Sunday 9 July 2017

Coffee machines, ground pentrating radar, gangers and other inconveniences

Sometimes you have to do a job in a hurry, with little time to plan and a lot of making it up as you go along. Jobs that are favours to friends/allies/contacts/whatever else are often of this type; they need something done in a hurry and they can’t do it themselves, so they have to turn to you. This sort of thing rarely pays well, but instead often comes with other benefits like favours in return. It’s the underground economy part of the underground economy.

I got a call from Cwildred because she needed help with a problem. It was small for them moment, but had the potential to blow up into a huge mess. I agreed to help her out because a) she’s a friend b) I owe her for all her awesome combat biking lessons and c) it’d mean getting on the good side of a massive nationwide gang who have fingers in all sorts of different ventures. See? Favour for favour.

The "A" stands for "Ancients" (And
not "anarchy". Never confuse the
two)
The problem lay in one of the Ancients’ assets, being a disused tunnel under Bellevue. It had been a part of a planned, part built and ultimately abandoned mass transit program that they had later discovered, and now used for their smuggling operations. Apparently it had gotten ‘lost’ following the first Matrix Crash and they’d found it again and repurposed it. (Fun fact: Seattle’s got all sorts of crazy stuff under the streets. The Ork Underground is but the latest part of it). So they had a nice cosy way to more illegal good around.

Except, of course, some idiot had gone and accidentally discovered it. A works project in Bellevue had stumbled across it, and that was running the risk of blowing open the whole thing. So she needed us to find out who knew and, if needs be, stop them from reporting it.

We were on a tight schedule but, unfortunately, everyone except for me and Neon were busy. So I called up Shortcut, and asked him for help. He was glad to lend a hand, given that it meant he could get a break from dealing with rich snobs and put his awakened skills to use. We met in Bellevue (Shortcut turned up on a Golf Cart, can you believe it?) To take a look at the site and plan our next move.

The site was your basic works mess, being staffed by actual honest to god city council employees, rather then farmed out contractors. The real issue was one corner of it, where they had accidentally discovered the tunnel. So far, it didn’t seem that they had found out what it was for or reported it, but we needed to find out for sure and contain the damage.

Underground Seattle is full of amazing crap like this
This was where Shortcut had a chance to shine, by taking advantage of being a Dwarf. He put on a hardhat and a high-vis vest and simply blended right in, like he had always been there. After scoping out the tunnel and confirming that they hadn’t actually been inside it yet, he tried his best blend in and make himself unnoticed while finding out what was going on. Instead he ended up accidentally completely wrecking the soycaf machine on site, which really got people annoyed. While they were fighting with the machine, he was able to slip a tag onto their Ground-Penetrating Radar so that Neon could mess with it by clearing its logs and the like. Destroy the evidence and all.

He wanted to check out the foreman’s office, so i provided a helpful distraction. I showed up, pretending to be a Bellevue resident who was complaining about the noise and their work causing property values to drop. I did such a good job of being annoying that the on-site acting manager lost it at me, which meant that several others had to hold him back and apologise profusely to me. All of which was giving Shortcut the cover he needed.

He got into the Supervisor’s office and rifled his stuff, making sure to remove any mention of this tunnel from the site plans and other material. Neon helped by remotely purging all the information off his computer and making it look like there was nothing there. Unfortunately, she also discovered that there was one other problem. The supervisor had decided to go and report this find to Knight Errant.

Well frag.

Fortunately, he had done it in person, so there was a slight chance that we could head him of. Figuring out the best route to the nearest KE station house, the three of us set off at all speed. I raced ahead of the other two, hoping to get an eyeball on the target. Instead, I found that somebody else has an eyeball on me; a pair of bikes driven by obvious Haloweeners were on either side of me. Now while they could just be dumb Weenies looking to break things because, I didn’t want to rule out their having a reason to be there. Gang rivalries and all that.

Gangers who ride these things around us tend to meet ugly
ends. I'm just saying there might be a pattern
A bit more weight for the ‘deliberate’ part came when Neon reported that she and Shortcut were also being followed by several more weenies, including a couple on an ATV. Then one of the ones following me took a shot at me, and it was on. I sprayed back with my SMG before speeding up and doing my best to outrun them. Putting all the skills that Cwildred had taught me to good use, I broke pursuit, weaving through back-streets and side roads while those chumps struggled to keep up with me.

Meanwhile, Shortcut and the Weener leader on the back of the ATV were having a full-blown magical duel. Mostly it had been a lot of counter-spelling, but Shortcut was actually holding his own. Neon was being hassled by one of the goons who had bumped her bike a few times, but then I showed up and blasted him for her. I also took a swipe at the leader, but his driver managed to evade me.

Shortcut then solved the problem for us by hitting the ATV and its two occupants with a wave of acid that he wasn’t able to counter. The ATV’s tires dissolved in seconds, causing it to crash and send its two already horrifically burned occupants sprawling. Suffice to say that none of them were getting up from that.

With that little distraction out of the way, we made it to the KE station house. From the info he’d found, Shortcut was able to conform that the supervisor (a Dwarf, by the way. Of course) was there, having eyeballed his truck in the parking lot. While he decided to have a go at the truck, I headed inside to deal with the target myself.

I found him in the waiting room, sitting down next to him. Unfortunately, Neon was not able to get into his commlink and simply erase the info from it. (She said her arm got knocked in the fight. Excuses!) Instead it was up to me to discourage him from going through with his report.

Toyota Gopher: boring and practical. And easy to hide a
Dwarf under
That was easily enough accomplished by me simply sidling up next to him, whispering a few words in his ear about how the Ancients used that tunnel and how they would not be very happy if somebody was to ruin their perfectly good smuggling operation. That was when he looked at me, noticed my ears and made the connection. He admitted that he’d received an anonymous tip about the tunnel, which led me to realise that the whole thing was a set up by the Weeners all along.

I suggested that he forget about the tunnel, fill in the hole and just go on with his work, oh and to also not report what he’d found to KE. He agreed on all those points, then got up, walked out, climbed into his truck and drove off. Except that Shortcut was hanging onto the underside of his truck and had sabotaged it, so it stopped working a little bit away from the station. So while he was desperately trying to restart his truck, am angry, goggled Dwarf popped up and stole his commlink. Probably scared the hell out of him too.


So the tunnel was quietly reburied, the Ancients got to keep their smuggling line and a bunch of Weenies got melted into the pavement. All in all, a pretty successful day out. Cwildred was really happy, and was able to pony up some yens as a reward. More importantly, she could pull favours for us I we ever needed them in future. Because, as said, having a nationwide gang syndicate on your side has its perks.

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