Downzone 12- Coup de Main
Over the next week, the systemic destruction of the gangs' assets begins.
It's difficult to try and hit every cache you can. You're hesitant to send your militia after any of them; they're still a soft target, and they're too easily traceable. If anything goes wrong, there's a good chance that they'd soak more casualties than you can afford to replace in an acceptable timespan. You have a
lot of targets to hit, though, and not a lot of time to do it in.
In the end, you settle for what you believe is an acceptable compromise; the militia won't engage any targets, but Karena will pick promising recruits and task them with delivering supplies to the locations you plan to engage. Probably boring for the recruits, but it's helpful for you.
And so you begin your devastation of the gang's assets.
During your time in the military, you learned a hell of a lot about how to approach engagements like this. Insurgents hid their resources
everywhere in Panama. It'd made trying to track down their resources a pain in the ass. Eventually, the officer you'd been assigned beneath had developed rudimentary techniques for locating and destroying enemy assets with minimal intelligence on the area.
It hadn't done you much good back then, but these gang members weren't half the soldiers the Panama insurgents had been.
You're not too concerned by the weapons gang members might have on them or at home. They can keep their shotguns and handguns and rifles for now, as long as they're starved of military-grade weapons and equipment. You're focused on bigger things: their vehicles, their high-power weapon caches, their cash deposits, and so on. Most of these will be guarded. But they don't have the manpower to guard every one of them, and despite combat being more of your kind of thing, you can sneak around reasonably well.
On the first night, you and Immolator begin a systematic search of areas nearby to your new headquarters. Shamus maintains radio contact as best he can, scanning the surrounding areas and reporting the location of additional caches when he can. There aren't that many, unsurprisingly; given the presence of your militia, it's likely that the gangs retreated from your presence some and maintained only a token presence here to watch you.
You manage to clear a four-block radius that night, emanating east of your headquarters. There isn't much to be found here; several weapon caches containing relatively low-powered electromagnetic assault rifles, less than fifty thousand in cash, and two humvees with two-inch steel reinforced plating on the sides. You destroy it all. By the time the guards have twigged onto something going wrong, the demolitions charges have already gone off and what they have is mostly ruined.
On the second night, you send Immolator off on his own to clear the northern section of the area around your headquarters as you make a push further east. Here, the gangs have a heavier presence; Karena's militia members haven't pushed out this far, leading the gangs to believe it's safe.
With the heavier gang presence comes an increase in the number of areas you have to clear. You go from building to building, pausing only to let Shamus scan around you. Occasionally, you locate a resource cache inside a residential building. It's tempting to hit even those, but you refrain; you're not here to terrify the locals, you're here to eliminate the gang presence in town.
Out here, the gangs have a lot more resources on them. Emags are increasingly commonplace, and you note the presence of several sets of polymer-weave body armours. It's not the kind of hardware which threatens you, but it's something you find concerning. This is corporate equipment that they're leaving lying around, and you remember Laine's briefing. Corporate equipment in these numbers means someone's arming them and training them. Maybe a bit like you-creating their own force to enforce order on the streets, to carve out their own little niche in the dog-eat-dog world of Downzone.
There aren't many actual storehouses out here, thankfully. There are a few run-down houses that the gangs use to store their cash and drugs, and a single warehouse filled with crates of cheap weaponry. You destroy it all.
On the third night, you send Immolator off to make sure the zones you've cleared so far are still clear, and that you didn't miss anything, while you sweep up north. You head from the most eastern point you'd cleared yesterday, and systematically sweep in a wide arc up to the north. Then, once you've done that, you push up further north.
The pattern holds clear. The farther away from you the gangs are, the heavier the weapons they have, and the better they're equipped. The better they're guarded. Some of the equipment they have out here is military-grade stuff. E-mag weapons designed to give augs pause, concussion grenades, more armour-plated humvees. One of them has a minigun mounted on the back, enough to deal some serious damage to any non-augs who oppose them. And this is just the stuff you're hitting, targets soft enough that you can get in and out without getting into a real fight. There's places you've found threatening enough that you've just marked them, watching who might be guarding them.
This far from your headquarters, you're finding a lot more assets. It seems nobody has got the message so far. The gangs are incautious, unprepared- or maybe they just have no better places to hide their assets than out in the open. You find over a dozen separate stores of cash out here.
It's definitely corporate influence, you conclude grimly. One or two gangs having this kind of hardware could be coincidence, or just someone with military connections. Eight is far beyond what you're willing to accept.
You cover a lot of distance that night. Seven blocks from your headquarters, in a wide arc from east to north, then two blocks north. You destroy at least a cache per block. The guards are getting heavier here, better trained, and you wonder how long you can keep using Immolator. You're already having to task him carefully-making sure he doesn't hit anything he can't handle. Unlike you, he isn't as tough, nor as strong or quick or stealthy.
On the fourth night, you send Immolator south, while you head east. Immolator won't make it as far as you will, but that's acceptable. This night, word has begun to spread. You don't follow any of the blandly non-suspicious white trucks that drive unhurriedly away as you approach, but before Shamus can begin murmuring in your ear, you mark them on your HUD for him to track, and hit them with a few tracer bugs when you can. You're not sure he can-those bugs are designed to self-destruct if someone scans for them to prevent discovery-but it can't hurt for him to try.
While he tries to track them back, you take to the streets, searching for any remnants of the gangs' equipment in the area. There aren't very many left. Most of what was here has been cleaned out.
Still, what you find, you destroy. Mostly low-grade automatic weapons. A single aug conversion facility- most likely one they just didn't have time to strip before you approached. A handful of crates filled with concussion grenades. Sixteen drug labs, stripped of anything valuable.
Immolator reports more success. Word has filtered down south, but it doesn't seem to have spread as far. It's more of the same down there. Military-grade weapons. Supplies of cash, and large amounts of it.
Two aug conversion facilities. Frag grenades. A warehouse full of drugs-the recreational sort, mostly, but some combat ones there as well. He takes out the warehouse and a few caches. The conversion facilities are too heavily defended. But you've got them targeted-and they'll have to spend time moving them.
On the fifth night, you both head back out and continue last night's push. You made it five blocks beyond your four-block clear radius last night. Tonight, you only make it another three.
They have military weapons out here. Grenade launchers. Explosive devices- landmines, frag grenades, small rockets. Body armour, high-grade, good enough to provide some protection against their own e-mag weapons. More humvees, armour thick enough you're almost surprised they can still drive. Concussion grenades, stun prods. They're bringing out people who-well, you wouldn't call them elite, but they're competent. You nearly get caught a few times. You have to fight your way out once, leaving a half-dozen people in comas with multiple broken limbs.
It makes sense given what you find. There's easily millions of dollars in cash in just the places you targeted. If you weren't worried about it being traced, you'd take it for yourself. Attempts have been made to hide it, but they're not good enough. You tear into them, straining hard enough to rip steel doors off the hinges intended to secure them to the safes.
You don't find any more aug conversion facilities. You're not sure if that's a good thing or not.
On the sixth night, you and Immolator strike out together, pushing south. Between the two of you, you've done raids on targets within an eight-block radius from your headquarters.
Out here, the caches you're finding are cleaner. New. Not made yesterday, but made recently. Higher-end equipment, as well. Confirmation, then, of Laine's reports. They're definitely getting funding from a source. If they weren't, they shouldn't be able to afford this kind of equipment. But what source wants to put in all the effort to give them gear like this, and for what reason?
The two of you move systematically through the neighbourhood, maintaining radio contact at all times. There is a routine, by now. You find something, you report it, you avoid it if it's too heavily protected, or eliminate it if it's not. Weapons. Armour. Vehicles. Cash. Facilities.
You clear three blocks that night.
On the seventh night, you spot the first of the cars.
***
When sleek, luxurious cars painted midnight black begin rolling into an area, neither you nor Immolator are stupid enough to stick around. You watch them for a time, but they don't breach the eight-block radius you've cleared. It's- not really acceptable, but you don't know what forces these people have in play. If they have any enhanciles of their own, you'd prefer to know about them
before engaging them. Laine suggested they had at least one-and you remember military history. Enhanciles were originally a military weapon, 50 years ago. It's still the most efficient use of radical human augmentation technology. If they've got augmented negotiators, they probably have an augmented kill-team. Maybe not as good as you, but still dangerous enough that you want to fight them on your terms.
So the two of you beat a retreat, even though neither of you are happy about it.
Besides, you silently assure yourself- you've cleared yourself a good amount of territory, and you've confirmed corporate presence. That's good enough for you.
If you're going to push further into Shutterbug- which you are- you're going to need resources. Money, information, manpower. And that's not going to come cheap.
Luckily, contracts for your militia- officially, a PMC- have finally started rolling in.
[Pick as many of the following as you want. Each contract taken increases the likelihood that a given accepted contract will fail.]
[] Blackbriar Industries would like to hire a contingent of your security forces to guard their factories. They don't expect to face significant opposition, but several corporations around Shutterbug have moved into the same industries Blackbriar produces in. They would like a show of arms to protect them in case a company makes aggressive maneuvers- and someone to guard their factories is another company should try for sabotage. Pays
1m.
[] Verisimilitude- more properly VR Stimulations, a company that produces VR and AR games for people Upzone- would like to hire a contingent of security forces to provide their workers with some protection. Workers have complained of increased harassment, and several instances of breaking-and-entering have occurred recently. Things are escalating, and the CEO of Verisimilitude is worried that soon it may come to assassination attempts on his employees. He is willing to pay you to station your guards at his company and protect his employees from any attempts at harming them. Pays
1.5m.
[] DeepNet Tech (Pty Ltd) would like to hire a substantial number of guards to guard a factory they claim produces medical technologies. Several attempts at sabotage have already been made, and it is only thanks to the building's technological security methods that these attempts have been stopped. DeepNet is willing to hire your guards. Of course, they will pay extra to ensure your guards do not attempt to peek. They do not wish you to see the methods used to produce their legitimate medical products, you understand. Trade secrets. Pays
2.5m.
[] Lionheart and Sons would like to hire a contingent of security forces to provide their clients with feelings of safety and security. A public works office, Lionheart and Sons is based in what was once a very successful part of town, but is now waist-deep in gangs and corrupt companies. They are hassled on a near-daily basis, and would appreciate your forces to be deployed posthaste. Unfortunately, they cannot assure you that your employees will return unharmed, given the dangers facing them. Pays
3.5m.
[] InfraRed Robotics would like to hire a contingent of security forces to provide testing data for their new robotics units and provide protection against people attempting to sabotage their factories. The process should be mostly safe, the memo insists. You will get… almost all of your security forces back, and the chances that your people will come under fire is less than two in three. Pays
4.5m.
