Dramatis Personae
Runners
“K”
Harmony Craig Bottow
UltraBoy!
Tobias Cheney
Rolf Soren Ramis
Others
Madame Gavral
Daedelus
Jaro

The team arrives back in Mars City and receives a message from the Thoth temple that, due to their gratitude, the team will have access to surgical facilities there, as well as some alphaware level implants. The team then splits up. HCB decides to rent a rooftop abode, and eventually finds a 4th story fire-escape access only rooftop shack + roof space for 1000 a month. He names it The Slaughtertower, and begins calling around to his acquaintances to offer his services as a torturer. He also contacts Remus, and has him hack to send (from multiple false addresses) the latest Crod Stompaz track (“Keb”) to Jerl and Chalt. They soon release it, to great undercity acclaim. HCB also talks Daedelus into upgrading a number of team members Firewall, in exchange for the team agreeing to help Ivan look into TA activities.

UB! buys some explosives and grenades thru Ultraman and passes some along to K. UB! makes some gas grenades, and also some pipe bombs. Needing a place to live, he moves into Tobias’ uppercity suite, and works as a bartender at some cocktail parties. his social graces are lacking, but the novelty of a blue ork serving drinks amuses Tobias’ friends. Tobias also works on UB!’s grenade launcher (using Ares development specs he got from PH Hughes) and upgrades it to semi-auto fire, for a small fee of course. Tobias is glad to have UB! around as a connection to the team.

K, deciding it would be to dangerous to return to his real SIN-affiliated house, crashes at HCB’s for now. He also contacts Madame Gavral, and does some piece-work for her, as well as offering future services. She, in return, invites K to the magical circle she is part of, describing it as a bi-weekly meeting of hermetic types interested in Mars and its many curiosities. He also restocks his medical supplies, realizing the importance of trauma and stim patches. Meanwhile, Rolph has returned to Ares for one of his occasional full immersion treatments in the SLEEP sim. Sylvaine, excited at the new Heliopolis contact, obliges.

The team then hears from Ivan about his hacking exploits, and after Ivan declares his intent to hide out for a while, decide to investigate the tail cars. K flies around invisibly to try to spot any of the cars, and eventually does, but they seem to notice him (possibly with thermals) and he flees. They hire Remus to hack the new undercity police camera system, and try to spot any cars of the specific make and model (they all seem to be police style cars, with no obvious markings). He succeeds, after taking a hefty fee, and tells the team that the cars appear to be frequently staking out team meeting places: Slot, Fat Carl’s, Tamany Clark’s junkyard, Doc Todd’s, and so on. The cars aren’t in the same places every day, but they seem to be at these spots pretty frequently.

HCB calls everyone and invites them to a welcome party at his new place. They all arrive, as well as Jaro and two other PC members who UB! invited. UB! has a crush on Jaro, and hits on her all night, but she doesn’t seem interested. Tobias tries to research undercity styles to decide what to wear, but fails, and just dresses down. He successfully makes conversation with the gangers, tho. They blast the Crod Stompaz all nite. K levitates UB! upside down while pouring two beers into his mouth, coining the “airstand.” Eventually HCB kicks everyone out and goes to sleep.

The next day, the team decides to set up an ambush at Slot in order to kidnap an occupant of one of the cars, take him back to HCB’s, and interrogate. They plan to all approach separately, and have their own escape routes. Tobias borrows a headjammer (from Ares thru PHH) to place on the kidnapee to prevent them transmitting signals. K will fly above the site invisibly with the jammer. HCB will (since he has a new face) enter Slot legitimately, go to the second floor balcony, and use a directional jammer on the car to prevent calls for aid. Tobias will approach on rooftop (using his hydraulic legs to make the jumps), and take out the car’s engine with his gauss rifle. Rolph will approach from a nearby alley, and bow snipe one of the occupants as they flee the car with a narcoject arrow, after which K will zip in, turn the ko’d goon invisible, and whisk him to HCB’s. UB! and HCB will provide fire support (and motivation to leave the car if needed), and some PC members, lead by Jaro, will cover their exit, and delay any backup/cops.

They head over and set up. HCB orders two cabs, to wait on either side so that they have multiple exits. HCB sees a “Free HCB! Crod Stompaz forever!” poster in Slot but manages not to freak out with excitement. Jaro calls and tells the team that the PC members are in place just as the tail car pulls up in the early evening glow (which is of course artificial light from the bottom of the uppercity plates). HCB kicks in the jammer as Tobias puts two gauss rifle shots through the hood from the roof. Having previously downloaded schematics to the car, he takes his time setting up the shots, and totally blows the engine, releasing a gout of smoke and steam from the radiator. He then ducks into cover, and begins making his way to the far side of the roof to flee. Rolf waits and takes aim, as the tinted windows are blocking his shot. UB! decides to deal with the windows (abandoning the plan) and steps out from cover, using his auto-selector to lob first a high-ex grenade and then a gas grenade onto the hood. The high-ex blows through the windshield and blows out the rest of the windows on the car, but the gas grenade goes off target and further blocks Rolph’s shot.

Two occupants of the car flee out the passenger side toward the nearby rowhouse, firing on HCB with machine pistols while they run. They drop him, and seem to be using armor piercing rounds. However, as the gas clears, Rolph is able to get off a shot at the second of the goons as the first one takes the rowhouse door. Threading the arrow between the broken windows, past the shredded driver, Rolph manages to ko the goon, finally proving his worth to the team. K begins his descent, turning the goon invisible and levitating him upwards. The first goon returns fire on Rolph’s position thru the car, doing serious damage, but Rolph manages to remain upright and flee due to the strength of his cyberbody. HCB dives off the balcony and rushes for UB!, shoving him into cover, and taking only limited damage in the fall (largely due to his experience landing as a parachutist). He administers one of the newly purchased trauma patches, stabilizing UB!, and then hauls him towards one of the cabs. Rolph takes the other. The PC crew exchanges fire with the goon in the house, and chuck in a molotov.

HCB has the cabbie drive around for a bit before dropping them near the Slaughtertower, where he hauls UB! up the fire escape. Tobias alters his outfit to street clothes and packs his gun, taking public transit to the uppercity. Rolph heads home, to his Ares memorabilia packed apartment. K flies away from the scene for a bit before remembering to place the jammer on the goon. He sees two tail cars approaching his location as he does so, but he escapes before the notice him, and they seem not to have the signal anymore. Cops and LS cars are also converging on the site of the gunfight, and the PC members flee. K arrives at the Slaughtertower with the goon, and drops him off. HCB and UB!, realizing they are lacking some requisite materials, call the rest of the team, and send K over to Rolph’s to get his mil-wave scanner.

HCB strips the goon and ties him to a chair, leaving the headjammer in place. HCB also strips, and stands there holding his claymore. UB! takes off his shirt as well, wanting to fit in, although HCB tells him just to stand in the corner and look tough. HCB lights some candle around the room. They wake the goon and begin questioning him. HCB explains the system: he will ask a series of questions. If he feels he is being lied to, he will roll a cigarette and place it on a table near him. On the second lie, he will place a match on the table next to the cigarette. On the third lie, he will smoke the cigarette. When he is finished, he will cut off one of the goon’s digits. The goon seems disbelieving at first, and HCB starts off easy, asking him where he is from. The goon refuses to say, and curses them out soundly, so HCB calls UB! over to cut off a finger, realizing that the claymore is a bit large for the task. UB! decides to take two fingers and the goon screams, spattering blood around the room. HCB heats the claymore and cauterizes the wounds.

HCB begins questioning again, and gets that the man is from Seattle. He then asks about the man’s childhood, eliciting more bravado. He has UB! cut off another finger, this time with a heated blade. Things continue in this vein for awhile, until HCB notices him grinding his teeth and whispering something, and ko’s him with the butt of the claymore. Meanwhile, K has gone to Rolph’s and discovered his paraphenalia filled den, including a huge light up Ares Predator sign in the window. He gets the scanner, but insists that Rolph move out, taking only what he can carry, and crash in a motel for now, if he wants to stick with the team. Rolph obliges, although he panics over what to take: corporate bobbleheads? trid posters? product mock-ups? K heads out after making sure Rolph is making progress, and returns with the scanner.

The three of them scan the man, finding a micro transmitter in one of his teeth, so they remove a few teeth and smash them. They also find standard headware (implanted comm and such). K stays invisible and floats in the corner. He heals the man back to consciousness. He is spitting blood as he wakes up. Using his spellcraft, K is able to make the man more likely to believe HCB, and they manage to determine that he is indeed a member of the Turing Army, which he joined after his brother died in the Seattle Renraku arcology disaster. K continues healing the man as HCB and UB! continue the torture, but he can sense his lifeforce ebbing with each revival. He feels ethically queasy, since HCB seems to occasionally violate his own rules (i.e. 3 strikes). But they manage to get more info: the TA came to Mars to track an escaped AI named “Mother”, who now goes by Daedelus, and to capture or kill it. They also are attempting capture/kill any of the AI’s allies, such as the team members. The goon recognizes UB!, but not HCB, and tries to encourage them to abandon Daedelus (as it is an abomination) but fails.

HCB and UB! accidentally almost kill him, and when K brings him back again, he is obviously near total soul death. They get a last bit of info, which is that the TA was hired by Renraku, whose local branch is now under new, anti-AI leadership. They arrived shortly after the bank heist. They operate in decentralized cells, to avoid detection, capture, and infiltration. Although the team promises to let the man live if he tells them all he knows, he says that he is a dead man anyway, and will say no more. He tells them they are in a world of shit. Then HCB decapitates him with the claymore, bathes in the blood spurting from his neck, and then is immediately disgusted with himself. The team did not find out the man’s cell’s location, but have some ideas as to where to begin looking.

HCB relates all of this info to the rest of the team, and Ivan tells him to old onto the goon’s head, for investigation purposes. Daedelus requests that the team investigate further, and they agree. HCB is somewhat disturbed by the way that the excursion into torture went, and realizes that he killed the man out of pity. He doesn’t quite know how to feel. The team plans to meet up later and plan their next move.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
“K”
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
UltraBoy!
Tobias Cheney
Rolf Soren Ramis
Others
Sylvain Georges
Thutmose
Kal-El
Kano
Ut-Napishtim
Daedelus

Earlier today, in Mars City:

Rolf is called in for a meeting with Sylvain, who supplies him with his latest batch of DiKoted arrows, as well as a new job to do, for the benefit of Ares, of course. Sylvain wants Rolf to head out to the sticks, Heliopolis specifically. A friend of Sylvain’s in the corp is working on setting up a deal there, and needs some info on the local terrain, political, religious, and otherwise. Essentially, they need a source on the inside to help Ares get an appropriately good deal. Sylvain tells Rolf to try out Thutmose, at the Hathor temple, first, as he is apparently a major player. If he doesn’t bite, the next best bet is Kal-El at the Thoth temple, whose values seem a little more aligned. Obviously, Rolf will bot be operating in an official Ares capacity, but he’s thrilled to be fighting the good fight again. He heads out the back way, as usual.

After taking cheap (and lengthy) public transit to Heliopolis, Rolf gets directions to the Hathor temple and arranges to meet with Thutmose. He talks about the quality of Ares handguns with Kano at the Red Delta. Rolf’s bodysuit is scrolling Ares ads and promos, and he stands out like a sore thumb amidst the dust and drab of Heliopolis, as well as the grandeur and solemnity of the temple. He ascends to Thutmose’s office, and makes a pitch. Thutmose doesn’t seem interested, especially given that Rolf just walked in waving an Ares banner (essentially), so how would it look for Thutmose to team up with Ares on a deal now? He mocks Rolf’s lack of the subtle approach, and says if this is the beat Ares can send, he is not impressed. Rolf is careful to mention that he is not officially representing Ares, but Thutmose waves off the distinction and ushers him out.

Rolf gets directions to the Thoth temples, and heads over, but gets a bit turned about on the way, and ends up approaching up an alley. Once near the prayer entrance, he hears a thin alarm coming from inside, and sees the large stone door begin to grind shut. He slips inside, as it slams closed behind him. Hearing gunfire from a room down the hall, he sneaks that way, entering the lobby to find a ko’d guard behind a desk. He pauses, and listens….

Meanwhile:

The team, having finished off the guards, checks out the hall and nearby rooms. K watches the staircases in the hall at the far end from where they entered. Ivan thinks he hears something in the lobby, and tells the rest of the team over wireless. Tobias also notices a quiet swishing sound, but doesn’t receive the wireless confirmation, as the team doesn’t trust him enough yet to share their signal with him. Tobias covers the lobby from the doorway, while HCB dashes across to try to see what he sees, or draw fire to reveal the sound’s origin. He doesn’t get anything. Ut takes up a position on the other side of the door from Tobias, and scans the room with his periscope.

Meanwhile, Rolf, seeing movement, has used his gecko tape gear to scale the wall and perch atop the info kiosk in the corner, where he is blending in with the wall and taking aim with his composite bow, with a narcoject arrow knocked.

HCB decides to move into the room and see what’s going on, and does so. He is convinced that he saw the ko’d guard move out of the corner of his eye, but Tobias and Ut are eventually able to convince him otherwise. Ut then spots the bow (which is not camo-ed) in the corner, and directs the team’s attention there. HCB opens fire on the shadowy shape there, failing to connect and hitting the kiosk instead. Rolf returns fire with the naroject, piercing HCB’s armor and ko-ing him with the drug. UB! decides to blow through the wall of the break room to get around back, and lobs in a high-ex grenade. Ivan backs him up, while K continues watching the stairways and back hall door. Rolf, once noticed, switches back to his Ares ad mode, and has another arrow knocked and ready.

After verifying that the explosions from UB!’s position are intentional, Tobias and Ut shout at Rolf to come down and surrender before they open fire. Ut makes a mad dash for HCB, and rolls him into cover behind the desk. Rolf descends and lowers his bow, but keeps it at the ready. Tobias comes out with his gun still up, aiming at Rolf’s head. Rolf thinks he recognizes Tobias from somewhere, and figures he has seen him around Ares at some point, although he is pretty sure he doesn’t work there. they strike up a conversation, which Ivan finds highly suspicious (as this stranger just shot HCB), but Tobias keeps his gun up. Ut attempts to revive HCB, and fails.

Tobias, after finding out that this is a fellow Ares hanger-on, still orders him to drop his weapon, and suggests to the rest of the team that they should just ko him. Rolf, taking offense, whips his bow up, in response to which Tobias blasts him in the face with a narrow burst. Rolf seems to avoid some of the damage, due to his quality Ares armor and his fancy footwork, and responds by loosing his arrow at Tobias. Fortunately for Tobias, Ut was prepared, and dives in front of him, snatching the arrow and stabbing Rolf in the side with it, under his raised arm. Finding a weak point in the armor, he pushes the arrow home, releasing the narcoject into Rolf’s system. He sits down heavily, barely holding onto consciousness, and mutters that all he wanted was to talk to Kal-El.

With some help, Ut finally revives HCB, who wakes up and asks who shot him. When Tobias points out Rolph, HCB shoots him in the chest, ko-ing him. The team then discusses what to do. Meanwhile, UB! and Ivan have blown thru the wall into the prayer room, and admire the hieroglyph friezes briefly before coming to the lobby. Eventually, Ivan and Tobias hear a tinny voice from somewhere back in the temple shouting about wishing to negotiate. Ut puts some shock-cuffs on Rolf, and HCB and UT haul him to the back with the rest of the team. K stays invisible and levitating.

They see a small vid-screen revealed behind a fake section of wall next to one of the staircases. There is another priest-robed man looking out at them from it. Tobias begins speaking to him, while the rest of the team figures out how they might convince Thutmose that they found proof of OP involvement, to get the bonus pay. The priest tells them that Kal-El has authorized him to offer them an increase on whatever they are being paid in order to reveal who is causing the attack, and lay off. The priest also reveals that they have sealed off the lower level and are preparing to fill it with gas if the team doesn’t cooperate. Tobias doesn’t seem impressed (he has internal air tanks) but the rest of the team puts on gas masks where available. UB! tries to blow open the stone side door, but it seems difficult. Tobias refuses to reveal their employer, but the priest correctly guesses Thutmose, and says they didn’t expect him to move so soon. Tobias says that Thutmose’s grievance is their involvement with OP, which the priest vociferously denies, as Thoth is known as a pro-technology temple and faction. Tobias asks for data to prove it, which the priest provides. It seems legit, and implies that Thutmose has been funding OP as a kind of bogeyman in order to consolidate power his power by saving the town from them. the team feels betrayed, and Ivan and HCB especially want to go after Thutmose, as they loath OP.

They begin discussing terms. The priest says they have a cloned head of Kal-El to give to Thutmose as proof of the mission’s completion, and that Kal-El wishes Thutmose to be killed instead, although the rest of the Hathor temple can remain as is. Thutmose and Kal-El apparently used to work together, but have parted ways. tobias asks how much they will pay, and the priest asks how much Thutmose was paying. Tobias says 30,000 at the same time that UB! gives the correct figure of 20,000. The priest offers 25,000, which the team accepts (they’ve already gotten 5,000 from Thutmose, and hope to get the other 5-15,000 before killing him). The priest rolls the head down the stairs, and UB! packs it with plastique that he took off of Rolf. They awaken Rolf, and he explains what he was doing there. They don’t entirely trust him, but K can sense that he’s not overtly hostile, and Rolf makes the good point that HCB fired first. He also admires UB!’s Ares Antioch. They decide to let him help, as the priest promises he will allow a meeting with Kal-El if the mission succeeds.

They plan to present the head, plus a bag of severed hands from the guards they killed, to Thutmose, get the money, leave the office, and then detonate the head from the hallway, taking out any guards they need to to escape. They set off some smoke grenades and start some fires before exiting the temple, to make it look appropriately damaged to anyone Thutmose has watching. They head out. Ut stays behind to make sure the Thoth priests don’t try to sneak off without paying. The team heads to the temple, K staying invisible, and managing not to get noticed by anymore crocodile headed guards on the way. K tries to astrally scout the upper levels of the temple, but there is a mana barrier in place. They enter thru the bar, and order some drinks, while calling up to Thutmose and asking to ascend. Tobias bluffs that they have proof of OP involvement. Thut sends a guard, and Tobias, HCB, and UB! go up with the head and hands, while Rolf, K, and Ivan remain in the bar. After they head up, Kano winks at K (invisible) with his cybereye, and surreptiously gestures him down. Ivan notices, but plays it cool. K descends behind the bar, and Kano (seemingly wary of surveillance, cleans glasses while whispering that K might want to go up too, as Thutmose is a powerful wizard, and is likely planning a double cross. Kano seems to be Kal-El’s inside man.

K heads out of th bar for the elevator, and calls it back down, without alerting the guard down the hall, who seems to be keeping an eye of the prostitution rooms, looking out for bad johns. He waits. Meanwhile, upstairs, the team emerges into the hallway leading to Thutmose’s office, and see 2 guards in the hall, as before. The guard who brought them up also remains, as the elevator heads back down. They enter the office, where Thut waits with a 4th guard. All the guards are wearing ceremonial armor similar to R-H’s, but none are his size, or quite as impressive. They present the head to Thut, who examines it and whispers something about his “old friend.”, and set sit back on the desk. They discuss payment, and since they don’t actually have proof of OP involvement, the team settles for the additional 5,000, and exits the office. UB! is raring to go, but decides to hold off until they are a bit down the hall. The elevator (now containing K) reascends, at which the guards get suspicious and tell the team to stand back. One guard waits to the side of the door. Just as the elevator arrives, UB! triggers the bomb. It goes off in a huge explosion, sending the office door tearing thru the hall into the now open elevator. K is a bit surprised. The team members in the bar hear a muffled blast, and deduce that it is going down. After some discussion, they decide to head for the elevator as well.

Upstairs, after the shock of the blast wears off, a bloody and tattered guard emerges from the smoking wreckage of the office, and croaks “kill them!” before collapsing. The other guards attempt to make good on this final request. They are all using halberds, and go for a brute force attack. Tobias and HCB fire on the guards nearest them, while UB! whips out his cyberhand blade and closes in on the 3rd. K floats invisibly over one of the guards (whom HCB shot) and sends a ko spell thru his hand into the guards body. He collapses. HCB takes some serious halberd damage from the second guard, and is blasted into unconsciousness by a bolt of lightning that emerges from the office. He summons up all his strength and dives into the elevator as he collapses. The guards are now brawling with Tobias and UB! separately, and seem to have the advantage. K tries to lend a hand, but finds himself distracted by an astral attack. He enters astral space to respond, and finds a powerful looking Ibis-headed form in glowing armor attacking him with a staff. He defends as best he can, but takes serious damage, and fails to attack successfully himself.

Tobias, feeling the need to turn the tide, wall jumps (using his cyber-legs) right up over the guard in front of him, trying to get to the farside of the guard UB! is fighting. He underjumps a little, and all 3 crash to the ground. Meanwhile, downstairs, Rolf gets a booster injection from Kano, to shake off his stunned feeling. Then, Ivan and Rolf scan the hall, and see the one guard. Rolf takes a shot, but feels compelled to do a trick shot instead of a killing blow, and splits one of the ears of the jackal headed helmet. Ivan, unimpressed and more distrustful, leans out and puts two shots from the Roomsweeper into the guard’s head, ending his life. They head for the elevator, and press the button. It descends again, now carrying HCB. Upstairs, UB! gets up first, and swipes with his blade, but fails to connect. Th guard ko’s him with a halberd blow, but is so distracted that Tobias is then easily able to dispatch him with a narrow burst to the back. K, sensing that his astral combat is lacking, decides to hugely overcast a fireball, and does so, suffering serious internal damage in the process. But, it pays off-the spell seems to blast right thru the other form’s armor, melting it’s astral flesh and sending it’s form floating away, dissipating as it fades from view.

The only remaining guard ko’s Tobias with a halberd blow from behind, and then turns on K, who is collapsed on the ground (and visible) after the draining effects of that final spell. The ascending elevator reaches the top, with both Ivan and Rolf readying their weapons. The door slides open, and Ivan sees the halberd swinging right for him, and quickly fires straight into the guards revealed face (he lost his jackal mask in the tussle). The back of his head blows out, and the halberd slices into the side of the elevator door, hanging there as the guard’s corpse drops. They set about reviving the team members as best they can, and call on the Thoth temple for aid, as Rolf heads back downstairs to try to get more drugs from Kano. Thoth priests eventually arrive, thankfully, as the team has managed to stabilize, but not heal most members. Ivan negotiates for a 2000 nuyen reduction in pay to heal everyone up fully (using a combo of tech and magic). Kal-El asks wirelessly for visual on Thut’s corpse, and Ivan enters the office and films his comatose and slightly smoking form. Kal-El tells Ivan to leave Thut alive, as this will be a more fitting form for him. Ivan notices that the office was completely shredded in the explosion except for a perfect sphere of undamaged space centered on Thut. Ivan pokes around, and finds an ankh necklace on the body, plus some scraps of paper (how archaic!) that look like bills related to the OP. The team gets paid, and Rolf gets his meeting with Kal-El, who seems possibly interested in Ares’ offer, which he passes along to Sylvain.

The team then scrambles out of Heliopolis, ready to get back to the city. Ivan is especially thrilled to get back in his car, although the thought of the bomb recently removed from under his seat still gives him pause. He decides to investigate further once they get back. HCB goes looking for a rooftop watertower (or equivalent) he can rent out somewhere in the undercity as a new hideout, and gets one on a month to month lease. Ut departs, to make for his own hidy-hole. Ivan drops everyone off, and then calls Daedelus, looking for info on the Turing Army. Daedelus provides what little info he has, and says he would be interested in retaining the team’s services to discover more. They arrange for Daedelus to give Ivan an advance in the form of some necessary programs to get Ivan started as a hacker, and Ivan’s spends the time while Daedelus pulls these together driving his cab, to make a little bonus money. He puts in an order with Ango for two small drones, and Ango gets him a good deal, although it costs the last of his money. He also spends some time upgrading his deck, and catching up on the latest hacking advances and techniques.

He gets back in touch with Daedelus, and gains access to a datastore from which he downloads the programs. They also discuss the mystery of his car bomb, and Ivan decides that he will investigate that first. Daedelus reminds Ivan that he is owed a favor now, and Ivan assures him that he will repay him. He heads out to the area of the garage where he had stored the car to do some meat recon before he goes in matrix. He sends one of his new mirco-drones to scout the garage, and finds the security camera inside has been destroyed. He hacks the node, and finds vid of a non-descript masked person entering the garage and blasting the camera. So that doesn’t get him much. Scanning the surrounding area, he sees a small cornerstore to one side of the alley which the garage is off of. He walks inside and scans for nodes. Finding the camera, he marks it for later. He then sets his car to auto-drive around the city while he hacks. He sets the skin to look like a cheaper version of his car, with a cheap trid screen on the side scrolling ads.

He breaks thru into the camera after some initial trouble, and finds some vid of one of the mysterious cars (which had been seen seemingly surveilling the team after the bank heist) parked out front of the store. Eventually, two persons leave the car, and head towards the alley entrance (which the camera doesn’t pick up) carrying a package. A short time after, they return without it. This is all the useful info he can get, as it seems the store recycles their camera storage space every few weeks, and this is right at the outside edge. He passes this info on to th rest of the team, and then decides to hide out for a while, working on his hacking technique, and try to get ahold of Wade, to see what’s up on the gang front.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
“K”
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
UltraBoy!
Tobias Cheney
Others
Daedelus
Ut-Napishtim
Tamany Clark
Matsunori Kitsuno
Madame Gavral
Mr Johnson
Thutmose

After the team exchanges Shortchange for the promised nuyen, they head to Doc Todd’s country clinic to heal up. HCB gets his half busted ‘ware repaired, which the team counts as an overall expense before divying up the loot. HCB also gets extensive (and expensive) facial reconstruction surgery and a new fake SIN in order to avoid recapture, as well as replacing all the gear he lost upon arrest, as well as purchasing a claymore. He also enhances his sense of smell with pheromone detectors, so he can record the smell of someone’s fear. He also finds out that Crod Stompaz have gained a big following due to his very public capture, but he realizes he may never be able to return to the band, since presumably LoneStar is looking for him. He receives a message from Matsunori Kitsuno, who tells him that he has heard good things about HCB from their mutual friend Ken Ichiro, and that he will be in touch. HCB is convinced that he is now in good with the Yakuza in Mars City as well, and is thrilled. Daedelus sends Ut a message that it wants the Turing Army investigated, and is thrilled to have him back from prison so quickly. Ut recovers his gear and scraps the SIN he was using when captured. K spends a long time in a simstim healing tank while his mind is meeting astrally and in matrix with Madame Gavral in order to create a level 2 sustaining focus, in order to allow himself to permanently levitate, and once and for all abandon false legs. He gets fake teeth, including one poison gas filled tooth, one storage capsule tooth, and two sets of permanent implant replacements (4 upper and 2 lower). The 4 uppers are the physical aspect of his focus. He decides to wrap his face in bandages and travel invisibly when possible to avoid detection for his part in the bank job, he also invests in a fake SIN.

Ivan gets ahold of Tamany Clark and starts spending his cash. He pays off his debt, get the oil slick sprayer he has had on order, and drops a bunch on ruthimer polymer cam coating for his car. It’s looking doable, but Tamany says it will take a bit, so Ivan drives the car there while his meat body heals in the clinic. He also orders a pair of latex disguise masks and a new fake SIN. Ivan gets a message from Wade that it seems like Tendo (the snitch) is actually dead. Wade and Yoleus are also working on setting up what they hope to be a major blow on the Black Shadows, but they are waiting for the post bank heist heat to die down in the undercity first. Ivan also hears from April that someone has been hacking Yann’s datatrail and scouring th matrix for info about their hotsim run uploads (which have obviously ceased during April’s absence from the team). Ivan’s a little freaked. The team also meets up with Ultraboy! at the clinic, who fills them in on what’s been going on in the undercity.

Essentially, the post-bank heist crackdown has been severe. Lots of LS cars on the prowl, as well as city cops. There are new cameras and censors up all over the place. There has also been a spate of terrorist bombings against various offices and manufacturies involved in terraforming Mars, which some in the news (including April, who has been getting some major screen time) have speculated to be the work of Olympus Prime. UB! got attacked by some LS cops, and managed to escape, but has left the city for a while to lay low and recuperate. He dies his skin blue and tones down his style (loses the mirrorshades and leather, puts on sweatpants, combs over his mohawk). He is thrilled to be back in the team’s company, especially Ivan. News from the moon is almost non-existent, LS is saying there was an outbreak of fatal food poisoning that some prisoners used as an excuse to start a riot, which was quickly put down by the capable LS facility staff. BS, in other words.

After the team finishes healing (and their free medical runs out) Ivan gives Tamany a call to see if is car is ready. Tamany tells him it is almost done, but he should really come check it out first. Ivan is wary of a trap, but agrees, telling Tamany they will be there in 5 hours, but planning to arrive much sooner. Tamany also tells him that he has a line on a rocket pack idea for HCB. They call a cab. An autocab arrives, and they pile in. K flies invisibly above, scouting the surrounding territory. He spots two hovercraft all of a sudden, closing rapidly on the cab from the low hills to either side of the road. The team in the car can’t see them yet, but Ivan decides to hack the autocab and hopefully coax some more juice out of it. He succeeds in gaining control without shutting it down, but can’t get much more speed. The hovercrafts appear, they seem to be light armored scout craft, and HCB fires ineffectively with his new machine pistol. UB! opens up with his grenade launcher, winging one, and slowing it significantly. Ut blazes the other one with Ex-ex rounds from his submachine gun, sending it crashing to the ground in flames. The first hovercar returns fire with some sort of (comparatively) small railgun, and blows a huge hole straight thru the cab, trashing the engine block. HCB catches some shrapnel, but everyone else avoids injury, especially Ut, who uses his skills as an escape artist to safely dive out the window. HCB attempts to follow suit, but his luck fails him and he times his jump wrong and ends up in the recently blasted open trunk.

Ivan manages to pull off a controlled slide with the careening car, and brings UB! around to fire again. He does so, demolishing the remaining hovercraft. The team gets out of the cab and investigates the wreck, finding a logo they take to be the Turing Army’s. The craft and guns are totally trashed, though. Ivan and HCB get a call from Mr Johnson, who tells them that he has been observing the clinic discreetly, and manged to block the hovercrafts attempts at communication to an outside source, so hopefully no-one knows yet about their discovery of the team and ensuing destruction. He sends them a military/megacorp grade satellite video of the previous minutes chase and attack, and Ivan and K go look around to figure out where they came from, and find some camo tarp covers up on poles back a little ways to either side of the road. They take the tarps, and head back. The team decides that the TA likely was just watching their usual haunts, and didn’t specifically know they were leaving right now, so they figure they are safe for a minute. Ivan calls Tamany and asks him to send a few cars with some muscle to pick them up and get them into the city. The team hides under the tarp and keeps a lookout until the towtrucks arrive, and then head back to Mars City.

They are happy to return, but there is a noticeably increased police presence, and a lot of physical and geotag graffiti, much of it bearing an “OP” logo that the team recognizes as Olympus Prime. HCB puts the Crod Stompaz on and has a conversation with one driver about how awesome they are. He manages not to reveal his true identity, although the guard is lauding praise on him. They reach the junkyard, and see Tamany waiting with an unfamiliar uppercity looking type. They hop out, and Tamany asks who the fuck they are and what they are doing in his yard. Ivan (who is wearing one of his disguise faces) says they are there to pick up Ivan’s car, to which Tamany responds that he doesn’t know any fucking Ivan. Ivan makes a cryptic mechanic related in-joke, and convinces Tamany to go take with him in private. Tamany signals one of the towtruck goons to come along.

Once in private, Ivan reveals his true face, and tells Tamany that the dwarf outside is HCB. He fills him in, and they exchange some pleasantries, and then Tamany takes him to his car, which looks great. Except that there is huge shaped charge hidden under the drive seat, which Tamany explains was set to trigger when anybody went hot and rigged the car. Ivan is a little spooked, and decides to try to track down surveillance tapes of the garage and neighborhood where he left the car. They can’t find any id’ing marks, and it looks like it was a fairly recent addition, so they decide just to take it out, which they do. UB! enters and tries to help, but just gets in the way and gets yelled at. Ivan tells him that he likes, but will kill him if he blows up the car. UB! retreats and sits on his hands.

Meanwhile, outside, HCB has introduced himself to Tobias Cheney, the fancy looking dude. It turns out he is also interested in rocket based movement enhancement, and has been working with Tamany developing some ideas. They think they can maybe modify rocket boosters from automotive use to personal use. Tobias also makes sculpture using scrap material that he buys from Tamany in bulk. He is also a wine snob, but HCB manages to impress him by using his enhanced senses of smell to compare the wine Tobias has with him with an internet database, correctly identifying its year and vintage. They chat about illegal deeds, and UB! prompts HCB to show off his Yakuza tattoo, which he does. Tobias appears to have enormous legs, and is carrying a duffel bag. Eventually, everyone heads inside to check out the newly tooled up car. It looks awesome. Tobias manages to use his photographic memory and hacking skills to identify some of the illegal mods to it, breaking the ice (pun not intended) a bit. Ivan declares that he is taking Ramose-Hotep’s ceremonial armor back to Heliopolis, and that anyone who wants to can tag along. UB!, K, Ut, and HCB all decide it might be good to leave the city for a bit longer and agree. Tobias invites himself along, although he is acting kind of like a narc. Ivan asks him if he knows how to shoot, and he opens his duffel bag to reveal a machine gun/grenade launcher/sniper rifle combo. Ivan tells him to sit in front and man the machine gun if needed, and tells HCB to sit behind him and shoot him in the head if he acts up. He is not very subtle about this.

They head out. Ivan has been drinking steadily from a flask since the return to Mars, having had some problems with the shakes on the moon after his supply ran out. K is craving more beetlegum, which is the part of Heliopolis he is most excited about. UB! gives him a piece he has been saving (after Asp told him not to take drugs). K once again flies invisible above the car, although Tobias eventually notices him when he swoops down for the gum. HCB tries to tell him it was a bird, but he knows otherwise. They reach the gates of Heliopolis, and K notices one of the crocodile headed guards looking straight at him. He communicates astrally and signals his non-violent intent, but the guard insists he come down and remain visible while in Heliopolis. He does so. They park near the entrance, and head down the narrow steep-sided alleys to the looming Hathor temple, where they enter the bar and try to give Kano RH’s armor. He suggests they talk to Thutmose instead, but seems saddened. They also buy some beetlegum and cram.

A temple guard in ceremonial armor leads them to Thutmose’s office, where they give him the armor and present an awkward and halting version of his death. Thutmose says that they had sensed his soul’s successful ascendance, and that he is glad the armor is returned. Ivan tries to offer condolences, and Thutmose rejects him as undercity scum. They ask for a reward, and Thutmose says there is not one, but that he will pay them to do a job he had expected RH to take care of upon his eventual return. He wants the nearby temple of Thoth investigated for any sign of heresy, specifically of involvement with the ghoulification of Heliopolis residents and funding of or involvement in the Olympus Prime movement. If any sign is found, he wants the whole temple cleansed with a blood sacrifice. He will give them 20,000 nuyen + 2 days medical for this, or 10,000 just for the investigation. They discuss over wireless tranceivers, while Tobias (unaware of the hidden conversation) attempts to negotiate. The team eventually agrees, after which Thutmose plays back a snippet of their wireless convo and encourages them not to betray them as he will be watching. He also tells them that if they are caught in the act, he will of course deny all knowledge. The team heads out for the Thoth temple.

Ut and Tobias enter while the rest linger outside. Ut makes an enthralling show of looking around at all the art and masonry, while Tobias asks for info about the temple and area. He has shifted his clothes’ appearance to look more like the locals. The guy at the front desk directs him towards a nearby data terminal. He jacks in, and starts trying to hack into the system. He eventually gets security access, but fails to find any particularly useful info. He tries to shut down the cameras and fails, setting off a series of alarms. He panics at the appearance of some IC and jacks out, suffering dumpshock. Ut jumps over the desk and quickly ko’s the guy there, who was going for his walky-talky. The rest of the team runs in as the door begins sliding shut. Ut tries to take out one camera with a thrown knife, but misses, and shoots it instead. An alarm goes off in the building. They check the desk, and finds buttons for the doors on either side of the room, opening them. They decide to take the left hand path, after K checks out the near area and calls the all clear.

The head down the passageway, and UB! blows open the first door. Three people inside seem temporarily shocked by the explosion, and UB! tells them to get down. They begin to, but as he approaches, one slashes at him with a knife. He responds with his arm blade, doing some serious hurt. HCB fires into the room, and nearly kills one of the others. K levitates him out and HCB tries to force him to reveal his allegiance to OP, but he just seems confused. HCB cuts off his arm with his new claymore, causing him to go into shock and die. Ut shoots out the lights in the hall to give the team cover. UB! and Ivan finish off the first attacking temple employee, and K levitates the other one into the ceiling while HCB tries to force him to reveal his allegiances. He refuses, and HCB shoots him in the face.

The team members in the hall hear a noise from the end of the hall and turn to see a priest and two ceremonial guards with halberds enter through the door there. The priest shouts something about “why are you desecrating my temple?” before they drop him with burstfire. The guards, enraged, charged, and inflict some serious damage on Tobias (whom K levitates out of the way while he continues shooting) before being killed themselves. The team now has a closed door on the right side of the hall, past the first they entered, and an open door at the end. But they are starting to wonder whether OP is really here at all. On the other hand, they get paid twice as much if they are, so they kind of have to be, right? Also, Ivan feels he is wasting his time doing this kind of piddling job now that he pulled off this huge moon mission. The rest of the team doesn’t entirely disagree.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Scrounge
Others
Ut-Napishtim
Mr Johnson
Gabriel “Shortchange” Timms
April O’Mally

As the door slides open, a thick cloud of vision + thermal blocking smoke pours thru. An alarm is going off on both sides of the door. Ivan ducks thru the nearby office door, out of the trid lounge, leaving Ramose and the cat there. Asp is still hiding. Scrounge and K go invisible, and K levitates. HCB takes up a position in front of them in the doctor office’s door. The team members with thermal can just make out some low to the ground shapes rushing them from within the smoke before some armored dogs break out and attack. The dogs seems to be trying to lock the team members in place, by biting and holding them. They seem able to sense magically invisible team members using scent as well. Two dogs team up on Ramose while a third goes after Scrounge and HCB. As Ramose is smashing his two dogs, one yelps, and the team hears Asp cry out “Lefty!” from the back room, and come charging out. Thru the cat’s sensors, Ivan is able to see that these appear to be biodrones, meaning there is a rigger somewhere onsite, and indicating a pretty serious level of security in this, the secure wing (appropriately named, huh?). Scrounge takes some damage, and he and K drop invisibility as it doesn’t seem to be helping. Asp is tightly holding the biodog he has mistaken for Lefty, and is trying to soothe it. The team takes out the other two dogs as some Winternight members come charging up the main hall.

The WN members are felled in a burst of full-auto fire from within the smoke just as some large forms become visible to the team. Two full armored suits come thru the door, coasting on small jet boosters located in the legs. They seem to be armed with machine gun/grenade launcher combo’s on one arm and a monofil whip on the other. Ivan opens up with the cat on the nearest form, barely scratching it. It returns fire, totally destroying the cat in a deadly full auto burst. The second mini-mech heads for HCB and Scrounge, firing while moving. It connects, but not as devastatingly. Fortunately, HCB has been holding onto the FN-HAR assault rifle that he grabbed off of John King’s corpse, and is able to return full auto fire, carefully targeting vital regions, while Scrounge and K back him up. The first mini-mech is meanwhile slice and dicing Ramose while Ivan panics in the back room, before popping out and taking a shot. Ramose is ko’d by the mech, which then heads for Ivan. Due to some incredible shooting, HCB is able to down the mech nearest him, but the other one ko’s Ivan with it’s monofil whip, taking a big chunk of the door frame and wall out as well. Ivan groans for help, seemingly summoning all his remaining energy to hold onto his last shred of life. Asp has by now determined that the biodog is not Lefty and is in the process of smothering it in rage.

HCB, K, and Scrounge all unleash on the the remaining mech from cover, while also trying to heal the downed team members, and once again due to some incredible shots manage to take it down. HCB recovers some grenades from the smoking ruined mechs, as K and Scrounge revive the fallen team members as bet as they can. The team can hear screaming and gunfire from outside the Copland facility and decide they better get moving. Asp finishes off his biodog. He is still bucknaked, holding his weapons. The team enters thru the now completely open security door, into a lobby with two creches where it looks like the mini-mechs might have been stored. There is a door on each side. They blow them open. They can hear quiet but desperate sounding whispers of “steady!” “wait for it!” “keep it together!” and such coming from beyond the doors. Ivan grabs a piece of broken glass from the doctor’s office and fashions a mirror, with which he, Scrounge, and Ramose look out one door, while HCB and Asp watch the other entrances and K astrally projects. Ramose has hauled the cat along.

K seems unable to penetrate the magic barrier in the center of the next area (which he assumes are the cells/faraday cages/etc) but senses 4 guards on one side, and 6 guards with what he thinks is a prisoner on the other. Ivan checks out the 6 guards side, and the team recognizes the form of Ut-Napishtim being held to the ground by two prison guards. There are also two sets of barricades with 2 guards behind each set along the wall. Ut-Nap, sensing his chance, manages to break free from the guards and, contorting himself, get his hands in front of him. He feints for one of the guards stun batons and instead grabs his pistol and shoots him as he dodges backwards. Scrounge launches a stunball using Ivan’s mirror targeted on the two guards who were holding Ut-Nap. Ut avoids most of the damage, but his two guards are ko’d. The rest of the guards seem to be a little woozy, but shake it off. Ramose, feeling adventurous, charges out towards the nearest barrier and soaks some pistol fire before reaching it and dealing some huge damage with his vibro blade. Ivan dodges out of cover, and launches himself in a flying leap onto the other side of the near barrier, while coup’de’graceing the two ko’d guards with his roomsweeper. It is graceful and vaguely upsetting. Ut is trading blows with the guards behind the second barrier, while Scrounge supports the whole group with spells.

Meanwhile, HCB launches a grenade out the other door. As K watches in the mirror, one of the guards runs out of cover to try to toss it back. K blasts him with a fireball, also detonating the grenade. Asp and HCB charge out into a settling haze of blood and gore. They receive some pistol fire, and HCB is ko’d, sliding to a halt against the first barricade. Asp lobs a grenade over the second barricade after recovering one from HCB’s stock. He then leaps over it and dispatches the cowering injured guard. Asp is still naked. Between Ivan, Scrounge, Ut and Ramose, the guards on the other side don’t last long. Ut searches them for keycards and such, finding one that he has seen them use on his nearby cell doors. The rest of the team comes around behind the remaining guards on the other side and makes short work of them. Ut tells the team that he got caught in an undercity sweep of anyone involved in the bank heist. One of his hideouts got raided while he was there, and he thinks that the Turing Army (and anti-A.I. militia) may have tipped off Lonestar, as Ut has been working for Daedelus a lot. He thinks the TA has been watching him, and maybe other team members for a while. In prison, they have been giving him intense violence and crime aversion BTL therapy, which has fucked him up pretty seriously, as he was previously tortured in BTL by the Black Shadows. He tells the team that the prisoners, in between BTL sessions, are kept in a drugged state in stasis pods that act as Faraday cages, cutting them off from the magical/matrix realms. He doesn’t know where the specific guy they are looking for is.

The team at this point explores a bit, finding another security door (to the processing center where HCB first arrived), the treatment chamber, four cell groups filled with the stasis pods, a rising staircase, and one locked door. Asp grabs an armor vest off of one of the downed guards. Ut begins trying to pick the lock, as the team hears the sounds of guards firing inside the Copland facility that they entered thru, and gradually approaching the team’s current position. Scrounge heads up the stairs, and is almost decapitated by a full auto burst. His rat spirit tells him to flee, and he does, yelling “mech!” as he scampers down the hall and around the corner. The rest of the team takes up defensive positions as HCB crouches behind a barricade. They hear a muffled thump, followed by some clicking noises, and two grenades tumble to the bottom of the stairs. K attempts to fling one back up as everyone flees, but apparently cast “suck” instead, and fumbles it. Ut attempts to missile parry one and suceeds. Scrounge, K and Asp duck into the far hall while Ut, Ivan, and Ramose run back up the hall they are in (where HCB is still covering them).

The grenades go off, and the mech emerges seemingly undamaged by Ut’s parried grenade. HCB fires on it and it turns his way, ko’ing Ramose with a full burst as it zips forward. Ivan and Ut duck into the second cell block up, and notice the guy they came here for. Ivan begins the process of waking him. The mech is advancing on HCB’s position and ko’s him again, although the barricade absorbs much of the fire. Asp charges the back of the mech, but his sword seems to have little effect on its thick armor. Realizing the direness of the situation, he salutes his remaining comrades, and pulls one of the high explosive grenades he got off of HCB. Placing it against the mech’s back armor, he fires his pistol thru it. The resulting explosion sets off not only the first grenade, but also the remaining frag grenades Asp is carrying, as well as the grenades remaining in the mech’s launcher and the explosive charge in Ramose’s sword hilt. The series of reverberating explosions in the tiny hallway creates the so-called “chunky salsa effect.” Ramose, Asp, and the mech are shredded beyond recognition, thickly coating the floor, walls, and ceiling in a paste of gore. Most of the nearby stasis pods in the first cell room are destroyed as well, fortunately the target of the mission is in the next room up. The barricade nearest is blasted loose from the wall and launched over HCB’s prone form into the far wall. K and Scrounge run up to see what happened, and are horrified at the result. Everyone has severe hearing damage. They revive HCB and find a small fragment of broken horn attached to a flap of burned skin, all that remains of their former team mates.

(Meanwhile, elsewhere, Ramose-Hotep opens his eyes: he is faced with the Gods of the Black Lands. Anubis, the guide to the dead, beckons him forward, into the presence of Thoth, the keeper of the book of life. The weight of his soul is compared to a feather, to determine whether he will ascend into the presence of Nepthys, the Goddess of the Death Which is not Eternal, or be devoured by the crocodile headed god, Ammat. He is found worthy, and is welcomed into the realm of the Neteru. Elsewhere yet, Asp reunites with his wife, and his beloved dog Lefty, bathing in YHWH’s glow)

Ivan and Ut emerge, and Ut returns to picking the lock, as the LS guards approaching thru Copland seem to be getting closer, seemingly having cleared the facility of WN, as gunfire has mostly stopped. K is monitoring them in astral space, and can tell that the huge explosion seems to have caused them to pause for a moment, however. Ut makes quick work of the lock this time, and Ivan bursts into the room to find a spider (aka security rigger) seemingly trying to disengage from his rig and defend himself. Ivan shoots him in the head, although he has a moment of existential angst as he realizes that the spider must have seen them coming thru his camera feeds and known his death was near, but been unable to jump out in time. He feels a premonition that he may someday die this very same way. He quickly enters the system and scans it for the info he needs while attempting to block and ignore the Black IC security system. He finds the controls for the security doors and opens the one to the processing center while closing the one they entered thru. He also sees the “dead” status symbols under the nodes for the biodogs and three of the mechs. There are three remaining mech readouts, but they seem to be only for monitoring and comms, and don’t have any control ability. He jacks out.

One LS guard has jumped thru the closing security door that the team entered thru, but the rest of his squad holds back, and he is quickly killed in a hail of magic and bullets. Ivan slaps around the technomancer to get him to get in the game, as they could use his help to escape. He gives him a pistol and combat jacket as well. Ivan and HCB both also grab LS combat jackets off of dead guards. They head thru the security door, K is levitating the cat along with, as the team may need the Johnson’s advie, and Ivan wants to salvage what he can. The technomancer obviously thinks he is hotshit, since he got such a serious rescue party, but Ivan quickly cuts him down to size with insults and not-so-veiled threats. His name is Gabriel, but he goes by Shortchange. As they are heading down the tunnel, they decide there is probably a security station ahead, and have Shortchange jump into the matrix to try to open the door, etc. He complains about poor signal and background interference (which K has also struggled with), but eventually suceeds. HCB dives around the corner and blasts one surprised guard from behind as the door slides open. He yells at the other guard to “freeze,” which he does. However, as the team approaches, the guard knees a switch, and a full facility alert goes into effect (they can hear the announcement over the open comm channel at the guard post). Ivan shoots him. They continue.

The reach the processing center where HCB first got jumped when he arrived, and SC hacks the door to the trolley. They hear an explosion behind them, and decide they better rush. Some of the team rushes better than others, as they are all pretty beat up and exhausted. Ivan gets the trolley running while HCB and Scrounge lag behind, K launches them into the air with levitate and starts pulling them along behind the speeding trolley. As they zip down the rails, they see a shape enter the tunnel behind them and close on them-it seems to be a fourth mech. It launches a grenade their way. HCB attempts to shoot it down and fails. K can’t do much, as he is busy levitating the team members (they are almost in the trolley now). Luckily, Ut uses his missile parry to toss the grenade back out just as HCB and Scrounge finally reach the trolley. K drops the spell and uses a well aimed fling to chuck the grenade back at the mech. Ivan sees the end of the tunnel approaching as the grenade detonates behind them, sending a huge explosion washing towards them. The trolley derails and plows thru two guards who seem to have just entered the tunnel to see what the fuck is going on. Most of the team dodges out of the tunnel before the explosion reaches, but Scrounge is hit, and then is clipped by the remains of the mech as it hurtles down the tube. He is ko’d, but quickly revived as the rest of the team enters the adjoining registration room and fries the guard behind the desk there. He doesn’t even manage to stand all the way up.

The team exits onto the launch pad and quickly heads for nearby fields to gain some cover. They move in the direction of Trogville. They eventually reach cover safely, and all grab onto each other as K levitates them in one big ball. He stays low to try to avoid detection and flies as fast as he is able towards the silo near the former Humanis factory where they stowed the launch gear. They arrive, and Ivan and Gabriel begin attempting to access the cat’s datacore to get the final escape instruction. They eventually succeed in retrieving a garbled version, and determine that they first need to launch a charge to blow the silo roof, and then alternate flares and pods until everyone is launched (so that the pilot of the stealthcraft with the hook can swoop in and get them all in a line). K and Scrounge are on lookout and see helicopters circling the main facility in a widening grid. HCB hollers up to them to return, as they are ready to launch.

Ivan shoots up the charge, blowing the roof, and then shoots a flare, followed by HCB’s pod. The team members can see the helicopters have all now turned towards their position and are approaching. K goes second, Scrounge third, and Shortchange fourth. Ivan warns SC not to try to access the matrix while in the upper atmo or space, to which he gets in only a quick “wha…” before his pod slams shut and launches. Ut goes fifth, the cat sixth, and then Ivan realizes he has a slight problem. There is no one to press the button to launch his pod. He snaps the controls off the launcher, jumps in his pod, presses the button, chucks the controls out, and slams his door just in time as his pod ascends the tube. As he launches skyward he sees the nearst helicopter launching a series of missiles towards the line of pods. The flares seem to pull most of them away from the pods, but the one carrying the cat takes a direct hit, sending it flaming to the ground. Ivan’s pod barely avoids the floating debris. Luck seems to carry all of the remaining pods into the atmo, and they are hooked in reverse order, and hauled into the stealthcraft, which appears to have an active camo skin projecting the starscape behind it.

The pods all fill with fluid once they are set in their creches on the ship, and the team feels the craft put on some serious g’s. Most pass out. They eventually are launched out of the ship down into the Mars desert (nice tight dispersal again) while in their capsules. None of them can see any sign of civilization anywhere nearby. The pods split open, and once again give the team members 20 seconds to disembark before immolation. They do so. They are waiting around and scanning the horizon while SC whines. Most of the team feels relieved to be back, especially since they can access the matrix/astral plains much more freely and easily here. They hear a thumping sound approaching, which a few of them recognize, and one of the Johnson’s one legged mono-stabilized “rabbits” appears bouncing towards them. It stops nearby, and Mr Johnson emerges. He greets the team, expresses his sympathies for the absent team members and presents the team with a datastick containing access codes to their payment accounts. He verifies that SC is all right, and ushers him into the rabbit. He tells the team that their medical account has been set up to be accessible at either of Doc Todd’s clinics. The team verifies that the money is good, and start talking about how to split it. The Johnson warns them about the heat from the bank job: apparently a daughter of a friend of the mayor’s was killed during the bank heist, and all hell has been breaking loose. There have been a lot of raids on undercity gangs, so he warns them to watch out. He tells the team he will be in touch if he needs them again. Then he departs. Ivan calls up his car, and the team waits while he races it to their location.

Scrounge decides that this is his last run, and only takes 2000 of the payoff, to set up his retirement. The team decides to all chip in for extra medical for HCB to fix his ‘ware, and they decide Ut will get 8000, since they did save his ass, but he also was kind of instrumental in their escape. Ivan returns April’s angry messages about Yann’s hospital bills, and they figure out a deal. They head towards Todd’s country clinic with thoughts of new gear, and maybe new faces….

up next: the team recovers and arms up for the next run

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Scrounge
Others
Mr Johnson

The team decides to begin working on the escape device, and consult the cat/Mr Johnson. Much to their disappointment, they are not actually building a spaceship, but merely a sub-orbital launcher and some small hoverpods to hold them in the upper atmosphere until they can get snagged by the stealth craft that the Johnson has waiting.

Scrounge is resting up somewhere after his grueling time in the pits. RH is still tied up, coming down from his Kamikaze rage. Asp knocks him ot every once in a while until he finally regains composure. The he is set free. The team begins working, K is levitating tools and objects while Ivan directs and HCB fiddles. Asp is providing backrubs and home cooking. Scrounge wanders off somewhere invisible again. RH decides to take care of external security, and promptly steps on some leftover poison cake and sends himself into a hemmoraghic fever. Scrounge reappears and agrees to help Asp get RH to Winternight to heal him up (as they are rumored to know about poison), while the rest of the team keeps working on the devices. They work only during the night while the Vory crew is gone, and head their progress during the days.

Asp, RH and Scrounge travel to the Winternight farm, healing RH both magically and with 1st aid after each bad bout of poison induced vomiting that he suffers. He is alive, but barely cognizant. He mumbles that whatever happens, they can’t let Mimir take his horns in trade for healing. They reach Wodan who ignores them until one of his ravens whispers something in his ear, and they are once again guided in by Ratatosk thru realms of fire, ice, and stranger things to Loki’s shining hall of lies. As Asp touches the door, the illusion fades and they find themselves on a normal prison farm, confronting a mundane brick building. Asp still is sure that he saw Lefty and Heather palying fetch off in the ice realm, though.

Loki agrees that WN will help RH in return for Asp’s assurances that the Copland raid is on, and will go down soon. Scrounge has left them behind somewhere along the line, seemingly not wanting to get involved with these weirdos. Asp RH down into Mimir’s well, and then climbs down the rope and hauls RH to the end of the cavern, where he finds Mimir waiting. Mimir asks Asp what he will trade, and Asp tells him that he doesn’t want anything done to himself, so Mimir can take anything from RH that he wants. Mimir asks waht RH values most, and Asp tells Mimir that RH specifically requested to keep his horns. Mimir chuckles and tells Asp he can leave while he operates.

Asp returns to find RH shorn of his horns, and bleeding from the stumps. However, the poison appears to have been cleansed from his body. They return towards the factory, and Scrounge rejoins them on the way. RH is having an identity crisis, as he is both scarred and de-horned, as well as having shamed Heliopolis’ royal guard during the bank heist. Very sad. They return to the prison and help put the finishing touches on the escape devices, while K and Scrounge scout Copland. They hide the components and estimate how long it will take to assemble and launch. K and Scrounge return and deliver their report, and the team sets up their plan.

HCB goes off to let WN know that they are ready, but sprains his ankle on the way while trying to run, so the plan gets delayed a day. WN and HCB agree on a meeting point and time to begin the assualt. HCB returns to the team, and they head out as the sun is setting, smuggling the cat under a blanket so the Vory workers don’t see it. Scrounge stays behind to guard the factory. HCB notices a conspicuous new hill by the meeting spot, and approaches. A rock swings aside on the hillside, and he is beckoned inward. He crawls through and sees the WN guys all wearing warpaint and operating what appears to be a Da Vinci style tank driven by multiple modified bicycles. He is offered a drinking vessel along with a chant of “skol!” He notices the vessel is an emptied out skull with the orifices sealed. He sips a little, but they insist he drink it all. He does so, and feels somewhat woozy, but they tell him that it will clear out his nano-trackers.

He calls for the rest of the team to enter, and they each in turn drink the brew. Ivan is the only one who feels better afterwards. Most of them refuse to pedal as the strange craft begins to move. The team notices that the interior walls of the “hill” have an image of roiling seas, as if they were in a longboat. They are duly impressed by WN’s bizaare use of active camo and sim. After a while, Loki announces their arrival. K and Asp head out first to deal with the guard towers. WN seems impatient, but Ivan convinces them to hold back for now. K casts invisibility and leviatate on both Asp and himself, and they zip around the guard towers, rapidly eliminating all four with no difficulty. Asp knocks each guard unconscious after paralyzing them, and K executes them afterward, although he waits until Asp is safely out of sight before doing so after Asp is horrified by K’s point blank execution of the first guard. Blood splashes on Asp’s face, as usual, on this first occasion. It seems he can never incapacitate someone peacefully anymore. The guards are all prisoners assigned to Copland, and are all carrying bolt action rifles. K abandons Asp on the roof of the main Copland building when Asp starts whining about not needing to kill people, and goes off to scout the inside a little more before he brings everyone in.

Asp decides to get down off the roof, but first strips off his coveralls, as they are rather bright. He almost gets noticed, and the rest of the team briefly panics as a spotlight plays across the roof, but he manages to dive out of the light just in time and jump down from the roof without injury. He approaches the fence where Ivan, RH, and HCB are now waiting, and ko’s one more prisoner in a field on the way. Ivan and RH have noticed (thanks to them remembering to bring a voltometer) that the inner of the two security fences has a faint electrical signal flowing thru it, probably an alarm rather than a shock device. K can’t find any way to turn it off, but he does get a better idea of the layout, seeing four prisoners playing some sort of game on an athletic field to the east of the main building, and assensing a building full of well-prepared inmates who seem to know they are coming to the west. He is so afraid he refuses to verify the presence of these inmates, despite Ivan’s repeated requests to do so.

K returns to the north fence, and lifts everyone over, including the WN dudes, who got tired of waiting and came up front to see what the hold up was. They all go running off in three groups. The team all sticks with the center group, headed for the main building. They all also rmove their coveralls, and are all naked except for their armor. Asp reaches it well ahead of everyone else, and sprints thru the halls, looking for the access to the secure complex. He barely avoids detection by a prisoner with his back to him down a side hall, and decides to be more careful. He enters a trid lounge by a serious looking security door at the south end of the building, and decides that secrecy justifies homicide in this case, so he kills the two prisoners in the lounge. A man emerges from a nearby office to see what the commotion was (Asp is quiet, but not that quiet), and quickly dives back inside. Asp enters the office, avoiding a shotgun blast, and quickly dispatches the third prisoner as well.

Outside, the WN guys are now running all out and hollering a terrible battle cry towards the heavens. Whenever they see other inmates, they chuck some spheres at them which shatter on impact, releasing a purplish gas. K goes off to the east to help the WN dudes who went that way take care of the athletes. The main group enters the main building with the team, and begins looting and pillaging. The team heads down the hall, with HCB taking the lead, after all putting on their gas masks. HCB encounters the inmate that Asp bypassed in the throes of a terrible convulsion. His blood seems to be crystalizing in response to the poison that WN unleashed. HCB finishes him off, although he completely misses with his first swing. Luckily no one is watching to mock his poor aim. He checks the east and west halls, but finds they both lead back outside, where WN seems to have things under control. No one has yet emerged from the building to the west that K was so sure was full of guards.

Ivan advances towards the serious looking door at the end of the hall, and is set upon by a prisoner with a doctor’s gard using cleaver. He is lightly injured, but the doc is quickly eliminated by the cat and HCB, who unloads some rounds from the FN-HAR he appropriated from Humanis. At this point, they can all hear alarms going off in the building. Ivan begins examining the door, and trashing the nearby medical facility and office to try to find a way to open it. K rejoins them and tells them that the guys on the field are all dead from the poison the WN unleashed in concert with K’s spellcraft. The door suddenly begins to open, and the team takes up defensive positions around it. Asp hides under the bed in a side room off of the office of the last man he had killed. K ducks into the doctor’s office with HCB. Ivan, the cat, and RH take up positions in the trid lounge.

Next up, what will come thru that door?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Scrounge
Others
Mr Johnson
Timur Basyev
Keb

While clearing bodies, Ivan discovers a note in his pocket scrawled on human skin. he doesn’t share this with anyone. After burying/melting all the bodies, the team decides to prepare for LoneStar’s eventual arrival, and try to find some workers. HCB heads out with RH towards Trogville and the Yak in search of advice/assistance, lacking a better idea. While walking, they hear helicoptetrs approaching, which HCB recognizes, due to his familiarity with various aircraft. They hury back to the factory to warn the others, arriving just in time. Everyone hides their gear, and pretends to be cleaning. The helis land and HCB goes out to talk to the LS team leader, an ork male. He is brusque, but doesn’t seem to care much about the absence of Humanis and all it’s people, but warns HCB that the factory better be back on line quickly, so as not to miss quota. HCB agrees, and bluffs his way thru. Unfortunately, LS notices that everyone’s nanotrackers are inactive, and activate them, so they are all on the grid. This makes them more trackable, but also less suspicious if scanned by LS again. LS also notcies K’s magical ability and secures a magecollar around his neck, disabling his spellcasting abilities.

LS then takes off, leaving the team to scramble for assistance in quickly manning the factory. Reviewing what he knows of the factions, HCB decides to head for the nearby Vory factory complex, as they presumably have access to workers and might be interested in expanding their turf. He heads out with RH. Ivan speaks with the cat/Mr J, who says he will provide plans for the team once they are set up and have the factory operational-the team will build their escape device during the night while overseeing the normal production schedule during the day. K is freaking out about his collar problem, so Asp temporarily paralyzes him. Ivan and Asp begin searching the factory for instructions or any indication fo what is made there, and find that it seems to be fairly idiot proofed, although not very specific about what they should be making. Ivan is distressed by the lack of computer control systems, as the factory seems anachronistically manual. They also find the anti-magic generator and disable it.

Meanwhile, Scrounge awakens in a dank, dark hole (not entirely out of his element) and tries to recall how he got here. He remembers sneaking off to scout the Humanis factory while everyone else dealt with the Yak, as he wasn’t sure which families they might be dealing with. He thgouht he was near the Humanis factory when all of a sudden he felt a shock and was tackled from behind. A bag was placed over his head as he lost consciousness. He spends some time trying to figure out his surroundings, and determines that he is in a crude cell carved out of rock, somewhere underground. He is beginning to try to open the barred door when a bright light shines down the tunnel and the door slides open. He hears distant cheering and an announcer introducing a new contender, the “Ratman.” He turns invisible and heads for the light. He emerges from the tunnel into a brightly lit arena, and can hear shouts and jeers from the stands above the walls, but can’t see the spectators due to the lights. A rabid dog faces him, and he quickly defeats. After the announcer declares his victory, another gate slides open and a large masked man with a club emerges. Scrounge retreats and is sprayed with paint near one of the walls, making him visible again. He takes some hard hits, but manages to take down this second opponent as well. Injured, he returns to his cell, where a pipe carrying water and some thin gruel drops from the ceiling. He rests.

HCB and RH arrive at the Vory factory and try to talk their way in. They fail at first, until HCB tells an unfunny joke that the guard appreciates for its Russian nature and lets them pass. They have an interview with Timur Basyev, who appears to be some sort of mid-management type-decent offic eoverlooking one of the factory floors. He makes a deal to help HCB man up the factory and place it under Vory control, allowing the team to work at night. He also requires that HCB find him a quality pit fighter. The Vory and Triad apparently have pit fighting rings, and occasionally have a major competition at some neutral point (for which the Humanis factory will be great), and Basyev needs a star for the upcoming bout. HCB volunteers RH, who agrees. He heads to the pit, and is stripped of his gear. Dropping in, he is declared to be fighting the previous day’s champion, the Ratman! Scrounge, seeing his door open again, goes invisible and emerges, but is sprayed with paint once again, as the announcer declares that the audience is sick of that trick. He exchanges a quick whispered communication with RH, and they mill around. As the audience gets impatient, a large ring of spikes deploys from the arena walls, and begins tightening towards the center. They are forced closer and decide to fake a fight. The try to pull their punches, but are both gassed with kamikaze, which Scrounge is able to shake off. However, it triggers RH’s trained battle rage, and he nearly ko’s Scrounge. Scrounge plays dead, as two more opponents enter the arena-he secretly casts spells to aid RH. RH is ko’d by the 2nd goon, and Scrounge takes the opportunity to blast the goon, rising from his repose to claim victory.

HCB makes a deal with Basyev to reacquire RH in exchange for the promise of a better fighter in the future, but leaves Scrounge for now, lacking any idea of how to get him out. Scrounge returns to his cage and feeds again. He continues fighting for the next few days, growing increasingly weaker and less popular. The audience is bored by invisible stunballs. HCB decides to wait for the recruits from the main complex, and heads back on a bus with them when they arrive. Basyev sends a few experienced foremen with the new workers to get the factory going. RH is still ko’d. When walking up to the factory, one of the workers steps on a pocket of poison left over from the attack, becoming extremely ill in the ensuing gas cloud. HCB unnecesarily warns the reamining workers to watch out for poison. The foremen declare that they will be traveling back to the Vory complex to sleep, which actually is better for the team anyway.

They haul RH upstairs for medical assistance, while the foremen get the factory going. Aps wakes RH up, but he is still in a rage, so Asp paralyzes him and ties him down. HCB tells everyone about Scrounge, but K is insistent that they need to deal with his “no magic” problem first. HCB heads back to Basyev with an idea. He has Basyev put the word out that the first 3 people to put Keb (HCB’s nemesis, the Ancients lieutenant) in the hopsital will get a supervisory spot in the Vory factory. HCB also has Basyev send a message to the AB+ to smuggle Keb out of the main complex and leave him outside Trogville. He asks Basyev where to go to deal with the magic thing, and Basyev suggests either the Ghost Cartel or Winternight farms. HCB, leery of GC’s Azzie connections, decides to take his chances with Winternight. He and K head out.

Upon approaching the farm, they see a tall, barren tree with a figure with its arms spread attached to it. Two ravens circle the figures head, occasionally landing and appearing to whisper into his ears. HCB hails him, and eventually get shim to speak. He names himself as Wodan, and says that he is seeking knowledge of ancient runemagicks. HCB asks if anyone can help with K’s collar, and Wodan suggests Mimir, who he says he traded an eye to for some runic abilities. HCB gets rough directions and heads on, guided by a squirrel that Wodan summons to lead them. As they travel thru the fields, they pass thru areas of fire, ice, and other strange lands, although they do not notice any change in temperature. The squirrel halts and confers with an eagle which leads them the rest of the way. They enter into what looks to be an ancient viking town under a gate depiciting a serpent swallowing its own tail. They approach a great golden hall in the center of the village. As HCB touches the door, the image disappears and is replaced with the prefab concrete structure they are used to. Looking back over the fields, they also now appear as normal. The door swings open, and a voice beckons them to enter.

A decrepit figure sits in a chair at the far end of an open room, and introduces himself as Loki Liesmith. HCB opens with a Xenogears joke, using his sci-fi classics knowledge, which Loki seems to appreciate. Loki says that they are constructing Naglfar in order to raid a distant hall, accompanied by their cadre of frost giants. HCB is confused, but eventually deduces that Winternight is planning to assault Copland, but needs assistance gaining initial access. As HCB had previously considered Copland as one approach to the secure wing of the main complex (and the mission objective) this seems like it might work out pretty well. They agree to help each other, and Loki tells HCB and K how to find Mimir’s well.

They head out, and eventually reach the well. There is a beat up looking winch which lowers a bench seat down the shaft. HCB desecends first to check it out. He travels down a dark and slightly glowing tunnel, and finds a hunched and cloaked figure at the end. He confirms that this is Mimir, and gets the details of the deal: K will have to trade him an eye for the solution to his problem. HCB, forseeing that K might not be too into this, tries to find an alternative. Mimir suggests 12 teeth instead. HCB tells him he will be back, and heads back up the cavern. He tells K of the situation, and K (desperate as he is) agrees. He heads down, meets Mimir, and is temporarily paralyzed, although not anaesthetized, will Mimir removes the teeth, which he tucks in a pouch at his belt. He then pulls a wire from the side of his head and connects it to K’s collar, humming and making sharp gestures in the air. He tells K that he is free to go, but not to try to remove the collar, as the tracking is still active-he has merely deactivated the anti-magic field.

Thrilled, K flies down the tunnel and up the well, rejoicing in his regained abilities. He and HCB head back towards Trogville to (hopefully) pick up Keb, if the plan has gone off. The arrive a day and a half later, and find Keb tied up as promised, they take him (cursing all the while) to Basyev, who seems excited by the prospect-he looks like a good fighter. HCB talks Basyev into freeing the Ratman and returning his possesions, and Scrounge finally rejoins the team. Now, in posession of the factory, the team is ready to begin construction of their escape device and plan the final stages of the job: getting into the secure facility and getting the target safely out, and then getting off this rock. Who knows? Things might even work out for once…....

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Others
Dead
Ken Ichiro
Kelo
Vesperic
Malice
Samson
John King

In Trogville, HCB, RH, and Ivan tell Dead they will be back after the next Yak/Mafia race to pick up the poison and sort out the plan for the assault on Humanis. HCB notices that the Trogs have mounted the heads of the captured Humanis goons from the trap that he laid. They head back outside, and meet up with Asp and K, who have just noticed that Scrounge seems to have pulled his usual vanishing act. He seemed somewhat worried about mixing with Yakuza, since he doesn’t know their affiliations, so he seems to have decided to lay low for a while. Ivan convinces HCB to talk to Ken about letting Ivan race as well. Ivan and HCB head for Yak turf after helping the cat and the rest of the team hide out-they decide that the cover of working on a Yak farm would be unnecessarily complicated when they could just hide out for a day or two instead. K, practicing his newly learned invisibility spell, pops in and out of his hiding place, and shoots up in the air. Asp talks to his dead wife and dog. RH convinces K to eat some addictive Beetlegum, finally. The cat is silent.

Meanwhile, HCB introduces Ivan to Ken as an ex-racer from Trogville, and Ken agrees to let him drive, as it will help to have another skilled racer (and probably helps that he is totally expendable to Ken, as Ivan has no Yak attachments). Ivan does a little tinkering on his car, which looks like a souped-up dune buggy with a roll cage. HCB is still driving the extended three wheeler, which apparently has a new surprise in store for the mafia driver, but Ken brushes off HCB’s inquiries about the nature of the surprise. They head for the mafia racetrack. It seems to have been altered a bit since last HCB saw it, and appears more lethal, with additional spike traps, ramps, pits, etc. Ivan tries to get noticed by the cameras. They do four laps this time, with the mafia bio-driver leading most of the way, while HCB and Ivan hassle him and the other Yak cars run interference with the other mafia cars. Ivan makes a molotov with one of his whisky bottles, but misses the bio-mafia. HCB deploys his spiketrap, but it seems like the bio-mafia has learned that trick, as he avoids it-he also seems to be driving even better than before, and Ivan and HCB are only able to keep pace thru cooperation. Coming into the last lap, HCB tries to ram the bio-mafia, but swings too far the wrong way and goes flying off a nearby ramp. He recovers spectacularly, tho, and manages to regain a flanking position quickly. He rams the car from the side just before the finish line while Ivan simultaneously rams it from behind. HCB’s car deploys it’s “surprise”- an explosive tipped harpoon which latches onto the mafia car, and holds them together. The explosive doesn’t trigger until Ivan rams the conglomeration, tho, maybe the wiring was bad. The explosion mostly obliterates the mafia car, and sends HCB spiraling sideways towards a spike trap in his rapidly disintegrating vehicle. Ivan is launched into an arial cartwheel, and crosses the finish line first, although not on the ground. He passes out upon impact. HCB manages to jump free of his wreck before it hits the trap, and just avoids getting flattened by a trailing mafia driver who was gunning for him.

The mafia are not too happy about the death of their driver, to say the least, but the Yak play it off as an accident while HCB gets Ivan out of his wrecked buggy. The yak and mafia agree that the mafia officially won the race, as they had the first car across on the ground, and the yak clear out and head for home as quickly as they can. Ken is thrilled with the results, and tells HCB that he is ready to move on Humanis whenever HCB wants to. HCB tells him they’ll be back, and he and ko’d Ivan head for Trogville in a borrowed car under the cover of night. HCB drops off some food for the hiding team members, and his car dies again upon approach. He carries Ivan the rest of the way, after stripping off his equipment and leaving it in the car to avoid suspicion. They both get some magical and herbal healing. Ivan is horribly disappointed to find that he was not the official winner. Samson shows up, and tells HCB that Malice is waiting outside, and they are both in for the Humanis raid. Ivan and Samson bond over memories of Seattle and the night of rage. Dead, Vesperic, and Kelo will be leading the Trogs, who will take one side of the factory while the team plus the AB+ folks take the other. The yak will ring around the outside and pick off any escapees. HCB grabs the poison and tells the Trogs to meet him around the west end of Trogville, they also send a runner to the yak to let them know it’s on. HCB rounds up the team outside, and they head to the west side of the forest. The plan is that K will fly invisibly to the factory roof, crumble and drop the poison discs into the air vents, and then, once the poison sends people inside fleeing, everyone outside will pick them off. They will then enter the factory and take out any stragglers. Dead reminds everyone that he wants John King’s head. The group heads for the factory, staying south of the vory complex and north of the mafia farms.

They approach as the sun goes down, and finally get a visual on the factory in the early darkness. K does his thing and zips off, wearing heavy duty gloves and a respirator, as the team isn’t totally sure how this poison works-it’s some chemical warfare shit out of the eastern european merc wars, and K decides to take what he feels are appropriate precautions. He does a flyover of the roof, and seeing/sensing no-one, descends. When he is about 15 feet up, he suddenly reappears and tumbles to the roof. He manages to avoid taking any damage, and luckily the poison is still in its original case, but he is rather surprised. He tries to assense and cast some spells, none of which seem to work. He decides to proceed anyway, and locates an intake vent. He quietly pries the cover off and crumbles all the poison discs in, dropping them down as he does so. He then searches the roof for a way down, and finding none, decides to make a running leap. He goes to the northeast corner, and runs due south, jumping with all his force off the edge, hoping he will be able to activate his spells again before he hits the ground. Luck seems to carry him thru, and he regains his magical flight only a few feet from the earth. He zips back to the team, high on life.

At this point, people are starting to exit the factory in a noxious cloud-most are hacking or vomiting. Ivan moves the cat forward slightly and begins machine gunning the crowd while Asp approaches on foot. Asp is stricken by a flashback as he watches a child’s head explode in the machine gun fire, and he collapses to his knees in tears midway to the factory. Ivan continues firing until his ammo belt runs out. Then he throws in another belt and approaches. He begins executing any of the people still moving, telling each first that he is an elf. One man spits in his face when he rolls him over, and Ivan caves in his skull with repeated blows. This is becoming more and more like the night of rage, and Ivan sees this a great day for metahumanity, as well as personal revenge-he imagines that some of those he is killing might have been in Seattle all those years ago. RH goes to finish off anyone who got away to the right, while HCB and K go left. HCB is trying to conserve ammo, so he stomps on people’s windpipes and such when possible, only shooting those who are out of easy reach. K is hovering above him oblivious, high on life after his amazing escape from the factory roof.

Ivan goes hot into the cat at the same time that a man in a welding mask with a cutting torch runs out and swings at him. Ivan watches his meat body take a grievous wound thru the cat’s eyes, and has a strange epiphany about the nature of his life. He guns down the welder, and goes and covers his body with the cat. Two more welders run out, the cat guns down one, but the other takes a big slice out of the cat’s side, nearly incapacitating it, before he is killed by K and Asp, who has finally emerged from his catatonic stupor. Ivan and the cat retreat a ways, and HCB and RH return to the area after finishing off the last stragglers. Samson and Malice agree to watch outside with Ivan and the cat while RH, Asp, and HCB go in-they are all wearing gas masks, as the factory is still venting poisonous looking fumes. As they enter the front, a portcullis of sorts slams shut, Asp and RH jump clear inside the factory while HCB is stuck outside. RH and Asp take some damage as some workers on the gantries above dump containers of molten metal over them, melting some of their armor. Asp shoots one while RH jumps and pummels the other, causing him to spill molten metal all over himself and the gantry. HCB runs around to a side door, which he powers thru after K blasts it for him, and is quickly stabbed with a sharpened pipe. Asp hears the commotion, and enters the room, stabbing the teen with the pipe thru the back-some sort of horrible shishkebab.

HCB checks the room next door and finds some vomiting, near death children. He exits the room. RH falls thru the somewhat melted gantry, but lands well. He jumps back up and heads for the stairs to the 3rd level. Asp and HCB approach the door leading to the stairs to the 2nd level. Asp carefully opens the door and two more welders with torches run thru towards HCB, although one loses his footing and stops short. HCB and the other one seems incapable of hitting each other at first. Asp takes some severe torch damage, but manages to down his opponent, while HCB deals with his by shooting him right in the face. They head up the stairs at the back of the room. They take a minute to do some combat healing, and then Asp approaches the door to the 3rd level. Sensing no movement inside, he steps thru, and is hit with two blunderbuss shots, although his armor absorbs the damage. HCB tries to shoot one of the guards but misses. RH bowls thru both of them, and vaults the desk and splits one of the guards skulls. Asp dispatches the other. They find an intercom in the room and call for John King to surrender. He responds that they are all filthy halfbreeds and cowards, and tells them to come and get him.

RH decides to do so, and rams thru the steel door at the back of the room, entering JK’s office. He is greeted with two slingshot stones from two children, a shotgun blast from and adult woman, and most effectively, a full auto burst from an adult male. All these people are wearing gas masks and are ensconced behind a heavy looking desk. RH’s momentum carries him forward into the desk, and with his last ounce of strength, he chucks his vibroblade, barely scratching the man and lodging in the wall. Asp enters as the kids and woman reload, and vaults the desk to attack the man. He does some damage, but it seems like this man is wearing actual armor, as opposed to the ineffective sheet metal armor everyone else has been using. He guns Asp down in another full round burst, but reveals himself in doing so, allowing HCB to shoot him thru the neck. He drops. HCB dodges another shotgun blast from the woman, and drops her with two more shots. He then kills the children, who are cowering in the corner, the older one trying to protect the younger with his slingshot. He stabilizes Asp and RH, and brings RH back to consciousness. HCB beheads JK, grabs the shotgun and the assault rifle, RH grabs Asp and they head out. They all get some mundane and some magical healing outside from the Trogs an K. HCB turns over JK’s head to Dead, who is thrilled. They decide they need to clean the factory and hide/dispose of all the bodies before dawn, when LoneStar will probably at least do a flyover to make sure everything’s on track. The team will also quickly need to find workers for the factory if they want to keep control, as LS doesn’t appreciate missed quotas.

The Trogs begin rounding up the bodies outside with the help of K’s spells, and dropping them in a mass grave. The gas masked team members are dropping the bodies inside into some smelters and furnaces. Ken appears in a stealth suit and lets HCB know that the yak fulfilled their side of the deal and are heading for home. HCB presents him the shotgun in thanks. Ivan decides to bury the cat in the nearby abandoned silo where HCB met Ashley previously, to avoid trouble with LS inspections. The team needs workers quickly tho-where will they turn next?

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Scrounge
Others
Lefty
Tendo
April O’Mally
Mr Johnson
Barry Goldstein
Dead

On Mars, the team is preparing to take out Tendo, who Wade told them snitched them out to Halfman and the BS. Scrounge gets in touch with Ivan, looking for work, and Ivan tells him that the team believes Scrounge owes them some money from the Gavral job. Scrounge agrees to help with Tendo. UB! goes to lay low with Ultraman for a while and collect himself after his first big job. Ivan tells April he will help with Yann’s hospital bills once he has money, as it was apparently extremely expensive. The team meets up at Slot, where Ivan buys everyone drinks, much to the chagrin of the rest of the team, who are trying to maintain a low profile, as they are officially wanted. Ivan introduces Scrounge to the new members, and K checks him out while he checks everyone else out. RH reminds everyone that they need to rescue HCB.

Scrounge and K agree to work together to scout out Tendo’s hideout astrally, while the team drives their meat bodies there. Scrounge also summons a spirit in preparation. They find the building mostly due to K’s amazing astral navigation, and determine that Tendo appears to be under guard on the second floor. Ivan drives up and they park a block and a half away. The building has plywood nailed up over all the windows. K flies out the sunroof, RH activates his camo-armor and jogs down the street, Asp and Lefty scout ahead, Scrounge sneaks along while sustaining invisibility. Ivan prepares to send in the cat. Asp is throwing sticks with Lefty and casually approaches the front door, where he knocks. K flies up to the roof, Scrounge heads around to the back alley, RH waits across the street. Asp asks for water for his dog, while the guy inside repeatedly tells him to fuck off. He eventually opens the door, pointing a gun at Asp, who tries to disarm him, failing the first time, but succeeding on the second attempt. He is shot while doing this. From across the street, RH’s autoinjector triggers and he charges once he sees the fighting start, and he impales the guy in the door with his vibroblade even though Asp tells him not to since the guy is unarmed. Asp gets sprayed with blood.

At the same time, Ivan has pulled up to the corner and fired a shell thru the ground floor window to the right of the door. As Asp and RH enter the ground floor with the cat, they see two detached legs standing right behind the splintered plywood which was covering the window, and a sea of viscera on the walls and floor nearby. Ivan is thrilled. RH, Asp and Lefty head for the stairs at the back of the hall. K blasts open the stair access door on the roof, and enters, descending to the third floor. Ivan begins shelling the third floor from the street. Scrounge begins ascending the fire escape in the rear. K rounds a corner, and sees 2 armed BS looking goons temporarily distracted by Ivan’s firing, however he makes a bit too much noise and they spot him. They exchange gun- and spellfire, and K retreats to the roof while Ivan continues firing. One of the goons follows him and he launches him off the roof to his death with a powerbolt. Ivan pulls around back just in time to see him splat on the ground. Scrounge begins blasting thru the plywood on the rear second floor window while Asp and RH engage the two goons in hallway, plus 1 more that shows up from the 3rd floor. Scrounge sends in his spirit, which is quickly killed, and Asp also takes some damage, but between K from above, and the cat, RH, and Asp from below, the goons don’t last long. Once again, Asp disarms one only to have RH eviserate him immediately, showering Asp with more blood. Picking a door at random, RH barges thru, and in a brief second sees an ork looking figure tied to a chair. His vision is then obscured by a massive explosion, which knocks him down and almost unconscious. The cat manages to avoid damage down at the end of the hall but Asp, Scrounge and K all take severe damage.

RH attempts to regain his footing in the trap room, and is hit by sniper round. Another round knocks Scrounge out-he is bleeding heavily from the wound. RH hauls him out to the hallway to get him out of sniper range, while Asp sprints down the stairs and across the street with Lefty to try to get to the snipers. K heads for the roof, planning to escape off the back of the building to avoid the snipers, but is shot down by a burst of heavy machine gun fire. He is extremely near death-fortunately a pigeon flew in front of some of the bullets and lessened their impact as K was taking off from the roof. Ivan replays some of his car camera footage and is able to figure out which window across the alley the machine gun is firing from, and begins lobbing shells in, setting off a huge explosion on the second shot. He also has the cat begin pulling Scrounge to the car. RH heads up the roof to grab K at the same time, but is knocked out by more sniper fire. Ivan sets up a bucket brigade with the cat to get the 3 unconscious team members to the car.

Meanwhile, Asp, has taken some fire while crossing the street, but gains access to safety in the building lobby by breaking the door. It seems to be apartments. Aps tries to call the cops to report a disturbance in the area, hoping they could help cover the team’s escape, but the cops just laugh him off and mockingly say they will be right there before hanging up. He decides to head for the 4th floor (out of 5) and finds there are 8 apartments facing across the street. He waits and listens for more shots. As the cat crosses the roof pulling RH, he hears them. He busts in the door of the apartment he believes the shots came from, and takes two pistol rounds in the chest-there is a sniper set up, and another guy watching his back. Asp charges the pistol guy while the sniper jumps up and grabs his sidearm. Asp dispatches the first guy, but is ko’d by two more pistol shots from the sniper. Lefty comes to Asp’s aid, attacking the sniper with limited effect, and is himself ko’d fairly quickly. He seems to be just hanging on to life. Ivan is yelling at Asp to get back to the car the whole while.

In the alley, Ivan has finally gotten the whole team in the car, along with the cat, and begins driving off, before deciding to go back for Asp. He slaps trauma patches on Scrounge and K, stabilizing them for now, and slaps a few stimpatches on RH to get him going again. RH (still affected by the kamikaze) and the cat enter thru the busted front door, and are making for the stairs while Ivan tries to talk to Asp thru the micro-tranceiver. He hears his own voice thru the cat’s sensors and figures out that it is coming from the elevators before the tranceiver shuts down. RH presses the open button and lobs in a narco grenade before the doors slam shut again. He then opens the door again and grabs an unconscious Asp and BS goon. Ivan calls Wade and tells him about the fiasco, Wade apologizes but chides Ivan for not doing more prepwork. They drop off the BS goon for Wade and Doc Todd to question, and then heal up for a while. Once they are able, K and Asp head for their homes where they can heal up independently. Asp is horribly depressed about Lefty’s assumed death, and begins taking in way more animals than he can feasibly care for. Wade calls Ivan and tells him that he got a dog’s severed head mailed to him from Long Pig, Ivan decided not to tell Asp for now. Ivan makes a necklace of the BS goons severed thumbs for Asp, and puts it around his neck in the hospital while he is unconscious. He also offers a firm hand on the shoulder in support.

Mr J gets ahold of Ivan about the Deimos job and tells him to bring the team to decipher HCB’s coded message. When they meet, Mr J seems surprised that the team doesn’t seem to know anything about the job, or HCB’s plans to get himself imprisoned, or the specifics of his secret code. They scramble to figure out what HCB meant, and where the dropzone is based on the limited maps that Mr J has been able to reconstruct from ex-inmates. They eventually settle on a spot a bit southeast of the main complex, and hope they are on.

Mr J tells them they only have a few hours to get prepared, and the team scrambles to get all the supplies they need. They buy a variety of streetdrugs off of Barry, get some industrial poisons thru Ango, and pick up a few bottles of fine whisky. RH leaves his ceremonial armor behind, but they decide to bring the cat. They meet back at the spaceport, and load into a private shuttle, after having a toast to their future successes. They are all issued prison jumpsuits (but can still wear anything form fitting underneath) and bring only small arms. They are also all injected with nano-trackers, in case LS scans them. They are each loaded into a cramped pod, which quickly fills with a gel, which fills their lungs and seems to cushion them. They are loaded onto a small private vessel and take off from Mars, approaching Deimos. Once they are at the limits of LS’s control zone, their pods are launched. Beginning with Ivan and ending with the equipment pod, they are separated out and shunted down a long acceleration tube and then blasted into space towards the target spot on Deimos. They are pressed back into the gel, and can still sense the extreme pressure. Their heads are pressed back, but they have a limited view out the open fronts of the pods, and can see the moon rapidly filling their field of vision. After they enter atmosphere, the pods deploy some long veined spines with fabric between them, which slow them significantly, although they still hit the ground pretty hard. They are able to get a little bit of a look at the layout of the place while coming down. Once they hit the ground (in a fairly tight circle-nice work Mr J), their pods split open and inform the occupants that they have 10 seconds to vacate. The team scrambles to grab the gear and clear the area as the pods completely incinerate.

HCB emerges from the high crops nearby and greets them, showing off his tattoo. They chat for a while, and the cat tells them to get a move on. They are all a bit surprised. Apparently, Mr J has put a construct of himself into the catbrain in order to provide some advice and mission support. Ivan tries to engage in electronic warfare but is rebuffed, after which Mr J suggests not messing with him, as only he knows how to get them off Deimos again. HCB tells everyone that their cover is that they are Yak farm workers who transferred out of the main facility recently. He takes the metas into Trogville to deliver the drugs, as well as the booze and poison for safekeeping. Dead accepts, and HCB says they will be back before the Humanis raid.

But first, the big race!

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Others
Ken Ichiro
Dead
Vesperic
Kelo
John King
Mr Johnson

HCB gets a huge racing dragon tattoo on his back, he has severe tattoo fever for a bit. He gets yak permission to take his car to trogville. He drives at night to avoid LS spotting him, and parks in hidden places during the short days. He is fairly confident of his navigation, and soon approaches some tall fields and a distant forest which he thinks is the place. As he nears the forest his car dies. He gets out to fiddle with it, and hears a rising chant of “trog! Trog! Trog!” He joins in as hooded figures with torches emerge from the fields around him. He tries to tell them he is one of them, but they tell him he is a filthy mutant, and he realizes he has the wrong group. He flashes his Yak tattoo to scare them off, but they just shout additional abuse against the Japanese. He flees towards the forest on foot, the figures give chase and pelt him with stones and such, but he makes it.

The forest parts before him and seals behind him, seemingly keeping his pursuers out. An open space seems to continually be around him while the rest of the forest seems dense and impassable. After a few minutes of all out flight, he pauses and gets his bearings, heading in the direction he was traveling before. He eventually emerges in a clearing, and sees a number of huts and row houses standing in semi-circles. He hears a twig snap behind him and turns to see a darkly clad elf sneaking up on him. She seems surprised to have been noticed. She asks him what he is doing here, and he tells her he was fleeing some goons and also just wanted to visit. She takes him to Dead, and ork who seems to be the villages leader. He quizzes HCB, but seems to generally believe him (meta-solidarity, right?). Dead id’s the goons as Humanis members, who control a nearby factory and constantly harass and attack metahumans on the moon. Thus the magical barrier around Trogville-it only lets in metatypes.

HCB is upset, because Humanis probably took his car, and he doesn’t want to go back to the Yak without it, so he agrees to work with Dead to get some intel on their factory, and try to reclaim his car. Dead sends HCB to talk to Vesperic, a troll woman in charge of security. She says she has a person inside the factory, who she will contact about getting HCB in to get his car back. HCB waits until Vesperic gets a message back, and then heads out to meet Ashley, an elf poser who Trogville has agreed to accept if she will first help them do some damage to Humanis.

HCB heads out, this time walking, taking a long route around the Vory factory complexes to avoid trouble. He finds the agreed meeting place, and unused silo, and cautiously enters. Ashley is there, and they discuss the plan-they will sneak in in the night, and try to recover as much of his car as possible, sabotage/kill whatever possible-she suggests they turn their prison coveralls inside out to hide the bright white ID numbers. They enter the factory, and are quickly seized. A bag is thrown over HCB’s head from behind, and he is pummeled for a while before being taken across what he assumes to be the factory floor and up a few sets of stairs. He is eventually forced to sit and the bag is removed from his head.

He is across a large desk from a human male, who introduces himself as John King and apologizes for his lackeys rough treatment, saying that some of the most junior members of the organization are a bit overzealous. JK tells HCB that he feels that dwarves are really more like humans-not haughty like the elves, or revolting mutants like the goblinoids. JK tries to convince HCB to help Humanis to take over the Trog farm, removing a blight from the landscape of Deimos. HCB agrees, on the condition that he get his car back, and that they make him some sort of firearm. HCB also suggests Ashley come with him. JK agrees-HCB will go in, disable the magic barrier within an hour, and then aid in the conquest, and then will be free to go, with Humanis’ eternal thanks. HCB gets a zipgun, reassembles as much of his car as possible, and heads out with Ashley, who apologizes for deceiving him and says she is glad that he has also seen the light. She thanks JK for allowing her to appreciate her human heritage and to stop pining for those disgusting elf traits she used to find so appealing.

They re-enter Trogville while the Humanis invasion force waits outside. HCB tells Dead and Vesperic to detain Ashley and torture her to find out info. Vesperic complies, out of sight but well within hearing. HCB squirms a bit. He fills Dead in as best as possible, and they plan an ambush. They will drop barrier, allowing the Humanis goons to enter the woods, while Kelo (the sneaky elf) takes a small group around behind them. They will reactivate the barrier when the goons are deep inside, and the forest will aid in the defense-Dead, HCB and others will be in the village to take care of any goons who make it through, Kelo will take care of anyone who makes it out the other way. Ashley reveals that there should be about 20 Humanis fighters, but that JK probably won’t personally be there. They activate the trap, and it goes off pretty well. HCB signals when to reactivate the barrier, and Dead whispers thru a door to a hut that HCB has never seen anyone going in or out of. They let Ashley flee out the opposite direction. 5 Humanis goons make it into the clearing, 2 are killed before the others surrender. Kelo returns having only lost one of her team, and says that most of the goons either got trapped in the forest or killed, but a few probably escaped, so JK will find out what happened.

HCB decides to trust Dead, and tells him that he has a drop coming and but needs a field where he can deactivate the sensors for a bit. He offers to import a grabbag of street drugs for the Trogs to sell/use in exchange for using one of their fields. Dead agrees, and directs HCB to a fallow fields on the Yak side, he tells HCB to let him know when to turn off the sensors. HCB heads back to Yak turf with his limping car, driving straight thru this time. Ken seems a little annoyed he took so long and fucked up the car, but he has no love for Humanis either. He also has a job for HCB, the Yak need someone non-affiliated to sneak into mafia turf and scout out the mysterious driver they’ve been using, HCB volunteers Kelo from Trogville, and goes back to get her. She agrees to help in exchange for Yak protection of Trogville, but makes HCB promise to bring her back. He does so. They head out under the cover of darkness, HCB parks near SPF to wait to pick her up. She is gone quite a while, and he is getting nervous, when he finally sees a figure fleeing some rapidly gaining cars in the distance. He fires up his car and races forward, swinging around next to Kelo and getting her in the car just before she would have gotten run down, then racing back to Yak turf. He easily outdrives the mafia cars, and they seem to drop off when he reaches Yak farmland.

HCB drops Kelo off at the Yak hospital, and tells Ken what happened. Ken is pissed, and tells HCB that they’re going to have to give Kelo up to the mafia to avoid a diplomatic incident of sorts. They question Kelo, and she reveals that the mafia driver is some sort of biodrone, possibly hardwired to the car, who appears to be learning and improving rapidly with each race (as HCB experienced). HCB and Ken decide to poison Kelo with a delayed acting poison and then hand her over to the mafia-she won’t be able to tell them anything as she will quickly die once in their custody, and it gets the Yak out of hot water. HCB heads back to Trogville to tell Dead that things went south and Kelo got killed on the job, but on his way he sees Ashley (the elf poser) working in a Yak field. She bolts, but HCB’s two Yak guards grab her, and suggest they all return to talk with Ken. Ken eventually gets the story out of HCB while they direct Ashley’s torture (HCB gets the torturer to cut off her toe). She seems to be telling the truth that she was just trying to get by after fleeing Trogville, as she doesn’t want to risk returning to Humanis, as they will think she betrayed them. Ken suggests that they give Ashley to the mafia instead of Kelo, after they give her the full elf makeover she always wanted. HCB agrees, and they give the antidote to Kelo. Ken informs HCB that the mafia is requesting another race against him, on their turf again. HCB agrees, wanting to stay on Ken’s good side.

HCB heads off to Trogville again, this time with better news. He meets Dead and lets him know Kelo is okay (minus the specifics) and will be back after some time in the hospital. HCB still has to find a factory in which to build whatever escape mechanism Mr Johnson is sending down plans for. He convinces Dead that now is the time to strike against the Humanis factory, which Dead agrees to with the suggestion that HCB get the Yak to help in the raid instead of providing the promised protection for Trogville. HCB heads back to Yak turf, and gets the go ahead from Ken. He also asks Ken to check at the main complex for any messages that might have come in for HCB while he has been out and about. Ken returns with a sealed letter a day later. It appears to have been opened and then resealed, but HCB doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He finds a quiet corner and opens it. It contains a blank datasheet, which activates upon his touch. It is a communication from Mr Johnson telling HCB how to get in touch-he is going to smuggle the message out in the body of a soon to be deceased prisoner, a rather well known socialite released on appeal ($$$) who Mr Johnson has seperately been hired to eliminate. Due to his high profile, his body won’t be donated to “science” like the other prisoners, so HCB should be able to get a message out if he can get it in the guy. The datasheet incinerates once HCB sets it down.

HCB tells Ken he needs to get a message out to help plan a job on Mars, and tells him the method of doing so. Ken says he will talk to the lab guys. He returns later with the plan to have HCB give him the message, he will take it to the lab guys, they will encode the message in protein form, and then bribe someone in the morgue to inject it into the guy with the preservatives. HCB agrees, and writes a coded message with suggested team make-up, loadout, time of drop, and a map to the droppoint. He then returns to Trogville to wait for the team to show up and make sure the sensors get turned off.

Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Others
Mr Johnson
Keb
Luther
Malice
Samson
Ken Ichiro

HCB awakens again, in yet another holding cell. He is getting sick of this shit. As he regains awareness, his head still feels lighter and he is really missing the lack of his olfactory booster, which seems to have been disabled or removed. Without his suit/helmet and comm, he can’t even access his internals to tell what’s missing. He notices that he now shares a cell with three other people: one ork and two humans. The ork and one of the humans appear to be asleep or unconscious. The other human is watching him intently. When HCB reacts, this person starts talking.

He tells HCB that he has been sent by a mutual friend to inform HCB of the terms of his current employment. Mr Johnson is apparently not thrilled at HCB going to jail ahead of schedule, as it cost quite a lot to send this person in. He has been imprinted with a construct persona capable of answering limited questions regarding the job and providing basic parameters, as well as discussing compensation to some degree. He has disabled the other two prisoners with a poison concealed on his person, and temporarily jammed the comms leaving the cell’s monitoring systems. When the guards ineveitably come to investigate, a transmitter in his head will emit a HF tightbeam signal to a nearby concealed transponder, which will relay the conversation to Mr Johnson, who will then arrange for the rest of the team to join HCB. Obviously, this is expensive and rather unideal, but Mr J is trying to make the best of a bad situation.

HCB and Mr J’s messenger converse about the job: the basic plan is that HCB will first enter the main facility and get processed, as all prisoners do. Having no useful gang or syndicate ties to help him out, he will have to find his own allies in the main complex to help him gain access to a travel pass to leave for the external farms/factories/labs. Once he has the pass, he needs to do a few things. He needs to find a farm where he can either permanently or temporarily disable the sensor grid to allow the rest of the team to drop in (although any of them that wish to come in through the jail will be encouraged to do so, as it will be far easier). He will also need to plan for future access to a farm where he can once again disable the sensors to allow for pickup/extraction, although that can wait until after the team arrives. HCB also needs to gain access to a factory where the team can produce the mechanisms of their escpae, plans for which will be sent along with the rest of the team. HCB can also lay the groundwork for the actual mission as much as he is able: namely, finding out how best to gain access to the Faraday cages in the secure wing of the main complex in order to extract the target. THe messenger promises that compensation for this job will be commesurate to the difficulty of the tasks at hand.

Unfortunately, they are not able to discuss much further as the guards arrive more quickly than expected. The messenger’s eyes flash briefly and he emits a high scream and begins bleeding from his eyes and ears before collapsing on the ground. The guards rush in and forcibly subdue HCB, who is about as suprised as they are. As they search the messenger’s body, they find a number of Black Shadows tattoos. They then beat HCB into unconsciousness.

He awakens a bit later (he thinks not too long) staring into space. He appears to be enclosed in some sort of small pod with a transparent front. He panics briefly as he is encased in some odd sort of gel, but this is cut short by a far greater panic as he suddenly drops rapidly towards the moon below. He appears to be traveling at fairly extreme speeds, explaining the cushioning gel. It is still fairly crushing, both physically and mentally. The speed keeps up until he enters the atmosphere (Deimos was terraformed before Mars, as a test run), at which point his pod breaks heavily, jolting him again. HCB gets a brief overview of the prison layout, although the closer horizon lines of the small moon prevent him seeing as much as he would like. His pod lands on some sort of pad, and splits open, spilling him and the gel onto the nearby pavement. Some guards in full armor armed with submachine guns gesture him over to a small building on the edge of the complex. He enters, and is processed thru-they record his SIN and biodata, assign him a prisoner number, and inject him with tracking nanotech in order to make sure he is where he is supposed to be. The guards ignore his attempts ar conversation, and HCB cannot make out there faces behind their full riot gear.

HCB exits the processing center thru the back and heads down a set of stairs. At the bottom, he takes a seat in the waiting railcar. He recognizes the ork from his holding cell sitting across from him, and strikes up conversation, braggin about how he killed the BS guy in the cell. The ork seems nervous about talking shit on the BS, and warns HCB that they have a lot of people in here. HCB laughs it off, and talks about how many of them he has been killing lately. The ork moves a couple seats away as the train starts moving. It is a fairly short trip to the main complex, where they emerge into a common area off of the messhall and cellblocks. The prisoners from the train split off, and some head off with group or individuals that seem to have been waiting for them. HCB, unsure what to do, mills around a bit.

All of a sudden, he realizes that there are no guards in sight. He bolts for one of the doors as the room clears out, but it slams shut-the ork from the train apologizes on the other side. HCB turns around and finds three human males sporting BS tattoos approaching him. He tries another door-also locked/barred. The center BS goon tells HCB that he’s got a message from Longpig for him, they engage in some fairly uninspired insult oneupmanship, and then HCB tries to kick him in the balls. The goon deflects th first blow, and hammers HCB in the side with a pipe. The other two goons are circling around, but appear to be following the center goon’s lead. HCB tries to kick him again, and connects this time, sending the goon to the floor with a groan. The other two goons are wailing on him now, but he focuses his attacks on the guy on the floor, stomping on the back off his head and knocking out most of his teeth on the hard concrete floor. HCB takes a hard hit in the back with a pipe from one of the other goons just as some guards rush in and begin breaking up the fight. They finish sending HCB back to the realm of the unconscious, where he has been spending so much time lately.

He awakens sometime later in what seems to be a prison hospital. He drifts in and out of consciousness for a while, and eventually feels able to move about some. He strikes up a conversation with a neighboring convalescent, an Amerindian man named Malice. They trade some stories and info, and HCB finds out he is in the Anarchist Black Cross controlled prison hospital. They also run the library, tech schools, and some of the other main complex facilities. The Mars City Street Gang Collective operates under leadership from some upper echelon Ancients lifers from Earth. They run the messhall and most of the cellblocks, although the AB+ controles their own living areas. Malice warns HCB against the Ancients/MCSG. These seem to be the two main factions in the genpop areas of the main complex. HCB convinces Malice to help him get a job in the prison library, due to his love of sci-fi, although it seems Malice doesn’t really trust him, and is somewhat evasive about the possibility of HCB acquiring a travel pass. HCB is consistently disappointed that no-one seems to have heard of the Crod Stompaz in here, and sets about rectifying that.

After his first shift at the library, HCB heads to the messhall. He is stopped in line and told that Keb wants to see him, and directed over to a young man sitting alone at a nearby table. HCB joins him-Keb is a human male in his late teens/early twenties, and is covered in prison tattoos. Keb suggests that HCB can help out the Ancients since he seems to have access to the AB+ areas of the prison. Keb is looking to expand his turf and impress Luther, the head Ancient, it seems. He wants HCB to find a way to sneak a bunch of gangers into AB+ areas and take over the hospital as a first step. HCB says he will do it and will go look around for a way in. Keb tells him he better not take too long. Keb is kind of obnoxious, but he says he can help HCB get a travel pass and other privileges.

HCB gets up and starts leaving. He decides to start a fight in the hopes of getting sent back to the hospital, and getting a chance to look about. He starts saying the most insulting military specific slang he knows until someone reacts. A guy tries to jump up and swing at him from a nearby table, and HCB swings back. He is soon shot in the back from a gantry above by an Lonestar guard with a nonlethal projectile of some sort. He fakes a seizure until the guards approach and beat him some more before commanding some of the other inmates to take him to the hospital. This time he strikes up a conversation with an African ork named Samson. They discuss sci-fi classics, and Samson talks some shit on the Ancients. HCB asks after Malice, and then gets up to wander around. He encounters Malice as he is exploring a stairwell that seems to have maintenance tunnel access. Malice tells HCB that he has been seen with Keb, and that he best watch his back, if that’s how he’s going to play things. HCB heads out after pretending like he’s not working with Keb at all.

He goes back to the messhall later and tells Keb that he found a way in thru a maintenance tunnel, and Keb tells him that they are going in that night-Keb will arrange for HCB’s cell to open, and then he will sneak to a camera free area to meet up with the rest of the force, and lead them to the tunnel. HCB tries to weasel out of going, but Keb won’t have it. After some contemplation, HCB decides to tell the AB+ about the planned invasion. He finds Malice and fills him in, Malice thanks him and tells him how to actually get into the maintenance tunnel (which HCB hadn’t bothered to figure out) via a nanotattoo map. Malice tells HCB to make sure he isn’t in front when they come down the tunnel. HCB heads back to his genpop cell and waits for night.

As promised, his cell slides open around midnight. He exits and attempts to sneak to the rendevouz. Although he is fairly quiet, he unfortunately manages to let nearly every other prisoner see him as he keeps halting directly in front of the cells. As the inamtes begin to raise a hue and cry, HCB begins shouting “fire!” in hopes of causing a distraction. It works, since the inamtes still locked in their cells begin panicking. HCB moves quickly to the rendevouz, and leads Keb and the rest of the gangers to the tunnel access, which one of them fortunately has the key for, as HCB didn’t bother to check it out at all. They enter the maintenance room, and pry up the tunnel lead, heading towards the hospital. HCB is leading, but is moving slowly and attempting to remain quiet. The gangers get impatient and most of them push past him, which he allows. However, Keb doesn’t let him slip away.

They reach the far end of the tunnel, and the front gangers burst thru the door, and are quickly engulfed in a gout of stinking flame. It appears to be some sort of gel based substance that sticks to their skin and burns extremely hot. The first group of gangers seem to be melting in front of them. In the confusion, HCB bolts for the door with some of the other gangers, and manages to get ahead of them, racing up the stairs. He is almost impaled by a sharpened pipe thrust in his direction as he rounds the corner, but Malice allows him thru the lines. The gangers behind him are not so lucky. Keb is shouting abuse at him from below and promising retribution. HCB heads back down to take him on, as he is pretty annoying. Keb quickly cuts HCB down with a pair of shivs, as HCB deals minor damage with a short pipe. As he falls to the ground and passes out again, he sees Malice and some other AB+ folks chasing the few remaining gangers down the tunnel.

He wakes up in the hopsital again. Malice and Samson come to see him, and tell he him that he’s got lodging in the AB+ area, and that someone will get his meals for him and such, since he wouldn’t be safe in genpop areas for now. HCB inquires again about getting a travel pass, and Malice says he will see what he can do once HCB decides where he wants to go. He heads back to the library and researches the prison layout/factions/activities/etc., as well as advocating for expansion of the libraires sci-fi selection. He also tries to meet any outside faction reps who come into the AB+ areas of the main complex for whatever reason. He encounters a yakuza named Ken Ichiro, who he manages to gravely insult in flawless Japanese, a languagw which he is mostly unfamiliar with. A veteran of the occupation of San Francisco (evidence by his SoCal accent), Ken has a more played back attitude than some yak, so after HCB’s profuse apologies, he lets it slide. After talking for a while, Ken offers HCB a chance to race on the yak’s illicit tracks if he can make out to their area. With a destination in mind, HCB heada back to Malice and procurs his travel pass. He tells Malice a litte about his eventual escape plans, and Malice tells him not to forget all the folks who help him get there.

HCB heads out, and travels as straight as he is able to the yak areas. The paths aren’t really marked, but he actually manages fairly well. He arrives and looks around for a bit before locating Ken. When he does, Ken suggests that HCB try some demo races vs other yak drivers before getting into actual competition (mostly against the neighboring mafiosos). HCB smokes the test races, and quickly moves up to the real thing, all the while gradually customizing and improving his car. The cars are mostly scrap built and vary widely in capability and design. He is being built up for a big race against some mysterious new mafia driver that Ken’s feeling a little nervous about. The races are recorded and smuggled off planet for sale, in both trideo and sim-LS is definitely getting a share, of course. HCB initially focuses solely of driving better than the other racers, but as the the challenges get bigger, he adds on some offensive capability to his vehicle in the form of a scrap metal caltrop drop concealed in the rear. He employs it to limited effect in his first race againt the mysterious mafia racer, which HCB just barely wins. During the second big race (this time on mafia turf), HCB’s car is rammed by a sacrificial mafia car, from which he barely recovers. HCB uses a modified caltrop dropper with a much wider spread to disable a number of the less competitive cars, leaving him and the mafia driver neck and neck for most of the race. HCB once again pulls off a narrow victory.

Ken and the other yak clear out of there pretty quick with HCB as the mafia types are looking pretty pissed. HCB seems to be in good with the yak for now, due to his racing prowess. He makes plans to head for Trogville next…..

up next: can he get the team safely down? can he even protect himself?