A Fragment from Bingo's War Diary
Story by Dave Neal. Compilation and introductory information by Solace
The Character:
Bingo The Cyberclown: Also a heavily-augmented former soldier. His skin is bleached and he has green hair. His appearance and manner can best be described as "freakish."
Excerpt from Bingo’s War Diary, Volume III (pp. 1,235-47)
(Note from Bingo: The following encounter was a real frag-o-rama, so I’m not sure how much actually happened, and how much is what I *think* happened. Some pricks mucked around with our memories, so who the hell knows what’s what? All I’m sayin’ is that some of this happened, and some of it I *think* happened, but others may’ve seen it different, so if your account doesn’t gel with mine, well, pissonya!)
>>0214:2300619<<
Got a call from Solace, talking about an easy run, so I go to the rendezvous point and see a spiffy corporate jet, and all these other runner types on board. Great. I see Solace, except that then the hoser says he never called me. Okay, so this isn’t the first time someone’s pulled the bait-and-switch on me, right? Sheesh.
On board is Rhino, some Mob legbreaker; a skinny decker (who I later learned was named Spider), a dwarven Wombat-shaman or something like that (Muskrat? Chinchilla? Hell, I dunno), who looks at me like he don’t know me (you know, the usual gawk-o-matic, "eeew, a clown" thing); who else? Oh, yeah – Cowboy (that isn’t his name, but he has that sorta Cowboy look about him; I figure I’ll just stay behind him in a pinch and let him draw the fire!); there’s this weird-ass stone-faced wage mage, who’s just sitting there, staring blankly ahead of her (never seen something like that); then there’s this sprout-munching physical adept, happy as can be, whistling some tune and drumming his fingers; I figure he looks damn happy to be here, so I’ll call him Joyboy.
[NOTE FROM SOLACE: The "Wombat-shaman" that Bingo refers to is actually an owl shaman by the name of Shadow. Joyboy is indeed a physical adept whose name is Ray Hawkins. The "stone-faced" mage is another shaman who goes by the name J.T., and Cowboy is a street samurai named Scorn.]
Aside from Rhino and Solace, I don’t know these people from shinola. That’s not good; I don’t like going on a run, even a routine one, without a group I’ve met before. Folks have a way of getting twitchy on ya at the worst possible moment, and I don’t want that while we’re in it, you shiv?
Anyway, we’re going on this flight for a cut-and-dried kinda run. Somebody advanced us cred, which is cool, and the craft is pretty spiffy. We tool out to the location, and gear up. We disembark routinely, and then the drek hits the fan…
>>0214:2317456<<
We’re in some pile of shit now; middle of nowhere – trees, mountains, clean air. I’m thinking tribal lands; gotta be. Only which one? I’ve got some brownie points with Cascade Ork, from some SMERF work awhile back, but not at all sure we’re there.
[NOTE FROM SOLACE: "SMERF" is the Socialist Metahuman Ecumenical Resistance Front, a group that has utilized Bingo's "services" in the past.]
We’re all here, and we look like we’ve been through a serious ringer. Except nobody remembers jack. We got off the plane, we saw the bunker we were to hit, we split off, and then blooey. Somebody sprayed us with something, and we all went down. I smelled something and then was down, real fast.
My first thing was to check my gear, but everything *seems* intact. Weird-ass stuff. I’m down quite a few rounds, so I must’ve done something, although damned if I can remember.
We putz around for awhile in this nowhere place, and I’m getting pretty pissed at this point. Nothing gets me pissed like a setup, which this clearly is.
Rhino got something bad done to him; like part of his brain taken out; I don’t mean his grey matter, I mean some kinda ware he had topside; somebody took the crap out. He’s in bad shape, kinda shocky; I give the boy some derms, and we move on to Plan B – get the hell outta here!!
Nobody else with cyberware lost anything, I’m relived to note, although our memories are all shot, which is a real pisser.
The decker, Spider, manages to link up with a satellite, and pass an SOS to some goofball rigger named Les, who pops up in an Appaloosa after awhile, tellin’ us we’re in Tir Tairngire. Trippy.
We all hop into the battlewagon, which looks pretty souped-up. I take a seat in the turret, which houses a sweet cannon I haven’t seen since my Cleveland run. Anyhow, we’re driving back with this hillbilly rigger and next thing you know some pissy Elven border guards pop over the horizon with a Yellowjacket, ordering us out of the Tir or they’ll fire, and crap like that.
So, I’m in a bad mood *anyway*, so fire off a couple of rounds from the cannon, which damn near upends the Appaloosa, and manage to scratch the paint on the Elven chopper, although not much more.
We get back to Seattle, and everybody crashes at my warehouse. This band of freeloaders head straight for my fridge like a friggin Mongol horde, while the dwarf hits the sack.
I decide I’d best liquidate my flat, before the fraggin’ jackrabbits do, and put my place up on the block straightaway. I see ole BG’s hovercraft over in the corner (see, my place used to be a lil’ warehouse, which I turned into a first-rate base of operations).
Some goon takes on Joyboy upstairs, nearly killing him, and he gets away. Near as I can tell the hit-man was trying to nail the pain-in-the-ass dwarf, and Joyboy happened to stumble onto the scene.
Anyhow, at some point, we get visited by some Tir Na Noggers, and I’m getting damn nervous, because I’m thinking "sheeit, it was just a scratch on that super chopper, right? I didn’t even shoot it down!!"
The bastard Elves offer us some deal to do some run for them, and by now I’m thoroughly confused, and am trying to grill the Noggies, only one of them works some damned squidgy magic on me, and I’m just sorta frozen there. Now I’m thoroughly pissed, thinking there’s gonna be some payback time real soon, because nobody does that shit with me, right?
The long and short of it is these Noggies are playing us for suckers, using us to run through the ringer for them, to tweak Aztechnology, who’s making this big play. For some reason, these badass Elves don’t want to get their lily-white, dainty hands sullied, so they’re using us as cannon fodder.
>>0214:2368890<<
Okay, I’m down in the dirt, and we’ve cacked a couple of geezers on the periphery. Lotsa trees, ala Tairngaire stuff, right? Everything’s pretty normal – I’m in my fightin’ duds, and we drop off about three hundred clicks from our target.
One thing I don’t like are my lancemates – we’ve got this zoned-out, useless wage mage wannabe (missed her name; sue me), and Cowboy, who might as well have a target painted on his T shirt, the way he struts around; also got a dwarf or something like that, who’s babbling about Aztechnology all the while. Rhino’s on the scene, with a couple’a chaperones on each arm. Gotta say Rhino don’t look too swell. Oh, yeah, there’s one of them adepts on the scene, too – a fizzy. Yeah, he’ll last long…pfffff. Speaking of that, there’s a decker, too, named Spider; ain’t run with her before. Come to think of it, I haven’t run with any of these sods before! Not good!
We spread out in a lateral line, with Cowboy taking the point; I’m on the left flank, with my Steyr-Aug handy; got my eyeballs and ears cued up and ole TC on overdrive, because I don’t like this scene one bit – we’ve been led by the damned shnozzes the whole way, and there’s somebody behind the scene who’s not leveling with us; probably those friggin’ elves. Man, I hate elves sometimes, s’pecially those Tir Na Noggers. Sheesh.
My memory’s pretty shoddy at this point, probably on account of that noggin’ bashing we took at the earlier setup, so bear with me! We run across this souped-up troll, sauntering up to us, toting some serious hardware – big thing with a backpack. I try a couple of potshots to size him up, only my bullets stop before getting him, spacking on some sorta forcefield.
I throw myself down and crawl my way up to a tree, keeping to the left flank. Meantime, Trollboy opens up with his weapon, which fills the air with sparkles and starts chopping stuff into bits. I toss a smoke grenade, hoping that what this bruiser’s got is some kind of laser weapon, figuring that the smoke’ll dissipate the laser, and let us cream him in short order.
The report of the gun makes me realize that the idiot’s got himself a pocket railgun, somehow. The smoke doesn’t go jack against the DU shards that thing’s spewing. The SOB looks jumped up on some nasty derms, too. I switch to full auto and fire off several bursts, testing the integrity of his damn frazz shield; the shield takes it just fine, so I decide to sit this one out, planning to maybe use some grenades to soften Trollboy up a bit. He must have the equivalent of a mini reactor on his damned back, to generate that railgun’s energy AND power a forcefield!
Something happened behind me with the zombie mage chick, some squidgy mage thing, so I don’t know what’s going on. The adept, on the right flank, fires off some rounds at the SOB, too, but no luck. The shield’s just taking the rounds with a grin. I’m beginning to think we need a helluva lot more firepower to get our asses out of this jam. I bark out to the other creampuffs that the troll’s got a baby railgun, and to lay low; of course, nobody else knows what a damned railgun is, so I’m just wasting my time!
Suddenly, Cowboy charges forward from the center, drawing Trollboy’s fire by unloading his weapons at the sucker. His bullets spack off of the frazz shield, with absolutely no effect. You’d think Cowboy’d duck and cover, but he sorta does his John Wayne impression, standing there by that tree, blazing away with his guns. If his goal was to get Trollboy’s attention, he does; realizing that, he ducks down behind his "cover" – the tree; I’m thinking, "so long, sucker. No way that tree is going to block railgun fire, especially at near point-blank range."
I see Trollster concentrate his fire on Cowboy, bringing his railgun level with the tree he’s hiding behind. The thick tree goes all sparkly, and then I’m seeing Cowboy get carved up into cubesteak by the gun. Just a constant spray of sparkly DU rounds and Cowboy goes from chowder to stew in about thirty seconds. I decide this is one fight I wanna sit out, at least without any serious artillery. The tree comes down on Trollboy, pinning him, and maybe breaking his leg (I heard something crack, from where I was, but it could’a been wood).
The dwarf is screaming something, and the zombie mage is just moaning, her eyes rolling up in her head, and speaking in tongues and spinning around, talking to her guardian spirits or something. I wonder again what I’m doing with these yutzes…
Trollboy shifts the tree of him, by using his railgun to chop off sections of it. He’s running VERY hot; my thermal vision is picking up major emissions from his backpack. I’m guessing the derms are to keep him functional amidst that shitstorm of heat and radiation. The whole damn valley is getting hot, from the DU rounds the idiot’s scattering everywhere.
Then we see about the worst damn thing I seen in my life – Bee Gee (short for Big Guns), an SOB who I used to run with years ago. Only BG ain’t BG anymore – he’s wired out the wazoo with three LMGs sticking out of his damned body on tripods. He’s amazingly wired. He’s moving incredibly fast, faster than anybody I seen. He’s hooked up to this mini chopper (I think).
He screams "HE’S MINE!!!!!!" at Trollboy and then opens up with his three LMGs at one. Now the valley is filled with a helluva noise as those two go at it. Now we’re like extras in one o’ those old Godzilla vids, watching these two super dudes go at it. The dwarf is all ashy, and is making some gestures. I’m wondering what the hell’s going on.
Anyhow, BG keeps a sustained fire up on Trollboy…BRAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA, until the field comes down. Of course, Trollster’s returning fire with the railgun, until you can see blisters forming up on the guy’s skin from all the heat dissipation.
BG’s guns cut through the Troll’s leg, and he goes down. Then I sorta blank out, because I don’t remember what the hell happened right after that – I mean, one minute BG was there, next minute he wasn’t. Still wondering what happened then.
We rushed the Troll, now that he’s down, and commencing firing and charging, because the guy slaps some more nasty derms on himself and he’s *getting back up.* Eventually, with several of us drilling him, Trollster goes down.
Meantime, I’m checking out his railgun, thinking this would be a dandy little piece of artillery to have, although it’s getting nasty cuz it’s cooking the Troll, on account of it getting so damned hot. I begin thinking we gotta get our asses out of here before it blows.