My Gold and Green organization had expanded to three bloks over the course of the past year. We also had scooped up three abandoned factories and were Making Stuff, in addition to slowly grinding down the rooms in the Top Fifty of Habberblok to put in hydroponics gardens to surround the ghosts with life and slowly ease their hatred.

The hydroponics stuff was free, actually. The Mentats sponsored the whole shebang as an experiment in easing the strain of death zones formed by necroic entities, and since it made money on the side by selling fresh veggies, it was considered a win-win. My holopoint presentation sold it to them, as well as the fact I could actually walk up there and put the stuff together.

By now all the locals were familiar with the Ghost Knights and the quests they had to do, even if nobody talked about them. Normal stuff, like killing a guy who’d raped a punk’s sister long ago, or finding a surviving relative to let them know what had happened and pass a message on, or weird stuff like cleaning every room on floor 140 (which turned into a sponsored renovation project by the city and rapidly became some of the most desired rooms in the blok).

Ghost Knights were the elite of the Green and Gold. You only got the title if you completed your quest for the dead and a spirit of Habberblok attached itself to your mindblade/claw. You also picked up a haunting spirit as a familiar of sorts, who could keep an eye on your back and also warn you of psychic presences, which came in very useful, needless to say.

The boys and girls got a reputation for being tough as nails, and that was no lie at all. Psi-Reinforced Body meant every Feat made them that little bit tougher, and the full contact sparring and healing meant they were maxing Health and Soak. Being Nulls meant their Con scores were ever-rising. Yes, they were tough as nails, and could take punishment that others simply could not.

However, a mini-gun didn’t really care, so there was that.

Our opponents had been better armed than us, but that changed quickly, as in proper questing fashion, we killed them and took their stuff. They didn’t have psionics, they didn’t have Falling Star boosting their guns and weapons, and they couldn’t heal easily even if they got away.

The harsher drug dealers in the blok went down like that. There wasn’t much in the way of warning, we just killed them and either quietly vivified the bodies, or sent them upstairs to the ghosts. The ghosts didn’t mind maintaining some of the hydroponics’ mechanical components, but they needed hands to do so, and free labor to sweep the floors was always useful.

There were six different gangs dealing throughout Habberblok, and only one by the time we got done, who only dealt in the mild stuff and was veeeeery careful not to take over the bigger stuff as his competitors bought it.

Sharkey’s people were among the first we kicked out of Habberblok, and he wasn’t happy about it. They made a push to get back in, tried to ambush a few of the boys... and got counter-ambushed so lethally the attempts dropped off fast.

That was the beginning, and it began to snowball. Ghost Knights questing for the dead, dozens of young men and women with mindclaws cleaning things up and making the place and area better to live, serving in the Auxiliary, and then bringing down those first harvests of berries and vegetables... yeah, word had spread quick.

Two neighboring bloks had expressed interest in what we were doing. Kids were sent over, had the shit scared out of them, and then beaten out of them, and learned that attitude had its place and time, and it wasn’t here. If they wanted a mindclaw, they accepted a quest, and got to learn what it meant to have your ancestors looking after you.

More young men and women, and some older ones, had joined in. The circle of influence and the conflicts created by it rose. We had what amounted to a security contract, which could almost be considered a protection racket initially, just shifting from whatever gang had claimed the territory to us. That’s what it took, so we used the existing mechanic, but also made sure they knew what we were doing, helped them with their own security, and kept them informed of goings-on. We made them feel safe, instead of oppressed, and made to generate goodwill instead of resentment. They needed us, we needed income, it amounted to a tax to the Juris that wouldn’t bother to come down here unless bribed.

This was the kind of experience they started putting to use, from slowly pushing out rival gangs from multiple sources and factions, and now specifically targeting one we were sick of. It was a campaign, the kids were planning it, and I was one of the pieces they were moving, to deal with the tough stuff.

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Like this damn Walker here.

There were various levels of mechanization, ranging from just a few implants, to full cyborgs. Likewise, power armor had grades. You had real power armor, that moved based on how you moved, and was fairly light as such things went. Then you had mek suits, where you were basically wearing a robot, and generally hooked directly into it, subbing its servos for your own movements, and you were just along for the ride.

The next step up from a mek suit was a walker, or a mini-Mech.

Humanoid chassis for weapon mounts grew increasingly less viable the higher you went, unless and until you included a lot of anti-grav to offset the increasing amount of weight coming down on two narrow legs, and how easy it was to get those arms and weapon limbs shot off, as well as making it hard to hug the ground for a low profile.

Of course, they did have anti-grav here, and fusion batteries to power them, and a mech could respond faster than most vehicles, especially in tight quarters where most vehicles couldn’t go.

And besides, weird science loved them some giant robots, so gots to have them, right?

This Walker was basically a light artillery carrier, with a pair of auto-cannons for some armor-punching and pulse lasers for clearing out chaff. Guy in an armored bubble rode in the middle of it, jacked in with a cyberlink, directing it like his own body, and trying to shoot me.

He was having a time of it, because I had definitely spent time and money getting a Vampire’s Veil up, and none of his electronics could see me. He was having to rely on his meat eyes to track me, and that was definitely giving him conniption fits.

Without auto-tracking, his aim sucked, and he was hitting the broad side of the barn, and not the girl skating past it as he tried to get his sights on me. There was too much cover, and I was using it all as he chased me with hard and hot light in brilliant swathes, blasting holes into the plascrete walls of this old factory.

Up the walls, across the ceiling, down the walls, back up to the ceiling braces, skipping between steel rafters, down, across, up and over and down again while he cursed and swore and tried to keep up with the bulky machine, trying not to bounce off the ceiling braces as he chased after me.

Of course, he had a friend racing ahead of me, and they were talking. That was fine, I was too, and humming Heaven’s Own March for the benefits of my Marked as they took the advantage of the heavy hitters being drawn away to collapse on this arsenal of the Mav Street Runners, another one of Sharkey’s bully crews.

Sniper shots peeled off those on their flatbed cannon carriers, the autoguns lolling empty as their gunners lost their heads to flashes of Sun Shots. More shots raked across their armored cabins, punching through diaglass and steel and making a mess out of the cockpits.

Marked people came sliding around corners on lightfoot, leading with Sun Shots at anyone who looked too big or too shiny. Usually those people got two or three shots, to be on the safe side, and then a mindclaw came down to take off the head for further security.

Alarms were going off, but the outside coms were jammed and down, and we’d even cut their private lines and laser relays to be on the safe side.

The line of grenades blew past me and into the wall near me, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. The heat and shockwave didn’t actually annoy me much, it was all thunder and fire damage, and the physical fragments pinged off my golden skin armor and DR 19/Holy Silver, and they weren’t holy silver.

I went up the wall and then the ceiling as the ambusher in the second Walker tried to track me, a minigun chewing out the bullets.

He really did not like it when I braced my golden blade and bounced his shots right back at him. Arrow Deflection -> Arrow Reflection. Automatic once a round if desired, burn AoO’s if you want to do more than once.

Yeah, those were some heavy slugs, but the fun of force and psionics is that reversing shots is just too much fun not to do, and hard light doesn’t actually have much mass.

Heavy slugs bounced off Chalice, rebounded as their dumped inertia was fed completely back to them, aimed with cunning angles, and became a tight grouping of shots which turned his bubble-view into a spider-web of impacts, very tightly clustered.

He frantically let up on the guns and tried a point-blank grenade launch at the corner of the ceiling. Alas, I skipped upside down across the ceiling and came down outside the pincer-arms he was trying to stick out there, carving through one at the joint and sheering it right off as I hit the ground, carried the stroke through and across the back of his leg, lightning and acid carving deep into the joint of his Walker and really fucking up the servos there.

The blast of the grenades sent dust and stones flying, pinging loudly off him and softly off me. It blasted his Walker sideways, sending it lurching into the wall with a crunch as he lost his leg and his gyros couldn’t compensate properly.

I didn’t feel like stabbing through the inch of metal surrounding him, but the shattered diaglass bubble? It was only two feet from him.

Chalice was three feet long.

I swung up between his legs and guns, and as he gawked at me being right at his feet, a meter of golden force slid right through that weakened impact point and took him in the heart.

He managed to blink once, the lightning fried his circuits, and he was done.

His buddy rounded the corner as I cut on the right, the left, and my hair swirled out and plugged into the command cables for his grenade launchers.

He had just about enough time to realize I’d ambushed the ambusher, that his buddy’s ‘awk!’ on their comms meant he was dead, and then he saw the barrels of his buddy’s grenade launchers light up.

Foopfoop!

The first set did everything I needed, fracturing his cockpit and sending shockwaves through him and his Walker.

Sixty feet between us as I jumped and didn’t hit the ground. His ‘awk!’ joined his buddy as he struggled to settle his bouncing brain and didn’t succeed in time.

The Walkers powered down as their pilots died, not having any remote-piloting hardware on board (I was looking for it).

Somewhat damaged, but not too terribly much. The Goldilocks would have new toys to play with.

The Mav Street Runners wouldn’t be running anywhere after this. The ‘locks were already pulling ID chips and breaking into their accounts, while the Goldijacks were plugging into their vehicles and getting them ready to pull out.

Implants were being pulled, and bodies prepped for the soylent wagon. We’d already flagged one for special service at the nearest TC crossroad.

More transport trucks came rumbling into the open doors of their main shops here, for carting off their equipment and supplies. The process began quickly, and hey, having some new mek-suits there really helped with moving around the heavy stuff.

Weapons were priority, repair equipment and parts printers next, and then electronics and tools following. Replacement parts were racked and shoved into trucks, sent out one after another down streets staying very quiet after all the shooting.

We had spotters down all the key arteries coming in here. Most of my Marked had arrived on foot, taking underways to avoid all the watchers and spies planted around Habberblok, coming out of a garage in Glumberzone and from there trotting another five miles to get into position around the Mavver hardpoints.

Six dead, two from headshots and one from a heartshot. Everybody else had been saved, and although half a dozen had lost limbs, they’d been preserved and stitched right back on. I knew, because the wounds had popped up on me while I was jumping and dodging, and naturally I could tell exactly which of my Marked were getting them transferred to me... and they could feel me taking them on the far end.

Bonding experiences, yep.