Mai watched as the base’s gate slowly ground open. Despite her anger at the council’s betrayal she’d beefed up the base beyond recognition, adding more towers, enlarging buildings, and adding fortifications to them. Now, if any enemies were able to penetrate the walls, they’d face heavily fortified buildings more than capable of keeping their inhabitants safe whilst providing covering fire to any other building under attack. It had taken all of the expansion points the rebels had.

“Could have greased the tracks,” joked Dakota, nudging Mai with her elbow.

“I’ll have you know that they’re level five gates. The best I can do right now until we’ve carried out some missions,” Mai walked forward as the gates finished opening. That, and she didn’t want to admit she’d overspent on a couple of weapons so had been forced to settle for the gates. And there wasn’t a chance in the hells that she would be using her own BIO-MASS to grease the tracks.

Beyond the now open gates were the lodging of the other rebels. None matched the standard of dwellings up in the city. If anything, they were worse than one-miler dwellings. And that was after she’d upgraded them. She’d thought defences were more important and hadn’t checked on the state of the barracks before it was too late.

Never thought things would be this bad, Mai walked through the gates, the rest of her party silent. They’d agreed to go to an armourer’s, see what they could purchase. It irked that Yen Ching and his people seemed to be content to just rule over their small patch of the city.

They were strangely passive for people who had once been cullers. She pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind. It served no purpose to dwell on them.

Instead, she concentrated on their surroundings. The second gate on the rebel compound opened, the guards waving them through. The town beyond was poorly lit, buildings sagging, signage flickering on and off, rubbish piled in the streets. Those buildings nearest to the rebel base were pockmarked from bullets and heavier weapons. From the look of it, some of the battles had been particularly heavy.

“Well, if this doesn’t suck, I don’t know what does,” muttered Jock. “This whole place looks as though it’s had the shit kicked out of it over and over again until it just gave up.”

Mai kept walking for a few paces, eyes scanning, looking for potential threats. Many of the civilians she saw were carrying weapons, evidence that nanites and bio-boost were in short supply.

“The civilians here look pretty downbeat too,” Chan pointed over at a family making its way along one of the streets. Clothes dishevelled, faces grimy and emaciated, they made her heart ache.

“Let’s hit the shops, see what we can do about it.”

*

“I really like the look of that dress,” Dakota scrolled through a list of available items. There weren’t many, the shop being low level. It was poorly lit, a theme which Mai was starting to get well and truly tired of. She silently swore to herself that good lighting would be one of the best things she could bring to the city

“Save the nanites,” laughed Mai. “Not entirely practical. I mean, how are you going to run and gun wearing such a thing?”

“I wouldn’t wear it out, just wear it around the base. Maybe at the odd dinner,” Dakota mock pouted.

“Dinner now is it?” Chan gestured at the shop owner. “Any good restaurants around here?”

“Seriously?” the shop owner scoffed. “We’ve got places you can eat, but none which I’d call good. Not unless you’re one of the factions, or maybe a guilder.”

Mai finished scrolling through the shop’s items. Because of its level, most were redded out and those that she could buy weren’t practical. She made her excuses and thanked the shop owner.

Leaving the shop brought them out onto a main thoroughfare lined with shops. The Nether City was full of such places, but this was one of the few places still neutral. Looking at the people walking along the street, she wondered what conditions were like in other parts of the city.

Right now it’s going to be too dangerous for us to poke our noses where they won’t be welcome, we’ll concentrate on building this place up first.

And the way to do that was to find out what people needed help with.

*

“That armourer looks interesting,” Chan said as he pointed over to a sign which actually stayed on more than it stayed off. It looked like ‘Bob’s your armourer’. “Looks like they get more business than the others.”

“That’s not a surprise. I reckon the only people who make good livings down here are undertakers, armourers and doctors,” Mai replied. She was tired of seeing just how dilapidated everything was down here. It seemed that no matter how hard people tried, the various factions would always be there to bring the city back down into a state of everlasting drudge.

“Come on, let’s have a look,” Dakota led the rest of them to the armourer’s door. It was heavily warded, with retinal scanners, fingerprint readers, and a nasty-looking ball turret hanging from the ceiling.

“Probably best if we just ring the doorbell eh?” Dakota pressed the button in question and a once-popular dance tune rang out. “Huh, beats for the beatdown.”

They waited until the song played itself out then, with no warning, the door opened, sliding out of sight into the wall.

“Guess that’s our invitation,” Jock stepped through into the shop, the others following him slightly more cautiously.

“Better than I expected,” Mai looked around. The walls were lined with weapons of all sorts, the traditional sort, not nanite. Her retinal monitor scanned and logged each one, prices showing above them. Some she’d never even heard of. One, something called a flintlock, was positively primitive. The cost was exorbitant, so it must have had some special ability she couldn’t see at first glance.

“Welcome, welcome, how might I help? I’m Bob.” A portly old man stepped through a door at the far end, sitting himself behind a counter which was just as heavily armoured and protected as the front door.

“We’re just browsing right now, thanks,” Mai smiled, waving at the walls. “You’ve got an impressive selection.”

“We tend to find people want guns more than most things in this city. The factions keep killing each other and so people keep buying guns to protect themselves,” the man’s face screwed up as she spoke. Mai thought it was strange that someone who hated what was happening to her city would keep selling the very things that contributed to the situation. But, people needed to eat, and she couldn’t judge the woman considering her own poor choices.

“We also sell armour and clothing. You’ll need to use the clothing stand over there to see them. Most people like to see the weapons first.”

Mai wandered over to the clothing stand and stepped in. It was actually a three-sided cubicle. As a customer scrolled through the clothing options, they would appear on the customer, allowing them to see what they looked like in the clothing before they bought it.

She was surprised to see that pretty much every item was redded out. Just about to give up as she scrolled through the options she paused, then scrolled slowly back up.

Twenty-Fifth Recon, Night Wolf uniform, what the hells? She was looking at a set of military clothing, named after the unit which had used it. There was a small history of the unit, the wars it had participated in. The only part which interested her was the fact that the unit had a ninety-five per cent success rate by using the stealth properties of its uniform.

She gasped as she saw the stats on the clothing. It gave an additional ten per cent bonus to STEALTH, URBAN CAMOUFLAGE, & LARCENY which stacked on top of any Ranks she and her people might have had, allowing them to go to a maximum of seven if they were already at Rank Five. Which in turn meant they had a thirty-five per cent chance of a critical success.

This will give us a massive advantage over the other factions. They’ll never even see us coming! That last was an exaggeration, but it would certainly make their job a lot easier if the enemy didn’t even know they were coming. Mai much preferred the idea of sneaking around the objective than blasting her way in. She’d seen too many people die and wasn’t prepared to have more deaths on her conscience if she could avoid it.

“Ah, I see you’ve found the Night Wolf,” the shopkeeper nodded approvingly. “A very nice set of clothing. Some of the best I have to offer.”

“Why’s it redded out? We have enough money.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the materials required to make it,” Bob shrugged. “I don’t have the materials for most of the items in my catalogues.”

“Materials? What about nanites?” Asked Chan.

“Nanites, nanites, nanites,” the shopkeeper waved his hands about him in scorn whilst making a somewhat rude fart noise. “That’s all I hear from people nowadays. No, this suit requires special materials to which the nanites will be bonded. It needs natural fibres.”

Mai’s jaw dropped, natural fibres might as well have been a myth to most citizens in the city. No-one wore clothing that wasn’t made from nanites. None aside from the ten-milers, and even then only the richest of those.

“Where on earth do we find natural fibres?” Dakota walked up, eyebrows raised.

“That’s the rub. There’s an old farm out the outskirts of the city. Cotton. It’s a plant, by the way,” the shopkeeper explained as he read the expressions on their faces. “Once harvested, the cotton is turned into the cloth called cotton. It’s all very laborious and complicated and I won’t waste all of our time trying to explain the process. I need at least two paces of cotton per suit. Three if the person wanting it is large. And that’s just the start. Get the cotton first, we’ll discuss the rest later.”

Mai carefully did the calculations in her head. She had thirty-five people with her. Which would mean she’d need one hundred and five paces of cloth.

“We’ll need a ground car, no way we can carry that amount of material.”

“You’ll get it for me?”

MISSION RETRIEVE THE COTTON

DO YOU ACCEPT YES/NO?

“Oh, we’ll get it for you,” Mai nodded as she pressed YES.