NOVEL FROG What Her Information Can Cause
I left Mara's clinic feeling a little bit weak in my legs with a promise that she would come over for dinner on my ship.
Since I've pretty much obtained what I needed, which was delivering Mara her food, getting information about a potential buyer for the White Powder and also getting information about gene mods.
The other girls were still busy with their shopping so that left me with no plans until dinner time and it was still early in the day.
I guess I could just walk around the station for now, since I never actually explored this place by myself?
Who knows, maybe I might even find something interesting while exploring?
Just as I started walking out of the alley, a notification sound came from my Codex.
Tapping on it showed that it was one of those Roaming Hustles that Amber told me about.
'Massive Gang Shootout at Aldiya Market Street. Open Hustle.'
Huh… Something tells me that this has something to do with the two groups of people I met earlier which Mara talked to…
Oh well, since I have nothing to do anyway…
I pulled out my pistol and shotgun to check their ammo before holstering them to start running towards the location of the street marked by the map on my Codex.
The location was not exactly that far but it would still require a fair bit of travelling to reach there.
Incidentally, I spotted a few others who looked like Mercs also seemingly moving towards the same destination as I was.
While most of them were simply running on foot, I spotted a few who were leaping from building to building while a few were even using grappling hooks shot out from their arms to swing there.
Heck, I even saw a guy who modded himself into a centaur galloping past me, his horse back strapped with an array of weapons including a minigun.
I guess that's why some people mod themselves to look like that…
By the time I reached the place, the firefight was already in full swing and gunshots echoed in the air without pause.
The market street looked like a bazaar square with shop stalls arranged haphazardly all around the place.
The square itself was nestled in between two medium sized buildings with two streets running perpendicular to the market.
The civilians had obviously already vacated the area and everyone here was either a gang member or a Merc which turned this into a three way fight.
The two different sides of the gang were not only trying to kill each other, they were also shooting at the Mercs as well. And obviously on the side of the Mercs, we were targeting both sides of the gang.
The good thing was that it was quite easy to see who was on which side since both sides of the gang were wearing coloured jackets that highlighted their affiliation.
I suspect they had done so in order to either intimidate the other side with the clear difference in numbers which did not work since both sides seemed to have the same number, or maybe they didn't want to shoot their own side by accident.
That meant that everyone else not wearing those coloured jackets here was a Merc.
I slid behind an abandoned stall to survey the area while pulling out my shotgun at the same time.
The stalls were being used as cover by each side and right now we're simply taking pot shots at each other.
The Mercenaries had the least members and I idly wondered if any police officers were going to show up or we were just expected to clean this up ourselves.
Looking to the sides, I could see several Mercs popping out from their covers to take a few shots before ducking back down again to avoid the return fire.
Incidentally, the centaur Merc seemed to be hiding behind a rather large crate to set up his minigun which he was currently busy loading up.
"Are the police even coming for this?" One of the Mercs near me groaned, ejecting his pistol's magazine to slam in a new one.
The Merc beside him scoffed, "You a new Merc or something? No way the police are going to get involved in a gang war like this. Just so that if these gang members blow this entire place up, they can blame Mercs like us for screwing up instead of taking the blame for it."
"Ugh… Typical of them…" The Merc groaned before popping up to take a few shots.
Welp, that explains why they aren't here I guess.
I didn't exactly have a plan here and it looks like the Mercs around me were content with just fighting against the gang members on their own as well, since we would be paid as long as we participated in this Hustle and not based on how well we did.
Still, I wasn't going to be satisfied with something like that so I thought perhaps I could do some damage to one side to cause the stalemate here to collapse.
Just as I got up to a knee to prepare myself to run towards the next cover, one of the Mercs let out a warning shout.
"RPG!!"
I had a moment to find it amusing that we were still using the term 'RPG' before something exploded, causing shrapnel and debris to fly around the bazaar.
I managed to take cover but one of the Mercs wasn't so lucky as a broken pole from a stall flew towards him and speared him in the neck, killing him.
Ouch…
While the others were busy trying to recover from the explosion, I took advantage of the cover it gave to dash out through the smoke and find a position to flank the gang that had also been affected by the explosion.
I leapt over the counter of one of the stalls, only to find a thug in the midst of pushing himself up from the ground while coughing from the smoke.
He looked up to see the barrel of my shotgun pointed at his face before I pulled the trigger, blasting his head apart and killing him.
I heard a cry and turned to see another thug yelling out something while charging towards me, his pistol shooting a few rounds in my direction.
Judging by his reaction… I'm assuming I just killed his friend or something?
Most of his shots missed but the ones that hit were simply deflected by my shield so I only needed to swivel around to point my weapon in his direction before pulling the trigger.
The pellets blew open his abdomen and he crashed onto the ground, dead.
I leapt out of the stall and found three thugs hiding behind an overturned cart, two of them in the midst of reloading while another one was just about to peek out from their cover.
I levelled the shotgun at them and fired from the hip.
Unfortunately, one of the thugs who was reloading had a shield which blocked most of the pellets. Fortunately, the guy who was peeking out from the cart had moved outside the range of his friend's shield which put him in a position to have his face pierced by a few of the buckshot pellets.
"Arrgghhh!! You bitch!!" The guy screamed, clutching at his eyes.
Looks like it wasn't enough to kill him but it did manage to take out his eyes.
The other two were frantically trying to finish reloading their weapons but one of them fumbled and let the magazine drop on the ground.
One managed to cock his rifle before pointing it at me, but I managed to squeeze off another shot which shattered his shield before I had to dive out of the way to avoid his shots.
I rolled into a crouch before firing another shot, this time blasting the rifle guy in his chest and sending him crashing against the cart.
The other thug just managed to pick up the magazine he dropped before I switched my sights to him and fired another shot, blasting him in the head.
The last thug that I blinded tried to fire blindly in my direction but I managed to avoid them by simply going prone before I put him out of his misery with a buckshot to his face.
I looked around while sliding in a few more shells into my gun, trying to see if there was any other targets for me to take out.
Right then, there was another crash and I turned to see the centaur Merc galloping through the bazaar and shooting at the thugs with… Holy shit, is that an actual bow?!
No way! He's actually using a bow and arrow in his hand! What about the minigun he was-- Oh… The minigun was mounted on his horseback.
He leapt over one of the stalls and fired an arrow towards a thug, hitting him in the shoulder.
The thug let out a cry right before the arrow exploded, taking out another thug that had been taking cover beside him.
A few thugs popped out from their cover to aim their weapons at the centaur Merc but the minigun swivelled around and a loud whine was heard before a rain of bullets literally eviscerated those thugs.
Holy crap, that's actually so cool…