Replica (Original Work)

Chapter 16 - A Change in Scenery

"Luce', do you have an actual plan?" Cutter asked, his voice barely audible over the roar of the idling APC's heavy forward engine.

I took my seat in at the front of the small, dark compartment while he and the rest of the team piled in behind me. "I'd say we don't have the luxury of plans at this point. Information as limited as it is, anything I come up with will probably be useless by the time it comes to act." I turned my head sideways and smiled a grim smile for a grim situation. "Besides Harlan you know me, I'm more a fly by the seat of her pants kind of gal anyway."

He nodded, clapping his hands together, and cracked his neck. He then moved to take a seat along the left of the armored rear of the vehicle. I shook my head. "What do you think you're doing? I want somebody on that gun." I pointed upward. "You and me are the only ones here trained to operate the damn things. I want you on fire control."

He flashed a toothy grin. "You don't want to do it?"

I shrugged as he made his way over the to neural jack seat linked up to the autocannon. "Call it a perk of being in charge. I don't like linking up to heavy weapons when I probably won't get the chance to fire them."

Cutter took the seat immediately to my left, pulled a visor down over his eyes and linked with the fire control system. "Careful you guys," he said. "One day on the job and she's already a slavedriver." The two of us shared a laugh.

Peirce shook his head as he hunched over to board the vehicle. "Situation like this and you two are still having a good time? How did I get roped into an outfit with a bunch of psychos anyway?"

I looked back to him as he sat down. "You applied for it."

He shook his head and looked down. "Not my finest decision." He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"At the end of the day every position in the company is shoveling somebody else's shit, least you can do is try to have fun with it," I said. "Don't worry so much. I'll wager you have plenty of years left to regret your life choices."

Peirce leaned back against his seat and rolled his eyes. Boones boarded behind him wordlessly, then Dunlap climbed in and sealed with rear doors before taking his seat next to Peirce.

I turned back to the front of the vehicle and signaled the driver. "This is all of us. Let's roll."

The young man at the front of the vehicle nodded, and we started on our way. It was a short drive to uptown hyper rail transit, and we had the added benefit of being rather imposing. You pull up in an armored vehicle, people clear a path. I spent the duration of the trip eyeing Cutter in the fire control seat nervously. The man was focused, any twitch would mean shit had hit the fan in a big way. Luckily, we made it to the terminal with less than no resistance, what with traffic clearing a path for the obvious military vehicle and nobody trying to shove a rocket up our backsides.

The driver slowed to a halt and turned back to me. "Uptown Transit. That really all you needed? Seems like an awful lot of trouble to requisition a toy like this to get you from point A to B."

I put reached a hand over to his shoulder. He looked maybe eighteen. He had probably joined the company security department when he was pretty young to already be trained to operate armored transport. "Kid," I said, "The less you know about it the better." I turned my attention to back to Cutter. "Harlan, environmentals?"

"Crowded, noisy, and disorganized, once we hit the pavement it'd be a hell of a job to take us out clean," Cutter said. "There aren't any good sniper positions in the immediate area either, so we're probably clear at least until we make it inside the terminal."

"That's what I like to hear. Alright. Boones, pop the doors. We're moving at one minute intervals. You take point. Cutter will follow, then I'll exit the vehicle and Peirce will follow me. Dunlap will bring up the rear."