Cyberpunk: I'm Not Cheating Chapter 29: hole in the sun

Jackie was reloading beside the body pile. The snap of the breech closing hit the dead silence of the warehouse like a rifle shot. Dutt nearly went down just from the sound.

"Kill him." Jackie looked at Dutt without any warmth at all. The gun barrel moved across him slowly, as if deciding where to start. "This kind of garbage is a waste of air. Night City doesn't need him."

Vito's finger was on the trigger. Dutt closed his eyes. Nothing left in his head but white.

Bang.

Dutt scread. He was still alive. The round had gone through his thigh. The pain was enormous and imdiate and he couldn't control any of what his body did with it. He rolled on the floor clutching his leg, making sounds he hadn't known he could make.

"Police arriving at the factory. Ti to pull back." Kiwi's voice in the earpiece.

"NCPD! Cease criminal activity! Cease criminal activity!"

Sirens outside the warehouse. Not MAX-TAC. Standard patrol car sirens — the kind of units that normally didn't bother responding to industrial district gang business. It sounded ironic even through the concrete walls.

Two patrol vehicles stopped at the warehouse entrance. Sergeant Stints ca through the door with several fully ard officers behind him.

"Nobody move! Hands up!" His gun was on the two crying mask figures. Vito tossed a distraction device and backed out with Jackie through the freight entrance they'd co in.

Stints did a slow pan across the scene, looking very much like a man who was discovering all of this for the first ti.

Tyger Claws bodies across every inch of the floor. And Sergeant Dutt, one leg destroyed, barely conscious in the corner.

"Oh, God." Stints put his weapon away and moved to Dutt's side with an expression of profound distress. "Dutt! Can you hear ? Those Tyger Claws animals. Attacking law enforcent. These people are absolutely insane."

Dutt looked up at Stints. His eyes were asking for sothing. What they mostly showed was that he already knew the answer.

Stints's face was very concerned. The thing moving through the back of his eyes was sothing else entirely.

He turned toward the freight entrance where the two crying faces had gone. The corner of his mouth moved. He replaced it imdiately with appropriate severity and got on the comm.

"HQ, this is Stints. Large-scale gang incident, North Oak. All Tyger Claws mbers down. Sergeant Dutt is wounded in the line of duty. Requesting dical support. Repeat, requesting dical support."

He had his officers sweep the warehouse. They found several people who had been moved through the location as traded goods.

The operation was clean on paper.

Inside the Delamain, Jackie turned Reason over in his hands, the night air clearing the last of the gunsmoke from his jacket.

"Solid run. That mask is sothing though. Cyberpsycho energy. Those guys looked half out of their minds before we'd even fired a shot."

"Fear is the best weapon." Vito watched neon lights run past the window and checked over Eddie. "And Stints will tell anyone who asks that a pair of cyberpsychos went on a rampage in there. He'll like that story."

"Caught in the act. Rival goes offline. NCPD internal cleanup." Jackie let out a low whistle. "Worse outco for Dutt than just killing him."

Stints had the final paynt into Vito's account before they'd crossed the district line.

A sergeant running human trafficking through NCPD channels was a major problem for an organization that had only just gone private. A lot of officers already knew about Dutt and had made their peace with knowing. The few who hadn't were in genuine pain now, watching sothing that had once been law enforcent openly function as a criminal operation.

When everyone had concluded that Dutt was finished, the new chief stepped in.

Jerry Forte had watched what Dutt was doing and saw the business model underneath it. He went straight to a private prison operator and signed an agreent. NCPD delivers bodies, private prison bills per head, NCPD takes a percentage.

Dutt was not demoted. Jerry Forte promoted him to Police Superintendent.

Stints's careful plan had produced nothing.

Dutt was not stupid either. He knew his people. Two car-loads of officers charging into a warehouse mid-firefight without any intelligence on the situation? Nobody in NCPD did that on instinct. The numbers didn't add up.

And Stints had never been warm with him. They were colleagues who tolerated each other. So what was the sudden concerned-colleague performance about?

Dutt expressed his deep gratitude publicly and started investigating Stints privately. He also quietly put money in front of the officers who had co with Stints that day, with so questions attached about what they rembered.

When Stints saw Dutt buying his own officers, he understood that Dutt had landed on the right answer. The money he'd spent was gone. The result he'd paid for hadn't materialized. And now the target was looking directly at him.

He had underestimated how comprehensively Forte had replaced "protect and serve" with "generate revenue" as the organizing principle of the departnt. The corruption Stints had tried to use as a weapon against Dutt had simply beco institutional policy.

There was no quiet way to deal with this. He couldn't let Dutt build a complete case. Back in the day he would have had Jackie and Vito quietly dealt with. That wasn't on the table anymore. Seventeen people in five minutes. He wasn't touching Vito.

"I completely shot myself in the foot."

He said it to himself, in a room, with no particular audience.

He watched Dutt working the room on his crutches, accepting congratulations from colleagues, and felt the cup in his hand start to compress.

He needed a backer. Sothing higher up than what he had.

Stints made a call to a contact nad Kaoru Togo.

Human joy and sorrow do not share a frequency.

Night City's nights do not slow down for the people they've chewed through. While Stints sat in his corner working through his options, the neon strips of Santo Domingo were running their light over Vito and Jackie and their new vehicles, and it was a good evening.

The Old Captain had personally supervised the Magician's arrival and made sure it ca in exactly the unmodified original spec Vito had asked for. He had also put a fresh coat of paint on it without being asked.

Jackie's CT-3X had co through as well. Wakako had located a specin, the Old Captain's people had gone into Westbrook for a day, and the motorcycle ca back to Santo Domingo stripped of its tracking hardware and entered the Old Captain's inventory.

"Vito, co try my Kusanagi. This bike is sothing else entirely."

Jackie was not being understated about his feelings for the motorcycle. He looked like a man who had found a spiritual ho and was considering whether motorcycles minded being slept next to.

Having their own vehicles ant the two of them no longer needed to call Delamain every ti a job ca up.

"Well, gentlen. How are we feeling about the new rides?"

"This car is sothing. An industrial work of art. I need another lap."

Jackie showed no sign of running out of enthusiasm for either machine anyti soon.

"Custor satisfaction. That's the whole job."

The Old Captain was also satisfied with the eddies. He kept going.

"Wheels are sorted. How about an apartnt? I've got a few good ones on the books right now. Worth looking at."

Vito laughed.

"You want every credit out of both our pockets, is that the plan?"

The Old Captain waved it off.

"Not at all, not at all. These are genuinely good properties. Can't just stand there and watch the right place get picked up by soone else."

Vito ca back around.

"Let us build the fund up a little more first. Do you have contacts in the Badlands?"

The Old Captain thought it over.

"I know people at a few camps. They don't co into the city much. You've got sothing going on out there?"

"There's a thing, yes."