Eden & Echo - A Gritty Cyberpunk Noir Thriller

An electronic siren was shrieking when I woke up. I bolted upright and looked for the source of the noise. Rook was already standing with his carbine at the ready but his body language was strangely relaxed.

A familiar pink furred hund shoved the door open, pulling a plastic cart behind him filled with what looked to be fast food bags on the top level and weapons cases on the bottom. Rook lowered his carbine once the door closed.

"You can never be too careful, eh?" Knight said in Döbian as he toggled the switch back and forth to reset the red plastic noise maker Rook had stuck to the door. "We spent millions on security for this place and you feel the need to improve it with a five credit motion sensor."

Knight shook his head. "At least you took my advice and stopped using claymores."

I looked over at Rook. "Claymores?"

He shrugged. "Nobody complained. They were a good cheap method to deny entry."

Knight wheeled the cart filled with food over. "Nobody was left alive to complain." He said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. "This one goes through more explosives than anyone else I know. He would open a bottle with a breaching charge if he could."

"I have actually done that." Rook said with a wink that made me wonder if he was joking or not. "What's for breakfast?"

"Well I snagged random orders from the delivery service van on my way in. Some people won't get their breakfasts but we will compensate them accordingly. I've got a bit of everything and there are even some stimulant beverages." Knight waved his hands like a magician. "Who's eating first?"

Sparky emerged from his love shack, wearing nothing but boxers and the carbine that was slung across his chest.

"That would be Sapphire and I." He said, looking through the plastic and paper bags. "Ah yes… pancakes. Gotta love some nice warm pancakes."

He gathered up breakfast for the both of them along with some drinks and went back to the storage room. I started approaching the cart but Knight shook his head. "Not just yet. We wait half an hour to see if anything bad happens to them then you eat, followed by Rook."

"He won't let you choose your food yet because you may be tempted to snack." Rook explained. He looked at the plastic cases on the bottom of the cart. "What toys have you brought us to occupy our time while the food gets cold?"

"Oh you know, a bit of this, a bit of that." Knight unloaded the cases onto a shooting bench and parked the cart off in a corner where it would be less tempting. "I looked at the after action report you sent me along with the scans from your weapons. Oh, and Eden, that was a slick trick with the lights. Well done."

"Thank you." I said, reliving the moment when the intruder appeared and slashed up Mr. Brown. It didn't feel like a triumph.

"Well I was able to get some information on their equipment from my contact in Porto PD. It's pretty much a dead end and doesn't tell us much about who sent them." There was a slight hint of annoyance in his voice.

"The suits and grenades were originally Katzenlund military surplus sold to the BZF and of course the BZF is notoriously bad at keeping track of their inventory. So it's impossible to know if Katzenlund really sent them or if they did arrive and some officer sold them for vodka money."

"Well that sucks." I said, finding a thread to pull on. "Why would the BZF want stealth suits designed to fit katzen? Aren't they mostly hunds?"

"The export bans on electronics and weapons have made it hard for them to keep their military up to date." Knight explained. "None of the Western Alliance will sell them anything and their allies to the south and east are under sanctions too."

"So they scavenge what they can from the black market and buy from places like Katzenlund that don't care what the weapons are used for as long as the BZF pays their inflated prices. Some stuff the BZF uses as is, some they give to terrorists to cause unrest in nearby countries, others they strip for parts."

He shrugged. "The BZF connection is about as perfect a cutout as you could want. As for the attackers themselves, they aren't in any databases we or Porto PD have access to. So either they have been scrubbed from the system by someone really good or they never were in it to begin with"

"The numbers they had tattooed under their eyes were gibberish, so I can't imagine it will lead anywhere. Their wetware had to be military grade to interface with the suits but that's a dead end too."

Rook seemed to think about this. "I'm pretty sure they weren't military. They felt like…" He hesitated. "It was like someone gave them the gear and set them loose but didn't take the time to train them. Going back to kill Krieger was an emotional decision, not something that a professional would have done. It was sloppy."

"They didn't scout out my apartment ahead of time either or recognize the safety glass for what it was." I said, thinking out loud. "It was like they had never gone up against someone who could fight back. The suits made them overconfident."

"Like children playing dress up." Knight mused. "It's all fun and games pretending to be Captain Katzenlund until someone punches you in the face. Rook, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Probably not, unless you are thinking about how we need more explosives." Rook eyed the equipment. "A few proximity grenades keyed to go off when they detect katzen stealth tech wouldn't be amiss."

Knight sighed. "Survivor tattoos, stealth suits, and silver claws. Does that ring any bells?"

"It's hard to tell with my tinnitus but yes, I understand what you are suggesting." Rook wiggled a pinky finger in his ear. "I've been meaning to get these replaced but it's impossible to find anything that comes close to real Döbian hardware."

He gave me another wink before continuing. "So, our intruders were running around pretending to be brujas. That would explain some things."

I was lost. I didn't know what a bruja was and my katzen dictionary translated it as "Witch" or possibly "Owl" with no additional context. I would have done a search on one of the network databases but the boneyard was blocking my access to any outside nets.

"So what's a bruja?" I asked.