The Dam Rescue

Wednesday 31st May 2070

Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph, Ki-Rin.

The runners left the area of the barrens where they had found silk, with no word from their friends or contacts except from Lamb who told them that she had something to tell them. As they headed out their Commlinks picked up news feeds of a force 4 quake in San Fran.

They headed back into Seattle and went directly to the Vory club called the Star, as instructed by Lamb. When they arrived she introduced a man called Download, he was the decker that she went after and he told them about when he worked for Dominic Cross, son of the CEO of Cross Applied Technologies. Dominic had forced him to launch the attack code at the Ares controlled AI, Thetis. He then Commed them a bit of a datafile which he had half hacked, half had dumped onto his PAN.

Lamb pressed on to tell the runners that she had hacked Dominic’s diary, and found an appointment already made by Dominic for Friday June 2nd at 11:00 with Six, Sickle, Ash, Glyph and Ki-Rin.
Lam had her run boxed off, she had found out who had transmitted the virus, which attached Thetis and was on her way back to see Ares. She wished the runners luck and left.

They sat for a short while discussing their options before blasting back to San Fran to find out what had happened to their friends.
When they got into commlink range they started picking up messages from friends. Nunzio left a message with Six, telling him that a corp goon squad had attacked their parents. When they did a ring round, there was no answer from Kitty, Six’s girlfriend, or Daisy, Ash’s sister.

San Francisco had prepared well for quakes, and most of the buildings were able to weather the forty second shaking of the earth. Windowpanes had shattered, and some buildings would need structural repairs, but all told the city was well. The runners blazed in with Six and Ki-Rin heading to Kitty’s the rest to Daisy’s. Both of the girl’s apartments had stoved in doors, signs of a struggle, and a conspicuous absence of the resident. Ash was already struggling to cope with the strain, and he went from absolute despair to raging anger.

The runners decided to play along with Dominic and go to the meet. Only Ash and Six went, with the others close by as a FRT. They were cordially shown into the building, and were ushered up to meeting room 5.

Friday June 2nd 2070

Dominic stood in the room looking away from the runners out of the window he indicated a trid screen that showed Kitty, Daisy bound and blindfolded in a concrete room. Ash’s brother Blake guarded them.
Once the runners had taken in the scene, he turned, his eyes black pits, his face blistered and raw. He explained that he wanted them to back off and not get involved with what he was doing. Six and Ash argued with him that taking their family got them involved. Dominic didn’t seem to understand how they felt. Ash threatened him and came close to killing him there and then, Six implored to speak to the girls, and after a few moments Dominic accepted.
The moment he gave the runners access to the girls Commlinks, Ki-Rin ran a trace. Six tried to have a coded conversation with Kitty but she was dazed and didn’t pick up on it straight away. Ash was unable to get through to Blake.
Once they had done, Dominic dismissed them and once they got out onto the street Six told Ash that he thinks kitty was trying to give him a code and stood trying to work it out. Ash phoned Ki-Rin who told them that they were burning rubber across town zeroing in on the location of the PAN signals. Ash and Six blazed after them.

About 60 miles outside San Francisco lies the Goodwin Dam, and the runners pulled up within a mile of it looking across the road, which spanned the blocked river. They saw guards patrolling between the gated road.

Forming a loose plan the two cars sped toward the gates, at the last minute Ash yelled to Six to shoot the lock off the gate. Six’s gum mount was rearward facing, so he snapped it into a sharp spin, stitched a line of bullets across the lock and corrected the vehicle in one fluid move, Meanwhile Glyph sped past ramming the gates open. The 5 guards on top of the dam were run over, shot and grenaded before the cars had come to a halt in front of one of the control towers on the dam.

The runners made their way through the guards who were positioned in the dam interior, using increasingly sophisticated tactics to clear the sections, the last section cleared they had a mortally wounded guard who pointed them toward generator 1.

They opened up the bulkhead door to generator 1 and saw that Kitty and Daisy were guarded by Blake in what appeared to be the water channel of generator 1. If the genny were turned on they would surely drown. Six dropped Blake with a stick and shock round. Sickle then fashioned a makeshift ladder out of the gantry and railings they had been running along. Once the runners got down to the level of the hostages the iris that held back millions of tons of water began to open. Ash, Six and Sickle desperately got the girls and Blake up out of the death trap in the increasingly deepening water, while Ki-Rin hacked the controls to the dam to shut down the Iris.

The runners escaped.

The headed back to town, and Ash claimed he knew someone who they could trust to look after Kitty, Daisy and Blake, while they head back to Cross Applied Technologies to finish this whole thing. Six, Ash and Ki-Rin wanted payback, Sickle was just happy for a rumble.