The alarm sounded louder than normal. It didn’t matter. Jenna was already awake and already out of the shower. Nothing really startles her anymore. As she slid her Kevlar vest over her chest, she couldn’t help but think
When are they gonna make these for women?!
It was always uncomfortable being a metalhead. Everyone expects that only men want to ‘Serve and Protect.’ She scoffed as she remembered she had just ripped the crotch in her newest pair of trousers while hopping a fence to catch a slicker. Her memory flashed back to her partner laughing at her as her pink thong could be seen through the backside.
If they’d just make uniforms for women, I wouldn’t have to worry about this drack!
It was uncomfortable getting to work. Jenna would show up a few minutes early to be ready for the debriefing. It gave her time to slug back a few coffees to burn the brain into a heightened awareness for the rest of the day. She grabbed her helmet with the built-in mask and remembered she hadn't gotten her filter yet. As a highly prized commodity, all the filters were locked in storage past the locker room. This precinct still only had a locker room for men, so she had to walk through to get her gear.
Oh drack! Bad timing...
“Mornin’ Jen!”
One of the other officers quietly chuckled as he was pulling up his pants, exposing himself to her momentarily. She’d seen it all before.
“Eat drack, Jifron!”
She spat out as she walked to the cabinet with the filter station. She grabbed her unit, tossed it on her back, and walked back out the front into the debriefing room. Jifron wasn't far behind her.
“Oh. Come on, Jen! You can’t expect to walk in here and not accidentally see somethin’ every now and then. It’s your fault, really. If you’d just give a courtesy knock…”
Jifron was the station jerk. Everyone knew it. Unfortunately, he was also her partner.
“Shut your hole, Jif. I’m not in the mood for your antics today.”
“Someone woke up with a Thumper up her crack, eh?”
Jifron got a stern look from the captain, who was now pointing right at him, insisting that he shut his face and listen to the debriefing. He didn’t like their horseplay. He always saw it as a liability to the department and he could see Jenna was in no mood for it today. Sometimes, he’d let it slide, especially like the time last week when Jenna shoved a few questionably scented feminine napkins inside Jifron’s filtration system only for him to find out at the end of his shift why it smelled awkwardly repugnant all day.
“Listen here,” the Captain raised his voice. “We’ve had an increase in slicker complaints. Jen and Jif, I need you two to cover the lower regions of Zeelis today and I don’t want to hear any complaints about it. There’s no way we can clean up the air if people keep screwing with our bots.”
He kept going on, but it didn’t matter what else he said in the briefing. Jenna hated working in lower Zeelis. She especially hated slickers.
“Let’s go. You wanna drive or me?” Jifron asked.
“I’ll take the wheel,” Jenna said.
It didn’t take long for Jenna and Jifron to find the damage left by slickers. About 12 minutes from the station, sure enough, there was a bot stuck near the middle of the street with flashing lights indicating a problem and oil dripping from its filtration recirculation pump. Slickers always stole the filters by ripping the hoses that held an oily substance that absorbed the green and purple misty fog in lower Zeelis. Once the hoses spewed the oily liquid out, it would vaporize again into toxic fumes in green and purple, but most importantly, it caused the bot to stop in its tracks. This always gives the slickers enough time to grab the filters and leave the scene. Unfortunately, not all of the stuff vaporizes. Much of it stays as an oil slick on the road, causing major accidents, usually.
Jenna and Jifron got out of their vehicle.
This is not a nice part of town Jifron thought, pulling his sidepiece up in preparation that the slickers might still be close by.
“Ah man! They ripped it this time! It’s so much easier when they just cut it clean through.”
Jenna noticed that these were amateur slickers.
“I’m gonna need you to help me push this thing off the road and call in Bot Repair.”
“Sure thing, Jen. Whatever…just keep an eye out”
Jifron’s voice came in clearly inside Jenna’s helmet. The latest upgrade really cleared up the previous problems with static.
As Jenna and Jifron pushed the bot to the side of the road, being careful not to step in the puddle surrounding the bot, a call rang out through both of their helmets,
“We need backup! We’ve got a slicker here, fresh off the kill. We’re in pursuit on the corner of J and Bauss.”
Instinctively, both ran for the car, jumped in and took off. Unfortunately, they were too late upon arrival.
The other car was still running, doors open and lights flashing. One officer had his helmet crushed and was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. They could smell the second one before they saw him. He was slumped behind a dumpster with a couple of laser holes burned straight through.
“This was no slicker” Jenna voiced aloud.
A manhole cover sliding nearby caused a screech that caught Jifron’s attention.
“They’re over here!” Jifron yelled, running toward the cover.
“Careful! They obviously don’t like us that much” Jenna spoke out.
I hate the sewers!
Jifron and Jenna quickly dropped through the manhole and tried to follow the sounds. At one point, they thought they could catch them. After turning a corner, the men had sprinted faster, leaving just a momentary silhouette behind. Jifron and Jenna yelled, and even fired off a shot, but they couldn’t keep up. The meanderings of the sewer made it difficult to keep up with suspects. All they had left behind for evidence was a metal bar near the scene of the murder and a few metal bits and wire that the men must have dropped as they ran.
“Ugh!!! I hate this!” Jenna said in disgust. “Why do we even try to clean the air down here?!”
“Jen, let it go. We need to let Cap know about the others.”
“What is this drack?! Wires and…is that seriously a robotic radius and ulna? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Jenna was ticked. It was a ripper.
“Slickers and Rippers. I gotta find another area to patrol.”
“You don’t have the seniority, Jen. Besides, why’d you join this precinct if you wanted to patrol upper Zeelis?”
“It’s the only place that would hire a woman. Everywhere else they said I could work behind a desk…Cowards!”
“Get over yourself. Let’s go take care of our comrades before any more rats show up to grab their gear, or worse yet, their parts.”
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Psyber-Decks is a mini-game being developed to use Psyber-X NFTs. If you'd like to be able to play the game before anyone else, you simply need to buy 2 Psybercrates at Psyberxmarket.com for the Alpha testing access.
