Created G.H.O.S.T. System - A Cyberpunk Story

Trace frowned as he examined the back of the truck. It had indeed been peppered with a handful of bullets. Most had missed hitting anything more than the thick metal backside. However, a few had pierced the delicate electronics alongside the thick cabling that ran to the trailer.

A metal-jacketed bullet was stuck inside the cable, causing it to spark and malfunction.

He reached out and gripped the connector, his gloved hand providing enough insulation for him to ignore the few sparks that traveled up the cable. With a twist of his wrist, he pulled it free, disconnecting it from the truck.

The truck began to slow as the motors in the trailer abruptly disengaged.

Wasting no time, Trace grabbed hold of the nearby handholds and braced himself.

A few seconds later, Monroe pushed the brakes firmly, but also did so carefully to keep the trailer under control. It was already wobbling terribly from the destroyed wheels, pushing it even more than he already was would simply cause it to flip or jackknife again.

Twenty long seconds later, the truck finally rolled to a stop and Trace hopped off between the truck and trailer. As he jumped, his left hand thumped the concealed holster on his thigh, revealing the revolver. His left hand withdrew it and passed it to his right hand as he stumbled onto the dirty pavement.

One of the raider cars had been forced to go around the trailer as it slowed and was only a few feet in front of him. There was another on the other side, but he couldn't worry about that one at the moment.

Outside of the driver, there were two other people in the car. The second was sitting braced on the open passenger window, with his gun held askew. The third was a female standing up through an open moonroof. Her smg was dangling from its strap while she held tightly to the roof. At the moment Trace popped into view, she was in the middle of cursing out the driver for his awful driving.

Trace raised the revolver and fired, barely even taking any time to aim. With how powerful the gun was, proper aim didn't even matter. Just getting close or grazing the target was often enough.

The large bullet hit her in the lower side, throwing her backward even as a large section of her body vanished into a bloody mist. The woman's blood covered the inside of the car, distracting the driver, while the other gunner had managed to get his rifle into position.

Throwing himself to the side, he pulled the trigger again, the large caliber bullet deflecting off the armored plating of the windshield. A large, deep groove appeared where it had hit. This vehicle didn't have glass for its windshield. Instead, it had been replaced on the inside by screens and cameras on the outside.

He shifted his aim and tried again, the bullet drilling through the less armored side of the driver's door. Now, he wouldn't need to worry about being run over and only needed to take out the last one.

The car began to inch forward as the driver's dead foot lightly rested on the pedal. Before Trace could react, the last raider propped himself on the roof of the car and opened fire. The man's scout rifle had been modified to fire the more common 10mm rounds instead of the stronger and more appropriate .30-06 rounds it was designed for.

The raider pulled the trigger repeatedly, his finger jerking against the mechanism in a panic.

The first bullet struck Trace in the chest, destroying the paint that provided the suit with its stealth abilities. The barely there protective plates held together, but he would need to work on the suit later. The second shot skimmed his side, peeling a section of the paint away. The third shot hit his cyberware arm.

If the ammunition had been a higher caliber, the shots would have been all over the place. Instead, they had been somewhat close to the mark, despite the raider's inability to properly aim or shoot.

Trace fired the revolver, eliminating the raider in one shot. He didn't have time to waste. There was still the car on the other side of the trailer, and the ones behind it that needed to be taken care of as well.

At the same time, he also needed to worry about the damage to the suit and his arm. He wasn't super worried about either, at the moment, but they did need to be addressed. Preferably before they got worse, and he suffered more damage. The arm was built tough, but that didn't mean he wanted to push its ability to take damage. Like anything, it had a breaking point, one that he would really rather not discover.

By the time the bloody mist of that raider had begun to settle the sound of Monroe's own massive auto rifle could be heard booming away on the other side of the trailer. Slapping his thigh, Trace holstered the revolver. Now that it was empty, he didn't want to waste time reloading it. Closing that holster, he pressed on his other thigh and removed the CD-10 with its extended magazine. The gun was much less powerful, but it came with a lot more ammunition.

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Trace rubbed the spot on his arm where he had been hit as he ran toward the back of the trailer. The sleeve of his suit had been torn, but the arm itself was completely intact and undamaged. He had gotten remarkably lucky this time.

He slid to a stop beside the remnants of the last wheel. The torn pieces had wedged themselves into gaps all over the place near it. The dual-axel setup was the only thing still holding it up, as both rear wheels on the last axle of the passenger side had been shot out.

It didn't give him a lot of cover in that condition, but it was better than nothing.

Ducking down, he aimed at the tires on the raider vehicles he could see and quickly shot several of them out. Now they wouldn't have to worry about the raiders attempting to break into the trailer and then leaving.

Trace holstered the pistol and reached over his shoulder to grab the railgun. With a jerk, he tore it from the straps holding it in place and flipped the rifle into position against his shoulder. Pressing his finger against the trigger, he felt the capacitors begin to charge.

As soon as the subtle whine began to fade, he aimed and squeezed the trigger. With a crack, the bolt was launched from the rail inside and a gradually widening hole appeared through the side of the first of the cars. It was a good thing the power setting on the railgun had never been changed. They wanted to kill these raiders, not completely demolish the vehicles.

If nothing else, the tires on their trucks might be useful. It was a long shot, but Monroe might be able to make use of them.

Since the power on the gun wasn't turned very high, there was still power in the capacitors and Trace could fire it again right away. Choosing his next target, he squeezed the trigger and then went for the third truck and repeated the action one last time.

Each shot sent a burst of hot air out of the vents beneath the barrel. Scattering dust and dirt from the ground into the air. All the modifications he had made to the railgun had done their job, and it wasn't showing the least amount of excessive heat. He had run a few tests on it and been happy every time. That didn't mean he was going to suddenly stop messing around with it and trying to make it better. There was little chance of that happening, especially as he was now attempting to make a pistol variant of it.

Regardless, now that the vehicles had been taken care of, he could concentrate on the actual raiders. All of which had begun to swarm out of their respective trucks and cars.

With a muttered curse, he leaned the railgun against the cracked steel rim and retrieved his holstered pistol once more.

"You alive over there, Monroe?" He called out over the constant gunfire.

"Yeah, but these frack-faces are putting holes in my baby!" His large auto rifle fired again. "You know what? Screw this."

There was the sound of a few scattered shots, but largely everything became silent on that side of the trailer.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Trace called out, while he used his suppressed pistol, with its very nice scope, to shoot one ankle after another.

"I was getting my new toy," Monroe called out with a grunt of effort as heavy feet hit the ground.

A moment later, he heard the whir of multiple barrels beginning to spin to life. A deafening roar split the air as countless bullets were spit out at the end. The dirty pavement tinkled as brass and steel intermixed, spent cartridges falling empty to the ground. Monroe feathered the trigger, keeping the pressure on it light so he wouldn't melt the barrels.

Within the span of a few seconds, he had burned through all the ammo within the heavy backpack. Five hundred rounds, gone in moments and plenty to cut everyone and the vehicle that he had been dealing with in half.

With a sigh of relief, Monroe slid the backpack to the ground and placed the minigun atop it. With a laugh of pure joy, he shouted out. "I LOVE THIS THING!"

Trace rolled his eyes and focused on his own targets. Taking them out at the ankle had been working wonders, as without fail they fell to the ground, allowing him to then shoot them in the face or really anywhere else. Some of them were wearing protective masks, along with the armored vests they all wore.

This close and with the good scope he now had on the gun, Trace was able to make quick work of several of them. Those who didn't die right away were still knocked unconscious as the bullets to the face snapped their heads back or crushed their throats. Piercing through a vital spot wasn't always needed to kill or disable an enemy. Sometimes the alternative, such as simply removing their ability to breathe or even see, worked just as well.

On the other side of the trailer, Monroe used his rifle to eliminate the rest of the raiders. A few moments later, all of them were dead.

Standing up, Trace grabbed the railgun with one hand and held his pistol in the other. Together with Monroe, they swept each of the vehicles, opening the doors and nudging the bodies one after another. They found a couple that were merely unconscious and tied them up, securing them for later questioning.

The rest of the bodies were moved to the side to be stripped of everything useful. Trace handled that, along with grabbing the modified control modules from each of the vehicles. He had accidentally destroyed one of them with the railgun, and Monroe had ruined the one in the car he had cut in half with the minigun.

One of his projects had been programming the other modified control module. He had been making significant progress, mainly due to the way it had been designed, more so than his own genius. No matter how annoying it was for him to admit, Trace truly was not a talented programmer. He had been able to make progress in the subject after countless hours of studying, but it was hard-fought progress.

Programming just didn't make sense to him in the same way that other forms of technology and hardware did. Which was fine. Everyone had their talents, but that also didn't mean that he was going to simply stop trying to learn or move forward. That just wasn't his way.

While he was busy moving the bodies and getting everything good from the vehicles, Monroe was salvaging their tires. There were two spares strapped to the underside of the trailer. However, at a minimum, they needed four replacement tires. More than likely, they would actually need more, depending on the condition of the rest.

At the moment, the current plan was to retrieve tires from the trucks. From there, Monroe would use some of the equipment he always carried for emergencies to widen the hub holes as well as create additional holes for the studs and resulting lug nuts. It was a terrible plan, and they wouldn't be able to go faster than twenty, or twenty-five miles an hour max, but it would get them to the next scarpo town.

With any luck, once there, they would be able to replace everything with some proper tires that actually fit.