Clusterfrag

((Indeed.))

'Frag it', Val thinks, the danger to his meat clearly evident to him even in VR. A shadowy sword appears in his hand, and he flicks around the node shearing locked-down files open at random and with reckless abandon, not caring what monstrosities he might unleash. He hopes that his spoofed access ID will foil anyone who chooses to investigate this abysmally planned digital raid. Leaving the node's quarantine sector in ruins, he logs off the node, returns to the meat--

--and is immediately consumed in a wave of frigid agony. Teeth chattering, he addresses his team.

"Help me up, 'manos. Lets get the frag outta here."

Max helps the flagging decker to his feet and makes immediately for the door. Listening briefly for signs of life on the otherside, the elf opens the door casually and scans the hallway, simultaneously giving the team a signal to hang back and wait for the all-clear.

Doc cups his hands over his mouth, and breathes into them, startled as his breath starts to crystalize as it slips through his fingers. Lightly shifting his weight back and forth to keep the blood flowing to his numb feet, he tilts his head in a gesture toward Val.

"Any luck?" He asks under his breath, flicking his eyes momentarily to Max.

Eyes squeezed shut while trying determinedly to restore agility to his frozen limbs, Val quietly replies.

"Luck? Frag off." Val's triumphant grin is marred only by his hyperactive jaw. "Should be good. Corrupted Kato's file myself then opened every damned box in Pandora's closet. Everything in those data-cores should be nothing but useless virtual junk in the next few minutes, and Kato's file will vanish in that mess just as well as if it never existed. If anybody snoops around, I may end up owing a certain security tech an apology which I've no intention of ever having to give, so, again--let's get the frag out of here!"

Kato stumbles into the hallway and clutches the wall.

"Frag, I almost turned into Japsicle."

He flashes a grin between bluish lips and makes his way towards the rear entrance.

Val wraps his arms around his torso tighter than if he were wearing a straight jacket. Futilely hunched over against the cold, he plants one quaking leg in front of the other and follows after Kato with an unsteady stride.

Doc walks behind Kato as they make their way out of the building.

With any luck, there is a digital massacre occurring behind the door they've just left. This thought provides a feeling of warmth inside his otherwise frigid frame.

The gang retraces their foot-steps, encountering no resistance thanks to Val's discrete hacking. After re-enabling the security camera footage (from a safe distance) the foursome retreats to the safety of the parking garage.

Kato leans against the rover.

"You guys did good. But, this next part is a major pain. The whole place lock up like Fort Knox."

Doc deactivates the rover's security system, and unlocks the doors.

"What are we looking at with the weapons cache?" He asks Kato, opening the rear door to throw his pack inside.

"Drek!" He shouts, jumping back.

His hand slips away from the SMG that it was reaching for moments ago, as Doc realizes what he's looking at.

"Drek," he says, much quieter this time. The prone body of the wage slave sits slumped on the wide leather seat.
"Kinda' forgot about this guy," he says sheepishly.

Having strung the razorwire back into a position resembling its natural, uncut state, Max now nurses hands with more than a few minor cuts. But despite the pain in his hands, the elf is ready to get them a little dirtier.

"Alright, well, now onto this part of the process."

Hopping into the rover, Max goes to work roughing up the wageslave. Taking the ID chip from Doc, Max places is back under his skin and proceeds to scrape him up along rough surfaces, knocking the man to and fro so as to simulate some kind of brawl or mugging. Rifling through his pockets, Max takes his credstick and any items of value. Content with his work, Max lugs the wageslave to the door of the rover and shoves him out, letting him land hard on the concrete. Max really does feel sorry for the guy,

"Nothing personal, pal. Hopefully nothing a shower and a day on the couch can't fix..."

Speeding along towards the Weapons Cache location, Sinjin struggling slightly to find good purchase sitting behind the massive troll, Tyros checks in, <"What's your status gentlemen? We are almost to the meeting point.">

[ Redmond Barrens ]

If the wild west was an apocalyptic urban jungle, it'd be the barrens.

The rover slips almost silently over a grid of pot-holes that at one time was called a road, a myriad of hydraulic shock absorbers working furiously to keep the process vibration-free. The vehicle is surrounded by looming monoliths of poverty--burned out buildings home to either squatters, gangers, cockroaches or all of the above. The pollution is particularly bad here; it catches the sun and refracts it, bathing the 'burb in a nuclear hue that makes eyes water.

An Indian Pathfinder, bearing a large troll and a medium-sized ork, pulls up alongside the rover as the team reunites.

Kato points to a long neglected subway marquee. Underneath the crumbling letters and rusted steel is a staircase descending into darkness.

"Station 13. That's how we get to the stash."

Doc stashes the rover out of sight in a side alley near the subway entrance, and gets out. Glancing at the run-down buildings, he checks and rechecks that the security system is active.

"Kato, you always take us to the nicest places."

Kato grins.

"Hey, you cheap date, buddy. Even Lone Star scared to come here, that's how come we built a base inside the station."

Looking at the subway entrance, Doc runs a hand over his chin.

"So it sounds like you're familiar with this place. What should we expect? I'd imagine they've got some kind of early warning system near the entrance. How far down is the actual cache?"

Kato picks up a piece of ree-bar and traces a line in the dirt at their feet.

"Subway station will be full of booby traps--you can count on that for sure #1. Tracks have patrols--usually two guy with uzis, armor vest. About 1 kilometer from there. Entrance to the cache is a big plasteel door. Inside: five, maybe six guy. Don't want to tip them off until we are inside, but once we are... no witness."

Doc nods as he follows along,

"Okay, so how much of an accident does this need to look like? Will, um, bullet holes in the guards be too much evidence?"

Kato scuffs his foot along the ground, erasing his improvised schematic.

"You got any 'splosives, chief?"

Doc reaches into his pack, and pulls out a spray can of foam explosive.

"Good to go."

Max looks doubtful,

"You know, there's really not much of a way to make this one look like an accident, in my estimation-- not unless there's some massive explosives dump down there that we could rig to blow, effectively razing the whole place to the ground. Even then, that doesn't look much like an accident. What specifically do you have in mind, Kato?"

Tyros parks his bike carefully behind the rover. Hoping off, he pulls out a laminated but worn piece of paper with reusable adhesive on one side and attached it firmly to the seat; scrawled in big letters it reads: "Do not touch. Bike boobytrapped by a troll!". Satisfied his security system is engaged, Tyros walks over and joins the conversation.

"What if we just make it look like the place was hit by some gangers after the weapons? That has to be a common threat and while not an accident, it's not something that can be pinned to us or our employer. Plus, not sure if you guys have noticed, but we now have a huge armory at our base which stands empty. I bet stealing whatever is down in the munitions dump would help supply the place."

Kato snaps his fingers.

"Magic man has a the right idea. Halloweeners wander into the station to shoot drugs some' a the time. Not too far fetched, eh?"

Doc nods,

"Okay, I like it. With any luck, their armory will already have a few explosives in it. With the attack blamed on gangers, and explosives already on site, it should be easy to make this appear as anything but a controlled demolition."

Val nods distractedly.

"Yeah. Easy."

Val chambers a round in his sidearm and replaces it in its concealed holster at the small of his back. He removes his SMG from the rover and loops the sling over his neck, slaps in a clip, and cycles the action before concealing it under his coat. The feeling of cold steel leeching the heat from under his arm evokes an odd but familiar combination of anxiety and determination. Mostly anxiety. He wipes the sweat from his palms on his coat, hoping the rest of the team doesn't notice his nervousness.

I smile dawns on Max's face as he mutters,

"About goddamned time."

Reaching into the rover, he takes his shotgun in his hands as if considering a long lost friend. Marlowe's weight isn't exactly perfect, but it's perfect for Max. The shotgun is an extension of the elf at this point in their long and storied relationship, and Max wields it as few ever wield anything. Drek-- Max wields Marlowe like few ever see others wield anything-- and it's a proficiency borne of familiarity that Max does not take for granted. The places he's been, the things he's seen.. the people he's killed.. This gun is inextricably linked to all of them, it seems. Almost lovingly, Max chambers a shell and loads one more so that the weapon is at maximum occupancy. Nine armor piercing shells could very well equal nine lives. Hey-- there's nine all over again.

Tyros unsheathes his massive, 6 foot long claymore from his back sheath. Giving it an experimental slash through the air, it's blade making a loud wooosh, "Alright, I'm ready. This is a straight forward smash and grab. We good to go?"

Max considers the suggestion of this being a straight-forward job and suggests,

"We ought to be careful of any recording surveillance equipment they have installed. It'll be hard to pass this off as a ganger hit if we're caught on camera. Assuming there's video, we need to make sure the data files are destroyed before the place goes up."

Kato scrambles across the street and pauses at the top of the staircase. He stares into the abyss below.

"Someone with cybereyes, take the point."

Val switches to low-light vision and tentatively begins the descent into the foreboding underbelly of the Barrens. An icon in the form of a digitized eye appears in the list of running programs at the periphery of his vision as he fires up his Analyze program and sets it to pulse scan for any camera nodes or other threats with a wireless presence. He places each foot carefully in front of the other, moving as quietly as possible, while occasionally flicking to thermographic vision and scanning the darkness for life signs that even his enhanced visible-spectrum vision may have missed.

Doc treads behind the decker, overlaying his normal sight with a false-color infrared. He keeps an eye out for the subtle thermal glow of running electronics, and the less subtle blooms of living, warm-blooded creatures.

At the moment, only the Smartlink daemon appears in the active processes list in the corner of his vision. Crosshairs sweep across the lower edge of his field of view as he walks forward with the battle rifle -- with 20 rounds of chrome colored Anti-vehicle ammunition -- bobs in his arms at the low ready.

Max follows closely behind Val and just to his right, aware that at a moment's notice he may have to overtake the decker and engage any number of untold hostiles. His senses perked nonetheless, Max is content for the time being to let the new guy show some initiative and run point. His gun is up.