JB CXXXIII: With Full Abandon
Jason Brakowski slides the helmet down on his head as he decides what to do with the team. They're not equipped to fight what seems like the entirety of LAPD's SWAT and a sizable amount of the National Guard-not like this, and not when Patel's telling him that the security systems are malfunctioning and he had to physically destroy the servers with a HITMark to wipe the files. He suspects, like Belltower has told him, that he shouldn't rely on standard procedure in this situation. It fits all the markers-confused tactical situation, unknown hostiles, and Technocratic assets being rendered inert or actively suborned. He can't trust standard procedure, she said. He'll trust her judgment. He wonders where she is, for that matter. She was supposed to be off during a meeting somewhere-which means he can't rely on her for construct defense.
"Get back to the break room. I have a plan." He tells all the Enlightened personnel. He can't hold the place indefinitely, but he can probably hold it long enough to wait for reinforcements.
If standard procedure is being followed, there should be QRF on-scene in 30 minutes, maximum, from when an attack warning was given or shots were fired inside the Construct. They can hold that long, but... something about that rubs him the wrong way. The glitching defensive systems that ensure he can't lock down the facility. The hemophages having been able to attack without warning. The mysterious voice and what it means. He doesn't trust standard protocol in this case. He doesn't know who's suborning it but that rules out the standard evac zone or holing up.
So, step one. Evac all non-combatant personnel. Trusted personnel can go to the mat-trans, untrusted ones will have to hole up here and wait for rescue. Step two. Keep the construct safe until reinforcements arrive. And step three-not be there when they do.
I was never one for blind conformity, Jason thinks.
He summarizes what he wants to do as everyone files in. He's going to take the HITMark Vs-the full-up combat designs with high-end targeting software and 20mm chainguns and the armor of light vehicles-and he's going to use them as an escort for the vehicles. There's a fair arsenal of up-armored SUVs and cars in the garage that they can use. Terrestrial, local transportation. Everyone here can drive, anyways, so he can ride shotgun and shoot from the Paladin. TAC-1 can take one of the up-armored and armed SUVs, and so can TAC-2. The voice said 'enlightened personnel only' but... he doesn't fully trust it. The rest of the assets will go to securing the construct against the assault, or trying to. Hopefully they can hold until something can cut through the hemophages and get them out.
It's not the best of plans, but it is
a plan.
"Yeah. Let's do this." Hughes says, smacking a fist into a palm loudly. She's armored up in hex-camoed tactical shell armor, a bulky suit of advanced (but not the most advanced) combat gear, carrying an Iteration X multirifle in her hand. The vents on her left arm are open slightly, showing that she's cycled the plasma cannon in there to operational power. "Always wanted a chance to kick some ass." And with her in agreement, the rest follow.
"We're going to join up with Park on the server level. I'm going to tell all the temps to hole up in a defensible position and await rescue. Hopefully we'll draw some of their forces away while we do this. Let's go win one for the good guys." Jason says enthusiastically.
***
They've somehow managed to shut down the elevators, Jessica Hughes thinks, and wonders how they've managed even that. There's an independent fusion generator in the basement, so even if they had cut external power it should have kicked in. It means that she has to open the door manually, which takes time and effort. She's sweating, even, which is a rare happening since the synthetic musculature is just more efficient than the real stuff, as the heavy armored doors slide slowly open. And then she sees that there's an anti-tank missile launcher aimed at the elevator by some National Guardsmen, and they don't seem to care that the backblast in a confined area will kill them as well, as they fire at the crack in the elevator. The entire team's in the elevator-a mistake, she realizes now, and it means if she doesn't think fast they're all going to die. It drives her.
She pushes the doors back shut as fast as she can, puts her back to the slit, and is rewarded by the remnants of the heavy metal doors almost collapsing on her. But she's a lot stronger than human, and she pushes forward and sees that the two guardsmen are long-dead, from both the backblast and the deflected shrapnel of the TOW missile. "To the stairs! Now!" She yells, and everyone listens. The sound of that going off-it was probably going to alert everyone. And that meant that she needs to cover the rear before actual hemophage forces came up. The SWAT and National Guard were probably tripwires, influenced by hemophage mind control abilities.
She predicted right, as a squad of vampires-their body temperature is too low to be anything but-charges out through another stairwell, taking cover behind abandoned office cubicles and corridor walls. She can see that TAC-2 and the HITMarks are engaging hostiles in the exit she's chosen, but she trusts in their abilities. They're enhanced combatants like her and Patel has been running some sort of anti-hemophage targeting and tracking program on his ADEI for them. She can hear the ripping sound of IX-22 fire as they advance downwards.
[PLASMA-RDY] shows green in her vision, and artificial muscle peels back from her left arm, her hand drops down, and the muzzle of the plasma weapon shows up. The hemophages pretending to be a SWAT team see this, and they dodge, but they hesitate just a little bit, and that takes away the edge of their superhuman speed as she fires it wide-area, the bright blue cone of starfire annihilating everything in its path. Potted plants, desktop computers, ergonomic office chairs, cubicle dividers, desks, and laser printers join the vampires in becoming ash.
"Multiple targets down." Hughes says. "Reforming on you."
"Stairwell is clear. For now." Brakowski says. For a dumb bro, he isn't so bad, she thinks. Or so dumb. "Couple of the HITMarks took some hits, but they were just rifles so we're fine. Patel's been shot but he was wearing a vest. TAC-2's taken some light injuries from a grenade. Figure it's only going to get harder when we get into places where they can deploy heavy weapons."
"Hurts like a motherfucker but I'm fine." Patel says. "Let's keep going."
Jessica thinks about what Brakowski has said. He's right-when they have more time to bring up the real heavy weapons like grenade launchers and machine-guns they're going to start having a much harder time. She's armored against small-arms but TAC-2 is only armored against assault rifle rounds and is vulnerable to standard weapons-even the polymer shell armor they wear can be worn down eventually by enough heavy rifle fire. TAC-1 has it worse. They've got good armor, but they've got vulnerable joints and gaps. She then puts it out of her mind. She can't worry too much. Lives are depending on her. Just like in Afghanistan-there's no time to dwell on the odds, she has to fight as hard as she can. She grabs a couple of smart grenades from the shoulder pack full of explosives she's carrying (never say no to more explosives), her ADEI setting them to proximity mode, and she scatters them like marbles on this floor. Maybe someone will get caught in them.
"I'll take the rear. HITMark Indigo-Phi-54, you take point." She watches the HITMark dutifully take up the frontal position as they move down the stairs. Twenty floors down. Just twenty more to go. It'll be the longest stair climb she's ever had in her life.
***
Jason Brakowski's brow is matted with sweat and there's an uncomfortable amount of dried blood as they approach the 10th floor. Everyone's been wounded at least a few times, and although Corporal Hughes's plasma cannon has saved their ass an uncomfortable number of times, it's at 30% charge and she has 6 shots left, and she's nearly out of all the grenades she's been carrying. She's run through an uncomfortable number of magazines of hiveloc rounds taking out damnably tough hemophages wearing damnably tough suits of armor, and she's on her last 2 magazines of airbursting ammunition, having had to use so much of it against people who thought cover was useful.
He's been stabbed once, although it was a very clean hit with nothing vital-barely even a flesh wound-and the leather catsuit-wearing hemophage paid for it. She had been pretty, with catlike, predatory eyes, until he had dumped a magazine of armor piercing-incendiary into her guts and then shot her a few times in the face for good measure. It's like they expect that showing off their curves and a little bit of cleavage gives them a tactical advantage, Jason thinks. Unfortunately for her, he's seen a lot of pretty faces in his life and he's not going to roll over and die for one.
They're going through another floor of office-turned-slaughterhouse now. The people here weren't even Technocrats. Just office workers who worked in the same building because they worked for Union-friendly interests and died for it. He feels slightly angry-just slightly, as the emotional dampeners kick into full gear. He couldn't have saved them, he concludes. They didn't have anywhere to go and the hemophages were shooting to kill. He can, however, avenge them. Except... there's something interesting here. "Wait up." He says. "Those SWAT guys-they weren't killed by us." He looks at one of the employees, who has died with her hands crushing a National Guardsman's throat. "And what the hell happened here? It looks like some of these guys got killed, and then-" he gestures to some of the weapons lying at the feet of corpses which have been turned into shredded meat by machine-gun fire. At the ragged corpses of V-addicts and hemophages that they've created. "-and then reinforcements killed them. What the hell's happening?"
He doesn't know. None of them know. It's just obvious that something has gone wrong in the hemophages' plan. Brakowski is nowhere near naive enough to think that it means that they're automatically better off, but it doesn't mean he can't try to see if there's any possible way to leverage this change. "The situation is getting... interesting. We need to figure out how to exploit it. Williams, how's your surveillance going?"
Williams looks at her tablet. "I've got the CCTV cameras working now. It looks like... the hemophages outside are fighting unknown hostiles. RDs as well." She gives him the tablet, and he looks at it. The oddness of it makes his head hurt. A SWAT armored car rocks as it gets hit by a bazooka. There's soldiers in black armor and wearing gas masks fighting the hemophage SWAT and National Guardsmen-but they don't move like the masks are slowing them down, despite how Brakowski knows that breathing in those is an utter bitch. And then there's Men in Black, but not the kind that Brakowski is familiar with, but rather some very ominous looking ones, flesh dead-gray and seemingly ignoring all pain and injury. They're supported by armored vehicles-but old ones. M4 Shermans and T-34s, and he doesn't know how they got there. "They're RD tanks of some sort." Williams says. "I don't know what kind or what strange RD stuff they're made out of, but that's what the filters say. They're not regular WWII vintage tanks."
He looks for a leader but can't find one, not in the vanguard. "Allies or enemies?"
"Enemies, probably." Vega says. "Call it a hunch that they're not going to be happy to see us."
"Right." Brakowski says. "So the choice is between the frying pan and the fire. Well, then." He just hopes that the choice he made about where his destination is wasn't as much of a trap as how he's going to get there.
***
Six shadowy figures surround a holotank. Unlike their hotter and sexier sister, the LX-4, Spectre Limousines didn't come with the spatial warps that made them larger on the inside than the outside, although very good ergonomic design and space-saving technologies made it seem that way. They also didn't come with a well-stocked minibar or an autochef unit. Most of the space in the Spectre is taken up by rows of military-style folding seats, an armaments locker, and command equipment. The remainder of the space is not allocated to a sensuous gel bed and themed bedsheets but rather a small armory, a fold-out surgical unit, and a small pantry/minifridge, full of cyborg high-energy protein bars, Erg Cola, and other high-density foodstuffs. There's still a residual smell of hot, fresh pizza in the room wafting from an almost-empty pizza box. The users of this Spectre know that sometimes it's necessary to have something for morale, even if that something is takeout pizza.
Five of the shadowy figures are dressed in black commando gear from Q Division. One of them is bending down and helping the sixth figure up. The sixth is wearing a slightly rumpled suit and has a device plugged in the back of her neck. Even if the sixth had been standing, she would have been by far the shortest of the entire group. The five cyborgs and one HITMark are all NWO agents, despite how they might look like an Iteration X gathering. Five of them are Tyrants. The last one is a simacrulum of a Belltower. Of Jamelia Belltower.
"I need us to get back into the Construct's systems so we can keep the personnel listening to us." Jaron says, vaguely annoyed. He is surrounded by the smell of roast pork, having recently suffered a blackICE attack that almost succeeded in claiming his life, stopped only by his own internal firewalls and the primium of his skeleton. "We need to know if they're listening or if we need to get in and rescue everyone. Belltower's body is there but that's a secondary concern. The report Aristide," Jaron frowns at the name and almost chokes at what he needs to say next, "wrote says that her 'psychic form' can be implanted into another host with difficulty." He looks at the heavyset man behind him, doing something hidden by a row of folded-up seats. "Bacon! How are those corpses coming?"
"Well enough." John Bacon says, chewing on a slice of pepperoni as he does his gruesome work. "They should be indistinguishable from actual bodies. We can drop them around the area, hit them with some 40mms, and they should be fine. Only problem is the heavy cyborg. Hughes. I don't have enough Primium to fake her corpse properly. Might be able to fool standard scans-but otherwise we'd need to make it look like RDs took her corpse to strip for materials and I'm not sure if people would believe it."
"We need to make sure that they listen to us to the letter. We don't have much spare space or time." Jaron says next. "Any ideas on how to deal with potential problems if they do the sensible thing and don't listen to us?"
"Fortunately," Julianna Briony mentions, glancing at Jamelia's HITMark surrogate, "We do have a solution if they're not listening-as long as we can get through the EWar our enemy is putting out. I think we can give them the right orders once they're out of the jamming umbrella."
"So this is the reason you kidnapped me?" Jamelia Belltower asks as one of the Tyrants takes her out of the cyborg containment cuffs, or rather, the HITMark containing a beta-level of Jamelia Belltower asks. The flesh around the cuffs is red and raw from the constant EM abuse, but she doesn't feel it. Pain, for a HITMark, is a mild annoyance at best, not something that might cause a reaction. "Just to get me to say what you want me to say and then recycle me for spare parts?"
"Bastion sent us to figure out why you were reactivating and taking possession of assets when you should have been in space." Jaron explains, as if to a slow child. "So when we were inconvenienced for the tenth time and couldn't complete it in the normal fashion because all our initial leads had gone quiet and/or were ostensibly Rogue Council or Traditions actions, we sort of assumed it was enemy action and you were responsible in some way. At that point, the best way to figure out what was happening was to, well, go straight to the source. We knew you existed, and we knew you were a beta-level. Please don't be sarcastic." Jaron says. "Your ICE nearly killed me when I was trying to get to this information. It probably would have killed me if I didn't expect it and take precautions. So I'm nursing a very bad headache and I'm not allowed to drink on a mission."
"You could have asked." Jamelia grumps. "Instead of ambushing me with an EMP rifle-" she glances over to Bautista, who is cradling the expensive and rare anti-cyborg rifle, "-shoving a network blocker into my neck, and dragging me on a drive with a black hood over my head. Metamaterial-infused, even, so I couldn't see anything."
"And you'd have told me. I believe you entirely." Jaron snaps back, crushing the empty Erg Cola can in reflex. "Oh yes, by the way, I'm engaged in a secret conspiracy to fight part of the Technocratic Union which is hiding within Technocracy internal security. The reason I'm fighting this faction is because it has gone rogue, and also is listening to Control. Despite the fact that listening to Control is 'being part of the legitimate Technocratic Union' by definition and fighting against people with valid orders from Control is Reality Deviance. Oh and by the way, Control's become Autochthonia's finger puppets and are now working with evil space ghosts made out of ex-Soviet operatives. Or something. Do you want to join me? I mean, you're loyal enforcers of the regime who might have been tasked with infiltrating the sole defenders of everything good in this world like puppies and sunshine from SkyNET, and oh yeah, the Computer might be able to infiltrate your base-level neural augments, but you're good people besides for your body and war crimes count so I'm offering you the hand of friendship."
The rest of the Tyrants laugh politely. They normally don't-but when their commander has a literally killer headache, it seems like the time to humor him.
"I suppose when you put it that way... what exactly would you have done if this had turned out to be a red herring?" Jamelia's beta-level asks, changing the subject.
"Well," he finishes nonchalantly, "we'd have destroyed your cognitive core and made it look like it was some sort of Rogue Council assassination that fortunately just hit a body double."
"If people probed further, we'd have made up something about your psychological enhancements having been a severe concern for Bastion-which, incidentally, would also explain why we were covering it up. Nobody wants a tarnished hero." Julianna adds. She's Tyrant's infiltrator, honeypot, and psych ops agent all in one, although most NWO honeypots or ravens don't have the ability to crush a man's chest in a single move. "We've got that covered."
"I'm impressed." Jamelia's beta-level says. "That's decent planning. I'd have been able to do better if I wasn't just a beta-level, of course."
"Don't be. We're still being outmaneuvered by Friend Computer. And I still don't know anything about why someone who looked like you was going around stripping old constructs of their equipment and personnel." Jaron says, as he steps away from the Spectre's holotank to get another Erg Cola. "I'm not going to stop here until I have some answers as to who your evil twin might be and what her game is. Because you don't seem to have any." He sighs.
"Maybe it's the good twin." Beauchene says sarcastically. "I bet she doesn't have a goatee."
"Just because Jamelia Belltower is clearly the evil twin doesn't make this mystery woman her good twin. She could be double-evil." Brown says.
"All right, kids, back to work." Jaron hollers at them.
Unexpected Employment Circumstances:
Good news! The interns are making it down the building via stairs! Bad news! They're fighting lots of vampires... and worse, there's a new bunch of angry zombies in town and they're not very happy. So what now? What about the plan?
[ ] Write-In. Figure something out.
Sic Semper Tyrannis, Part I:
Are the Tyrants going to move to rendezvous with your interns? Who might need to be bailed out.
[ ] (0.8x) Yes.
[ ] No.
Sic Semper Tyrannis, Part II:
Their next stop is to...
[ ] (0.5x) Rescue Dr. Rosario. You'll need an excuse as to why you're going into a lab construct fully armed that won't get suspicion from the Adversary, but she's officially Construct 2IC and can answer more questions.
[ ] Rescue Financier Sykes. He might also have a better understanding about what's going on. Jamelia seems to trust him a lot, after all.
[ ] Retrieve Jamelia's body. Secondary objective it might be but they do have an intrusion specialist and teleport homer beacons.
[ ] Just give the interns a safehouse location and fade. They've already created too much of a risk by acting overtly.
[ ] Write-In.
