"There sure are a lot of people."
It was the day of the job. After their client, Faraday, brought them over and negotiated with the clearly Arasaka guards, Carl, Oliver, and Jack were allowed to enter a warehouse in the transport port of the Arasaka Waterfront District with their weapons. Only after entering did they realize that, despite arriving an hour early, they were still among the later arrivals.
Besides them, there were already at least twenty mercenaries inside, fitted with all kinds of cyberware and carrying various specially modified firearms as they waited.
"There really are."
After responding to Jack's remark, Carl began observing the mercenaries who would be carrying out the job alongside them. After taking a closer look, he realized he recognized most of their cyberware and weapons.
"Subdermal armor, Mantis Blades, Saratoga Submachine Guns, Kenshin Pistols, Nova Pistols... Oh, they even have the SOR-22 kinetic precision rifle Oliver worked so hard to get. Looks like they're all pretty capable."
None of those weapons were cheap. At the very least, bottom-tier mercs could not afford them. Then again, anyone sent here by a fixer could hardly still be using weapons like a Lexington.
"You needed to say that?"
Oliver looked at the SOR-22 kinetic precision rifle in his hands, then at Jack's Saratoga Submachine Gun, and finally at Carl's Kenshin. If the three of them blended into that crowd of mercs with their weapons, no one would be able to tell what made their squad any different from the others.
"Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three... Carl, Oliver, including us, there are twenty-six people now. If everyone's getting a hundred thousand in pay, how much did the client spend on this job?"
"You're forgetting the fixer's cut and all the other expenses. Anyway, it's definitely a number we can't even imagine, Jack."
Oliver felt that it was probably a number he would never come close to in his lifetime. "The gap between people really is bigger than the gap between dogs."
"Like you've ever seen a dog in Night City."
Carl laughed. "I've seen plenty of cute dogs. I even raised one before."
"How come I never saw one?" Oliver gave Carl the finger in response to his bragging. "A Corpo Dog isn't a dog?"
"You two, quit bickering. More people are coming. Doesn't that guy look familiar?"
Jack nudged them with his elbow, motioning for them to look toward the warehouse entrance they had come through not long ago. Oliver and Carl looked over and found that he really was someone they knew.
"Isn't that the guy from before?"
Looking at the blond, muscular man standing alone with a large machine gun in one hand, Oliver recognized him. "The one who got into a fight outside the braindance shop. Didn't he have two teammates back then? Why is he alone?"
"Maybe they died. Or maybe he figured they weren't qualified for this job."
Carl did not have much of an impression of the muscular man, and his tone was casual. "After all, nothing that happens in Night City is surprising."
As Carl spoke, he noticed that after the blond man spotted the three of them, he walked straight toward them.
Looking for trouble?
That was Carl's first thought, but then he realized it did not seem that way. When the blond man approached them, he actually looked like he had finally found what he was looking for.
"You're Carl, Oliver, and Jack, right?"
The blond man called all three of them by name as soon as he arrived, then introduced himself. "I'm Maine. I've worked for Faraday before too, but Faraday said he only had three slots for this job, so I took another fixer's contract. For the escort job later, want to team up?"
"Maine?"
Carl did not answer right away. He first sent Faraday a message and confirmed Maine's identity before speaking. "Why did you think of teaming up with us?"
"This job."
Maine looked at the other squads, then back at Carl and the others. "Since we've got that little connection through Faraday, I figured you were trustworthy. Besides, I'm curious about what you can do. I've worked with him for quite a while, and I never imagined he'd pass over my team for a rookie squad."
"Plus, you're alone now, right?"
Carl saw through the cleverness beneath Maine's muscular exterior. Taking on an escort job where lives were on the line for that kind of payout alone was extremely dangerous, so Maine wanted to rely on that small connection through their fixer and stick together for safety.
Maine was no fool. Anyone who had made it as far as becoming a fixer's merc on the streets understood that there was strength in numbers.
"That's part of it."
Maine did not care that Carl had seen through him. He could tell Carl was the leader of the group, and he stared at him as he asked, "So, what do you think?"
"What are you good at?"
"If needed, I can stand at the front with this Type 31 Heavy Machine Gun, relying on my subdermal armor. Is that enough?"
Standing at the front meant that if Carl and the others had any ideas, they could shoot him in the back at any moment.
"More than enough."
Carl reached out and shook Maine's hand. "Pleasure working with you."
"Likewise."
A smile appeared on Maine's face. "Captain."
"Just call me KK. You can treat it as my codename."
Since Maine was temporarily joining the team, Carl did not mind introducing their setup.
"Jack does roughly the same thing you do. The two of you can handle people with suppressive firepower. Oliver is our medic and sniper. Go to him if anyone gets hurt or if you need long-range support. As for me..."
Carl thought about his own role and gave an odd answer. "You'll find out once the fighting starts."
"You'll find out once the fighting starts?"
Maine did not really understand, but seeing that Oliver and Jack both seemed to understand perfectly, he let the matter drop.
It was only one job, after all. A basic understanding of how they would work together was enough. If they survived and completed this mission, who knew when they might work together again?
Time passed quickly as the mercenaries got acquainted with or observed their teammates.
Then, right at nine o'clock, a Corpo Dog wearing Arasaka attire entered the warehouse with a group of Arasaka Security personnel.
The job had begun.
Before you continue