Session started at 7:16 pm on 07/24/2007
Attending players: Sarah, Michael, Ben, and Eva
Presiding GM: Aaron
We got paid for the last job. Now we just have to survive the trip back to Seattle. We have a rental car and what should be about 35 hours of driving ahead of us. Ajax has planned out a route for us that should be minimally hazardous. I don't really agree with the choice of a convertible, but hopefully we can swap off to a different car if it becomes a problem.
The first half of the trip is relatively uneventful. We stop for lunch in a diner out in Bisthmark, North Dakota.
("There has to be a conversion ratio somewhere... exp to karma..."
~ Michael
"We can solve that. Just convert to GURPS and convert back."
~ Ben
"What?! Oh God NO!!!"
~ Michael)It's the last stop before the Siox Nation. The place is called "Edge of the Boarder Diner". It's a little dingy, but the food isn't bad. They actually have some vaguely natural foods instead of the regular "plate of soy" we've been seeing.
The doctor is fidgeting with windup toys. She's been collecting them for the whole trip and she plays with them incessantly. There was some screaming before that. When Ajax pushed her she gave a very confusing explanation about getting some sort of magical trace off of Tantilus and possibly enforcing her will on toys instead of people. I'm not really following. It sounds like she's cracking a bit, but at least for now the toys have calmed her down and they're relatively harmless.
("You do realize that that could cause us to kill her."
~ Ben
"She has a last name! Get her!"
~ Michael)A large troll in the booth next to us is suddenly trying to talk to us. Uh... what the hell? Ajax talks to him relatively amiably. He pulls up a chair and starts pitching a job to us. It involves moving a 2m shipping crate we would need to swap with another crate. The crate he has to give to us is apparently full of towels and styrofoam. Okay. This is not how I like to get my jobs.
He's offering us 9000 NY. That seems a bit high. We manage to talk out of him that the plan is to go to a crashed cargo drone about 200 km down the road and swap out the crate. He doesn't seem to think that there will be any resistance at the crash site.
We agree to do the job. We drive across the boarder and meet our Johnson to trade vehicles.
It's the 20th of December, 2070.
He gives us coordinates for the crash and instructions about the crate to take. Ajax says that area used to be part of the Theodore Rosevelt park. It's got a different name now, but it's still a park. The area is pretty hilly so visibility to the crash sight should be low.
The drive is uneventful. The crash site is a mess, but there aren't any authorities or park rangers on the scene. Yorick picks out the sound of a VTL aircraft about 6 km off from the crash site. The cargo drone managed to go down about 2 km off the road.
The doctor flits off astrally for some recon while we look around in a more mundane manner. She comes back pretty quickly with news that a group of 8 people and a landed VTL about 6 km north of the crash site. She says one of them is awakened but she's pretty sure he didn't see her.
The doctor quickly summons an earth elemental while we unveil the crate. The crate has a large red Aztechnologies logo spray painted on it. How auspicious. We cover it back up and carry it with the tarp. We head off towards the crash site, carrying the crate.
The crates are strewn all over the crash site and the drone control unit is mostly crushed. We locate the crate we want without too much trouble. The RFID manifest attached to it looks rather exciting. Yorick opens the crate and we discover that some of our old gear is in there as well as some other military stuff. Fucking Aztechnologies.
On Ajax's suggestion we quickly switch the contents of the two crates and close them back up.
The doctor alerts us that someone has just come over a ridge above the wreckage. Yorick checks and tells us that there is a person with an Aeries alpha in full body armor and helmet looking down at the crashed drone. We are mostly shielded by the remains of the main cargo pod, but he might have caught glimpses of us.
("A guy holding an Ares gun is like saying, 'I blow my nose with Kleenex!'"
~ Michael)I hand off the big gun to Yorick. Ajax sits down on the ground rather abruptly so he can concentrate on hacking.
Over both AR broadcast and the normal airwaves we hear "Put down everything you're holding and come out with your hands up." Not likely.
Yorick has the tripod gun up in time to perforate the person who tries to take a shot at him. It doesn't sound like the guy is so happy about this.
("7P -1AP"
~ Aaron
"Yea, exactly. Stun damage, if it hits me in the face."
~ Ben)Two more guys pop up more directly north of us. They take shots at Yorick, and one of them hits him in the upper arm. He's bleeding but keeps his hold on the tripod gun.
(Ajax has hacked one of the guys and shut down his cybereyes.)
I sprint up to the edge of the depression from the crash and take cover far enough from Yorick that we won't both get hit if they start launching grenades. I get my guns out and ready to go.
The doctor smacks one of the guys pretty solidly with a stunbolt.
Yorick draws a pistol and shoots one of the closer guys. Then Yorick takes cover behind the ridge.
The doctor's spirit manifests next to the first guy who shot at us.
The guy in the middle is shooting at the doctor. She's hit twice and she collapses. Her spirit vanishes.
I shoot the guy who shot her and he falls.
The other guy has ducked down behind cover. I wait for him to pop back up.
Yorick opens up with the big gun at something on the ridge. The guy Yorick was targeting pops up and launches a lighting bolt at him. It smacks him but he stays up. Sometimes it disturbs me just how durable Yorick is in the face of bullets, rockets, and magic. It seems unnatural some how.
There is no way I'm going to be able to shoot the guys off on that ridge. I sprint off back around the broken cargo container so that I can get a closer angle on them.
I can hear Yoricks gun screaming behind me as I round the middle of the cargo container.
By the time I make it around the container the bad guys have pulled away.
Ajax is trying desperately to give the doctor some medical attention before she loses too much blood. He manages to stabilize her, but only because he's got a medkit to tell him what to do.
Once we've established that we aren't being shot at anymore I come back and finish packing the crate. Yorick and I drag the crate back to the flatbed while Ajax helps the doctor to get back into the cab.
End of Session