Lille wasn’t quite sure what Tony’s personal assistant was here to do, but he had a more urgent matter at hand:
Net surveillance had sent David to investigate an agent they’d tracked in Evil Land, and it needed to be dealt with now.
David’s car had broken down in the first stretch of the extre tal race track, about thirty kiloters from Night City. They had encountered a sandstorm and likely hunkered down in an abandoned building on the spot.
So they should still be on Evil Land, which is why Blais suggested that net surveillance commission David: in a sense, he was a known quantity, and... they had so fa among the rcenaries, at least they weren’t greenhorns.
Evil Land was quite far from the nuclear blast site, so the instantaneous, high-intensity electromagnetic pulse would be diminished with distance, leaving only the geomagnetic disturbances caused by high-energy particle streams, which were also mitigated by the dust storms in Evil Land.
Put another way, David should have been almost unaffected by this round of electromagnetic pulses. In their field of view, Night City had suddenly burst into a fireball, and then the whole city went dark—
This ti it was truly the entire city that went dark.
All communications with the city were lost, and only faint noise remained in the network, the static produced by small stones in the storm rubbing against each other, causing interference with communication signals.
On the highway outside of Evil Land, two Mackinaws trembled violently like tractors, moving forward at a slow pace, probably slower than pedaling a tricycle.
"That’s a good find!"
With scanning goggles on, Pila appraised the wreckage left by the battle, her long chanical prosthetics picking up pieces of firearms from the road like an orangutan.
You had to admit, with enough guts, scavenging tonight could make one rich...
Pila thought so as she looked at the core of the Achilles technology assault rifle’s accelerated magnetic rail in her hand: with so repairs, this thing could sell for 50 Euros.
Rebecca smacked her older brother’s head with a bang, her huge chanical prosthetic hand lifting a tire from the ground—
Then she removed the brake disc on top, which appeared to be made of carbon ceramic material, with manageable damage. This was worth much more than the piece Pila had found.
David estimated the value of the junk they had collected, feeling a surge of excitent inside:
Nobody said scavenging could be so profitable, did they?
"Still laughing!" Lucy gave David a knock on the head, exasperated. "Do those scraps you picked up cover the cost of the repairs?"
David said sheepishly, "Pretty much... If we’re lucky, might even make a little profit... probably."
Honestly, as rcenaries, their squad’s financial state was quite decent and developing very quickly.
A few months ago, only Man had a second-hand sports car, and their firearms weren’t anything fancy: either a Lexington or a Freedom-style handgun, and as for prosthetics, they were even more lacking—aside from Man’s high-strength combat prosthetics, no one else had anything.
Even then, Man’s combat prosthetics were the kind that had pirated software installed, and could malfunction at any ti, so much so that even standby mode wasn’t entirely reliable.
Now they had two Mackinaws that could withstand machine guns and one heavy machine gun. Man’s prosthetic problems, like spontaneous pains and neural inflammation, had also significantly subsided, and although they no longer had a bullet launcher, his mind was much clearer.
David could also use the Dinar Si Anweisitan Type 3 in his spine almost effortlessly, dramatically diversifying the team’s combat options:
Previously, fights mostly relied on Man and Dolly leading the charge, and when things got tough, they’d pull out the bullet launcher for a blast, with the others providing support.
Now, it was different with vehicles, high-end prosthetics, heavy weapons...
They had it all.
Of course, they needed to fix the car first.
Click-click-click-click-click-click—
"Don’t worry." David chuckled with a sly smile. "I really feel it’s close, just one more job like that..."
[Ziit—]
The two hackers in the team, Qi Wei and Lucy, received a communication request at the sa ti. The signal was quite strong and unhidden.
[Net surveillance communication, you have been locked by net surveillance, please do not take aggressive actions.]
A brief line of text caused the entire team to lose their lively atmosphere.
Lille could chat and laugh with the company, but that didn’t an they could too, every word and every data packet from the company was sothing they needed to handle with care.
The two hackers were on high alert because they discovered... they discovered that their wireless cyber modulators had started to heat up!
Network surveillance possessed communication technologies many wild hackers couldn’t crack, and the wild hackers were well aware of this.
Wild hackers often relied on informational asymtry for their wireless hacking: I know the vulnerabilities in your equipnt or software, then I target those vulnerabilities.
Magic Dolls were the tools they used for hacking, the more devices the programr had hacked, the broader and stronger their attack capabilities usually were, which is why being a hacker was a profession that truly tested one’s knowledge and skill levels.
Fundantally, everyone’s equipnt wasn’t that different—compared to the company’s.
With network surveillance, they had the most comprehensive databases, the most intelligent brains physiologically, and more importantly, they often employed a dinsionality reduction strike:
Certain high-frequency directional transmitters could directly burn out the wild hackers’ equipnt from the hardware level, without the need for so-called "network warfare".
Most of the ti, military-grade equipnt would crush street-level gear across dinsions, no street kid would bet on whether company equipnt was of that caliber.
Everyone was sweating, two Mackinaws emitted tractor-like noises on the highway, moving slowly forward, waiting for more information to appear on their HUDs.
[...]
[We are pursuing a special individual nad Peter Fieldhamr. He should be in Evil Land now.]
[Find him and bring him to the network surveillance office.]
[The commission fee is one hundred thousand euros.]
Just as the team mbers were uncertain, another line of small text appeared at the bottom of the HUD...
[Accept, tell them you need a new vehicle, you need a middleman to facilitate.]
David sensed a familiar vibe right away: It was big brother!
Although he didn’t know how Lille managed to send ssages under network surveillance’s eyes, David suddenly had an idea with Lille’s prompt.
[David: We do not directly cooperate with the company, just borrowing your frequency band. I want to bring a middleman in.]
[Network Surveillance: Not this ti.]
[David: We need equipnt, we need vehicles, we need weapons, I’d be glad if you could deliver them.
I can guarantee the secrecy of the mission’s content, but we need a middleman to help us with supplies, the Old Captain from Saint Domingo, you should know him, right?
Using your communication lines, you wouldn’t have to worry about confidentiality issues, right?]
[Network Surveillance: We’ll be watching you, rember, secrecy.]
[Relay communication channel open]
[Do a good job, I want to know what kind of intelligence Peter Fieldhamr has. Consider the car and equipnt as part of the reward.]
David didn’t know how to reply to Lille, so he simply nodded vigorously.
Seeing this made Lucy beside him sweat even more, "David... do you know that people who take on jobs like this usually don’t end well?"
"People say there’s no good end in the rcenary business, but didn’t I drop out of school to do this anyway?
Plus, after this job, we’ll be closer to our goal, don’t worry, I..."
David was full of confidence, gazing into the sky.
The Moon, he was determined to get there soday.
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