บท 214: Raffen Up

"Hang on yal! Maybe we should hear 'em out before we gun 'em down?" Falco asks, his lack of front windscreen making him aware of how easily he could get shot in the face...

"Eh, fine." Maine relents, "It'll just give the kid more time to move anyway."

Falco slowly pulls the truck over, allowing the crew to step out and approach the bandits. They stop a good distance away and the leading person speaks up.

"Who're you? You're no merchants, and I don' see any clan shit... What're a buncha' mercs doing in our turf?"

Maine folds his arms, tapping his iron on his shoulder, "Don't matter, all you need to know is we're here to buy what you got. We got a discount though,"

"Discount? You tryin' a be funny or somethin'?" the dirty Nomad growls, stepping forward and twirling his sawed-off shotgun on a finger. "'Cuz clowns don't last long out here."

Maine flashes a toothy grin, "Yeah, discount. Means you'll drop your shit now, maybe we'll be generous and let you dig your own graves."

Falco quirks a brow a Ori, for as long as they'd known Maine they'd never heard him say something like that before. At least, not seriously.

The Nomad, apparently having enough, laughs and tries to raise his gun. Emphasis on 'try'.

"AARRGGHH!" he suddenly screams as his hand and gun go flying into the air, ten of his men behind him crying out simultaneously. The last man holding his gun blinks as David appears in front of him, stabbing forwards with his blade and puncturing his jugular in one clean strike.

"W-what the fuck!?" the bandit leader shouts, gripping his bleeding stump. "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE!? DO YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE!?"

"No, but we will." Maine says before clocking the guy, causing him to spin and fall like some looney toons character.

The rest of the bandits all surrender at that, having a limb cut off before you could even react was real freaky to most people, the possibility of someone being the fast never actually occurring to them. A few do try to flee too, but Rebecca and Pilar gun them down before they could even leave the road.

"Well that was easy..." Rebecca drawls, "We're gonna raid their camp right?" she throws at Maine.

"Yeah, their base should have enough to get us to Vegas. We can also scrap their wheels to repair ours." he looks over his shoulder at Falco, "Unless you wanna swap it out?"

Falco shrugs, "We'll need three or four cars to replace the truck, it'd be more efficient fuel-wise to just repair it."

"E-excuse me..." a man, one of the hostages stumbles over, his eye black and his nose covered in dry blood, "Thank you for the help! Who knows what they would've done to me and my family!"

Ori looks over at the man's wife and two children, all-female... Yeah, that wouldn't have been pretty. "No problem, but we're looting everything they got on them." he states.

The man nods, "That's fine... It's not like we could have kept anything if you hadn't arrived..."

Maine steps forwards and towers over the man, "Whachu got to reward us with? We didn't save your ass for nothin'. We're mercs, not a charity."

The man pales, "T-they already took everything. We've got nothing left..."

"Don't fuck me with, you don't look dumb, you must have some shit stashed away in that trailer of yours." Maine grouses, gripping the man's collar.

"Maine, give 'em a break." Falco says, putting a hand on the merc's forearm. Maine looked as if he was going to crack Falco's head open like a ripe watermelon for a second, but the fury in his eyes died as his body relaxed. "Whatever, let's just hope what these gonks had is enough." he jabs a finger at the tied-up bandit leader, "You and me are gonna have a little heart to heart." he states before dragging the guy off.

"Yeah, you and your family should probably go." Ori remarks, stepping past the man and starting to gather up all the dropped weaponry.

He gives a sharp nod, "I-I'll do that."

------------------------

After all the bandits had been interrogated and executed the group stripped their vehicles and anything else they might've had, even to the extent of cutting their bodies apart to scavange the barest useful Cyberware components.

Falco decided to armour up the front of the truck since he was pretty sure they were entering 'Mad Max' territory, thankfully they were able to siphon more than enough fuel to keep it running for a few more days without Ori's 'assistance'.

As for who the bandits were? Apparently they were some Raffen Shiv's, a derogatory name for Nomads who lacked any and all honour, psycho and sociopaths were abundant and the only real rules they had were to not hurt your own... Meaning ANY thing else was technically allowed, even if some subgroups had other ideas.

They were called the 'San Peyote', controlled the few miles of road nearby, and allied with other groups to divvy up land. Since it was one road, if one group missed a caravan then another would pick up the slack. Of course, this meant that there were some disputes over 'stolen' goods, but that was usually hashed out with a fistfight.

That also meant that the earlier captured family would probably run into more problems... Hopefully they'd be fine though.

Maine had managed to squirrel out the location of their main camp, excluding the guys they'd already killed, the gang should have twenty or so guys left, a relatively easy number to deal with given the individual strength of crew, barring Christy of course.

A day later, the crew was ready for another raid. And after that, straight to Vegas.