Tue Sep 28, 2004 11:08 pm by Darkov
It was the old man who spoke first. “Ah, Hirayuki it is good of you to join us,we have a lot of preparation to do...
He swept his hands around the four others there and then continued, pointing at the tall bronze skinned man on the far left. “Santiago Llorens, our pilot and perhaps the best in all of the Sirius for the job.” Then he pointed at the one next to Llorens, a stocky man with a scarred face and very short black hair, only stubble. “This one is Koller, our arms man.” Hirayuki glanced at the man uncertainly. He seemed to have holsters all over his body for various sorts of heavy weaponry. The old man continued. “And these last two,” he pointed to a short man in grubby clothes and sharply dressed man with close-cropped hair who looked around anxiously. “Are Paddy Jackson, our demolitions man and Martin Evans, our inside man.” The old man closed his eyes and waited for a while. He turned towards the group. “And this is Aki Hirayuki, our tech/hacker man.” Hirayuki raised his hand in greeting but the others just looked on. The old man must have pressed a button because soon the shaven headed man walked back in and escorted Evans out of the room. The old man waited and then suddenly spoke up. “Right men! We have a lot of planning to do, get to it!!!”
***
That was 6 months ago. Erol gathered the best in all the Sirius. From all the five houses, all the best at their job. He’d actually sent me to get them all to his personal base. Some came along just fine…others were reluctant. I had to bribe Llorens with millions just so he would come out of his retirement on Ruiz. But it barely made a dent in the old fella’s bank account. I don’t know where he got all his money from and I probably never will. But if this goes all sweet then it’s a sure profit for all of us.
The shaven headed man, whose name was Skulk sat back from the comm.-display and checked his log. Satisfied with it, he shut down the comm. And walked out of his cabin. He strode up to the top level where Hirayuki was preparing a massive jamming operation to cloak their escape. He looked out of a view port and they were flying across Manhattan’s Washington Bridge, the bridge that joined Manhattan’s two continents together. He went aft and checked the cargo hold. The massive load of military-type heavy weaponry would scare any contraband-seeking cop so Hirayuki had done something with his wizardry on that as well. The Armored transport they were in gently glided down into 53rd Avenue, only a block from the Liberty Bank, the oldest in the Sirius and to house the most amount of funds. “I’ll pick you up in the back courtyard in 10 minutes!!!” Llorens yelled. The Bretonian, the Rheinlander and the Kusari hacker jumped out with Lloren’s hired thugs.
It was a strange sight seeing this large group of men pushing a float pallet towards the bank. Strange enough to rouse the suspicions of an LPI cop walking the beat. He ran up to them as they began to push it up the stairs. “Hey you guys can’t do tha…” He was cut off as Koller, the Rheinlander lifted up the cover of the float pallet, grabbed a Detroit Landblaster and whacked him around the head with it. “Okay, let’s go go go go go!!!” yelled Paco, the leader of Lloren’s mercenaries. They all whipped out the weapons from the float pallet and started blasting away at anyone who got near the bank. Jackson tossed a homemade bomb in the bank’s foyer as the steel security doors started to close. With an almighty roar that almost blew the roof off and stopped the security doors flat the homemade charge exploded and Jackson ran in with double Daumann Shredders. Koller charged in, turned around and set up a shoulder mounted needler rifle and began blasting at the various LPI and LSF vehicles that came to investigate. Hirayuki was struggling to get the float pallet through the door. Skulk ran up and shoulder charged it and it flew through into the destroyed foyer pinging off all the desks like a pinball. Periodic explosions began rocking the bank as Jackson cracked open the minor vaults. Hirayuki looked desperately for Evans. There he was, standing on an upstairs balcony waving his hands frantically. Hirayuki raced up the stairs and met him and they sprinted to the Vault.
The door was massive. Hirayuki doubted even one of Jackson’s homemade specials could crack this. He flexed his thin hands and walked over to the control console and started working on it with his gadgets. Every now and then a muffled explosion would rock the building. But they got more frequent and louder. “Jesus…” thought Hirayuki, there couldn’t be that many vaults could there? With his little gadget he found the right frequency the code was on and it only took a minute to find three possible code sequences. On the second one it bleeped green and the massive vault began to grind open. His and Evans’s eyes went wide. There was billions of credits and priceless colonial and alien artifacts in there!!! They started hurriedly packing all they could into sacks and their clothes. Soon there were heavy footsteps in the adjacent hallway. It was Koller. “Time to go little friends!” he yelled and picked them up. The float pallet, already crammed with credits was waiting outside. Koller spent a couple of minutes loading the pallet up until it was overflowing and the he and Hirayuki climbed onto it with the others. Evans ran to join them but Koller flicked out his Daumann Devastator and fired three times into Evans who shuffled back and fell down, clutching at his throat. Then Koller jumped down and maneuvered the float pallet halfway over the balcony. Hirayuki look around anxiously. Jackson and two of Lloren’s thugs that were on the float pallet looked normal enough. Then Koller jumped on and it flew off the edge.