XV. 1TB of Dynamite
A Punk, A Spy, A Contact & A Thumb-Drive: Recipe For Excitement!
HAPPY NEW YEAR’S EVE! With just hours to go and some of our friends around the world already enjoying the festivities, we hope you all had an excellent 2025 and we look forward to joining you in an even more kickass 2026. For now though, let’s send the year off with blast with the latest adventure of our hot-rodding hippie-punk, Lita! May God Bless You & This Force — Jake C.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t play, it’s that she hadn’t played anything that couldn’t be beat with a joystick and a few clever button combos. The fact that Roger Steele–in from the desert for his latest intel sweep–could even get Lita into a game of chess was a miracle in his eyes as far as their working relationship went. He remembered vividly the night of the Creed’s first mission. Along with the great smoking session, she and some of the bikers were beating each other silly on an old fighting game on a TV rigged up in the hangout. Every time he’d come back, downtime would often be spent cycling through games after all the hard work and nuisance paperwork was in order.
On this latest sojourn, Agent Steele had asked her almost flippantly “how about a game of chess?” only to get the shock of his life when Lita answered “sure.”
And there he was with two checkmates under his belt, and her closing in on her third. The svelte gray agent in the leather jacket was rather amused by the sight. Here was this classic street chick with her frenzied hair, dark fur, clad in denim and beat-to-hell leather sandals, looking down at the chess board and managing to play well.
Too damn well.
“Rook to B8, that’d be a checkmate.” she perked up.
“And sadly, you’re not a computer I can dump some brandy into.” Steele smirked. “Where did you learn all this?”
Lita delicately cleaned up the pieces from the sides of the table before answering with a gentle chuckle. “Learned the rules once watching ol’ Smith play and I free-handed the rest.”
“And you can remember all that and still leave room for that screen-clearer you keep using on Death Fight V?”
“As a matter of fact, I can!” she playfully huffed, folding the board away. “Now that the fun and games are over, where you scoping this time?”
“Rondella House in the 400s.” Steele replied, straightening his jacket.
“Contact or just browsing?”
“What else can you do in a library? Both.”
The hippie-punk perked up, snout scrunched in surprise. “Which lead you following?”
“Getting inside the worker pool for the Tower Network and other maintenance areas. A friend named Horace knows about getting some keycards and IDs fabbed. If this works out, I’ll be enjoying an ever-green way of working within the city’s scope. I stay for the lottery period I’m assigned, gather what I can, leave and come back with a new ID. If it doesn’t, remind me to kill the bastard. Or if he manages to get me first, would you do the honors?”
Lita sauntered up and playfully dusted the gray wolf’s shoulders. “For Mista-Prim-and-Proper, you sho’ do talk my lingo nice. Get outta here, but take this though.”
She slipped him a piece of paper with her cell number.
“I thought you were taken,” he quizzed.
“Oh I am,” she snickered. “It’s for when you need backup. Ring me and I’m there.”
Roger wasn’t even phased; he just nodded and pocketed the paper. “Will do.”
With that, the gray wolf was off in his slender black Dodge Charger and making tracks for Rondella.
It was your average Haven library. Unique in that it was open 24/7, but the night hours were completely automated. In the height of the city’s golden era, moves like this were PR gold. In its modern dereliction, it was a great way to quietly handover all manner of goods, from drugs to ransoms to the kinds of fraudulent IDs Roger needed to really start probing about the city.
“Horace” was a stout black wolf in a plain white button-up and black slacks who came up to Roger’s shoulder and greeted him at the front door.
“Hey Benny!” he glowed, “Glad you could make it, I got this great book I wanted to show you.”
Steele smiled and leapt up the polished stairs and into the library. The other appeal of Rondella was its “Marble Revival” interior. A cozy, classical kind of space brought new color by the various blue-monitor computers strewn about the place.
For his belt size, Horace moved just as fleetly as his guest, and was quick to show him where the “great book” was.
It was in the far back corner at a table pressed flush against the wall. It was one of only a few camera blind-spots in the place. Horace helped Roger into his seat and took his own opposite of him.
“Trust me,” he winked. “You’ll love this stuff.”
He pushed across the table a copy of an encyclopedia, History of Astronomy Vol. X. It was a proper brick of a book, and when Steele’s slender gray hands parted its covers, he found more than just what he was expecting.
There were the IDs just as he had requested; a black micro-secure digital card. He pocketed the card between page turns and slid it into his silver reader. The text that came up were rows upon rows of unassigned 10-digit codes to be used. It was between page reads that Horace also handed over a thick silver thumb-drive.
“That’s for your friends,” he nodded.
Steele nodded, though he wasn’t able to hide his perplexion. Again, he swept it into his pockets between pages and inserted the thumb-drive.
Upon it was one massive file. Too big to be read on the reader, but with an attached text file.
“Directory: BATPLAN - AUTODEPLOY - BATCHDIRECT”
From the moment he clocked the first abridged phrase, he realized just what his contact had offered him. He had just been handed a massive cache of battle plans mounted by A.C.E.S. And from the file size of one terabyte, he understood just why the data was so massive. It was every permutation, every variable, every possible stratagem the computer could have come up with. The only answers that weren’t on the surface: how recent were these? What status was A.C.E.S. at the time of their conception? The good standing of her golden years or the haphazard flailing goddess of today. Were they future attacks or surveys of past programs?
Though the contemplations whipped through Agent Steele’s head, it had only been a few seconds after the revelation hit him that he looked up to see the black wolf had vanished.
No sound of footsteps, and with a wave of Roger’s hand, no sign of cybernetic cloaking either. Gone into thin air.
Steele looked carefully around the library, shafts of blue light glistening along the many tall mahogany bookshelves. For now, it seemed his contact had delivered the goods and then some. But if this was all a covert sting, Steele wasn’t going to hang around to find out. He replaced the book on the nearby shelf it came from, zipped up his leather jacket with all his prizes inside, and made his way out the door of Rondella House.
He covered the compass the way his icy-blue eyes darted about, making sure no one was behind or ahead of him as he made it to his car. When he got there, he dug about his pockets for that little slip of paper Lita gave him. After a quick dial, the hippie-punk picked up and was met with five very important words.
“May I borrow the computer?”
“Bring ‘em in, let’s dive.”
They couldn’t begin to go over the whole damn thing on the lock-off–the terminal explicitly kept off the A.C.E.S. Network–and even the fraction they did survey was astonishing.
Battle history dating back to the first fights of General Godred to all load-outs sent during each encounter to scores of prospective battle plans in correlation to certain conditions.
The dark gray vigilante could only shake her head in disbelief, flicking through schematic after schematic, dossier after dossier.
“God almighty Aphrodite,” she deflated, running a half-gloved hand down her muzzle. “You need to get this shit outta here fast. I don’t think I’ll be killing your friend, but poor fella might get it in the neck for what he’s just done.”
Steele nodded. “Send Knox the deets quick. Let him know about the change in pace.”
Lita spun herself over to the electric telegram unit and tapped out the message as quickly as she could. “Candygram for Goldfinger: Extra Sweet. Boy’s Got A Mother. Standby to Receive Her.”
“Don’t forget to put it in lead!” Lita barked.
Her tone caught him off-guard, but Roger flashed his cigarette case and tucked both the SD card and thumb-drive inside and snapped it shut.
“Never leave home without it.”
As he stuffed it back inside his jacket and zipped it up, he rested a hand on the hippie-punk’s shoulder. When she looked up, she saw a surprising warmth come across his face.
“You’re doing well,” he said. “Hell, you sound like a C.O. twice your age. No one’s giving you shit about how you command, are they?”
Lita shrugged. “Not in the way that matters. Ribbin’s cool, but I ain’t ever had an order disobeyed. Besides, with most these bastards being about your height or more, all I get left to break ‘em is a punch to the gut or a kick to the nuts. And I left one of Mack’s idiots reelin’ on the floor after a run-in with the fuzz.”
The image had Roger stifling a laugh before he continued.
“Mind playing escort then?” Steele asked. “Seeing as most of the pack’s off tonight.”
“You got it!” she grinned, “It’ll be nice to warm up Red’s seat instead of keeping my ass glued to that monitor sending shit over the P2P.”
Lita and Agent Steele both stepped out of the Creed’s HQ and made their way down the street to their rides. When they saddled up and fired their monstrous V8s, all that counted was getting Steele out the door. Anything between them and that was fair game. And that was putting it lightly.
At first, the black Charger and that blood-colored Bug were cruising nice and easy, soaking in that classic cobalt night, enjoying the color of a more modern block of apartments and skyscrapers. A few stray kids on bikes were in the area, but they weren’t the kind of knuckleheads Lita had to sic Mack and his boys on.
No, those kinds came racing right up front to the duo. With chain whips and laser-pistols, two scrawny white wolves on slick-back crotch-rockets were racing up towards the cars and not veering an instant.
Roger–with data to protect–swerved out of the one the wolves’ way.
Lita–in her fortified murder machine without a fuck to give–slammed her sandaled-paw down and let the game of chicken play to the finish.
Credit where due, the idiot didn’t waver. All Lita saw as a flurry of white fur and green fiberglass tumble over top the Red Devil, to which she patted the wheel, called her baby Bug a good boy, and rejoined Roger in their race to the withered titanium border.
That still left them with one hooligan who was fast on their tail.
One hooligan who Roger and Lita had gotten the exact same idea for.
Without even looking at each other, the gray agent on the right and the darksome hippie-punk on the left opened their windows, drew their peacemakers, and domed the thug at the same time. Between the compact Mauser and the monstrous Wildey, there wasn’t much left of the biker to go tumbling off into the distance.
Miracle of miracles, the blood only reached their hands, and Roger was the one hound who preferred his digits tipped in leather.
“Have fun cleaning those,” he winked.
“Nothing a little peroxide can’t fix.” she retorted.
Unfortunately, even taking out the trash can’t be done in peace anymore, for once again, the old favorites were back in force. A silver-and-black autocop came tearing out of a side street directly in front of Lita and Roger. Both wolves braked hard and swerved away from it.
Lita waved Roger on. She didn’t dare say a word in front of the law. Not while it was alive anyway. The gray agent stepped on it and sent his slick black muscle car tearing away for the border while Lita swung back around and started dancing her dance with her favorite hunk of electric bacon.
She swung out the driver’s side window, and started firing like mad. She wanted the engines gone and gone quick. Flashes of green whizzed and rattled into all four humming blue discs, but the damn thing wouldn’t stop. Lita tried whittling down one of the engines, and that began to work, only for a quick flash of blue to signal a rebound.
“Of all the fucking times to get good you scrubs!” she growled.
She clipped the throttle down to keep pace and brought out her Dragunov. Pointing the barrel out the passenger side this time, she set the Russian beast loose on the autocop like an old-time mobster with a Tommy. An absolute sea of electric red rattled every last inch of the autocop, from its useless tinted windows to those miraculously recovering engines.
Fortunately, the latest iteration of Haven’s finest wasn’t enough to overcome her tried and true philosophy: with enough lead, anything’s possible.
The shields were broken, the body was Swiss-cheese, and at long last, the first of the four engines gave way and sent the machine tumbling down and into the street.
And then it kept on tumbling.
As Lita swung back in and took control, she saw this bastard rolling and rolling and rolling down the straight of the street. And towards the border.
Lita whipped out her phone and rang Roger, paw-flat down and driving like a bag of coke was coursing through her.
“Yeah?”
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THAT FENCE!”
She heard the Charger’s tires squeal and prayed he was as fleet as her on the pedals as the flaming blue mound of twisted metal tumbled closer and closer and closer until, with a final terrible shriek, slammed into the border and tore clean through it. It didn’t stop until it finally flipped over the edge, and the only place left for the momentum to go was down in a ball of electric blue flame.
Lita slammed both paws down on the brake and skidded to a stop just beside Roger. The Charger was dusted by all that kicked up tarmac, but was otherwise fine. The gray wolf at her wheel, turned to look at Lita with a look of total bemusement.
“I take it you’ve never tried the front door.” Steele said.
“I like making my own.” Lita shrugged. “Went a little big on this one though.”
The gray agent with the ice-blue eyes nodded and winked one last time. “I’ll let you know when I’m back in the neighborhood for longer. But before I go, one last thing.”
The dark hippie-punk nodded.
“Find Horace.” Steele asked. “Stout black wolf, mid-40s, white button-up, black trousers, black loafers. You don’t have to meet with him. Just let me know if you ever see him again.”
“You got it hoss,” Lita replied with a playful salute. “Now go let the top dog know what’s in your lap.”
Steele sped off in an instant, carefully winding down the treacherous Ivory Coast canyon, back up the other side, and then into the same distance as all desert guests went.
For Lita’s ride back, she kept thinking about this Horace. About whether he was a true friend, or some fella flicking one wild domino effect into play. Like with Roger, the disappearing act didn’t sit right with her. She made a trip up to Rondella herself just to scope out the locale. She checked the alleys and found nothing. She tiptoed into the library only to find the same empty book repository the two contacts had traded work in. It was only after a quick glance at the Comm/Ent. Newsreel over breakfast the next morning that it all came into focus.
HORACE WELTON, 44, TRIED & CONVICTED DRUG SMUGGLER. SENTENCED TO REPROGRAMMING.
With a trumped-up charge like that, Lita knew that they knew. And yet her and Steele were still able to get the data out the door. When Lita checked Knox’s reply on her fax, she saw that the data and agent had been received, and that its veracity was being double checked.
Lita sighed as she looked back to the paused news screen and hammered out a quick reply: “Tell our boy H was alright. He’s paying the tab tonight.” She snapped a screenshot of the headline and sent it over as well.
When she stepped outside and took a deep breath of street air, she looked down to her tough old crimson Bug and smiled. Her first thought was to drop everything and go bombing for a bit, the old streets calling to her once more. But seeing that newsreel changed a few things for her.
“Lemme make a call, baby,” she smiled, blowing a kiss to the Red Devil. “I got something else in mind.”
She picked up her phone, dialed for Professor Smith, and greeted the old English chap with music to his ears.
“Free for a game of chess, Teach?”
The Red Devil was northbound in seconds. It was time to shake up how things were done around here.