Maeve met ?Daniel outside her hotel after a very pleasant breakfast. She hadn’t realized he was in the fancy car at first, and thought that some important guest had merely summoned their chauffeur. But when her augs were pinged with a message from him to get in, she hesitantly opened the door, gawking. Her fascination didn’t last long, however, and was overshadowed by the thought of their gear. After resting her marksman rifle between her knees, she turned to face him, grinning eagerly. “Where’s the gear?”

  ? “Ah shit, right,” he said, glancing into the backseat. Following his eyes, she saw nothing there. “Probably in the trunk.”

  ? He was going to pull into the nearest parking lot, but at the advertised rate of 20 credits per hour, he snorted in disgust and drove them all the way to the edge of town before parking and opening his door. “Let’s go through it now.”

  ? The trunk of the vehicle opened as soon as his hand touched it, swinging up and revealing two closed boxes next to each other. They were high-grade things, with circuitry and a smooth, matte black finish. Each crate bore a symbol on it, seemingly laser-etched into the metal. On the left, a jagged icicle. On the right, a stylized depiction of the aurora borealis.

  ? “Which one is which?” She asked, frowning. Damien could only shrug. She thought the one with the icicle was probably his, but…

  [The right-hand crate is yours, Maeve. Tyrion selected equipment he believed would suit you well, and match your preferred style for the next few missions.]

  ?

  ? Before she could relay the information, He leaned forward and thumbed the lock on his crate. it gave a quiet beep, then the lid flipped open, showing… “What the fuck?”

  ?? “Nice!” He exclaimed, sounding thrilled. “This crate had dimensional shunting!”

  ? He reached in, his arm disappearing almost to the elbow before he pulled out a new kind of pistol. Long and boxy, it fit flawlessly into his hand, and instead of one barrel, it had four. Curious to see her own gear, she also opened her crate. It too was expanded on the inside, and two long rifles sat at the edge, with a cluster of magazines toward the bottom. She grabbed one of the rifles, pulling it out and hefting it. Some kind of assault rifle or carbine, she thought, lifting it to her eyes. A reticle appeared at once, along with an ammo count in the corner of her vision. 60-round mag, she thought. Fired in a 3-round burst. Very nice. Leaning it against the sidewalk, she studied the other rifle. This was a proper sniper rifle, and it was heavy. She definitely couldn’t fire that standing up.

  ? “This is amazing!” She glanced over to see Daniel holding two identical pistols. They kind of reminded her of the Foxteeth Model D, but a sleeker, more streamlined design. They were almost pure white, with ice-blue metal accents that shone under the light. Obviously something ice-themed, she thought.”

  ? They didn’t have much time, so they agreed to pluck out their weapons and wearable equipment. She could sling the carbine over her shoulder with a strap, but settled for putting it in the backseat just then. Into her new belt went two spare magazines for the carbine, one for the sniper rifle, and a pair of binoculars. Daniel similarly mounted the twin pistols, the four-barreled handgun, and four magazines. He also dug around until he pulled out something that looked like a bright blue pill in clear plastic wrapping. After frowning slightly, he popped it into his mouth and let out a shaky breath.

  ? “What did you just take?” She asked him, looking concerned. His pupils had dilated, and he was breathing a bit faster than before, as if he’d gotten a sudden burst of energy.”

  ? “Mind Krank Ultra,” he explained, his voice a little unsteady. Was this some kind of super caffeine? “S-Sylas suggested I take it to counteract the exhaustion from my healing.”

  ? “Are… you going to be okay to drive?”

  ? “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  ? He did indeed seem fine, just a little more energized, so she let it go. Soon, they were outside the city limits, zooming a few feet above the ground and traveling at ridiculous speeds. She leaned sideways to check the speedometer and nearly gasped. They were already at 130 miles per hour, and the needle was swiftly climbing to 140. “Aren’t you going a little fast?”

  ? He only smirked at her. “It’s fine. I’m a good driver, and there’s nothing around to crash into. Just relax and enjoy it.”

  ? Well, he certainly was. Maeve didn’t know the first thing about how cars operated, and had never cared to learn. But she knew a lot of men who were absolute nuts for this stuff. Judging by the look of fierce excitement in his eyes and the rigid grin plastered onto his face, he was one of them. Oh well. She left him to his all-too-early midlife crisis and buried herself in her augs, continuing some of the last night’s research on known Samurai. She was starting to settle on what kind of gear she wanted to get in the future, when she was flush with points.

  ? She still had her 55 points leftover from the initialization, and another 10 from her daily stipend, leaving her at 65. Not enough to really buy a lot… Lyra had given her some ideas about catalogues she could purchase, but they were all mundane and boring. Yes, she’d use them if she got the chance. But realistically, she had weapons and ammunition and was heading toward a veritable bounty of points.

  ? “Hey,” she said, as the thought struck her. “Do you want to agree to just split whatever points we earn between us? Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair.”

  ? He said that was fine with him, so she returned to her research. There were thousands of samurai of various classes, with a wide variety of gear and fighting styles. She focused on one in particular, one who’d been in the news recently in New Montreal. Deus Ex. There were a few others, of course, but that was her main inspiration. It was also just the start of the rabbit hole that had led her to staying up way past midnight, blearily flicking through vid after vid of samurai fights until they bled into her dreams. She was a city-level threat in her sleep, flying high above the ground in a specialized suit, leveling armies of antithesis with long-range attacks and explosive bombardments.

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  ? “Nearly there,” Daniel commented, breaking her out of her daydreams. “ETA 5 minutes. We should probably call Sourdough.”

  ? She had to admit, she was a little impressed at how easily he controlled the vehicle, lightly directing its movements with his left hand while his right tapped at the dash. In seconds, Sourdough’s sour old face was visible, bleary-eyed and puffing on his usual cigarette. Wasn’t that guy worried about lung cancer? Samurai weren’t immortal. Or maybe some were, she thought. He’d been active for decades, hadn’t he? Maybe you could modify your body to the point that you lived forever, or at least for a crazy long time.

  ? “Hey, kids,” Sourdough grinned through the camera feed. “How’s the car?”

  ? “Runs like a dream,” Daniel replied, missing Maeve’s eyeroll. “We’re five minutes out.”

  ? “Aye. Just picked you up on the sensors. You'd better not bring that car all the way to the station and get it wrecked. I’ve been looking forward to buying that for weeks.”

  ? “Don’t worry,” Maeve assured him. “We’ll park it plenty far away. What should we expect?”

  ? “Well, for a start, a whole horde of nasties. My drones are showing dozens of Model 3s, even a few Model 3-Bs. They gave up on the site a long time ago and moved north. They’re within the range of another station now, but I’ve shut it down so they don’t storm it. You’ll have to go to that station. I’ll turn it on, and you farm some points. Easy work, no?”

  ? A new point appeared on their GPS, and Daniel smoothly changed direction, veering to the right to take a wide curve around the antithesis horde shown on the dash screen. Maeve swore. There had to be a hundred of the aliens there. “What the fuck? We can’t handle all that on our own!”

  ? Sourdough’s grin only widened. “Don’t worry, lass. You’ll have the entire turret station backing you up. And I’m going to feed you all the points. This time tomorrow, you’ll be neck-deep in new catalogues to peruse. If you survive.”

  ? “How ominous,” she snorted. “So. What do we have to do when we get there?”

  ? “As soon as you get in, you hold the fort. Keep an eye out, and kill anything that comes to attack. Simple as that.”

  ? “There are a lot of them…” Daniel said, frowning. “But is that really enough to take out a turret station?”

  ? When both Sourdough and Maeve frowned at him, he shrugged. “I’ve seen one of the interior stations before. It’s got dozens of guns on each side. I doubt a Model 3 could even scratch one of those.”

  ? “Ah,” the older Samurai said, nodding his understanding. “It’s simple. The xenos adapt. They figured out how to slip through the gaps of that station. They’re all built along the same specification, so they’ll know how to slip through this one, too. That is why I need you to act as a secondary defense.”

  ? “And the reason you couldn’t just send droids and drones is…?”

  ? “Jesus, you two really need to have your AIs explain to you how the whole ‘being a Samurai’ shit works. Listen. Every degree of separation decreases the points earned per kill.”

  ? “Huh?” Maeve asked, tilting her head. “Degree of separation?”

  ? There was a long sigh through the speakers of the car, and Sourdough lit another cigarette. “Alright. Say, I take this gun here.”

  ? He held up a long-barreled pistol, all shiny chrome and gleaming with circuitry. “If I kill a Model 3 with this, how many points do I get?”

  ? “10,” they answered in unison. He nodded.

  ? “Exactly. But if I put this in the hand of another person, or a droid, and they kill the xeno, I get less.”

  ? Daniel let out a little ‘ah’ of understanding, and Maeve nodded. She could see the problem now, but Sourdough still spelled it out. “I can’t place the turrets myself. They’re made out of parts that are made out of fabricators that are built by drones, and the ammo is the same way. Basically, I have to keep my expenses to a bare fuckin’ minimum, or I’m straight losing points.”

  ? “But having us kill them for you will result in lost points too, won’t it?”

  ? “Yes, but not as much as you might think. I’m still ending up negative. But this is step one. Once you successfully defend the station, we’ll talk about step two. And it’s pure profit for you anyway, so I don’t wanna hear any bitching when it’s all done.”

  ? “Not from me,” Maeve said, raising her hands. Daniel only grinned.

  ? “I can see you’re nearly there. As soon as you’re inside the defenses, I’ll turn the whole thing on. You’ll probably have… 5 minutes at max. So be ready to shoot some aliens.”

  ? “Copy that,” Daniel said, then ended the call. She snickered.

  ? “Finally hung up on him before he could hang up on you, eh?”

  ? He didn’t say anything as the car began to lose its speed, but she caught the smirk on his lips. Chuckling, she performed a quick final check on the magazine of her two weapons. All good. As the car came to a stop, he thumbed a button on the wheel, and the car slowly sank. “Putting it onto the ground. The less chance it sticks out, the better. Also, try not to make too much noise, even if we’re on the opposite side of the station. We don’t want to get caught out in the open.”

  ? “I’m not an amateur,” she said, rolling her eyes.”

  ? “Yes, you are,” he said, meeting her eyes without a smile. “We both are. And I’d rather not die on my first mission.”

  ? Her sass faded quickly, and she let out a quiet breath, then nodded. “Right. Quiet it is.”

  ? It was at times like this, she thought, slinging the carbine over one shoulder and picking up the longer rifle, that she was kinda glad he was trained to remain calm under pressure. It had saved her life before, and just might do so again. It was why she tried to keep her snarky comments to herself. They’d have to depend on each other here if they wanted to survive. Even a small mistake could make them lose everything.

  [Have heart, Maeve. I have faith that you will pass this test with flying colors.]

  ? “Thanks, Lyra. I hope you keep that chipper, enthusiastic attitude if I die. The world would be a darker place without it.”