Thursday, March 01, 2007

The end of Simon Crusher

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash.

1st September 2070 17:00

The runners gathered outside the ramp which ran down underground. They hadn’t found Simon Crusher amongst the dead on the surface of this facility and guessed that he had fled down. They were also keen to find out if there was a cloning facility here too.

Looking down the ramp they saw that it was 3 vehicle widths, well lit, terminating in a roller shutter door. They decided to hotwire one of the vans and drive it down the ramp slowly. Approaching the roller shutter doors Six and Ash noticed that there was a pair of some kind of slam plate in the floor, one near the roller shutter, one ten metres away. Ki-Rin and Ash hopped out of the vehicle and jogged over to the pedestrian door set in the left hand wall, Glyph covered them while Six rolled the van’s engine block over the slam plate. Ki-Rin found that there was a decker on site who cut his connection to hacking the electronic lock on the door, and rather than take him on in cyberspace opted to bust the door lock by bypassing the circuitry.

Ki-Rin triggered some kind of security device, and two massive bulkhead doors slammed home onto the plates in the ground. The one nearest the roller shutter door nearly took out Ash’s arm; the other drop bulkhead crushed the van but was unable to slam completely home, leaving a gap of about a foot.

As soon as the kill zone had been set up, two Steel Lynx drones dropped down from hatches in the ceiling to join Ash and Ki-Rin. One drone squatted low and rolled under the gap in the rear bulkhead to take out Six and Glyph. Bullets flew. Ash stuck his AK into the mid section of the drone and fired a couple of bursts into it at close range. Ki-Rin scrambled across the floor and blind fired at the other drone, Six and Glyph finished it off before anyone was badly injured.

Ki-Rin finished cracking the door, while Glyph and Six slipped under the gap in the drop door. The door clicked open and the team announced their arrival with a flash bang grenade, the three stunned guards stood no chance when all four runners unleashed a volley of lead from the doorway.

A window ran the full length of the wall and the runners could see the expanse of the cloning chamber beyond, at the far side of the room was another door. The runners kept low and made their way to the next door. Glyph popped the door open and saw four civilians, strapped to chairs, tubes and cables running from their bodies. Ducked low just out of sight was another guard. Glyph didn’t have any flash bangs. A frag grenade was rolled into the small room instead. The explosion destroyed everything in the room. Ki-Rin began shooting out through the glass screen into the guards the he spotted moving around in the clone chamber. The guards returned fire, shooting through the walls at the runners.

Six sent out his flyspy drone to mark the targets for the rest of the team and they began to take out the guards.

Ki-Rin was filled with lead and he died. The rest of the team were taking hits as well. Six stood in cover and saw the decker go down. He dashed to his side and administered first aid, with the help of the nano-medkit Ki-Rin was brought back from the brink.

Glyph and Ash finished off the rest of the guards. Inside the massive cavern four pillars ran from floor to ceiling. Embedded into each of the pillars were four growth vats. Tow pillars worth, eight in total, housed the nearly fully formed clones of Dominic. Alive, but lifeless. The other eight pods had been opened. Ash Shot each clone dead.

A bulkhead door at the rear of the chamber was the only other way out and the runners donned gas masks before throwing a nerve gas canister in. On the other side of the bulkhead was a long corridor. This terminated in a ladder which went up. Checking the GPS the runners could tell that this would go up and inside the Pyramid shaped island in the middle of the lake. The runners were beginning to experience electrical interference with their equipment and disconnected unused electronics.

Looking up the step ladder the runners could see a large vaulted space above them, a mesh catwalk running overhead. Inside the pyramid had been hewn away leaving a vast space. A catwalk ran around the outside edge of this about two metres up, and a walkway from either side liked up to a dais in the centre. Electricity was arcing from sigils and symbols daubed on the walls and focusing down onto 5 forms that were out of view on the dais. Glyph stuck her head up for just a moment and then a shot rang out. Simon Crusher was stood on the cat walk and was laughing as he fired off a couple more blind shots toward the now out of sight shadowrunner.

The team surged up the ladder, each diving out in a different direction as quickly as possible. 2 essence hungry Dominic clones surged at the runners and attacked them with tooth and claw, lead flew. Two of the clones were dead before they could do any damage and then Ash fired the fatal shot that killed Simon Crusher. There was a moment before his body tumbled from the catwalk, then their was an explosion of energy. Electricity arced from the dais struck the catwalk and then earthed through the runners.

Six, Glyph and Ash all wore their electricity non-conductive armour that they had bought when they were paid to steal some Thunderbirds, Ki-Rin became the conduit for the full charge; the energy struck his chest and burned a deep wound.

For the second time that day, Ki-Rin died. For the second time he was resuscitated. The runners took stock and then made moves to flee. Ash gathered up dropped weapons. Glyph and Ki-Rin set explosive charges. Six made preparations to bring one of the helicopters online.

The runners hovered over the site in the stolen helicopter long enough to watch the explosion they had set cause the underground base to be flooded by the water of Pyramid Lake before turning back towards San Francisco.

The next day the runners did their own thing, Ki-Rin headed to the street doctors who told him that the wounds would Scar. The Six and Ki-Rin sent the helicopter to one of Ki-Rin’s contacts to have it stripped down to check for anything incriminating.

Ash Sold on the stolen weapons to Snow, before getting the runners back to meet up. Ash had decided that he should march into Alamais’ headquarters and demand their payments. Only Glyph accompanied Ash, and after getting told that the Dragon was out of the country Ash lost his temper. The runners dragged Ash down to the pub, and they all got drunk.

The next morning, Ash received a package. A credstic with enough money to split amongst the team, and a weapons focus in the form of a dagger. Ash assumed that it was from Alamais.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fair point. We have had to assume that the pay off had come from Alamais...

If I work up some plans for the Step Van and hand them to you on Sunday, can we assume Six spends his D/T on it and make relevant rolls next week?

Anonymous said...

Alive but lifeless eh! Biology gone wild!

Yey i got paid...now what to spend the money on...

Owain said...

I would have taken it as read that Six would spend the upcoming downtime working in the garage doing something along those lines.

"Alive but lifeless", I thought it had a poetic sort of ring to it.

And come on Glyph, there are lots of things to spend your cash on... Or save it and get Deltaware wires 4.

Anonymous said...

Mmmmmmm...

"And Ki-Rin was dead again, maybe it's just me, but i read myself as a useless tag-along who died occasionally in that one.

Thoughts?? Sens your answers on a large SAE to:

"Is Ki-Rin past it, or is the unbiased SR4 GM discriminating against his player as a form of petty revenge for early on in the Earthdawn campaign?2

:-)

Owain said...

Hey! I resemble that comment. I think we are even now, two for two.

And come on, they had guns, you were blowing big holes in their mates, were they supposed to get a big red marker to draw a target on themselves?

And the lightning thing... that is what lightning does, if you hadn't been as savvy as the rest of the team to upgrade your armour, how is that my fault.

Anonymous said...

Horses for courses. I think K's armour is flame retardant instead so when we're up against fire attacks not electrickery, Ki-rinn will be laughing while Ash and Six sizzle.

Anonymous said...

But you miss the point my friend, because i'm immune to fire we'll never face it, it will be lightning or... i dunno... ice attacks, so i take extra damage. I tell you i'm being bullied....

:-( Lol

Owain said...

moan, moan, moan. Right if you want to be bullied, you are going the right way about it.

What isn't Ki-Rin's armour protecting him from? Box Jellyfish did I hear? For some reason the Chinese Shop next door got the wrong address for their box jellyfish delivery, and at about 3am while Ki-Rin is sleeping, 6000 transparent sea dwelling jellies flood into his bedroom. You take, 20P. Your impact armour counts.

Anonymous said...

See!! SEE!!? He's just a cheap bully!