While the Kill Team secures the bodies, you swipe a ring of keys off the belt of the man who used to sit in the turret.
His cooling corpse stares blankly at you as you reach down. The gaping hole in his chest leaks steaming blood as it pools on the ground.
That's… not natural. Blood steams when hit by a high-intensity heat attack, of course, like the one that killed him. But it doesn't tend to last that long. Usually it cools down a few seconds to a minute or so after death. This guy's been dead for at least a good couple minutes.
So why is his blood still boiling?
Could be many reasons. He could just have strange genetics or a mythological ancestry to him. He could also have gone through arctic weather gene therapy at some point, like if he was born in a very cold place. His parents could've gone through it and it might've passed down to him as well. Of course, it could also be a biological attack method, where he'd squirt boiling blood out at attackers or prey.
There's something about it, though, that really draws your attention. Specifically, it draws the attention of the super-scientist in you. Because, well, you don't really think that this is natural. Not in a place like this, not with the employers the dead man had.
Regardless, you've got some looting to do!
Hopping down from the garage roof, the ring of keys jingles in your hand as you land in a bouncy crouch on the smooth concrete driveway.
The garage itself is fairly simple. A large box of red brick and mortar with a smattering of doors. On the back side of the vehicle storehouse is a single door while the front has the twin of the door in the back and a large, rectangular shuttering garage door.
They're all locked, of course. But that's what you grabbed the keys for in the first place!
You run through the ring, trying each key on the garage door lock securing it to the ground. After a few moments, you slide in a key that fits and a sharp click signals the unlocking of the mechanism.
With a flexing of muscle, you hoist up the shuttering garage door and, with a final push, you slide it into place over the now open garage.
You hear a sharp whistle from next to you as a trooper peers into the garage. You can't see his face or eyes through the mirrored lenses of his armor, but you can tell that he's ogling the vehicles stowed away all the same.
And they are nice looking vehicles, don't get it twisted, but they're not the kind of vehicle you'd see at a race track or a rich man's house. These are purpose-built transports. The kind of machinery used to haul extremely precious and/or delicate things long distances. The sort of vehicles used to convey things you want to keep inside the bounds of the machine.
Along the back walls are a slew of workbenches and tool cabinets littered with, you guessed it, tools. Tools of all shapes and sizes, wrenches, screwdrivers, hyperastic converters, and hammers, oh my.
You give each locker and workbench a quick glancing once-over, to see if there is any desirable loot to take with you.
After a few minutes, you frown and slam the flimsy metal door of the locker shut. Nothing, once again. Well, that's not entirely true. You did nab a few sets of quality tools, though, as well as some power tools that you didn't have until now.
However, there is one thing that you found that does seem to be useful. You found what appears to be a form of compression battery! Specifically, you found a basic form of Augerbattery.
Augerbatteries are a type of compression battery that are capable of storing about twelve times as much power as your standard store-bought grocery store battery thanks to compression and density techniques utilizing advanced augerwire from the Upper Realm. Specifically, technology from the Augerspire.
The Augerspire is a gargantuan tower in the Upper Realm that stretches all the way from the nullflats at the bottom of the realm to the firmament at the very top. The Augerspire is said to innovate simply out of a desire to innovate, which leaves you with mixed feelings.
What is the point of innovating if the technology is never used for anything? Why strive to make new things when the goal is only to further make new things? You can understand the appeal, but… seeing the technology you make in action is so very satisfying as well. Especially when it works!
Regardless of your feelings on the subject, you still have an example of one of their creations — even if it's a, quote-unquote, "crude" example of their tech. The Augerspire is known to auction off their 'lesser' creations in order to fund some of their bigger projects. Which is likely how these people got their hands on this battery in the first place: buying it from somebody else who bought it at an auction. Or however many middlemen were in the process of the Society acquiring it.
Once you reverse engineer this, you can power some more advanced tech. Nice!
(Gained Better Tools: +10 to Super Science Rolls)
(Gained Research/Reverse Engineer topic: Augerbattery)
~~~~~~~
The security station is a hive of bustling activity.
Guards rush to and fro, entering and exiting the building with an unusual fervor. Small ballistic turrets sprout from the corners, the automated weapons sweeping and scanning each guard. The turrets seem to have a strange antenna attached to them, which is pointed at each guard one at a time in quick succession.
The security station itself has guards in the windows, watching the surrounding trees as the majority of the guards move towards the main facility. There seem to only be a few guards still stationed here, at minimum five and at most eight.
The building has two floors and is rather thin. Two barred windows on the first floor, on either side of the solid iron double doors. On the second floor are three windows, these ones not bared. Each window has a guard in it.
If you wait, the rest of the guards will trail out and enter the main facility. There are about thirteen, fourteen, fifteen guards rushing there now. If you give them a minute or two, you won't have to deal with them while taking the security station. However, you will have to deal with them later.
What do you want to do?
[ ] Ambush
The Kill Team will launch an ambush on the rushing guards.
Pros: Taking out the rest of the outer guards
Cons: Fighting them all at once+the turrets and window guards
[ ] Wait it out
The Kill Team will wait for the rushing guards to clear out.
Pros: Not having to fight them all at once+the turrets and window guards
Cons: Having to fight the rest later.
If you want to detail what actions are taken or anything like that, you can write it in.
[ ] Write in
Loot Roll: 15
~~~~~~~
GM's Note: I got word that a pharmacy a few towns over had my meds in stock, so I drove over there and got a refill. So everything's good for about a month.
Also, I will now be taking breaks over the weekends. This is in an effort to combat burnout and to give me time to work on other projects that I have.
One by one, the guards milling outside the security building leave. Hoisting a large array of armaments in their arms as they seem to move almost… robotically? Definitely something weird going on here.
What sounds like a growling noise grows in the distance. The animalistic roar seems to come from the direction of the main laboratory, which sets you on edge a bit more than before.
It doesn't take long before the rest of the guards clear out, leaving the facility guards in the windows and however many are inside the building as the only remaining guards in the security station.
"What do you think about EMP-ing the turrets? If we've got any, that is." You whisper in a crouch next to Woodsmoker as a thin, ethereal trail of smoke rises from her had.
"Good idea." The Kill Team Captain hisses out. She reaches over and taps the closest grenadier on the shoulder as she directs a charred bark-covered finger towards the turrets. With a clench of the fist, the grenadier loads a dark, steely cylinder into the tube-shaped grenade launcher hanging from their belt. Blue LEDs light up along the sides of the presumed EMP grenade as the projectile drops into the grenade launcher.
"Blue Team, pick your targets. Once the turrets are down, drop them, two shots each. Red Team, split into Green and Yellow. Sweep along the forest path and set up ambush points along each side." As soon as Woodsmoker finishes her orders the Kill Team silently explodes into motion like a well-oiled machine. Blue Team sets up along the treeline, rifles and carbines resting on fallen trees and branches. Each of the five Troopers points a weapon at one of the guards in the windows, with Woodsmoker taking the spot of the grenadier.
Red Team, now split into Green and Yellow Teams, creep through the trees in the wake of the passing facility guards. Weapons at the ready as Green takes the left side of the path and Yellow takes the right. What feels like seconds later, they've set up disguised positions using holograms and flash-cloned foliage.
Woodsmoker holds up a hand, fingers splayed out. Slowly, she counts down five seconds. Each second's passing is marked by a finger falling. Once she hits zero and her hand makes a fist, all hell breaks loose.
The grenadier, already set up, pulls the trigger on the grenade launcher and fires the cylinder with a Thoomp!
The glowing blue grenade sails through the air in a seemingly lazy arc as you hold your breath. It seems to hang in the air forever as it lackadaisically falls in between the turrets. It bounces, once, twice, before erupting in a sphere of blue thunder.
Bolts of lightning snake across the turrets. Sparks shoot out of the now disabled auto-turrets as they fall limp, hanging from their wall-mounted sockets.
In unison, the very moment the turrets fall, a duo of echoing shots ring out around you. So close together are the shots that it takes you a second to realize that each trooper shot twice and it wasn't just a pair of gunshots.
The windows shatter outwards as blood explodes against the panes. It reminds you vaguely of the fruit you shot when your Uncle Mike took you shooting once and how they erupted in geysers of red fruit flesh and sticky juice.
And then, all of a sudden, silence. The sudden movement of the Kill Team leaves you scrambling after them as they rush to the security station.
Woodsmoker reaches the door first, her head now billowing in dark, heavy, cloying smoke. Her carbine sweeps up and she puts a quintet of rounds through the comparatively flimsy metal of the door. In a flash, she raises an armored boot and hits the door with a fire-enhanced kick.
The door flies off its hinges, tumbling down the hallway and hitting something wet and meaty on the far wall. She moves in and you get a half-second glimpse of her aftermath before another Trooper moves in and blocks your view of the door embedded in the far wall, a red splatter of gore surrounds it.
Blue Team piles in after their Captain. Six agents split into pairs as they move in practiced motions. Two take the door on the left of the hallway, two take the right, and Woodsmoker and a grenadier take the hall. Woodsmoker and the G-Trooper slam deployable cover into the walls, dragging the shuttering sheets of thick metal and reinforced ballistic plating out to cover their bodies.
The weapons of the agents sweeping the side rooms give sharp retorts as they make doubly sure that the guards in the bottom floor windows are good and dead. Footsteps thump down on either side of the far end of the hall, a quartet of facility guards round the stairwell only to have their bodies punched full of holes by the ready and waiting Woodsmoker and her grenadier partner's LMG.
Their residue falls back against the ground. What little remains of their bodies are nothing more than a pile of limbs and gore, with the occasional part of a head and a hole-filled torso lying around.
The Troopers in the side rooms pile out and meet up with Woodsmoker and the grenadier as they collect their cover and place it back with the rest of their kit on their backs.
"Search them for anything that can be of use." Woodsmoker orders you as she leads Blue Team up the stairs. Her words leave no room for argument so you find yourself knee-deep in the gore and viscera of the dead, shifting through the butchered bodies for anything that looks to be useful.
Your boots squelch as you step in a particularly juicy pile of blood and guts and you're thankful for the liquid-phobic nature of your clothing as otherwise, you'd have a lot of questionable stains covering the hem of your uniform. You knew that Kill Teams didn't play around, but, well, their showing during the garage battle didn't fill you with much hope. After all, they couldn't all be hyper-competent, could they?
It's clear now, however, that Kill Teams are, as they say, — typically the few zoomers still somehow alive, the old farts that they are — 'built different'.
You frown, grimacing as you hold up a red-stained wallet by the corner with your thumb and forefinger. A thin string of chunky viscera hangs from the brown leather, which you flick off with a gloved hand.
With a flick of the wrist, you unfold the wallet and reveal the contents. The contents being twenty-three dollars and thirteen pennies. What a haul.
Other than those, however, you do see this guy's card stash, where he stashed his cards before, you know, dying. Inside the pile of cards — which seem to bulge the wallet — you find a blue ID keycard. In fact, amongst the piles of dead men, you find three more! That is actually a good haul.
Of course, they only seem to allow you into places that would otherwise allow security to be in in the first place. They're not all-access, after all, but they should get you into many places.
Footsteps alert you to Woodsmoker coming down the stairs, her armor smeared with red liquid.
"You find anything?" The Captain asks, her voice a smoking hiss as always.
"Yeah." You nod, holding up the quartet of keycards as her ever-stoic face nods. "These keycards're security cards. They'll get us into most places, but not all."
"Good work." Woodsmoker takes three cards from you, leaving you with one, before asking you a question. "You have access to your AI, STEVE, yes?"
"Yeah, why do you ask?" You question while trying to clean your gloves off.
"There's a camera panel, but it's locked. Figured that an AI would be able'ta crack it." Woodsmoker offers an explanation, gesturing you to follow her, which you do.
She leads you up the stairs, past Troopers as they mill about, doing their post fire-fight jobs. Gunfire rings out from the surrounding, the sign that Green and Yellow Teams are engaging the facility's response team.
Before you lies a many-monitored viewing station. The station that, presumably, guards would use to view the facility's camera system. The screens are currently on, though there is a splattering of blood dribbled across some of the vaguely CRT-ish monitors. A Trooper drags a corpse from the chair, which has a bullethole through the backrest.
"You said it's locked?" You query Woodsmoker and co and receive a round of nods in response. "Alright then. STEVE, can you break it?"
"Of course, Mistress! Your ever eager servant would love nothing more than to do just that!" STEVE's maniacal voice joyfully yells over the line as he virtually plugs himself into the security system.
Lines of code trawl down the screen in blindingly fast blurs as STEVE does battle with the fire wall of the facility. Minutes pass as STEVE's code probes and prods the static lines of the facility, but eventually, you hear his voice once again.
"It's wide open for you, Mistress!" As soon as you hear STEVE's voice, the CRT screens swap from the blank glow they had before to displaying dozens of cameras. Each screen displays a different camera in a different section of the facility.
"Good work, STEVE." He squeals in happiness as he fades into the distance, returning to wherever it is he disappears off to.
Cracking your knuckles, you slide into the chair and get to work.
Turns out, the cameras don't show you the entirety of the facility. They only show you the basement of the old manor and the hallways, as well as the various 'all access' rooms, like the kitchens or cleaning closets.
The basement itself seems to be, well, full of cages. These cages, of which there are at least a dozen of them, all have something inside that you recognize: things that look like the abomination from before.
"Well, shit." Woodsmoker utters from behind you.
"Well shit indeed." You remark, falling back in the bullet-ridden and blood-stained chair. Surprisingly enough, it's an unusually comfortable chair. Especially for a place like this.
The inner facility guards are dressed in much heavier armor and are carrying heavier weapons. The kind of weapons that you'd expect to see on a containment team. Which might be why they're clustering near the basement, now that you think about it.
What do you do next?
[ ] Main Facility!
[ ] Employee Lodgings!
Blue Team's Shooting:
5 Rolls, DC 50
1st: 51+20=71, success
2nd: 40+20=60, success
3rd: 34+20=54, success
4th: 37+20=57, success
5th: 41+20=61, success
Grenadier's Shot, DC 55: 58+20=78, success
Loot Roll: 75, nice
STEVE's Hack Roll DC 65: 71+20=91, success
~~~~~~~
GM's Note: I wrote this one in a blurred haze of words and typing.
The main facility loomed like a fortress rising through the trees as you moved over the forest path. The Kill Team hustles over the concrete pathway, weapons shouldered and ready at a moment's notice.
The mansion-cum-research facility is a large, L shaped building fashioned in the style of the old, Edwardian manors. The structure itself is two stories tall, with a high peaked roof that likely contains an attic of some kind. Strangely enough, there don't seem to be any guards on the outside of the building.
"The guards are all inside, right STEVE?" You whisper to the AI currently manning — AI-ing? — the security system.
"Yes, Mistress." The ever-loyal machine man responds. "There are exactly twenty-three guards inside. Each are armed with RP-Stun Guns and are wearing Underpowered Exo-Armors. The armor seems to be oriented for bludgeoning."
You frown in contemplation. Rapid Pulse Stun Guns are top shelf non-lethal weapons — at least, from the commercially available shelves — and, as such, they are not cheap, not in the slightest. To outfit twenty-three people with them would cost one pretty of a penny. And that's not even counting the exoarmors. Sure, they're Underpowered models, but those are still expensive!
Exoarmors are a powerful tool, even Underpowered brand models. They both provide extra strength to the wearer and additional armor. These exoarmors are built for melee, it seems, the features in the armor make the wearer functionally immune to blunt and bludgeoning damage.
The RP-Stunners are primarily non-lethal, though that doesn't mean that they can't kill, far from it. You'd have to turn the power up to the maximum setting first, and then you have to repeatedly hit the target in rapid succession, but you can do it. Eventually, the nervous system will give out from the stresses of the stunner's electricity.
It's obvious that the guards are here to contain the abominations. However, the abominations have shown resistance to heat attacks before, even going so far as to be functionally immune to fire. That means that, unless the guards aren't actually meant to contain the abominations, that electricity-based weapons have an effect on the monstrosities. Perhaps they're weak to lightning? Well, there's only one way to find out!
"Woodsmoker." You whisper to the Kill Team Captain. "I figured something out." The walking forest fire regards you with a smokey look, urging you to continue. "The guards are armed with stunners, RP-Stun Guns to be specific. My theory is that the abominations are weak to electricity."
A frown crawls across Captain Woodsmoker's scorched, bark-like face as she considers it. "I'll take that into consideration," the Kill Team leader hisses out, "any further advice?"
You nod. "They're wearing exoarmor, Underpowered exoarmor." Woodsmoker's frown deepens, giving some definition to her otherwise flat face. "Fortunately, it can be overloaded. Underpowered is cheap, but it comes at the cost of combat endurance. It overheats, it runs out of power, and/or it draws too much power. Regardless of the reason, it will eventually be disabled."
"And if they're still inside…" The wooden woman flicks her wrist, a teeny burst of flame sparking from her wood-like fingers.
"They'd be sitting ducks, Ma'am." You confirm with a grin and a nod.
"Good. Any advantage is a good advantage." You can see Woodsmoker looking at the other members of her Kill Team. Specifically, she's looking at the more wounded members, like the one who you saw patch himself up near the garage. Apparently, Leroy — the Trooper — had been shot in the process of taking out the turret on the roof, which definitely saved some lives.
Some have already been wounded but none have died, so far at least. Kill Teams are dangerous jobs, but there aren't exactly many jobs in the Service that aren't dangerous, they're just dangerous in different ways. You deal with belligerent suspects and the occasional active combatant, Kill Teams deal with the worst there are, the kinds of people that would willingly damn humanity to eternal slavery in the hopes of receiving a choice spot in the heirarchy once it's all over.
Fortunately, people like that aren't very common. Or else Kill Teams would have a lot more work to do and they wouldn't be available for back-up or for raids like this.
The manor-cum-research facility has three entrances. They are the main entrance, the 'L'-side entrance, and the back entrance. None are heavily guarded, but each will definitely have something on them.
The main entrance has two guards on the balcony of the stairwell. These guards have mounted weapons on the railing of the banister, machine guns to be specific.
The L-side entrance has a force-field of some sort. It doesn't seem to be an offensive force-field, just stopping you from getting in. You might be able to disable it somehow.
The back entrance doesn't seem to have anything defending. However, unlike the rest of the entrances, there aren't any tracks leading to or from it. So there's definitely something there, something that scares people away from using it.
What's the plan?
[ ] Sneaky-beaky-like
You will stealthily move through the facility. They know you're here but they don't know where you are, especially with the security system commandeered by STEVE.
[ ] Shock and Awe
Hit them hard, hit them fast, speed run this thing and don't give them time to react. They know you're here, so it's time to ring their bells.
-[ ] Write in
This is in addition to the plans above, so you'll choose one above and then add this in, if you want to add it in. This is so you can dictate specifically what the plan is, if you are so desired.
~~~~~~~
GM's Note: Alrighty, back on track.
Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST, thanks for sticking with it through these weird times.
"Can you get us through that force field?" Woodsmoker hisses out a question, smoke drifting over her shoulders.
You consider it, quirking your head to the side as you tap your chin in thought. The force field generator is behind the projection, yes, however… If you can slip a signal in there…
"Yeah, yeah I can." You nod, wringing out your hands as you get ready to do some work.
With that, you hustle on over to the L-side entrance. Getting through said entrance would allow the Kill Team to slip in unnoticed and would help them achieve their objectives far easier than if they get bogged down in some ambush or defensive line.
The L-side entrance is a smaller thing than the main. Instead of double doors with a grand design to them, this entrance only has a single white door with a trio of low, shallow steps leading up to the door.
Of course, unlike the main entrance, this entrance has a large blue, glimmering, curtain-like shield covering the doorframe and stopping anyone from entering. Force fields, depending on what kind you're using, are very potent tools to halt movement. They can also be used as an attack, wrapping around someone to trap them in place if you calibrate it correctly. Some have varying effects, such as burning anything that crosses the field into cinders or bouncing any attack back at the enemy.
However, all defenses have a weakness or flaw — there is no true total defense and anyone trying to peddle one is lying — and force fields are no different. While it varies from model to model, from method to method of projecting fields, this force field you seem to recognize as a Zetamax DC-12, the DC stands for 'dissuader collective', which means it stops the movement of whatever happens to touch it.
The DC-12 has a fatal flaw, however, in that the method it uses to deploy shields is interceptable. The power generator shoots wireless waves of electricity to the projector. All one needs to do is hijack the transmission and you can send all sorts of signals through it.
You've got a couple methods of doing this. One is that you simply ignore the force field and go through the wall, bypassing the projector-generator situation entirely. That would, however, be very loud and sort of defeat the whole purpose of going in through this entrance in the first place.
Another is by feeding a wire with a makeshift antenna on the end around the edges of the force field. Get it in the right spot and, with a jolt of electricity, you can shut the whole thing down. Of course, this does take some trial and error until you get the right spot. Which will take some time to get done.
A third method is bombarding the area with wireless signals, like by shooting a tv broadcast at the general area. You'll overwhelm it quickly, forcing it to shut down after a few seconds of that hell. This does come with some cost as you don't have anything that could do that on hand. However, you could definitely rig something up with your Infragoggles. You'll need to take it apart for that and there's no guarantee that the Infragoggles' parts won't be damaged by the process of launching a broadband broadcast at something.
So, what do you do?
[ ] Wire Zapper (Will take between a couple minutes to a couple hours, depending on how lucky you are)
[ ] Broadcast Barrage (Will cost you the use of your Infragoggles for the rest of the mission, but you'll get a new set at the end. There's also a chance that you can put the goggles back together)
[ ] Through the Wall (Go through the wall and ignore the force field problem, will defeat the purpose of being sneaky, though)
~~~~~~~
GM's Note: Sorry for lateness and for shortness, life got in the way for a bit.
