When I arrived home in the evening I was exhausted. Although most of the materials were easy to get, the sensors required rarer materials usually only found ironics, so I really had to sge my ass off to find enough. It was worth it though, by the time I got back I had two more bots, a red fox with a mop of hair that covered its eyes, and a white fox with a blue scarf, and there were two more queued up to be finished by m.

  I didn’t want the bots proteg the kids to be noticeably armed, so I nearly bankrupted myself to i in some hidden ied ons. It was crazy to think I’d been hunting Antitheses yesterday and I was already out of points.

  Things were quiet when I walked in, An appeared to be teag Eddie to read, Jane was in the back with Jennifer, and Issi was dressing up Deadbeat with whatever spare clothing she could find. The quiet sted approximately three seds before Issi’s cry of “Foxies!” lit up the room, and I became the ter of attention.

  “Ummm… surprise?” I muttered. “I’m leaving these two with you, there will be two more in the m.” I gestured for the foxes to head over to Isabelle, who was thrilled. I sent Deadbeat out with a simple and while she was distracted, I just had to snatch a pair of pants off his head before he left.

  Jane waved me over to the back, where Jennifer was sleeping. “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  Jane shrugged. “Better thaerday. She woke up briefly, told me that Marcus pushed her into the back of the vahe attack started, then the car colpsed wheithesis tried to get in. She doesn’t know what happeo Marcus.” She turo me, “You think he’s still alive?”

  I tried to keep the grimay face, based upon her expression I didn’t succeed. “Do you wao give you my ho answer?”

  “No.”

  I reached up and patted her on the shoulder. “Just remember that he saved Jeniffer’s life, that stupid heroic bastard.” Fuck. Marcus had been the eldest, and had been looking after most of us for years. Of course he’d sacrifice his life for one of the kids, that’s how he was. I fought the sting building up in my eyes.

  “Nyx, dinner for everyone."

  I passed two dio Jane before heading up front. An gave me a strange look, I wasn’t sure if Jane had already told him or not. I decided to leave it up to her either way, she was better at the touchy feely stuff. I was quiet the rest of the night, killing aliens was easy, dealing with my feelings not so much.

  —

  With four bots to leave behind, the dark gray and light blue foxes finished during the night, I felt retively safe taking care of some unfinished business.

  The Hell Moths. Any gang willing to e halfway across the uy and risk retaliation from the locals was a threat worth taking seriously. I kneroximately where their territory was, but I wasn’t going to go around antagonising all the gangs in that area. Jane was right, I might have been a little too impulsive sending out that message to the locals.

  “Nyx, is there any ce you locate the Hell Moths' base of operations?” I asked.

  Easily. They doly keep a low profile. They’re based in an abandoned manufacturier in the South East. Strangely, they don’t seem to want to expand, despite having signifitly better equipment than their rivals.

  “Signifitly better as in?”

  Low PMC

  I whistled, “So that’s why they had that EMP device. They won’t have anything that could actually take out one of my bears, will they?”

  No, they have SMGs, assault rifles, some body armor, and some light munitions. The bears will be able t off anythihan focused anti-tank fire, eventually.

  “Good to know,” I looked at the bears guarding the area. “Dusty stays here, everyone else… iruck?”

  Why is that a question?

  “I’m not sure everyone will fit,” I snapped.

  It has aended cab, all five bears would fit in the back, as long as Bob is in one of the fros

  “Also good to know.”

  The bears piled into my truck, they smushed themselves together in the back seat. Adorable.

  For someohat lived oreet taking a vehicle anywhere was quite the y, for the first two minutes. Looking out the window at the mess of mass fabricated apartments, als, and corporate factories, just drove home how ugly the uy was. A mess of nondescript brown and gray; It was depressing. Thankfully the trip to the Hell Moth’s base didn’t take more than ten minutes, so I didn’t have the time to really think about it.

  As soon as we arrived I surveyed the area.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” I said, staring down at the plex below. I had to get Nyx to point out the location because it didn’t look different than any of the other unlit, run down buildings in the area. I hated abandoned industrial areas. Sihere wasn’t much value to trolling the buildings gangs typically used this type of area to hold proxy wars, in order to minimize the damage doo their owories. Only the most desperate people lived around here, it was a good way to catch a bullet.

  I had my truck stop directly above the building. “I wish I’d put more cameras on this thing, I’ll have to install more ter. Any ideas on how to approach this?”

  You just send Bob, like you threatened for all those angs.

  “Really?” I g the big bear in the driver’s seat, “ he really take it?”

  I think you may be uimating how powerful Bob is, he could easily shrug off a shot from the Railgun. Would you like to see it?

  “Yeah, sure how do you expect…” Bob opehe door and jumped out, from a hundred feet up. I half crawled across to the driver’s seat to look down, but before I got there I heard a massive crash. I stuck my head out the open door to see a massive hole in the roof of the factory.

  “Nyx, what the fuck?”

  Bob is fihis is what he was designed for after all.

  “Jumping from trucks?”

  It’s called aerial iion. He’s also excellent in close quarters, like now. You should take a look.

  I pulled up Bob’s feed, he did appear to be in one piece, uhe Hell Moths he’d nearly nded on. The gangers had put together an impromptu firing line, automatic fire sprayed down the narrow hallway. One of the bae pulled up a grenade uncher and just coated the hallway in explosives. As they started going off Bob tinued on, ung.

  The Moths panicked, esg down to the far end of the hallway, a massive metal security door closed behind them.

  “That’s not going to stop Bob, is it?”

  Not eveely.

  I watched as Bob stue of his superheated cws into the door and slowly melted his way through. “Let’s get down there, I don’t want Bob to do all the work.”

  —

  It was all over by the time I arrived on se. Bob ered the majority of the gang while I was making my way through the building. Thankfully it wasn’t hard to find the way since Bob left a trail of half crushed bodies aed security doors in his wake. At the end of the age ani, with about fifteen people sitting around with their hands up. A lot of them tensed up, or went pale, when I walked in.

  I put on my smile, “Howdy! Based upon some of your reas you already know who I am.”

  I hefted my CAR and slowly looked across the entire room, “which begs the question, why you’d be stupid enough to attack my family.”

  A womahe ter of the room stood up, my eyes were instantly drawn to her face sp aeribal looking tattoo partially covered by her brown hair. “My boys didn’t attack your family, that was never our iion."

  I raised an eyebrow, “Then, praytell, what were you doing?”

  She flinched, “Stealing one of your bears.”

  My brain froze for a sed. “Why…?”

  “There’s a market for Samurai tech, and right after the Incursion someone posted a bounty on one of your bots, one million for aional bot, five huhousand for a broken one. We figured it was worth the risk.”

  “To piss off a Samurai, I find that hard to believe.”

  “My boys screwed up a tract, and we needed cash fast. You think we wao piss off a Samurai? We didn’t have much of a choice.”

  I felt a headache ing on. “And how did you find my location?”

  She paused, just for a moment, “It osted oe. ‘The Obsidian Eye’ is a dark web site which acts as a bre house for illegal jobs. We’ve been using it to make money.”

  “Nyx?”

  It’s true, a request for some of your tech, and your location osted twenty three hours after the Incursion started.

  “Fuck.” I looked around the room, “You idiots o think harder about your options, you might end up dead ime. Where’s that EMP thing you had?”

  One of the Hell Moths poio a er, the harpoon was sitting there so I had Bob step on it. “I don’t want to hear from you again, got it?”

  “You’re letting us go?” asked the woman.

  “I holy don’t give a shit about you, I thought you were attag me ily. Now you’ve seen how easily I could walk in here and end you, I doubt we’ll have any further issues. After all, if you try anything like this again my friend won’t stop at destroying your dot it?”

  Everyone in the room nodded. I just turned and walked away.

  “Nyx, any ce you track who set up that tract? That shits got to go.”

  No, it looks like the t used a disposable endpoint, there’s only a drop point in the tract.

  “Fuck. Could you do anything to that page? I want my information off there.”

  Easily, you want a warning, or the nuclear option?

  “Just get my information off there, and make sure they know what’ll happen if they mess with me again.”

  Do’ll take them a couple weeks to get running again, and they got your warning. I eve a present behind so if they post anything about you agaie will tank permaly.

  “Thanks,” I sighed, less than a day after awakening and someoargeted me. What a joke. “Let’s get out of here”