I once saw in a nWoD thread on rpg.net that one GM was going to make Pentex a good guy whistleblowing organization, just to screw with his players.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
I once saw in a nWoD thread on rpg.net that one GM was going to make Pentex a good guy whistleblowing organization, just to screw with his players.
The seed of an amusing omake occurs to me:
Donald (or rather an EDE whose services have been purchased to act as a messenger while looking like Donald) suddenly appears in the middle of the werewolf cairn. "I've done more damage to Pentex than you, your your pack, and every other pack in this country. Combined. Be Glasswalkers, work with the Syndicate. Donald Away!"
Donald (or rather an EDE whose services have been purchased to act as a messenger while looking like Donald) suddenly appears in the middle of the werewolf cairn. "I've done more damage to Pentex than you, your your pack, and every other pack in this country. Combined. Be Glasswalkers, work with the Syndicate. Donald Away!"
VanusDraco
Special Projects Division
- Location
- The Bottom Line
SPD is an acronym for "Special Project Division", it's a methodology, which is basically a specialization within a convention. Specifically, SPD is Pentex's research division. Focusing on Wyrm tainted products.
History of Pentex is pretty interesting from what I remember from the new convention book.
Bad ass Financier, Proctor, was instrumental in helping to establish the modern Technocratic Union. He's literally the finance/economic adviser to the Queen, and basically created the modern Syndicate.
His company, know as the Proctor House, reorganized and changed its name to Pentex after a merger with another company(I think its an Oil company but i am unsure). Proctor commit suicide around that time.
Pentex's research and development, the only part of the Syndicate that does Science basically becomes its own little methodology, I believe it started informally. Not sure if they were even formally acknowledged as a methodology.
1999, comes the Avatar Storm, there was much panicking. A couple weeks later(Or perhaps month), when things calmed down a bit, the new head honcho of the Syndicate finally noticed that there has not been any communication from the SPD for a while. Messages are ignored and designs and products that use to come out of SPD completely dried up. So some damage control agents were sent in, but they never returned. The Syndicate finally stopped after the head of one agent got mailed back to the head office.
Investigation from there uncovered lots of unfortunate shit, so they went into Damage Control mode. A special group of agent is created to pretend to be SPD, and is working on retrieving and retiring all tools and product that has gone out of the SPD. Maybe in 10 years the SPD can be formally disbanded because obviously they have not been getting results.
But someone else has already found out about the Wyrm infestation, Project Invictus is a cross convention operation whose goals is to destroy the Nafrandi which have infiltrated the Syndicate. Thus, the right hand is waging a secret war on the left hand when they both basically want the same thing, Invictus want to destroy all the Wyrm influence, the new "SPD" want to hide away the Wyrm tainted stuff and basically destroy all evident of their guilt.
Main while, Pentex is still sending out dividend checks to the Union. But no one knows what is really going on.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Though, apparently in this Quest Project Invictus actually outed Pentex and the SPD to the rest of the Union as... well... almost entirely Nephandi-corrupted and saturated with Reality Deviancy of the "bringing hostile aliens to Earth", so the bits in the Convention Book: Syndicate relating to it... probably aren't applicable here. Which would also explain the Glass Walkers being teamed up with them - with the Syndicate all "the former Special Projects Division are horrible monsters who want to destroy all of everything and we are just not down with that" rather than the canonical "this is totally a legitimate and profitable enterprise we support".
So yeah, butterflies.
So yeah, butterflies.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"So... Glass Walkers. We understand that you don't like us so much, because you think one of our divisions is composed entirely of horrible abominations that defile the earth by their very presence, and really need to be cleansed from existence. We've... well, we've recently come across some fairly compelling evidence that suggests that you might be right about that one. Can we talk?"
VanusDraco
Special Projects Division
- Location
- The Bottom Line
You sure about that?
The reason Invictus work in secret is because of the potential blow back value of Pentex being exposed, which would lead to Technocrat civil war, with NWO(possible ItX) on the one side and Syndicate the Void Engineers on the other.
I remember Donald uncovered a tiny portion of what SPD was doing, with the demonic money, but i don't remember Pentex as a whole being exposed yet.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
I'm fairly confident, yes, the primary source being this:
In short, Project INVICTUS is working out in the open as an Enforcer project, the corruption throughout Pentex has been exposed, and this:
states outright that the Syndicate and Glass Walkers are best bros and not afraid to say it to the rest of the Union, as a direct result of INVICTUS's promotion to a fully-sponsored Syndicate operation. Frankly, I don't see the Walkers teaming up so readily if the Syndicate still had Pentex on the payroll. For all that they're cool with the Weaver, they hate the Wyrm about as much as any wolf.
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...especially since the start of that beautiful relationship was the two groups bonding over blowing up Pentex subsidiaries.
VanusDraco
Special Projects Division
- Location
- The Bottom Line
Eh Sure why not.
It still sounds as if the Syndicate is keeping it in house, but meh, not feeling like argueing the point.
It's also that, to be blunt, the canon SPD is an invasive Werewolfism which... doesn't really work when Technocrats not infrequently requisition goggles which can see EDEs.
Any plan which is "We'll have our technology powered by evil spirits" kind of fucking doesn't work when anyone with DSci 1 or a DSci-1-capable detecting Device can blow the whistle on it. And you can't justify it with "they shut down any attempt to whistleblow" because that presumes that you can get into a position using evil-spirit powered technology without being called out.
(likewise, "We hide banes in everything!" of Pentex runs into Mage's Technocracy "We oppress poor innocent spirit-summoners with evil cold soulless sensor grids to allow us to track down and PURGE SPIRITS (Corr 3, DSc 1)")
Any plan which is "We'll have our technology powered by evil spirits" kind of fucking doesn't work when anyone with DSci 1 or a DSci-1-capable detecting Device can blow the whistle on it. And you can't justify it with "they shut down any attempt to whistleblow" because that presumes that you can get into a position using evil-spirit powered technology without being called out.
(likewise, "We hide banes in everything!" of Pentex runs into Mage's Technocracy "We oppress poor innocent spirit-summoners with evil cold soulless sensor grids to allow us to track down and PURGE SPIRITS (Corr 3, DSc 1)")
Remember spherewise, Syndicate has Entropy, Time, and Primal Utility at high levels. The SPD are officially sanctioned by the Syndicate and have consistently been working on completely shady shit as long as it turns them a long-term profit. What does this remind you of?
As to why Pentex has survived so long with Technocratic attention-it's a very big powerful edifice that the Technocracy needs to disassemble in a way that does not lead to Consensus breaking down-and also, because of the breakdown of the Camarilla truce, the Camarilla, who are not capable of spotting the fact that Pentex is literally run by Things From Beyond Which Want To Rape Your Soul To Death (and probably wouldn't care if they knew) are backing them, making that even harder.
When/if Pentex does something particularly beyond the pale that gets the attention of Ragnarok Command, though, it generally turns out that in an ironic twist their own shoddy building materials contributed to their building catching on fire and exploding. What could have ever done this? Certainly not an invisible black helicopter firing thermobaric missiles into the windows. No, not at all.
*Invisible black helicopter flies away*
I am working on the update in fits and starts.
As to why Pentex has survived so long with Technocratic attention-it's a very big powerful edifice that the Technocracy needs to disassemble in a way that does not lead to Consensus breaking down-and also, because of the breakdown of the Camarilla truce, the Camarilla, who are not capable of spotting the fact that Pentex is literally run by Things From Beyond Which Want To Rape Your Soul To Death (and probably wouldn't care if they knew) are backing them, making that even harder.
When/if Pentex does something particularly beyond the pale that gets the attention of Ragnarok Command, though, it generally turns out that in an ironic twist their own shoddy building materials contributed to their building catching on fire and exploding. What could have ever done this? Certainly not an invisible black helicopter firing thermobaric missiles into the windows. No, not at all.
*Invisible black helicopter flies away*
I am working on the update in fits and starts.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ahhh - and part of what happened is that we hit the 1999 thing, and suddenly, technocrats all over *were* investing in small amounts of DSci.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sufficiently dark blue or deep purple coats of paint can let you claim, with perfect honesty, that cause of death was not, in fact, an invisible black helicopter.
Thats because the Syndicates invisble helos wont be Black.
No the invisble helos will gold (or any other color of money)
Just dont ask about the Canadian Fiancer who made his own currency popular. His helos are tartan coloured.
No the invisble helos will gold (or any other color of money)
Just dont ask about the Canadian Fiancer who made his own currency popular. His helos are tartan coloured.
Ivan the Not-so-Terrible
AH MEW CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE
- Location
- Mikonyan’s USSR
Are you suggesting that the Syndicate cannot afford to make invisible helicopters out of Primium?
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What one could afford if necessary, and what one chooses to spend ones money on are two very different things.
Yes. Primium is in short supply these days. An Enforcer helo with more Primium than needed is a waste of material and cash.
Far better to buold an ARC or more Hitmarks
What would a weapon system made of bitcoins be like? Other than a fraud and hilariously volatile.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Depends who's using it. If you're a Syndicate Highly Experimental Commodities Trader, using the inherent value in the bitcoins to construct or empower a physical thing, then yeah, the resonance in the Primal Energy you pulled is going to have some interesting destabilizing effects, and it may well be more vulnerable to paradox than most. If you're a VA/Hermetic hybrid cyberjock who's working off of some sort of "work that goes in equals work that comes out" philosophy, and reforming the computation required to create them into a brute force attack... well, it probably still has some interesting destabilizing effects, and may well be more vulnerable to paradox than most. So maybe not so dependent on who's using them after all.
Nah, see, Syndicate paradigm people - like @MJ12 Commando - know that Bitcoin can casually be repurposed from a poorly thought out VA attempt to overthrow the Syndicate to just a means for moving primal energy from idiots to them.
Of course, the VA true believers are sure it is the future and that certainty lasts long enough for the Syndic hypereconomists to cash out, removing the primal energy from the system, and then let the paradox cause crippling reputation damage and scandals to the people still involved.
Of course, the VA true believers are sure it is the future and that certainty lasts long enough for the Syndic hypereconomists to cash out, removing the primal energy from the system, and then let the paradox cause crippling reputation damage and scandals to the people still involved.
Update LXXVI: Necessity
JB LXXVI: Necessity
Jamelia walks through the Iteration X floors of the massive Construct. Racks and racks of rapid-deployable ground drones are neatly folded on top of each other. There are very few living things here-most of the workers are doing so by telepresence, or are autonomous drones. Some of the drones are being unfolded, prepared for deployment where expendable robots might be useful.
She's reminded of the Moscow museum and the Iterators there talking about the airburst-round equipped security drones. But there's differences in how they work. The Moscow ones were built via nanofabricator, while most of these are constructed via Sleeper work. The Moscow ones were autonomous, while the RA-8 series of autonomous robotic remote have only the most limited intelligence and require a cybernetically enhanced commander to operate. They're solutions to the relative lack of AI cores, of the risk of putting veteran soldiers into the line of fire.
Iteration X, in Jamelia's experience, had been almost as accepting of losses as the Progenitors. Both Iteration X and the Progenitors could and would restore dead personnel from backups as a matter of course (whereas other Conventions had to scrape and beg for use of said facilities), but for Iteration X, their acceptance of death was more akin to religious fanaticism-a crusade of sorts for their deus ex machina. Holy martyrdom for the Computer. Of course, come 1999 and both of the Utopians found themselves having to contend with the loss of resources. Suddenly, every HITMark and Enlightened combat cyborg was a precious resource, and with the loss of over 95% of their resleeving facilities, the Progenitors were no longer capable of trivially rebuilding dead agents. Both had to adapt to a world where they were mortal.
The Dimensional Anomaly's changed a lot, Jamelia thinks. After the Anomaly, Iteration X has become one of the most loss-averse Conventions, because every one of its high-end assets is expensive and difficult to replace, and it's found ways to deal with that via combat robots and low-end Sleeper cyborgs. After the Anomaly, there's very little of the old religious zeal left, replaced in many ways by way too many science fiction novels and TV shows and a naive optimism Jamelia shakes her head at but almost envies. Of course, in many ways it's the newest Convention, with the least continuity to the old, since its leadership was decapitated in a way no other Convention's was, not even the Void Engineers, whose mastery of Dimensional Science allowed them to salvage quite a lot from their orbital stations and warships. It complicates the issues. The NWO, Progenitors, Void Engineers, and Syndicate kept enough of the old guard to have a chain of command and respect for the institutions.
Iteration X's leadership is there by dint of having gotten results. The system itself has not been around for long enough to have any inherent legitimacy. And in many ways Iteration X has become the glue that is holding the Technocracy together-the NWO and Syndicate might be at each other's throats, the Void Engineers are still toeing the line on whether or not they're members of the Technocracy or a rogue Convention, and the Progenitors have threatened to restart wars the Technocracy doesn't need by their actions-but Iteration X, this new Iteration X, is a Convention that has cooperated with everyone and been indispensable to every major operation. The NWO's restoration of its previous surveillance networks wouldn't have been possible without Iteration X quantum computers and data-mining AIs. The Progenitors couldn't have done EXEMPLAR without Iteration X cybertech or nanomachinery, and many of their Applied Sciences soldiers use Iteration X weaponry and armor. The Syndicate have been profiting massively from exploiting Iteration X technologies to sell to the masses, and the Void Engineers need every gram of Primium, every weaponized prosthetic, and every combat cyborg they can get their hands on.
Iteration X going into turmoil wouldn't slay the Technocracy, but it'd weaken the Union further. An unacceptable result, Jamelia concludes. So she either has to marginalize the hard-liners, have them reconcile, or eliminate them, distasteful as that sounds. TYRANT could be useful for both. Although a NWO Amalgam, they spend most of their time in the Iteration X sections of the base. It makes sense, given their augmentations. They'd need support from Iteration X cyberdocs to keep their bodies functional, and although the NWO had biomed resources they were the wrong kind of biomed resources. Jamelia walks through racks and racks of deployable war drones, the functional 'old' Iteration X barracks which has now been repurposed into a recreation room, complete with a dozen Iterators playing some sort of MMO, clearly communicating with each other via ADEI link, and heads towards the suite the Tyrants have taken over. Her first thought upon encountering them is that they look surprisingly normal. Most of them, anyhow.
Julianna Briony looks like she could be someone's trophy wife, which is far more common for FACADE-engineered honeypot clones than for actual NWO agents, but Jamelia can notice the subtle signs of shape-changing elastiskin and polymorphic skeletal functions. A disguise specialist, probably, although the sheen of her skin implies she also has active camouflage in case there's a situation no disguise will help with. Jorge Bautista is a lithe, agile looking man who has plenty of expertise with disguising his tells-a veteran agent. However, the way he looks at Jamelia, the way he evaluates her threat level, makes her think scout-sniper. She can't get a good look at his eyes due to his deliberate movement, but she guesses that they're heavily modified with ballistic tracking cyberware and the slight twitch of his right hand is due to a tactical shooting driver in his cyberlimb processors.
Juliet Baxter is a tall woman who is the attractive-but-not-unforgettably-so level veteran NWO agents with access to Progenitor cosmetic surgeries tend to level out at, wearing a tank top and jogging shorts. Her body is dense with nanotube musculature and Jamelia guesses a Primium endoskeleton like a HITMark V. Jamelia can see external reinforcement of her kneecaps and long bones with hypercarbon and heatsinks embedded throughout her limbs. She's sacrificed discreetness for more combat power. A heavy, more of an overt operative than a covert one, Jamelia concludes.
Jacob Brown is another semi-obvious cyborg, most of his skin the black of chameleon polymer and his neck ringed with a deployable full face mask. His face is still living tissue, unlike the rest of his body.
Jacqueline Beauchene is more akin to an ATLAS unit than any of the others. She still looks human at first glance, but Jamelia's modified eyes can see the slight flicker of her disguise field. Underneath it, she catches glimpses of heavy cybernetic skull and neck reinforcement jutting through skin and inhuman, high-power cybernetic limbs tearing their way out of synthflesh. Another heavy, intended to only infiltrate to a target location via use of holographic disguise. Anything more than casual physical contact would be a problem for her, but she could take on any of Iteration X's finest.
In John Bacon's old personnel picture, he looked the part of the typical SAS operative, tall and whipcord lean, body seemingly made out of solid rock. Now he's still muscular but has a bit of a gut. It looks like he's gone soft, but Jamelia knows that it's not that. No-he needs that body space for combat hardware. The discreet launch ports for microdrones show how he's modified himself. He's hollowed himself out-turned himself into a stealth drone hive to sneak spy drones into an area. The fake fat hides nanoforge feedstock, and the bulk allows him to keep himself relevant in a fight while carrying the bulk of a 60kg Creation Engine in his torso.
Jaron has similar enhancement to Juliet, sufficient to mostly pass for human but optimized for combat. It fits him, he was perfectly capable of subtlety but preferred a more direct approach when it was just as efficient. Bastion knows this, and it tells her a lot about the infiltrations Tyrant is supposed to be expecting. They can certainly infiltrate, but they expect extremely heavy resistance during that infiltration. They expect to be deployed in areas friendly to the continued operation of high-spec cyborgs. For Jamelia, it screams "we really want to know what the Void Engineers are doing and are fed up with their excuses." It's pretty obvious that they're intended to find out more about what the Void Engineers fight. Of course, she knows Jaron and John-they're Union loyalists, pragmatists but people who still think that the Union's status quo is far better than any alternative. People who she might be able to convince to join her little new conspiracy.
"Operative Belltower." Jaron says in welcome. "A pleasure meeting you. I'm sorry we weren't around in Moscow-it looked like an operation that could use our talents, but by the time the entire crisis happened-"
"Thank you." Jamelia says, cutting him off. She doesn't care if it's honest or not, if they're apologizing to her now, it means they think that she has a lot more power than she actually does. "I'm not here to talk about Moscow, though."
"Then you're here about something else, right? Some new operation?" Jacqueline asks, noncomittally. An Iterator would have been champing at the bit by now.
"I just wanted to see the latest in NWO augmentation technology." Jamelia mentions offhandedly. "This seems like a significant bit of mission creep from what we've been doing before."
"Can't rely on Iteration X or the Void Engineers anymore." Jorge says. "The Iterators been emulating the Progenitors more and more, cutting down on military R&D and hypertech for more masses-compatible developments. Stopped treating HITMarks as expendable. Makes it harder to get bailed out of a sticky situation when it happens. So we've had to make our own extraction teams. Overt operations is a growth industry now." Jamelia can tell that he thinks that treating HITMarks like real people is a mistake.
"And that's why we exist." Jaron says, with the smoothness of someone who's practiced a cover story for a long time. "With Iteration X increasingly rediscovering their science and engineering roots and the shrinking of their active combat arms, and the Void Engineers entirely focused on fighting Threat Null, we need some organic heavy combat assets that can fit inside your average-sized building. Armor is great, but armor can't breach its way through a Camarilla-run skyscraper to rescue hostages."
"I'm aware." Jamelia says. "I've come to appreciate having heavy combat assets at some points." She's also come to appreciate just how easily they can become a crutch for linear thinking and poor planning, but there are times when having Kessler or Cross or the MA-38 around were necessary. "It's just that it's a very different sort of enhancement program."
"You've gotten some upgrades yourself from NWO standard spec, haven't you?" Juliet mentions offhandedly. The other woman is staring at Jamelia's chest. No, Jamelia mentally corrects herself, through it. Undoubtedly she's looking at her heartrate and breathing to try to reverse-engineer what level of enhancement Jamelia's undergone. "I'm guessing a pretty heavy retroviral regimen, there's none of the telltales of pharmaceutical augmentation. Progenitor?"
Jamelia nods. It's not exactly something she needs to keep secret. "Doctor Rosario does some good work."
"I can tell." Juliet says. "So are you just here to compare bodies or..."
"No, no, nothing like that. I'm just wondering if you've done field tests."
"A couple." Jaron says noncommittally. "Just basic operations against the Camarilla and Rogue Council, nothing high-threat. Nothing high-threat to us, I should clarify. Objectively speaking a horde of hemophages is pretty threatening."
"A lot less threatening when you fire Supernovas through the walls." Jacqueline mentions. Jamelia notices the slang, places her as a heavy weapons specialist in her previous life. Only NWO overt ops used 'Supernovas' as slang for hyperbright incendiaries.
"The local Iterators are planning on getting revenge on a shapeshifter hive." Jamelia says. "I think this would be an excellent chance to get more field testing data, and certainly an opportunity to ingratiate yourself with Iteration X leadership." She's telling them the truth as she understands it. So many agents get caught up in the idea that they have to lie about everything, when the truth often works just as well if shaped in the right way. "The scientists will love that you're keeping the shock troops quiet, and the shock troops will love having the NWO pull its own weight."
Jaron looks noncommittal. "We'll discuss it. There's a lot of logistical issues with our deployments, this isn't like sending in a dozen suits."
Jamelia knows that she's gotten this in the bag if he's thinking of logistical issues. "That's all I could ask for."
Kiet's offer tempts Henriette, but she doesn't want to embarass herself and Jamelia in front of these men and women by making a promise she can't keep. So she hedges her bets. "I think I'll almost certainly be able to provide support for you, and I'll definitely try to join you in the field, but I don't know yet."
The HITMark nods. "Understandable. The NWO doesn't have many heavy assets of their own. They're probably going to be sitting out the actual hive sterilization."
One of the ex-SAS Iterators decides to comment. "Yeah, because they're a bunch of sneaky guys who can't win a straight fi-" His statement is interrupted mid-stride by Jamelia walking in, with six... six very high-end cyborgs all wearing black suits rather than the standard chameleoflage uniforms common to Iteration X. The uniforms are black-Midnight, Henriette's ADEI helpfully responds, NWO issue. One of the women is smiling, as if they had timed their entrance specifically to show up that person in specific.
"Ah. Yes." Kiet says. "Our guests from NWO's overt operations unit have said they'd be joining us as of three seconds ago. With their help, this operation should be smoother than expected. I assume you've been briefed?"
The leader of the NWO cyborgs nods. "So do you have a precise location for the target yet?"
"Phase space locations are apparently extremely relative, but we do have a location for their realspace access point." Kiet says. "We're going to punch our way through from there. Any additional details will be uploaded as they come. We're tasking a satellite overflight to examine phase space topology and environmental hazards, so be ready for more information. Operation time will likely be when there's a night window, to minimize witnesses."
Jaron nods. "Understood. We'll be ready to go when you are."
Kessler, in many ways, felt somewhat like the odd cyborg out in ItX these days. Part of that was probably due in large part to missing out on fifteen years of slow, gradual change in social attitudes that the others took for granted, like the proverbial dragon-toad getting tossed into a boiling pot instead of leaving it in there as you stoked the fire. He knew he'd changed from the man that he was back in '94, and the changes he'd went through weren't the same changes that his fellow Iteration Xers had undergone.
Some things, though, hadn't changed much since the days of Hittite warriors in their barracks casting lots to pass the time. Entering the base mess John Kessler was greeted with the sounds of men eating, socializing, and bitching about everything from their boss to the weather and everything in between. He sidled up to the chow line-yes to the potatoes, yes to the synthetic meat, yes to the Cyberboost nutrient slurry, hell no to the vegetable medley- and found a group of NCOs near one end of the mess to sit down near.
The topic, unsurprisingly, was about the cairn assault coming up. "...least we've got some backup this time. The Fuzz're nice and all, but it's good to have some proper cybersoldiers for this op."
"Fuckin' right. Hear anything about whether we'll get enough primium rounds for the Mk. XVII's?" The cyborg in fatigues had some scars around his eye that disappeared abruptly into his scalp, where the natural skin gave way to synthetic material. His arm is clearly artificial, lacking the hair or pores of a real limb. Kessler strains his ears and hears the familiar whine of servomotors.
The other cyborg was wearing PT attire, showing off angular, geometric markings on his artificial limb, things unfamiliar to Kessler. "Ha! Good joke. Cunt in supply said that we'd be using silver ammo and conventionals. I tell her that's fuckin' suicide, but the bint just shrugs and says that's our allotment."
John didn't need much of an invitation to work his way into the conversation. Social niceties were not one of the skills he'd practiced on the dragon planet. "There a problem with silver?"
"Who the feck are you?" The workout cyborg asked, looking irritable. He had a look of someone trying to gaze into the middle distance at John Kessler for a moment before blinking and frowning.
"Looking for this?" He smoothed out the nametag on his shirt (name sewn in actual honest-to-god black thread). "Still haven't gotten the hang of those AR-thingies yet."
His partner seemed to be a bit quicker on the uptake. "Sergeant Kessler, sir!" He rose, seeming to snap to attention.
Mama Kessler's boy grinned. "Sit your ass down, son. I work for a living, don't go 'sir'ing me like that." He chugged a bit of nutrient slurry right out of the squeeze tube rather than with a spoon like you're probably supposed to. Table manners were another skill he wasn't entirely in the habit of again, and the taste and consistency were close enough to chocolate pudding that it didn't bother him much anyhow. "Now, answer the question."
"Sergeant, a warform shapeshifter is the size of a goddamn bear. A significant proportion of shapeshifters have evolved silver resistance to a greater or lesser degree, and the smart ones wear custom body armor or have EDE pacts that strengthen their fur to the toughness of steel. Even with an Aesir Munitions Thor, you need multiple shots to take an average one down. Silver also plays hell with ballistics, there's a reason most people don't use silver bullets and it's not just cost."
"So?" The exojock seemed particularly unconcerned. "Doesn't mean you need Primium. That shit's hard as balls to make as it is, and digging it out of the landscape to reuse it's a pain I only wish on FNGs on shit detail."
"But if we're dealing with really tough ones or at range..." the rude one tried to explain.
"Then shoot them more, or let the dedicated heavy weapons guys deal with the issue. Besides, how much range you expect the furries to give you anyway?" They were gathering a crowd of onlookers. People didn't need to crowd around him when they could dial up their audio pickup feeds and network what they were hearing with their buddies. Still, the general decrease in side conversations was indicator enough for Kessler. "Trust me, I got my Ph.D in ass-kicking before going on a extra long sabbatical learning me up on how to Make Do. Yeah, the Primium rounds and railguns would be nice, but you're not going to get enough to matter. What are you going to do about it?" John looks around at the assembled ItX crowd before singling one out.
"Corporal Jennings!"
"Sergeant!" She almost leaps up, facing the far wall rather than towards Kessler.
"What is your assessment of the werewolf threat?"
"Sergeant?"
"What can the doggies do? How do they act? What do you do to keep 'em down, and what just pisses them off a bit?"
"Sir, the shapeshifters are capable of morphing between human and canine forms! This includes a halfway state, sir! They regenerate, but regeneration is suppressed by silver and primium rounds, as well as select RD artifacts! Tactics usually are a combination of ambush from across the Gauntlet and human waves of bestial underlings backed up by one or two senior, intelligent shapeshifters directing them! Support from RNEs or other noetic entities has been documented in the past! Effective deterrents and suppressant equipment includes but is not limited to Primium rounds, silver, ARGIVE-pattern nanite swarms, vibrational blades with Progenitor-approved neurotoxins, ultrasonics, napalm if covering sufficient surface area..."
"Sounds like you've got quite the collection to choose from. You want my advice, kiddos? Make do. Remember this; we're the Shock Corps. It's not the latest, shinest gizmos that made us who we are. It's not the sleek chrome that makes you a badass...it's you that does that. Yeah, I'm right there with y'all in geeking out over the latest doo-dads and what's got the most bells and whistles, but in the end it's a means to an end. The enemy hasn't adapted all that much, while we've marched on. It doesn't matter if you get 'em with a micro-missile or a silver bullet in the back of the head so long as they die."
"The big guns help a lot though." A woman says loudly. "And I've killed one with a kitchen knife, so I think I'm qualified to say that this is a gigantic shitshow."
Kessler tracks towards the voice, taking in details. Good-looking-check, inhuman hair color (reflective silver)-check, the slight reflection of HUD elements in the eyes-check, literally inhuman body density-check, mass spectrometry showing that she's roughly 90% carbon allotropes by volume over a primium-coated titanium endoskeleton, check. Full conversion cyborg, Iteration X-and given that she's wearing non-regulation combat gear, probably very important. "So who are you?"
"Catherine Sutherland." Her armor looks more NWO than Iteration X. Even standard issue uniforms now are chameleoflage-it's not nearly as good as the Photonic Redirection/Editation Devices that Kessler remembers using on black ops-but it's nice to be at least slightly hidden. Hers lacks that, being an armored bodyglove made out of black spidersilk and thin, segmented hypercarbon plate over the torso and shins. Her gloves are clearly some sort of high-tech devices of some sort, and her legs are surrounded by thick pillows of artificial muscle. "And you're an old relic who doesn't understand just how fucked-up the situation is. Yeah, the furries haven't changed much, but it isn't the 90s anymore. We don't have the numbers to waste throwing low-tech Kamrad-tier cyborgs at the problem. Imagine this happening 20 years ago, Sergeant. You can't, because it wouldn't have happened. But now we're making plowshares, not swords, which sounds great except furries and superstitionists and fucking Nephandi are killing us with the swords they've made, and then taking our plowshares to ruin or pervert as they see fit."
"I survived 20 years in a hostile environment with outdated technology-"
"-so? You're an exceptional person. And you're more heavily augmented than most of the people in this room. Yeah, sure, I'm two generations beyond you. I might even be stronger. Put me up against a superstitionist wizard with a magic fireball wand and you'll laugh but I'll melt. Jennings over there doesn't even have more than Level One primium protection and has a cyberheart. Find a furry who can shut down tech, there's a 50/50 chance she just drops dead. You? Laugh it off, beat the furry to death with his own dick. Bauer over there-" she points to the scarred cyborg with the servomotor powered arm- "-got an old-80s era cyberarm which he spent most of his merit pay and combat bonuses specifically acquiring. Yeah, a modern limb might be lighter, more natural, and let him punch through the side of a light tank, but this way he can put it in front of his face if Dark Lord Voldemort decides to cast Avada Kedavra at him. You're from a different fucking world than us, Sergeant. So don't try to lecture us from your position of privilege."
Rose doesn't know what she expected when she talked about her personal troubles, but it probably wasn't the advice Reina was giving at this moment. Or lack of advice.
"Honestly," Reina says sadly, "my childhood was so long ago I cannot truly remember it. One of the costs of a long life. The mind only can hold so much. I cannot remember my mother's face; only a sketch I made of it when I realised it was slipping from me. I cannot truly tell you what she was like, because I knew her for fifteen short years before the angel Gabriel first visited me and told me I would do great things. He led me away from the house I was born in to the door of a lodge house of the Order, and I barely looked back."
Rose does not feel entirely comfortable with this talk of angels and faith. The Progenitors are perhaps the most established secular Convention - Iteration X having merely exchanged its former Christianity for the Machine Cult - and to hear her own voice talking like this... well, it feels wrong.
"I have been on the other side of such arguments, though," Reina adds. "So many mayfly children, many living but a few decades before something took them back to God. Most without the grace of God, but those who did have it were always the most troublesome. The Enlightened are strong-willed and precocious, and the way of the Inner Circle was always that we must hide the truth of the world under a lantern from those who could not handle it."
Rose's milkshake would have gone down the wrong way, if her biology had not been carefully reengineered to prevent her from choking on her own food. She is thankful for that, as she splutters. "You had children?" she manages.
Reina smiles sadly. "Many," she says. "And many husbands. I buried most of them - the ones which left bodies, that is. The heart goes where it will, even when you would rather avoid the pain of burying another loved one in a few short decades." She sighs. "I wish I could tell you some magic panacea which would make everything better, but with some of them, I was left wishing I had said something earlier, and with others I was left regretting words better left unspoken. It was always so difficult. I seldom had the time I should have had for them because of the demands of the Order, and there were so many things I could not tell them."
"I should go talk to her," Rose says impulsively.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps it will make the pain worse. You must give the fires time to cool, but you must not let vitriol seep its way in." Reina lets her head sink into her hands. "I was a poor, distant mother quite often," she confesses. "I often tried to avoid painful arguments by throwing myself into my work, and left it too long - and sometimes overcompensated."
Rose purses her lips. "I think it's too soon," she says, almost believing her own lies. She swallows. "I... I should get her something nice, though. As... as a sorry gift. For shouting at her. And everything. For everything."
"True. She is a Progenitor... and they are always appreciative of captured beasts and monsters," Reina says slowly. "I know I would always have been proud of one of my children hunting down a werewolf or vampire."
Something in this sounds off to Rose. But on the other hand, she would be able to get out of this place and vent some steam by hunting down a vampire or two. Maybe she could buy Serafina... a smart kitten with the bounty on a vampire! And then she'd have an excuse to play with it with Serafina! Yes, Rose concludes. It makes sense.
"You look terrible." Elsa says, as Serafina wakes up and frantically tries to get her bearings. "What were you thinking?" Serafina Rosario has woken up in strange beds fairly often in her life. Serafina has been woken up in this fashion much less often.
"Wha?" Serafina manages, with all the grace and eloquence of a drunk. "Whoo 'ead hurts" Generally, Serafina wakes up in strange beds significantly less intoxicated, and feeling a lot better than she is.
"Figures. You spent last night drunk off your ass hitting on everything that moves. Now, I didn't exactly mind-" she smirks a little "-but that's definitely out of character for you." The ex-Virtual Adept drops a SoberUp into a glass of water. "Drink. Water."
"Dun wanna be sober. It hurts." Serafina says, but she's not nearly strong enough to resist the cyborg's insistence.
As sobriety returns slowly, Serafina looks at the newly-minted Void Engineer in fear. "I... I didn't do anything too embarassing did I?"
"Well, I think you ended up making out with a dozen Space Marines and wanted to find out if this body had any 'non-military enhancements', your words, but besides that? Nothing."
Serafina cups her face in her hands in defeat.
"What's happened to you? You were holding together so well in Moscow and the other times I've met you, but now you're just self-destructing. I've seen a lot of people self-destruct." Elsa says. "What's eating you?"
Serafina tries to play tough. "Nothing."
"Don't lie to me, girl." Elsa chides. "I've seen a lot of people break, and you are definitely broken. I've seen myself break, and I know that lying about it didn't help. You need to talk to someone."
"No." Serafina manages, as she gets up and tries to out of the room. "I don't. I'm going to be fine."
"You're not fine!" Elsa snaps, moving to block the doorway. "Does someone who's fine drink themselves half to death? Does someone who's fine lash out whenever someone's concerned about them? No, you're not fine, and I'm not letting you leave until you tell me!"
Things people have to remember: When I said that the vast majority of the Technocracy's ability to build Primium is gone, I meant it! Also, Iteration X is a shell of itself now, especially since heavy assets have been split to Ragnarok Command and the Void Engineers need all the Primium.
Focus On (Because Running Two Semi-Fights Simultaneously Is Terrible):
[ ] Jamelia/Kessler/Henriette/Sad Werewolves On Fire
[ ] Rose/Reina/Sad Vampires
Be Jamelia:
Roll 8d10e7 for Requisitions, Difficulty +1. You'll get something, but not as much as if you had dedicated yourself to it.
Operation Smilodon:
Jamelia wants Henriette and Kessler to-
[ ] Penetrate to the core of the hive and kill the leadership (Highest risk, highest potential reward)
[ ] Take out their armory and RD artifacts (Loot!)
[ ] Take out kinsfolk and secure the perimeter against, you know, unfortunate coincidences (lowest risk, lowest reward)
Be Kessler:
[ ] Check Your Cyberpunk Privilege (concede defeat and go to the gun range to fire a belt-fed 25mm automatic shotgun or something)
[ ] Don't Check It (write-in a more convincing tack to argue that they should make do)
Be Rose:
Vampire Hunting, right? Hunt vampires using...
[ ] (2.5x) Social methods! (Wear something sexy, dare vampires to take a bite out of you)
[ ] Overwhelming firepower!
[ ] (0.5x) Patience and good planning. (Angry Rose angry like angry kitten. Angry kitten does not like planning).
Be Serafina:
[ ] (3.0x) Clam up and say nothing to Elsa.
[ ] Write-in.
Jamelia walks through the Iteration X floors of the massive Construct. Racks and racks of rapid-deployable ground drones are neatly folded on top of each other. There are very few living things here-most of the workers are doing so by telepresence, or are autonomous drones. Some of the drones are being unfolded, prepared for deployment where expendable robots might be useful.
She's reminded of the Moscow museum and the Iterators there talking about the airburst-round equipped security drones. But there's differences in how they work. The Moscow ones were built via nanofabricator, while most of these are constructed via Sleeper work. The Moscow ones were autonomous, while the RA-8 series of autonomous robotic remote have only the most limited intelligence and require a cybernetically enhanced commander to operate. They're solutions to the relative lack of AI cores, of the risk of putting veteran soldiers into the line of fire.
Iteration X, in Jamelia's experience, had been almost as accepting of losses as the Progenitors. Both Iteration X and the Progenitors could and would restore dead personnel from backups as a matter of course (whereas other Conventions had to scrape and beg for use of said facilities), but for Iteration X, their acceptance of death was more akin to religious fanaticism-a crusade of sorts for their deus ex machina. Holy martyrdom for the Computer. Of course, come 1999 and both of the Utopians found themselves having to contend with the loss of resources. Suddenly, every HITMark and Enlightened combat cyborg was a precious resource, and with the loss of over 95% of their resleeving facilities, the Progenitors were no longer capable of trivially rebuilding dead agents. Both had to adapt to a world where they were mortal.
The Dimensional Anomaly's changed a lot, Jamelia thinks. After the Anomaly, Iteration X has become one of the most loss-averse Conventions, because every one of its high-end assets is expensive and difficult to replace, and it's found ways to deal with that via combat robots and low-end Sleeper cyborgs. After the Anomaly, there's very little of the old religious zeal left, replaced in many ways by way too many science fiction novels and TV shows and a naive optimism Jamelia shakes her head at but almost envies. Of course, in many ways it's the newest Convention, with the least continuity to the old, since its leadership was decapitated in a way no other Convention's was, not even the Void Engineers, whose mastery of Dimensional Science allowed them to salvage quite a lot from their orbital stations and warships. It complicates the issues. The NWO, Progenitors, Void Engineers, and Syndicate kept enough of the old guard to have a chain of command and respect for the institutions.
Iteration X's leadership is there by dint of having gotten results. The system itself has not been around for long enough to have any inherent legitimacy. And in many ways Iteration X has become the glue that is holding the Technocracy together-the NWO and Syndicate might be at each other's throats, the Void Engineers are still toeing the line on whether or not they're members of the Technocracy or a rogue Convention, and the Progenitors have threatened to restart wars the Technocracy doesn't need by their actions-but Iteration X, this new Iteration X, is a Convention that has cooperated with everyone and been indispensable to every major operation. The NWO's restoration of its previous surveillance networks wouldn't have been possible without Iteration X quantum computers and data-mining AIs. The Progenitors couldn't have done EXEMPLAR without Iteration X cybertech or nanomachinery, and many of their Applied Sciences soldiers use Iteration X weaponry and armor. The Syndicate have been profiting massively from exploiting Iteration X technologies to sell to the masses, and the Void Engineers need every gram of Primium, every weaponized prosthetic, and every combat cyborg they can get their hands on.
Iteration X going into turmoil wouldn't slay the Technocracy, but it'd weaken the Union further. An unacceptable result, Jamelia concludes. So she either has to marginalize the hard-liners, have them reconcile, or eliminate them, distasteful as that sounds. TYRANT could be useful for both. Although a NWO Amalgam, they spend most of their time in the Iteration X sections of the base. It makes sense, given their augmentations. They'd need support from Iteration X cyberdocs to keep their bodies functional, and although the NWO had biomed resources they were the wrong kind of biomed resources. Jamelia walks through racks and racks of deployable war drones, the functional 'old' Iteration X barracks which has now been repurposed into a recreation room, complete with a dozen Iterators playing some sort of MMO, clearly communicating with each other via ADEI link, and heads towards the suite the Tyrants have taken over. Her first thought upon encountering them is that they look surprisingly normal. Most of them, anyhow.
Julianna Briony looks like she could be someone's trophy wife, which is far more common for FACADE-engineered honeypot clones than for actual NWO agents, but Jamelia can notice the subtle signs of shape-changing elastiskin and polymorphic skeletal functions. A disguise specialist, probably, although the sheen of her skin implies she also has active camouflage in case there's a situation no disguise will help with. Jorge Bautista is a lithe, agile looking man who has plenty of expertise with disguising his tells-a veteran agent. However, the way he looks at Jamelia, the way he evaluates her threat level, makes her think scout-sniper. She can't get a good look at his eyes due to his deliberate movement, but she guesses that they're heavily modified with ballistic tracking cyberware and the slight twitch of his right hand is due to a tactical shooting driver in his cyberlimb processors.
Juliet Baxter is a tall woman who is the attractive-but-not-unforgettably-so level veteran NWO agents with access to Progenitor cosmetic surgeries tend to level out at, wearing a tank top and jogging shorts. Her body is dense with nanotube musculature and Jamelia guesses a Primium endoskeleton like a HITMark V. Jamelia can see external reinforcement of her kneecaps and long bones with hypercarbon and heatsinks embedded throughout her limbs. She's sacrificed discreetness for more combat power. A heavy, more of an overt operative than a covert one, Jamelia concludes.
Jacob Brown is another semi-obvious cyborg, most of his skin the black of chameleon polymer and his neck ringed with a deployable full face mask. His face is still living tissue, unlike the rest of his body.
Jacqueline Beauchene is more akin to an ATLAS unit than any of the others. She still looks human at first glance, but Jamelia's modified eyes can see the slight flicker of her disguise field. Underneath it, she catches glimpses of heavy cybernetic skull and neck reinforcement jutting through skin and inhuman, high-power cybernetic limbs tearing their way out of synthflesh. Another heavy, intended to only infiltrate to a target location via use of holographic disguise. Anything more than casual physical contact would be a problem for her, but she could take on any of Iteration X's finest.
In John Bacon's old personnel picture, he looked the part of the typical SAS operative, tall and whipcord lean, body seemingly made out of solid rock. Now he's still muscular but has a bit of a gut. It looks like he's gone soft, but Jamelia knows that it's not that. No-he needs that body space for combat hardware. The discreet launch ports for microdrones show how he's modified himself. He's hollowed himself out-turned himself into a stealth drone hive to sneak spy drones into an area. The fake fat hides nanoforge feedstock, and the bulk allows him to keep himself relevant in a fight while carrying the bulk of a 60kg Creation Engine in his torso.
Jaron has similar enhancement to Juliet, sufficient to mostly pass for human but optimized for combat. It fits him, he was perfectly capable of subtlety but preferred a more direct approach when it was just as efficient. Bastion knows this, and it tells her a lot about the infiltrations Tyrant is supposed to be expecting. They can certainly infiltrate, but they expect extremely heavy resistance during that infiltration. They expect to be deployed in areas friendly to the continued operation of high-spec cyborgs. For Jamelia, it screams "we really want to know what the Void Engineers are doing and are fed up with their excuses." It's pretty obvious that they're intended to find out more about what the Void Engineers fight. Of course, she knows Jaron and John-they're Union loyalists, pragmatists but people who still think that the Union's status quo is far better than any alternative. People who she might be able to convince to join her little new conspiracy.
"Operative Belltower." Jaron says in welcome. "A pleasure meeting you. I'm sorry we weren't around in Moscow-it looked like an operation that could use our talents, but by the time the entire crisis happened-"
"Thank you." Jamelia says, cutting him off. She doesn't care if it's honest or not, if they're apologizing to her now, it means they think that she has a lot more power than she actually does. "I'm not here to talk about Moscow, though."
"Then you're here about something else, right? Some new operation?" Jacqueline asks, noncomittally. An Iterator would have been champing at the bit by now.
"I just wanted to see the latest in NWO augmentation technology." Jamelia mentions offhandedly. "This seems like a significant bit of mission creep from what we've been doing before."
"Can't rely on Iteration X or the Void Engineers anymore." Jorge says. "The Iterators been emulating the Progenitors more and more, cutting down on military R&D and hypertech for more masses-compatible developments. Stopped treating HITMarks as expendable. Makes it harder to get bailed out of a sticky situation when it happens. So we've had to make our own extraction teams. Overt operations is a growth industry now." Jamelia can tell that he thinks that treating HITMarks like real people is a mistake.
"And that's why we exist." Jaron says, with the smoothness of someone who's practiced a cover story for a long time. "With Iteration X increasingly rediscovering their science and engineering roots and the shrinking of their active combat arms, and the Void Engineers entirely focused on fighting Threat Null, we need some organic heavy combat assets that can fit inside your average-sized building. Armor is great, but armor can't breach its way through a Camarilla-run skyscraper to rescue hostages."
"I'm aware." Jamelia says. "I've come to appreciate having heavy combat assets at some points." She's also come to appreciate just how easily they can become a crutch for linear thinking and poor planning, but there are times when having Kessler or Cross or the MA-38 around were necessary. "It's just that it's a very different sort of enhancement program."
"You've gotten some upgrades yourself from NWO standard spec, haven't you?" Juliet mentions offhandedly. The other woman is staring at Jamelia's chest. No, Jamelia mentally corrects herself, through it. Undoubtedly she's looking at her heartrate and breathing to try to reverse-engineer what level of enhancement Jamelia's undergone. "I'm guessing a pretty heavy retroviral regimen, there's none of the telltales of pharmaceutical augmentation. Progenitor?"
Jamelia nods. It's not exactly something she needs to keep secret. "Doctor Rosario does some good work."
"I can tell." Juliet says. "So are you just here to compare bodies or..."
"No, no, nothing like that. I'm just wondering if you've done field tests."
"A couple." Jaron says noncommittally. "Just basic operations against the Camarilla and Rogue Council, nothing high-threat. Nothing high-threat to us, I should clarify. Objectively speaking a horde of hemophages is pretty threatening."
"A lot less threatening when you fire Supernovas through the walls." Jacqueline mentions. Jamelia notices the slang, places her as a heavy weapons specialist in her previous life. Only NWO overt ops used 'Supernovas' as slang for hyperbright incendiaries.
"The local Iterators are planning on getting revenge on a shapeshifter hive." Jamelia says. "I think this would be an excellent chance to get more field testing data, and certainly an opportunity to ingratiate yourself with Iteration X leadership." She's telling them the truth as she understands it. So many agents get caught up in the idea that they have to lie about everything, when the truth often works just as well if shaped in the right way. "The scientists will love that you're keeping the shock troops quiet, and the shock troops will love having the NWO pull its own weight."
Jaron looks noncommittal. "We'll discuss it. There's a lot of logistical issues with our deployments, this isn't like sending in a dozen suits."
Jamelia knows that she's gotten this in the bag if he's thinking of logistical issues. "That's all I could ask for."
***
Kiet's offer tempts Henriette, but she doesn't want to embarass herself and Jamelia in front of these men and women by making a promise she can't keep. So she hedges her bets. "I think I'll almost certainly be able to provide support for you, and I'll definitely try to join you in the field, but I don't know yet."
The HITMark nods. "Understandable. The NWO doesn't have many heavy assets of their own. They're probably going to be sitting out the actual hive sterilization."
One of the ex-SAS Iterators decides to comment. "Yeah, because they're a bunch of sneaky guys who can't win a straight fi-" His statement is interrupted mid-stride by Jamelia walking in, with six... six very high-end cyborgs all wearing black suits rather than the standard chameleoflage uniforms common to Iteration X. The uniforms are black-Midnight, Henriette's ADEI helpfully responds, NWO issue. One of the women is smiling, as if they had timed their entrance specifically to show up that person in specific.
"Ah. Yes." Kiet says. "Our guests from NWO's overt operations unit have said they'd be joining us as of three seconds ago. With their help, this operation should be smoother than expected. I assume you've been briefed?"
The leader of the NWO cyborgs nods. "So do you have a precise location for the target yet?"
"Phase space locations are apparently extremely relative, but we do have a location for their realspace access point." Kiet says. "We're going to punch our way through from there. Any additional details will be uploaded as they come. We're tasking a satellite overflight to examine phase space topology and environmental hazards, so be ready for more information. Operation time will likely be when there's a night window, to minimize witnesses."
Jaron nods. "Understood. We'll be ready to go when you are."
***
Kessler, in many ways, felt somewhat like the odd cyborg out in ItX these days. Part of that was probably due in large part to missing out on fifteen years of slow, gradual change in social attitudes that the others took for granted, like the proverbial dragon-toad getting tossed into a boiling pot instead of leaving it in there as you stoked the fire. He knew he'd changed from the man that he was back in '94, and the changes he'd went through weren't the same changes that his fellow Iteration Xers had undergone.
Some things, though, hadn't changed much since the days of Hittite warriors in their barracks casting lots to pass the time. Entering the base mess John Kessler was greeted with the sounds of men eating, socializing, and bitching about everything from their boss to the weather and everything in between. He sidled up to the chow line-yes to the potatoes, yes to the synthetic meat, yes to the Cyberboost nutrient slurry, hell no to the vegetable medley- and found a group of NCOs near one end of the mess to sit down near.
The topic, unsurprisingly, was about the cairn assault coming up. "...least we've got some backup this time. The Fuzz're nice and all, but it's good to have some proper cybersoldiers for this op."
"Fuckin' right. Hear anything about whether we'll get enough primium rounds for the Mk. XVII's?" The cyborg in fatigues had some scars around his eye that disappeared abruptly into his scalp, where the natural skin gave way to synthetic material. His arm is clearly artificial, lacking the hair or pores of a real limb. Kessler strains his ears and hears the familiar whine of servomotors.
The other cyborg was wearing PT attire, showing off angular, geometric markings on his artificial limb, things unfamiliar to Kessler. "Ha! Good joke. Cunt in supply said that we'd be using silver ammo and conventionals. I tell her that's fuckin' suicide, but the bint just shrugs and says that's our allotment."
John didn't need much of an invitation to work his way into the conversation. Social niceties were not one of the skills he'd practiced on the dragon planet. "There a problem with silver?"
"Who the feck are you?" The workout cyborg asked, looking irritable. He had a look of someone trying to gaze into the middle distance at John Kessler for a moment before blinking and frowning.
"Looking for this?" He smoothed out the nametag on his shirt (name sewn in actual honest-to-god black thread). "Still haven't gotten the hang of those AR-thingies yet."
His partner seemed to be a bit quicker on the uptake. "Sergeant Kessler, sir!" He rose, seeming to snap to attention.
Mama Kessler's boy grinned. "Sit your ass down, son. I work for a living, don't go 'sir'ing me like that." He chugged a bit of nutrient slurry right out of the squeeze tube rather than with a spoon like you're probably supposed to. Table manners were another skill he wasn't entirely in the habit of again, and the taste and consistency were close enough to chocolate pudding that it didn't bother him much anyhow. "Now, answer the question."
"Sergeant, a warform shapeshifter is the size of a goddamn bear. A significant proportion of shapeshifters have evolved silver resistance to a greater or lesser degree, and the smart ones wear custom body armor or have EDE pacts that strengthen their fur to the toughness of steel. Even with an Aesir Munitions Thor, you need multiple shots to take an average one down. Silver also plays hell with ballistics, there's a reason most people don't use silver bullets and it's not just cost."
"So?" The exojock seemed particularly unconcerned. "Doesn't mean you need Primium. That shit's hard as balls to make as it is, and digging it out of the landscape to reuse it's a pain I only wish on FNGs on shit detail."
"But if we're dealing with really tough ones or at range..." the rude one tried to explain.
"Then shoot them more, or let the dedicated heavy weapons guys deal with the issue. Besides, how much range you expect the furries to give you anyway?" They were gathering a crowd of onlookers. People didn't need to crowd around him when they could dial up their audio pickup feeds and network what they were hearing with their buddies. Still, the general decrease in side conversations was indicator enough for Kessler. "Trust me, I got my Ph.D in ass-kicking before going on a extra long sabbatical learning me up on how to Make Do. Yeah, the Primium rounds and railguns would be nice, but you're not going to get enough to matter. What are you going to do about it?" John looks around at the assembled ItX crowd before singling one out.
"Corporal Jennings!"
"Sergeant!" She almost leaps up, facing the far wall rather than towards Kessler.
"What is your assessment of the werewolf threat?"
"Sergeant?"
"What can the doggies do? How do they act? What do you do to keep 'em down, and what just pisses them off a bit?"
"Sir, the shapeshifters are capable of morphing between human and canine forms! This includes a halfway state, sir! They regenerate, but regeneration is suppressed by silver and primium rounds, as well as select RD artifacts! Tactics usually are a combination of ambush from across the Gauntlet and human waves of bestial underlings backed up by one or two senior, intelligent shapeshifters directing them! Support from RNEs or other noetic entities has been documented in the past! Effective deterrents and suppressant equipment includes but is not limited to Primium rounds, silver, ARGIVE-pattern nanite swarms, vibrational blades with Progenitor-approved neurotoxins, ultrasonics, napalm if covering sufficient surface area..."
"Sounds like you've got quite the collection to choose from. You want my advice, kiddos? Make do. Remember this; we're the Shock Corps. It's not the latest, shinest gizmos that made us who we are. It's not the sleek chrome that makes you a badass...it's you that does that. Yeah, I'm right there with y'all in geeking out over the latest doo-dads and what's got the most bells and whistles, but in the end it's a means to an end. The enemy hasn't adapted all that much, while we've marched on. It doesn't matter if you get 'em with a micro-missile or a silver bullet in the back of the head so long as they die."
"The big guns help a lot though." A woman says loudly. "And I've killed one with a kitchen knife, so I think I'm qualified to say that this is a gigantic shitshow."
Kessler tracks towards the voice, taking in details. Good-looking-check, inhuman hair color (reflective silver)-check, the slight reflection of HUD elements in the eyes-check, literally inhuman body density-check, mass spectrometry showing that she's roughly 90% carbon allotropes by volume over a primium-coated titanium endoskeleton, check. Full conversion cyborg, Iteration X-and given that she's wearing non-regulation combat gear, probably very important. "So who are you?"
"Catherine Sutherland." Her armor looks more NWO than Iteration X. Even standard issue uniforms now are chameleoflage-it's not nearly as good as the Photonic Redirection/Editation Devices that Kessler remembers using on black ops-but it's nice to be at least slightly hidden. Hers lacks that, being an armored bodyglove made out of black spidersilk and thin, segmented hypercarbon plate over the torso and shins. Her gloves are clearly some sort of high-tech devices of some sort, and her legs are surrounded by thick pillows of artificial muscle. "And you're an old relic who doesn't understand just how fucked-up the situation is. Yeah, the furries haven't changed much, but it isn't the 90s anymore. We don't have the numbers to waste throwing low-tech Kamrad-tier cyborgs at the problem. Imagine this happening 20 years ago, Sergeant. You can't, because it wouldn't have happened. But now we're making plowshares, not swords, which sounds great except furries and superstitionists and fucking Nephandi are killing us with the swords they've made, and then taking our plowshares to ruin or pervert as they see fit."
"I survived 20 years in a hostile environment with outdated technology-"
"-so? You're an exceptional person. And you're more heavily augmented than most of the people in this room. Yeah, sure, I'm two generations beyond you. I might even be stronger. Put me up against a superstitionist wizard with a magic fireball wand and you'll laugh but I'll melt. Jennings over there doesn't even have more than Level One primium protection and has a cyberheart. Find a furry who can shut down tech, there's a 50/50 chance she just drops dead. You? Laugh it off, beat the furry to death with his own dick. Bauer over there-" she points to the scarred cyborg with the servomotor powered arm- "-got an old-80s era cyberarm which he spent most of his merit pay and combat bonuses specifically acquiring. Yeah, a modern limb might be lighter, more natural, and let him punch through the side of a light tank, but this way he can put it in front of his face if Dark Lord Voldemort decides to cast Avada Kedavra at him. You're from a different fucking world than us, Sergeant. So don't try to lecture us from your position of privilege."
***
Rose doesn't know what she expected when she talked about her personal troubles, but it probably wasn't the advice Reina was giving at this moment. Or lack of advice.
"Honestly," Reina says sadly, "my childhood was so long ago I cannot truly remember it. One of the costs of a long life. The mind only can hold so much. I cannot remember my mother's face; only a sketch I made of it when I realised it was slipping from me. I cannot truly tell you what she was like, because I knew her for fifteen short years before the angel Gabriel first visited me and told me I would do great things. He led me away from the house I was born in to the door of a lodge house of the Order, and I barely looked back."
Rose does not feel entirely comfortable with this talk of angels and faith. The Progenitors are perhaps the most established secular Convention - Iteration X having merely exchanged its former Christianity for the Machine Cult - and to hear her own voice talking like this... well, it feels wrong.
"I have been on the other side of such arguments, though," Reina adds. "So many mayfly children, many living but a few decades before something took them back to God. Most without the grace of God, but those who did have it were always the most troublesome. The Enlightened are strong-willed and precocious, and the way of the Inner Circle was always that we must hide the truth of the world under a lantern from those who could not handle it."
Rose's milkshake would have gone down the wrong way, if her biology had not been carefully reengineered to prevent her from choking on her own food. She is thankful for that, as she splutters. "You had children?" she manages.
Reina smiles sadly. "Many," she says. "And many husbands. I buried most of them - the ones which left bodies, that is. The heart goes where it will, even when you would rather avoid the pain of burying another loved one in a few short decades." She sighs. "I wish I could tell you some magic panacea which would make everything better, but with some of them, I was left wishing I had said something earlier, and with others I was left regretting words better left unspoken. It was always so difficult. I seldom had the time I should have had for them because of the demands of the Order, and there were so many things I could not tell them."
"I should go talk to her," Rose says impulsively.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps it will make the pain worse. You must give the fires time to cool, but you must not let vitriol seep its way in." Reina lets her head sink into her hands. "I was a poor, distant mother quite often," she confesses. "I often tried to avoid painful arguments by throwing myself into my work, and left it too long - and sometimes overcompensated."
Rose purses her lips. "I think it's too soon," she says, almost believing her own lies. She swallows. "I... I should get her something nice, though. As... as a sorry gift. For shouting at her. And everything. For everything."
"True. She is a Progenitor... and they are always appreciative of captured beasts and monsters," Reina says slowly. "I know I would always have been proud of one of my children hunting down a werewolf or vampire."
Something in this sounds off to Rose. But on the other hand, she would be able to get out of this place and vent some steam by hunting down a vampire or two. Maybe she could buy Serafina... a smart kitten with the bounty on a vampire! And then she'd have an excuse to play with it with Serafina! Yes, Rose concludes. It makes sense.
***
"You look terrible." Elsa says, as Serafina wakes up and frantically tries to get her bearings. "What were you thinking?" Serafina Rosario has woken up in strange beds fairly often in her life. Serafina has been woken up in this fashion much less often.
"Wha?" Serafina manages, with all the grace and eloquence of a drunk. "Whoo 'ead hurts" Generally, Serafina wakes up in strange beds significantly less intoxicated, and feeling a lot better than she is.
"Figures. You spent last night drunk off your ass hitting on everything that moves. Now, I didn't exactly mind-" she smirks a little "-but that's definitely out of character for you." The ex-Virtual Adept drops a SoberUp into a glass of water. "Drink. Water."
"Dun wanna be sober. It hurts." Serafina says, but she's not nearly strong enough to resist the cyborg's insistence.
As sobriety returns slowly, Serafina looks at the newly-minted Void Engineer in fear. "I... I didn't do anything too embarassing did I?"
"Well, I think you ended up making out with a dozen Space Marines and wanted to find out if this body had any 'non-military enhancements', your words, but besides that? Nothing."
Serafina cups her face in her hands in defeat.
"What's happened to you? You were holding together so well in Moscow and the other times I've met you, but now you're just self-destructing. I've seen a lot of people self-destruct." Elsa says. "What's eating you?"
Serafina tries to play tough. "Nothing."
"Don't lie to me, girl." Elsa chides. "I've seen a lot of people break, and you are definitely broken. I've seen myself break, and I know that lying about it didn't help. You need to talk to someone."
"No." Serafina manages, as she gets up and tries to out of the room. "I don't. I'm going to be fine."
"You're not fine!" Elsa snaps, moving to block the doorway. "Does someone who's fine drink themselves half to death? Does someone who's fine lash out whenever someone's concerned about them? No, you're not fine, and I'm not letting you leave until you tell me!"
Things people have to remember: When I said that the vast majority of the Technocracy's ability to build Primium is gone, I meant it! Also, Iteration X is a shell of itself now, especially since heavy assets have been split to Ragnarok Command and the Void Engineers need all the Primium.
Focus On (Because Running Two Semi-Fights Simultaneously Is Terrible):
[ ] Jamelia/Kessler/Henriette/Sad Werewolves On Fire
[ ] Rose/Reina/Sad Vampires
Be Jamelia:
Roll 8d10e7 for Requisitions, Difficulty +1. You'll get something, but not as much as if you had dedicated yourself to it.
Operation Smilodon:
Jamelia wants Henriette and Kessler to-
[ ] Penetrate to the core of the hive and kill the leadership (Highest risk, highest potential reward)
[ ] Do so with Iteration X. (-PE, +Not Glory Hogging)
[ ] Do so with the Tyrants. (-PE, +Tyrant StatS)
[ ] Take out the breeding pens. Just kill the guards, and set a ton of wolves on fire. (Heroism!)[ ] Do so with the Tyrants. (-PE, +Tyrant StatS)
[ ] Take out their armory and RD artifacts (Loot!)
[ ] Take out kinsfolk and secure the perimeter against, you know, unfortunate coincidences (lowest risk, lowest reward)
[ ] Split the Tyrants, bring one of them along instead of Kessler (-Prime Energy Bounty, +Tyrant Stats)
-Choose one option that isn't "penetrate to the hive core."
[ ] Split the Tyrants, bring one of them along instead of Henriette (-Prime Energy Bounty, +Tyrant Stats)
-Choose one option that isn't "penetrate to the hive core."
-Choose one option that isn't "penetrate to the hive core."
[ ] Split the Tyrants, bring one of them along instead of Henriette (-Prime Energy Bounty, +Tyrant Stats)
-Choose one option that isn't "penetrate to the hive core."
Be Kessler:
[ ] Check Your Cyberpunk Privilege (concede defeat and go to the gun range to fire a belt-fed 25mm automatic shotgun or something)
[ ] Don't Check It (write-in a more convincing tack to argue that they should make do)
Be Rose:
Vampire Hunting, right? Hunt vampires using...
[ ] (2.5x) Social methods! (Wear something sexy, dare vampires to take a bite out of you)
[ ] Overwhelming firepower!
[ ] (0.5x) Patience and good planning. (Angry Rose angry like angry kitten. Angry kitten does not like planning).
Be Serafina:
[ ] (3.0x) Clam up and say nothing to Elsa.
[ ] (+1.0x) And get really, really drunk afterwards. Again.
[ ] (+3.0x) And kill yourself to deal with the grief. Sure, you might be resurrected again, but maybe you won't remember it after that happens.
[ ] Actually respond to the intervention positively.[ ] (+3.0x) And kill yourself to deal with the grief. Sure, you might be resurrected again, but maybe you won't remember it after that happens.
[ ] Write-in.
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Oh, ow. Not good.
Focus On (Because Running Two Semi-Fights Simultaneously Is Terrible):
[ ] Jamelia/Kessler/Henriette/Sad Werewolves On Fire
[ ] Rose/Reina/Sad Vampires
What does this vote entail exactly?
For example, if we choose too focus on one, when it's over can we then go back too focus on Rose? Because missing either fight would make me rather sad.
[ ] Jamelia/Kessler/Henriette/Sad Werewolves On Fire
[ ] Rose/Reina/Sad Vampires
What does this vote entail exactly?
For example, if we choose too focus on one, when it's over can we then go back too focus on Rose? Because missing either fight would make me rather sad.