Highway Chase
| Highway Chase | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Taina Kauhava Irena Tachikov 3310 Freya | Winternight | ||||||||
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Six of Hearts Eidolon | WN Unit Corvus | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Payload of Ymir-compound | |||||||||
| Ascension Run | |||||||||
Summary
Six and Eidolon stop a terrorist attack from causing massive casualties, but only barely.
Background
One of Eidolon's previous runs had pointed out that Winternight still has some cells active around.
The Meet
Irena Tachikov heard through back channels that there's some juicy intel being carried by some kind of government agent in New Orleans. She wants to get on it before any other Evo employee does to accelerate her career, recruiting Six to investigate. At the same time, Taina Kauhava also acquires this same hint, sending Eidolon to catch any wind of things. They start tracking a man based on a burned SIN, but as a human male with variable height and a False Face cyberware aug, he's difficult to pinpoint. The two runners
The Plan
After finding the man, crippled and thirsty on a beach surrounded by trapdoor spiders which nearly catch Six's leg with a web trap, they get his alias. Kleiner Schmidt, a government spy who refuses to elaborate further, tracked a shipment of Ymir, a neurotoxin compound infamous for its use by Winternight. He's collected some intel regarding host data breaches, blueprint copying and unusual traffic patterns that imply there is an imminent terrorist threat to New Orleans. Since the municipal police department only cares about protecting the wealthy, others have to prevent it or it might cause an international incident, considering where the trails he found lead to. Eidolon recalls the Monolithians talking about Winternight operatives getting freed from a plane in an earlier run and he calls Bolt to ask for details. He only says that no Winternight members were inducted into the gang, but they indeed were freed near Seattle and their whereabouts are, as of now, unknown. Looking at a map of New Orleans, Eidolon and Six's knowledge and software combined determine that Routes 10 and 610 are most likely to be the attack's core objectives, going by several extremely densely active urban centers such as museums, shopping malls and Stuffer Shack supercenters. Unwilling to deal with the lunatic Zobop or the Crescent City Mafia, they choose to make their stand on the highway itself.
The Run
The ambush happens in two parts. Six is at a crossroads between ventilation columns, hiding behind ruthenium polymer cloaks. Eidolon prepares a sniper nest south of the route and prepares to detonate preset explosive charges on the underbelly of the highway. Unfortunately, once the truck arrives the charges aren't strong enough to properly damage the bridge and make driving further impossible. The truck continues its journey, and while Six puts a solid burst of discarding sabot rounds from her Yamaha Raiden into the rigger cocoon, it is to no avail. Thinking on her feet, she prepares her Magnetic System and jumps on the truck while it drives by, Eidolon taking pot shots at the car's rear axle to try and slow it down. While Six makes her way to the front of the truck and blasts the driver at point blank, he manages to only take superficial damage. One-handing an automatic shotgun and eventually slashing at Six with a cyberspur, he manages to lose both his shotgun and his attacker, knocking Six almost down to the street to have her face peeled off by the high speed asphalt rash. Fortunately, her magnetic system spares her some serious plastic surgery.
As the side of the truck opens, a relatively crude solution of 30 RPGs with gas rockets in a rack, Eidolon spots one row with a Fly-Spy and shoots through the car's frame to tear through ten of the warheads. The truck begins emitting cyan neurotoxin gas in its wake while Six desperately does the world's most hardcore sit-up and leans over to the side to shoot an airburst grenade, triggering eighteen more warheads. With only two left, the Winternight operative drives the truck off the highway to crash down in the street below. Both Six and the terrorist jump out of the truck, and while the two runners attempt ot disable him, the heavily augmented burnout adept jumps off the highway with skimmers and a parachute, landing on a rooftop below and heading into the alleys.
With Six having taken a decent amount of damage and Eidolon not having a clear shot, the two decide not to chase after him and instead have Freya call EMS regarding the two remaining warheads, now dispersing on a apartment block rooftop where the truck had crashed. They evacuate to Kleiner Schmidt's hotel room to regroup and inform their Johnsons of the operation.