Chapter Fifty-Two - Riding in the Ground

Chapter Fifty-Two - Riding in the Ground That evening, after work, I took a bus out to meet Jane. Not at Full-Auto Stranger-Danger, but out in the outskirts of Fortress ENE. While I lived a good ways from even the Outer Circle area, I was still well within the city. There was a massive area of cleared land that the city sat on. The outskirts was less part of Fortress ENE, and more like the small satellite towns that had been around before the fortress was laid or which popped up afterwards. There were buses out to a few of those, since people still lived there. Kind of a pain in the ass, but I didn't have that much choice. I got off at the last stop, then had to walk a block over to where I found Jane and a guy I wasn't familiar with. She was leaning up against a large pick-up, painted in a dark blue with flame decals on the front. The guy was standing a few paces away, arms crossed next to an old SUV with a bike trailer on the back. "Beanstalk!" Jane called out. "Hey," I said before starting to head over. "Beanstalk, this is Hec." "Hector," the man confirmed. He shook my hand as I came closer. "No one calls me Hec." "I do!" Jane said. "Like I said," he replied. Jane laughed at that, loud and raucous. "You're a bit late," Jane said to me. "But not too late. Was just talking to Hec here about how we'd divide the prize." "The prize, huh?" I asked. Hector nodded. "The cargo needs its location marked out. We know more or less where it disappeared. About an hour's drive out of the city. No one's pin-pointed it yet." "So that's my job?" I asked. I couldn't help but notice that there was a motocross off the trailer. It looked like one of those decently large racing bikes, but painted all in black. There were two hard-plastic cases at the rear and a smaller one sitting in front. "That's my ride?" "My ride," Hector corrected. "But Jane here says you're good for finding things. So yeah. If you want to brave the wilds, that's on you." I nodded along. "And once I find the cargo?" I'd done some research. The bus ride had been long enough for that. I knew what the cargo trucks I was looking for looked like. Lucky for me, they were painted in whites and oranges, company colours. They weren't small, either. "Ah, I've got that part," Jane said. She ran back, then returned with a small plastic device with a switch in the middle. "This is a SM0002 satellite beacon. Costs a grand, so don't lose it." "Alright," I said. The thing was beaten and battered, but looked okay otherwise. "Flick the switch when you find the cargo and hide it nearby. I'll be able to pinpoint it. Take some pics too. Your augs can do that?" "I've got a phone with a camera," I said. "Good enough!" Jane said. She returned to the blue pickup with the flames, then came back, this time with a rifle and a small box of loose ammo. "This is... well, it's an old-ass .308 I've had sitting in inventory forever. Probably works fine." I blinked as I took the rifle. It was a magazine-fed lever-action. Not an old-school one with wooden furniture, but something halfway modern, with a carbon-fiber stock and a fat silencer on the end. "Five round mag, plus one in the chamber," Jane said. "Rounds are AP. Should make any nasties out there think twice." There was a gun sheath on the bike, I noticed, next to the front... fork, I think it was called. "Need a helmet?" she asked. "No. I should be fine," I said. "I guess I'll get going, then." "Here," Hector said as he gave me some keys. "Don't bang it up too much, yeah?" "Sure," I said. "What's the payout for this one again?" "Six grand!" Jane replied. "Well, that's for grabbing the goodies. I make a quarter for arranging things, Hector and his guys make half of that for fetching them. You make an eight." "And the other eight?" I asked while I did some mental math. "Guards," Hector said. "For the grabbing." "Okay," I replied. Seven-fifty? That... well, it wasn't that bad for an evening's work. More than what I made clearing an E-rank for Luna Corp. I got on the bike, then fumbled around for a bit to start it up. I got it going, but Hector was looking mighty nervous. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from novelhall. Please report it. "You ah, know how to ride that?" he asked. "Yeah, of course," I lied. Then I gunned it. The fork twisted, and I was sent tumbling off the back. I Reloaded, then cursed. I was back at home, a solid hour ago. I should have set a save earlier. The entire trip back, I was looking up guides on how to ride motorcycles and trying to figure out the make and model of the one Hector had from memory. This time I made a Save before arrivinf, then looked around the bike, inspecting it. There were two 3-litre gas canisters in the saddlebags and a small toolkit in the front bag. Good to know. I made it ten yards before falling off this time. The next got me doing a wheelie... but not on purpose. The time after that I think I broke my wrist. It hurt like a bitch and so I Reloaded again. Then I asked Hector to show me how to use the bike. He was real sceptical about it, but showed me anyway. That helped. I didn't break anything the next time I fell. It took five more loops for me to start feeling comfortable. I found some straight spaces and gunned it, then did sharper and sharper turns until I figured out the whole 'leaning against it' thing without going so hard that I ended up on the ground. I was getting good at reflexive Reloads too! In the end, I took that helmet. Less for the protection, and more because there were still some insects that weren't extinct, and they seemed magnetically attracted to my face. "Alright, see you in a few," I said. I opened a map on my augs, marked the last known location of the convoy about a half-hour from where we were, and gunned it. The roads were safe. Mostly because the government hired these armed patrol trucks to drive them every hour. I actually shot past one on the way. The tucks rolled on these six huge wheels and were covered in armoured plates. They were basically tanks without the treads, with a large turret on the top and two smaller guns, one on each side. Plus, each one had a pair of D-rankers at the rear, geared up in full mil-spec armour, ready to throw down. My tax money at work. It took a while, but I made it to where the convoy got split up. It was a small, abandoned township where the main highway ran through. One of the trucks was... just there. Shoved off the side of the road and into the lot of what used to be someone's trailer home. The front was crushed in. I parked the bike, walked over, then checked inside only to recoil. The cargo was gone. The cargo container supposed to be on the back had been removed and was gone. The driver was... still there. however. More or less. The truck didn't look like it had run into anything nearby. The homes here were damaged, but it was more poor maintenance than violence, I think. So, the truck... Looking at the front, I found blood. Not the drivers, not unless he bleed purplish-red. A monster, then? Portals breached. It happened all the time. It only took a few hours after a portal opened for the monsters within to sometimes start venturing out. It really depended on the monster, though. Fortunately, Earth was a low-magic space. Monsters that stepped out, especially more magical ones, would usually jump right back in. Sometimes though, they'd be tempted by something, or they were predators that liked meat, regardless of how magical. And then a breach might start. Technically, a breach was whenever monsters came out of a portal, but generally people only called it a breach when they started to come out in numbers. North America was way too large with way too much unprotected space to keep every portal from spilling out monsters. Teams were sometimes paid on government contracts to rush out and close dangerous portals, or clear out an area, but it was dangerous work with shit pay. So there were wild monsters all over. And it looked like one of them had taken the front of this truck on and maybe won. I felt like maybe Jane should have given me a bigger gun. Back to the bike. I had several directions to start looking in, but what else were infinite tries good for? ***