Night had fallen. Along the border between Chihuahua, xico and New xico, the darkness took on a bleak, desolate hue.
Aside from the occasional gusts of wind-blown sand, there was no sign of life.
Suddenly, from various directions in the distance, clusters of bright firelight erupted on the dim horizon. Flas raged, emitting the crackling sounds of bursting explosions.
Rumble, tremble...
The aftermath of explosions flared violently across the barren wasteland. Small EMPs, shrapnel, sympathetic detonations, and heavy armored drones the size of trucks crashed down, alongside UAVs plumting like dying birds. Amid the continual thuds, the air itself seed to sear with heat under the wind's pressure.
The chaotic, elongated streaks of orange-red looked like the brushstrokes of a postmodern abstract painter.
They were flight paths ford by a chaotic mix of light attack drones, heavy Octants, rockets, missiles, infrared flares, and hovercraft.
Fsshh—
Beside the burning wreckage of a overturned Bratsk U4020 in the sand, a Latin-faced man hung his head low. Blood seeped from his nose and mouth, foad crimson at the edges, while blood sprayed from a deep gash at his neck—nearly severing his jawbone, cervical vertebrae, and brainstem—staining the yellow sand.
His two limp, cybernetic arms still extended crackling mantis blades. One blade's folding chanism had snapped, sparking with fizzing discharges.
Sporadic arcs of electricity popped from it.
Nearby lay the shattered corpses of seventeen or eighteen cybernetically enhanced attackers. So had their chests torn open from within by thorn-like spikes; others looked like they'd been sawed cleanly in half; so had been… outright beheaded.
The air was thick with the sll of scorched tal and charred fatty flesh.
The grueso scene made even the administrative personnel from Arasaka's Foreign Affairs Departnt—who had accompanied the delegation to the "Austin Variable Dialogue Conference"—frown deeply and instinctively avert their gaze.
"D-Director, are you alright...?"
Inside the ergency-landed, business-class armored hovercraft used for exploration.
As the deputy representative of the Arasaka delegation for this conference, and Vela's aide, the well-dressed foreign affairs official Masao Mizuno clutched the black-gold case the director had just tossed aside. He stared in horror at the bloodstained figure captured by the surveillance feed.
"Unhard. rely a group of cornered fools lashing out."
Drenched in blood and viscera, holding a black-and-red long-bladed spear still dripping crimson, clad in her bloodstained dark Arasaka office uniform, Vela released the disemboweled attacker from her grasp.
The blast from the recent EMP missile explosion had left her extrely uncomfortable.
Though high-end cyberware and military vehicles were built with EMP counterasures—and Vela herself had specialized anti-EMP modules and strong natural resistance—Militech's gear was no joke.
After taking several hits at such close range, the hovercraft's central system had short-circuited and gone offline. That aside, the nausea and sharp stinging in her brain made her movents far more brutal than usual.
As she spoke, Vela kept moving. Spotting a glint in her field of vision—suspicious, stealthy—she fra-skipped into a blink-dash.
Her spear-blade sliced through. Feeling resistance along the edge, a scream rang out as a wound opened midair. Blood sprayed across the shimring 'image' and onto Vela's clothes.
Optical camouflage.
Expressionless, Vela pulled the trigger on her TKI-20 Shingen smart submachine gun. Six-round burst. With precise targeting and tracking bullets, she fired: two to the eyes, two to the heart, two to the neck. Blood blood instantly.
"Activate Tyrant mode. Has the reboot completed?"
Wiping the blood from her face, data streams flickered in her now-reddened eyes as she gave the command.
[AI: Reboot complete. Activating… 60% →]
"Fortify defenses. Activate all security bots and deploy drones. Soldiers, move out."
This order was directed at the accompanying Arasaka heavy security unit.
She reached out and pulled a soldier—whom she'd just rescued from the hands of a heavily cyber-modified attacker—behind a rocky outcrop of the gobi terrain.
"Y-Yes, Director!" the soldier stamred, visibly shaken but exhilarated.
"Mm."
Vela gave a slight nod, scanning the situation on the ground.
A crisscross hail of gunfire covered the temporary defensive position the hovercar convoy had set up upon its ergency landing, stretching for several hundred ters in every direction.
Shattered weapon fragnts and burning light-armored vehicles littered the scene, mixed with over a dozen wrecked ard robots.
In the distance, one of Arasaka's heavy Octant drones, which had shielded Vela's personal vehicle and taken a direct hit, lay in pieces—exploded, burning fiercely, its flas lighting up half the area.
From the mont the vehicular radar detected the ambush, several EMP missiles hidden among infrared-decoy-diverted anti-air missiles had temporarily disabled the hovercar convoy's systems.
They could still fly, but sluggishly—and flying half-disabled, with compromised weapon systems, in mid-air was as good as painting a target on their backs.
So Vela had decisively ordered the entire convoy to make an ergency landing. The distress signal had already been sent. A defensive periter was to be ford on the spot, with the accompanying netrunners working to reboot the systems…
That was a lie.
This was a half-scripted operation.
Vela was hard-acting.
Looking at her bloodstained uniform, its fabric marked by bullet grazes, she narrowed her eyes slightly. To enhance authenticity and abruptness, she had deliberately not worn her standard 'Inquisitor' field uniform from previous operations.
This level of realism should suffice.
She had specifically chosen Juárez—a city once dubbed the most violent in the world.
Even though Night City now held the title of the most violent and cri-ridden tropolis globally, Juárez still maintained its infamy in the underground. Its title as the most 'toxic' had barely changed. Here, leaf-blowing was a normalized lifestyle, and the place teed with cyber-rcenaries suffering from drug-induced psychosis—its reputation well-earned.
The Federal Intelligence Agency had a long-standing tradition: they loved to pick cannon fodder from these rustic locales, where a single dose got you high, and delinquents road every corner.
If there were too many rational, disciplined types around, it would be harder to maneuver.
Crack, squelch squelch…
At that mont, combat on Vela's flank—responsible for her protection—also concluded. Sharp, rhythmic tears of flesh echoed through the air. It was the cyber-ninjas from the Arasaka Family Compound assigned to guard her.
Steam rose from their deployed thermal mantis blades. The leading ninja spoke, "Director, you actually didn't have to..."
"Have you forgotten my primary role?"
With a soft smile, Vela countered.
"Running away isn't my style."
Then, her eyes sharpened. In front of other subordinate departnts, she leaned forward, her specially-reinforced, abrasion-resistant high-heeled shoes stomping the ground with force—bam!
The yellow-brown sand cracked instantly, soil scattering in all directions.
Ti to wrap up the act.
She launched a devastating stomp-kick at a heavily-modified off-road vehicle racing toward her, the model nearly unrecognizable.
Bang! With a deep, heavy crash, the car door twisted and deford. The nearly ten-ton off-roader was knocked sideways and flipped.
Bang bang clatter!
The vehicle tumbled over the uneven terrain and finally ca to a halt against a protruding boulder. Vela turned toward the driver—an arm-modified Black man extending the barrel of an ejection-firing system—and brought her spear down with a swift slash—shhk!
Like a hot knife through butter, the sharp blade scraped along the cockpit's tal fra and windshield.
Beneath it, artificial skin, synthetic muscle fibers, blood vessels, and titanium bones were all sliced apart.
Like molten iron, the spearblade suddenly warped and extended, forming a sharp arc—splat!—as red-and-white blood sprayed from the cockpit.
Seeing this, the five cyber-ninjas made no comnt.
They moved simultaneously with Vela's strike—Sandevistan, engaged!
With coordinated precision, they darted toward the flanks.
Their objective was singular: ensure Vela's safety.
Bang! Bang bang!
Amid the high-speed combat, Vela sidestepped several buzzing, electrified sniper rounds as if she had a third eye. Raising her head, her ultra-sharp intuition instantly locked onto the coordinates of a distant observer.
[Coordinates sent]
Vmmm… vmmm…
Two Arasaka Octants that hadn't yet been shot down by residual guided rockets received the site's highest priority command. Their vector engine blue flares blazed as they roared toward the edge of the illuminated nightti Gobi.
A salvo of rat-a-tat-tat, boom boom boom—autocannon fire raking the ground, followed by rocket blasts scarring the earth.
Vela could feel the presence of distant observers vanish.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh—several more guided missiles launched. In reply, brilliant decoy flares shot out from the bellies of the two Octants like a sky full of fireworks. In the stream of heat and light—boom!
One Octant was hit, lost balance, and crash-landed amid black smoke and shrapnel. There were flashes and explosions, like a ruptured steel furnace—blinding and scorching.
Vela paid it no mind.
The opponents were agents from the New United States Federal Intelligence Agency.
Even with operational secrecy and rogue frontline disobedience in play, they were unlikely to bring in heavier military hardware. But when it ca to armants, Militech's deploynt level was sothing Arasaka had to treat with full seriousness.
Military-grade cyberware was a baseline—hardly worth ntioning.
Equipnt like multi-functional single-soldier launchers, light armored vehicles, and disguised missile trucks—skating on the line of the "Excessive Firepower Prohibition Treaty"—were very likely issued to field agents.
Because Arasaka did the sa.
So did every major corporation around the world.
Ratatatat—
With the Arasaka security detail's counterattack and deploynt of mobile turret emplacents, the attackers' vehicles—labeled as "terrorists"—were held at bay, at least temporarily.
But even in that short ti, two more Octants had crashed.
To take out the enemy's rocket launcher trucks, they had essentially traded one-for-one.
Drones, ard bots—consumables. A Manticore vehicle also got hit by a missile, its hull smoking, one side sagging as it crashed. It smashed into the ground—its engine clearly beyond quick repair.
Estimating the situation, Vela opened the grid map in her cybernetic eye's HUD.
Route analysis showed the support team scheduled for mid-route interception was ten minutes away. Even the Trauma Team's devac crew was en route at high speed.
Bzzt bzzt…
[WARNING: INCOMING BREACH ATTEMPT.]
"Hmm?" Vela saw that her customized [Self-ICE] module—linked directly to Arasaka's cybersecurity departnt—was sounding the alarm.
[COUNTERASURE DEPLOYED.]
A blaze of crimson data flickered violently in Vela's eyes.
Insane personal compute power, absurd neural load tolerance that had never been maxed out, and a prototype network access rig—experintal, not yet on the market—equivalent to the highest anti-intrusion tech of both Arasaka and NetWatch. It kicked into high-frequency operation.
Decryption. Counter-hack. Traceback. Daemon virus—
[BREACH PROTOCOL CONFIRD.]
[DECRYPTING… UPLOADING…]
[TARGET LOCATED] → [CHAIN INFECTION] → [CYBERWARE OVERHEAT] → [SYNAPTIC LTDOWN]...
A complete intrusion-counter flow.
Whether the hacker hidden in the distance got their brain fried like an overcooked steak, Vela didn't know. But the incoming breach vanished.
"Director, the hovercar systems have rebooted!"
The accompanying Arasaka netsec expert reported in delight.
"Mm. Begin extraction. This round… I'm done playing with those people," Vela answered herself.
Just as she was about to signal a retreat, a familiar drone humd near her ear.
In the next instant, a high-explosive shell from a frontline armored hovercraft struck the Octant still circling in front of her. With a deafening explosion, it fell like a fireball, wreckage raining down.
"Hahaha… Like my gift?"
It was three magnetically levitated armored vehicles.
Dual-body hover chassis, but their cannons were thicker and longer than standard models. They were also equipped with anti-rocket grilles and rocket nest modules. Vela recognized them—Basilisks.
A man's rough and manic, borderline hysterical voice ca through the loudspeakers, drawing closer.
"Finally! Finally, my chance ca! Hoho! Little Arasaka b*tch, I bet your Octants and vehicle ammo are spent. Your hackers—thanks to you—must be out of RAM too, right...?"
Vela's expression was unreadable.
What is this? Improvising?
She had secretly issued an encrypted order via Arasaka-kei's remaining legacy—the covert agent network—to an old contact at a northern xico intel station, hoping to stir so rogue Militech agents or embedded F.I.A. pawns into attacking the Arasaka return delegation.
So where the hell did this clown co from?
Vela eyed the big tal hunk for another mont, then dismissed it. Not worth the effort. She wasn't Adam Smasher, and she didn't have her full gear—tearing through APCs would be a pain.
She raised her hand, halting the cyber-ninjas and security force.
She spoke calmly: "Tyrant mode, deploy."
[AI: Affirmative. Full reboot complete. Activating now.]
Hiss—
It ca from one of the convoy's exploration hover transports. With a sound like pressure releasing, a massive figure encased entirely in angular tal armor slowly stood up.
Each step echoed with thunderous heartbeats. Its upper body was broad and dense, lower body narrow. Arms like pile drivers, absurdly wide shoulders bearing an armored head. Crimson goggles lit up.
"Authorization granted. Execute annihilation operation. Eliminate them," Vela turned away.
Before her sentence finished—VROOOM—
Blue flas burst from the vector thrusters on the giant's back and legs. WHOOM! A roaring gust—then the flying tal giant streaked across the air, trailing fire.
CLANG! A deafening crash and explosion of brilliant sparks—one Basilisk was hurled into another like a projectile.
Before their turrets could even rotate, the Tyrant hovered midair, projecting a death zone: a red gravity-target field recognized internally.
VMMM VMMM BOOOOM!!
Explosions, tremors, the ear-grinding wail of tal—then the compressed terrain heaved. The rear ends of all three Basilisks popped up. Their hulls shook violently—then, internal munitions cooked off. From the inside out, they erupted. A heatwave rolled out, scorching the air until it shimred.
Whoever that clown was—it didn't matter. Maybe he had a grudge. Vela didn't care to rember.
She already had what she needed.
Covered in blood and dust, Vela looked up. The blast wind lifted her hair as she gazed toward the sky.
There—trailing sirens and streaks of blue fla—ca a string of black dots, screaming across the sky.
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