“Whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t you,” Willy remarked with a glance at the still-steaming bodies. “Let’s move. Just like we practiced, right?”

“Got it.” There were maybe four minutes left to get to the security room before the vault closed at 12:05. DD and Stripmine could keep anyone from shutting it early- or so Walker claimed- but they couldn’t override the timer itself unless we got them an opening. We lined up and went for the door at the back of the lobby, me on point. Willy’s exo was barely armored compared to mine, its protection only a little better than a regular ballistic vest. It would probably stop small arms fire, but it wouldn’t laugh it off like the Zamok would.

I smashed the door open with a lurching blow from my foot, revealing an office hallway. Its faux-wood paneled walls were lined with doors. Two more Argent Fist troopers in gray fatigues stopped short when they saw us, evidently on their way to find out what all the noise was. I didn’t leave them with any doubt. Another thudding burst of .50 cal dropped them before they got off more than a shot or two. This was about as fair as hosing down dogroach larvae with brake cleaner. If I was a nicer person it would have felt cruel.

Lowering the gun, I made a haptic gesture to pull a wireframe floorplan of the building onto my HUD. We’d gone over it again and again, but I wanted to be sure. Willy spoke into the radio and confirmed what I was seeing. “Left at the end of the hall. Computer room’s behind the armored door. Clear the offices first.”

“Sir, yes sir. I got left.” I moved in with Willy close on my tail, and after briefly heaving Agatha out of the way we kicked down the first set of office doors in unison. Behind mine I found not enemy soldiers but a cowering woman in what passed for K-block business casual- dark green slacks, a checked button-down and a creased, shiny blazer that looked made of plastic. Motherfuck, I swore to myself.

“P-p-p-p-please don’t-“ she stammered from the floor behind a desk. I cut her off by putting a couple rounds into the wall over her head. She screamed and curled up so tight her head was almost between her knees. I winced a little inside the armor. That was probably worth some hearing damage.

“Stay here and stay on the floor, or the next ones won’t miss,” I spat through the Zamok’s voice-changer. The last thing we needed was innocents running around in the middle of a gunfight, and I figured the worse I scared her the more likely she was to listen. The kingsdamn bank was supposed to be closed; no one here but the Fomorii and Cromwell parties. Maybe this jo-san wanted to get some overtime in and had just picked a really bad day. Or maybe she worked for one of the targets and was pretending to be a civ for just this eventuality, and she’d put a shaped charge into my back the moment I turned around. I couldn’t see any weapons but with Admin involved that didn’t mean much. Fuck it. I wasn’t quite hard enough to kill her just in case. Instead I left her there on the floor, weeping in fear but alive.

Willy’s shotgun ratcheted off a three-round burst just as I turned around. Its reedy report was like cracking fish bones amplified a thousand times. I hoped he hadn’t encountered the same situation I had and made the safer bet, and I didn’t ask when he emerged unscathed. The next set of offices was empty. The third we didn’t have to clear because the Argent Fists inside kicked the doors down for us when they started shooting.

I stood there like a rock, buckshot pellets and Thayer caseless slugs bouncing off me easy as gravel from spinning tires. Willy used me as cover, his coilgun snapping up to ventilate one merc before I could even react. He fell like a sack of potatoes, riddled with tungsten darts. The other ducked back inside his door, realizing his little ten-milly subgun wasn’t doing much. Neither would his cover. I set the reticle on the wall and let Agatha rip, filling the corridor with smoke and noise. Armor-piercing bullets tore through the sheetrock, and I was rewarded with a yell that quickly cut off when I stayed on the trigger a second longer.

“There you go. An object lesson on the difference between cover and concealment,” Willy said.

I got moving down the corridor again, the need for haste warring with caution. “Doesn’t look like one you want to learn the hard way.”

“He’s definitely found that out.” We moved on quickly, not running into anyone else until we got to the armored door of the security room. It was tightly shut. Whoever the Fists had in there had prudently decided they were outgunned and decided to shell up like an armored lamprey in an arpaste macerator.

Willy took a position aiming down the hall. “I’ve got you covered. Be careful in there.”

I started to nod before realizing he couldn’t see it. “I will.”

He didn’t mean it for my safety. I leaned Agatha against the wall and drew the saw. This called for my version of precision- but first, it was time for another dynamic entry. In the course of their research, the slicers managed to crack the archival server of the contractors who’d built the Crockett building, and it turned out they’d put in the lowest bid for a reason. The computer room had a security door, sure, but the walls? Just gypsum and double-thick conplas.

I drew back and slammed my free hand into the wall next to the door. A mild jolt went up my arm as it punched straight through. I grinned. The mercs inside were probably pissing their pants. After fumbling around a moment I caught hold of a metal edge and pulled hard as me and the Zamok could. Servos snarled and so did I, grinding titanium-spiked boots through the carpet. With a wrenching squeal the whole door and frame pulled right out of the wall, trailing bundles of frayed wiring. I heaved it aside with a crash and lunged through the dust it left behind.

Time to think fast. Two Fists in here, a man and a woman, eyes wide in shock as I hulked out of the murk. He was closer, so I hit the trigger and sent the saw whickering through his neck and upraised hand in a single stroke. Instead of hot spatter on my face I just got a slight tinge to my visual feed as blood got on the camera array. As his shotgun clattered to the floor I sent the follow-through straight at his comrade, but she was quick enough to get her gun in the way. The glittersaw screeched as it slid across, the force of the blow driving a grunt out of her. Without missing a beat I grabbed her around the face with my free hand and threw her hard into the ground, then drove a boot through her skull easy as crushing a can. ’Stride’s teeth, I wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Clear,” I radioed to Willy.

He joined me in the security room. “Perfect. No damage at all.”

The mess I’d made in there didn’t faze him. He pulled a metal box from his belt and reeled out a length of cable from both ends. One went into the main computer bank that lined the back wall. Between status readouts and security camera feeds- most blank- I saw that the clock read 12:04. Willy jacked the other wire into a separate console at the far right of the room- the vault control, isolated from everything else. “Come on, you nerds…” he muttered.

It was only a second or two before a new window popped up on the main screen, containing a skeleton on a black background. It tipped its broad hat, flipped us off and disappeared.

“I’m going to assume that was the signal,” I said dryly.

“That’s right. We’re golden, now.” Stripmine and DD were in, and had the vault door jammed wide open for us. Now we just had to get there and grab what we came for. They had the external doors locked down too. Nobody got to leave until we were satisfied. We couldn’t reach Walker from inside the bank, but the slicers would let him know we got this far.

“Ready? I got point.” He stacked up behind me and slapped my shoulder. I smiled again. We were ripping through them like…well, like my saw through people. I moved back out into the corridor, heading for the opposite wing of the T-junction. Way down the hall I spotted a four-man fireteam of mercs. They actually had their helmets and respirators on, too. Finally getting their shit together, I thought.

A few bullets and one extra-loud hit that might have been a shotgun slug smacked into me, but even the couple that struck my helmet didn’t matter. I opened up, still advancing against the .50’s pounding recoil. All but one dove into side offices. The last collapsed with a scream like a tortured animal, one of their calves tumbling away and bouncing off the wall. Their buddies tried to drag them into cover but I pushed the muzzle lower and made sure it wasn’t worth the effort. “Motherfucker!” came a muffled shout from a survivor.

When I let off the trigger I could hear what was left of the belt rattling in its box. “Gotta reload soon, Willy,” I sent.

“Dump the rest at that door. Keep their heads down a moment.”

“Got it.” The muzzle of an SMG that was poking around the doorframe quickly retracted when I let off a quick burst at it.

“Behind you!” I leaned aside just in time to let Willy step forward and hurl a grenade. It arced perfectly across the hall and into the doorway, bouncing off the wall before detonating with a monstrous BANG.

“Go ahead and reload. I have you covered,” he told me above an agonized moan from down the hall. I did as he asked while he advanced, tossing aside the empty belt box and pulling a fresh one from the load rack on the Zamok’s back. Meanwhile Willy moved up with his shotgun at the ready, his Gyeoksung exo much more maneuverable than mine. One Fist popped out of the door opposite the one he’d thrown the grenade out of, and I heard a gunshot and an involuntary “Oof!” over the comm before a rattling burst from Willy’s shotgun.

“You good?” I asked as I slammed the top cover and chambered a round.

“Y-yeah,” he coughed. “I’d much rather take a load of buckshot to the chest in this thing than out of it, but it still doesn’t feel good.”

“I bet. You sure you’re alright?”

“Just got the wind knocked out of me. Now, at the end of the hall there’s a sort of waiting area, then a security checkpoint. Past that’s the vault itself.”

“Yessir.” The two of us moved down the hall with as much delicacy as we could muster- not much in my case. We took cover in the office the Fists had. My boots made wet sucking noises as they pulled free of the soaked carpet. “How you want to do this?”

“I’ve got some more explosives. We could breach the door and hit them before the smoke clears.”

“They’re probably thinking we’ll do that, though. Aiming right at us.” I thought about it myself for a moment. “Hey…correct me if I’m wrong, but that wall at the end of the hall isn’t reinforced or anything, right?”

“…No. No, it’s not.” I could hear the smile as he figured out what I had in mind. “I like it. I’ll come in right on your heelst the regular way. Just watch your muzzle and don’t shoot me by mistake.”

“I’ll pay your hospital bill,” I joked, clapping him on the shoulder. Between me and the Zamok it shifted him a little even in his exo. Whoops. “Kings know Walker gives me more deng than I know how to spend.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it soon,” he said airily. “Shall we?”

“Indubitably, good sir.” I could imagine him rolling his eyes, but the image soon disappeared while I focused on bringing the Zamok up to a run. I’d practiced some in the last few days and just barely got the hang of it. I had to swing my legs what felt unnaturally wide to keep them from clanking together, and the result felt more like a floaty, loping waddle than a sprint. Even so, by the time I reached the end of the hall I was bounding at a good clip, the office carpet torn to shreds by my titanium cleats. I angled not for the checkpoint door, but the wall next to it. I clipped a desk with my hip but it didn’t even slow me down. I lowered my shoulder, held Agatha out of the way-

And with nothing more than a thump and a puff of dust I was through. The wall hadn’t even slowed me down. Neither did the unfortunate merc standing just in front of where I busted in. The Zamok didn’t exactly stop on a chit, so momentum carried us both straight into the opposite wall- him first. Being as it was the side of the vault, it was made of reinforced concrete, not drywall. He didn’t so much hit it as smear across it like strawberry preserves.

I bounced off, momentarily stunned. Even armored and insulated the impact had been stiff.

“What in the fuck is-“ The Fist’s desperate yell was cut off as her and her friends opened up, turning around from the positions they’d taken around the door. Once more I stood there and took the punishment as I raised the .50 and put a burst through the only man I could shoot while aiming away from the door. He dropped missing a few pieces, and an instant later my forbearance was rewarded. Willy crashed bodily through the door like he was possessed by a Kestite devil, his coilgun’s plasma muzzle flash strobing madly. He shredded two Fists and buttstroked the one remaining with a crack that sounded permanent. I heard a metallic clatter and glanced down to see a dropped grenade roll almost between my feet, spoon already gone.

“Huh,” was all I managed before the thing exploded. It was like being inside a tin garbage can that someone had hit with a sledgehammer, and I actually felt myself grow lighter as the blast lifted the Zamok off the ground before it settled with a thump. I scanned myself, wiggled my arms and legs, but everything seemed to be good. I guess it was meant for bomb disposal.

A glance at Willy told me he’d come out alright too. “What was that dumb bastard thinking, letting that off in here?” he snapped, his anger directed at the dead man. “He would have blown himself to shreds.”

“Seems like he was trying to blow my dick off. As it were. You know what I mean.” For some reason a more accurate metaphor didn’t have quite the same gravitas.

“Indeed,” he said, voice dry. “And a good thing he failed. Unfortunately, I think we’ve run out of creative ways for you to bust into a room.”

“Yeah, isn’t this thing supposed to be open?” I tapped a knuckle on the vault door that dominated the back of the room. It looked just like one you’d see in a holo, a huge round slab of steel that must have been twelve feet high. “Or did they just swing it shut?”

“The latter. It’s still unlocked. You just know they’re zero’d in on it too, so…Ah. I knew there was a reason I brought these.” He pulled a grenade from his belt. “Smoke. It’s a fast-burner, radar and infrared-opaque. Even throws off sonar, supposedly. For whatever that’s worth.”

“Maybe more than nothing. These guys are way too squishy to be all they brought.” The Montesquieu had implied we might run into Admin Enforcement- the dreaded Masks.

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll pop the smoke and send it through. Give it a second, then you follow, then me.”

“Aye, aye.” I gave Agatha a shake. Still had most of a belt ready. I lined up behind the door and Willy opened it a crack. It was so well-balanced he hardly gave it a nudge, despite its huge mass. The smoke grenade ignited with a hiss and he rolled it through, trailing a cloud of white that quickly began leaking back through the crack.

“You open it, I’ll wait a second and go through,” I radioed.

“Yep.” I stayed behind the door as he swung it all the way open, revealing an already-huge bank of thick white smoke. It was immediately pierced by a fusillade of bullets, as well as a bigger, slower projectile that burst on the wall behind us and sent fragments clattering off my armor.

“Somebody’s got a grenade launcher,” Willy muttered. “Hit it.”

I lurched to my feet, skidded around the door and entered the vault at a run, still deep within the smoke. A couple stray slugs whacked off me but I didn’t think they were aimed. I knew I’d found the nearest cover when I bounced off it, probably denting a bunch of expensive safety deposit boxes. Not my problem.

“In. I’ll cover you.” I crept up to its corner and let off a few bursts of .50 in the general direction of the far wall, leaning back as more poorly-aimed return fire rattled in.

“Moving. And safe. I’m opposite you, on the other side of the door.”

“Got it. And now we just need to get to the other side, I guess.” Easier said than done. When Walker told me we had to break into a vault, I’d expected a tiny room, something not much bigger than my old shipping crate apartment. Then I’d looked at the floorplan. The Crockett vault was more like a small warehouse. The part nearest the door had deposit boxes lining the walls, as well as several big, square pillars lined with the same. Willy and I were both using those as cover. The part farther away was more irregular, full of larger individual safes for more unorthodox objects- and based on where the incoming fire was coming from, that was where we’d find our quarry.

“We’ll join up at the other side, then. For now, we’ll each take a side and move up.” More frantic gunfire came from across the vault, someone hoping to hit us by dumb luck.

I keyed my mic in awknowledgement and got started. Deciding not to poke my head out in the same place twice, I went to the other edge of the pillar and edged around- only to run smack dab into someone. Or maybe it was more like he ran into me, since he bounced away with a bloody nose. He was dressed in a dark suit and shades, carried a stubby Yakkorp carbine, and had some kind of implant or armor under the tan skin of his face that made it look scaled. Fomorii.

He was well inside the unwieldy length of the .50’s barrel. I took advantage of his confusion to throw a big, slow haymaker at him- about the only kind of swing the Zamok would allow. He jumped back with the twitchy speed of cybernetic legs, but I had the reach of one of those big Sun Age monkeys and made a lunge of my own besides. Instead of popping his head my gauntlet sledgehammered into his neck and sent him cracking to the ground like a broken toy.

That’s what happens when you fuck with D-block, I thought as I moved on. The place might have been a shithole, but it was our shithole, kingsdammit. It was bad enough without these fake-slick war profiteers interfering.

That whole encounter had gone better than expected. Slow as it was, the Zamok’s strength shattered his spine in one hit- and now that I was out of the smoke, the less hint of my location I gave, the better. Just then a screeching alarm went off, and showers of yellow-white powder started blowing down from the ceiling; the smoke grenade must have set off a fire alarm. A few reedy snaps off to my left told me Willy wasn’t so lucky, so I picked up the pace. I took the gap between this pillar and the next one at a dead run, machine-gun belts and gear clasps and the saw all jingling and rattling. I was reminded of a one-man-band I’d seen busking near Old Ved market once, all strapped up with old fuel drums and oil cans and bits of sheet metal to make his music. Running to the far edge of this new one, I risked poking my head out. Through the haze of smoke and fire retardant I spotted a Fomorii and an Argent Fist both firing toward where I thought Willy was at. After ten rounds from Agatha they weren’t anymore.

Willy’s voice crackled in over the comm. “Thanks for the assist!” Through gaps in the pillars I watched him dash out between them, vault with one hand over a shut-down cleaning robot, and empty his shotgun into some unfortunate with the other before leaping into fresh cover.

After a moment of staring at that display I managed to answer. “Anytime-ow!” Several big somethings smacked into the side of my helmet. I spun around with my finger already mashing the trigger and caught a glimpse of someone diving behind the next pillar, my bullets sparking at their feet. I loped up towards them smooth as I could, hoping the smoke and general noise of the gunfight would conceal my steps. It must have, because when the shotgun-wielding Fist leaned back out of cover the last thing he saw was the .50’s muzzle jabbing into his throat. The follow-up round probably wasn’t necessary, but if you’re going to do a job you may as well make sure it’s done right.

Past him the regular pillars ended. Just ahead was a rather convenient piece of cover: a safe that looked big enough to hold a vic, or maybe a few stacked on top of each other. Problem was I’d have to cross open ground to get there. When I stuck Agatha’s barrel out to see if I was spotted a hail of fire answered me, along with another launched grenade. I could probably take one of those and be fine, but I didn’t want to find out I was wrong.

Willy’s voice sounded tinny in my ear. “You want to get behind that big safe?”

“Yeah, but they got a bead on me. I’m not trying to eat one of those grenades.”

“Just a moment.” From the side of the room opposite came another plume of smoke. He tossed this grenade in front of the big safe, rapidly creating a cloudbank to hide us. “I’ll go first.” I watched him sprint low and hunched until he was behind the big safe, then wave me over. The smoke had spread pretty well so I moved, jingles and rattles and all. Just as I got behind the safe I heard a new kind of gunshot, a flat and extremely loud crack, crack, crack. When I glanced over at where I’d come from I saw a few nasty rents blown into the safe’s corner.

“What the hell did that, man?” I asked. It was a lot more damage than even the .50 would have done.

“Sabot rifle,” he said. He didn’t sound happy, and I was right there with him. Those things shot fin-stabilized uranium darts at ludicrous velocities, like a tiny version of the cannons Praetors sometimes mounted. Just like those cannons, they were meant for punching through armor.

“Will they kill us?” I asked.

“They’ll go through this damned soft rig without slowing down. You…well, I wouldn’t go trying to get hit. You take one in the back or through a joint and you’re done.”

“Great. I knew this was too easy.” Neither of us stated the obvious. Those sabot rifles kicked far too hard for a regular soldier to use. You had to be either chromed up to the gills or wearing power armor, and I’d bet my new apartment on which we were dealing with here.

The Masks had joined the fight.