“Hey, Coyote, there’s a… guy, here.”

The man named Coyote already saw the “guy”—a PMC, looking puffy in his rumpled surplus fatigues, plate carrier, and way too much gear—through his variable magnification optical implants. The guy was leaning against the wall next to a door, holding a carbine slung across his front plate. Coyote’s magnification adjusted as his cybernetic eyes got used to the range. It felt just as natural as if he were doing it with biological eyes; it just took another fraction of a second for the lenses to work out the clarity for a long distance gaze.

“Eyes on him,” Coyote replied. He lowered his cheek onto the polymer stock of his rifle, adjusted his prone firing position, and lined up the aperture sights.

“His boots are dirty. And he’s got a shitty beard,” Mercy blurted into his ears. Coyote winced. Mercy was still so loud. The two of them had been communicating over crappy old two-way radios for months, and Coyote had been reminding, nagging, scolding, and pleading with her to speak as quietly as she could when they were operating. Finally, he had given up and scraped together the extra credits to have ATP expedite getting a hold of subvocalization implants for her. Now she could be as loud as she wanted and nobody would hear her. Except for Coyote. Coyote could hear her all too well.

“Roger,” Coyote said, his ears ringing a little bit. He could see well enough on his own that the man had dirty boots and a shitty beard; 6x magnification at ninety yards was plenty for that. But if Mercy wasn’t telling him anything new about the guy, she was telling him about herself. Specifically, where she was. She could see the guy’s full body as well as his profile or his front, which meant she had gotten outside, somehow obscured from Coyote’s view.

Also, that this guy was a problem for her.

“No way around?” Coyote said, after a beat of silence.

“No, Could you…?”

“It’d be much easier if I didn’t have to.”

“But you’re good at it!”

“Yeah, and every other jackass within a mile is going to come looking for us.”

“Don’t you have a suppressor?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“We talked about this! This rifle is chambered for standard rounds. These guys know what a supersonic crack sounds like; a suppressor isn’t fooling anyone.”

“But doesn’t he look like he deserves it?”

“Do we have to do this now?!”

“Fine!” Mercy pouted. “Do you see a better path for me?”

“Stand by,” Coyote replied. He took a minute to scan the ninety yards between them again. It wasn’t ideal. This side of the shaggy six-story building was built onto a steel pier, which Coyote looked over at an oblique angle. A few skiffs and airboats floated sullenly at the moorings, and then thirty yards widthwise of flat, calm Chesapeake waters separated Coyote’s nest (on the flat top of a boathouse) from the pier. Mercy had gotten into the building—a broadcast station run by STC telecom subsidiary—through the second story, and they had hoped she’d be able to get out that way. Something must have cut her off. So now she was outside—but where?—and trying to get out through the front porch. Down the pier out toward the bay was exposed, up the pier toward land was exposed…

“Okay,” he said. “You’re not gonna like this.”

“Hit me, tough guy.”

“Do you see the blue skiff with the white stripe?”

“Yeah.”

“Use that. It’s moored to the dock by just one rope. When I say go, jump in, cut the line, and push off as hard as you can. Float as far as you can; I’ll tell you if you need to jump out and hide under.” She wouldn’t be able to start the boat without the key, but if she pushed off she could drift and hide, which was better than splashing about in the bay. Probably even better than starting the engine and calling attention to herself anyway.

“But he’ll shoot me!”

“No, we’re doing this your way. I’ll shoot him. Then you’re getting out of there like a bat out of hell. Got it?”

“Good enough for me.”

It wasn’t good enough for Coyote. Mercy would be insanely exposed out there. Coyote had five stories of windows to watch for anybody who might get the idea to look out into the bay for targets. If he missed even one…

But it was as good as they’d get.

Coyote pressed his cheek back down on the stock and lined up his sight picture. This “guy” was wearing a big fucking plate in his carrier, but it was probably cheap. It probably wouldn’t stand up to a round from this rifle. But probably wasn’t good enough. Coyote placed his sights just above the man’s jawline.

BANG. Shit! BANG. “MERCY, GO.”

“Wait wait…”

“MERCY, GO! NOW!”

Coyote lifted his cheek off the stock. The building was a hive of activity; dark figures crossed behind windows on every story. BANG BANG BANG.

That first shot hadn’t been Coyote. Someone else near the STC building was firing a gun. And, soon, multiple someone elses returned fire.

Coyote glanced back down to the guy in front. He was lying crumpled on the ground, motionless. The first shot—fired by God knows who—had startled Coyote badly, but he had been able to snap back onto his target and make a clean kill.

Mercy came bursting out from a pump unit at the corner of the building and dove into the boat. An aluminum donk sound floated across the bay and the boat rocked as she righted herself in the bottom and started sawing at the line.

One of those dark figures lingered too long at one of the windows for Coyote’s taste. BANG. It dropped away.

Chug-chug-chug VROOM. Mercy’s boat came to life.

“Mercy, how…” Coyote began to ask, but then two more dark figures appeared on the fourth story. BANG, BANG. A third… but then, the dull pounding of gunfire and the light of muzzle flashes, and it dropped away on its own. Whoever had started the clusterfuck was inside now.

“Are you kidding me? I could pwn these pieces of shit in my sleep,” Mercy screamed. She was picking up speed, and then, she was free. “Meet me at J.V.’s!”

“Lucky me, you picked a boat for me with a TS100 outboard engine. You know, built in GPS, so you can start and control the engine from software. And the morons signed their kernel with an all-zero key. Too easy.” Mercy finished her vodka and waved over another.

“Sure,” Coyote replied.

“You didn’t understand a word I said.”

“Outboard engine? And morons. I know those two.”

“Jarhead.”

“Nerd,” Coyote replied, finishing his beer and signing for another himself. “Anyway, lucky…”

ATP pulled up a chair at the bar. “A local red, please,” she said, before turning to regard Coyote and Mercy. “Lucky you that Argus picked up a pirate signal coming from the STC building.”

Coyote frowned. “Lucky? Does that mean they know Mercy made off with STC’s data? That’d be bad.”

“Think about it,” Mercy said, grinning.

“If Argus picked up a pirate signal, they’d have a tier-two blue team down there in five minutes,” Coyote said, as it dawned on him. “That’s who was busting that place up when you were getting out. Did you know that was happening?”

“No, I’d have told you if I knew there was an anvil falling on everybody’s heads,” Mercy said. “But I figured it out when I saw the shit-eating grin on ATP’s face just now.”

“Walk me through it, eh?” Coyote asked.

“I was watching the local radio chatter from the Morrigan,” ATP began. “Right around the time Mercy was in there, my bugs picked up a big, loud signal in STC’s band.” (“What, did Mercy use their phone?” Coyote said, which earned him a punch on the ribs.) “So she’d tripped some sort of monitoring. Not the end of the world if she escaped in good time, but if I was seeing the signal, it meant she wasn’t aware of it or couldn’t control it. So I pushed the big red button I had ready for just this situation.”

“You had a big red button?”

“I have a few band manipulators on standby. They’re like jammers. Directional, decent ranged, but they can distort some of the band characteristics just right, and make the signal look just wrong.”

“Like a pirate signal,” Mercy added. “Once you degrade the signal one bit beyond its error-correction envelope, you fuck up the digital signature in the packet headers, and it no longer matches. But maybe I’ll say it in jarhead words. Argus sees bad, Argus shoots bad,” she said, firing a finger gun.

“Bang,” Coyote said.

“I tried raising you on the two-way,” ATP said, shrugging. “But the band manipulator probably drowned it out.”

“Well,” Coyote said. “I appreciate that you tried to give us the heads up. But more to the point, good thinking.”

ATP arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you’d be so happy about it. I know you don’t like surprises.”

Coyote received his fresh beer and leaned back in his chair. “I hate surprises. But I hate being taken by surprise even more.”

“Go home grandpa, you’re drunk,” Mercy groaned.

“Hah. Okay. How about this: I hate it when things blow up in my face, but I hate it even worse when they blow up under my feet.”

“Strike two.”

“Look. Things were going sideways and we didn’t know it. ATP saw the alarm signal, which could’ve deep-sixed us, and turned it to our advantage. I really appreciate that you called an audible, ATP. It was messy, but otherwise it could have been ugly. I don’t think…” Coyote took a long, long pull of the beer.

“Nah, we would’ve made it out. We always do, tough guy.”

Coyote decided not to say it, the thought that had been burning. He would’ve made it out. He didn’t think she would have. And then… would he really have made it out?

He let the beer douse the sizzling fear.

“… Yeah. Still, thanks.”