By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 31: 28.10.70>
Man, do I fucking hate Las Vegas. Seems we can guaran-damn-tee that everything’s gonna go belly up the minute we hit town. Maybe it’s cursed.
Maybe it just hates us because we never go to gamble? I dunno, but if I never see Vegas again, it’ll be too soon. Wish we’d never ended up back there…
Few days ago, we got a call from Mal asking us to drop by his surgery.
Understandably for a guy who spends his working days elbow deep in gore, Mal doesn’t scare easily but he sounded spooked. We smelt trouble but Mal was safe and he told us he had a job for us. By way of background he started to tell us a ripping yarn and revealed that he had some close links with our old nemesis the Juggler and the Notable Anarchists. We knew Mal had street docced for them but the story he told us now made him an integral part of the team – a team which had an almighty boner for screwing over Cross Applied Technology.
The way Mal told it, Juggler had tipped them off to Dominic Cross’
acquisition of an Orichalcum book that could be used to summon the Sheddim – the goofy spirit that had Essence-raped Ash and I and left us bleeding out our auras into Astral Space. The NA had decided to spoke Cross’ wheel and raid his offices for the book and had togged up as commercial cleaners for a covert insertion before their contact on perimeter security had decided to boost his pension prospects by turning them over to the boss mid-op. They were screwed but pressing on and succeeding was going to be no more dangerous than bailing out so they forged on and you’ve gotta admire their balls.
In the middle of the tale, the door opens and the tea boy waltzes in – only this tea boy is the fucking Juggler. He’s carrying nothing more offensive than a double espresso though and Mal points out that Cross had originally employed us to stop Juggler’s attacks yet ironically we had ended up attacking Cross ourselves. We’d gone Poacher turned Gamekeeper and had been fighting the Juggler’s war for him ever since! Mal had a point, the enemy of my enemy is my friend so we all sat down with a brew and Juggler took up the tale.
The team mage, named Book, had done an Astral scout and located the Orichalcum book but it was being protected by a spirit of some kind. In real space the team had battled their way through to Cross’ private apartments and found the man coughing up blood, his eyes blackened and burnt, lying not far from the physical book itself. Seems the team finished the job and iced Cross (there’s a lot of that going around lately) but then couldn’t decide what to do about the Orichalcum Book. Their mage believed the spirit seemed keen for them to take it but they were worried about getting mixed up in things they didn’t understand. In the end, they seemed to think the Wizboy could protect himself against spiritual influence and had taken the book until they could destroy it. Bad move. Book the mage seemed to have gone screwy and was now officially AWOL with the Orichalcum Book. Juggler wanted both back and Mal was the go-between offering us 50k for our services.
Now this, this was a head fuck. I know that in real life nothing is black and white and it’s all just shades of grey, but this was totally blurring the lines between friend and foe, right and wrong. Time was when I would have shot the Juggler for less than 50k and the thought of us all trailing off after this Mage and a book that could potentially push us all over the edge into mad servitude to the Sheddim was far from appealing.
Continues: 1/4>
|| >
However, Juggler sweetened the deal with the promise of further info on the whereabouts of Ash’ brother and also said he had been told that the Orichalcum Book could be used to banish Allisom. Helping find Blake, giving the Sheddim the Bird, shafting Cross and plugging my sucking aura wound all added up to an interesting answer to the question – what the frag’s in this for me? We shook on the deal and started swapping info – Juggler had been totally frozen out of Book’s life but we’d had tabs on the man twice in recent runs. He’d been hanging out with Dr Manton Ford poisoning the Caribou sports drink and we’d been on his trail in Vegas before Ash and I were busted…
Ford was the weaker link and we we’re all set to hit research mode. A bad Burrito I’d picked up at Deano’s Diner intervened however and laid me up a while. As I lay dying in my bed, the rest of the team quickly established that Ford had fled town. Don’t ask me where Ash got the info – I’ve realised just lately that it’s better for me not to query his dubious contacts – but he found out a crack squad of Cross’ Console Soldiers called Seraphim had spirited the good doctor away and deposited him with a Barrens’ street gang called the Whites. The way I understand it, the Whites traded their info in a deal that required Glyph to go gung-ho on their local rivals. Maybe the Whites get off on ladies fighting? Whatever, the deal went down and the gang handed over a business card for a Johnson who had picked Manton Ford up in a chopper.
Johnson turned out to be a Lone Star Facilitator – a can do man who made things happen. I was back on point by this stage and Croner filled in the blanks for me. We met up with the guy and he was happy to talk about his brief stint working for Cross. He had made Manton Ford disappear and replaced him with John Austin, an executive for TecTonic who lived in Nixon.
We well-remembered Nixon and particularly the CAT facility at Pyramid Lake where we had swamped the technology being used to produce clones of Dominic Cross in dozens of feet of dirty lake water. It didn’t take too long to put two and two together and sure enough CAT were trying to rebuild the facility and Ford was slap bang in the middle of it. Surveillance went badly when my FlySpy was spotted by an eagle eyed brickie and we decided we had to move fast before we were thoroughly rumbled. We assaulted the facility as stealthily as possible but the alarm had already been sounded and before we knew it, a chopper was dropping a Seraphim Elite FRT on our heads.
The fire fight was intense and brutal. We weren’t equipped for heavy combat while Seraphim were togged up in military gear, but even their Elite were just console soldiers when you got right down to it and we had faced them before and knew how to defeat them. Ash and Drifter hit the deck and needed resuscitation and then, just as we were ready to Cas Evac Ford and high tail it before Seraphim reinforcements arrive, Ash goes totally postal, sobbing over the console soldiers’ corpses and tearing their helmets off. Only afterwards do I realise that he’s worried Blake has been drafted into the elite…
Ford sang like a canary. I get the impression the team’s ‘innovative’
interrogation techniques were more than he knew how to handle. I think Ki-rinn threatened to ram his teeth down his throat, Glyph let him drool on her cleavage and Ash just sobbed about the loss of his brother. I don’t do interrogation so I kept well clear. Props to the guys though, whichever method it was that worked, it got results and we were soon off to Vegas, back to the Volcano Club – scene of our last sighting of Book and my ignominious beating at the hands of a Lone Star patrol trooper.
Ki-rinn quickly established that if Book was inside, he was with the movers and shakers on the high rollers tables. I deployed drone observations while Frosty and Glyph tarted themselves up. They would play a young, flush couple splashing the cash inside while I kept tabs on them and Ash played fire support. I’d managed to pinpoint Book’s motor in the car park so we were confident he couldn’t easily give us the slip.
Continues: 2/4>
|| >
Ki-rinn and Glyph demonstrated a remarkable skill for wasting their money on bad bets. They played the ‘easy mark’ nicely and had obviously soon caught the attention of someone in the casino who wanted to strip their credsticks bare. They were escorted into the private elevator and whisked up to the private card tables. Shame Ki-rinn wasn’t quite so good at placing surveillance devices inconspicuously. My IBall Drone had been rumbled straight away so we were effectively blind. A tense half hour ticked by until Frosty dropped the dime in the callbox and tipped us off to the fact that he was sitting opposite Book. He and Glyph had been forced to go in unarmed and there were guards on the high stakes floor so Ki-rinn needed a rapid distraction before he lost the shirt off of his back.
Ash grabbed K’s sniper rifle and moved into position as our poker playing duo painted the guards by Smartlink. I held my breath as Ash took the shot – he was shooting high, through at least one wall and into an unseen foe… It was impossible to work out what was going on – the paints started to wheel around chaotically as a fight ensued. Ash was firing, reloading, moving and firing again, smashing shots through the wall. Worse, Glyph and Ki-rinn might have painted the enemies but we really didn’t know who was who or where our friends were. Each shot Ash fired could have hit Glyph or Ki-rinn or shattered the Mage’s skull like an over-ripe melon preventing us from ever finding out where he’d stashed the Orichalcum Book. We started losing paints. At first I wasn’t sure if they were ticking down confirmed kills but then so many of them flicked out at once we knew either Glyph or Ki-rinn was down. Ash was out of sniper rounds and helpless and then the rest of the paints disappeared. Both of our chummers were down, definitely shot up; at best unconscious and at worst dead and we had no way of working out which it was.
Ash and I sat in the van just looking blankly at each other. It seemed like hours but I guarantee it was just a matter of seconds. We didn’t know what had just happened to the other half of our team and going in to find out seemed like suicide. It didn’t take us long to decide to commit suicide though – what else could we do? Ki-rinn and Glyph had risked their lives to rescue us last time we were in Vegas. Looked like it was time to repay that debt. We at least knew Book was still inside, but it was a fair bet that he and the Red Samurai security in the joint would know that we were coming. We stealed ourselves for an assault. Frag Vegas.
I made a call to Nunzio and paid for a few Mafia goons to come and lend us their guns. Ash got hold of a shiny new rifle and we planned to go in hard and fast. My drones would lead the assault – parts come cheaper than lives – backed up by Ash who would lead in our hired heavies. The casino was emptied by Red Samurai and the disgruntled gamblers turfed out into the pre-dawn gloom told us we were expected.
I opened the batting by sticking the drone van through the casino’s front windows, laying down covering fire from the HMG as I deployed the drones and as the meat made its way in. The ground floor was open plan and Red Samurai didn’t stand a chance – we were clear and making a move on the first floor.
Trouble was, Red Samurai now had the edge. They knew where we would be coming up and had the escalators covered. Until those escalators were working again, the drones were effectively useless – unable to reach the next floor. It meant the meat had to go in first and take the brunt of the enemy fire and they suffered. By the time I had drones in support, we were men down and limited on medical supplies. One of the Mafia goons, Mario I think, got Ash back on his feet with a nano-medkit and the extra automatic fire from the drones helped tip the tide in our favour.
On the second floor, a nasty surprise in the form of twin-linked sentry guns awaited us but I know what I’m doing when it comes to confusing sensors. A grenade brought down debris from the ceiling tiles to confuse the targeting computer while the drones zipped in. By the time the drones had been acquired, Ash was able to pop up from the stairwell and finish the job properly with no casualties.
Continues: 3/4>
|| >
The sentry guns were covering the glass elevator to the High Rollers floor and we again realised anyone using the lift was making themselves a sitting duck. Sending the drones first was an easy compromise so I patched Ash in on the camera feed and we sent them up. I flattened the Steel Lynx down on the elevator floor and that gave us an edge of surprise over the Red Samurai who were expecting man-sized targets. The cameras revealed a private bar that looked a dead match for the room Ki-rinn and Glyph had described. Six guards were dotted around the place and amongst them was the Mage from the Notable Anarchists, Book.
I popped the Steel Lynx up and started firing through the glass as targets presented themselves. Book threw himself over the bar to take shelter from a volley from the Doberman and on the other side of the room I saw another set of elevator doors open and vomit out Glyph, guns blazing. She was alive! And now we were rocking! Attacked unexpectedly from two different directions, we had Red Samurai on the run and the glass elevator began to descend again to collect Ash and Mario.
My exultation was short lived. Book has a couple of mage tricks up his sleeve and reduced the Doberman to smoking metal with a stream of acid out of the end of his fragging fingertip and then the Steel Lynx ran out of ammo. I saw Glyph go down in a hail of gunfire and my only option was now to run distraction. The Lynx drew the guards fire while Ash piled into the lift, before a couple of grenades blew it right off of its legs.
I was blind. A little dump shocked and completely fragged for intel – all I had was an occasional burst of gunfire relayed to me over the comm. I was out of combat-effective drones too. My one consolation was that the grenades used on the Lynx hadn’t gone Ash’ way but it was small beer compared to the creeping realisation I’d have to go against everything I’ve learnt lately and put my carcass on the line in a firefight against Red Samurai with nothing but my Ares Pred. What else could I do? Three of my friends’ lives and the success of the Run could hang on whether or not I was there to put a bullet in one of the fraggers. I ditched the van and ran for the escalators.
By the time I got to the top floor, things had gone from bad to worse. I could see the bodies of Glyph, Ash and Ki-rinn scattered about the room and it was only our Hired Help Mario who was preventing MDK. Almost whooped with joy to see him knelt over Ash, spraying suppressing fire from an AK in Book’s direction while he stuck the nano-medkit into my boy. Ash eyes cracked open and I could see he was able to fight on. With Mario keeping Book’s head down, Ash and I flanked the fragger. As Ash wheeled around one end of the bar, Book turned in that direction, no doubt with some vicious spell in mind. I rose on his blind side, opening my flick baton and clubbing him over the back of the head as Ash pulled the trigger and thumped a Stick Shock round into his grid.
Book was out for the count. His Rentacops were goners. We were all alive. A quick medical once over convinced us neither Glyph nor Ki-rinn was about to shuffle off of the mortal coil and we discovered that the devious swine Glyph had somehow managed to lay her hands on the Orichalcum Book during her attempted escape. We knew it wouldn’t be long before Lone Star, a Red Samurai FRT or more of Book’s friends came running. Ash, Mario and I carried Glyph, Frosty and Book downstairs double time and blazed. We’re en route back to San Fran now and you better believe I gave Las Vegas a big old bird as we crossed the border and left the dusty hell hole behind. It’s a shame Mario lives there. I liked him – he proved to be a good man in a pinch and we swapped numbers after it all, but I don’t imagine I’ll be too keen to visit!
Mood: Bone weary. I needs my sleep, but not until we hit SF!
Ends: 4/4>
||
Showing posts with label six blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label six blog. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Six Blog
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 30: 18.10.70>
We’ve had quite an entertaining few days just lately – a successful run, the beta test phase of some new Corp medikit (which, needless to say I was paranoid and savvy enough to turn down, it remains to be seen whether Glyph and Ash suffer for their enthusiasm) and a sniff of info on Ash’ brother Blake that was tied to a sabotage mission we just couldn’t justify undertaking. Some damn Troll Toxic Shaman worked Ash over out in the Barrens and having beaten nine bells out of him, told him to sink a ship inbound for the San Fran Bay area if he ever wanted to see Blake again. Trouble was, our research soon found out that the ship had a 10,000 tonne cargo of carcinogens. Cuts me deep to think of the look on Ash face when he realised we were being asked to pollute and poison the whole San Fran Bay but I’ve got a whole trunk load of respect for him being the one to realise that sometimes the price is just too high. He made the call and we bailed but at what cost? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, thinking he just gave away his last hope of finding his brother…
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. We know Blake is out there somewhere now and that word of him is circulating through the shadows. If there’s information to be found, we can try to find it ourselves and we also have a new face to look out for. That Troll Toxic wont be blending in at many Frat Parties so if we can hunt him down, maybe a little violent persuasion can be employed to make him cough up the goods.
It’s our second run in with the toxic underbelly of the world in the last five days. Through Snow, we picked up a run from Saeder Krupp to investigate a lapsed Governmental black op codenamed Buttercup. SK wanted the project files because they thought it would help inform some ongoing research of their own. The only catch – if there were any project files, they’d be hard copy because everything else had been wiped in the crash.
Old documents about Buttercup recently made public thanks to historic declassification regulations gave us the names of both scientists who headed up the project. We hit research mode, trying to find them or tie them to a location during the project run but quickly discovered that both Docs were dead. However, Doc Schaeffer’s missus was waiting for God in a retirement home just outside of San Fran so we blazed over to try and milk her for Intel. Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know much, her hubby had kept pretty tight-lipped about his research, even in the bedroom, but she did point us in the direction of a colleague and research student who had served under the main men. She also tipped us off to the fact that someone else had been asking the same questions and sure enough, we were a little way behind a.n.other interested party.
Knowing Mrs S had given the other goons the same name and address, we blazed on over to a quiet little residential area. I clocked a rotordrone high and we saw and heard a gunshot from an upstairs room of our man’s house. I pulled up, dumping Frosty out so he could get busy and then pumped a Flashbang and a Thermal Smoke grenade into the upper floor of the house with the Antioch. With the front of the house covered I burned rubber heading around back to cover anyone trying to give us the slip. It proved unnecessary, the Dream Team had whacked the goons before they left the back yard and Glyph had patched up our man well enough for him to tell us that the lab had been out in the Nevada desert at a place called Duckwater.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Duckwater had been caught in the fallout of a nuclear reactor that had gone critical in the nearby town of Ruth and that meant our target location was slap bang in the middle of a toxic hotzone. The less time we spent in the toxic zone the better so while we geared up in the proper toggs, I remoted the drone van out there, figuring we would zip in onboard the chopper to rendezvous with the van, do the job and then get the fuck out of there just as quickly.
Flying through the toxic zone in the chopper was an education and no mistake. The engine struggled in the mucky atmosphere and I spent the whole flight on the edge of my seat, monitoring and managing the engine so it didn’t fail on us. Even so we had to ditch at one point, after attracting the attention of an amorous toxic spirit and though I do say so myself, it was only my skill at the stick that kept us from face planting high speed dirt. Right about then we realised the chopper was a bit of a white elephant. Ground vehicles were certainly slower but there was less risk of death if the engine conked out. We got the bird back in the air and limped to the rendezvous but then I just got the chopper out of the zone, up above the ceiling of the worst pollutants and on the quickest and most direct route to clear air and then home. We were anchored to the earth from then on.
Duckwater was a shocking mess. A small community of largely residential buildings, decaying and half buried in the toxic debris and scavenged over by a pack of pitiful grey skinned bottom feeders scratching out a living in the filth. There was only one building that looked like it might be large enough to conceal Buttercup’s labs so we wasted no time in heading over there. Ash immediately got himself spooked, insisting he could hear children’s voices but for the first time, I was able to seal myself into the safety of the Step Van and let the drones do the work, sharing point duty with the Steel Lynx and using the offensive Iballs to scout out rooms.
The labs were smaller than I had been expecting and largely empty. We’d been warned that the project had ended abruptly with a lab fire during the crash but had hoped to find something intact to prove we were on the right track.
We finally struck paydirt with a small file store – computers and filing cabinets for hardcopy that were largely undamaged by the fire but beginning to suffer from the ravages of the acidic atmosphere.
Glyph almost began a new career as snake chow right there and then as this damned viper rose up out of its nest. Cursed thing was as thick as a man’
torso and easily ten or twelve feet long – I’ve learned since that they’re called Nagah and use human mimicry, the children’s voices Ash had heard, to lure prey to its death. All I knew as I opened up with the LMG on the Steel Lynx was that I was glad to be tucked up inside the van. All told there were maybe six or eight of those damn snakes and they took some killing! Ash copped a nasty bite that looked like it would need attention but we didn’t need a second invitation to take the hint and get the hell out. We grabbed as many of the files as we could and the hard disks from the computers, loaded up and slowly rumbled off through the mire.
The lengthier return journey gave us opportunity to catalogue some of what we had found to see whether it would satisfy the Johnson from Saeder Krupp and although none of us was a specialist, we seemed to have got what we needed. We gave Ash chance to visit Mal back in San Fran while we finished up our collating and then we handed the data over. Remarkably, no one got shafted – Johnson paid up with minimal fuss. Something tells me he’s not cut out for life in the Corps.
Mood: Despondent. Wish there was more we could do for Ash.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 30: 18.10.70>
We’ve had quite an entertaining few days just lately – a successful run, the beta test phase of some new Corp medikit (which, needless to say I was paranoid and savvy enough to turn down, it remains to be seen whether Glyph and Ash suffer for their enthusiasm) and a sniff of info on Ash’ brother Blake that was tied to a sabotage mission we just couldn’t justify undertaking. Some damn Troll Toxic Shaman worked Ash over out in the Barrens and having beaten nine bells out of him, told him to sink a ship inbound for the San Fran Bay area if he ever wanted to see Blake again. Trouble was, our research soon found out that the ship had a 10,000 tonne cargo of carcinogens. Cuts me deep to think of the look on Ash face when he realised we were being asked to pollute and poison the whole San Fran Bay but I’ve got a whole trunk load of respect for him being the one to realise that sometimes the price is just too high. He made the call and we bailed but at what cost? I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, thinking he just gave away his last hope of finding his brother…
It isn’t all doom and gloom though. We know Blake is out there somewhere now and that word of him is circulating through the shadows. If there’s information to be found, we can try to find it ourselves and we also have a new face to look out for. That Troll Toxic wont be blending in at many Frat Parties so if we can hunt him down, maybe a little violent persuasion can be employed to make him cough up the goods.
It’s our second run in with the toxic underbelly of the world in the last five days. Through Snow, we picked up a run from Saeder Krupp to investigate a lapsed Governmental black op codenamed Buttercup. SK wanted the project files because they thought it would help inform some ongoing research of their own. The only catch – if there were any project files, they’d be hard copy because everything else had been wiped in the crash.
Old documents about Buttercup recently made public thanks to historic declassification regulations gave us the names of both scientists who headed up the project. We hit research mode, trying to find them or tie them to a location during the project run but quickly discovered that both Docs were dead. However, Doc Schaeffer’s missus was waiting for God in a retirement home just outside of San Fran so we blazed over to try and milk her for Intel. Mrs Schaeffer didn’t know much, her hubby had kept pretty tight-lipped about his research, even in the bedroom, but she did point us in the direction of a colleague and research student who had served under the main men. She also tipped us off to the fact that someone else had been asking the same questions and sure enough, we were a little way behind a.n.other interested party.
Knowing Mrs S had given the other goons the same name and address, we blazed on over to a quiet little residential area. I clocked a rotordrone high and we saw and heard a gunshot from an upstairs room of our man’s house. I pulled up, dumping Frosty out so he could get busy and then pumped a Flashbang and a Thermal Smoke grenade into the upper floor of the house with the Antioch. With the front of the house covered I burned rubber heading around back to cover anyone trying to give us the slip. It proved unnecessary, the Dream Team had whacked the goons before they left the back yard and Glyph had patched up our man well enough for him to tell us that the lab had been out in the Nevada desert at a place called Duckwater.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Duckwater had been caught in the fallout of a nuclear reactor that had gone critical in the nearby town of Ruth and that meant our target location was slap bang in the middle of a toxic hotzone. The less time we spent in the toxic zone the better so while we geared up in the proper toggs, I remoted the drone van out there, figuring we would zip in onboard the chopper to rendezvous with the van, do the job and then get the fuck out of there just as quickly.
Flying through the toxic zone in the chopper was an education and no mistake. The engine struggled in the mucky atmosphere and I spent the whole flight on the edge of my seat, monitoring and managing the engine so it didn’t fail on us. Even so we had to ditch at one point, after attracting the attention of an amorous toxic spirit and though I do say so myself, it was only my skill at the stick that kept us from face planting high speed dirt. Right about then we realised the chopper was a bit of a white elephant. Ground vehicles were certainly slower but there was less risk of death if the engine conked out. We got the bird back in the air and limped to the rendezvous but then I just got the chopper out of the zone, up above the ceiling of the worst pollutants and on the quickest and most direct route to clear air and then home. We were anchored to the earth from then on.
Duckwater was a shocking mess. A small community of largely residential buildings, decaying and half buried in the toxic debris and scavenged over by a pack of pitiful grey skinned bottom feeders scratching out a living in the filth. There was only one building that looked like it might be large enough to conceal Buttercup’s labs so we wasted no time in heading over there. Ash immediately got himself spooked, insisting he could hear children’s voices but for the first time, I was able to seal myself into the safety of the Step Van and let the drones do the work, sharing point duty with the Steel Lynx and using the offensive Iballs to scout out rooms.
The labs were smaller than I had been expecting and largely empty. We’d been warned that the project had ended abruptly with a lab fire during the crash but had hoped to find something intact to prove we were on the right track.
We finally struck paydirt with a small file store – computers and filing cabinets for hardcopy that were largely undamaged by the fire but beginning to suffer from the ravages of the acidic atmosphere.
Glyph almost began a new career as snake chow right there and then as this damned viper rose up out of its nest. Cursed thing was as thick as a man’
torso and easily ten or twelve feet long – I’ve learned since that they’re called Nagah and use human mimicry, the children’s voices Ash had heard, to lure prey to its death. All I knew as I opened up with the LMG on the Steel Lynx was that I was glad to be tucked up inside the van. All told there were maybe six or eight of those damn snakes and they took some killing! Ash copped a nasty bite that looked like it would need attention but we didn’t need a second invitation to take the hint and get the hell out. We grabbed as many of the files as we could and the hard disks from the computers, loaded up and slowly rumbled off through the mire.
The lengthier return journey gave us opportunity to catalogue some of what we had found to see whether it would satisfy the Johnson from Saeder Krupp and although none of us was a specialist, we seemed to have got what we needed. We gave Ash chance to visit Mal back in San Fran while we finished up our collating and then we handed the data over. Remarkably, no one got shafted – Johnson paid up with minimal fuss. Something tells me he’s not cut out for life in the Corps.
Mood: Despondent. Wish there was more we could do for Ash.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Six's blog, Scavenger hunt.
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 29: 28.09.70>
From the sublime to the ridiculous – I can’t believe what Glyph and I just put ourselves through for the good of Brutal Deluxe. I’m whacked!
So yeah, Brutal Deluxe - long story. This time the call came in from a man called Milan offering 250k for a brief sally on to the streets of San Fran.
I was interested but Glyph was the only one of the team free to join me and we soon found out we were outnumbered. Two other Shadowrunning teams were at the meet and it quickly became obvious that this was far from run of the mill. Each team had to register itself with Milan, which is where Glyph decided to christen us Brutal Deluxe, and was then given a shopping list.
Each item on the list had a points value and each team had three and a half hours to collect as many items from the shopping list as possible. At the end of the night, the team with the most points would win the 250k.
The teams blazed and I got vehicles on to the road via remote as we began calling down favours. Our strategy was to go for the biggest points first and then pick up what else we could incidentally. I blazed to the San Fran Giants stadium and we spotted a grid guide camera en route which we liberated to notch up our first point! At the Giants, Glyph diverted off to pick up some cats for a later item while I laid it on thick that I needed the First Base for a charity fundraiser. The manager swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I got the base, signed by the entire first team, a pair of box seat tickets for the match against the Padre’s and a cheque for 100k. The blag had been good but it was getting out of my control and I needed an out from this hairy situation fast. Feeling slightly guilty, I contacted the legitimate charity to collect the 100k and then, explaining that my charity treasure hunt was against the clock, I got the funk out of Dodge with the First Base and five guaranteed points.
I paid honest money for 50 gallons of AvGas and remoted one of the vehicles down to the airfield so it could be loaded up and that was our seventh point in the bag. I thought Papa could source a pre-grid guide car and called in a favour there, though that one never came off, and then begged Nunz to ‘liberate’ a Yakuza finger for me. I figured that with his Mafia connections there would be some coup to count against the Orientals but Nunz wasn’t playing ball. I could cough up ten large to pay for a hit or get the damn finger myself. I figured I had to speculate to accumulate and put my hand in my wallet again to secure two more points.
Snow proved willing to lend Glyph and I a Panther Assault Cannon for a test firing and we met there. Glyph had the transit full of half-feral rescue cats and it didn’t look as though she’d had a pleasant journey. The whole debacle was lunacy but Snow was able to shed some light on Milan’s bizarre game. Seems the treasure hunt is Corp-financed and allows Milan to put fledgling Shadowrunning teams through a dry run and test their resourcefulness. With our Rep and possible future contracts on the line, we redoubled our efforts for the sake of the whole team.
We took the Panther Assault Cannon out to the Barrens. We needed a spent shell casing to earn our tenth point and there were bonus points available if the shell had been fired at us. We had no intention of risking anyone else shooting at us so we set it all up. Glyph fired and recorded a POV film of the shot while I concentrated on jumping aside just before the shell hit.
It took us a couple of tries but we pulled it off and headed back to Snow in high spirits.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
En route, I realised that an RFID tag in the grid guide camera we had first pinched had attracted Lone Star’s attention. I called in another favour, this time from Bumfluff and between the two of us we managed to get away from the cops long enough to burn the tag. Seeing Lone Star reminded us that we might get some joy from Croner and sure enough he was game. We were going to have to put our hands in our pockets again but he could help us out with a couple of items on our shopping list.
From Snow, we went to the Municipal Waterworks and cut free the door for another point before loading Glyph’s rescue cats into the helicopter and heading for our next target. There were five points riding on rearranging the letters on a corporate building to say something rude, with bonus points for targeting an A, AA or AAA firm. We wanted to combine this with an item demanding we leave a dozen cats in a CEO’s office and that made this at least a seven pointer, plus bonuses. I’d realised that Mitsuhama was a perfect anagram of u_shit_Mama and we identified a small depot that would fit the bill.
Landing on the rooftop, we bailed out the cats and Glyph rappelled over the side of the building and got to work. She soon attracted the attention of the Rentacops so I bought the vehicle mounted weaponry into play to cover her ass and drop the opposition. Needless to say, that only attracted more attention and though Glyph was working like a Trojan, we soon had a Citymaster full of CorpSec en route. With Mitsuhama rechristened u_shit_Mama we moved to phase two, located the CEO’s office and started lobbing mangy feral cats in through the window. CorpSec appeared and the vehicle weaponry was called into use again while Glyph and I finished up and hightailed it in the chopper.
Time was running short so we headed to Lone Star and coughed up the cash for a set of Lone Star rims and a uniform shoulder patch. We struck lucky and spotted a ganger in the holding cells who sold us his jacket which took our tally for that encounter to four plus any bonuses we picked up for the rank of the shoulder patch.
Glyph wanted to stop for at least one more item but I was twitchy. By now I had four vehicles on remote, each carrying valuable points-paying cargo and I knew that if just one of them didn’t get to the meet by 11pm we would forfeit the whole game. I called it, took the gamble that we had done enough and we blazed. Fortunately, I was proven right. We dragged our haul into the meet to find we had been beaten back by both of the other teams. It didn’t matter though, we were back before Milan and that meant our points would all count. He did the totting up and announced the Brutal Deluxe total of 27 points as the winning score and by some margin! Result!
We’d coughed up the best part of 30 large between us but still earned 110k a piece, to say nothing of the boost to our Rep and the potential contracts Milan might now poke in our direction. It’s clearly time for a well-earned break though so Kitty and I are off to Paris for a romantic week away – our first visit to Europe. Back soon!
Mood: High as a kite!
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 29: 28.09.70>
From the sublime to the ridiculous – I can’t believe what Glyph and I just put ourselves through for the good of Brutal Deluxe. I’m whacked!
So yeah, Brutal Deluxe - long story. This time the call came in from a man called Milan offering 250k for a brief sally on to the streets of San Fran.
I was interested but Glyph was the only one of the team free to join me and we soon found out we were outnumbered. Two other Shadowrunning teams were at the meet and it quickly became obvious that this was far from run of the mill. Each team had to register itself with Milan, which is where Glyph decided to christen us Brutal Deluxe, and was then given a shopping list.
Each item on the list had a points value and each team had three and a half hours to collect as many items from the shopping list as possible. At the end of the night, the team with the most points would win the 250k.
The teams blazed and I got vehicles on to the road via remote as we began calling down favours. Our strategy was to go for the biggest points first and then pick up what else we could incidentally. I blazed to the San Fran Giants stadium and we spotted a grid guide camera en route which we liberated to notch up our first point! At the Giants, Glyph diverted off to pick up some cats for a later item while I laid it on thick that I needed the First Base for a charity fundraiser. The manager swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I got the base, signed by the entire first team, a pair of box seat tickets for the match against the Padre’s and a cheque for 100k. The blag had been good but it was getting out of my control and I needed an out from this hairy situation fast. Feeling slightly guilty, I contacted the legitimate charity to collect the 100k and then, explaining that my charity treasure hunt was against the clock, I got the funk out of Dodge with the First Base and five guaranteed points.
I paid honest money for 50 gallons of AvGas and remoted one of the vehicles down to the airfield so it could be loaded up and that was our seventh point in the bag. I thought Papa could source a pre-grid guide car and called in a favour there, though that one never came off, and then begged Nunz to ‘liberate’ a Yakuza finger for me. I figured that with his Mafia connections there would be some coup to count against the Orientals but Nunz wasn’t playing ball. I could cough up ten large to pay for a hit or get the damn finger myself. I figured I had to speculate to accumulate and put my hand in my wallet again to secure two more points.
Snow proved willing to lend Glyph and I a Panther Assault Cannon for a test firing and we met there. Glyph had the transit full of half-feral rescue cats and it didn’t look as though she’d had a pleasant journey. The whole debacle was lunacy but Snow was able to shed some light on Milan’s bizarre game. Seems the treasure hunt is Corp-financed and allows Milan to put fledgling Shadowrunning teams through a dry run and test their resourcefulness. With our Rep and possible future contracts on the line, we redoubled our efforts for the sake of the whole team.
We took the Panther Assault Cannon out to the Barrens. We needed a spent shell casing to earn our tenth point and there were bonus points available if the shell had been fired at us. We had no intention of risking anyone else shooting at us so we set it all up. Glyph fired and recorded a POV film of the shot while I concentrated on jumping aside just before the shell hit.
It took us a couple of tries but we pulled it off and headed back to Snow in high spirits.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
En route, I realised that an RFID tag in the grid guide camera we had first pinched had attracted Lone Star’s attention. I called in another favour, this time from Bumfluff and between the two of us we managed to get away from the cops long enough to burn the tag. Seeing Lone Star reminded us that we might get some joy from Croner and sure enough he was game. We were going to have to put our hands in our pockets again but he could help us out with a couple of items on our shopping list.
From Snow, we went to the Municipal Waterworks and cut free the door for another point before loading Glyph’s rescue cats into the helicopter and heading for our next target. There were five points riding on rearranging the letters on a corporate building to say something rude, with bonus points for targeting an A, AA or AAA firm. We wanted to combine this with an item demanding we leave a dozen cats in a CEO’s office and that made this at least a seven pointer, plus bonuses. I’d realised that Mitsuhama was a perfect anagram of u_shit_Mama and we identified a small depot that would fit the bill.
Landing on the rooftop, we bailed out the cats and Glyph rappelled over the side of the building and got to work. She soon attracted the attention of the Rentacops so I bought the vehicle mounted weaponry into play to cover her ass and drop the opposition. Needless to say, that only attracted more attention and though Glyph was working like a Trojan, we soon had a Citymaster full of CorpSec en route. With Mitsuhama rechristened u_shit_Mama we moved to phase two, located the CEO’s office and started lobbing mangy feral cats in through the window. CorpSec appeared and the vehicle weaponry was called into use again while Glyph and I finished up and hightailed it in the chopper.
Time was running short so we headed to Lone Star and coughed up the cash for a set of Lone Star rims and a uniform shoulder patch. We struck lucky and spotted a ganger in the holding cells who sold us his jacket which took our tally for that encounter to four plus any bonuses we picked up for the rank of the shoulder patch.
Glyph wanted to stop for at least one more item but I was twitchy. By now I had four vehicles on remote, each carrying valuable points-paying cargo and I knew that if just one of them didn’t get to the meet by 11pm we would forfeit the whole game. I called it, took the gamble that we had done enough and we blazed. Fortunately, I was proven right. We dragged our haul into the meet to find we had been beaten back by both of the other teams. It didn’t matter though, we were back before Milan and that meant our points would all count. He did the totting up and announced the Brutal Deluxe total of 27 points as the winning score and by some margin! Result!
We’d coughed up the best part of 30 large between us but still earned 110k a piece, to say nothing of the boost to our Rep and the potential contracts Milan might now poke in our direction. It’s clearly time for a well-earned break though so Kitty and I are off to Paris for a romantic week away – our first visit to Europe. Back soon!
Mood: High as a kite!
Ends: 2/2>
||
six's blog. Eleven nameless men
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 28: 18.09.70>
I just made it back from the briefest run of my career – there’s something pleasantly pre-ordained about spotting the wet work target you’ve just been set, sitting about five feet behind the Johnson doing the hiring!
I picked up a call from a man called Donovan who had been pointed in our direction by Lone Star pragmatist Croner. We met at a waterfront café and Donovan announced he represented an international business cabal called the Eleven Nameless Men. They pride themselves on their anonymity and the power that gives them to manipulate the Stock Markets. Unfortunately, their identities had been compromised and an assassin had begun systematically taking them out. With two dead, the remaining Nameless Men wanted the assassin stopped and his employer identified before anymore bodies hit the floor.
Donovan claimed to be an unknown factor, working as a go-between for the Eleven but otherwise unconnected to them. However, Ki-Rinn spotted someone at a nearby table paying a bit too much attention to our meet. He was concerned enough to run a Matrix sweep on the man and turned up that he was French ex-military, Special Forces and dishonourably discharged for mental instability. His poor surveillance skills had made him our Prime Suspect and we resolved to keep him in our sights until his guilt or innocence could be confirmed.
I began remoting vehicles into position, while Glyph went off to meet Croner and check out the police reports on the two deaths. Ki-rinn kept tabs on our man while I pulled a quick vehicle switch to give us an unmarked tail we could use on him. Glyph was soon back in touch with details of a magical ‘bent’ to the assassinations and a unique orichalcum bullet that had been used. Orichalcum bullets had to be hand-made – if Frenchie had made them himself we were fried but Glyph had spotted an engraved ‘A’ on each bullet and that led Ki-rinn to a Weaponsmith called Apollo though we knew he wouldn’t be too forthcoming about his clients.
Our mark was being far too relaxed – going about his daily commute with all the innocence of the other tram passengers and that was getting K and I twitchy. Either we were in danger of losing our man, or we were wasting time on an innocent bystander. We decided to ask him directly and at the next stop I blocked the tram so Ki-rinn could board it and take our target out.
As he surged aboard, I saw the driver reach for an alarm and had plugged him before I’d really thought about what I was doing. That bought Lone Star down on us and it was only good preparation that meant I was equipped to deal with them. Using the Antioch, I slammed a FlashBang through the windscreen on the Patrol One to take out the cops inside. Out of control, the Patrol One careened toward innocent bystanders and I couldn’t face having that on my conscience. The next grenade had to be precisely planted but I got it under the front off-side and the blast knocked the car to one side where it crashed harmlessly.
Ki-rinn bundled Frenchie into the van and we hightailed it. I left the subsequent interrogation to Frosty and Glyph but the guy was stone cold and they weren’t getting a peep out of him. Ki-rinn hit the matrix again, checking back on Frenchie’s first arrival in San Fran. From there it was a fairly routine sweep to track him through to his accommodation and we headed there to see if we could turn up any evidence.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
I made damn sure our slippery customer would still be present and correct when we returned to the van and then we headed inside. We didn’t have an apartment number and my smart mouth soon got me in trouble with a redneck nationalist who didn’t like the idea that I might know someone from another country. Glyph and Ki-rinn’s speedy trigger fingers dealt with that problem and Frosty got lucky with the B&E.
Frenchie had photographs of eleven people we assumed were the Nameless, a custom sniper rifle, a box of orichalcum bullets and some sort of ritual magic thing going on, using blood on the bullet and on the photographs to defeat his targets magical defences. Ki-rinn was able to hack Frenchie’s Commlink and that allowed us to piece together who his employers were and what the Eleven had done to piss them off in the first place.
And that, was pretty much that. We dealt with Frenchie, passed on the info to Donovan and even got a little extra cash from the Eleven because we were able to warn them how their magical defences were being bypassed. Talk about sweet.
Mood: Job done.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 28: 18.09.70>
I just made it back from the briefest run of my career – there’s something pleasantly pre-ordained about spotting the wet work target you’ve just been set, sitting about five feet behind the Johnson doing the hiring!
I picked up a call from a man called Donovan who had been pointed in our direction by Lone Star pragmatist Croner. We met at a waterfront café and Donovan announced he represented an international business cabal called the Eleven Nameless Men. They pride themselves on their anonymity and the power that gives them to manipulate the Stock Markets. Unfortunately, their identities had been compromised and an assassin had begun systematically taking them out. With two dead, the remaining Nameless Men wanted the assassin stopped and his employer identified before anymore bodies hit the floor.
Donovan claimed to be an unknown factor, working as a go-between for the Eleven but otherwise unconnected to them. However, Ki-Rinn spotted someone at a nearby table paying a bit too much attention to our meet. He was concerned enough to run a Matrix sweep on the man and turned up that he was French ex-military, Special Forces and dishonourably discharged for mental instability. His poor surveillance skills had made him our Prime Suspect and we resolved to keep him in our sights until his guilt or innocence could be confirmed.
I began remoting vehicles into position, while Glyph went off to meet Croner and check out the police reports on the two deaths. Ki-rinn kept tabs on our man while I pulled a quick vehicle switch to give us an unmarked tail we could use on him. Glyph was soon back in touch with details of a magical ‘bent’ to the assassinations and a unique orichalcum bullet that had been used. Orichalcum bullets had to be hand-made – if Frenchie had made them himself we were fried but Glyph had spotted an engraved ‘A’ on each bullet and that led Ki-rinn to a Weaponsmith called Apollo though we knew he wouldn’t be too forthcoming about his clients.
Our mark was being far too relaxed – going about his daily commute with all the innocence of the other tram passengers and that was getting K and I twitchy. Either we were in danger of losing our man, or we were wasting time on an innocent bystander. We decided to ask him directly and at the next stop I blocked the tram so Ki-rinn could board it and take our target out.
As he surged aboard, I saw the driver reach for an alarm and had plugged him before I’d really thought about what I was doing. That bought Lone Star down on us and it was only good preparation that meant I was equipped to deal with them. Using the Antioch, I slammed a FlashBang through the windscreen on the Patrol One to take out the cops inside. Out of control, the Patrol One careened toward innocent bystanders and I couldn’t face having that on my conscience. The next grenade had to be precisely planted but I got it under the front off-side and the blast knocked the car to one side where it crashed harmlessly.
Ki-rinn bundled Frenchie into the van and we hightailed it. I left the subsequent interrogation to Frosty and Glyph but the guy was stone cold and they weren’t getting a peep out of him. Ki-rinn hit the matrix again, checking back on Frenchie’s first arrival in San Fran. From there it was a fairly routine sweep to track him through to his accommodation and we headed there to see if we could turn up any evidence.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
I made damn sure our slippery customer would still be present and correct when we returned to the van and then we headed inside. We didn’t have an apartment number and my smart mouth soon got me in trouble with a redneck nationalist who didn’t like the idea that I might know someone from another country. Glyph and Ki-rinn’s speedy trigger fingers dealt with that problem and Frosty got lucky with the B&E.
Frenchie had photographs of eleven people we assumed were the Nameless, a custom sniper rifle, a box of orichalcum bullets and some sort of ritual magic thing going on, using blood on the bullet and on the photographs to defeat his targets magical defences. Ki-rinn was able to hack Frenchie’s Commlink and that allowed us to piece together who his employers were and what the Eleven had done to piss them off in the first place.
And that, was pretty much that. We dealt with Frenchie, passed on the info to Donovan and even got a little extra cash from the Eleven because we were able to warn them how their magical defences were being bypassed. Talk about sweet.
Mood: Job done.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Six's blog
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 28: 03.09.70>
Life has a habit of getting on top of you from time to time, which is why it has been a while since my last update. It has been a wild few days – hell at one point I even thought my friendship with Ash was gone. We’re still on patchy ground but I’ve been able to lay some doubts to rest.
Back around the 26th of August, Snow put us on to a job from a small marketing Corp called Ocean Blue. On the verge of closing a major deal, one of their star execs had gone missing and with his handshake and signature needed for the contract, Ocean Blue needed to find out what had happened to him – pronto.
Research mode revealed that our boy wonder, Brent Masters, had been taken away for some ‘recreation’ by two delightful looking young ladies but it was a clear set up, less legit than a 30 buck Rolex, and we quickly tracked Brent’s last known location to a Shadowrunner flophouse where we assumed he was being held hostage.
I watched the street while the rest of the team busted in. The place was empty but Ash quickly started jabbering that he could see Brent Masters there and that he was trapped in the Astral plane. Before we could even start to puzzle that little snippet out, I saw the runners who owned the flophouse coming home, laden down with jerry cans of petrol. Who burns down their own flop and why?! Well, we had the drop on them and after a brief and bloody scrap we were able to ask the survivors exactly that. They claimed to have kidnapped Brent as per their contract, only to have him disappear on them. They claimed the flophouse was now haunted and had planned on burning it down to exorcise the spooks and recoup some of the costs of their botched job from the insurance. It was our only physical link to Brent, if a somewhat tenuous one, so we had other ideas. We sent the surviving runners from the other team packing and holed up. Inevitably, they came back looking for revenge and we were forced to shoot up the flophouse for a second time but the scrap was more dramatic this time out and with Lone Star closing in, we fled the scene.
The other team’s Mage had speculated on Brent’s disappearance with us and Ash had sorted out some sort of magical tracking that linked the flophouse where Brent was supposed to be astrally trapped with a familiar location in Silicon Valley. The former home of CAT’s CORE project had been refurbished, rebadged as a Genesis facility and was once more on our radar. We went for the direct approach, busting in and working our way down to the basement where the CORE project had been based. This too had been refurbished and now boasted a corporate suite to rival any Penthouse in the city. In residence?
None other than the previously deceased Dominic Cross.
Now I’m no Doctor but people who get their fucking heads blown off are not, in my experience, in the habit of getting up and strolling around afterwards. I was stunned. So was Glyph. Ash however, strolled into the suite like a friend of the family and sat down for tea, biccies and a nice chat. To say we felt betrayed was an understatement. Who sits down and takes tea with a supposedly dead scumbag whose life achievements including brain washing your brother and kidnapping your sister. Ash’ actions were way outside my comfort zone but before we could twitch, the door to the suite was slammed in our faces and despite our best efforts proved utterly impassable.
Continues: 1/3>
Ash emerged, unharmed and unfazed by our astonishment with his blasé reactions, clutching an ornate wooden box. I was mightily pissed at this point. I just could not comprehend why we weren’t putting Cross back in his grave. Glyph agreed so with a small C-15 charge, we did just that and you better believe I made damn sure this time. Drone obs confirmed Cross was pate. All that remained was the CORE orb he’d had embedded in his head but I even rolled that into the heart of the flames and stopped to watch it melt.
Ash started in on us with some damn fool scheme to free Brent that Cross had given him and that just about pushed me over the edge. I couldn’t accept the fact that Ash was going to tamely accept anything Cross had told him and take it at face value. We’re talking about Cross, a man who should be dead, a man who brainwashed Ash’s brother, a man who kidnapped and threatened our loved ones, a man whose schemes have caused us no end of trouble and loss.
And Ash is going to trust him and follow his instructions to try and free Brent Masters? Not happening, no way. I told Ash there and then in the middle of the Genesis facility exactly what I thought of him, his unpredictable behaviour of late and his reaction to meeting Cross again. I walked, packed up my kit, drew the Lone Star away from the facility to at least help the team make their getaway and washed my hands of the Run.
I kept an eye on the news and the development of the run as best I could but it gave me no satisfaction to be proven right when Lone Star discovered the bodies of Brent Masters and our liaison at Ocean Blue and put the time of death several days before we had first met them. From start to finish the whole thing had been a screw job, and I could only assume it was done to manipulate Ash into doing Cross’ dirty work for him.
Hours ticked by and nobody responded to my warning. Even having fallen out with Ash, I couldn’t stand the thought of the team being in trouble so I headed back to the Flophouse, where I was picking their vehicles up on GPS.
It seemed the guys had been involved in a third firefight there but beyond a Lone Star mopping up operation there was no sign of them. Worried now, I quickly linked into the stealth tag I had put on Ash and tracked them to a Corp called the Alamais Foundation. All set to bust in and try and get them out, I was somewhat surprised to find them sitting in the lobby, a little shaken up, a little battered and bruised but otherwise OK.
They filled me in. It seemed Cross had given Ash a statue – a magical seal that it wouldn’t be a good idea to break. Cross was prevented from breaking the seal by the magic worked into it but someone with pure intentions, such as rescuing a trapped man from the Astral Plane, could have broken it. The whole plot had been a set up by Cross to persuade Ash to break the statue for him. Fortunately a Dragon called Alamais, CEO of this Alamais Foundation, had gotten wind of the plot and intervened, sending his goons to subdue Ash and the team and haul them in front of the Dragon. Alamais had taken the statue and clearly had no intention of giving it back, but he had filled in a few blanks. The Legion and CORE projects CAT had been working on were designed solely to create clones of Dominic Cross that Allisom could possess and work through. At least we know now why Cross appears to have more lives than a cat.
And so to the bombshell. Ash had cut a deal with the Dragon and taken on a job to kill the head of the Legion project and throw a spanner in the works of Cross’ clone factory. Hell I would have done that for free, so when the team asked me to come back onboard, I agreed, despite any misgivings I had about whether or not the Dragon was out to screw us over too. Ki-rinn picked up a data trail on Simon Crusher, the man Alamais identified as leading the Legion project and we soon found ourselves masquerading as horsey types to gain the confidence of a man called Philip Myers. Myers had part-owned a racehorse with Crusher and we thought he might still be in contact with our target. Sure enough, he sang like a canary and using a nanopaste facial disguise we decided I would pose as Myers to meet Crusher at the racetrack.
Continues: 2/3>
The meeting went like a dream, in spite of a couple of hairy moments and we all worked together to con Crusher into believing he was talking to his old friend while we slipped a stealth tag on to his jacket. I played Myers, Glyph played the drunken broad who made a pass at Crusher and Ki-rinn played my personal bodyguard, intervening physically to tag our man while hauling the horny drunk away. I wasn’t keen on staying any longer than necessary and increasing the risk our deception might be noticed so we made our excuses and left. When Crusher finally departed the racetrack he used a helicopter and while he had the edge on us for speed, we were as close behind him on the ground as four wheels and a beefy engine would allow.
The Legion Facility was on the shores of Pyramid Lake, near Nixon and we made our way there without too much fuss. Glyph and Ki-rinn teamed up well to gain us access to the compound and although ill-advised use of explosive ammunition soon gave our presence away, our slick teamwork meant we were able to mop up the opposition without too much trouble. During the firefight, Glyph and Ash had discovered an access point for an underground extension of the facility and we cautiously headed inside.
Security was tight. Automatic blast doors. Steel Lynx security drones. It took all of us, working together to access the lower levels and fight off the security detail – more of CAT’s damned console soldiers. Most of the lower level was dominated by a huge cloning room with hi-tech medical bays for 16 copies of Dominic Cross. Only 8 of the bays were occupied by fledgling clones but there were also experiments being conducted on the good townsfolk of Nixon, who were presumably supplying the raw genetic materials for the clones. It was a drawn out and bloody battle down there and I’m not ashamed to say that I kept my head down. A fly-spy drone made for a good targeting spotter, locating and marking targets for the heavy guns of Ki-rinn, Glyph and Ash but my rudimentary skills as a medic were also in demand. I pumped so many medical Nanites into Frosty it must have been like a miniature Charge of the Light Brigade in his bloodstream.
We’d still seen no sign of Crusher so headed deeper into the facility, out under the lake and up inside the pyramid shaped rock formation that had inspired its name. Here we found Crusher, protected by a pair of the CORE vampires we had previously encountered, engaged in some sort of huge ritual.
Glyph and I dispatched the Vamps, previous experience making us wise to their moves, while Ki-rinn and Ash concentrated on Crusher. Ash I think got the killing shot in and his fall seemed to disrupt the ritual, sending lightning arcing explosively around the room and earthing through us! I’ve cursed the wasted cash since buying insulated armour for the swipe of the Thunderbirds but it paid dividends that day!
We figured it wouldn’t take that long for Crusher to be replaced and then the clone factory would get back on track. Well we couldn’t have that could we? I know we’re making something of a habit out of blowing up CAT facilities but Glyph had plenty of C-15 and some damn fool had tunnelled out under the lake which made flooding the place laughable simple. It was too good an opportunity to resist, so we didn’t. We added insult to injury by making our escape in a stolen helicopter too…
Ki-rinn has his ex-army buddies stripping the chopper down as we speak and Ash even managed to get the Dragon to pay up. It has been a wild ride these last few days but things seem to have turned out alright in the end. We all deserve a break now. I’ve got the Step Van up on the ramps and a few devious plans for modding it so I’ll welcome a couple of week’s alone in the garage.
Mood: Well satisfied
Ends: 3/3>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 28: 03.09.70>
Life has a habit of getting on top of you from time to time, which is why it has been a while since my last update. It has been a wild few days – hell at one point I even thought my friendship with Ash was gone. We’re still on patchy ground but I’ve been able to lay some doubts to rest.
Back around the 26th of August, Snow put us on to a job from a small marketing Corp called Ocean Blue. On the verge of closing a major deal, one of their star execs had gone missing and with his handshake and signature needed for the contract, Ocean Blue needed to find out what had happened to him – pronto.
Research mode revealed that our boy wonder, Brent Masters, had been taken away for some ‘recreation’ by two delightful looking young ladies but it was a clear set up, less legit than a 30 buck Rolex, and we quickly tracked Brent’s last known location to a Shadowrunner flophouse where we assumed he was being held hostage.
I watched the street while the rest of the team busted in. The place was empty but Ash quickly started jabbering that he could see Brent Masters there and that he was trapped in the Astral plane. Before we could even start to puzzle that little snippet out, I saw the runners who owned the flophouse coming home, laden down with jerry cans of petrol. Who burns down their own flop and why?! Well, we had the drop on them and after a brief and bloody scrap we were able to ask the survivors exactly that. They claimed to have kidnapped Brent as per their contract, only to have him disappear on them. They claimed the flophouse was now haunted and had planned on burning it down to exorcise the spooks and recoup some of the costs of their botched job from the insurance. It was our only physical link to Brent, if a somewhat tenuous one, so we had other ideas. We sent the surviving runners from the other team packing and holed up. Inevitably, they came back looking for revenge and we were forced to shoot up the flophouse for a second time but the scrap was more dramatic this time out and with Lone Star closing in, we fled the scene.
The other team’s Mage had speculated on Brent’s disappearance with us and Ash had sorted out some sort of magical tracking that linked the flophouse where Brent was supposed to be astrally trapped with a familiar location in Silicon Valley. The former home of CAT’s CORE project had been refurbished, rebadged as a Genesis facility and was once more on our radar. We went for the direct approach, busting in and working our way down to the basement where the CORE project had been based. This too had been refurbished and now boasted a corporate suite to rival any Penthouse in the city. In residence?
None other than the previously deceased Dominic Cross.
Now I’m no Doctor but people who get their fucking heads blown off are not, in my experience, in the habit of getting up and strolling around afterwards. I was stunned. So was Glyph. Ash however, strolled into the suite like a friend of the family and sat down for tea, biccies and a nice chat. To say we felt betrayed was an understatement. Who sits down and takes tea with a supposedly dead scumbag whose life achievements including brain washing your brother and kidnapping your sister. Ash’ actions were way outside my comfort zone but before we could twitch, the door to the suite was slammed in our faces and despite our best efforts proved utterly impassable.
Continues: 1/3>
Ash emerged, unharmed and unfazed by our astonishment with his blasé reactions, clutching an ornate wooden box. I was mightily pissed at this point. I just could not comprehend why we weren’t putting Cross back in his grave. Glyph agreed so with a small C-15 charge, we did just that and you better believe I made damn sure this time. Drone obs confirmed Cross was pate. All that remained was the CORE orb he’d had embedded in his head but I even rolled that into the heart of the flames and stopped to watch it melt.
Ash started in on us with some damn fool scheme to free Brent that Cross had given him and that just about pushed me over the edge. I couldn’t accept the fact that Ash was going to tamely accept anything Cross had told him and take it at face value. We’re talking about Cross, a man who should be dead, a man who brainwashed Ash’s brother, a man who kidnapped and threatened our loved ones, a man whose schemes have caused us no end of trouble and loss.
And Ash is going to trust him and follow his instructions to try and free Brent Masters? Not happening, no way. I told Ash there and then in the middle of the Genesis facility exactly what I thought of him, his unpredictable behaviour of late and his reaction to meeting Cross again. I walked, packed up my kit, drew the Lone Star away from the facility to at least help the team make their getaway and washed my hands of the Run.
I kept an eye on the news and the development of the run as best I could but it gave me no satisfaction to be proven right when Lone Star discovered the bodies of Brent Masters and our liaison at Ocean Blue and put the time of death several days before we had first met them. From start to finish the whole thing had been a screw job, and I could only assume it was done to manipulate Ash into doing Cross’ dirty work for him.
Hours ticked by and nobody responded to my warning. Even having fallen out with Ash, I couldn’t stand the thought of the team being in trouble so I headed back to the Flophouse, where I was picking their vehicles up on GPS.
It seemed the guys had been involved in a third firefight there but beyond a Lone Star mopping up operation there was no sign of them. Worried now, I quickly linked into the stealth tag I had put on Ash and tracked them to a Corp called the Alamais Foundation. All set to bust in and try and get them out, I was somewhat surprised to find them sitting in the lobby, a little shaken up, a little battered and bruised but otherwise OK.
They filled me in. It seemed Cross had given Ash a statue – a magical seal that it wouldn’t be a good idea to break. Cross was prevented from breaking the seal by the magic worked into it but someone with pure intentions, such as rescuing a trapped man from the Astral Plane, could have broken it. The whole plot had been a set up by Cross to persuade Ash to break the statue for him. Fortunately a Dragon called Alamais, CEO of this Alamais Foundation, had gotten wind of the plot and intervened, sending his goons to subdue Ash and the team and haul them in front of the Dragon. Alamais had taken the statue and clearly had no intention of giving it back, but he had filled in a few blanks. The Legion and CORE projects CAT had been working on were designed solely to create clones of Dominic Cross that Allisom could possess and work through. At least we know now why Cross appears to have more lives than a cat.
And so to the bombshell. Ash had cut a deal with the Dragon and taken on a job to kill the head of the Legion project and throw a spanner in the works of Cross’ clone factory. Hell I would have done that for free, so when the team asked me to come back onboard, I agreed, despite any misgivings I had about whether or not the Dragon was out to screw us over too. Ki-rinn picked up a data trail on Simon Crusher, the man Alamais identified as leading the Legion project and we soon found ourselves masquerading as horsey types to gain the confidence of a man called Philip Myers. Myers had part-owned a racehorse with Crusher and we thought he might still be in contact with our target. Sure enough, he sang like a canary and using a nanopaste facial disguise we decided I would pose as Myers to meet Crusher at the racetrack.
Continues: 2/3>
The meeting went like a dream, in spite of a couple of hairy moments and we all worked together to con Crusher into believing he was talking to his old friend while we slipped a stealth tag on to his jacket. I played Myers, Glyph played the drunken broad who made a pass at Crusher and Ki-rinn played my personal bodyguard, intervening physically to tag our man while hauling the horny drunk away. I wasn’t keen on staying any longer than necessary and increasing the risk our deception might be noticed so we made our excuses and left. When Crusher finally departed the racetrack he used a helicopter and while he had the edge on us for speed, we were as close behind him on the ground as four wheels and a beefy engine would allow.
The Legion Facility was on the shores of Pyramid Lake, near Nixon and we made our way there without too much fuss. Glyph and Ki-rinn teamed up well to gain us access to the compound and although ill-advised use of explosive ammunition soon gave our presence away, our slick teamwork meant we were able to mop up the opposition without too much trouble. During the firefight, Glyph and Ash had discovered an access point for an underground extension of the facility and we cautiously headed inside.
Security was tight. Automatic blast doors. Steel Lynx security drones. It took all of us, working together to access the lower levels and fight off the security detail – more of CAT’s damned console soldiers. Most of the lower level was dominated by a huge cloning room with hi-tech medical bays for 16 copies of Dominic Cross. Only 8 of the bays were occupied by fledgling clones but there were also experiments being conducted on the good townsfolk of Nixon, who were presumably supplying the raw genetic materials for the clones. It was a drawn out and bloody battle down there and I’m not ashamed to say that I kept my head down. A fly-spy drone made for a good targeting spotter, locating and marking targets for the heavy guns of Ki-rinn, Glyph and Ash but my rudimentary skills as a medic were also in demand. I pumped so many medical Nanites into Frosty it must have been like a miniature Charge of the Light Brigade in his bloodstream.
We’d still seen no sign of Crusher so headed deeper into the facility, out under the lake and up inside the pyramid shaped rock formation that had inspired its name. Here we found Crusher, protected by a pair of the CORE vampires we had previously encountered, engaged in some sort of huge ritual.
Glyph and I dispatched the Vamps, previous experience making us wise to their moves, while Ki-rinn and Ash concentrated on Crusher. Ash I think got the killing shot in and his fall seemed to disrupt the ritual, sending lightning arcing explosively around the room and earthing through us! I’ve cursed the wasted cash since buying insulated armour for the swipe of the Thunderbirds but it paid dividends that day!
We figured it wouldn’t take that long for Crusher to be replaced and then the clone factory would get back on track. Well we couldn’t have that could we? I know we’re making something of a habit out of blowing up CAT facilities but Glyph had plenty of C-15 and some damn fool had tunnelled out under the lake which made flooding the place laughable simple. It was too good an opportunity to resist, so we didn’t. We added insult to injury by making our escape in a stolen helicopter too…
Ki-rinn has his ex-army buddies stripping the chopper down as we speak and Ash even managed to get the Dragon to pay up. It has been a wild ride these last few days but things seem to have turned out alright in the end. We all deserve a break now. I’ve got the Step Van up on the ramps and a few devious plans for modding it so I’ll welcome a couple of week’s alone in the garage.
Mood: Well satisfied
Ends: 3/3>
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Six's blog. Bum-fluff
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 27: 22.08.70>
Just back from a track day and I can still smell the burnt rubber and gasoline. What a great day :o)
I suppose a word or two of explanation. First things first, we’re back in good old San Fran and all seems sweet. Kitty is as hot as ever and someone gave my apartment a new lick of paint to repair the damage done by the Triad before we smoothed things over with them. I’ve decided I’m never getting caught unawares again and Mal has very kindly fitted me out with the latest Betaware cyber leg – fully synthetic and realistic to look at and touch but with a nifty little cyber holster built in so I can keep a surprise or two to hand. Good kit.
In addition, while I was away I seem to have become Grasshopper or Old Father Time or something, invested with the wisdom of ages. Why? Because Kitty and I took a reunion cruise down the strip for race night yesterday and that punk Bumfluff came to me with his life story begging for my help.
For real. I mean this kid has got serious stones and vitamin Reality deficiency if he thinks getting his ass handed to him on the streets a few times in some way makes me his protector and mentor… However, we all know I’m really a soft touch and it can’t do my rep any harm – so I listen.
Seems Bumfluff fell foul of Seto’s gig the same way I did. There was a 100k bet down on a simple drag, Bumfluff felt certain he’d have the edge but as soon as things got underway experienced an few ‘technical’ troubles. Now Seto’s an ass and he’s pulling this shit on decent folks. I’d love to sock one to the smug fragger so Bumfluff has my attention but he ain’t done yakking. To try and rectify his first mistake, he made another. Trusted a nobody by the name of Grifter who offered him a suitcase full of Smack for 20 or 30 large. Figuring he can sell it on for enough dough to cover his debt to Seto, Bumfluff bit the scam. He then tries to sell the Smack to the local Vory Novacoke dealer, only to be told the Smack is hookey, ripped off from the Vory not 24 hours before. So now Bumfluff has a fat debt and some explaining to do to the Russian Mafia if he hopes to live out the day. I’m about ready to walk and let the knobhead swing but maybe just maybe we can help…
I bring in the team, Glyph, Ash and our infrequent tagalong Drifter.
Drifter’s worth his weight in gold and remembers that when we were down on our luck, Ash paid this Grifter dude who just scammed Bumfluff for a run to pick up a piece of art from a museum exhibition. We never did get around to that run and a little checking now proves Drifter right – Ash has also been scammed by Grifter.
Well, now it’s personal so we make moves to track Grifter down. Thanks to Daisy, it soon transpires that Grifter was responsible for doing over the Vory drug den and lifting the Novacoke. From our knowledge of Sickle and a couple of other brushes with the Vory we know they set a great store by personal honour so I make contact with the Dealer, Kier and offer a trade.
He lays off Bumfluff and we give him the little turd who raided his safe house. Kier’s a reasonable chap it seems. He’s happy with the trade, so we set a fake hard luck story circulating on Shadowlands BBS and set Drifter up as a honey trap – a down on his luck Runner looking for a quick, no questions asked buck. We strike gold, Drifter is invited to a meet and we set up a stake out and get ready to bust some heads. On Fly Spy I watch Drifter make contact at the meet. He’s joining a gang of Hispanics and Grifter for a raid on a poorly defended drug den. Drifter makes his excuses and leaves, somewhat smacked off his tits from the Blunt the Hispanics are toking and we hastily rearrange our hit.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
It soon becomes apparent that Grifter and his new friends are about to turn over the same Vory drug den he struck gold at, just a few days ago. It’s too much of an opportunity to really impress Kier so we take our chances against the whole crew and make our move – Glyph and I run a little drive-by as the Hispanics make to bail out of their vehicles and they come blazing after us.
Grifter, loaded down with the cash the Hispanics put up to buy into the hit, decides he’s got what he wanted and pushes off pronto with Ash and Drifter in tow.
Up and down the hills of San Fran, Glyph and I have our fun, taunting the Hispanics, outburning their lowriders and trading shots. They get outdriven, outclassed and outgunned – it’s Glyph and her custom automatics and me with the turret mounted Ares Antioch against SMG firing hippies so high they can barely shoot straight. It’s no contest – like shooting fish in a barrel. I lay down smoke and flash bangs as a distraction, dropping them through the windows and into the vehicles where I can, while Glyph methodically works her way through the whole damn crew. You’d count to ten slower than we made two burning messes on the highway!
By the time we catch up with Ash, he’s already run Grifter off of the road.
Glyph and I pull up just in time to watch the show as Grifter’s tub goes over on its roof and crunches to a stop in front of us. While Ash has a one-to-one with our itinerant scammer, Glyph and Drifter retrieve the cash – a cool 50k for the Bumfluff benevolent fund – and I arrange to hand Grifter over to Kier.
Kier is good to his word and I warn Bumfluff to steer clear of the Vory in future. He’s been a knobhead this time but he’s smart enough to know what a close shave he’s had – he could have been sleeping with fishes at the bottom of the bay if the Russian Mafia got hold of him. We still have a problem though – Bumfluff needs another 50k for Seto, PDQ. Fortunately, this time, Ash has a cunning plan…
And that’s where the track day fits in. Ash, Glyph, Drifter and Bumfluff came with me down to the track. I laid down a marker time for the others and they tried to beat it. If ten seconds slower can be counted as beating me, then I guess I’m in trouble lol. Bumfluff came closest though – kid’s got some skills and that was all Ash needed to know. At his suggestion, Ash and I have put up 25k each to cover the rest of Bumfluff’s debt and now the Punk’s gonna race for us. He’ll race in the colours and livery we choose, so we can advertise some of Ash’ contacts, my Custom work etc and he’ll race when we tell him to race. That means he’ll either play wingman to me and watch my back out on the track or he’ll split his winnings with us, 60:40 in his favour with Ash and I take 20 per cent a pop until he’s quits with us.
Bumfluff’s fragging ecstatic and while I have my reservations, Ash is convinced that we can make this work…
Mood: High. I can still hear the NOS firing!
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 27: 22.08.70>
Just back from a track day and I can still smell the burnt rubber and gasoline. What a great day :o)
I suppose a word or two of explanation. First things first, we’re back in good old San Fran and all seems sweet. Kitty is as hot as ever and someone gave my apartment a new lick of paint to repair the damage done by the Triad before we smoothed things over with them. I’ve decided I’m never getting caught unawares again and Mal has very kindly fitted me out with the latest Betaware cyber leg – fully synthetic and realistic to look at and touch but with a nifty little cyber holster built in so I can keep a surprise or two to hand. Good kit.
In addition, while I was away I seem to have become Grasshopper or Old Father Time or something, invested with the wisdom of ages. Why? Because Kitty and I took a reunion cruise down the strip for race night yesterday and that punk Bumfluff came to me with his life story begging for my help.
For real. I mean this kid has got serious stones and vitamin Reality deficiency if he thinks getting his ass handed to him on the streets a few times in some way makes me his protector and mentor… However, we all know I’m really a soft touch and it can’t do my rep any harm – so I listen.
Seems Bumfluff fell foul of Seto’s gig the same way I did. There was a 100k bet down on a simple drag, Bumfluff felt certain he’d have the edge but as soon as things got underway experienced an few ‘technical’ troubles. Now Seto’s an ass and he’s pulling this shit on decent folks. I’d love to sock one to the smug fragger so Bumfluff has my attention but he ain’t done yakking. To try and rectify his first mistake, he made another. Trusted a nobody by the name of Grifter who offered him a suitcase full of Smack for 20 or 30 large. Figuring he can sell it on for enough dough to cover his debt to Seto, Bumfluff bit the scam. He then tries to sell the Smack to the local Vory Novacoke dealer, only to be told the Smack is hookey, ripped off from the Vory not 24 hours before. So now Bumfluff has a fat debt and some explaining to do to the Russian Mafia if he hopes to live out the day. I’m about ready to walk and let the knobhead swing but maybe just maybe we can help…
I bring in the team, Glyph, Ash and our infrequent tagalong Drifter.
Drifter’s worth his weight in gold and remembers that when we were down on our luck, Ash paid this Grifter dude who just scammed Bumfluff for a run to pick up a piece of art from a museum exhibition. We never did get around to that run and a little checking now proves Drifter right – Ash has also been scammed by Grifter.
Well, now it’s personal so we make moves to track Grifter down. Thanks to Daisy, it soon transpires that Grifter was responsible for doing over the Vory drug den and lifting the Novacoke. From our knowledge of Sickle and a couple of other brushes with the Vory we know they set a great store by personal honour so I make contact with the Dealer, Kier and offer a trade.
He lays off Bumfluff and we give him the little turd who raided his safe house. Kier’s a reasonable chap it seems. He’s happy with the trade, so we set a fake hard luck story circulating on Shadowlands BBS and set Drifter up as a honey trap – a down on his luck Runner looking for a quick, no questions asked buck. We strike gold, Drifter is invited to a meet and we set up a stake out and get ready to bust some heads. On Fly Spy I watch Drifter make contact at the meet. He’s joining a gang of Hispanics and Grifter for a raid on a poorly defended drug den. Drifter makes his excuses and leaves, somewhat smacked off his tits from the Blunt the Hispanics are toking and we hastily rearrange our hit.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
It soon becomes apparent that Grifter and his new friends are about to turn over the same Vory drug den he struck gold at, just a few days ago. It’s too much of an opportunity to really impress Kier so we take our chances against the whole crew and make our move – Glyph and I run a little drive-by as the Hispanics make to bail out of their vehicles and they come blazing after us.
Grifter, loaded down with the cash the Hispanics put up to buy into the hit, decides he’s got what he wanted and pushes off pronto with Ash and Drifter in tow.
Up and down the hills of San Fran, Glyph and I have our fun, taunting the Hispanics, outburning their lowriders and trading shots. They get outdriven, outclassed and outgunned – it’s Glyph and her custom automatics and me with the turret mounted Ares Antioch against SMG firing hippies so high they can barely shoot straight. It’s no contest – like shooting fish in a barrel. I lay down smoke and flash bangs as a distraction, dropping them through the windows and into the vehicles where I can, while Glyph methodically works her way through the whole damn crew. You’d count to ten slower than we made two burning messes on the highway!
By the time we catch up with Ash, he’s already run Grifter off of the road.
Glyph and I pull up just in time to watch the show as Grifter’s tub goes over on its roof and crunches to a stop in front of us. While Ash has a one-to-one with our itinerant scammer, Glyph and Drifter retrieve the cash – a cool 50k for the Bumfluff benevolent fund – and I arrange to hand Grifter over to Kier.
Kier is good to his word and I warn Bumfluff to steer clear of the Vory in future. He’s been a knobhead this time but he’s smart enough to know what a close shave he’s had – he could have been sleeping with fishes at the bottom of the bay if the Russian Mafia got hold of him. We still have a problem though – Bumfluff needs another 50k for Seto, PDQ. Fortunately, this time, Ash has a cunning plan…
And that’s where the track day fits in. Ash, Glyph, Drifter and Bumfluff came with me down to the track. I laid down a marker time for the others and they tried to beat it. If ten seconds slower can be counted as beating me, then I guess I’m in trouble lol. Bumfluff came closest though – kid’s got some skills and that was all Ash needed to know. At his suggestion, Ash and I have put up 25k each to cover the rest of Bumfluff’s debt and now the Punk’s gonna race for us. He’ll race in the colours and livery we choose, so we can advertise some of Ash’ contacts, my Custom work etc and he’ll race when we tell him to race. That means he’ll either play wingman to me and watch my back out on the track or he’ll split his winnings with us, 60:40 in his favour with Ash and I take 20 per cent a pop until he’s quits with us.
Bumfluff’s fragging ecstatic and while I have my reservations, Ash is convinced that we can make this work…
Mood: High. I can still hear the NOS firing!
Ends: 2/2>
||
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Six's Blog.
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 26: 12.08.70>
I knew Chuckles was going to be trouble… How much trouble? How about persuading Ash to bail out mid-run, trouble. Yes, that much trouble. I’m fragging fuming, not least because I had to put my ass on the line to pull Chumpzilla’s fat out of the fire afterwards too.
The day started well. I had a call from Nunzio who had negotiated a deal for us with the Seven Stars Triad. They respected our effectiveness at bypassing their security to take their boys in and collect the Lone Star bounty and understood that it was just a job, nothing personal. However, they needed to save face and that meant reparations had to be made. The Triad Head Honcho said that for 30k, all sins could be forgiven and we’d be free to return home. As an added sweetener, Kung Lok threw in a warning and a sop to our ego. The sop? That our skill and success rate had not gone unnoticed and the Triad might be interested in employing us at a future date. The warning?
That restaurant owner Fu Hong had disagreed with the Triad’s upper echelons about letting us off so lightly and been thrown out on his ear after swearing a blood oath against us. Glyph and Ash agreed to chuck in 10k a pop with me to settle up so that we could go home and Nunzio agreed to facilitate the deal.
Before we could even think of packing up and leaving Atlanta, Ash took a call from a local fixer called Smith – the fruit of his efforts at contact development and relationship building. Smith offered to put us in touch with a Corp Johnson who was looking to employ a team. I liked the idea of having a fixer on side here in Atlanta and a bit of a rep – if we could cultivate both San Fran and Atlanta it meant we could switch between patches and would always be able to use the other as a bolt hole. Glyph agreed it was worth trying to make a spot more money before we left and we let Ash make the connections.
We met Smith and then the Johnson at a hotel downtown. The introductions from Smith were costing us ten percent and though both Ash and I considered this money well spent, Glyph had her reservations. Johnson represented Future Concepts, an R&D company who had signed a deal to head hunt a research scientist by the name of Dr Lawrence Callahan from Mitsuhama.
Callahan had never shown up for work and Future Concepts wanted their employee delivering to them. Wrangles about cash, golden handshakes and contingency payments aside, it all seemed fairly straightforward and we happily took the gig on.
Straight to the horse’s mouth, I decided to check whether Callahan was contactable through his former employer or not and after playing the hold game with a series of switchboard monkeys I was surprised to be put straight through to our quarry. Callahan claimed to have changed his mind and rebuffed me fairly quickly and left us with any number of conspiracy theories running through our heads. Had he feigned interest in Future Concepts to carry out some sort of industrial espionage? Were Mitsuhama holding him against his will? Did they have some sort of leverage over him?
Ultimately, the whys and wherefores were unimportant, our job was simply to deliver Callahan to Future Concepts, but at least we now knew where to find the good Doctor and what we would be up against in order to extract him successfully.
A recce of Callahan’s old apartment turned up little other than the telephone number of Flick Stevens, a co-worker who claimed to know nothing of Callahan’s whereabouts or contract with Future Concepts so we blazed to Mitsuhama where we had our first unpleasant surprise.
Continues: 1/3>
|| >
Mitsuhama is one of the Big Ten – the world’s largest corporations and that grants them extraterritoriality, the right to claim their buildings and compounds as sovereign land, exempt from the laws of the country and subject to laws set by the corporation itself. You can expect those laws to be stacked in the corporation’s favour and get short shrift and no assistance if you should happen to cross them. Knowing this, we gave the Mitsuhama compound a wide berth and set up surveillance in the hills overlooking it from the north. The compound covers roughly a square mile of territory, ringed by a double fence and houses five separate buildings. A quick hackette from Daisy was able to identify the building where Callahan worked and the accommodation block housing his apartment but even so, we faced a tough infiltration if we were going to get into the compound.
Glyph snuck down to within 500 metres of the exterior fence and was spotted, attracting the unwanted attention of a dog team. I expected to be picked up instantly over corporate air space but with little other option I sent the Fly Spy down into the compound and began to worm my way through to Callahan’s apartment.
It was then we got our next surprise. An announcement from Ash that he had to go meet someone and would be leaving us for an hour. He tried to use the fact that we were settling down to do some surveillance as an excuse to bail, claiming it didn’t need all three of us to watch the compound. He was right of course, but leaving us still sucked and I damn well told him so.
What if an opportunity to snatch the good Doctor presented itself? How could he help us if he was having a beer and a chinwag miles away? It all harked back to the bad old days, when Ono was captured by the Notable Anarchists.
It was asking for trouble but Ash was resolute. As it turned out, he was gone for much longer than an hour and would have cause to regret his decision before the end of the night.
Glyph and I debated entry methods until nightfall and then in the darkness, we spotted approaching headlights. A two-man security team had come to sweep the area and I instantly realised the control feed for the Fly Spy could have been detected and traced. Killing the signal we slipped away, then took the opportunity to circle around, break into the Mitsuhama security van and stow away in the back. They carried us right into the heart of the compound without so much as a harsh word. Talk about providence!
From their own garage, we hot-wired the van and used it to move unnoticed around the compound. Across at Callahan’s accommodation block, we aped a maintenance team and slipped unseen up the fire escape. As we climbed, all hell broke loose. Dogs were barking, security klaxon’s began blaring and shots were fired. Below us, we saw Ash sprinting across the compound like a fun-runner at the New York marathon. Knobhead. We had no idea how he’d gotten in but he clearly hadn’t been as savvy as us about it. We had a hurried conversation but there was no alternative, Ash was providing the perfect distraction and we had to capitalise on it. Helping him would jeopardise the entire run and all of our lives. He had made his bed, we had to let him lie in it. It was hard. Damn hard. Whatever those bastards were doing to Ash, it was making the poor fragger scream like a bitch. I think I had a little coming of age on that fire escape. I had no alternative but to harden my heart to those screams and the only thing that gave me any comfort was the thought that if he’d stuck with us, it would all have been fine.
These were the consequences of his own decisions, made at his own volition and he’d have to deal with them… Damn I sound like Ki-rinn but that’s all there was to it.
In Callahan’s room we found his lover Flick Stevens. I was shocked that the little bitch had lied to me with such aplomb and put a Stick-Shock in her to keep her compliant. When Callahan arrived and saw our hostage, he had little alternative but to cooperate. Ash had stirred up a hornet’s nest at the rear of the accommodation and that meant sucking it up and walking bold as brass, right out of the front door.
Continues: 2/3>
|| >
We got back to the van without any hassle and made our way down to the gates. As we approached, there was clearly a lockdown in effect – again, a legacy of Ash’s stupidity – and we had to think fast. Glyph surrendered one of her weapon projects but the grenades wouldn’t fire for me. Typical! I stamped on the gas, roaring towards the outer gate and Glyph took matters in her own hands, shooting the windshield out and then pinging a grenade off of the fencing. We roared toward the explosion just preying the gates would be weakened enough for a ramming and we got a lucky break smashing our way out on to the open road.
As Glyph strip searched Callahan and Stevens for RFID security and stealth tags, I played logistical Kerplunk with the security van, my car and Ash’
pick up. With the FN-Har in the back of the Dodge, I downed a tree so that it fell across the road behind us. We then ditched the van and all possible tags, switching into the pick-up before returning to Atlanta. Once in Atlanta, Glyph and I split again. She took Callahan to see Johnson and collect our pay while I took Stevens to negotiate a hostage exchange for Ash and managed to evade pursuit.
My heart was in my throat for the next couple of hours. I’ve never played spy before and I didn’t really know what I was doing. First I made contact with the head of R&D at Mitsuhama – Stevens’ and Callahan’s boss. I told him I had Stevens and gave him 15 minutes to ascertain if Ash was alive. Then I moved on, changing location and phone so they couldn’t track or trace me. On the second call, I offered a prisoner swap and gave them time to prep Ash for transport. It was then I broke the news to Daisy and with her help selected a suitable location for the exchange. On the third call, I gave my instructions, timing it so that Mitsuhama had time to get to the meet but little time for any dirty tricks. They’re a Corp for frag’s sake. I was expecting them to double cross me. I knew it would go wrong somewhere on down the line but I had to secure Ash’ freedom and just did what I could to protect myself. Tense? Check my pants…
At the appointed time, Stevens’ boss pulled up at the appointed place and we made the exchange. Ash got halfway to the car before Mitsuhama hit me with the double-cross. Ash was strapped with a TNT waistcoat and unless I sold my employer down the river it was goodnight good buddy. I made a quick call to Glyph on my other PAN to get her to explain to Johnson that Ash had been captured and there was a risk his PAN had been hacked for sensitive info. It was a feasible story that I figured would cover our asses and explain to Johnson how he had been compromised without actually souring our relationship or deal. And then a weird thing happened. I trusted the Corp. I mean, I had nothing to lose, Ash was dead if I didn’t co-operate and I suspected they’d betray me and kill him even if I did co-operate so all I could do was train the FN-Har on their car, whisper a silent promise that if he died, they’d all die too, and trust them. I gave them half of Johnson’s phone number and made them take the explosives off of Ash. With him walking toward the car, I gave them the rest of the number. I steeled myself for the gunfire, the sniper shot, the explosion. Nothing. They got back in their vehicle and drove away. The Corp dealt with me on equal footing. We negotiated and for the first time in my short career, I got what I wanted and the Corp got what they wanted. Colour me surprised… and relieved!
There was still every chance Ash was tagged so we hooked back up with his pick up and gear and he scanned himself for RFID transmitters before we blazed back over to Glyph’s location to help fight off the imminent arrival of Mitsuhama’s Snatch Back Squad. We were too late. Glyph was covering the doorway with smoking guns and two corpses, still warm, were slumped behind her near the unconscious Dr Callahan. Forewarned by Glyph, Johnson arrived in short order to collect the Doc and paid his dues. Job done. We blazed.
We still have issues. Mitsuhama may not let sleeping dogs lie and Ash needs to decide on his priorities. It’s either Chuckles or us and the job, especially when we’re mid-job, but for now we can breathe a sigh of relief and head home. Apologies have been made and the air between us cleared.
We’ll see if it sours in future.
Mood: Tense.
Ends: 3/3>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 26: 12.08.70>
I knew Chuckles was going to be trouble… How much trouble? How about persuading Ash to bail out mid-run, trouble. Yes, that much trouble. I’m fragging fuming, not least because I had to put my ass on the line to pull Chumpzilla’s fat out of the fire afterwards too.
The day started well. I had a call from Nunzio who had negotiated a deal for us with the Seven Stars Triad. They respected our effectiveness at bypassing their security to take their boys in and collect the Lone Star bounty and understood that it was just a job, nothing personal. However, they needed to save face and that meant reparations had to be made. The Triad Head Honcho said that for 30k, all sins could be forgiven and we’d be free to return home. As an added sweetener, Kung Lok threw in a warning and a sop to our ego. The sop? That our skill and success rate had not gone unnoticed and the Triad might be interested in employing us at a future date. The warning?
That restaurant owner Fu Hong had disagreed with the Triad’s upper echelons about letting us off so lightly and been thrown out on his ear after swearing a blood oath against us. Glyph and Ash agreed to chuck in 10k a pop with me to settle up so that we could go home and Nunzio agreed to facilitate the deal.
Before we could even think of packing up and leaving Atlanta, Ash took a call from a local fixer called Smith – the fruit of his efforts at contact development and relationship building. Smith offered to put us in touch with a Corp Johnson who was looking to employ a team. I liked the idea of having a fixer on side here in Atlanta and a bit of a rep – if we could cultivate both San Fran and Atlanta it meant we could switch between patches and would always be able to use the other as a bolt hole. Glyph agreed it was worth trying to make a spot more money before we left and we let Ash make the connections.
We met Smith and then the Johnson at a hotel downtown. The introductions from Smith were costing us ten percent and though both Ash and I considered this money well spent, Glyph had her reservations. Johnson represented Future Concepts, an R&D company who had signed a deal to head hunt a research scientist by the name of Dr Lawrence Callahan from Mitsuhama.
Callahan had never shown up for work and Future Concepts wanted their employee delivering to them. Wrangles about cash, golden handshakes and contingency payments aside, it all seemed fairly straightforward and we happily took the gig on.
Straight to the horse’s mouth, I decided to check whether Callahan was contactable through his former employer or not and after playing the hold game with a series of switchboard monkeys I was surprised to be put straight through to our quarry. Callahan claimed to have changed his mind and rebuffed me fairly quickly and left us with any number of conspiracy theories running through our heads. Had he feigned interest in Future Concepts to carry out some sort of industrial espionage? Were Mitsuhama holding him against his will? Did they have some sort of leverage over him?
Ultimately, the whys and wherefores were unimportant, our job was simply to deliver Callahan to Future Concepts, but at least we now knew where to find the good Doctor and what we would be up against in order to extract him successfully.
A recce of Callahan’s old apartment turned up little other than the telephone number of Flick Stevens, a co-worker who claimed to know nothing of Callahan’s whereabouts or contract with Future Concepts so we blazed to Mitsuhama where we had our first unpleasant surprise.
Continues: 1/3>
|| >
Mitsuhama is one of the Big Ten – the world’s largest corporations and that grants them extraterritoriality, the right to claim their buildings and compounds as sovereign land, exempt from the laws of the country and subject to laws set by the corporation itself. You can expect those laws to be stacked in the corporation’s favour and get short shrift and no assistance if you should happen to cross them. Knowing this, we gave the Mitsuhama compound a wide berth and set up surveillance in the hills overlooking it from the north. The compound covers roughly a square mile of territory, ringed by a double fence and houses five separate buildings. A quick hackette from Daisy was able to identify the building where Callahan worked and the accommodation block housing his apartment but even so, we faced a tough infiltration if we were going to get into the compound.
Glyph snuck down to within 500 metres of the exterior fence and was spotted, attracting the unwanted attention of a dog team. I expected to be picked up instantly over corporate air space but with little other option I sent the Fly Spy down into the compound and began to worm my way through to Callahan’s apartment.
It was then we got our next surprise. An announcement from Ash that he had to go meet someone and would be leaving us for an hour. He tried to use the fact that we were settling down to do some surveillance as an excuse to bail, claiming it didn’t need all three of us to watch the compound. He was right of course, but leaving us still sucked and I damn well told him so.
What if an opportunity to snatch the good Doctor presented itself? How could he help us if he was having a beer and a chinwag miles away? It all harked back to the bad old days, when Ono was captured by the Notable Anarchists.
It was asking for trouble but Ash was resolute. As it turned out, he was gone for much longer than an hour and would have cause to regret his decision before the end of the night.
Glyph and I debated entry methods until nightfall and then in the darkness, we spotted approaching headlights. A two-man security team had come to sweep the area and I instantly realised the control feed for the Fly Spy could have been detected and traced. Killing the signal we slipped away, then took the opportunity to circle around, break into the Mitsuhama security van and stow away in the back. They carried us right into the heart of the compound without so much as a harsh word. Talk about providence!
From their own garage, we hot-wired the van and used it to move unnoticed around the compound. Across at Callahan’s accommodation block, we aped a maintenance team and slipped unseen up the fire escape. As we climbed, all hell broke loose. Dogs were barking, security klaxon’s began blaring and shots were fired. Below us, we saw Ash sprinting across the compound like a fun-runner at the New York marathon. Knobhead. We had no idea how he’d gotten in but he clearly hadn’t been as savvy as us about it. We had a hurried conversation but there was no alternative, Ash was providing the perfect distraction and we had to capitalise on it. Helping him would jeopardise the entire run and all of our lives. He had made his bed, we had to let him lie in it. It was hard. Damn hard. Whatever those bastards were doing to Ash, it was making the poor fragger scream like a bitch. I think I had a little coming of age on that fire escape. I had no alternative but to harden my heart to those screams and the only thing that gave me any comfort was the thought that if he’d stuck with us, it would all have been fine.
These were the consequences of his own decisions, made at his own volition and he’d have to deal with them… Damn I sound like Ki-rinn but that’s all there was to it.
In Callahan’s room we found his lover Flick Stevens. I was shocked that the little bitch had lied to me with such aplomb and put a Stick-Shock in her to keep her compliant. When Callahan arrived and saw our hostage, he had little alternative but to cooperate. Ash had stirred up a hornet’s nest at the rear of the accommodation and that meant sucking it up and walking bold as brass, right out of the front door.
Continues: 2/3>
|| >
We got back to the van without any hassle and made our way down to the gates. As we approached, there was clearly a lockdown in effect – again, a legacy of Ash’s stupidity – and we had to think fast. Glyph surrendered one of her weapon projects but the grenades wouldn’t fire for me. Typical! I stamped on the gas, roaring towards the outer gate and Glyph took matters in her own hands, shooting the windshield out and then pinging a grenade off of the fencing. We roared toward the explosion just preying the gates would be weakened enough for a ramming and we got a lucky break smashing our way out on to the open road.
As Glyph strip searched Callahan and Stevens for RFID security and stealth tags, I played logistical Kerplunk with the security van, my car and Ash’
pick up. With the FN-Har in the back of the Dodge, I downed a tree so that it fell across the road behind us. We then ditched the van and all possible tags, switching into the pick-up before returning to Atlanta. Once in Atlanta, Glyph and I split again. She took Callahan to see Johnson and collect our pay while I took Stevens to negotiate a hostage exchange for Ash and managed to evade pursuit.
My heart was in my throat for the next couple of hours. I’ve never played spy before and I didn’t really know what I was doing. First I made contact with the head of R&D at Mitsuhama – Stevens’ and Callahan’s boss. I told him I had Stevens and gave him 15 minutes to ascertain if Ash was alive. Then I moved on, changing location and phone so they couldn’t track or trace me. On the second call, I offered a prisoner swap and gave them time to prep Ash for transport. It was then I broke the news to Daisy and with her help selected a suitable location for the exchange. On the third call, I gave my instructions, timing it so that Mitsuhama had time to get to the meet but little time for any dirty tricks. They’re a Corp for frag’s sake. I was expecting them to double cross me. I knew it would go wrong somewhere on down the line but I had to secure Ash’ freedom and just did what I could to protect myself. Tense? Check my pants…
At the appointed time, Stevens’ boss pulled up at the appointed place and we made the exchange. Ash got halfway to the car before Mitsuhama hit me with the double-cross. Ash was strapped with a TNT waistcoat and unless I sold my employer down the river it was goodnight good buddy. I made a quick call to Glyph on my other PAN to get her to explain to Johnson that Ash had been captured and there was a risk his PAN had been hacked for sensitive info. It was a feasible story that I figured would cover our asses and explain to Johnson how he had been compromised without actually souring our relationship or deal. And then a weird thing happened. I trusted the Corp. I mean, I had nothing to lose, Ash was dead if I didn’t co-operate and I suspected they’d betray me and kill him even if I did co-operate so all I could do was train the FN-Har on their car, whisper a silent promise that if he died, they’d all die too, and trust them. I gave them half of Johnson’s phone number and made them take the explosives off of Ash. With him walking toward the car, I gave them the rest of the number. I steeled myself for the gunfire, the sniper shot, the explosion. Nothing. They got back in their vehicle and drove away. The Corp dealt with me on equal footing. We negotiated and for the first time in my short career, I got what I wanted and the Corp got what they wanted. Colour me surprised… and relieved!
There was still every chance Ash was tagged so we hooked back up with his pick up and gear and he scanned himself for RFID transmitters before we blazed back over to Glyph’s location to help fight off the imminent arrival of Mitsuhama’s Snatch Back Squad. We were too late. Glyph was covering the doorway with smoking guns and two corpses, still warm, were slumped behind her near the unconscious Dr Callahan. Forewarned by Glyph, Johnson arrived in short order to collect the Doc and paid his dues. Job done. We blazed.
We still have issues. Mitsuhama may not let sleeping dogs lie and Ash needs to decide on his priorities. It’s either Chuckles or us and the job, especially when we’re mid-job, but for now we can breathe a sigh of relief and head home. Apologies have been made and the air between us cleared.
We’ll see if it sours in future.
Mood: Tense.
Ends: 3/3>
||
Monday, December 11, 2006
Six's Blog
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Error 006 Cannot locate host.
sending error.
Disconecting....
Rety in 3..2..1..
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 25: 06.08.70>
Ash is up to something. Devious little turd. I know he’s been out and about in Atlanta, doing his thing, flexing the feelers and trying to set us up with sufficient contacts to make us more effective. However, he’s going about it in a manner I’m not sure I like, getting us involved, again, in far deeper shit than I think we can handle.
He came in from one of his contact meet-n-greets a few days back with a mission he told us just had to be done. Pressed, he told us it was for ‘a friend’ and admitted that we wouldn’t be getting paid. Now give the lad his due, he offered to pay Glyph and I for our assistance, out of his own pocket but alarm bells were already starting to ring – none of us know anyone down here well enough to be doing jobs on the house… With reservations then, we agreed to help and soon came to realise that there was a philanthropic kilter to the Run he’d picked up. Atlanta has its very own Orkish Underground, which goes by the name of The Falls. The place has been getting terrorised for the past six years by a serial killer dubbed Lobo and Ash wanted us to go down there and serve up a slice of justice. The authorities don’t care about the place – evidently this new ‘friend’ Ash has made, does.
We resolved to head down there as disguised as we could make ourselves. We bought a couple of Rat Bikes and I got them running, while Ash invested in some tatty clothing and dirtied up our gear – we didn’t want to get lynched for our ‘shinies’ by a horde of Ork Tramps. Reasoning that cash would have little value in the slums of the undercity, Glyph collected together some barter items – food stuffs, medical supplies, booze and fags and suitable togged up we went looking for trouble.
Just getting into the place was a trial. Friendly and welcoming they ain’t but we made our way around the barricades, observation posts and obvious ambush points thanks to the bikes and rode on in. Place is called The Falls because of the constantly streaming water that cascades from the foundations of Atlanta above down on to the undercity – a brackish mix of rainwater, spill from cracked utility pipes, sewage overflow and the natural leak from the water table. It’s a shitty way to live basically and whole areas of the place are flooded with several feet of collected water.
The inhabitants could see through our disguises straight away. Proud to a man, they were unwilling to accept help from outsiders and it took all of our collective powers of persuasion just to get them to talk to us. The art of persuasion often includes violence however and as Ash negotiated, Glyph and I clocked a group of Toughs moving in to get personal. One of them was carrying a sap and intended to use it but when it was shot right out of his hand, he took the point that we might object. The air was thick with unspoken threats of violence for a while but I twigged we were outside what passed for a hospital down there. Medical supplies changed hands and we ‘bought’ the information we were after.
We were pointed in the direction of an area of the undercity known as The Dark. The power seemed to be out in the entire area, evidently giving the place it’s name and as we made our way down to that sector, we mulled over the information we’d been given. It seemed Lobo’s victims were often found with circular abrasions on their chest and temple. We speculated that they might correspond to the medical pads used to monitor heart rate and brain activity and suddenly we began to smell rat. It was beginning to have all the hallmarks of another fucking Corp screw-job, using The Falls’ inhabitants as guinea pigs.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
We were all twitchy, but it was Glyph’s eagle eyes that spotted the first concrete evidence we were right about Corp involvement. As we hunted for a likely-looking building to serve as a temporary base of operations, she spotted that we were under surveillance from the distinctive profile of a set of night vision goggles. It was kit far too high tech for the undercity’s indigenous population so we began to revise our expectations of what we might come up against.
A quick recce soon confirmed that we would need to descend down to the lowest level of The Dark and overcoming a mixture of fear and distaste, we pressed on, chasing half seen shadows of movement, flickers at the edges of our vision and a deep baritone growl. Down at the bottom of the Underground we encountered our first serious resistance – a Corp kill-team kitted out for surveillance. Pinned down at the bottom of the stairwell we had to think fast and pull a twin flanking manoeuvre to switch around behind them and put them out of action. It was then we discovered the first body. It had clearly been the Corp team’s objective – relatively fresh but fitted with sophisticated medical monitoring equipment. Here was a pretty puzzle. Were the Corp ‘feeding’ civilians to Lobo? What information could they hope to obtain from the medical data of a sacrificial lamb?
Pushing on, we got a stroke of luck and spotted light reflecting off of the waters. Tracing it back to the source, we found a relatively intact building, with its own power supply and slipped inside the building opposite so we could make our way up to the windows and see what the hell our neighbours were up to. Jackpot! We were looking across at the Corp nerve centre, just a street’s width away, fully kitted out with computer equipment, signal uplink, medical monitoring bay and armed guards. We lined up, showdown style, at the window and on the count of three let hot lead rip from room to room. It was over in seconds – a concerted burst of fire that took them completely by surprise and finished the battle in our favour before they even knew they were fighting for their lives.
The Corp Ops were monitoring four camera feeds – three from ordinary residents going about their business and one from the viewpoint of someone stalking the Dark near our position. Figuring this to be Lobo, Ash and I headed out to pick up his train leaving Glyph at the monitoring station. She soon found that the Corps had been doing more than simple monitoring – they were directing the flow of certain stimuli to Lobo, effectively switching him on and off, controlling when he was a killer and when he was indistinguishable from other civilians. The bastards had themselves a Manchurian candidate and by the looks of it, several more waiting in the wings. Glyph turned down the stimuli so we could approach this Lobo and try to talk to him but the instant he came down from his drug-fuelled high, he was wracked by remorse, threw down two monowire scythes and fled sobbing.
We had ourselves a dilemma. These Lobo’s weren’t in control of their actions and that made bringing them to justice unfair at the very least. We also didn’t dare sabotage the equipment for fear it would activate all of the Sleeper Lobos and send them running riot. We needed guidance so Ash phoned his mystery contact. In moments, the Run was off. Ash’ new buddy Chuckles had known about these goings on all along and set the whole thing up so that the true evil of the corporations would be revealed to us. What a crock. If Chuckles had bothered to talk to us instead of being all pious and holier than thou he’d have found out our true feelings where the Corps are concerned. With the trials and tribulations we’ve had, he’s preaching to the converted and I don’t like it. I don’t like being taught unnecessary lessons in morality by strangers and worse still, I don’t like the thought that Chuckles is effectively party to the problems in The Falls. He admits to knowing what’s going on yet permits it to happen? Poor form. Ash needs to wise up pronto and ditch this paizon.
Mood: Irritated.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Error 006 Cannot locate host.
sending error.
Disconecting....
Rety in 3..2..1..
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 25: 06.08.70>
Ash is up to something. Devious little turd. I know he’s been out and about in Atlanta, doing his thing, flexing the feelers and trying to set us up with sufficient contacts to make us more effective. However, he’s going about it in a manner I’m not sure I like, getting us involved, again, in far deeper shit than I think we can handle.
He came in from one of his contact meet-n-greets a few days back with a mission he told us just had to be done. Pressed, he told us it was for ‘a friend’ and admitted that we wouldn’t be getting paid. Now give the lad his due, he offered to pay Glyph and I for our assistance, out of his own pocket but alarm bells were already starting to ring – none of us know anyone down here well enough to be doing jobs on the house… With reservations then, we agreed to help and soon came to realise that there was a philanthropic kilter to the Run he’d picked up. Atlanta has its very own Orkish Underground, which goes by the name of The Falls. The place has been getting terrorised for the past six years by a serial killer dubbed Lobo and Ash wanted us to go down there and serve up a slice of justice. The authorities don’t care about the place – evidently this new ‘friend’ Ash has made, does.
We resolved to head down there as disguised as we could make ourselves. We bought a couple of Rat Bikes and I got them running, while Ash invested in some tatty clothing and dirtied up our gear – we didn’t want to get lynched for our ‘shinies’ by a horde of Ork Tramps. Reasoning that cash would have little value in the slums of the undercity, Glyph collected together some barter items – food stuffs, medical supplies, booze and fags and suitable togged up we went looking for trouble.
Just getting into the place was a trial. Friendly and welcoming they ain’t but we made our way around the barricades, observation posts and obvious ambush points thanks to the bikes and rode on in. Place is called The Falls because of the constantly streaming water that cascades from the foundations of Atlanta above down on to the undercity – a brackish mix of rainwater, spill from cracked utility pipes, sewage overflow and the natural leak from the water table. It’s a shitty way to live basically and whole areas of the place are flooded with several feet of collected water.
The inhabitants could see through our disguises straight away. Proud to a man, they were unwilling to accept help from outsiders and it took all of our collective powers of persuasion just to get them to talk to us. The art of persuasion often includes violence however and as Ash negotiated, Glyph and I clocked a group of Toughs moving in to get personal. One of them was carrying a sap and intended to use it but when it was shot right out of his hand, he took the point that we might object. The air was thick with unspoken threats of violence for a while but I twigged we were outside what passed for a hospital down there. Medical supplies changed hands and we ‘bought’ the information we were after.
We were pointed in the direction of an area of the undercity known as The Dark. The power seemed to be out in the entire area, evidently giving the place it’s name and as we made our way down to that sector, we mulled over the information we’d been given. It seemed Lobo’s victims were often found with circular abrasions on their chest and temple. We speculated that they might correspond to the medical pads used to monitor heart rate and brain activity and suddenly we began to smell rat. It was beginning to have all the hallmarks of another fucking Corp screw-job, using The Falls’ inhabitants as guinea pigs.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
We were all twitchy, but it was Glyph’s eagle eyes that spotted the first concrete evidence we were right about Corp involvement. As we hunted for a likely-looking building to serve as a temporary base of operations, she spotted that we were under surveillance from the distinctive profile of a set of night vision goggles. It was kit far too high tech for the undercity’s indigenous population so we began to revise our expectations of what we might come up against.
A quick recce soon confirmed that we would need to descend down to the lowest level of The Dark and overcoming a mixture of fear and distaste, we pressed on, chasing half seen shadows of movement, flickers at the edges of our vision and a deep baritone growl. Down at the bottom of the Underground we encountered our first serious resistance – a Corp kill-team kitted out for surveillance. Pinned down at the bottom of the stairwell we had to think fast and pull a twin flanking manoeuvre to switch around behind them and put them out of action. It was then we discovered the first body. It had clearly been the Corp team’s objective – relatively fresh but fitted with sophisticated medical monitoring equipment. Here was a pretty puzzle. Were the Corp ‘feeding’ civilians to Lobo? What information could they hope to obtain from the medical data of a sacrificial lamb?
Pushing on, we got a stroke of luck and spotted light reflecting off of the waters. Tracing it back to the source, we found a relatively intact building, with its own power supply and slipped inside the building opposite so we could make our way up to the windows and see what the hell our neighbours were up to. Jackpot! We were looking across at the Corp nerve centre, just a street’s width away, fully kitted out with computer equipment, signal uplink, medical monitoring bay and armed guards. We lined up, showdown style, at the window and on the count of three let hot lead rip from room to room. It was over in seconds – a concerted burst of fire that took them completely by surprise and finished the battle in our favour before they even knew they were fighting for their lives.
The Corp Ops were monitoring four camera feeds – three from ordinary residents going about their business and one from the viewpoint of someone stalking the Dark near our position. Figuring this to be Lobo, Ash and I headed out to pick up his train leaving Glyph at the monitoring station. She soon found that the Corps had been doing more than simple monitoring – they were directing the flow of certain stimuli to Lobo, effectively switching him on and off, controlling when he was a killer and when he was indistinguishable from other civilians. The bastards had themselves a Manchurian candidate and by the looks of it, several more waiting in the wings. Glyph turned down the stimuli so we could approach this Lobo and try to talk to him but the instant he came down from his drug-fuelled high, he was wracked by remorse, threw down two monowire scythes and fled sobbing.
We had ourselves a dilemma. These Lobo’s weren’t in control of their actions and that made bringing them to justice unfair at the very least. We also didn’t dare sabotage the equipment for fear it would activate all of the Sleeper Lobos and send them running riot. We needed guidance so Ash phoned his mystery contact. In moments, the Run was off. Ash’ new buddy Chuckles had known about these goings on all along and set the whole thing up so that the true evil of the corporations would be revealed to us. What a crock. If Chuckles had bothered to talk to us instead of being all pious and holier than thou he’d have found out our true feelings where the Corps are concerned. With the trials and tribulations we’ve had, he’s preaching to the converted and I don’t like it. I don’t like being taught unnecessary lessons in morality by strangers and worse still, I don’t like the thought that Chuckles is effectively party to the problems in The Falls. He admits to knowing what’s going on yet permits it to happen? Poor form. Ash needs to wise up pronto and ditch this paizon.
Mood: Irritated.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Six's blog
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 24: 20.07.70>
Revelations and retribution overnight – in roughly equal measure. Again I’m feeling calmer now that we’ve taken action, made a stand, and done something proactive to look out for our own rather than sitting back and letting life happen to us.
Glyph, Ash and I hauled ass down to the airport and took delivery of the little turboprop plane I’d leased for the flight into San Fran. The whole city was shrouded in fog but good to his word, Drifter was waiting for us when we touched down – when you know you’re walking into trouble it pays to have as many friends as possible watching your back.
Wasting little time, we blazed right on over to Daisy’s and did a cautious little recce. Our suspicions were raised that someone was mooching around inside – Drifter covered the front and Glyph headed for the rear while Ash and I made our way inside. Man I felt for Ash as we crept across the blackened remains of his sister’s lounge. Some sort of freak ass explosion had made the room bulge outwards, literally pushing every single item as far up against the walls as it would go. I made my way into the bathroom, covering the hallway as Ash crept down to surprise the lurker. I only heard one shot – Ash drilling the little toad – and it was a good job he’d controlled his temper enough to use Stick Shock because the intruder was prettied up with a Lone Star badge proclaiming him to be part of some sort of Occult Investigator. While Ash made with the thumbscrews, hot coals and whatever else passes for torture and interrogation in a young woman’s kitchen, I switched on the lights and found that Daisy had been graffiti-ing the tiles in her shower with lippy. The phone number got me through to some Corp-line with an automated switchboard. Clearly Daisy had tried to send us a message but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
Fortunately, Ash was a bit more savvy. The Occult Investigator was a dwarf by the name of Glyn Boucher who was investigating the activity of a Spirit of Man. Daisy’s place had all the clues that pointed to this spirit’s involvement apparently but the only lead Boucher could share with us was a suspicion that a recently elevated Corp called Genesis had some sort of tenuous involvement. Having learnt that there’s no point pissing off Lone Star unnecessarily, Ash let him go and we pooled our ideas.
Glyph had managed to retrieve some video feed from Daisy’s front door and that showed Daisy and Blake being bundled out of the flat by the same spirit-creature we’d faced at April Walkers talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Creepy Little Bastard. Realising we’d need a mage to have any hope of tracking a spirit, we picked one at random from the White Pages – dude by the name of Starr who seemed to have all the right professional credentials.
Ash set to work on Daisy’s little conundrum to see if he could fathom out what the hell clue she’d tried to leave us.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
It was about then that several things started to come together and point in the same direction for us. Lone Star’s finest had tipped us off to his suspicions about Genesis, while Starr returned to confirm he’d traced the CLB back to the very same corporation. Ash found out that Daisy hadn’t stored his telephone number next to his name in her PAN. Instead there was some random number that he didn’t recognise. It all made sense when he called the number lipsticked on the shower wall though – the random number activated a stealth tag, which we assumed Daisy was concealing about her person, and the locator on the stealth tag also pointed us towards Genesis.
It was clear we were going to head down there and kick some fucking heads in so we cruised around our apartments to tool up. Every single place had been trashed and the gift of a grenade booby trap had been left for each of us.
We assume this was done by the Triad when they came looking for us. Clearly originality is not one of their strong points!
There was nothing doing at our pads so we settled for beating the morning rush to head over to Genesis. Remoting the transit, I hit the gate hard and with all of us clustered in Drifter’s Americar, he ramped us up the steps, through the plate glass and into the lobby. Startled security guards are no match for pissed off professionals and we were past them and following the locator beacon fixed on Daisy’s Stealth Tag before they had time to sound an alarm.
We’d learnt that Genesis had only just acquired extraterritoriality but we weren’t expecting to find their HQ building an empty shell. The place was all but devoid of life. Clearly the Corp was in the process of moving in – everything was still shrouded in bubblewrap and protective polythene and bar those corpses in the lobby there was not a guard, nor an employee to be seen. We made five floors before the CLB spirit appeared out of nowhere and started laying in to us. It was a desperate fight and if I’m honest, I think it was only weight of numbers that helped us succeed. Just like before we had to literally beat the shit out of it, flay the skin from its hide and turn it white with fear before it disappeared. Fighting spirits is so unsatisfying – how do you know when you’ve geeked the damn thing and it isn’t going to come back?!
Anyway I digress, needless to say, we made the top floor without any further interruptions and it was freaky drek central in the penthouse. Daisy was sitting in some sort of bondage contraption with her head wrenched back and drips of liquid silver pooling on her forehead and running off down her face. Ash and the others claimed they could see the shimmering form of a woman, stood behind and slightly to one side pouring that drek on to the girl. I couldn’t see it, but Ash evidently saw enough to take confident aim.
That huge boomstick of his roared once, twice and the body of Solace slumped to the ground. Course, she’s supposed to have died once before so we did one, sharpish, grabbing Daisy and buggering off pronto.
We know curiosity killed the cat but we couldn’t help scoping out the basement level before we left and it was there that we made our big revelation. Computers and other equipment branded with the Cross Applied Technologies logo made it clear that the Corp was being reborn as Genesis.
Regular readers will know we have something of a grudge against CAT so we couldn’t just stand by and let this happen. Fortunately Glyph still had plenty of those explosive charges left in her satchel. As we drove away watching the complex sag down into its own basement, we felt a certain sense of grim satisfaction. If Cross are being resurrected maybe all that Allisom nonsense isn’t over either… We’ll muse on it during the flight back to Atlanta.
Mood: Satisfied. Daisy is safe. Ash is happy. But Cross have Blake AGAIN…
Ends: 2/2>
||
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 24: 20.07.70>
Revelations and retribution overnight – in roughly equal measure. Again I’m feeling calmer now that we’ve taken action, made a stand, and done something proactive to look out for our own rather than sitting back and letting life happen to us.
Glyph, Ash and I hauled ass down to the airport and took delivery of the little turboprop plane I’d leased for the flight into San Fran. The whole city was shrouded in fog but good to his word, Drifter was waiting for us when we touched down – when you know you’re walking into trouble it pays to have as many friends as possible watching your back.
Wasting little time, we blazed right on over to Daisy’s and did a cautious little recce. Our suspicions were raised that someone was mooching around inside – Drifter covered the front and Glyph headed for the rear while Ash and I made our way inside. Man I felt for Ash as we crept across the blackened remains of his sister’s lounge. Some sort of freak ass explosion had made the room bulge outwards, literally pushing every single item as far up against the walls as it would go. I made my way into the bathroom, covering the hallway as Ash crept down to surprise the lurker. I only heard one shot – Ash drilling the little toad – and it was a good job he’d controlled his temper enough to use Stick Shock because the intruder was prettied up with a Lone Star badge proclaiming him to be part of some sort of Occult Investigator. While Ash made with the thumbscrews, hot coals and whatever else passes for torture and interrogation in a young woman’s kitchen, I switched on the lights and found that Daisy had been graffiti-ing the tiles in her shower with lippy. The phone number got me through to some Corp-line with an automated switchboard. Clearly Daisy had tried to send us a message but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
Fortunately, Ash was a bit more savvy. The Occult Investigator was a dwarf by the name of Glyn Boucher who was investigating the activity of a Spirit of Man. Daisy’s place had all the clues that pointed to this spirit’s involvement apparently but the only lead Boucher could share with us was a suspicion that a recently elevated Corp called Genesis had some sort of tenuous involvement. Having learnt that there’s no point pissing off Lone Star unnecessarily, Ash let him go and we pooled our ideas.
Glyph had managed to retrieve some video feed from Daisy’s front door and that showed Daisy and Blake being bundled out of the flat by the same spirit-creature we’d faced at April Walkers talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Creepy Little Bastard. Realising we’d need a mage to have any hope of tracking a spirit, we picked one at random from the White Pages – dude by the name of Starr who seemed to have all the right professional credentials.
Ash set to work on Daisy’s little conundrum to see if he could fathom out what the hell clue she’d tried to leave us.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
It was about then that several things started to come together and point in the same direction for us. Lone Star’s finest had tipped us off to his suspicions about Genesis, while Starr returned to confirm he’d traced the CLB back to the very same corporation. Ash found out that Daisy hadn’t stored his telephone number next to his name in her PAN. Instead there was some random number that he didn’t recognise. It all made sense when he called the number lipsticked on the shower wall though – the random number activated a stealth tag, which we assumed Daisy was concealing about her person, and the locator on the stealth tag also pointed us towards Genesis.
It was clear we were going to head down there and kick some fucking heads in so we cruised around our apartments to tool up. Every single place had been trashed and the gift of a grenade booby trap had been left for each of us.
We assume this was done by the Triad when they came looking for us. Clearly originality is not one of their strong points!
There was nothing doing at our pads so we settled for beating the morning rush to head over to Genesis. Remoting the transit, I hit the gate hard and with all of us clustered in Drifter’s Americar, he ramped us up the steps, through the plate glass and into the lobby. Startled security guards are no match for pissed off professionals and we were past them and following the locator beacon fixed on Daisy’s Stealth Tag before they had time to sound an alarm.
We’d learnt that Genesis had only just acquired extraterritoriality but we weren’t expecting to find their HQ building an empty shell. The place was all but devoid of life. Clearly the Corp was in the process of moving in – everything was still shrouded in bubblewrap and protective polythene and bar those corpses in the lobby there was not a guard, nor an employee to be seen. We made five floors before the CLB spirit appeared out of nowhere and started laying in to us. It was a desperate fight and if I’m honest, I think it was only weight of numbers that helped us succeed. Just like before we had to literally beat the shit out of it, flay the skin from its hide and turn it white with fear before it disappeared. Fighting spirits is so unsatisfying – how do you know when you’ve geeked the damn thing and it isn’t going to come back?!
Anyway I digress, needless to say, we made the top floor without any further interruptions and it was freaky drek central in the penthouse. Daisy was sitting in some sort of bondage contraption with her head wrenched back and drips of liquid silver pooling on her forehead and running off down her face. Ash and the others claimed they could see the shimmering form of a woman, stood behind and slightly to one side pouring that drek on to the girl. I couldn’t see it, but Ash evidently saw enough to take confident aim.
That huge boomstick of his roared once, twice and the body of Solace slumped to the ground. Course, she’s supposed to have died once before so we did one, sharpish, grabbing Daisy and buggering off pronto.
We know curiosity killed the cat but we couldn’t help scoping out the basement level before we left and it was there that we made our big revelation. Computers and other equipment branded with the Cross Applied Technologies logo made it clear that the Corp was being reborn as Genesis.
Regular readers will know we have something of a grudge against CAT so we couldn’t just stand by and let this happen. Fortunately Glyph still had plenty of those explosive charges left in her satchel. As we drove away watching the complex sag down into its own basement, we felt a certain sense of grim satisfaction. If Cross are being resurrected maybe all that Allisom nonsense isn’t over either… We’ll muse on it during the flight back to Atlanta.
Mood: Satisfied. Daisy is safe. Ash is happy. But Cross have Blake AGAIN…
Ends: 2/2>
||
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Six's Blog
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 23: 19.07.70>
Dunklezahn’s Balls! It’s happened again! We’ve been screwed, again, and this time by Nunzio’s boy Carlo! Goddamnit… It broke down like this. By the time Orange Jay had deposited us back in Birmingham, Alabama, it was about 9pm.
Ash was still sweating about being out of contact with Daisy so I rang Nunzio and asked him to send some of his boys over to check things out. We had a couple of beers while we were waiting but even the edge of inebriation couldn’t soften the blow when Nunzio reported in that Daisy was missing from her apartment and there had clearly been a struggle.
Understandably, Ash was all for heading straight back to San Fran until I pointed out that it was a road trip of several days back across country.
Instead, I talked him into heading back to Atlanta with me where we could arrange to have a charter plane waiting for us so we could make a quick overnight jaunt back to the Bay Area. He could see the plane was quicker and made more sense, so agreed to do it my way. En route back to Atlanta, Carlo called to say he had set up a meet with a buyer for the guns. We were going to just make it back to Atlanta in time so it seemed prudent to attend before catching our flight. How could we know it would turn out to be a mistake?!
We drove the wagon load of hookey shooters to an abandoned industrial park for a 1am meet and were joined by Carlo and his muscle – a runner named Hilt. In due course, a motor and two transits cruised up and Mr Cowboy himself, Johnny Kickback, lazily hauled his ass out of the driver’s seat and came on over for a chat. He reckoned the guns were his – obviously the Yakuza hit we interrupted was their attempt to spoke his wheel – and didn’t seem to care about the circumstances under which they entered our possession. I told him about the Yaks, pointed out that without our intervention the guns would be a couple of hundred miles away and offered to return them for a small consideration – a finder’s fee, if you will. Well, that just seemed to wind him all the way up to inarticulate rage. He spat out that we had been a thorn in his side for too long, drew down and just started shooting.
I scrambled for cover in the back of the wagon while Ash gave the Cowboy a gutful of hot lead slug. I didn’t see it myself but apparently that was when Carlo turned on Ash and shot him with one of our own guns! Cheeky feck!
Carlo had clearly decided there was a brighter future for him in Johnny Kickback’s employment but fortunately, Hilt has a conscience… Hey, I guess that makes him our kind of Runner! Carlo had told Hilt they were there to sell the guns and make sure nothing went wrong. Clearly Hilt felt that everyone shooting at Ash and I counted as something having gone wrong. As the Cowboy’s friendly neighbourhood muscle lumbered from the vans, Hilt picked a side. Ours.
While Hilt moved off to draw fire away from the unconscious Ash, I did the only thing I could and remoted the Dodge into a position from which I could offer supporting fire. I took care of Carlo as he tried to frag me then concentrated fire on the petrol tank of the transit. I saw it blow, catch the Cowboy’s car before he could escape and the secondary explosion from that was enough to topple the second van. His goons were toast but Hilt said there was no sign of Kickback in the wreckage of his burned out car…
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
We didn’t have time for mysteries; I just wanted to get the frag away from there. We blazed to the other side of the industrial estate where we could lay low long enough to patch Ash up and give Nunzio a mouthful of abuse for his sell-out staff. I don’t think he knew. Hard to tell with Nunz but I think he was genuinely surprised and hacked off that Carlo would turn his back on the family and compromise our safety.
Either way, he picked up where Carlo had left off and made moves to buy the guns from us himself for the family to use. I took a risk and told Nunzio we were heading back into San Fran. He didn’t push that either – I think he understood that with Ash’ sister missing, there was sufficient personal interest for us to justify heading back into the city against his express warning.
We’ve just handed over the guns to Nunzio’s buyer and taken payment. We’re going to cruise over to the Safehouse and give Ki-rinn, Sickle and Glyph a heads up that it might be time to find new digs. Hilt is apparently a San Fran native so by way of thanks for his help, we’re going to take him on the flight back with us. I’d like one of the others to come with us as back-up too but Ash and I are intending to head back to Atlanta so it might serve our purpose better if a couple of the guys stay with the vehicles and use the time while we are away to find us a safe Safehouse!
On a more positive note, as I mull things over, it occurs to me that we’re probably not going to have to do the Cowboy’s dirty work and fabricate the death of April Walker and Snow to lay a false trail for the Separatist Shamans now. Still no word from Snow though which remains a concern. I just feel exhausted by the bullet train of events we’ve been riding. It shows no sign of slowing, so here’s to Johnny Kickback! May his soul burn in Hell.
Mood: Numb.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 23: 19.07.70>
Dunklezahn’s Balls! It’s happened again! We’ve been screwed, again, and this time by Nunzio’s boy Carlo! Goddamnit… It broke down like this. By the time Orange Jay had deposited us back in Birmingham, Alabama, it was about 9pm.
Ash was still sweating about being out of contact with Daisy so I rang Nunzio and asked him to send some of his boys over to check things out. We had a couple of beers while we were waiting but even the edge of inebriation couldn’t soften the blow when Nunzio reported in that Daisy was missing from her apartment and there had clearly been a struggle.
Understandably, Ash was all for heading straight back to San Fran until I pointed out that it was a road trip of several days back across country.
Instead, I talked him into heading back to Atlanta with me where we could arrange to have a charter plane waiting for us so we could make a quick overnight jaunt back to the Bay Area. He could see the plane was quicker and made more sense, so agreed to do it my way. En route back to Atlanta, Carlo called to say he had set up a meet with a buyer for the guns. We were going to just make it back to Atlanta in time so it seemed prudent to attend before catching our flight. How could we know it would turn out to be a mistake?!
We drove the wagon load of hookey shooters to an abandoned industrial park for a 1am meet and were joined by Carlo and his muscle – a runner named Hilt. In due course, a motor and two transits cruised up and Mr Cowboy himself, Johnny Kickback, lazily hauled his ass out of the driver’s seat and came on over for a chat. He reckoned the guns were his – obviously the Yakuza hit we interrupted was their attempt to spoke his wheel – and didn’t seem to care about the circumstances under which they entered our possession. I told him about the Yaks, pointed out that without our intervention the guns would be a couple of hundred miles away and offered to return them for a small consideration – a finder’s fee, if you will. Well, that just seemed to wind him all the way up to inarticulate rage. He spat out that we had been a thorn in his side for too long, drew down and just started shooting.
I scrambled for cover in the back of the wagon while Ash gave the Cowboy a gutful of hot lead slug. I didn’t see it myself but apparently that was when Carlo turned on Ash and shot him with one of our own guns! Cheeky feck!
Carlo had clearly decided there was a brighter future for him in Johnny Kickback’s employment but fortunately, Hilt has a conscience… Hey, I guess that makes him our kind of Runner! Carlo had told Hilt they were there to sell the guns and make sure nothing went wrong. Clearly Hilt felt that everyone shooting at Ash and I counted as something having gone wrong. As the Cowboy’s friendly neighbourhood muscle lumbered from the vans, Hilt picked a side. Ours.
While Hilt moved off to draw fire away from the unconscious Ash, I did the only thing I could and remoted the Dodge into a position from which I could offer supporting fire. I took care of Carlo as he tried to frag me then concentrated fire on the petrol tank of the transit. I saw it blow, catch the Cowboy’s car before he could escape and the secondary explosion from that was enough to topple the second van. His goons were toast but Hilt said there was no sign of Kickback in the wreckage of his burned out car…
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
We didn’t have time for mysteries; I just wanted to get the frag away from there. We blazed to the other side of the industrial estate where we could lay low long enough to patch Ash up and give Nunzio a mouthful of abuse for his sell-out staff. I don’t think he knew. Hard to tell with Nunz but I think he was genuinely surprised and hacked off that Carlo would turn his back on the family and compromise our safety.
Either way, he picked up where Carlo had left off and made moves to buy the guns from us himself for the family to use. I took a risk and told Nunzio we were heading back into San Fran. He didn’t push that either – I think he understood that with Ash’ sister missing, there was sufficient personal interest for us to justify heading back into the city against his express warning.
We’ve just handed over the guns to Nunzio’s buyer and taken payment. We’re going to cruise over to the Safehouse and give Ki-rinn, Sickle and Glyph a heads up that it might be time to find new digs. Hilt is apparently a San Fran native so by way of thanks for his help, we’re going to take him on the flight back with us. I’d like one of the others to come with us as back-up too but Ash and I are intending to head back to Atlanta so it might serve our purpose better if a couple of the guys stay with the vehicles and use the time while we are away to find us a safe Safehouse!
On a more positive note, as I mull things over, it occurs to me that we’re probably not going to have to do the Cowboy’s dirty work and fabricate the death of April Walker and Snow to lay a false trail for the Separatist Shamans now. Still no word from Snow though which remains a concern. I just feel exhausted by the bullet train of events we’ve been riding. It shows no sign of slowing, so here’s to Johnny Kickback! May his soul burn in Hell.
Mood: Numb.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Six's Blog.
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 22: 19.07.70>
Alright, today is a better day, Today, I’m chilly. There are three reasons for that. One – I think I have a better handle on what the frag is going on out on the streets; Two, we’ve decided on a course of action that I’m happy with and we’re not just going to sit around waiting to get dicked any more and Three, Ki-rinn finally showed up. Hell, I’m first to admit Frosty and I have a fractious relationship – he hadn’t been in Atlanta 24 hours before we were at each other’s throats but damn it feels better knowing he’s watching my back too. Hell with Glyph and Sickle playing Roomie back at the Safe house, it’s getting to be like we moved the entire damn team coast to coast!
So anyways, while my brain was still frazzled and while Ash and Sickle were still trying to get their asses off of the Express and back into Atlanta, Ki-rinn made contact. He’d been chasing Skirt and Bastards with a fucked-up old army buddy over in Singapore and was on a flight path back that meant he could detour via Atlanta. I picked him up and filled him in and got myself a tight bundle of cynicism for my trouble. Frosty thinks we can’t keep our asses outta trouble without him and we’re reading way too much into the situation. Maybe he has a point.
Just about the one thing he believes least of all though is these visions from Allisom. Which meant it was a bad time to suddenly get hit by one – of Snow, in a marshalling yard, with a datadisk, getting his card punched by that laser with the high pitched whine. While my head’s still clearing, Ash gets on the phone. He had the vision too and now he’s looking out of the express train window at the self same marshalling yard. He resolves to dump the emergency brake on the train and bail out and I tell him Ki-rinn and I will blaze over there. Man Ki-rinn thinks we’re overdoing the dope. He has some valid points – there is a certain sort of devil may care lunacy to just taking these visions on faith. We don’t even know WHEN this vision is of but I tell him we’ve followed our guts on them so far and been done right by.
Trusting your gut is right out of Frosty’s Mantra of Modern Warfare. It’s something tangible he can believe in so for once he takes it on faith too.
Now the marshalling yard turns out to be an interesting place but not because it fulfils our vision. We find the warehouse soon enough and there is a welcoming committee waiting there packing heat. Thing is, they look more like manual labourers than Separatist Shaman’s or whomever the frag it is that has it in for Snow. We sit tight a while and in short order the San Fran Yakuza turn up, bold as brass, including Mr Cock of the Walk himself Yutaka Seto driving MY beloved car! Two things strike me as odd – firstly that Seto is looking to use my car out here for his own business, he isn’t just rubbing my nose in the fact that I lost the Bullet to him and secondly that these are the San Fran Yakuza – in Atlanta of all places! It’s like the entire Bay Area has been evacuated to the East Coast for the week – why are there so many familiar faces turning up out here?!
The Yaks spring a surprise on the manual labourers waiting in the warehouse and when they begin loading up crates of gear from inside, we can’t resist the opportunity to spoke their wheel and try to snatch the stuff for ourselves. Combat breaks out but we’ve got the drop on them and they aren’t quite expecting the level of trouble we bring to them. It’s short, bloody and brutal and I make sure no one sees me knocking around the place – extra trouble with the Yaks I can do without – but Ash could be in a world of hurt back home. He reckons they got a good look at him. That could incriminate me too – but I’ll have to play dumb.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Seto takes off so we grab the Yak truck full of merchandise and Ki-rinn and Ash blaze with it while I go back on over watch. Frag all happens at the Marshalling Yard thereafter and there’s certainly no sign of Snow. Frosty and Ash report it that we’ve struck pay dirt and picked up a wagon load of hooky guns. We cherry pick the best of the lot for ourselves and after a few heated words, brought on mostly because Ash doesn’t take kindly to me ripping the shit out of his idea that we can sell these babies on the street, I make contact with Carlo and ask him if he’s interested in taking them off of our hands and selling them on through the family. I figure if the Mafia can’t use a load of hot shooters, who can?!
Right while we’re cooling our heels, I get a call from Orange Jay, the beatnik hippy chick who was running the shop over from April Walker’s talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Seems Sickle didn’t meet the real April Walker after all and that just about clears up some of the confusion – evidently Sickle met the Cowboy, Johnny Kickback, who was fishing for info on the actual whereabouts of Binary Pulse. Jay tells us that April has seen through the thinly veiled charade I’d constructed for wanting to meet up with her but is willing to have a chat nevertheless. There are conditions – we have to meet Jay and travel in her unmarked, beat up Datsun. We have to accept some herbal magic tree shit that sends us right off into the land of nod – that or some sort of damn sleep spell I presume – so we lose track of the route and we get to have our PANs hacked by Binary Pulse herself so that as far as we can tell, the lakeside cabin where we hook up is actually at the North Pole… Neat.
A long and in-depth conversation ensues at the meet and I’ve no intention of boring you with too many details. Suffice to say the key points are that a Free Spirit is looking to find and kill Binary Pulse and her team because of a run in which they learnt its true name. That gives them some kind of hoochie koochie power over said spirit apparently. Last April knew, the spirit was masquerading as her dead team mate Solace. Maybe Johnny Kickback is another incarnation of this spirit or working for it to ice April – either way, he’s bad news too. Worse, now that we’ve hacked April’s computer, the files we’ve all downloaded to our PANs could make us targets for this spirit too. Daisy is almost certainly in a lot of trouble. Jay tells us our ‘auras are bleeding into the Astral’ which goes right over my head. It sounds bad though and apparently could be responsible for the visions we’ve been having. Something else to curse the name of Allisom for.
We also confirm that Shift is Snow by another name and that means to complete our run, we’d have to give up April and Snow…
Now none of us are keen on that. April has been very helpful and well, professional courtesy and a budding friendship means we aren’t going to give up Snow on a whim. So we’re faced with another botched run and I am not a happy lad. It almost spills over into an open argument at that point but I manage to talk Ki-rinn and Ash round. Rather than just binning another run and taking another hit on our reputation, I argue that there’s a way we can justify our pay without giving up April and Snow. Ki-rinn produces the memory foam face mask disguise kit he’s been sitting on for the last few runs and we take a scan of April’s face figuring that this spirit didn’t know Kote was dead so it won’t know the truth if we fake April’s death at some future point. We’re in no rush – we weren’t given a time limit, so we can afford to wait for a prime opportunity. If we can just get hold of Snow, we can explain the whole gig to him and set up something similar. We’ll then hand over the info that the team of runners is long since dead and Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt.
Now, if we could only get hold of Snow…
Mood: Concerned.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 22: 19.07.70>
Alright, today is a better day, Today, I’m chilly. There are three reasons for that. One – I think I have a better handle on what the frag is going on out on the streets; Two, we’ve decided on a course of action that I’m happy with and we’re not just going to sit around waiting to get dicked any more and Three, Ki-rinn finally showed up. Hell, I’m first to admit Frosty and I have a fractious relationship – he hadn’t been in Atlanta 24 hours before we were at each other’s throats but damn it feels better knowing he’s watching my back too. Hell with Glyph and Sickle playing Roomie back at the Safe house, it’s getting to be like we moved the entire damn team coast to coast!
So anyways, while my brain was still frazzled and while Ash and Sickle were still trying to get their asses off of the Express and back into Atlanta, Ki-rinn made contact. He’d been chasing Skirt and Bastards with a fucked-up old army buddy over in Singapore and was on a flight path back that meant he could detour via Atlanta. I picked him up and filled him in and got myself a tight bundle of cynicism for my trouble. Frosty thinks we can’t keep our asses outta trouble without him and we’re reading way too much into the situation. Maybe he has a point.
Just about the one thing he believes least of all though is these visions from Allisom. Which meant it was a bad time to suddenly get hit by one – of Snow, in a marshalling yard, with a datadisk, getting his card punched by that laser with the high pitched whine. While my head’s still clearing, Ash gets on the phone. He had the vision too and now he’s looking out of the express train window at the self same marshalling yard. He resolves to dump the emergency brake on the train and bail out and I tell him Ki-rinn and I will blaze over there. Man Ki-rinn thinks we’re overdoing the dope. He has some valid points – there is a certain sort of devil may care lunacy to just taking these visions on faith. We don’t even know WHEN this vision is of but I tell him we’ve followed our guts on them so far and been done right by.
Trusting your gut is right out of Frosty’s Mantra of Modern Warfare. It’s something tangible he can believe in so for once he takes it on faith too.
Now the marshalling yard turns out to be an interesting place but not because it fulfils our vision. We find the warehouse soon enough and there is a welcoming committee waiting there packing heat. Thing is, they look more like manual labourers than Separatist Shaman’s or whomever the frag it is that has it in for Snow. We sit tight a while and in short order the San Fran Yakuza turn up, bold as brass, including Mr Cock of the Walk himself Yutaka Seto driving MY beloved car! Two things strike me as odd – firstly that Seto is looking to use my car out here for his own business, he isn’t just rubbing my nose in the fact that I lost the Bullet to him and secondly that these are the San Fran Yakuza – in Atlanta of all places! It’s like the entire Bay Area has been evacuated to the East Coast for the week – why are there so many familiar faces turning up out here?!
The Yaks spring a surprise on the manual labourers waiting in the warehouse and when they begin loading up crates of gear from inside, we can’t resist the opportunity to spoke their wheel and try to snatch the stuff for ourselves. Combat breaks out but we’ve got the drop on them and they aren’t quite expecting the level of trouble we bring to them. It’s short, bloody and brutal and I make sure no one sees me knocking around the place – extra trouble with the Yaks I can do without – but Ash could be in a world of hurt back home. He reckons they got a good look at him. That could incriminate me too – but I’ll have to play dumb.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Seto takes off so we grab the Yak truck full of merchandise and Ki-rinn and Ash blaze with it while I go back on over watch. Frag all happens at the Marshalling Yard thereafter and there’s certainly no sign of Snow. Frosty and Ash report it that we’ve struck pay dirt and picked up a wagon load of hooky guns. We cherry pick the best of the lot for ourselves and after a few heated words, brought on mostly because Ash doesn’t take kindly to me ripping the shit out of his idea that we can sell these babies on the street, I make contact with Carlo and ask him if he’s interested in taking them off of our hands and selling them on through the family. I figure if the Mafia can’t use a load of hot shooters, who can?!
Right while we’re cooling our heels, I get a call from Orange Jay, the beatnik hippy chick who was running the shop over from April Walker’s talismongery in Birmingham, Alabama. Seems Sickle didn’t meet the real April Walker after all and that just about clears up some of the confusion – evidently Sickle met the Cowboy, Johnny Kickback, who was fishing for info on the actual whereabouts of Binary Pulse. Jay tells us that April has seen through the thinly veiled charade I’d constructed for wanting to meet up with her but is willing to have a chat nevertheless. There are conditions – we have to meet Jay and travel in her unmarked, beat up Datsun. We have to accept some herbal magic tree shit that sends us right off into the land of nod – that or some sort of damn sleep spell I presume – so we lose track of the route and we get to have our PANs hacked by Binary Pulse herself so that as far as we can tell, the lakeside cabin where we hook up is actually at the North Pole… Neat.
A long and in-depth conversation ensues at the meet and I’ve no intention of boring you with too many details. Suffice to say the key points are that a Free Spirit is looking to find and kill Binary Pulse and her team because of a run in which they learnt its true name. That gives them some kind of hoochie koochie power over said spirit apparently. Last April knew, the spirit was masquerading as her dead team mate Solace. Maybe Johnny Kickback is another incarnation of this spirit or working for it to ice April – either way, he’s bad news too. Worse, now that we’ve hacked April’s computer, the files we’ve all downloaded to our PANs could make us targets for this spirit too. Daisy is almost certainly in a lot of trouble. Jay tells us our ‘auras are bleeding into the Astral’ which goes right over my head. It sounds bad though and apparently could be responsible for the visions we’ve been having. Something else to curse the name of Allisom for.
We also confirm that Shift is Snow by another name and that means to complete our run, we’d have to give up April and Snow…
Now none of us are keen on that. April has been very helpful and well, professional courtesy and a budding friendship means we aren’t going to give up Snow on a whim. So we’re faced with another botched run and I am not a happy lad. It almost spills over into an open argument at that point but I manage to talk Ki-rinn and Ash round. Rather than just binning another run and taking another hit on our reputation, I argue that there’s a way we can justify our pay without giving up April and Snow. Ki-rinn produces the memory foam face mask disguise kit he’s been sitting on for the last few runs and we take a scan of April’s face figuring that this spirit didn’t know Kote was dead so it won’t know the truth if we fake April’s death at some future point. We’re in no rush – we weren’t given a time limit, so we can afford to wait for a prime opportunity. If we can just get hold of Snow, we can explain the whole gig to him and set up something similar. We’ll then hand over the info that the team of runners is long since dead and Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt.
Now, if we could only get hold of Snow…
Mood: Concerned.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Six's Blog.
By N.Barnes
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 21: 17.07.70>
Man, my Swede is fragged. What a head-fuck! If you wanna follow what’s been going on in the World of Six, take your time and read slowly or you’ll never keep up…
Sickle joined us at the Safe House in Atlanta after we’d gotten Ash’s ride fixed up some. It wasn’t too long before Nunzio’s contact in Atlanta, Carlo, showed his face to sub-contract some work out to us. Seems the Shindig we spotted at the Triad club Province happened at the behest of someone called The Cowboy. IIRC, at the time we identified this fellah as an Atlanta mover and shaker called Johnny Kickback. The Cowboy was buying up the services of the West Coast crime syndicates and getting them to work for him. It was the first job he’d handed to the Mafia that was being subcontracted to us.
Carlo put 100k on the table and asked to find three Shadowrunners who were big time back in the ‘50’s – Shift, Kote and Binary Pulse. All that was needed to earn the dough was the current location of all three so we immediately put our contacts to work. I tapped up Snow and had another one of those damn Allisom visions in which Snow was shot dead in his living room so I advised him to get the hell out of dodge at the same time. Snow had heard the names and added a fourth who used to be part of the team – Solace.
Now it turned out that Solace had died, mid-mission, in the late-‘50’s and it was this which led to the break-up of the team. Kote had gone postal, possible because of Solace’s death, and had killed 13 people in a botched raid on Renraku, before killing himself. So far, so easy. Binary Pulse had kept on running solo into the ‘60’s before finally handing herself over to the heat to answer for her crimes. That meant Lone Star had assigned her a criminal SIN and that made things much easier because it allowed us to identify her as April Walker, owner of a Talismonger’s in Birmingham, Alabama called Walk the Path.
Daisy told us there was a heavily encrypted signal coming from the shop.
Binary Pulse had been a Decker so that made sense – Daisy said she could give us some kit that would help her do a data-steal and decryption if we could get access to the source of the signal. We cruised out to Birmingham, Alabama and found that Walk the Path had been abandoned for a month or more.
With little alternative but to take direct action, Sickle and Ash broke in while I provided cover and FRT. As the download started, the Daring Duo heard something downstairs so I sent the Fly-Spy in to investigate. There was some sort of fragged up Bot just standing at the bottom of the stairs (though Sickle later heard tell it was a spirit – which figures in a
Talismongers) but the Drek only seriously hit the fan when Ash started to break into the shop safe.
Suddenly the freaky Bot is on my boys and worse, a remote-rigged drone turret flips from the ceiling to start handing out tickets for the Chaingun Cha Cha. I blaze down a back alley, blow open a fire door and let rip with the vehicle weaponry while Ash and Sickle take down the Bot. In short order they complete the download and we blaze but once in the car Sickle reveals that April phoned her own shop after that little confrontation. I guess she was watching their tomfoolery through the building’s security system.
Apparently they had a nice long chat and agreed to meet – sounds like a recipe for disaster to me but with Daisy estimating that decryption will take days rather than hours, it’s at least a quicker way of earning our cash.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Personal misgivings aside, I wasn’t about to let Sickle hang his ass out to dry so as he took the meet play by play, Ash and I provided cover from a vantage point nearby – ready to leap to his defence. To all intents and purposes, Sickle and his date had a nice quiet breakfast together. They discussed her and her team’s history, the dangers of Shadowrunning and her (fairly justified) paranoia that someone was out to get her but she didn’t exactly spill the beans. With little to go on, we decided on the spur of the moment to follow her via a combination of remote vehicle ops and matrix nous.
The canny lass certainly gave us the run around heading north by train only to switch onto a southbound express train to Atlanta. Fortunately, with little else to do in Birmingham, Alabama, Ash and Sickle head headed for the safe house and were already ahead by some margin. As I pursued the train by car, Ash and Sickle took up point on the platform, watching and waiting for April to arrive. Shame she didn’t get off of the train. Our best laid plans had gone to rack and ruin but quick-thinking by Ash meant Daisy was already hacking the camera feeds from the train carriage…
April had locked herself in the bathroom en route to Atlanta and emerged dressed all in denim, complete with moustache. She looked depressingly like Johnny Kickback in her new outfit and had obviously walked right out past Ash and Sickle as they kept tabs on the platform.
Now this is where it all gets just a tad surreal. Either, April Walker is masquerading as Johnny Kickback or Johnny Kickback is masquerading as April Walker. Whichever it is, it doesn’t make much sense that April/Johnny is then bringing in hired help to try and find Binary Pulse – unless it’s some sort of test. Maybe April is pretending to be Johnny to throw the people she knows he is sending after her off of the scent. Alternatively, Johnny has been trying to find April, keeping her shop under surveillance and, not realising the Mafia had subcontracted the job to us, thought he should try to screw information out of us ASAP when he saw us busting in.
I have no idea.
All I do know right now is that we are missing several pieces from the jigsaw. And here’s another surprise: Daisy decoded a forwarding number for Shift from the encrypted files on April’s server. Shift’s number matches Snow’s. Sure, Snow has his fingers in many pies, but does that mean he used to be Shift or just that he’s acting as an agent and go-between for April’s team-mate? What a twisted web we weave…
We’re not sure we’ve done the job yet. Frankly, if finishing the job means handing over Snow’s address, I’m not sure we want to – and that’s without even considering my vision of Snow’s death. We’ll protect Snow – no doubt about that. It’s a matter of honour and professional courtesy – you don’t rat out your Chummers.
Which kinda means this job is another fragging bust. Another screw job.
Sure, we’ve got the money up front this time but unless we cough up the information in return, keeping it will mean dicking the Mafia and that gives you the life expectancy of a woodchuck on the freeway. To say nothing of the fact that my brother subcontracted this to us and blood is thicker than water.
We are so screwed.
Mood: FINE: Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Call Dir: Shadownet/ShadowlandsBBS/>
Select Region: Region=SanFrancisco>
Call SubDir: SanFrancisco/WeBlogs>
Select Blog: Author=V.Six>
Initializing…>
Entry 21: 17.07.70>
Man, my Swede is fragged. What a head-fuck! If you wanna follow what’s been going on in the World of Six, take your time and read slowly or you’ll never keep up…
Sickle joined us at the Safe House in Atlanta after we’d gotten Ash’s ride fixed up some. It wasn’t too long before Nunzio’s contact in Atlanta, Carlo, showed his face to sub-contract some work out to us. Seems the Shindig we spotted at the Triad club Province happened at the behest of someone called The Cowboy. IIRC, at the time we identified this fellah as an Atlanta mover and shaker called Johnny Kickback. The Cowboy was buying up the services of the West Coast crime syndicates and getting them to work for him. It was the first job he’d handed to the Mafia that was being subcontracted to us.
Carlo put 100k on the table and asked to find three Shadowrunners who were big time back in the ‘50’s – Shift, Kote and Binary Pulse. All that was needed to earn the dough was the current location of all three so we immediately put our contacts to work. I tapped up Snow and had another one of those damn Allisom visions in which Snow was shot dead in his living room so I advised him to get the hell out of dodge at the same time. Snow had heard the names and added a fourth who used to be part of the team – Solace.
Now it turned out that Solace had died, mid-mission, in the late-‘50’s and it was this which led to the break-up of the team. Kote had gone postal, possible because of Solace’s death, and had killed 13 people in a botched raid on Renraku, before killing himself. So far, so easy. Binary Pulse had kept on running solo into the ‘60’s before finally handing herself over to the heat to answer for her crimes. That meant Lone Star had assigned her a criminal SIN and that made things much easier because it allowed us to identify her as April Walker, owner of a Talismonger’s in Birmingham, Alabama called Walk the Path.
Daisy told us there was a heavily encrypted signal coming from the shop.
Binary Pulse had been a Decker so that made sense – Daisy said she could give us some kit that would help her do a data-steal and decryption if we could get access to the source of the signal. We cruised out to Birmingham, Alabama and found that Walk the Path had been abandoned for a month or more.
With little alternative but to take direct action, Sickle and Ash broke in while I provided cover and FRT. As the download started, the Daring Duo heard something downstairs so I sent the Fly-Spy in to investigate. There was some sort of fragged up Bot just standing at the bottom of the stairs (though Sickle later heard tell it was a spirit – which figures in a
Talismongers) but the Drek only seriously hit the fan when Ash started to break into the shop safe.
Suddenly the freaky Bot is on my boys and worse, a remote-rigged drone turret flips from the ceiling to start handing out tickets for the Chaingun Cha Cha. I blaze down a back alley, blow open a fire door and let rip with the vehicle weaponry while Ash and Sickle take down the Bot. In short order they complete the download and we blaze but once in the car Sickle reveals that April phoned her own shop after that little confrontation. I guess she was watching their tomfoolery through the building’s security system.
Apparently they had a nice long chat and agreed to meet – sounds like a recipe for disaster to me but with Daisy estimating that decryption will take days rather than hours, it’s at least a quicker way of earning our cash.
Continues: 1/2>
|| >
Personal misgivings aside, I wasn’t about to let Sickle hang his ass out to dry so as he took the meet play by play, Ash and I provided cover from a vantage point nearby – ready to leap to his defence. To all intents and purposes, Sickle and his date had a nice quiet breakfast together. They discussed her and her team’s history, the dangers of Shadowrunning and her (fairly justified) paranoia that someone was out to get her but she didn’t exactly spill the beans. With little to go on, we decided on the spur of the moment to follow her via a combination of remote vehicle ops and matrix nous.
The canny lass certainly gave us the run around heading north by train only to switch onto a southbound express train to Atlanta. Fortunately, with little else to do in Birmingham, Alabama, Ash and Sickle head headed for the safe house and were already ahead by some margin. As I pursued the train by car, Ash and Sickle took up point on the platform, watching and waiting for April to arrive. Shame she didn’t get off of the train. Our best laid plans had gone to rack and ruin but quick-thinking by Ash meant Daisy was already hacking the camera feeds from the train carriage…
April had locked herself in the bathroom en route to Atlanta and emerged dressed all in denim, complete with moustache. She looked depressingly like Johnny Kickback in her new outfit and had obviously walked right out past Ash and Sickle as they kept tabs on the platform.
Now this is where it all gets just a tad surreal. Either, April Walker is masquerading as Johnny Kickback or Johnny Kickback is masquerading as April Walker. Whichever it is, it doesn’t make much sense that April/Johnny is then bringing in hired help to try and find Binary Pulse – unless it’s some sort of test. Maybe April is pretending to be Johnny to throw the people she knows he is sending after her off of the scent. Alternatively, Johnny has been trying to find April, keeping her shop under surveillance and, not realising the Mafia had subcontracted the job to us, thought he should try to screw information out of us ASAP when he saw us busting in.
I have no idea.
All I do know right now is that we are missing several pieces from the jigsaw. And here’s another surprise: Daisy decoded a forwarding number for Shift from the encrypted files on April’s server. Shift’s number matches Snow’s. Sure, Snow has his fingers in many pies, but does that mean he used to be Shift or just that he’s acting as an agent and go-between for April’s team-mate? What a twisted web we weave…
We’re not sure we’ve done the job yet. Frankly, if finishing the job means handing over Snow’s address, I’m not sure we want to – and that’s without even considering my vision of Snow’s death. We’ll protect Snow – no doubt about that. It’s a matter of honour and professional courtesy – you don’t rat out your Chummers.
Which kinda means this job is another fragging bust. Another screw job.
Sure, we’ve got the money up front this time but unless we cough up the information in return, keeping it will mean dicking the Mafia and that gives you the life expectancy of a woodchuck on the freeway. To say nothing of the fact that my brother subcontracted this to us and blood is thicker than water.
We are so screwed.
Mood: FINE: Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
Ends: 2/2>
||
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
