Clusterfrag

<< 5 DAMAGE >>

The digital flame consumes the Black IC, raging until it implodes into a single point of light.

(( Combat's over. ))

Lines of code flicker and disappear as Stat1C erases all traces of his presence on the system.

Val's eyes snap open as he returns to the confined gloom of the restroom. He's woken up in cheerier places, but rarely in a cheerier mood. Whistling to himself, he flushes the toilet, swipes the motion sensor off the wall, wets his hands down in the sink, and strides back into the pub proper to retake his seat at the bar. He orders another shot, which goes down the hatch just as soon as it arrives.

After taking a brief moment to rifle through the contents of the pilfered file, he opens an encrypted comm channel to the rest of the team, and describes his findings.

< Looks like we've got something to work with, 'manos. The Legion supply line... I've got the fraggin' bible right here. Schedules, route maps, correspondence, you name it. I think with this we could stage a pretty nice little hijacking, if we can wait five or six days until the next shipment. These trucks are bound to have their Vehicle IDs cleared through checkpoints, the drivers will have border crossing credentials already loaded onto their PANs, and we'll have the exact trucks and goods that Legion is expecting. We should head somewhere where we can talk strategy without being disturbed. >

Max nods to the bartender, stands, and heads for the door. As he moves, he comms,

<Sounds like a plan to me. I think I saw a motel a way's back down the road.>

Adams tries to suppress a grin as he scans the bar for watchful eyes.

< That's the best news we've had all day. This finally gives us something to work with. Max, you go on ahead; I'll find us a place to patch up the rover. >

Adams motions for a drink, and orders a scotch. The bartender finishes his pour, and Adams' finger hovers over the credit transfer dialogue on his commlink. He shoots the bartender a meaningful look, and says in Ojibwe,

"You don't happen to know a competent mechanic in town? One who knows how to keep his mouth shut?"

Max comms back, asking Doc,

<Actually, can you fish a place where we might be able to rent a short-term cabin or something out of that Knowsoft? Something a little more remote seems like a good idea to me.>

The bartender fails to hide the surprise on his face when Doc speaks his native tongue. He taps a few buttons on an external commlink.

"I'm sending you the frequency of a local mechanic. He does work for the syndicate. He is... discrete."

Adams taps an extra 50 nuyen onto his tab, and gives the bartender nod.

"Thanks, friend," he says, downing the last of his drink and getting up.

Walking toward the door, he comms out,

< Got a garage that can take care of our wheels. Let me check for a place to hole up. >

Accessing his knowsoft, Adams searches for any place matching the criteria laid out by Max.

[ Outskirts, Calgary ]

It used to be an office building, before the owner got caught up in the never ending war between the Russian cartels and the Chippewa syndicate. The heating works, but infrequently. The location is remote; on top of a hill in a business district that long ago stopped struggling against the sprawl. Doc mulls over these facts, and flips the old school key-card in his hand.

The new owner--an older ork with a noisly cybernetic leg, hadn't been very interested in their purpose. He had wanted ¥1500 for a week, but Max's protestations had lowered that fee to ¥900.

Doc collapses into a cob-webbed office chair and kicks off from a antique matrix terminal, the kind that had an AR display built into the desk. The screen's been smashed. Kids, probably. Maybe gangs. His eyes sweep across the long, drafty workspace and his beleaguered team mates. This will do.

Max rubs his hands together and breathes heavily into them, his breath visible in this frozen place. A cold glow spills through the windows of the building-- the glass seems to be the only thing the owner replaces as vandals destroy it. Dust dances in shafts of light that manage to peek around corners and paint the interior in negative relief. Max's eyes focus not upon that which he can see easily, but the lowlight voids left in the rest of the place-- the broom closet cracked open with its belly so bathed in inky blackness that even elfin eyes can't penetrate it, the windowless hallway which may well stretch from eternity into the pits of hell, and the bathroom whose secret horrors lie hidden behind a shroud of darkness and cold impenetrable to either light or warmth.

The lighter sparks in the elf's hands and the momentary reprieve from the frigid, still room is an epiphany against his face and fingers. The glowing ember at the end of his cigarette reminds Max that the world can be warm when it needs to be, and his thoughts light upon the BioDrive facility where the team found itself just ten short days previous. Chuckling coldly, a puff of breath and smoke wisps out of Max's lungs, and he says,

"Mojave seems pretty far away, huh?"

But the smoke filling his lungs is warm despite the freezing air. Max sets Marlowe down on an old bureau against the back wall and moves to explore his surroundings a little more closely. He starts first with the broom closet, in which he is relieved to find a largely soiled and occasionally tattered stack of moving blankets. Wrapping one around his shoulders, he walks with his cigarette dangling from his lips back toward the center of the room where the team seems to be setting up its circle of operations, and drops them down in the center. Even Tyros-- whose skin must be as thick as a rhinoceros's hide-- looks cold.

Taking another drag off of his cigarette, Max muses,

"Hell of a place to sit tight for five days."

Adams snorts,

"At least the proprietor of these fine lodgings probably wouldn't care or notice if we built a campfire in the middle of the room."

He rubs his arms, alarmed at how good the idea sounds to him.

"Okay, let's go over that info that Val dug up. We need to figure out a place where we can safely take one of these trucks, and remove its occupants. What are we thinking, ambush in a remote location? Try to nab it at the local supply depot and hope nobody finds the bodies while we're gone?"

Max interjects with,

"Why don't we set up an area jammer first, and maybe Val can scan for active PANs so we can be sure that we're alone?"

Tyros waits for Val to finish the precaution.

"Look, let's not over complicate this. Let's find the truck. I'll dominate the mind of the driver. You'll kill whoever else is along and we'll put them in the back. Then I'll have the driver take us to the base. Simple. I like simple."

Val gives the thumbs up to indicate the team is not being listened in on.

Max's eyes dart to the decker's signal of 'all clear' and then back to Tyros and Doc. As is often the case, Max doesn't see Sinjin, but supposes that the ork wouldn't be much of a ninja if he did. Nodding, the elf assents,

"I agree. We're gonna want to take the truck someplace isolated, though-- someplace where we won't raise alarms if things go ugly. Any indication of how many guys we might expect aboard this truck, Val?"

Val nods, bringing up the file he pilfered from the transport company earlier. He transfers an encrypted copy to each team member's commlink and distributes the passkey.

(( No sense in me being a conduit of information, as I don't know the contents of the file IRL. ))

Max receives the data transfer and begins working his way through the information. He's looking for cargo manifests that will lead him to the specific shipments that interest him, and from there searches for payroll sheets and operations logs-- anything that might lead him to a sense of what their manpower looks like on a given goods run.

(( Dunno if applicable-- maybe roll Investigative Procedures? Finding relevant information in a sea of documentation seems like something a detective would have to have become better at than your a-ver-age bear. ))

The customer file that Val recovered is fairly spartan. From what the team can tell, a flat amount of nuyen (¥25,000) is transferred on the first of each month. Looking back through past transaction receipts, it seems as though the payments are originating from a Capital Exports Corporation. Perhaps a shell company? No other contact information has been entered into the system, meaning someone at the company probably has a more informal relationship with the client.

Cargo manifests vary slightly, but typically share the same pattern:

• 150 units NutriSoy MREs
• 378 units 1 liter treated water
• 50 units MItsuhama Nu-Cell Battery
• 100 units personal grooming kit, men
• 75 units Alpaca 100 tobacco/cigarette
• 30 units blanket mylar
• 30 units laundry detergent
• 50 units BTL entertainment, misc

From driver's logs, it appears that an Ares Roadmaster leaves the facility at 0800 and returns roughly six hours later. Employee records indicate that two armed escorts accompany the truck. No further information can be found on the personnel.

The truck's route out of Calgary is exclusively on well trafficked roads. Once outside, it follows a road straight to Devil's Canyon.

Max eyes the list and muses to the team,

"What are the odds that we could infiltrate their facility and poison those seventy five packs of cigarettes they send up every week..."

The elf rubs his stubble as he considers the idea.

Val chuckles quietly, nodding.

"Well, from what I know of Bell, I wouldn't be totally against the idea. But this being just a recon contract, I don't think we need to overextend ourselves."

Max cracks a grin, and says,

"It's a lot easier to recon a facility with nobody in it."

"We would need everyone there to smoke the cigarettes at once, otherwise it would just put the facility on alert if a guard or two dropped dead upon smoking the first batch. Better I think for us to get there with the element of surprise. What we need to do is get me inside the truck somehow. I can sit in the back invisible until we get out of town. Then take control of the driver, have him stop at the appointed spot, and you all can take out the other crew and jump on board. Then the driver takes us the rest of the way in."

Max traces his finger along a road that leads into Devil's Canyon. Tapping decisively, the elf says, "Here. This spot should be far enough away from both Calgary and Legion to keep us from attracting the attention of either. If we set up positions on either side of the road, we should be able to orchestrate a solid ambush. Val could access the truck's PAN and kill the ignition." Max pauses to think and rub his considerable stubble, then continues, "Meanwhile, we jam their comm transmissions so they can't call out for help. They'll get out to kick the tires and see if there's anything they can do, and when that happens we geek anybody holding a gun. Tyros takes control of the driver and we cruise casually home. Failing that, I could always take the wheel and try to talk us in if we wind up having to kill everybody. All we'd need in advance is some camouflage that blend us in with the snow. And to make sure our area jammer is up to the task." Pausing again, Max glances up at Doc in the cold light with a grin on his face, and finishes, "We might also want to bring some towels to clean the blood off the truck after we take it."

Adams opens his eyes, having been visualizing the ambush as it was laid out by his comrades.

"We might consider rigging a nearby tree or pile of rocks with explosives in order to block the road if Val and Tyros are unsuccessful on the first pass."

He grins, "I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty stupid if they just drove right by us."

He looks at the map again, "Topo is showing a steep slope on the north side of the road, so it shouldn't be a problem to start a minor landslide if we need to. Nothing too major -- we'd still need to drive the truck out ourselves -- but enough to get them to stop."

Max nods, and says,

"I like your thinking, but why worry about rigging the slide? Why not just block the road with minor obstructions so they have to stop no matter what, giving us all the time in the world to take over the driver and the truck? Lot easier that way, and we don't have to worry about explosives or anything like that tipping off our target. Once we're done, Tyros can just levitate the drek back out of our way."

"it's a nice plan, for an ambush. But this is a recon mission. We need a good look up Legions skirt, and we'll be risking much more than a slap in the face to get one. We'll need to get in and get back out again with none the wiser, or the intel we gather will be forfiet the minute Bell finds out he's been compromised. What happens when the transport arrives late, after our unexpected delay throws it off it's routine schedule? What of the two fully armed escorts we'd have to deal with. And most importantly, what happens at the end of the day when people come up missing?

No, it's a good ambush....but we don't need to steal a truck. Alls we need do is steal a ride. We get all of us aboard the truck before it leaves the transit hub. this leaves the standard teams in place to pass the standard checkpoints, at the standard times. Once we arrive, we'll have 6 hours to reconnoiter the facility and get stowed away again before the driver makes his routine return trip to Calgary. We'll remove the most variables this way, and no one goes missing at roll call. I think we keep this simple. Simple is small, and harder to pick out from the norm. They have a routine, gentlemen. Let us oblige them."

Max shakes his head, and suggests,

"What you're talking about there is a job for one-- maybe two men. And no one or two of us is going to be qualified to handle everything we come across. If we go in as a team, the likelihood is that we get made at some point. That's certainly our track record, anyway." Max pauses for a moment as a brief silence settles over the room. The elf makes eye contact with all of his teammates before he continues, "Besides, who's to say that the guards who turn up geeked didn't get that way on the return trip? Or Tyros alters the driver's memory to make him think that he killed his compatriots? I'd love to be able to slip in and out undetected the way you're suggesting, but I simply don't see it happening. Seems to me that a good ol' fashioned stick-up is the way to get onto the base undetected."

Sinjin harrumphs.

"Whaddya mean its a job for only one or two of us? In fact, of five, I can only imagine one of us'd have a hard time sitting still and keeping his mouth shut till we got there." he says teasingly.

"Now, I'll grant that the five of us snooping around out there might be about as hard to notice as a joy girl in Sunday school, but the important part is that we'd be there, and we'd be in, before they squad up and start tryin' to kill us. Remember, there's hundreds of the bastards, and we will have to get back out again"

The ork pauses to eye Max meaningfully.

"An old fashioned stick-em-up? Your talking about some real Hollywood cowboy drek. And that drek always ends the same way.... the cowboy's whole posse gets killed and only one man survives to ride off into the sunset....the cowboy."

Taking a small sip of icy vodka, Sinjin continues,

"There might be a way to compromise, adding a measure of safety and still allowing for some big bang jollies. But we havent thought this plan all the way through yet..not by a long shot. The truck itself will be bugged and tracked, but the real problem is going to be the two squads of infantry that accompany it, in their respective armored vehicles. Are there any thoughts on how to deal with these two obstacles, and sabotage their threat level before we get to the O.K. Corral? Also, who else wants to drive? We will need all three vehicles to arrive together to keep cover, otherwise we might as well take the rover and damn the whole charade to begin with."

Adams tosses the viewpoints back and forth in his mind. An idea strikes him.

"Wait, there might be a compromise. Sinjin, you make a good point about missing workers causing alarm. That will definitely result in them figuring out that something is up. What if we don't kill them? Tyros, you can grab the driver's mind, I can stick-n-shock the other two, or Sinjin can use those narcoject grenades. An application of Laés and/or a memory wipe would leave them none the wiser. The shipment will arrive on time at the compound, and the guards and driver will have no recollection of anything having been amiss."

He stands up from the his seat on the paper-thin matress.

"This lets us perform the quick and dirty ambush away from prying eyes, but covers our tracks as well."

Max nods, and says,

"I like that idea. Though, we're still in a tight spot when it comes to getting back out of the facility. I'll try to hunt down some stick n' shock rounds so you're not the only one firing non-lethal munitions. Though, if it came down to it, Sinjin and I could sneak up to the truck and put them under by hand."