“I’m pretty sure when I went to bed st night, I didn’t have enough materials to produy bots.” After a night out with Sharron, I slept in, for the first time i memory. When I came out to the garage, ready to get to work, I found it was a lot busier than when I left.

  You didn’t. You’re now worked with all the squad leaders, remember? Because you were ed about your manufacturing and surveilnce capabilities one of the squads took your semi out and collected materials while you were sleeping. Another squad leader then took the initiative to begin produg squirrels for you.

  “And they mao produce several dozen squirrels in that time?” I asked.

  The Css II Industrial maes have a six foot square printing area, and since each squirrel is only a foot high you squeeze a lot of bots into a single run.

  “I see that,” I replied, looking at the veritable o of squirrels in front of me. Unlike Angeline’s squirrels, which were stantly in motion, these ones were standing at attention. Wide-Eyes seemed to be pag bad forth in front of the lines, iing the tiny troops.

  While the first mae rodug squirrels, the sed erf updates on some of your troops. As of now, two squads worth ur troops have been upgraded, along with their ons.

  “Wait, just the basic models? I’m pretty sure I bought the blueprints for heavier models in each group.”

  About that, Heavy is behind the truck. You should call him over and take a look.

  I did so, and was surprised by the ge. Most of my troops were around three and a half feet tall, but Heavy was noroag five feet i, three feet in width. He looked like a fridge.

  “Fuck me, I didn’t expect to have to look up at him. This upgrade was worth it, right?”

  The ‘Heavy’ trooper should be able to take punishment equal to, and in some cases exceeding, what Bob is capable of. The new armor pting is much more resistant to thermal, kiic, chemical, eleagid cussive damage. The new frame also has a point for a shoulder-mounted on, which may be useful iure. Unfortuhey also weigh a ton pared tur troops, so it’ll be difficult to transport them en masse.

  “rade them,” I replied, as I pulled on Heavy’s arm. The big bot didn’t even shift an inch, despite my improved strength. “We’ll run two squads through the upgrade process, followed by the foxes and ons, then heavy models. It’ll be slow, since each produ cycle takes over four hours, but I’ll feel safer once everything has been modernized.”

  Uandable. What about the squirrels?

  “I… don’t think I and enough squirrels to cover a signifit area, even with my upgrades. I’ll have to implement anders, just like for the bears, going forward. I think I may be able to hahis many, and surveilnce of this district, with Wide-Eyes’ help.”

  I’ll adjust the squirrel produ pns going forward.

  With a thought I had one of the bears crae of the garage doors, and thehe squirrel horde scampering out into the streets. I could faintly hear the yells and gasps of people outside, but I ighem and had the garage door re-secured after all the squirrels left.

  A staggering amount of information started flooding into my brain, images and sounds, until I temporarily severed the data e. “How the hell does Angeline deal with something like that?”

  Multiple brain enhas, multitasking along with increased processing aion, at minimum. I’m sure it doesn’t look impressive, but that level of trol required a lot of time and effort.

  “No kidding.” I rubbed my head, trying to ease the sudden headache I’d developed. “I o set up some rules, so the squirrels only send important data back.”

  What are you looking for?

  “Start with any violence. I know there’s a lot of that around, but I’d like to be kept apprised of any issues. Sed, anyone passing out pamphlets, or refering to the ‘Guiding Light’ repeatedly. Unfortunately, as cult-y as they are, acc to Jessup’s information the Guiding Light’s people weren’t wearing a uniform while recruiting, which makes trag them down harder.”

  Perhaps keeping a for vehicles may also be useful. Very few people seem to have a w model down here, so it would be easy to fg any active civilian vehicles as suspicious.

  “Good point, let's do that too.” Once I’d created a crude set of rules, I braced myself. “Here goes nothing.” I reected to the data stream, and this time it was much less overwhelming. A few updates fhts and gunfire came in, but nothing super important. There were actually fewer is than I expected.

  I was just about to start pnning my steps, when one of the feeds caught my attention. It had Ripjack, who I thought would have been driven off by the angs after my st run-in with him, meeting with Salvador, leader of the age, and Null, of the Void Walkers. Three assholes the district could do without. The only reason it was fgged was because Ripjack baded some random ganger with his ‘new’ cw.

  “I’ve had some of my girls watg the area, she doesn’t seem to have more than a dozen of those bots defending the area. They’re tough, but nothing a coup’ rockets ’t take care of. Our sponsor up above wants a sample of her tech, but they don’t need more than one or two. There must be some sweet salvage in that bunker of hers, it’s all ours once we break in,” Null said. The woman was sitting on a stack of crates, crates which looked eoo o be from the uy, while typing on a tablet. After a minute she looked up at the other two leaders, pushed a lock of purple hair out of her fad smiled. “Our sponsor doesn’t even want the rifles, just bots, which is eveer. With those we’ll trol the entire uy.”

  I frowned. I holy thought the local gangs uood they shouldn’t fuck with me, after I had Ripjack’s arm forcibly removed st time. It wasn’t like their followers were the bravest buher, whoever this ‘Sponsor’ was really got them riled up.

  “Mother… Nyx you hack that tablet a me know who the fuck she’s talking to? With any luck it’s those ‘Guiding Light’ nutjobs creating trouble and we’ll take care of two issues at once.”

  Unfortunately, the e leads back to a temporary endpoint topside. Local surveilnce cameras are dead, along with the device’s camera, but I’ve been able to access the user’s Augs to get identification. Frank Man, tractor to a Teologies. They specialize in advanced on R&D, with a particur i in Samurai teology.

  “So some corp wants to start a war, just to get access to my catalogs? And they think they get away with it?”

  They have pusible deniability, you’ve started fights with the gangs before. You even broadcast one of the is.

  “Well, the asshole deserved it.” I checked the feed again, the three leaders cracked one of the crates and took out what looked like some sort . I shook my head, “I ’t believe they gave these psychos heavy ons and expected them to py h them. I’m going to have to fiscate them before they blow holes iy. Fuck! I ’t believe I have to deal with this right now.”

  You certainly chose an iing pce to live, that’s for sure.

  “Nyx, I need you to gh a’s work and find evidence of this operation, along with any others performed against other Samurai.”

  Dohe data was not on the maiwork, or any active e, but I was able to assemble the records based oover data seweeives. Seven different operations were found.

  “Fuckers. Just send it to Broodmother and Barricade, I’ll have to let the Family look into it. I’m going to be busy dealing with this… explosive situation.”

  That was a terrible joke.

  “Shut up, I’m just trying to deal with the the fact that I now have two different groups fug up my neighborhood.” I stared at the image, trying to figure out my step. “The Guiding Light will have to wait. Thankfully they’re not an immediate threat, and I’m still rolling out squirrels, so I ’t take immediate a anyways. These three, however, just might start firing rockets into a poputed area, if I’m not careful. They still seem to be in the pnning stage, so I’ll just have to make a move before they do.”