Chapter 9 – Upgrades

L’Cor was rudely awakened the next morning when Yoko flounced into his room.  She had used her master key to let herself in.  She was dressed in her usual trashy attire and she acted as if she didn’t give a dagnag.  In short, she was back to her usual self.

She stood over L’Cor’s head and her loose shirt flared out at the bottom, giving L’Cor a classic up-the-shirt view.  Yoko’s pink bra covered a pair of surprisingly well-rounded breasts.

“What’re you waiting for sleepyhead?!” exclaimed Yoko.  “The taxicab is downstairs.  Come on, we’ve got to go!”

L’Cor pretended to keep his eyes closed for a couple more seconds and then said, “Shhh.  I don’t have a holo camera so I’m trying to preserve a memory.  Pink looks very good on you.”

Yoko glanced down and blushed deep red.  She drew back in a hurry and pulled her shirt shut.  Then, she got a devilish gleam in her eyes.  “It was too dark last night so you probably missed it.”

L’Cor slowly sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.  “Missed what?”

“This!”  Yoko grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled upwards.  Along the way, she managed to grab the bottom of her bra as well.

L’Cor’s mind instantly snapped awake as he saw Yoko’s beautiful breasts.  It had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman and his body reacted accordingly.  He felt slightly disappointed when Yoko covered herself up a moment later.  “Hadis!  What a way to wake up!”

Yoko chuckled and then sniffed the air.  “Ew, you better take a shower, before we leave.  The taxicab can wait.”  She took a good look around and wrinkled her nose.  “Doncha ever clean up in here?”

L’Cor glanced around his messy apartment.  “It’s the maid’s week off,” he said.  He got up off his bed and made his way into his bathroom.  Inside, he stripped off his clothes, stepped into the shower, and turned the shower up to full blast.  As the washed himself, he thought he heard the door open, but he could not see anything beyond the fog generated by his shower.

When he was done, he opened his shower door to find that all of his towels were missing.  Even his dirty clothes on the floor were gone.  Someone had come in!  He shook his head bemusedly and chuckled.  If that was the game that Yoko wanted to play, then so be it!  His time in the military had long burned away any shyness he might have felt about nakedness.

He whistled a tuneless tune as he stepped out of the bathroom.  Yoko was sitting on his bed with an expectant look on her face.  She whistled through her fingers as L’Cor playfully posed for her.  “Can I at least have a towel to dry off?”

In response, Yoko threw him a small face cloth.  L’Cor caught it, and then shrugged.  He proceeded to wipe himself down as he made his way to his dresser.  He was acting as casual as possible but his mind was racing at ways in which he could get back at Yoko.  The only problem was, all of the scenarios running through his head involved getting Yoko naked and in bed.

Yoko screamed in glee at L’Cor’s physical reaction.  “You naughty old man , what’s going on through that gutter that you call a brain?”

“Keep this up and you’ll find just how not-old I am!”  L’Cor smiled broadly.  He had to admit that he was enjoying this flirtatious activity.  He pulled some clothes out of his dresser drawer and got dressed amidst booing noises from Yoko.

As they left his apartment, L’Cor asked a question that had been plaguing him.  “Why do you dress up like that?”

“Like what?” asked Yoko innocently,  “Like a hooker?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

L’Cor snorted derisively.  “You don’t have the temperament.  A hooker wouldn’t blush because a dirty old man had sneaked a peek under her shirt.”

They shared a laugh and then Yoko said, “I find that it tends to make men underestimate me.  If they’re busy thinking of my body out in the field, it makes my job that much easier.”

That made a lot of sense to L’Cor.  Yoko’s current attire was definitely hard to forget.  She dressed in such a way as to show nothing of her body’s naughty bits, but left a lot for the imagination.

They got into the taxicab and Yoko ordered it to take them to a drive through restaurant first.  They ordered their meal and ate in the cab.  By the time the cab pulled up outside of Ivan McMac’s shop, they had finished their breakfast and threw the paper wrappers into the taxicab’s disposal bin.

They walked into the shop together and Yoko linked her arm with L’Cor’s.  Ivan greeted them with a smile and an arched eyebrow.  “Good morning Yoko.  Good morning L’Cor.”

“Good morning Ivan!” said Yoko brightly.

“What can I do for you guys today?” asked Ivan.

“L’Cor has agreed to team up with me.  If he’s going to play in the big leagues, he’s gonna need some major upgrades to his Mick.”

Ivan gave L’Cor a questioning look.  “A partnership eh?  Is he good enough to keep up with you?”

L’Cor was about to say something but Yoko beat him to it.  “I’ve seen him fight.  He’s pretty good.  He just needs some better equipment.”

L’Cor felt something like pride inside of himself because Yoko was standing up for him.  A part of him was surprised at how easy it was to get along with Yoko ever since she let down her guard last night.  The other part of him was just going along with the flow because he really enjoyed being with her.  “Actually the plan is to use me as bait and for Yoko blow up the other guys before I kick it.”

That got a laugh out of both Ivan and Yoko.  Ivan angled his head towards the back door.  “Head on in Yoko.  I want to speak with L’Cor for a couple of minutes.”

Yoko surprised L’Cor by giving him a shy smile and then obediently followed Ivan’s instructions.  It was obvious to L’Cor that the relationship between Yoko and Ivan was more than the usual mechanic/player one.

Ivan confirmed this when he said, “You know, Yoko is almost like a daughter to me.  If you’re teaming up with her as a way to take advantage of that girl –“

“I’m not,” said L’Cor abruptly with a raised hand.  “She reminds me a lot of my brother.”

“Brother?”

“Yeah, I think you knew him in the war.  R’Tus Penrag’n”

Ivan’s face brightened up immediately.  “Of course, I knew there was something familiar about you!  That boy had the most potential of any pilot I ever had the honour of being a crew chief for.  How is he anyway?”

“He died,” said L’Cor quietly.  “About six orbits ago.  It was from friendly fire.”

Ivan’s face fell and he looked as if he had suddenly aged.  “Oh frak it! I knew no Saxx could ever do it in for that boy.  He was a natural.  I didn’t hear anything.  I guess the brass hushed it up?”

“Yeah.  They didn’t want it generally known that their best ace was nuked by his own people.

“How did it happen?”

“The usual frak up,” said L’Cor with a bitter tone.  “Satellite images had picked up unusually high Saxx activity but because of the terrain, they couldn’t confirm the presence of a hive.  When R’Tus’s quad discovered it and called it in, someone at HQ panicked and fired off a thermo-nuke before we could get everyone to minimum safe distance.  R’Tus had some damage to his jump jets so he couldn’t boost out of there fast enough.  He decided to hold rear guard and make sure that no Saxx followed us out of the area as we retreated.”

Ivan sighed, a deep sad sigh.  “A hero to the end.”  Ivan shook himself visibly and then said, “Well come with me.  Yoko was right.  If you’re gonna team up with her and fight in the big leagues, you’re going to need better equipment.”

L’Cor followed Ivan to through the back door and said, “How much is this all going to cost me?  I haven’t spent much of my prize money yet but I’ve sent a fair bit back to my sister Q’Wen.”

“Don’t worry about that for now.  There are a lot of poor and destitute people in that apartment building that Yoko manages.  My helping her ends up helping a lot of other people too.”

“Like Yoko’s sister Kasa?”

“Yes,” said Ivan in a sad tone.  “She was seduced by those corporate bastards with their promises of riches and fame.  Well she got her five minutes of fame, but the riches all turned to dust.”

They made their way to the central computer where Ivan had originally configure Phantom Crash.  Yoko was already there.  She had an image of Phantom Crash on the holoscreen.  L’Cor could see that she had already stripped out all of its weapons.

“You have a rather bad habit of holding down your triggers too long.  In an extended fight like the ones we’ll have, you’ll run out of ammo long before anyone else,” said Yoko without any preamble.

L’Cor held his tongue.  He didn’t like to be criticized by a half pint of a woman but he reminded himself that this small woman was the current reigning champion and if she were in a MAAC would have given R’Tus a run for his money.

Yoko manipulated the computer like a pro as she dragged an icon onto Phantom Crash’s frame.  This Gatling gun is the closest thing to a MBC for a Mick.  The damage per shot isn’t that great, but the volume of fire this baby can dish out is amazing.  Plus, you’ll have more than enough ammo to keep your trigger finger happy.”

The weapon system looked huge and he looked at the display half expecting the computer to warn him that Phantom Crash was overweight.  Instead, he was surprised to find that Phantom Crash was nowhere near its weight limit yet.

“The best thing that Ivan did for you was to give you a pair of really decent legs.”

L’Cor remembered how much those legs had cost and now he was glad he had gotten them.  “What about the torso piece?”

Yoko snapped a bubble from a piece of gum that L’Cor didn’t know she had.  “It’s not bad,” she said thoughtfully.  “But, most of the opponents you’ll be facing have advanced targeting computers.  That means that all of their missiles will lock on at the same time.”

“That’s bad?”

Ivan cleared his throat and said, “Think of an AROW system for medium range.”

“Ah,” said L’Cor simply.

Yoko pulled another icon onto Phantom Crash’s frame.  “The shot cannon is a really useless weapon.  At the ranges where it becomes effective, a Mick with a melee weapon would toast you before you could lock on.  This rocket propelled drill arm will do the trick.”

“What’s that?” asked L’Cor.

“The concept of the rocket propelled drill arm was taken from the construction industry,” explained Ivan.  “Basically, you take a hardened tungsten drill with a diamond head and you attach it to a small rocket.  Then you link the fire control to your Mick’s jump jets and you’ve got a melee weapon that can take out even the heaviest armour in one blow.”

“Cool.”

Yoko pulled two more icons onto Phantom Crash.  “A rocket propelled grenade has better range and better targeting abilities than the old spring-fire versions.  And, last but not least, a dual tube missile launcher with an advanced targeting computer means that you can still fire two missiles at once.”

“Ahm…Yoko, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but aren’t we taking too much advantage of Ivan here?”

Yoko turned to look at him.  The smile that she gave him made him feel as if he had just won a prize.

“Actually, these are weapons that I used to use before I could afford my current weapons on Baby.  I’m a bit of a collector and I never traded them back to Ivan.  As my partner, I’m loaning them to you.  Put them to good use, ok?”

“Ok!”

“Now, as for the items that we’ll have to lease from Ivan…let’s see…” Yoko pulled the rollers off from Phantom Crash’s legs and dragged another pair on icons onto its frame.  “The legs that Ivan gave you actually have optional hover attachments.  That means that if you use the hover jets in conjunction with your jump jets, you can have the same kind of mobility as a true hover platform.  Also, if you ground yourself to use your OC and need to suddenly move, you don’t have to wait until your hover jets fire up.  You can just run on your regular feet.”

A curious thought occurred to L’Cor and he asked, “Baby is a traditional hover type right?  How do you overcome the OC issue?  The blow back from the hover jets would blow the OC covering off right?”

“I have my OC built into Baby’s armour.  I usually don’t take enough hits to totally disable it.”

L’Cor whistled softly in appreciation of Yoko’s skill.  He looked at the computer as it tallied up the weapons and calculated Phantom Crash’s specifications.  Due to the added weapons Phantom Crash now had an even lower top running speed and its acceleration was lower too.  However, these specs were offset by the ability to hover.  “You also put an extra inch of armour plating?”

Yoko rolled her eyes as if this were a basic question.  “Everyone takes hits.  You’re gonna need the extra plating.  In the melee matches that we’ll be in, I don’t think even I will be able to remain untouched for long.  When my OC fails, our roles will shift I’ll become the bait while you become the silent hunter.”

“I’ll do my best to protect you,” said L’Cor seriously.

“I know you will,” said Yoko brightly and then she blew him a kiss.