<Damn it, Finesse,> Phantom texted his chummer via commlink as they climbed through the ventilation shaft of the MCT drone factory they had evacuated only minutes ago. <Why didn’t your charges go off?>
<Not sure, boss,> replied the young elven street sam. <Might be a loose wire. Maybe the circuit failed. Could be a million different things. Can’t tell until I check the charges.>
<On four separate charges?!> Phantom fumed. <You fragging assured me you were good with explosives, and not a single one of them went off? That kind of crap risks our lives, screws up our run, and can trash our rep. I’m sure you don’t give a damn about my team’s reputation, but I do.>
Moving in silence out of the ventilation shaft and into a darkened hallway, the two shadowrunners cautiously slunk through the shadows. Retracing their original paths through the factory, the pair avoided the MCT night patrol and other security measures to arrive back at the drone assembly line, where the charges were placed. Once the two were certain their overwatch hacker had looped the security cameras feeds and the patrols were wandering other parts of the building, they began rechecking the charges.
“Yep,” Finesse whispered. “Detonator failed on this one, boss. I’m replacing it.”
“You gotta use better material than this,” Phantom replied. “And this charge has such sloppy wiring I can see two separate spots where it could’ve failed. And here, this wiring is frayed. How the fuck do you miss that? You’re lucky I’ve got a ’soft I can slot to fix this.”
Slipping a knowsoft into his skilljack, Phantom rewired the charge himself, fixing it in a few minutes’ time. “I shouldn’t have to be doing your job, noob,” he mumbled under his breath. Pissed did not even begin to describe what he felt for the young runner and the empty promises he’d made to score this job.
“There were also loose wires on charge number three,” said Finesse. “It’s all good now. They’re set.”
That was when Phantom saw what the elf had done to fix the last charge. “Wait, you fucking used Econovalue batteries?!” Phantom exclaimed, unable to contain the cold rage in his voice any longer. “Made in Aztlan?! Batteries over a year old with no fucking charge left in them?! You’re done. I have no time for your bullshit!”
Triggering his wired reflexes, Phantom pulled his silenced pistol from its holster and without hesitation put two bullets into the elf’s skull. He re-holstered his pistol and rechecked the two charges Finesse had worked on and claimed were set. On his inspection, he discovered the elf had managed to get them right the second time around—a job that should’ve been done correctly fifteen minutes ago. Too little and too late for Finesse, as far as Phantom was concerned.
“Phantom, is everything all right?” asked the disembodied voice of Cypher, their overwatch support. “I see your gun went off twice. Should I send the rest of the team?”
“No need,” Phantom replied as he dragged the body over to the nearest charge. “Finesse bullshitted me one too many times, so I put an end to his incompetence.” He then pulled the dead runner’s commlink from his tactical vest and pocketed it, leaving nothing on the body to tie the dead runner to him or his team.