Chapter 159: Last Minute Gamble

Chapter 159: Last Minute Gamble

“Lanus, are you sure you can fit into this?” I asked as I scrutinized the thumb drive before me.

“Affirmative. It is adequate to hold my core memory and vital processes. However, my resources will be severely reduced, and I will not be able to make any complicated calculations like those required in research projects.”

“That’s fine. You have all our data saved as well, right?”

“Affirmative.”

“If there’s still room in there, transfer every bit of data we have onto it. There should be enough on it that we can just resume everything once the danger passes.”

While I let Lanus continue to take care of the software side of things, I inspected the new power armor once more. I had made some hasty changes to them. Judging from what I’ve seen of corpo hit teams belonging to top-tier corporations, it should give me the extra edge I need to survive.

We had completed most of the other preparations we needed to do before we planned to depart from Elevate City. As a corporate-controlled area, it was just too risky to stake here when our potential enemies were powerful corporations themselves.

For our headquarters, we will leave it in the hands of our employees for now, while Lanus’ hardware will be repurposed into a simpler supercomputer. It was done in case someone breached our base while we were gone. The last thing we needed was to give more reason for other corps to come after us.

When I was done with everything, I sat down in my office and glanced out the windows to enjoy the view of the city.

I sure hope I get to see this again, and not from somewhere else. I can only hope the big corpos don’t bother to squash my insignificant company if they know I’m not there. If only my company could grow legs and run away with me...

The sound of the door opening brought me out of my head as I turned to find Claire.

“Done with everything?”

“Yep, I’m just bringing you the latest reports to sign off on.”

I chuckled as I began browsing over the terminal she handed me.

I couldn’t help but burst out in laughter after reading through it.

“What is it, Rollo? Something wrong?”

“Haha. No, no.” I composed myself. “It’s just that it’s so ironic that our latest report is showing we’ve been performing better than we ever been. Sales are way up with our new products made in partnership with Sensorial, and even our transport business is breaking records.”

Claire shook her head and didn’t say a word about the report, instead she told me to prepare for tomorrow before exiting my office.



The next morning, Thorne, Claire, and I discreetly took an unmarked car out of our compound. We made our way toward the airport while we had our Shades on the entire time, projecting the image of three middle-aged men onto us.

We passed by security calmly and handed over the fake passports I made based on some random folks I found in the ECPD database.Explore new novels on novelbin(.)com

Once we passed security, we sat down by our boarding gate while we continued to make calls to various members of my company about their new responsibilities while we were gone.

“Like I said, Vin, you do what is necessary during this time. You might not be able to get in touch with us.”

“...Should I be expecting anything to happen?”

“It is hard to say, so I guess it is better to be prepared than not in this situation.”

“I see...”

He gave me a knowing nod before the call was cut off.

I glanced over and found Claire still on a call, so I conversed with Thorne, who was already done.

“This’ll look so silly if nothing ends up happening,” I muttered.

“It wouldn’t be so bad. It’s a nice test anyway to see if the company can function without us. I heard other corps do these kinds of tests sometimes to simulate when their entire management team gets wiped out.”

“That’s... reassuring.”

He shrugged.

“Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”

They charged through the haze like an arrow, lunging straight toward our last known location. Their movement was so fast, it pushed aside some of the fog surrounding them.

I could see on the scans that they eagerly ran through where we were, and I grinned.

I had also added a decoy function, where our power armor could drop these small devices that projected holograms identical to ourselves. Combined with the haze, our enemies must be really startled at the illusion they saw right about now.

It was too bad I couldn’t enjoy the surprise, but our lives were on the line.

The three of us spread out, listening to Thorne’s direction, before we opened fire with our new assault rifles on full auto. A steady stream of explosive rounds made their way toward our stunned enemies, peppering their energy shields.

Those hit were stunned by the shockwave and became stationary targets.

No matter how strong it was their shields were, they couldn’t hold up to our unrelenting assault.

Our opponents soon proved to be well-trained as several railgun rounds made their way toward us. There was no way we could react to the sudden attack, but thankfully, we had our own sets of energy shields.

Their shooting quickly ceased, likely due to the unexpectedness of us having similar tech, as they worked to switch to countermeasures. During that momentarily pause, we continued to unload our weapon at their stationary allies, and their defenses soon popped.

+30 EXP

+30 EXP

We didn’t stick around to find out what countermeasures a top corp had in reserve against energy shields, so we quickly repositioned ourselves.

Not long after we did, a grating noise screeched out from our old position. It was so loud I could feel my power armor vibrating, but not much else happened besides being a nuisance.

Was that a frequency weapon? Whatever, I can think about it later.

We continued to exploit of advantage of being able to hide in the smoke, while we shot at them from the dark. We were lucky. Most of them didn’t have power armor, which meant the shockwaves of each explosion were easily able to disorient them for more follow-up attacks.

I counted a total of seven attackers at the start, but we soon demolished six of them.

The remaining enemy was, unsurprisingly, the only one among them wearing power armor.

We couldn’t disorient them as easily as their peers, but they were one-sidedly being fired upon just the same.

It was only a matter of time before their energy shield was also overloaded. It lasted much longer than the ones the others used, so they must’ve had a stronger power armor version.

I swiftly switched to my marksman rifle with the penetration rounds and fired as soon as the shield went down. In the aftermath of it, I could see a noticeable dent in the armor, but it was otherwise unharmed.

However, the occupant of the power armor didn’t think the same.

“Stop, stop! I surrender, don’t kill me! I have value as a hostage, so please don’t kill me!”

“Rollo, we need to get out of here...It has started. We don’t have time for this. Let’s finish him off and run. They may have underestimated us during this first fight, but I don’t think they will continue to do so,” Thorne said with undisguised worry in his tone.

“To be honest, with our stealth tech, it wouldn’t be hard for us to just hide. However, they would then target our fixed assets in an attempt to flush us out. We’d lose everything we had built up until now. Our only chance was to escape the city and leave a trail for them to keep following and waste their time, but that’s no longer possible...I think I have another...drastic way to deal with this without losing anything.”

“What do you mean by that? I don’t like it when you have that look in your eye!” He shouted.

I ignored him and stepped toward our remaining enemy.

“You there. Get out of the power armor now, unless you prefer we continue shooting.”

This may be the stupidest idea I’ve had...but I don’t see any other way for us to get out of this unscathed.

We had been too late.

There was no way I could see ourselves escaping now and leaving a trail to distract them. If we disappeared into the city, they would target our company to draw us out, and I didn’t want everything I had built up to be destroyed.

It’d be naive of us to believe we could get out of a conflict against a top corporation that could employ energy shields unscathed. If I didn’t want to lose anything, then it was time for the gamble of a lifetime.