Chapter 261: The Good Sort of Armed Robbery

The two occupied vans were taking different gates, so I stole the yard’s traffic barrier and made both drivers hate the same snake. I looped a solid coil around its wheeled base, pulled it across the nearer exit and gave Bridget enough time to block the second with our utility vehicle.

Lukas stayed beside her rather than jumping onto anything, feeding a web-line around a fixed post before fastening it across the driver’s escape lane. He wasn’t trying to stop a moving van with his ribs, which was excellent news for everyone tired of hearing about them.

[System: Nick the passengers back from the blokes who nicked them first, mate; confusing the police is usually your hobby, but today it might actually save us time.]

We’re taking the people and leaving the debt, so somebody in a very expensive suit probably owes me a consultancy fee. The nearest driver shouted for me to move, then reached beneath his seat while I drifted above his windscreen and asked whether he preferred discussing the matter through the glass.

He produced a baton instead of a gun, which made our disagreement much less interesting than he’d intended. I let it pass through mist beside my head, formed a coil around its handle and pulled it through the open window before he could reconsider the investment.

"You can charge the replacement to your captain, because she started the morning with more equipment than manners," I told him. He tried closing the window on my tail, then discovered it had become smoke and reconsidered how much his driving job actually paid.

The second driver backed away from Bridget’s bumper until Lukas’s web caught the rear axle and tightened against the post. He stopped before damaging the van, leaving Bridget enough room to tell him that nine speaking passengers were about to decide where they wanted to travel.

He insisted they were contracted workers and showed her a transport sheet, but the woman with the walking stick began hitting the inside of his partition. She said her contract didn’t include a locked door, which provided a much clearer explanation than any of us could have written.

Bridget offered the driver a choice between handing over the keys and explaining the marks on the partition to Hollis, whose patrol vehicle was approaching through the same gate. He looked towards the bronze uniform, apparently expecting the colour to make his morning easier.

Hollis parked beside him and asked every passenger whether they wanted to remain inside. The answer was loud enough that even the guard at the cold store stopped pretending not to hear, and the driver handed over the key with a complaint about changing instructions.

[System: Funny how they understand questions once somebody wearing the correct hat asks them. Keep your teeth visible until the last passenger’s out, champ.]

I’ve been doing that since birth, so I’m pleased we’ve finally found a professional application. I held the first driver away from his controls while Hollis’s partner opened the rear doors and helped the five workers down onto the loading apron.

Four came from the second van, bringing the count to nine with the fake load left for its driver to explain to his captain. Niall tried returning for a bag until his sister arrived in Pike’s borrowed recovery truck and told him she’d personally destroy the bag if it kept him inside another box.

Iona hugged Niall until I found an engine worth studying, and Bridget asked whether the reunion had damaged my terrible reputation.

"Only if you tell anyone, sweetheart, and I’m prepared to discuss a very generous silence agreement." She said she’d accept me admitting I was pleased, which felt like aggressive negotiation.

The dispatch supervisor ran from the cold store waving the disabled lure controller. He demanded the stolen key back, which was a brave complaint to make beside people who’d spent the morning dodging animals attracted by the equipment it operated.

I dropped the key into Hollis’s palm and suggested she keep it until somebody explained the camp’s scheduled bait releases. The supervisor looked at the nine workers, then at the officer holding his key, and decided his next conversation should happen somewhere else.

[System: Finish the delivery, champ; this isn’t one of those courier jobs where you throw it over a fence and bugger off.] Iona rode with them in Pike’s recovery truck while Bridget led the route to the independent quarry shelter, and Hollis kept the two drivers at the yard until their instructions could be checked.

The shelter occupied an old weigh office on the quarry ridge beside a covered loading bay, with water tanks, blankets and a nurse who greeted Iona by name. She checked the nine arrivals against the list and closed the gate behind them before any of us started discussing what came next. Niall kept trying to help until his sister put a drink in his hands and informed him that being rescued included sitting down.

[System: Deliver No One As Cargo completed, and that’s fifteen hundred EXP earned properly. Twelve thousand two hundred and fifty total, with all nine people somewhere that doesn’t sell them by the load.]

I’m putting that slogan on Lukas’s next vehicle, because his current advertising mostly involves people asking whether he’s insured. He was busy helping the woman with the walking stick find a chair, so I kept the comment private instead of interrupting something useful.

Bridget gave the shelter staff our contact details and asked which road their supply truck normally used. It was the same camp road we’d crossed earlier, making Rusk’s next message particularly difficult to ignore when it sounded over Hollis’s radio.

The captain declared the civilian camp an active containment failure and ordered it cleared by force. Artillery support would begin in thirty minutes, with anyone still inside treated as having refused evacuation, despite the gate she’d ordered shut and the road her own guards controlled.

Hollis asked whether the command included the families beside the water tanks, and Rusk answered that the target area had already been approved. Behind her voice, another officer began reading firing positions while the shelter’s nurse reached for the phone to warn the people we’d just left.