Address: NCnet // >encrypted< // >encrypted< // Individuals // Redeye.atx
Page Title: ShadowNet: Redeye (overview)
Excerpt: Redeye has accrued power and reputation at an utterly unprecedented rate, such that her name may eventually command the same respect as the likes of Fastrack and V-jack. Along with her role as a connection between professionals and anonymous employers, Redeye is known as a powerful information broker. Like any good information broker, she is secretive to a paranoid extreme, and she almost certainly commands far more resources than she lets anyone know about.
“Come on, come on, come on!” Ironwood growled, more to herself than to Daybreak.
Ironwood was used to dealing with Spectra’s crap. She didn’t blame Spectra for the difficulty of keeping First Seed going despite gang wars happening across the street. She hadn’t complained the last time she’d had to lie to a Warhorse squad leader’s face in order to give Spectra an alibi. She could even handle Spectra leading the war in through First Seed’s doors.
But for Spectra to bring this horseshit down on a bystander, and a witness, and—most
importantly—a guest?
Ironwood gritted her teeth even harder as she glanced over her shoulder at the panting pink professor following behind her. The poor girl probably rarely even saw guns, to say nothing of having them pointed at her, for Mother’s sake. Spectra had a lot to answer for.
The racket had stopped, but that didn’t mean the trouble was over. Better to keep running, get Daybreak as far away from the scene as possible. A dozen different plans spun through Ironwood’s head even as she galloped down the dilapidated streets, but she already knew what her best option was. It was just that she just hated the idea.
The safehouse. Spectra’s safehouse. Ironwood bristled at the idea of owing Spectra a favor. Maybe the ol’ instincts were wrong, and there wouldn’t be any need...
A burst of gunfire echoed off of the concrete buildings lining the street. Ironwood snapped her head to the side in alarm as she heard Daybreak yelp and fall. “Hey! You all right?”
“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” Daybreak squeaked, picking herself back up. “I just... the sound startled me, so I tripped and—”
“Okay, good! Now let’s go!”
Ironwood felt a headache coming on. Oh, how she wished that this bullshit could be happening on a different day.
As soon as the two reached an intersection, Ironwood took a sharp right turn and started leading Daybreak deeper into the shadow of the plate. The safehouse wasn’t far, and there were probably worse things than owing favors to a reckless “professional” who had two gangs and at least one corporation out for her head. Probably.
Red words blinked in the center of Victoria’s map: Incoming voice call—active asset.
Victoria answered with a quick flick of her hoof. “This is Redeye,” she monotoned.
A deep-throated stallion’s voice replied: [The target’s under our control, but, uh, I’m seeing two unarmed heading towards our drop-off. One’s the owner of the place we pulled the target out of. What do I do?]
What to do, indeed? Victoria clicked her tongue. Calling another team on Spectra’s friend—Ironwood, that was her name—would only risk creating more witnesses. She could make an emergency call, but Warhorse’s response wouldn’t be able to intercept the two before they reached the safehouse. The main difficulty with finding solutions here was the small matter of the stranger, Ironwood’s guest, a wildcard in this most delicate game in which the stakes were far higher than anypony else could know...
[Redeye? We’ve only got a few minutes!]
And keeping the assets waiting on a response would be as good as calling Warhorse on them.
“Maintain low profile, then detain at point R. Absolutely no violent solutions unless reciprocating use of force. Await further instructions.”
With that, Victoria spread her hooves wide, then swiped them together and gave her head a violent shake. The city map vanished, the display on Victoria’s shades reverted to personal mode, and the chair quickly lowered its mistress back to the floor.
“Wardrobe, please,” Victoria said to the apartment, striding purposefully towards the study’s already open door. “A special outing. My finest.” She imagined that she could hear the clicking of hidden mechanisms in the walls as they assembled the outfit in accordance with her coded words. Then, as an afterthought: “Cancel tranquilizer venom. Substitute three explosive, six anti-personnel, six high-velocity. Remaining magazine, tranquilizer venom.”
Victoria sighed as the doors hissed shut behind her. Getting her coat dirty in an outing to the shadows was bad enough, but the threat of having to personally get her hooves dirty was more danger than she would normally abide. Unfortunately, these weren’t normal circumstances, no...
Well, on the upside, this was turning out to be quite the interesting day.
Ironwood slammed and bolted the door, then let out a long breath, simultaneously a sigh of relief and a huff of annoyance.
“Are... are we safe now?” squeaked a timid voice. Ironwood sighed again, quietly this time. Daybreak couldn’t have been younger than thirty-five, but she sounded like a little filly. Then again, it would be hard to blame her for that after the kind of day this had been.
“Yeah, we’re safe,” Ironwood lied. “Jus’ pull up a seat, we can wait this out for a while. I’m gonna need to make a couple calls with this place’s terminal.”
The safehouse was simple enough--one of the undercity’s many abandoned flats, which Spectra and Ironwood had forcefully purged of vagrants and other vermin some months ago. The place didn’t see much use, so some of the salvaged chairs that they’d dragged in to make it more comfortable were starting to deteriorate. The futon was looking less than trustworthy too. Still, it was comfortable, it was discreet, and the ruined walls were perfect for stashing things in. If she needed them, Ironwood knew where she could find a loaded hoofgun, a cheap AR headset, two gallons of clean water, and a portable generator full of gas.
All of which were reasons why she hated the safehouse. This wasn’t a residence, it was a hideout. It was the kind of place that only criminals who needed to avoid the consequences of their actions would ever use.
“Hey, uh... Daybreak.” It took Ironwood a moment to remember her “house”-guest’s name; she was busy trying to peek out of the front wall’s windows while hiding from view by standing flat against the wall. “There’s a terminal in the next room over. Go fire it up an’ I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ironwood heard a door open behind her, followed by a timid “Uh, Ironwood?”
What Ironwood saw when she turned around froze her blood. She’d stared down a couple of pistols today, but that was nothing like the hardware currently being aimed at Daybreak’s chest. A pair of pegasi, one yellow and one white, towered over Daybreak, aiming two long-barrled saddleguns each at the poor little unicorn. The gunponies’ darkened AR visors concealed their eyes, but not their dangerous frowns.
Behind them was the crumpled form of a blue-green pony. It was hard to tell in the low light, but Ironwood thought she saw wings and the glint of implants.
“Steady. No need for trouble.” Ironwood felt her heart shudder as she slowly advanced towards Daybreak. “We’re gonna leave, all right?”
“No, you’re not. Take your headsets off and put them in the middle of the floor.” The yellow merc’s voice was flat; impassive. His partner didn’t speak.
“Fine. We do what you say, you don’t shoot. Right?” Ironwood spoke slowly and deliberately as she took position by Daybreak’s side. Ironwood was sure that both pegasi noticed her trying to look past them and into the room where Spectra was, but neither of them commented on it. “I left my headset back at the farm. No trouble from me.”
“You try anything, we shoot.”
Daybreak whimpered again as she fumbled with the strap on her goggles, finally getting them free after a few frantic seconds.
“All right. We’re not gonna try anything.” Ironwood nudged Daybreak gently, and felt that the poor girl was shivering. “Let’s all just have a seat, a’right?” She held out a foreleg to urge Daybreak to come with her as she backed towards the center of the room. Neither stallion moved. Both kept their weapons aimed at Daybreak and Ironwood.
Ironwood led Daybreak over to the chair that was least likely to collapse. “It’s gonna be fine, all right? We’re gonna be fine.” She brushed Daybreak with the side of her head, urging her towards the chair. “Go on.”
Daybreak sat gingerly on the moldy armchair, as if she was afraid that its deep cushions might contain something sharp that would cut her if she fell into it too quickly. Ironwood didn’t sit; she stood next to the chair, trying to keep one eye on every part of the room at once. It was all she could do to stop herself from reaching over and placing a comforting hoof on Daybreak’s shoulder.
“So,” Ironwood said, as casually as she could manage, “You’re from the university?”
Daybreak nodded once, but she didn’t look away from the two stallions who still had their weapons trained on her.
“You teach classes there?” Ironwood leaned forward, trying to get Daybreak to look at her instead of the mercs and their guns.
“Sometimes.” Daybreak looked like she was trying very hard to sit still and still failing completely. Her chest shook with unsteady breaths, and she grimaced slightly every time she took a hard, forced swallow.
“What kinda classes? Magic theory?”
“No.” This time, Daybreak briefly met Ironwood’s eye before she answered. “Magical history and magic studies.”
Ironwood chuckled. “Like I said. Magic theory?”
Daybreak turned toward Ironwood and opened her mouth to explain, but she cut herself off and looked back toward the gunponies again as one of them spoke up.
“Yeah, I just got the confirmation. No, there wasn’t any trouble.” The white pegasus had turned his visored stare towards the front door.
Ironwood dared to take a sigh of relief as all four mounted rifles in the room retracted and folded flat against their owners’ saddled backs. Without another look at Ironwood or Daybreak, the two visored pegasi haded for the door.
Ironwood didn’t wait for permission to move. She nearly bumped into one of the armed pegasi as she rushed past him and into the darkened room containing the place’s terminal. Spectra’s fur blended all too well into the shadows, and she still laid perfectly still, but anypony could smell a bloody wound from this distance. At least, that was what Ironwood chose to tell herself. She didn’t smell blood.
“Uh... Ironwood...”
Ironwood’s jaw stiffened with intense disapproval as she heard Daybreak’s whimper. Of course.
“Tell ‘em they can shoot me once I’m done checking on Spectra,” Ironwood snarled.
A voice replied in a gurgling metallic sputter. “Tell Ironwood that all three of you will be safe, but only if you follow my instructions without hesitation.”
Ironwood snapped her head to the side in alarm at the sound of her name. In the small room’s doorway stood a figure nearly a head taller than Daybreak, covered from head to tail in a black robe that was sewn into neat panels, like a formal suit. The hood was tented from , as if to accommodate a mane done into a rigid mohawk, and the wearer’s face was hidden behind a satin-like veil. It was as if the robe was being worn by a ghost.
Ironwood remained unimpressed. “If I had a bit for every time somepony told me to do something ‘for my own safety’ while pointing a piece of hardware at my chest...”
“I didn’t think there was any need for that,” the figure replied in the same distorted drone, “But--”
She punctuated her words with a sternum-shaking gunshot and a muzzle flash from between two of her robe’s molded panels. A hoof-sized crater appeared in the ground in a flash of yellow light, less than a hoof-span from Ironwood’s metal forelegs. Daybreak didn’t even have time to finish her yelp before the hooded pony started barking orders at her.
“You. Pick your headset back up and open it to local connections.” Then she looked at Ironwood. "Where’s yours? Implanted?”
Ironwood spared Daybreak only a momentary glance as the poor girl hurriedly ran back into the main room. “Ain’t a thing in my skull ‘cept bone ‘n brains. Left my headseton the farm when th’ two of us started running for our lives.” Ironwood hadn’t shied back an inch from the oversized bullet hole at her hooves--if anything, she was seriously considering charging the hooded figure down. Targeting programs weren’t perfect, and the stranger probably didn’t have his or hers on paranoid automatically-waste-any-incoming-threat mode.
“I’ll arrange to have it picked up and delivered to where we’re going.” The figure shifted to the side, away from the doorframe. “Have the other one help you drag the pegasus into the bed of my vehicle.”
And there it was, the last straw. “No,” Ironwood said in an animal growl.
The figure actually managed to look taken aback despite not having any visible facial features. “What did you say?”
“Leave the other one out of it,” Ironwood said, glaring straight through the stranger’s tented hood. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“She has everything to do with this. She needs to come with me.” The electronic voice reached a high pitch on the word needs. “I despise repeating myself. She will help you move Spectra. I don’t recall giving either of you a choice in the matter.”
“How do you know our names?” Ironwood demanded.
“Will it be faster for me to disable you and have your friend help me move you as well? I regret that I do not have tranquilizer venom in my magazine.” And the electronic voice managed to be menacing despite being barely comprehensible.
“Yes.”
There was only a half-beat of silence before Ironwood charged, her mechanical legs pounding cracks into the bare concrete floor. Before she could even take three bounding steps towards the hooded pony, two gunshots rang out, two yellow explosions bloomed on Ironwood’s false knees, and the would-be heroine crashed to the ground in a yelling, cursing, flesh and chrome trainwreck. She tumbled to a halt at the cloaked pony’s hooves.
“Never fear; I’ll pay for repairs. You! Help me move both of these two. Careful; she’s bound to weigh quite a lot thanks to her augments.”