Tools of War

Tools of War
Part of Nanomachines, Son
Date 2080-12-03 GM Darklordiablo Location Abandoned Neonet Blacksite, Atlantic Ocean
Belligerents
Usagi Rabbit Noaido Riot Boombox Purkinje	MCT Black Ops Strike Team
Casualties and losses
	2 Mages 1 Decker 1 Officer 3 Troopers 1 Sneakydrone

Background

These are dark times, Runners. We have seen the future, and it is not a future we want to persist. We have need of one of the last prototypes Neonet made before they fell. We have tracked it down, and now we require a team to acquire it.

The Meet

The meet was in a Chinese restaurant in downtown, which apparently had been cleared out for the meet. The Johnson explained that they required the runners to acquire a specific prototype called the "Search Protocol 5.0" that was left behind in an abandoned Neonet black site research facility in the Atlantic. Unfortunately, MCT was also aware of the black site, and had sent a team to strip the site of anything useful.

Purkinje had been wracking her brains as to whom this Johnson could represent, and came to the conclusion that they were working for a secret organization called The Order of the Delayed Calamity, a group of primarily Awakened and Emerged individuals who's purpose was to stop, or at least delay the many apocalypses that the sixth world presented.

The Johnson offered a full set of arctic dive gear, as well as the loan of vehicles necessary for reaching the site.

Legwork

There was limited research that could be done, although Noaido examined what kind of layout they could expect from this facility, and Purkinje did some quick research, finding a record of materials that must have gone to this site, including hundreds of meters of elevator kit, a significant amount of reinforced steel, compressed plasteel panelling, and an unusual industrial rail system. The logical conclusion was that the lab was subaquatic, and that the prototype vault was on the seabed, or under it. They also determined that there would be some kind of traceless self-destruct system on the base.

The Plan

The equipment they had made it most logical to access the base from underwater, kill any MCT operatives they encountered, and head down to the vault. Grab the prototype, head back to the surface, and destroy the base with as many MCT still inside as possible.

The Run

Riot started by sending a water spirit to investigate their point of entry, both finding an entrance, and a mage guarding it. After lengthy discussion, it was decided that Purkinje would trick the biomonitor, Rabbit would execute the mage, and the team would use that entry point. This went perfectly, Rabbit cutting the hapless mage in half, dispelling that mage's spirit, and Boombox pulling off a quick rewiring of the biomonitor to keep it from reporting in. Purkinje and Noaido then spent a few moments investigating the MCT team's Pi-tac system, and found that some of the team had emergency autoinjectors of some kind of concentrated K-10.

The team hustled for the elevator, and Boombox used his trademark "Throw smart corrosives at it" solution to disarm the explosives on the door. The team was surprised by how low tech the elevator was, cutting out the arrival chime, then calling it. They then began the looooong descent into the depths inside the pressurized tube. At the bottom, the elevator tried to leave again, so a gas grenade was set to proximity and sent up. Meanwhile, they found that the team below had been forewarned, and the mage was invisible, waiting for them. But Rabbit was quick on the draw, cutting this one in half as well by virtue of astral perception and ultrasonic sensors. The decker working on the vault door didn't fare much better, with Galatea charging him. He did have a chance to set off his autoinjector, however, as a suicide ploy, but Riot quickly punched him so hard he exploded, luckily causing no harm to the team.

The vault door was next. It was big, imposing, reinforced steel, and hollow, according to a astral jaunt. The team quickly identified that as meaning 'full of nasty drek', so stopped trying to cut the door open, and hacked it instead. Purkinje and Noaido made a good team again, quickly breaking through both the Dual-keyed locks to open the vault. Inside was the prototype, as well as a number of rather destructive matrix weapons, which the team took upon themselves to destroy.

By the time they'd finished taking care of the contents of the vault, the elevator had returned, revealing a load of unconscious MCT operatives. Just in case, Usagi tosses in a paint grenade... revealing the camoflaged drone inside, which was utterly destroyed in short order.

Taking the elevator all the way back up to the defunct oil rig, Noaido and Purkinje delved into the host, finding a Null form scouting it. The duo evicted the form from the nested host, and Purkinje Defragged it. Then, once the team was off the rig, they set off the self destruct and watched as the industrial rail system first dropped the labs into the abyss, then flooded the vault and caused the rig to collapse.

Aftermath

Once on the plane, several members of the team investigated the device, and were astounded to find that it had the capability to find *any* copy of a file, anywhere on the matrix, as well as pull data from nearby offline or non-matrix computers. Then they were horrified to find that it's core was virtuakinetic brain tissue. A technomancer had died to make this device.

Rewards

• 20,000¥
• Arctic Diving Suit
• Diving Gear
• 4 Karma
• +2 rep The Order of Delayed Calamity
• -1 rep MCT

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Purkinje

I finally found out about the client behind this job and the last one. The Order of the Delayed Calamity, a secretive group dedicated to the counteracting of apocalyptic threats. Among them are powerful mages and technomancers, including people who can perform augury. That must be how they wound up looking for me in vague terms. They're an honorable sort, dedicated to their cause and destroying power that could be misused. I'm glad to work with them. As for the job itself, this is the first time I've gone up against MCT directly in months. I have no pity for their black ops teams, and neither did my team mates. We killed every last one of them that we could find. I'm pretty sure a couple escaped, based on intercepted PI-TAC footage. Well, they can serve as a warning to the rest. We destroyed the rig and all the prototypes in it except for the target item. It's going to be useful in the days to come, but it pains me such a thing comes at the cost of harvested virtuakinetic cells. I can sense the suffering that went into this. We have to finish the job, or all is lost.