Farmageddon II

Every run has its after effects. You do one thing and it sets off a whole series of other effects. Some of these are planned and were intended to occur. Others are collateral damage, the unplanned results of your actions. And then there are the times when it will generate further runs, as in this case.

Some time ago we burned down an Aztechnology experimental farm at the behest of an elderly (and creepy) Ork doctor. They were trying to develop blight-resistant strains of grain as a way of overcoming the problems that had been plaguing their food production for the last few years. We put a stop to that branch of the research, but it seemed that they had a lot more then just that one farm in the pipeline. The same Doctor had become aware of this, and had hired us to continue wrecking their agricultural plans.

However, this time round it wasn’t going to be as simple as burning down a farm and setting a few harvester bots loose. After the losses they had suffered, Aztechnology had become desperate and taken to outside sources in order to fix their problem. They had hired Baltasar Torre an external consultant and expert in agricultural engineering for an exorbitant rate, and had him working around the clock at their Seattle Pyramid on new strains. Furthermore, he’d managed to create at least one that was viable enough for them to move to production, which added some urgency to our job.

We were given three objectives, all of which needed to be fulfilled. The first was to eliminate the Dwarf and thus stop his work. The second was to swap the viable grain samples with dud ones that would grow but then succumb anyway. And the third was to over-write all his research notes to ensure that Aztechnology couldn’t reverse engineer his work and continue production anyway. And in order to do this all we needed to do was find and kill a guy inside one of the most well-guarded places in Seattle. Easy.

Fortunately, he made it just a little easier to locate him within the building. Baltasar Torre had a custom anthrodrone assistant which had its own unique icon within the Seattle Aztechnology host. Tracking that allowed us to get a fix on where he was staying and where his lab was. Unfortunately, that meant getting into the heavily guarded upper echelons of the Seattle Aztechnlogy pyramid, which presented its own set of problems.

We came up with a broad plan to get us in there, although once we’d done that we’d have to improvise a lot of the operational details as we went. Step one was to monitor the traffic coming to and from the Seattle Pyramid to look for opportunities. This gave us an opening, as we found that they had a regular parade of services arriving and leaving in GMC Bulldogs (And not Aztechnology Governors, which tells you a lot about their faith in their own brands). Freddie and Neon tailed one, belonging to an Aztech cleaning service, allowing them to clone its ID chips and colour scheme for future use. Now we had our in.

Do you have Juan?

It was simple enough to ambush one of those vans and swap it for Freddie’s Bulldog. Shortcut made them think they had to pull over to check the engine, allowing me to shock the crew. We stole their uniforms as well as some of their equipment, mostly a cleaning trolley with supplies and a Juan drone. With Me and Abbey riding up the front in the janitorial uniforms, it was easy enough for us to be let in without question. The two of us headed into the building with the Juan, while using the cart to conceal a few pieces of key equipment (Such as my Ares Alpha). Shortcut and Captain Cancer used magical cover to get themselves inside along with us. Finally, Freddie and Neon were waiting in the Bulldog; Freddie was in the Juan to act as an extra set of eyes, while Neon was monitoring communications and operations.

Abbey and Shortcut managed to over-ride the lift controls to get up most of the way up the Pyramid, but still well short of the VIP level where Baltasar Torre was. Those floors weren’t directly accessible, but rather users had to go through a security station first. To do that, we used the natural cover that nobody would question a cleaning robot going through there, and engaged in a multi-stage infiltration based around the Juan. Abbey was hidden inside the cart, courtesy of her ability to fold up into tiny spaces. I was sneaking alongside it, using it and the robot for cover. Finally, Captain Cancer and Shortcut were both invisible through magic. The guards saw nothing except for a Juan with a cart, and waved it through.

That got us up to the VIP level, where we were intending to ambush Baltasar Torre when he got back to his room. There was one problem, however, that we didn’t factor in. His Drone was there, and stated that the room didn’t need to be cleaned. Freddie-Juan continued to report for cleaning, but Freddie being himself, he can’t even do a good impersonation of a cleaning drone. Finally, the drone decided to eject the Juan, which is where it got ugly. I tried to take it down, only to have it sprout a set of blades and prove to be insanely fast and agile. It wasn’t until Shortcut and Captain Cancer blasted it with a massive double lighting bolt that it went down.

After doing out best to conceal what happened (like pushing a book case in front of the massive scorch mark on the wall), all we could do was wait for Baltasar Torre to return. As the minutes stretched out into hours, we did our best to occupy ourselves while we waited. I would up drinking a lot of entirely natural fruit juice (made from real fruit, can you believe it) and eating all his ice cream (featuring real milk). Shortcut (who was being grumpier then usual for whatever reason) took a very long bath.

It was almost anticlimactic when Baltasar Torre returned. I effortlessly took him down, and we quickly secured him and pulled the info we needed out of him. Rather then offing him on the spot, we chose to keep him alive for the moment so that we could poke him for more details should anything untoward occur.

With that out of the way, we went on to the next stage of the plan. Using the info we’d pulled out of him, Abbey and Shortcut went to the lab to do the swap and change the computer files. The latter was going to be handled by them plugging a data tap into a terminal and letting Neon do the rest. Given how heavily secured the lab was, the pair of them opted to crawl through the ducting, using their various abilities to easily make their way there. Although they bypassed the security outside the lab, they still needed to deal with the passive defences on the inside, which came in the form of various motion sensors and the like. This meant that the pair of them were moving painstakingly slowly, careful not to trip anything.

Upstairs, we hit on another problem. The head of Baltasar Torre’s security detail showed up at the front door of his apartment, and we knew that simply not answering wasn’t an issue. Instead we came up with the plan of Captain Cancer magically disguising me as him, and me trying to brush him off. It worked right up until the point that the security chief started talking... in Spanish. While I tried to bluff my way through, the truth was I had no clue what he was saying. And while he left without further pushing the matter, I could tell that we’d been made.

I quickly signalled Abbey and Shortcut, warning them that they needed to get a move on. In the apartment, I got ready, taking cover behind one of the couches with my rifle levelled at the door. Sure enough, there were a trio of heavily armed and armoured security guards on the way, looking to get in to the room and find out what was going on, one way or another. One of them blasted the door open with a shotgun, only to then find a grenade landing between them. That solved one problem, but still left us with the thorny issue of getting the hell out of there.

After Captain Cancer offed Baltasar Torre, I came up with a solution. I got him to again magically disguise me, this time as one of the Aztechnology guards while he turned himself invisible. I simply walked out of there, making my way down to the security station. Once there, I told the other guards that the intruders (ie, us) were heading to the roof for an extraction by LAV. That got security scurrying upwards, while I simply took the lift down.

The friendly face of
Aztechnology

Meanwhile, Abby was able to make the switch and install the data tap, just as a team of guards entered the lab. She and Shortcut scurried out of there but were left running form gunfire and without an immediately viable exit. They improvised by ducking into an elevator shaft and making their way down by climbing it; while a long and arduous process, it allowed them to temporarily evade detection.

Of course, they still had to get out, which probed to be a problem. Abbey suggested that they simply cut through one of the walls and escape to one of the mall levels of the Arcology. From there, they could steal some clothes and simply blend in with the crowd. The problem was that they didn’t have any tools for chopping through the walls. Shortcut improvised with his Acid Wave spell, but that attracted unwanted attention with an Aztechnology guard shooting up at them. He repeated the process, using the spell to cut the floor out from underneath the guard, which both dealt with the problem and got them an escape. A few minutes later, they were strolling out dressed in the latest stolen fashions.

That only left Freddie and Neon who were siting inside the Bulldog in the carpark. Unfortunately, said carpark was now swarming with security guards trying to prevent anyone from exiting through there. Their solution was to hack one of the other vehicles present and have it drive over to the lifts, as if getting in place to collect a team making a fast exit. The security teams predictably swarmed around it, allowing them to simply drive off while everyone was distracted.

We reported our success back to Doctor Creepy Ork, who seemed to be very happy with the results. He took the samples and the original, unaltered data from us and in return forked over a huge pile of yens. And while yes, Aztechnology is probably going to be a little annoyed about what we did, I think I can live with that.