The team was back on the road and now had their captive to interrogate. Different members wrestled wit h ideas on how to deal with the ork who had attempted to murder them. Both of his compatriots had been left behind with the burning car pushed deep in the woods to be forgotten.
The group agreed that they needed to confirm no reinforcements would be coming to settle a score for him and if he were to be released, he would make no effort to pursue them. Richard cast a healing spell as delicately as he could manage, so as not to rehabilitate their prisoner too much. He followed up that spell with his Influence, to ensure that his answers would be as truthful as possible. The ork came to and Richard began plying him with questions, aided by his social skill prowess. "What were you being paid for? What will you do if we let you go?" The answers were satisfactory for the runners - the ork was tasked with defense of the substation and tracking down any Shadowrunners entering the territory. He had no interest in the Shadowrun business anymore, considering he had just seen his comrades gunned down with lethal precision. The team came to a consensus on keeping the ork tied up at the wrists and releasing him unconscious and camouflaged in the forest. Kablisk swung at the mercenary with his shock gloves, connected, and rendered him unconscious again. He used his ability to adeptly disguise the ork's presence in the foliage. Kablisk returned to the GMC Bulldog and Cruiser gunned the accelerator. The runners made it the rest of the way to Bear Lake without any further incident. They approached the town and pulled into a small camping area enshrouded by towering maples. Cruiser released his MCT Fly-Spy drone and launched it into the sky overhead to examine the path from Bear Lake to the Athabaskan Oil Pipeline substation. It was a relatively straight shot through the town and towards the compound. The corridor of trees formed by the valley funneled one's gaze directly between the mountains on either side. The team realized that they hadn't eaten in nearly a day, so they chose one of their most innocuous members to pick up some groceries in town - Wyrine. He got out of the step van and walked to a simple market in Bear Lake. Wyrine picked up an assortment of simple meals and snacks and laid them on the counter. The cashier made small talk, asking about his plans while in town. Wyrine was a bit put off by this sudden friendliness; it was a significant departure from the 'I don't know you and you don't know me' attitude of the Seattle Metroplex, but he did his best to engage with the staff. A point of interest for Wyrine in the conversation was the cashier bringing up a protest or possible riot in the vicinity of the oil pipeline, starting sometime early tomorrow. The clerk didn't go into details, but it sounded like a good distraction for when the Shadowrunners planned to hit the Athabaskan Oil Pipeline substation and cripple the machinery inside. Hoping his small talk was enough to satisfy the curiosity of the cashier, he paid for the food and walked back to the van, where he was greeted with a dormant RV on the opposite side of the parking lot. The encounter with the Shadowrunners back on the highway from Kitimat had Wyrine on edge and he was immediately suspicious of the camper. After dropping off the groceries and checking in with the group, Wyrine volunteered to chat with the occupants of the RV. Trigger's thermographic vision counted three individuals in the vehicle. Wyrine knocked on the metal door that would give him access to the cabin portion of the camper. After some shuffling and a period of time passed that seemed inordinately long for such a small space, the door cracked open. Wyrine was met with an outdoors-type individual: weathered skin that had clearly spent the majority of its life in the sun and a heavy, dark beard adorned his face. The man's expression was neutral when Wyrine attempted to make small talk and introduce himself. He didn't really have anything of note to talk about, so the conversation ran dry rather quickly. Wyrine excused himself and upon returning to the vehicle, asked what Trigger had seen through his thermographic vision during the conversation. Trigger declared that he had seen no movement from the other two individuals while Wyrine engaged with the man. It was extremely suspicious and before the runners could come to a decision on how to proceed, Trigger took it upon himself to throw formality to the wind and went to the RV under the pretense of needing to borrow some salt. Again, the door only cracked open wide enough for a sliver of the man's face to poke out, but Trigger, continuing to see no movement from the other two people, kicked the door in. The man flew back, prone on the floor of the cabin. Trigger stepped in to see a woman and boy bound to chairs in the kitchenette area of the RV. By this time, Richard and Wyrine had caught up with Trigger and were met with the hostage scene. Trigger wanted to make absolutely certain that there was no mistaking what he suspected was happening here, so he asked Richard for an Influence spell again. Trigger confirmed that the man with the dark, cracked skin was a serial killer. He had murdered a number of innocents already and he was simply continuing his spree with this woman and her child. He currently had no other living victims. Wyrine led the woman and child out of the cabin and shut the door behind him, so Trigger could get to business. Trigger repeated stabbed the magically dazed man with his [knife], leaving the man in a quickly widening pool of blood. Wyrine did his best to comfort the woman while they walked back to Bear Lake. He made a convincing point to keep the police out of this matter because he and his cohorts would take of everything. It was enough to assuage the woman from fears of retaliation. In the back of her mind, she already had an idea of what end the murderer would meet. Wyrine made one last effort to probe for any connections to the Athabaskan Oil Pipeline, in case that could be exploited, but time was short and the runners were overstaying their welcome in the town. Richard and Trigger examined the inside of the camper for any useful items, but it was all standard camping equipment. They had more than enough trappings from the soldiers of fortune they had disposed of previously. Trigger noted that this serial killer must have been keeping his tools in another location, removed from the jejune environment of the RV. Wyrine returned from parting with the woman and her child. He entered the driver's side of the camper and disengaged the brake, rolling it as deep into the woods as it could go before being stopped by the vegetation. The team realized at this point that no good would come out of remaining this close to a crime scene. Cruiser pulled the GMC Bulldog out of the campground and found a place closer to Bear Lake where they could hunker down to pass the night undisturbed. A number of members awoke to the distant sound of a police siren. The group wasted no time packing up and readying themselves to head to their mission location. Out the rear view window, they glimpsed the police car pulling into the campground where they had parked yesterday and exacted street justice on the kidnapper. They could only assume that someone had discovered the camper and contacted the authorities. After passing through Bear Lake as inconspicuously as possible, the runners examined the path before them. It was a relatively open and elevated line to the substation. The majority of forest in this area had been felled to make way for the pipeline, construction, and a clear line of sight. Only a handful of solitary pine trees dotted the landscape here. The group found that their chances for remaining unseen would be much greater if they followed the tree line that skirted the base of the mountain range that created the valley in Bear Lake. Cruiser cautiously guided his step van along the edge of the forest, keeping his sensors alert for any interlopers. He stopped the vehicle and parked at the cusp of the trees meeting open field, the most direct path to cover where the crew could sidestep the shadow of the pipeline and remain hidden. Everyone besides Cruiser exited the Bulldog and proceeded to sneak to the shadows of the hulking metal structure in front of them. Everyone was successful in sneaking to the pipeline undetected, though some were far more capable and accomplished it with greater finesse. At this point, Wyrine reached out with his Renraku Tsurugi cyberdeck to perceive what electronics were accessible in the vicinity for tampering. He located a camera pointed in their direction and proceeded to use his Hack on the Fly skills to rework the codes necessary for operating it, granting him access to the controls. He edited the files contained in the camera, setting up a 24 hour loop of the previous day and ensured that there were no anomalies in the footage that would raise any red flags. The team approached the substation and recognized that the easiest entry point would probably be on the roof, but the realization had dawned on them that no one had thought to bring some of the more important climbing equipment. Thankfully, Cruiser made use of his Nissan Rotodrone and had it ferry the rappelling gloves to the Shadowrunners. Now that they were properly equipped to climb, they went up one by one, with Trigger first. He assisted the other climbers who lacked the same prowess he had in scaling the pipeline. With everyone having ascended the metal structure successfully, the group cautiously proceeded to the roof to examine any obstacles that were in their way before reaching the door. There were some large vents and smokestacks belching out steam and chemicals, but they found nothing of note until they reached the door that would take them into the building. Wyrine caught the electronic lock and immediately jumped in to hack it from his position. He easily defeated the security measures and gave the lock instructions to only open from the outside, safeguarding against hazards from within the building. Opening the door a crack, Cruiser sent his Shiawase Kanmushi drone in to check the situation inside. The drone concealed itself under the metal grating of the walkway that ran the length of the second floor, winding its way around the various machinery. The drone spotted one of the technicians below, monitoring the output levels of a particular pump. The Kanmushi continued to creep along the underside of the walkway until it reached the other side of the building and located the office area, where Wyrine's hacking had revealed the master control panel to be. It entered the ventilation system to continue monitoring the whole of the office area through thermographic means. Now that the area had been confirmed to be largely devoid of personnel, Trigger and Wyrine advanced into the facility. Richard and Kablisk elected to stay behind, so the Technomancer could begin his hacking sabotage on the machinery. Trigger and Wyrine snuck past the worker below them with ease, being sure to walk with purpose and not make sudden movements. The roar of the equipment in the facility also help to remove the sound factor from the equation. Kablisk was in the Athabaskan host, examining the plethora of icons fashioned after Pacific Northwest Native American imagery representing eagles, fish, and killer whales. He sifted through the data to unearth some useful information about a weak point he could exploit for maximum interference to the instruments. After minutes in Matrix time, really a matter of seconds in the physical world, Kablisk zeroed in on a number of maintenance logs that specified a particular pump that had had frequent issues with voltage overload. After a successful edit to the program managing the threshold for electrically overwhelming the apparatus, he called upon his Machine Sprite and instructed it to use its Gremlins ability to wreak havoc on the pump. It was primed to go off at a moment's notice. Trigger and Wyrine continued to the hallway that led to a series of offices for the pipeline substation. They treaded carefully, weapons at the ready. They made a left to creep down the nondescript corridor and Trigger noticed two employees sitting at desks across from each other. Since they were facing one another, there was little chance of the Shadowrunners being noticed, but the door to their office was open and they didn't want to take any chances. One at a time, being as discreet as possible, they edged to the doorway and then quickly crossed the threshold to get to the end of the hallway, where they were met with the entrance to the control room. During Wyrine's time on the roof waiting for the ok from Cruiser's drone, he spent time tracking down this physical location and also disabled the door's maglock. Wyrine passed through the incapacitated security and plugged into the control console; he was immediately transported to the master controls for the entire facility. While Wyrine was occupied with accessing the terminal, Trigger spotted two larger individuals walking down the hall in their direction. Their arms were positioned in a way that they were clearly carrying something long and large that would undoubtedly be firearms. At the last second they turned right into a small room.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm Dobie, GM of this Shadowrun group. I've been playing Shadowrun since Second Edition, though I had a serious hiatus and have just recently picked up Fifth Edition to get back into the Shadowrun universe. Archives
September 2017
Categories |