Never Fade Away: There's Gonna Be a Parade! (ch. 50) (Patreon)

“Here we go darlin’s, time to go on a duck hunt. This song I'm leaving you with ain't really got the tempo for a fight and sounds more like an emergency siren goin’ off than a country song, but trust me, it's perfect for what's about to happen.

Here's Indian Love Call. Now go break some beaks.”

~

The wind was in my hair, and I only realized how long it had gotten when I felt it whipping around my eyes and ears. The dull roar of the rocket filled my ears, it was impossibly loud but it being behind me helped take the edge off of it. My mag-boots let me cling to the rocket,  despite the wind that managed to slip through the bubble shield, which I had designed to only keep the stronger wind currents out.

“This is so damn dumb,” Johnny said, sounding like he was having the time of his life as he stood by my side, the rocket aiming up towards the sky. We were trying to draw all attention towards us,  not to mention, flying too close to the city would leave everyone we passed deaf with ruptured eardrums. The rocket wasn’t going as fast I could make it -- the point was to drag things out a bit to let the operation actually commence.

Still, going nearly two hundred miles an hour to cross a distance of about five miles… that was about a minute and a half of travel time. Which might not sound like a whole lot of time, but with a Sandevistan, it was essentially all the time in the world. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it, but it turned out that a lot of the implants from the soldiers or Tyger Claws that I killed got harvested and put on the streets. Sandevistans were a favorite, to the point that people had apparently been having races with them. Which meant that we had dozens of Sandy users serving as the point of the spear, so to speak.

The rocket banked over the city, sailing high above it as I left a trail of orange particles and smoke in my wake. I made sure that everyone got a good look at the rocket before I shifted it toward the direction of the Turian base. From above, I saw a stirring -- I hadn’t known that they were going to drop asteroids on the city, but my IFF pinged that everyone that I cared about was okay. That stirring also revealed itself to be the Turians reacting to my presence.

My HUD read out that my GBM’s output was set to .1%, letting me freely take aim with it as I spun the rocket so that I was hanging underneath it, facing the ships that flew up from the city. They were sleek looking. Almost like a beak, in a way. Everyone had taken to calling the Turains birds, and they didn’t really do much to dissuade the notion. They were small, single man fighter jets that immediately began firing upon the rocket as they flew upwards. The bullets struck the bubbleshield, bouncing off of it with little fanfare.

A thin beam of violent red light erupted from the barrel of the GBM, punching through the kenetic barrier of the jets before tearing through the jets themselves, and continuing onward until they struck a building. The jets banked and I let them, realizing that even .1% was still too much to use in city limits. I wasn’t looking to punch holes in buildings and collapse them all onto the streets below. That would defeat the purpose of securing the city. So, with a thought, I set the output to .01%, and this time when I pulled the trigger, the gravity beam punched through the cockpit of a jet and faded away before it struck a building.

Each pull of the trigger came with a powerful recoil, but my arm was built to handle it.

As the rocket sailed upwards to clear the upper most buildings, I saw what almost looked like a layer of Turian airsupport peeling off of the city as dozens, if not hundreds, of jets were breaking off of whatever mission they were on to try and shoot me down. They might have had better luck without the bubbleshield blocking every shot. Time began to slow for me as I lined up the shots. Pulling the trigger, I punched through the cockpit of a jet before winging another, the rocket starting to do a slow spin to give me full cover of all of the fighter jets.

They were a lot faster than my rocket, that was for sure. But they only had a small window to even try to strike the rocket. And my job in this was to ensure that they never got the chance to slip through the window. I fired the GBM, each time taking down at least one jet as they broke formation and did their best to shoot me down. A few even tried to crash into me, only for the entire jet to be reduced to nothing with a slight increase in the output of my weapon.

The very moment that we left the city limits, the second half of the operation began. I was less worried than I otherwise might have been because David was serving as the very tip of the spear. His implants put him in a league of his own now - he could probably manhandle Smasher if I hadn't already killed him. I felt comfortable leaving the heavy lifting to him, knowing that the others would all be fine so long as David was there.

They would cut out the Turians in the city -- dislodge them from their bases, and from there, they would hunt down the remaining squads. All I had to do was give the birds something to shoot at in the meantime.

And, when the sensors got an alert, I knew that the Turains had taken the bait. Even without the sensors picking up rapid movement, the Turian jets suddenly breaking off was a pretty big warning sign. Looking up, my optics zeroed in on an asteroid that was rapidly approaching where I would be within a few seconds. My prosthetic was perfectly in sync, the predictive software and my cyberdeck running all the calculations needed in an instant. Adjusting the output of the GBM to 5%, I pulled the trigger and my arm snapped back as a blood red beam raced upwards towards the asteroid.

The two collided with a flash of light, the asteroid smashed to pieces and the little that remained would burn up in the atmosphere. And, to close off an angle of attack, the nose of the rocket shifted downward until I brought it near parallel with the ground, kicking up a huge cloud of dust in my wake. The jets closed back in, but they kept their distance now, especially when I shot them down through the cloud of dust.

I could start to feel their desperation as I rapidly approached the base, crossing the distance at rapid speeds. I was already more than half way there, I saw when I turned around. The Turian base was a dull compound, and I could see them scurrying around like ants, trying to prepare for my arrival. Their artillery pieces lined themselves up before firing, and I banked out of the way as a shell slammed into the ground right where I would have flown through. The dust was left in my wake, and not a second later, another went off, this one further away.

“This is some fuckin’ skateboard, L!” Johnny said with a laugh and despite it all, my lips twitched. Another shell impacted and ended up hitting the jet that was trying to ram itself up the rocket's thruster.

It wasn't particularly funny to me. None of it was. Some of my kids were dead. Some were injured. David, Becca, and all the others… They were fighting for their lives in the city. It should be a moment of absolute tension and solemn focus. Yet, my lips fought to curl upwards into a smile until I couldn't fight it off anymore. I was riding a rocket like it was a hoverboard.

Johnny was right.

This was so damn dumb.

“Pfft,” A chuckle escaped me, it bubbling up from my chest despite my attempts to swallow it down. It was nearly lost in the wind, but like a dam being burst, I couldn't hope to hold back the tide that followed. “Ha… haha… hahahaha!” The laughter escaped me even as I pulled the trigger to the GBM, the blood red beam hitting the shells that I couldn't dodge. Before long, I simply gave up and threw my head back and simply laughed.

It was the height of ridiculousness. I genuinely couldn't have come up with something better? Was Johnny making me stupid? I could only imagine what the others would say if they could see me now.

My laughter didn't stop as I crossed the threshold to the base, rendering their artillery useless. The jets banked away, trying to avoid what came next.

With a slight hop, I leapt out of the bubbleshield and I felt the two hundred mile winds hit me with all their might, flinging me back even as the rocket continued to sail forward. I flipped and turned, lost in a cloud of dust before I managed to get my hoverboard underneath my feet and sail out of it. Sailing up, I still had a sharp grin on my face as I looked out at the rocket as it closed the last half mile to the Turian compound. It made a slow arc-

My vision went white, and that was with my dazzle-shielded optics. The second thing I felt was the shockwave slamming into me, the wall of air hitting me with every bit as much force as when I leapt off of the rocket. I struggled to remain aloft, my ears ringing despite the protection I had prepared in advance. When color began to return to my vision, I saw that the area was awash with orange light particles from the GN Drive. They fell from the sky like rain, fluttering down at a sluggish pace.

The Turian compound was gone. Gone as in wiped away entirely -- there was a glowing red crater where the compound had been, and there wasn't so much as a scrap of metal left to identify that anything had been there in the first place. It was actually a little surprising. I… figured there would need to be some mopping up, but I wasn't seeing anything.

“Might have made the bomb too big,” Johnny remarked, standing on his own imaginary hoverboard right next to me. He took out a cigarette and lit it up, admiring my handiwork with the critical eye of an expert. “I used a tactical nuke to blow up Arasaka, and I thought that lightshow was impressive. L, I'm pretty sure you just invented a clean nuke.”

“It was an accident,” I replied, scanning the area for any signs of survival. I had been wrong -- there were traces of the compound, but the following shockwave scattered them out. However, the important bit was that the Turian's just lost a good half of their number, their air support, and their artillery, and I imagined that the show was less than great for their morale. In short, a ride that lasted all of two minutes just turned the tables all the way around.

“Gonna pull an Oppenheimer? ‘Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds?’” Johnny prompted, but I ignored him.

I reached out to the others, only to find that I couldn't get a signal out. The GN Particles were interfering. Looking back at Night City, I saw that five miles had been enough to save it from the worst of the shockwave. And, because of it, I saw something descending from orbit.

It was the ship that had been hanging overhead. It wasn't the dreadnought, but it was a step down from it in size. A small step. Likely reacting to the loss of their forward operating base. I suppose I should have seen that coming. And I very much had.

I descended until my feet touched the ground, my hoverboard slotting back into my spine. With a thought, I activated my Microbots that quickly began to pour out of the implant that I had embedded in the notch of my spine just above the hoverboard. To anyone else, it would seem as if a led light had turned on, but that light came from a PYM particle shield that transformed everything that went through it into its proper size.

It was a storage facility for Microbots. Millions of them. Each a simple machine on their own, but with enough, I could build anything. What I did with them now was have them coil around my prosthetic arm as more and more and more of them emerged from my back. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions. Each layering themselves first around my arm, then around my entire body as what I was building took shape.

The GBM was probably the most blatantly powerful weapon that I would ever create. And I said that after building a bomb that leveled an alien military compound likely designed to tank explosive blasts. It was so powerful that, until now, it was impossible for me to use it at full power. My arm simply couldn't handle it. I wasn't sure if I could even build an arm durable enough to fire it off at max output. Even 10% of its full power was pushing it.

But, the answer was simple physics. If the recoil was too powerful, then spread the area of distribution.

The Microbots flowed upward, becoming the barrel of a gun that was as large as some of the buildings in Night City. The base of it spread out, hundreds of thousands of Microbots locking together in layers to prepare for the recoil. My optics were in sync with the Microbots, allowing me to see the Turian ship as it sailed down, heading straight for me. My Cyberdeck ran the calculations -- speed, mass, the curvature of the Earth. Everything that I would need to nail my shot.

I set the GBM's output to 100%, clutching it tightly with my prosthetic arm. I heard the dull hum from the weapon, knowing that it was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to show what it could really do.

Then I pulled the trigger, and I'm pretty sure I triggered an earthquake.

…

David Martienez always felt more comfortable in steel and chrome over flesh and blood. From the moment he understood the weakness of his flesh, it had disgusted him. Why walk when you could run? Why settle for lifting a hundred pounds when you could lift a thousand? It worried Lucy, he knew. He’d scared her well before Arasaka had taken him with how fast he had chromed up, even if she never said anything about it.

He had scared himself, if he was being honest. When he scaled down his load for the trip to the Moon, it was only then that David had realized the haze he had been living in. Like his head was full of cotton, muffling every thought. He had fully anticipated that sensation again when he chromed up, not only reaching his previous load but surpassing it.

Yet, his thoughts were crystal clear. Because of it, he fully understood what L had created.

‘I'm untouchable,’ David thought to himself. Perhaps, to others, that thought might sound arrogant. Undeserved. However, those people weren't able to pick up a tank with raw physical power, easily lifting what had to be at least fifty tons and throw it into a building with enough force that it slammed through every wall and barricade, and landed on the other side of the block.

Time moved in a crawl, slower than anything he had experienced before. Even in comparison to his last Sandy. So slowly that other people with Sandevistans seemed to be moving like they were moving through quicksand. The alien bullets were still a little quick, but in the same way that a jogger was faster than a power walker. Still slow in comparison to a sprinter.

It was almost too much, David thought as he entered the main base that the birds were using in Pacifica. They were prepared, throwing up laser traps and explosives, but that didn't mean a damn thing when he could outrun the shrapnel. There was no sense of strain as he used his Sandevistan, entering the building and pulling a move that he saw once in an XBD -- taking his gun, skating around the aliens, and simply putting a bullet in the back of all their heads. Was there even a need for a plan?

If L outfitted himself and maybe Becca with the same list of implants, they could probably deal with the whole invasion themselves in the span of an afternoon. His body of steel and chrome was perfectly in tune with his Sandy, able to push to limits that David previously thought were impossible. It couldn’t even be called a fight as he ran through the building, one of the vibroblades that L used emerging from his back when he ended up running low on ammo.

He simply cut right through them. They were completely helpless to stop his merciless advance up the building, continuing on and on until he reached the rooftop where he found some kind of tech that Lucy wanted him to upload something into. A piece of alien hardware flared to life at his wrist -- an omni-tool, she called it. Orange light and a spiral disk that he could easily manipulate. She explained it as the alien version of a cyberdeck.

It mostly went over his head, but all he had to do was press a button to upload whatever she wanted into the system.

As the upload was initiated, time resumed its normal pace. He looked out at the Turian base, not even winded by the massacre. He couldn’t see the base, but he did see the trail that L left behind on his way there. It was-

David flinched when the missile went off, rasing a hand up reflexively before his optics dimmed the flash. That, he reasoned, had to be the missile going off. It was bigger than L said it’d be. He saw the shockwave expanding outwards, but as it did, it lost its strength. There was still an awful loud explosion that left his ears ringing and was accompanied by a stirring in the air.

“That takes care of that. We’re about done here,” David said, his eyes flashing blue as he reached out to Lucy. Netrunning was weird with the birds, so she was spending her time on control, making sure that they were updated on the situation. He was glad for it, even if he would never admit it. Better that she was safe than out here in this mess.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lucy replied. “I’m picking something up- its fuzzy, but the ship overhead is-” She began, only to cut herself off. David could guess what prompted it when, through the dust, he saw… something rising up from the ground some distance away. It didn’t take a genius to guess that it was L, even if he wasn’t sure what he was up to-

A blood red beam was launched up from the sky, matching the circumference of a megabuilding. David felt the building under him tremble ever so slightly, and even miles away he could hear the unnatural sound of the beam seemingly vaporizing everything before it. It shone brightly like the sun as it raced up towards the sky- no. Not the sky. Towards the bird ship. David looked up with a sense of awe, his jaw dropping slightly when the beam punched through the clouds…

Then it struck the ship and went through it like wet cardboard. A perfect hole was torn through it, taking out a chunk of its guts as the beam continued to pass on through. It didn’t take a second more for gravity to do its thing, snapping the ship in two and the halves both began to fall unceremoniously to the Earth.

David knew he was just one of many that watched in awe as they fell into the ocean, sending up a massive wave that bashed at the city shore. Despite it all, David couldn’t stop himself from chuckling.

“Well… maybe not entirely untouchable.”