An Engineer in Night City - ch 5.9 & 5.10 (Patreon)

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the delay. I was writting the chapter when I laid down for a few minutes to rest, then it was already 5Am here. Here is the double chapter I promised. There's also today's chapter to look forward to.

Legal Problems Require Illegal Solutions (9)

David closes the door, ready to leave for Arasaka Academy, when he notices Mark returning to his apartment while looking worst for the wear.

“Rought night?” David asks his neighbor once he notices the rare state of his person.

“Y, yeah.” Mark yawns tiredly, “and there are still more to do, but need to take a shower first. I will try to catch a nap while I wait for my appointment later in the day.”

“Make sure you get enough rest, and don’t forget to sleep, alright? Work will still be there when you get back.”

Mark blinks at David words, grinning at the young man and reaching towards his head, ruffling the hair of the protesting teen. “Thanks for the advice, David, I appreciate it. You’re right, I will sleep it off before going back to work.”

David slaps Mark hand away in embarrassment before powerwalking towards the Academy, and Mark enters his apartment once more with a tired yawn on his lips.

The transmigrator takes David advice and takes a long, relaxing shower, then he sends a quick message to both Kiwi and Miguel regarding the affairs of the day. Finally, he falls on his bed and sleeps like the dead, or like a Factorio player that just realized the sun is already up on the window.

…

Kiwi looks at the message marked Important, realizing its from her new employer. After quickly reading it the Netrunner sighs and pulls the files she was about to sell on the black market, a hint of amusement at the fact they would act as proper backup like her “day job” description intended.

Her “department” also has a budget and since some idiot decided to steal the physical server like a caveman instead taking the data as a civilized person should, she will be using the budget buy another server. For a moment, the idea of skimming off the top from the department budget cross over her head, making her weight the pros and cons of such an action. It’s not unusual for Edgerunners to klepto some valuables during a mission but depending on the fixer and the valuable stolen that would tank the cyberpunk reputation on the streets. If she decides to stay for the long term and steals from the budget she will need to work with subpar equipment or cover the difference with her ill gotten money anyway.

Kiwi pauses once that thought crosses her mind. “Am I really willing to become a corpo after a single offer?” The Netrunner looks at the contract she signed, and the advance she received for the month. “So long as he stays professional, yeah.”

In the former factory worker and Joytoy eyes, the contract was too good to be true, but since her employer paid her in advance, if things get messy she can simply delta and lay low for a while. Kiwi doubted that the Wube Inc. would be so vengeful as to root out a single Netrunning in Night City.

…

Miguel knocks on the apartment door, and a small hand pointing a hand cannon to his face answers. “Hey choom, what can I do for you?”

Putting his hands up, Miguel introduces himself. “Hey, I’m Miguel, remember me? I’m a friend of your boss, Maine.”

Rebbeca eyes widen, “oh yeah, Miguel, I remember now. How are you doing, choom?” The small Solo steps aside, inviting the former Green Beret. “Come in, Maine just woke up. He got the whole crew holed up on his apartment to look after Sasha.”

As Miguel enters he spots the rest of the crew. Maine looks tired despite being the middle of the day, his output is giving a dressing down to the group’s Netrunner, the techie with long arms is stuffing his face with kibble as he strips and cleans a gun, and Rebbeca goes back to the kitchen to make some synth coffee.

“Good day Maine. Can we talk a little bit? It’s business.”

“Hey Miguel, Nice to see you.” Maine sighs, “business, eh? I can guess about what it is. Do you mind if the rest of the crew listen, or should we move this to my office?”

“Isn’t your ‘office’ the bathroom?” Pillar asks casually, and Rebbeca casually shots his hand for his impertinence. “Hey, that was close to the product!”

Ignoring the siblings’ antics, Miguel sits at the table. “The Engineer sent me a message about yesterday clusterfuck. He said they used your Netrunner as ‘bait to draw him out of the factory so that They could raid the Starter Base.’ Can you give me some more detes on what happened yesterday? I swear, the first time I get to sleep during the night this shit happens.”

Maine replies with an ironic smile to his friend, “just like in the army, huh?” Shaking his head, Maine recounts the events of the previous day.

The successful operation from the Engineer gig, waiting at Afterlife, meeting “Mr. Cool” himself and accepting an improvised gig that paid premium for speed, Sasha successfully completing the mission but almost fucking it up due to personal reasons, if not for the Engineer deciding to rush towards Biotechnica’s building the moment he heard that Dex DeShawn was the one who gave them the gig, the subsequent rescue, and finally the Engineer leaving a stunned Sasha on the street before rushing to fight in a gang war in Pacifica.

“He won, by the way,” Miguel notes to the stunned Edgerunner crew, “some people wrecked his base, but he managed to deal with the aggressors. If you go there right now you wouldn’t think the place was a warzone just a few hours ago.”

“Damn, no wonder he had the balls to treat my Netrunner as an amateur. Our levels are totally different.”

Miguel shrugs, “maybe he was just angry that she almost got herself killed? Unless you’re on his shitlist, he’s quite generous and compassionate.”

“I really should apologize to him, if he felt so strongly about it.” Sasha quickly elaborates when everyone turned to her, “not that I’m complaining about the dressing down or don’t appreciate being cared for, but I was expecting that sort of behavior from the crew or my sister, not from a complete stranger.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it Sasha, it sounded strange at first,” Maina turns to Miguel, “the Engineer had too much intel on what, where, and how Sasha would conduct her gig, and the moment Dex DeShawn name crossed his lips he raw like the Executioner was on his tail.”

Miguel knew that his friend was fishing for information, however he could only shake his head. “As far as I understand, some of the things he can do are fucking magic, so I’m not going to question how he knows some secrets while being painfully naïve on certain aspects. Anyway, the Engineer isn’t blaming the crew of anything, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

While the rest of the crew sighed in relief, Dorio took the opportunity to ask her question. “Then what is the Engineer message?”

“He wants to propose a closer partnership with your crew,” Miguel answers, “he will soon incorporate, and he will build the ‘legal’ security team to provide security for his workers, while he will hire Edgerunners for black ops operations.”

“A corpo fixer, huh? That’s a lot of hats the Engineer plans to wear.” Pillar points out, making Maine think over the proposal. “What does he get from hiring Edgerunners instead of Arasaka or Militech mercs?”

“According to him, he likes to have a hand in a group’s development, and he believes that a professional mercenary’s loyalty is to their parent company, which is a conflict of interest in his opinion.”

“Can’t fault him there,” Maine agrees with the sentiment behind the Engineers actions, “give me the detes on the proposal, depending on what it is, it might be worthy hearing shit from Faraday.”

“Just remember this,” Miguel warns his friend and the crew with a somber tone, “make sure that you don’t go half-cocked just so you get yourself killed, Mark is willing to help resolve your issues, but he can’t read your fucking mind.” The ex-special forces pause, “probably.”

…

The Queen of the Afterlife is seething with rage at the sudden gang war happening on her city and being entirely in the dark over the reason why it started. She isn’t completely in the dark, however there are missing too many pieces for her liking.

‘The gang war starter several hours ago, deep into the night. Several gangs arrived on Pacifica, and after a tense initial confrontation, one of the boostergangs fired the first shot and then things went downhill.’ Rogue mentally recounts the events of the night, trying to make sense of the insanity. ‘A few gangs tried to blow up the Engineer’s headquarters and klepto his equipment with a certain degree of success, while other gangs were killing each other within Pacifica either under order, or to stir up trouble. Every gang wanted something different, and not all of it related to the Engineer.’

The legendary Solo grabs a bottle of Vodka and pours herself a drink while glaring at her bodyguard if he ever dares take her drink away.

“This must have been done by accident, or as a spur of the moment whim. Something on this magnitude doesn’t go under the radar until the last minute without anyone hearing about it.” Rogue wanted to blame the Engineer for this, but the man was simply defending his turf from the aggressors.

The only clue that she has is the piece of intel she learned while overhearing Maine’s crew table. After sitting down to commemorate a successful job, Dex DeShawn approaches them, they talk for a while, Dex leaves, The Engineer arrives talk with the Edgerunners, Biotechnica and Dex names are eventually dropped, then the Engineer rushes after the crew Netrunner. The rest, as they say, is history.

“What other headache he has for me?”

Her Netrunner redirects a message from the Engineer to her Agent, answering her prayers.

It answered with scorn and mockery.

Legal Problems Require Illegal Solutions (10)

The Mayor office clerk tried not to fidget at the sight in front of her. A man wearing incredibly expensive looking Power Armor was calmly writing the forms for opening a new business inside Night City. Most small business, in the clerk’s humble opinion, are ‘frauds that only survive on their better’s charity,’ because they didn’t go through the bureaucratic process, and thus didn’t pay them the necessary “fees” to keep the business running legally.

The man sitting in front of the clerk, however, made sure to read each passage on every contract and license that requires his signature, slowing down the line massively behind him. As petty revenge, the clerk telling the armored man that he isn’t filling the forms correctly, or that he isn’t filling the proper forms in a timely manner. Yet, the armored man did everything without issues, and soon the excuses to delay him became more malicious.

For the people in the office the sight cut a comical silhouette due to the rarity of people well armored as Mark doing something so mundane in Night City. They would say, ‘Edgerunners don’t stand in lines, they blast their way to the front!’ or ‘corpos don’t send their attack dogs on an office errand, they have interns for that!’

Eventually, Mark is called further inside the Mayor office to talk with people of enough importance. Mark follows the attendant and walks through the corridors of Night City’s Mayor Office. Mark is almost surprised by how mundane the inner architecture of the office looks like, with a clear departure from the needlessly flashy and retro-futuristic aesthetic that Night City favors, or the clean and sterile corporation architecture that Arasaka and other corpos employ.

‘This city must be getting to me, here I am being nostalgic for seeing a building full of extremely busy government clerks.’ Mark shakes his head, and finally enters the meeting room. “Good evening.”

There were three people seated at the table, with three more standing acting as bodyguards. One of them is the representative for the government, while the other two are from Arasaka and Militech. Mark narrowed his eyes behind the visor, recognizing the Arasaka man.

“Yorinobu-san,” Mark gives the older man a respectful bow, thanking his time in college and hardcore weeb phase. He then extended his hand to the Militech representative. “Mr. representative.” Finally, he addressed the government representative, who is the mayor himself. “Mr. Mayor.”

“Hajimemashite,” Yorinobu replies with a polite nod, holding a hand to stop his cyborg ninja bodyguard.

The Militech representative didn’t return the greeting, while the Mayor returned a tired smile. “Welcome to this meeting, Mr. Mark. As you already know, I am Lucius Rhyne, the Mayor of Night City. I hope you weren’t inconvenienced by the waiting.”

“It’s fine,” Mark answers the overweight man, “now, how can I help the city and the two major corporations of Night City?”

“We want you to stop what you’re doing and leave pacifica, after paying us for compensation, and then be persecuted to the full extent of the law.” The Militech representative answers promptly.

Yorinobu takes his time to answer, and the other two representatives wait for him to continue. The Mayor is visibly stressed by the wait, while the Militech representative doesn’t bother masking his impatience. Eventually, the heir to the Arasaka Empire speaks.

“Arasaka wishes for you to cease your operations in Pacifica, as it fears you will glean corporate secrets that where improperly disposed. Additionally, has interest in developing the Pacifica region for future real estate projects, and cannot stand by someone taking it first.”

Finally, the Mayor speaks. “The Night City council simply can’t abide by your irregular acquisition of Night City property. At least, a proper bidding process must take place before operating in such manner. Fines must also be paid for the irregular activity.”

Mark nods and addresses the Mayo directly. “I understand your concern. After all, the entirely of Night City trash could be considered a unique treasure for those who can exploit it. I believe to be uniquely suited to make a use of all that trash. If you don’t mind, I have a demonstration video for you to see.”

Mark sends a video file to the three sitting across from him, and after some time checking the files the group opens the video. In the movie, Mark shows his equipment working to transform the trash into finished goods, starting from the mining. A large mining drill digs into the ground, compacting the scrap into massive blocks of trash, which is then moved through conveyor belts towards the recycler machines. From there, the trash is disassembled, and certain materials are spilled out, with a tiny fraction of scrap leaving the conveyor belt for storage. The disassembled material is then sorted and sent to storage, with some of the material being further broken down along the line before going into stock.

The image changes to an area that was previously full of trash, and slowly the trash pile diminishes until only clean ground is left.

“As you can see, I can automate the cleaning process of the land, taking out the trash and leaving pristine ground behind. Pacifica is relatively clean compared with the City Landfill, so the process of cleaning the area of filth should happen swiftly. As for the reclaimed components, here is a sample of what my Assemblers™ can do.” Taking out a small box, Mark produces three items, a “green chip,” a “red chip,” and a “blue chip.”

“Those are special computer chips that can be used for a wide range of applications, customizable for the needs of the client. They might look bulky now, however,” Mark takes one green chip, the Electronic Chip, and breaks it with his finger, creating a smaller piece, “each chip can be broken down with simple tools, even manually as you just saw, to fit the requirements of the use case, yet they don’t change their performance. The green chip you see is the basic Electronic Chip, good for simple applications in the civilian sector, or if you need reliable items to supply the military. The red chip is the Advanced Electronic Chip, with a higher performance than its basic counterpart and suitable for most high-tech applications. The blue chip is the Processing Unit, with highest performance and fit for cutting edge technology. Allow me to demonstrate a simple application of this technology.”

Once more Marks takes three items from his box and they are three cyberdecks painted in green, red, and blue colors for identification purposes. Mark takes one piece of reach chip type and slots into and adequate area of the cyberdecks and shows the representatives, who now look mildly interested in the demonstration.

After a brief inspection, the Militech representative eyebrows shot up in surprise at the change in performance. The equipment with a green chip operates to usual parameters, but the ones with red and blue chips have a much better performance when it comes to speed, and after a brief struggle by one of the bodyguards to hack and fry the cyberdecks, the destroyed chips are recovered by Mark and changed to new chips in different configurations, restoring the inoperable equipment.

Mark gives three cards to the men present, a black card with a single orange-rust gear in the middle, with the name Wube Inc. at the back and Mark current contact info.

Urban Development, Infrastructure, Mining, Logistics, Security

Wube Inc.

Mark Henderson: Chief Engineer of Night City Operations

“Here’s my proposal, Mr. Mayor. The city won’t need to pay for Wube Inc. for the trash reclamation and disposal service, in return it will sell the chips and other materials for the Night City and the two corporations in attendance at a discount.” Mark turns towards Yorinobu. “I don’t trust any information that comes out of the trash, nor I have the time to personally sift through the refuse to find the small golden nuggets of info, when I can make more money selling Iron and Steel. Of course, I can also offer services to properly dispose of databanks and other sensitive material, if you’re interested.”

Both the Militech representative and the Mayo look surprised at Mark courage at offering Arasaka to deal with their trash in such a bold manner. Yorinobu remains mostly stoic though his expression tightens. “I see.”

“What about your personal actions? Are you going to talk about the murders and other illegal activities you’re up to? Do you,” before the Militech representative could continue, Mark interrupts the man.

“No.”

“What? ‘No?’ What do you mean by ‘No?’”

“No. We’re not going to talk about past issues. I could give some very compelling arguments as to why, but that requires me to acknowledge that there is any issue, and hence talk about it. So, no. We’re not going to talk about it.”

Suddenly Yorinobu stands up. “Arasaka will study your proposal with care, Mark-san. For now, we will drop the claim on the Pacifica district until it is cleaned and fit for human habitation. Both Arasaka and I will be in contact with Wube Inc. Until then, Mark-san.” The Heir to the Arasaka Empire leaves the room calmly but swiftly, with both Militech and the Mayor staring at the retreating men with surprise.

The Militech representative glares at Mark’s armored mask but doesn’t further antagonizes him. Eventually, he also stands up. “I will talk with the R&D department regarding interest on the items. Militech Procurement Department will contact your sales department for further negotiations.”

Only the Mayor and his bodyguard remains from the original men waiting for Mark. “You said Wube Inc. would work for free to the betterment of Night City?”

Mark shakes his head. “Nice try. Wube Inc. won’t charge for the trash reclamation projects, but I am willing to give a very generous deal for urban development and infrastructure projects, so long as the city approves some of Wube Inc. proposals for opening new installations.”

The Mayor eyes, once dull and tired, regain some spark of life from the once idealistic man. “Tell me more, Chief Engineer.”

Mark grins behind the mask.

…

Back at the limousine, the Bodyguard questions Yorinobu’s decision to have Night City branch of Arasaka to make a deal with the newly stablished Wube Inc.

“The products shown by Mark-san have potential to be useful to Arasaka’s efforts, and I felt prudent to cultivate a good relationship with the Chief Engineer, who appears both capable and dangerous. Close the windows, I wish some privacy.”

The bodyguard nods, clicking a button and rising the privacy screen for his current boss.

When Yorinobu is certain he’s alone on his seat and nobody is listening, he loosens the control on his emotions and starts laughing hard.

“Ha ha, to have the audacity to come at Arasaka to take their trash and dismissing Militech in the same breath. I like the balls of that man. I wonder how he will respond to this.”

Yorinobu sends a quick message to Mark. “Are you willing to discuss business after work hours over a drink?” Yorinobu’s father, Saburo, would never lower himself to drink with someone he considers his ‘lesser’ unless he’s completely in control of the situation, disdaining certain confraternization practices when he was young.

The reply came promptly. “Sure. High class, low class, or my place? I know how to cook washoku, genuine ramen if you give me twelve hours of preparation time, or we can have some genuine burgers made of real meat and real American cheese.”

Once more Yorinobu laughs at the reply. “I would kill for a burger.”

…

“Sir, is it wise to leave the Engineer free without at least pressing charges?”

“It’s fine. I doubt he would care about the law of Night City beyond paying it lip service, and he’s clearly deranged enough to wage war on Militech if he felt like it. We can’t have access to his technology through legal means, but I admit that was a long shot to begin with.”

“What do you propose, then?”

“We will talk with the R&D department once more and see if they managed to crack the stolen samples first, if they didn’t I will talk with the Finance department to approve a new budget for Procurement.” The Militech representative stalls the bodyguard complains, “there’s always time for litigation, my friend. Besides, that’s not how corporations really fight, is it?”

The bodyguard remains silent for a few moments. “I thought you didn’t like the current system, Mr. CEO.”

“I don’t, but I’m not blind to the reality of the world either, and Mark and Wube Inc. aren’t blind to it either. Maybe a little naïve, but he’s not stupid. Regardless we already got enough data on how to breach his defenses, and next time we want to finish the job we will send the professionals.”

…

Unaware of the many plots and developments happening around him, Dex DeShawn celebrates another well paying job that was successfully finished. He earned a lot of money from the information sold to the gangs, got some extra eddies from working with the larger corporations while doing little to any work himself, and he got out smelling like roses.

“I love when a plan comes together. This is going to be my decade, Choombatta!” Dex DeShawn cheers with his closest confidants and team, raising a glass of pre-DataKrash whiskey. “Cheers!”

“Cheers!”

Dex takes another drag of his cigar before sighing in contentment. “Nothing can sully my mood now, nothing.”

Dex DeShawn, self-styled “Mr. Cool,” would later regret getting himself involved with the corporations and the Engineer. For now, he parties away the money earned from his biggest hit to date.