Run #3 - The Smoking Gunwale

[GM Nick]

The ship's radar results grip Axel's chest like an icy hand: two klicks out, approximately. He scans the horizon. If it were not for the storm clouds still tumbling about, they might even have a visual.

Achak wipes rain drops off the DSECD and hands it to Yung. "Better for you to make the call. I'm not sure what any of this means."

[Molly]

For quite possibly the first time in her experience, Mouse finds herself grateful to be out in the cold, the winds from the departing storm plastering her wet clothes against her skin. Again, her conscious attention remains tethered to Javad’s frail form, dragged into his orbit by the sheer gravity of his trauma. She follows its beats like a familiar tune. Out of the slaughter and into the storm.

Achak's prompting does beg another question: one that had been gnawing at her before she was rudely interrupted by the sound of unseen footsteps. She opens up her group messages, specifically the thread that pointedly excludes both Javad and Achak. << Ne… will Preacher want us to hand over the kid? >> The message streams into her AR, like the metaphorical question hanging over them now. << Obvious jokes aside, dunno how I feel handing over the sole survivor of a bioweapon to the guy who wants to study it. >>

[MattL]

Yung looks warily at the DSECD, contemplating what further horrors activating the device might require the group to face. He shrugs, quickly grabbing it from Achak.

"I'd say it can't get any worse, but that'd be a lie, eh? We're still alive after all." He attempts a half smile, but it struggles to stay on his face for more than a moment.

He make the call, silently mulling over how to frame the series of events in such a way that Preacher's only direction is for the team to get the hell off the ship.

[GM Nick]

The team's face fumbles with the slick, black plastic brick. The rain, sweat and blood that coats his hands makes the task cumbersome. After he finally manages to open the device, he snaps the safety retainer and activates the isotope. A green light pulses from a small display, bathing his face in a sickly glow. Alphanumerics flickers across the display and the device begins to buzz. Assuming that it's working, Yung draws the device to his face.

Yung stares out at the whitecaps while he waits for the connection. The clicks and pops from the communicator are almost inaudible over the crashing of waves. His mind begins to wander. He recalls the events of the past hour and all the unspeakable horror that they've witnessed. Is there a rhyme or reason to it, or does he just wish there was?

After what seems like an eternity, there's a hissing sound followed by the gravely, unmistakable voice of Preacher. He asks: "What have you found?"

[MattL]

Yung wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his coat, anxiously glancing to the left and right before responding.

"Whole things gone to drek. Some kinda bio-weapon, yeah. Everyone on board was DOA, well, we found one survivor, kid in our custody; he's seen some shit. Some kinda whirligig activated during the investigation. It..." He pauses briefly, trying to find the words to explain the next part without sounding like a complete novahead.

"Listen, we all saw it, this thing 'triggered'" He uses air quotes despite being an audio only channel.

"Aye Mouse, can you like, piggyback on this signal or something, send the man some video metadata about the thingy and what it did?"

"Anyway, it uh, peaked at some kinda resonance frequency turned all the dead people to, wait for it...zombies. I'm not fraggin with you, zombies." He pauses, waiting momentarily for a response, then deciding to continue.

"So yeah, faced with a zombie horde in the hundreds, we made a slight hole in the ship and very likely compromised it's structural integrity. It's currently sinking. We've barely managed to make it topside. We grabbed the whirligig and got what footage and data we could. Some other recon team is here, not sure who. I'll save personal opinions about what it all means for a formal debrief. What's the call Padre?" He glances anxiously to the rest of the team, waiting for the response from Preacher.

[Molly]

Mouse physically winces at the mention of the kid, but opts to keep her mouth shut and put her faith in the resident bulldrek artist. When prompted directly, she peers toward the DSECD to fill in. "REST ASSURED, WE CAN PASS ALL DATA FROM OUR FINDINGS IN PERSON, OVER SECURE CHANNELS. GIVEN THE C.I. THREAT PREACHER HAS DISCUSSED, I WOULDN’T RISK IT NOW." Again, she lapses into uncharacteristically stiff professional language, as though briefly possessed by some corporate suit, who is coaching her on which words to use.

She holds up a finger to interject briefly, "TO BE CLEAR, THERE ARE STILL FUNCTIONAL BULKHEADS. IF YOU DECIDE TO KEEP THE SHIP AFLOAT, THAT'S YOUR PREROGATIVE." She eyes Axel uneasily, as though to confirm that technically speaking, the vehicle's still temporarily seaworthy... for a few more minutes. "BUT CONSIDERING THAT WE'VE ALREADY TEASED EVERY OUNCE OF PAYDATA FROM THIS VESSEL AND TOOK ITS WHOLE PAYLOAD, THE VALUE OF THE SHIP ITSELF IS PROBABLY NOT WORTH THE EXTRA RISK." ...now that phrasing is clearly all Mouse.

[GM Nick]

Preacher listens patiently as Yung explains the catastrophe still unfolding. Another brief period of silence follows as Preacher presumably reviews the footage uploaded via Mouse's comm. "Horrific," Preacher responds. "I can't allow this to spread to the mainland. Gather an organic sample and scuttle the craft. Send it to the bottom of the ocean."

Axel, meanwhile, has been fixated on the radar. The bogey is headed straight for them, and now very close. He glances over the bow, eyes plumbing the clouds for silhouettes.

[Molly]

"OH THANK FUCK." Mouse exhales, her shoulders visibly relaxing with Yung’s success in securing the green light to escape. Sure, they're not yet out of dodge, but this is still the first good news they've gotten since boarding. "YOU HEARD THE BOSS. LET'S MOVE."

She swivels her head around to find which side of the freighter they'd entered on, while lowering her volume in an aside. "-PREFERABLY BEFORE PREACHER STARTS QUOTING THE BIBLE AT US." Scanning the horizon for any sign of their party yacht, she continues in a pale, computerized imitation of the Johnson's familiar baritone. "AND LO, AS WAS FORETOLD IN ZECHARIAH 14:12, LET THOSE WHO FRAG AROUND FIND OUT."

[Drew Buddy]

Axel glances at yet another brick of plastic explosive that somehow seems to have made its way from his bag to his hand. Funny, that. He looks up and grins.

"Don't need to tell me twice."

[MattL]

Yung cocks an eyebrow at the orders, thinking momentarily about trying to extract more nuyen out of the situation. Then he recalls what he witnessed below, letting out a sigh of relief at not being the one carrying the 'organic sample'. His gaze reaches out to the unseen horizon searching for something without looking. Finally he shrugs.

"Well, you heard the man, time to do what we're good at for once."

[Molly]

""...OVERCOMPLICATING SIMPLE TASKS?"" A wicked little grin of anticipatory delight slips past the the sass.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel glances at the elevator, then at the ladder leading back down to their perfume bottle of a pleasure yacht.

"Probably best to do this from the exterior. Main thing is we need to crack the outer hull," he speaks at the languid pace that shows he's thinking, and not at all about the ticking clock counting down the minutes until the mysterious contact arrives. He places a detonator into the brick of plastic explosive, pressing the test button until the light flashes green. "Figure we climb down, I can stick it on the hull below the water line, we get the hell out of here, and scuttle this rust bucket behind us."

He finishes his work, tosses the brick into the air and catches it, as if testing its weight and balance. "Let's send this tub and these creatures to the bottom of the ocean." He's off walking toward the ladder almost as soon as he finishes speaking.

[GM Nick]

Dice

Axel - Demolitions - 6, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 3, 3, 5 - 3 hits on 9 dice

Axel works quickly, affixing the explosives to the one of the freighter's structural ribs. It's already sinking, but he's going to help it sink faster. The rain makes everything slippery and he fumbles with the detonator a few times before pushing it into the lumpy mass of boom boom clay. Content that the job is satisfactory, he scurries back up the ladder to re-join the rest of the crew.

Just as Axel emerges from the maintenance shaft, Achak mutters something in Blackfoot and points. The silhouette of a craft can be seen in the haze on the horizon, and it is rapidly growing larger.

"I'm beginning to miss land," Achak says, and begins running towards the port side where the yacht is located.

[Molly]

Everything's fine. Or more accurately, the things that are distinctly un-fine are about to explode and/or go down with this ship. The mysterious footsteps she'd heard only moments prior? Any remaining zombies on board that hadn't yet been dispatched? Boom. Sploosh. Not her problem anymore.

Deliberately sidestepping any messy details that would expose the myriad holes in this logic, she squints briefly in the direction of the approaching vessel, adjusting her wireless filters out of habit, with maybe a touch of desperation, as if trying to manifest some signal out of the approaching ship. [You're killing me, Smalls. I told you I-] [[-could still benefit from the extra processing power to pick up any faint signals. ]] She fills in, lest her Agent’s whining distract them both. [[Just indulge my curiosity one last time, and I promise, I'll line up a shot of this sinking tub as we sail off into the sunset]].

Her Scrappy-Doo of an agent temporarily quelled by the promise of more explosions, Mouse makes her way toward Achak, and that last uncomfortable jump toward freedom. Her dark eyes flit from the churning water surrounding them back toward the more physically capable members of the crew, her gaze bobbing from Yung to Mick. "THINK YOU COULD GIVE SHORTROUND A BOOST?" It’s not that the kid couldn't make it alone- in just one night, he's probably done enough lifesaving acrobatics for a lifetime. If anything, it's a more irrational impulse- that the kid deserves to know he's in good hands now.

(( Matrix Perception, in case anything is close enough from the approaching ship to ID? Otherwise, Mouse is just going to scoot her hoop back to the party yacht ASAP. ))

[GM Nick]

Mouse sends out a Matrix ping, hoping to score some scrap of information about the vessel bearing down on their position. Just as she's readying her bevy of cracking programs, an AR window pops open. Whether or not her agent opened it, Mouse isn't sure. But she finds her immediate attention drawn to it. Strangely, there's no file ID attached. It's a video-- or rather, a series of videos spliced together. The clips look like standard fare from social media, but each is less than a second long. A wide range of metahumanity in different outfits, different locations and different situations flash by, each uttering a word scraped from a longer sentence. Played together, they form a cohesive message.

"Don't--let--them--notice--you... Don't--give--them--a--reason." As abruptly as the video opened, it closes again. The area of Mouse's vision where the window was is clear, and she can see the bogey now. A slick chrome wedge shreds the waves as it makes a beeline for the derelict freighter. It's too small to be pleasurecraft and too fast to be a commercial vessel.

[Molly]

Her eyes scrunch shut, her small fists clench and release, as though she were contending with a looming migraine rather than this anonymous and foreboding counsel. "For frag’s sake, intrusive messages, can’t you be more specific?" She hisses outwardly, her voice largely consumed by the surrounding winds. Her attention wheels toward the unsolicited message, her immediate impulse being to dissect it, to dig out its source and its motivations, yet already suspecting it to be a fruitless endeavor. The least this mysterious messenger could do is explain which of the myriad lurking dangers it meant by ‘them’.

No, she just doesn’t have the time to indulge her paranoid fantasies right now. In the smallest deference to this bizarre warning, she does boot her familiar ‘wrapper’ program, to start broadcasting her deck as a standard, embedded comm. That’s all this mystery threat warrants. As far as she’s concerned, this spooky rider she’s apparently acquired can wait its turn, or at least until she’s no longer staring down the approach of Coast Guard or pirates or a shipload of unmanned explosives or whatever else this new vessel might be carrying.

If she wants answers, she's going to have to survive long enough to see them, and that will involve getting her hoop far and away from this doomed ship."FRAG IT. LET’S GO ALREADY."

[Drew Buddy]

Axel drops down off the last rungs of the ladder onto the deck of the pleasure yacht, wiping plastique residue off on his jumpsuit. He waves Wind and Whirlwind to take up positions on either side of the craft, Ares Alphas tracking the location of the incoming boat.

<< Let's make ourselves scarce, >> he comms as he connects to the yacht, and absently runs through the engine start procedure. << This is the last ferry to shore. All aboard! >>

[GM Nick]

The yacht drifts away from the freighter as Axel engages the engines. The massive vessel seems to be listing a bit, but it could just be the perspective. Every member of the team feels palpable relief at having disembarked the cursed ship and its grotesque secrets. Javad-- now wearing a life preserver-- stares dumbly at the rapidly shrinking silhouette.

As the yacht flees under full throttle, the runners gradually become aware of a hissing sound. Mick is the first to spot the disturbance in the water: a sort of shimmering that stretches out in a straight line towards the water. One. Two. Three. Three of them. It's only when they impact the ship that their nature is revealed. Torpedos! Torpedos that can only have been fired by the unidentified ship.

There's a teeth-rattling concussive blast as all three detonate alongside the hall. The heat causes Axel's explosives to ignite, and the ship is temporarily obscured by a fireball. A massive plume of smoke billows outward and debris begins to rain down on the yacht. Chunks of twisted steel hiss as they drop into the ocean.

[Molly]

Mouse instinctively braces against the increasingly distant explosions, but refuses to turn away entirely, adamant on capturing the surreal footage through her lenses. "LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE DOESN'T WANT THEIR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY OUT IN THE OPEN," she muses, keeping her head craned ever so slightly toward the drekstorm, even as she retreats into the relative shelter of the yacht's canopy. As the remaining view of the freighter is swallowed some combination of distance, belching smoke, and the churning waters below, her consciousness is subjected to a gleefully shitty rendition of the Titanic theme on recorder.

Don't let them notice you. Don't give them a reason. In light of the foreign ship's assault on the formerly-floating tub of evidence, this vague warning does seem like generally good advice. No need to advertise their own presence as witnesses. Of course, the applicability of that fortune-cookie-generic advice to the current situation may be mere coincidence. The fact is, who sent it, what the frag they were referring to, what their motivations might have been, how they had even found her- none of these questions are likely to be answered anytime soon.

With a sigh, she presses her fingers against her temple, having seemingly depleted her supply of adrenaline with which to panic. << I hate to add to our compounding list of spooky unexplainable drek, but just before we pulled out, I got hit with this: >> She attaches the clip, once again eyeing the (seemingly vacant?) metadata in passing. << No idea who- or what sent it, or why they made it sent some digital ransom note instead of plaintext. Just that they wanted our attention, so… mission accomplished? >> In a way, her distant expression seems to echo Javad’s, any fear having been edged out by pure exhaustion. Whatever this is: be it friend, enemy, a construct of impending madness, it's going to have to wait its fragging turn to be dealt with.

[GM Nick]

Axel keeps the throttle on full, making a bee-line away from the flaming wreck as it slips into the foaming depths. He desperately hopes that whomever fired the torpedos mistakes them for a group of all-too-curious yuppies and opts not to pursue. The mood is grim on the deck of the yacht-- each team member clinging to the railing and staring through the sea spray at the rapidly shrinking plume of inky black smoke.

A minute passes. Then another. And another. The horizon is clear, as is the radar. Whether the runners were deemed not a threat or the newly arrived gunship had more pressing tasks, the result is the same: they're in the clear.

Refusing to waste the nugget of luck afforded by fate, Axel keeps the ship at top speed until the coastline is once again in sight.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel keeps half of his attention on the boat's course, and half on the radar return from the gunboat. The yacht's accelerometers are interpreted as the sensation of waves splashing against his hull. As the dot moves out of what he hopes is torpedo range, he shuts off the active sensors and adjusts course. No sense in leaving a beacon shouting "I am here" to the world, or making their destination obvious to the mysterious boat.

<< So... Glad Preacher was okay with scuttling the ship, 'cause that was happening anyway, huh? Did not see that one coming. Everyone still got all their digits and bits? >>

[Molly]

By now, Mouse has made her way to the ship's interior, deferring to her better instincts to stop standing around in the midst of a waning storm. Instead, she’s claimed a corner beside one of the interior loungers, butt on the floor and body curled into a ball. When Axel mercifully breaks the team's silence, she raises her head from her knees. "GUESS WE HAVE OUR RESIDENT BULLDREK ARTIST TO THANK FOR THAT." A weary smile of genuine appreciation creeps at the corner of her mouth. "DUNNO WHAT WE WOULD'VE DONE IF PREACHER ACTUALLY WANTED THAT SHIP." She pauses here, before managing a loose shrug. "...BESIDES MUTINY."

At Axel's next question, she un-balls herself slightly, revealing a stolen ice bucket she'd been wrapped around. "MENTALLY OR PHYSICALLY?" She turns the bucket gently in her hands, her expression pensive, either examining her warped reflection in the polish metal, or deciding whether or not she's about to hurl into it like Reiya on a Tilt-a-Whirl. "I'M JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENS NOW. WILL WE ACTUALLY GET TO GO HOME THIS TIME?"

[GM Nick]

The sun sinks into the horizon as the yacht putters parallel to the coast, headed for a rendezvous with Anne-Marie. Despite a fairly successful job, the atmosphere is leaden with questions: Just what is going on? What will they do with Javad? What happened on that freighter? The mood would be tense if not for the burgeoning exhaustion.

One thing is for certain: Shit just got a lot more complicated.

Preacher has invited the team to return to the Immortal Sun for a debrief and payment. The notion of home provides a little relief, at the very least.