Finally In The Middle of Some Calibrations

Finally In The Middle of Some Calibrations
Date	2084-07-10
GM	Asmodeus
Location	Tarislar, Seattle
Status	Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
Casualties and losses
	Submersion ordeal for 8133D3R

Summary

The Monolithians start unfucking their base. Runners help!

Background

See Monolithium Powers.

The Meet

Bolt is there in Devil Lake with Eidolon and waits for the others to arrive. Specialist Flashlight, the gang's armorer, mentions that their current tools for maintaining equipment absolutely blows and needs a complete overhaul. Unable to maintain the high tech milspec armor they took from Knight-Errant's HTR academy with scraps, Flashlight's frustrated by the increasingly decrepit armor condition. They have to steal materials and tools from elsewhere, and while getting a basic field maintenance toolkit is doable, shops and facilities would be ideal.

The Plan

The team starts looking at options and considers Ancients, Skraacha, Eighty-Eights and Octagon Triad. Considering the options, they decide against corporate targets since that's a little higher brow. Triads are excluded since they're considerably more vindictive; while Ancients and Skraacha are likely to provide far greater direct opposition, once they get away they're less likely to find pipe bombs in their mailbox. 8133D3R does Matrix Searches to find suitable targets to hit and identifies two locations where Ancients have production of the suitable kind, one in Tarislar and one in the Salish Sidhe Council. They pick the Tarislar option, but the effectively A-security rating of the elf-controlled region is concerning.

Asking the Skraacha via Warboss who Eidolon's known by reputation before, the team obtains a viable way out; blowing up a hole into an underground tunnel by pre-planting plastic explosives on a tunnel roof to make the surface fall apart and let them simply drop into the OU from above. By contacting Krauter via networking checks, they manage to bribe the Spikes lieutenant into attacking the Ancients by footing the bill for some heavy duty military explosives that the trolls can use to bomb an Ancients outpost that Krauter claims was about to push homeless trolls off a nearby squatter residence. A distraction. A way out. To finish the trifecta, they request [8Hextech]] and her drones to operate forklifts, handle truck transportation and actually carry the heavy duty machinery out of the facility.

The Run

Infiltration is difficult. The Spikes attack in East Tarislar lures away a solid two thirds of the local detachment of armed Ancients. It's time for the team to work. Having to cross a pond, cut security fences, bypass laser sensors and more, Lumina manages to hop over the fence, drop, roll and avoid detection all in one fell swoop. A looper round with smart loops at a camera from a heavily suppressed Ares Light Fire 75 (with the custom quiet suppressor) and a quick chop to the back of the neck lets her disable a sentry and create a blind spot in the security cam network. After this, she and Eidolon time a duo attack on two gate guards, one getting a sub-sonic bullet to the temple while the other is knocked out again. Lumina opens the gate and lets the team inside, hiding the bodies of the sentries in the bushes. The far weaker warehouse workers are knocked out mercifully and hidden in lockers while Hextech drives her truck in; this blends into the noise of usual warehouse operations, so without checking the area themselves, the rest of the facility doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary since gunshots were all exceptionally quiet and no alerts have been rung thanks to expert one-hit knockouts.

A CAD-7 anthrodrone doctor is extracted and electronic components are loaded onto the main truck by the anthrodrones. Hextech takes over looping the warehouse cameras while the team advances to the armorer labs. Looping cameras, luring out sentries and even remotely using Resonance abilities to loop difficult to reach camera points, The team advances and slowly clears out the gunshops. It's a painstaking process and several times they're on the verge of discovery, managing to rely on Lumina's superhuman abilities, 8133D3R's Matrix-breaking Resonance and Eidolon's ice cold marksmanship to keep pushing deeper into the facility. Hextech's truck follows around the building to the secure loading ramp and the drones begin quietly dismantling the machinery, hauling hundreds of kilograms of machine parts into the tank carrier while the team keeps watch over the remaining security possibly catching wind of things. With all footage properly looped and no alarms ringing, however, the relatively quiet base continues to feel quiet and utterly boring for the security detail.

Eidolon had grabbed a bounty off the WCM bounty board. Ho'ol Gwynevera, a Laesa Syndicate liaison working in the replacement trade (bunraku service using homeless people and plastic surgery to 'replace' missing or dead loved ones and friends for a price) is in the facility. Failure means letting the scumbag live and a notoriety hit. Eidolon sneaks around the place, takes careful aim and despite being spotted at the last second, Ho'ol doesn't have the reflexes to dodge the professional assassin's shot. That alerts the entire complex since he had to use APDS instead of sub-sonic to punch through the armored glass. The Juggernaut drone that acted as a stopgap security measure on a second floor hatch emerges and immediately opens up a rocket volley on both Eidolon and Lumina, but their skimmers allow them to speed out of the way, load up onto Hextech's truck and speed away as fast as possible.

Aftermath

Due to extracting into the Ork Underground, the Ancients' chase is cut somewhat short. Specialist Flashlight can fill out the Devil Lake airship hangar with comparatively brand new utilities. A tool kit, tool shop and tool facility for Armorer, Automotive Mechanic and Chemistry are all installed into the area, allowing the members' Light Mil-Spec armors to get repaired and restored to full function once again.

Rewards

15 Karma (15 RVP)
1 Street Cred (1 RVP)
2 CDP
2 WCM Reputation
Submersion Ordeal for 8133D3R
8,000 Nuyen (Bounty)
Optional Rewards:
1. Dodge Trailer + 1,000 Nuyen (Cost: 14 RVP from Karma)
2. Maersk Spider RCC + 1,000 Nuyen (Cost: 9 RVP from Karma)
3. Hextech, 4/2 WCM Technomancer w/ 2 Chips (Cost: 5 RVP or 10 CDP)
4. Eidolon can take Warboss or Krauter at 1 Loyalty.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Lumina: "I have nothing personal against the Ancients, so minimizing casualties as much as possible at the place we infiltrated was a welcome thing. Most of us stuck to non-lethal methods to take opposition down quietly. There were several challenges along the way regarding the security of the area, but thanks to 8133D3R, we were able to proceed smoothly. Delta-03's radar was a great boon in helping us pinpoint targets we couldn't see, allowing Eidolon and I to prioritize in taking down multiple targets quietly as a team. We all synergized well with each other, and I wouldn't mind working with my team in the future."

Delta-03: "While certainly an abnormal trip for me, all the time we spent preparing and my inbuilt radar and ultrasound hardware made for a wonderful and clean time getting through it all. Sure, 8133D3R had a very rough go of things, but I did offer medical attention if they needed it. Only thing we missed was the drone that shot rockets at us!"

Eidolon: Second time working with 2 members of the team. I was forced to deviate slightly from my MO to keep things silent, so the Ancients lost two of their number from subsonic rounds. Things worked surprisingly well, and I managed to make Lumina's life easier, disabling the Juggernauts sensors before it could fire at her directly. Mission successful and the WCM are in better shape than they were, and Hextech got a new drone to play with.