After our last job, we felt that it would
be best to lie low and avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves, since
Aztechnology doesn’t take losing well. Fortunately, circumstances conspired to
get us a job that would be far away from Seattle in a region that has a
surprisingly low corp presence. Added to that, the job came from Tyler, which
meant that I was in essence working for my millionaire arms dealer boyfriend
(yes, I know, he’s not an arms dealer, he just knows lots of arms dealers). So
you know, perks of the role and all.
Of course, knowing Tyler had its other
perks, and I don’t just mean getting to hang out on his luxury yacht. He had
used his connections to get me into a stupidly exclusive Delta-grade cyber
clinic for a systems upgrade. As a result, I am rocking a new set of wired
reflexes that makes me even faster then I have ever been before. It only cost
me a cool half-million too.
So now that I was fully wired, I was ready
for Tyler’s job offer. What he needed was for us to fly down to Cuba to deal
with a little issue he was having with a client. The problem came from a guy by
the name of Jerros, who had been building his own private army for whatever
reason. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue (especially given that Cuba’s not
near us) but Jerros had decided to take delivery of the weapons and then not
pay for them. The unspoken implication was that something had happened to the
people who were meant to be collecting the payment.
Our job was simple. We were going to head
down there and deal with Jerros. Tyler basically was going to write off
whatever weapons he had, but at the same time he was going to try to ensure
that nobody was going to get away with stealing from him. And if along the way
we found out what he was actually up to, that would also help. We bought a considerable
amount of explosives and heavy weapons off him, just to ensure that we would be
able to reduce whatever we found to burning wreckage.
Shortcut had gone down to Cuba ahead of
time to do some groundwork/recon, as well as lounge around on the beaches. We
joined him, flying down in Freddie’s plane and parking it at a private port
that one of Tyler’s contacts ran. Our base of operations would be Tyler’s
yacht, but it also would help to have feet on the ground going in. There was
one moderate obstacle to our typical operational procedure, however; Cuba’s
Matrix infrastructure is terrible, which meant that Neon would have to make do
with whatever she could find. She complained about this a lot.
Meeting up with Shortcut (Who had decided
to buy a jeep with a missile launcher, just in case), we headed out towards the
location where Jerros was hiding out. His base of operations was an abandoned
Soviet facility in the north-east of the island, which was a substantial hike
from anything that even resembled a city. One thing we did notice along the way
was a lack of cars on the road. Most vehicles were trucks or grossly-overloaded
tractor-pulled busses. The few cars we did see were largely old models that
were falling apart. For the first time ever, Freddie’s Bulldog stood out simply
because it was only a few years old.
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| A pleasant place for a getaway or revolutionary militia |
We fond an abandoned farm not too far from
Jerros’ base to work from. Freddie started out with one of the new toys he’d
bought from Tyler, being a Lockheed Optic X2 drone. Flying it over the base, he
was able to give us a good idea of what was inside, and it was not good. His
arsenal included a Krime Wing LAV, two Northrop Wasp helicopters, a couple of
armed trucks and a whole mass of goons. Also, interestingly enough, there was
an unarmed utility helicopter on the ground. Finally there was a command bunker
which we figured our target was inside of, as well as an armoury.
Our plan had me and Shortcut sneaking in on
foot to get a better look at the facility while planting explosives on the
vehicles and the command structure. We were also going to blow a hole in the
wall to allow access for stage two, Which was, by the way, for us to go loud
with me and Shortcut taking care of Jerros’ men while Freddie joined in with
swarms of drones.
Phase one was mostly a success. The command
bunker was too heavily guarded to get into, but that didn’t stop me from
planting a bomb on it anyway. Getting a good look at the men on the ground
revealed that most of them were local types armed with AK-97s, the sort of
thing you could get anywhere. Shortcut assensed them as well, finding that most
of them had little in the way of Cyberware. While it wasn’t one of our targets,
I slapped a data tap on the helicopter just to find out who it belonged to.
That move did become a little redundant
when Jerros emerged from the bunker. The guy was dressed for war, wearing heavy
military body armour and carrying a Vindicator Minigun. With him was a
sharp-looking Asian man in armour, accompanied by two bodyguards whose uniforms
were adorned with MCT logos. They boarded the helicopter and flew off, heading
north out over the sea.
With that out of the way, it did look like
the rest of the base was getting ready to move, which bought us to stage two.
The bombs went off as planned, blowing holes in the sides of the command bunker
and the wall, while destroying the two Wasps. Amazingly, the Krime Wing was
damaged but still operational. Likewise, Jerros was still alive, albeit trapped
on the rubble of his bunker; a quick grenade fixed that.
As the rest of the base responded they came
under fire both from Freddie’s drones and Shortcut’s missile-armed jeep. So
while I was in the middle of it, I was by no means outguned and easily holding
my own against all that was going on around me. Hell, with my new wired
reflexes, none of their shots were even coming close. I was mostly focusing on
dealing with the men on foot, letting the drones handle the heavier stuff.
Shortcut took out both of the armed tucks at once; a bit of magic saw one of
them ram the other, and accidentally run over one of their men along the way.
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| This is not good |
The only problem was the Krime Wing itself.
While damaged, it did manage to get itself into the air, and was heavily armed
enough to turn the battle around on its own. It managed to evade one of
Shortcut’s missiles, and Freddie’s rotordrones couldn’t do enough damage to
bring it down. We only stopped it when Freddie took direct control of one of
his rotordrones and managed to put a grenade into one of the intakes, leading
to a rather spectacular explosion.
After that it was just down to the cleanup.
The armoury yielded the best results, being mostly stacked with various trade
goods that would be worth a lot on the open market. Corn, sugar, rum, cigars
and the like. There also was a pink 1955 Chevy, which we could only assume was
owed to Tyler (well, his associates, but you know what I mean) as a part of the
payment. Tyler was very happy with the outcome, giving us a big fat wad of yens
at the end of the day.
He wanted us to stay on in Cuba for a while
and investigate what exactly was going on between Jerros and MCT. As an
incentive, he offered us use of the Chevy while we were there. Hard to say no
to that.
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| I cannot think of a better way to get around |
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