It took about an hour for the response team from the Runners’ allies to show up, armored buses and carriers crammed with shooters hurtling our way, looking to reinforce, get some payback, see who dared mess with them, or avenge their buddies.

We weren’t too sure of their motives, and it didn’t matter.

The first thing to do was mess with the TC control signals when they reached that intersection. All green, head across... and the first two vehicles only had time to scream when they saw the haulers coming.

Buses went flying in explosions of metal, glass, burning fuel, and some flesh and blood, gangers screamed, and the haulers kept right on going. The cross-circuiting bots unplugged themselves and scampered away, as TC got irritated with people messing with their control signals. But this was late at night, and it only killed some gangers, so no harm, no foul.

We sent their kill totals to them later, and they responded politely and updated the numbers. One of those haulers was a leader, with almost five digits! I think we sporked some of the bets on place advances, so some bookies might have got mad at us...

The drone mines ran up underneath their vehicles as the rest of the convoy stewed in place, wondering if they could trust the lights, and trying to get their buddies out of the burning buses. Boomboomboomboomboom... ten more vehicles went ripping off the ground, they made some damn nice mini-explosives hereabouts, and the fine gangers inside them didn’t fare too well, while filling the roads with more wreckage.

The Chill Dawgs decided they had better things to do, and got out of there as soon as possible. We let the scavs deal with the dead, as they’d do a fine job and inject some more money into the local economies, nothing to worry about.

---

The Criminey Eels came in from the opposite direction. They were a street rod crew, prone to drive-bys, fancy muscle cars, and crazy racing, so TC tricks didn’t mean shit to them. Spiked flats to blow out their wheels and raising the street bunkers to block their travel lanes at inappropriate times, however, that could annoy them. We didn’t even have to kill them. Once half their cars were out of action, we just ID’d whoever was in charge of ordering them in, and a drone came plummeting down from on high to take him and his car out in a nice explosion.

We tracked the follow-up calls, and watched them all turn back as we were pulling out of there.

---

The Gros Lobos were a bit more clever, getting word of our retreat path and opting to set up an ambush along it. Our Marked watchers saw them getting into place, setting up snipers and the like, and some of our reserve crew followed the paths through the underways. They literally came up through the basements of the buildings the Lobos were in, shocking some of the maintenance crews who got quickly out of the way, and took out their ground forces from behind. The snipers were boxed in, the drones came hovering down in front of them to let them know they were boned, and as they bailed out of the rooms they were waiting in, they were unceremoniously shot by the teams waiting in the corridors.

---

The fourth group coming in was on foot. The Newvinian Rats came in purely on Mark I soles, a steady infiltration of manpower at street level and below. They had very good instincts of the understreets, and regularly infiltrated the territory of other gangs through the underways, so they had some knowledge of paths and tracks.

Going up against mindblade-users in tight quarters was a murderously bad idea, especially when they all had access to The Map of our combined travels in Janus Prime, including an incredibly detailed knowledge of the understreets. It was with very little fanfare that some bloody and murderous fights erupted on the streets and below, with the latter being close-combat and helping others once again learn that the Green and Gold earned every single bit of their reputation for being damnably tough. The topside fight became a series of rolling ambushes and enfilades, the sneaky Rats moving into ambush after ambush, and really not enjoying the experience.

When they finally pulled out of our territory, two-thirds of them were dead, and they were running for it.

---

The last wave was probably from the Awkman Hawks, who liked to use drones flying and landbound, and were pretty tech-savvy, being the gang responsible for setting up Sharkey’s private network and all. Something like four hundred drones came swooping into our territory, rigged to target and blow up, swooping in like several flocks of oversized pigeons ready to ram into things and explode, killing everything around them as they did.

The anti-drone rockets were significantly cheaper than actual drones, since they didn’t need terrain-following, coordination tech, or communication bands. As the jammers hit the drones, and their terrain-following tech ended up looking at the Habberblok ghosts and promptly fritzed, the mini-rockets launched from storm-style launchers turned the early morning into a fireworks display of falling drones and explosive payloads detonating. A lot of eyes were looking for the ones that were trying to be sneaky, and a lot of target practice was put to work shooting them down.

---

Our spoils of war were trucked into one of the subfloors of an old distillery we’d taken over, now converted into our own fortified garage, and the kids now had more targets to go after.

The deaths sobered them up, as even with how tough they were and how skilled and how they could be healed, they could still die if they were hit. They were awesome, but this wasn’t a game, and they could still be killed.

It did give them a huge mad on for Sharkey, and morale soared.

Us beating the snot out of the other gangs also did wonders for our reps, as the Goldilocks crew was more than happy to post all sorts of vids of them getting their asses handed to them.

We had begun dismantling Sharkey’s Machine, and we’d see where this could take us.

----------

“I admit you have balls, but no sense,” I complimented the guy in black power armor lite, looking rather sleek and impressive. The mindblade he was displaying was a deep crimson, so he was a sword for hire, for whatever purposes. “Cutting your way through my people was a nice way to prove your skill, but really, do you think you would have made it here if we’d wanted you dead?”

He was wearing a helm painted with a black skull, that was probably supposed to be intimidating. He raised the meter-long Mindblade in his hand without a care. “It had the intended effect of calling you out for a duel, did it not?” I eyed the three Stars and two Suns on his Blade, and shook my head. He was clasping a Focus in his hand, boosting the effects of the Mindblade, and it was crackling with energy designed to leech off a psion’s Reserve.

“You’re an Eight and not much more. What are you going to do, Boost your armor and size and think you’ll catch me by surprise?” I had watched three vids of him fighting by now, and was scanning through a fourth. I just shook my head at him. “Constran the Crimson Sword. I mean, seriously? You came an awful long way just to get your head handed to you. Go on, Buff up. I’ll wait for you.”

He displayed some surprise, and spirals of psionic energy flared up around him, in specific patterns and colors related to the effects he was drawing forth. Inertial Armor, yep. Biofeedback, yep. Combat Precognition, yep. And lastly, Body Growth, instantly grabbing ectoplasm and doubling his height to twelve feet, increasing mass by eight, and doubling his reach.

“You are very sure of yourself, as befitting someone who performed a Quadruple Sun Strike!” he said loftily, the filtered voice even deeper now, clearly feeling superior looking down at me, and waving a two-meter mindblade, Stars burning on it, Suns spiraling around it, crackling with energy from Nimbus and Corona.

“Uh-huh. Lesson time.”

I glided forwards, his mindblade instantly dipped to thrust forwards at me, right for my heart, and unarmored chest in general.

My Claws flashed up and slashed across.

His crimson mindblade shattered like glass, as did his massive form, revealing his shocked real-size body beyond. My fist continued forwards through the disintegrating remnants of his blade, the ruby shards evaporating before they could hit the floor, and my Claw, balled into a fist, crashed into the breastplate of his armor.

It was a Sun Strike, and my Corona and Nimbus went off.

He left his feet as the psionic reinforcement on his armored vest shattered, and the force of the strike passed right on through his armor. He went sailing back ten feet, Soaking most of the hit so that he could keep his feet and skid to a halt, and he gasped and stared at me and the smoking circuits of the rent in his power armor above his breastbone.

His blade snapped back into existence, but it had neither Suns nor Stars at the moment. He grimaced as he tried to bring them up, except I was suddenly in front of him too fast... and Suns and Stars were definitely on my fist.

He tried to parry, and I shattered his mindblade again, making him shake from the feedback once more, and this time backfisted him across his helm. Metal creaked and folded, parts of it tore open, and he spun around, half-stunned by the blow, trying to bring up his non-existent blade again to try to block me, and I planted my foot between his legs, thoroughly exhausting his Soak and crushing his manhood up into him, padding be damned.

He came down from three feet in the air, quivered, and fell, folding over like a baby at the pain down low.

“Now, you’re going to pay for cutting up four of my boys. I’ll leave you your armor, but you’re donating your Focus to the armory. If any of them had died, you would also be dead right now.” I toed his Focus up to my hand, and tossed it to Brekko, standing in the circle ringing us nearby.

I had standards on bladecraft before I would allow any of my disciples to use a Sword Focus, and none of the lads had reached it yet... but Brekko in particular was really trying to get there, bless the bright boy’s heart. Trying to be a good cutter and a good shooter wasn’t easy, but he had ambitions.

“Throw him outside by the curb. If he’s still there in ten minutes, shoot him.”

Unsympathetic hands grabbed him, and when his helmed head looked up, he saw the four kids he’d cut on his way in, their shirts still bloody, but the wounds across their chests gone, and gold-green mindclaws latched onto him, pulsing and ready to crumple his armor to shreds if he dared resist.

------

Constran managed to call his bike over to him via voice protocol, and somehow climbed aboard backwards and set the destination. The flywheels spun and kept the bike balanced as it sped off. He hissed and spit and swore revenge, even as he thanked the Emperor he hadn’t killed anyone going in, or he would now be dead, instead of losing a replaceable Sword Focus.

She hadn’t even brought out her mindblade to deal with him. Shattering his blade, crushing his armor, dispelling his Buffs... even through the agony of his crushed testicles, he shivered.

She had destroyed him, and he had no idea how she had done it. Sharkey had sent him in to test her out, maybe kill her if he could, although when he had looked around and seen all those dozens of Mindclaws with Suns on them around him, he knew that doing that was going to be next to impossible. He might be better than any of them, but not all of them.

And he wasn’t anything compared to her. Where the fuck had she come from? A Quadruple Sun Strike... he hadn’t believed it, but now he could, because that’s exactly what she had done to him, without using a Sword. Crushed his blade with one fist, nearly pulped his heart with the second, moved right with him as he was smashed back, destroyed his reformed blade with a third, and backfisted him with a fourth.

He had the distinct feeling she could have driven one up between his legs, and if she had, he would have died instantly.

She could pull off a Quintuple Suns Strike, he was sure of it. That meant she could spar with Coronal Knights, at least!

That fuckhead Sharkey, sending him up against someone like that. The damn zwilnik had no idea what he was up against...