Rules?

  Beacon has the gun to his own head.

  “You don't have to Beacon, you have a duty to the service, others rely on you. You learn from this and march on to the next assignment.” He says, holding his palms facing Beacon.

  Beacon scoffs, “You just said 'I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.' what use is a person like that to the service?”

  “You learn from this. But this, this is not the solution.”

  “Maybe you're right,” He turns the gun on Bucket, pointing it at his face, his hand shaking, the stress of it showing clear on his face. “Maybe you're the problem.”

  “I just fixed the problem.” Bucket calmly says. Staring down each other Bucket is calm, relaxed—Beacon is sweating, hand shaking, distraught.

  “You're right, at least your not useless.” Beacon says. He turns the revolver to his own head and pulls the trigger.

  The revolver's hammer drops.

  It clicks.

  Bucket smashes Beacon in the side of his head with his pistol, knocking him out. It takes all his will to calm his shaking hands. Bucket needs to hold it together for his team. They need to move. “Pick him up, let's head out.”

  Buckets team took Beacon in, Bucket heads back out on his own to respond to a distress call.

  DM Zone Chat – Ace - All available Specters, we require assistance at location Alpha Beta Delta 3 9 2 extract, enemy units are closing in.

  Bucket doesn't recognize the voice, or the location for that matter, but he knows what they mean.

  DM Zone Chat – Bucket - That's 3 9 1, not 3 9 2

  DM Zone Chat – Ace - HVE in the clean room, assistance needed to clear approaching enemy units

  DM Zone Chat – Bucket – I'm on it

  Bucket hopes they prepped the HVE properly for the skinjack. He sees 4 enemies, loose spread, heading towards the clean room, sweeping with their handheld scanners. They’re a hunt party, armed to the teeth. Time to buy the clean room more time.

  Bucket slaps a wireless cam to the wall behind him, syncs it to his ghostshades and sets a PiP live feed to his right eye. Taking aim with his C18 AR he squeezes the trigger; the explosive shot rings out, hitting the Net Lord in the knee. Ducking down behind some rubbish he can see his target on the PiP of his ghostshades, lying on the ground. The Net Lord is still active in the host; he can hear him cursing up a storm, he's very unhappy—him not being very happy makes Bucket very happy.

  The other three are looking around to see who shot their teammate. One of them raises his revolver and shoots the lame one in the head; Buckets found the ancient Net Lord and tags him with his ghostshades. After a minute, they continue their scanning, only they seem a little more jumpy now. He can see the one he tagged as an orange outline through his ghostshades. They're so arrogant, probably thought he just got a lucky shot on one.

  Kneeling Bucket unloads a half dozen shots into the tagged one, then switches to the other two. By the time they figure out where Bucket was, they're all dead.

  Bucket approaches them, weary that others may join the party. He switches off the Hype. The lifeless white echo-suits are like white canvases painted with blood red, pus yellow jelly and orange hydraulic fluid. It's all so routine for him at this point that he almost misses something on the Net Lord he had pegged as an ancient. Under the corner of the face shield, a small transmitter.

  Searching him, he finds something else disturbing; a Royal minted coin from 2214, five years ago, with a small hole in it. Commander Underwood, his Commander, tacks a coin to a small bit of wood to give them as a signal to meet. Why would this Net Lord have it?

  He turns his attention back to the transmitter, the tech is unfamiliar to him. It doesn't look like something the Net Lords use either. Carefully, he pries his knife in the end of it. The device starts to smoke, he throws it to the ground as it burns up in a flash.

  Poking his knife at it, all I can see is a solid plastic lump. He decides to keep quiet about all this for now. The coin could have been something the Net Lord found; there was no small wooden block so maybe just a coincidence. Glancing around the side alley, he makes sure no one's watching as he pops the .45acp bullets out of a spare mag and jams the device in the mag with the coin and puts the mag in his 1911. He needs to smuggle it back into the town.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Georgie should know what the device is—if anyone will.

  Bucket pushes through the old wooden saloon style doors of the Rusted Node tavern. The heavy, musty clouds of indigo haze floating around covers the slight moldy odor. The room is lit with scores of blue florescent lights of all kinds of shapes; mermaids, fish, octopus. The runner in the entryway is threadbare, fused into the boards below. A low, synth techno beat pulsates in his chest.

  Walking up to the bar, Smithy glares at him from the other side. He points his thick, sausage like finger at Bucket , ”Yous gunna start another fight? If that's the plan yous can piss off.”

  “Are you still holding on to that? It wasn't even a real fight; it was a mouthy sailor that I put in his place, no damage to property.” Yeah, the mouthy sailor lipping off about the rumor's of Bucket and the Colonel. It didn't help that they were true.

  “It was three.”

  “It didn't matter. Look, I even paid their tab when they were taken to the infirmary. I'm not looking for trouble. Just a drink and some info.” He can't afford to lose Smithy as a contact; the man knows everything going on around the Cavern. “You seen Georgie?”

  “That'll be $20.”

  “That's one pricey beer Smithy. Look, make it $10 and you have my word I won't start another fight for the rest of the week.”

  “Yous shouldn't have to bargain that yous won't fight people in my establishment, it should be assumed gavels are cool cats. $10, plus whatever drink to go with it.”

  “OK, I'll take a beer.”

  Smithy turns and draws a beer. Bucket shakes his head; he needs to not lose it on this guy.

  “That'll be $10 for the beer, and as we agreed $10 for the info.” He says with a weaselly smile. Bucket wonders if anyone has ever punched him in the face.

  “Never mind, I'll just take the $2 beer and pass on the info.” The smile drains from Smithy's face. He takes the beer to the sink and scoops out the head with his beer comb, shoves the beer at Bucket, a third of the contents splash on the bar. Bucket flings a $2 bill in the spilled beer.

  “No tip?”

  Bucket knows he should keep his mouth shut, and yet... “Yeah, here's a tip; don't be a greedy fuck. I would have easily given you $5 to tell me a degenerate gambler like Georgie is out back betting on dice.” He stands and walks away before he says more.

  Two women stand from a booth in front of where he's heading. He almost misses her sitting in the booth. He stops, they look at each other; it's Nadine. She smiles. Despite better judgment, he quickly sits down.

  “Hi.” Bucket says as he settles in the booth across from her. They are not supposed to be talking—yet here they are.

  “Hey. They were very adamant I don't speak to others, especially you. I have 18 more days before I'm done. They really don't want me to see you again, they say for my own good.” She says, the way she smiles at him contradicts what they had told her.

  “I think we both know you know what you want.”

  “Maybe I want a soldier who's not so full of himself.” She says, tilting her head and raising her eyebrow.

  “Why, what fun is that, Ma'am?”

  “'Ma'am, such a proper soldier, never breaking the rules.”

  The two chaperones exit the washroom. Bucket stands.

  “Carry on, soldier.” She salutes and winks.

  “See you in 18 days.” Turning away, he knows this is yet another thing he should be walking away from. But her deep, dark brown eyes just draw him in.

  Walking into the Mens Room he goes into a stall with an Out of Order sign, through a wooden door on the wall and out to the back alley. A few guys are betting on dice.

  “Hey, you guys seen Georgie?”

  “He died.”

  “Shit, when did that happen?”

  “Yesterday, he took a header off the upper dock and cracked his head open. He was pretty sauced.”

  Old Georgie was a degenerate gambler, but he never drank. Georgie even had to pay Smithy $5 just to come back to the alley to bet on the dice game.

  “Well, that's a shame, carry on.” They never stopped their game.

  Going back through the bar Bucket turns to the booth Nadine was in. Nadine and her chaperones are gone—but the Colonel’s there.

  “Expecting someone else to be sitting here?” She says with her long, delicate fingers wrapped around a pint, gently drumming on the glass.

  “Was just walking through, if you'll excuse me Colonel...”

  “Sit.”

  He sighs and has a seat.

  “So, where do I begin? First off, you got a smoke?”

  “You don't have any?”

  “Be a gent and give me a smoke. You are still a gent, in some ways, right?”

  He taps two Red Labels out of the pack, passing one over, her surgical like fingers grasp the cig. Her fingers seem to dance with the cigarette as she places it to her lips. She leans forward as he gives her a light. He lights one up as well.

  “You know, he'll smell it on you.” He says,

  “You know, I'm not taking parenting advice from you.” She says with a slight snarl and small, shape tun of her head, “So, now that we're just keeping things about business, let's talk about business.”

  “It would seem best if we do Colonel.” He says taking a deep drag of his cigarette he exhales with a long, deep sigh.

  “First off, the cutwire job. Your 24 hours of mandatory leave starts right now; it would have started after the debriefing, but that didn't happen because you went back out in the field. Also, your squad has been reassigned; direct orders from Underwood. You're to stay here on your own and put together another team.”

  “Wait, what?” This makes no sense. Underwood sent his squad here to assess the Specters. Now he pulls them all out?

  “You'll have to take it up with him. Third thing; stay away from her.”

  “Who?”

  She takes a long drag, blowing the smoke out the side of her mouth as she glares at him with her piercing steel blue eyes. If looks could kill he would be sliced to ribbons. “I like rules, I live by rules, I love the order it brings to my life. I am not one to bend rules lightly. It pisses me off when I break them for someone that ends up being an asshole. 24 hours, no field work. Dismissed.”

  He stands; it's best to let it go. He genuinely has some affection for her. But the mission needs to take priority, so many people's lives are at stake. And now he's without his squadmates.

  Standing, he turns to Smithy, “You're an asshole for wanting $20 to tell me Georgie died.”

  “Well, you're shit at gathering intel if you didn't know he died falling off the dock.”

  “Word is he was drunk, did he finally buy a drink here?”

  “Nope, never.”

  “Him getting sauced for the first time ever then taking a header off the dock in the same night; does that sound right to you Smithy?”

  “Not right at all man, not right at all.”