Blask looks at slingshot, You got a place for me to test this bad boy out?, as he heaved his Dragon Glaive over his beefy shoulder.
I want to stay prepared for whatever puke we take down next!
"We're fresh out of proper glasses, but..." Glitch starts, and on turning around he holds his mug "someone a Wodka Martini, shaken not stirred?"
Longshot accepts one of the martinis. "Yeah, this is a lot better than the paste it used to put out," she says suspiciously, her googles whirring as they zoom in to examine the glass. "Yeah, you can head to the left corridor there, I think there's a junk chamber that you can swing that around."
"I agree with Nilan that Slivvy is the most direct threat to our continued survival at the moment. We need to deal with her."
"There is more than slime, that you can get from UBPs" Glitch comments on Longshot's assessment.
On Caloo's joining in on the plan to kill Slivy he inquires "Do we have the nukes to finish that, if we start it?"
Longshot seems to take Glitch's request seriously. "Nooo, I haven't found any nuclear material down here... though I suppose, if we got really desperate and needed it, we could try... well no, that could be disastrous if it went wrong..."
Zhor pops his head in from a nearby room. "If it's all the same to everyone else - maybe let's not build nuclear weapons where we're sleeping?"
Longshot sighs. "Yeah, he makes a good point. And I don't think the walls are thick enough for us to make a nuclear lab without building radiation shielding too."
"Or, you know, blast shielding?" Scrambles calls from the culinary synthesizer, where he is brewing himself, apparently, three cups of coffee simultaneously.
"Oh no, we're WAY too close for blast shielding to do anything if we made the bomb right," says Longshot, laughing at the suggestion in a mildly disconcerting way.
"Pansies. If you want to make a point, you have to be serious about it. No risk no fun! If I modify our food processor of doom a little more, we'll be set." Glitch jokes, with a straight face.
Nilan will try and get a secure message to 5-AM and the AAF. He requests a meeting, somewhere in the city.
If we can get the AAF to do the heavy lifting forus... he says with a shrug.
"Just because a nuclear arsenal is out of the question doesn't mean that a big bomb isn't an option all the same."
Longshot and Scrambles both go dead silent at Glitch's joke, staring at the ysoki. "He's kidding, you idiots," sayz Zhor from his corner. The two visibly relax.
-------------------------------------
5-AM accepts the meeting request and suggests a place on the fringes of the city, less a restaurant and more a food market where different entrepreneurs can try their luck. "It'll be quiet away from the established stalls, where the start-up tents are."
"What kind of food is that? Biologically grown? Would be nice to get my hand on that. For calibration purposes."
Longshot tilts her head at Glitch's question. "I mean, that's gonna vary from vendor to vendor, I'd think? I'd think that they're reliant on the cheap lab foods from the Aspis, just cuz most of the little rooftop gardens don't make enough food for a commercial endeavor, but maybe if there's enough of them that pool resources and shares together, then..." She begins making some sort of inscrutable business analyses on her screen. There are lots of spreadsheets and graphs.
----------------------------------------------------
When you make it to the food market to meet with the AAF, things are crowded and lively - species running the full gamut of Pact Worlders and beyond. You eventually find 5-AM loitering outside of a stand where a mangy-looking pahtra is hawking some meat substitute called "I Can't Believe It's Not Ysoki" - though, again, given the state of his little food tent and the way he keeps glancing at Glitch and Jink, you wouldn't be shocked to learn that it Actually Is Ysoki.
After hearing your plan, 5-AM agrees that now would be an excellent time to take down Slivvy.
With 5-AM on board, you all retreat back to Longshot's lair to discuss the actual assault.
From the surveillance footage Longshot provides, Fevercore looks to be a pretty secure operation - it looks like the mine and the administration are combined into a single facility, and descending into the facility is done through a single secured entrance. Jink and Blask are able to confirm a little more, but not much - when they were hauling 'cargo,' they would enter through the entrance and take the magcrates into a sort of entrance chamber, dropping off the magcrate with Slivvy's creepy android workers, taking their credsticks, and going - they don't know what else is further in the facility. There had been a keypad with an entrance code on the door, but Slivvy's likely changed it by now.
I wonder if we can get that code. Getting in would be easier if we could do such a thing.
"I am all for dropping ships on this place from high orbit... In lieu of large explosives."
The squad of you synchronize timepieces with the AAF and split up, preparing to attack the facility.
You arrive at the Fevercore property line without any trouble, emerging from another of the 'substations' that Longshot directs you to within a block of the place. The neighborhood is quiet - looks like it's a few hours before dawn.
The "assault" hits a snafu early - you arrive at the door at the same time as 5-AM and his trio of AAF agents. He shrugs sheepishly at you. "All clear on the southern side?" he quips. "No resistance to be found - cut our way through the fence and here we are. So... all together then?"
There isn’t much to the facility site from the vantage of the small gate built around it. A concrete walkway leads west behind a twenty-foot-high chain-link enclosure. The gate to the enclosure is padlocked to dissuade normal transient foot traffic. East of the landing pad is a heavily fortified bunker entrance constructed of concrete and steel. The bunker is octagonal and thirty feet wide on all sides, with a heavy steel door on the south side.
"I guess we try the door? As noone brought something to go through concrete." Glitch states and gets his door opening tools out. "You lead the way?" he asks those standing taller than him.
"When you're ready, Glitch," Caloo holds up an injector needle, "I'll give you a boost."
"Let me try without first, ok?" Glitch replies, watching that pointy thing Caloo has in hand.
Approaching the door, it clearly has a keypad that presumably controls entrance.
"I know this one. The joy of mass production." Glitch tells. He takes a drill out and puts a hole in the pad between the 9 and the 6. Through that he sends a mikrobot, that pulls a glass fibre thread behind it. Steering it to pin 12 of the microprocessor, the bot overrides the original signals with what Glitch sends from his computer.
As the drill enters the pad, Glitch suddenly has a shocking revelation about the joy of after-market additions - there's a sudden *POP* and an arc of electricity shoots out of the pad, through Glitch, and arcing to the rest of the party.
It looks like Slivvy is also familiar with some of the flaws of this particular model... and took it upon herself to upgrade the system.
"That is not part of the original model." a slightly smoking Glitch tells.
Then he checks it that is a one way thing, or if that electrifying experience can be repeated.
"Yowch!"
Son of a b*&+$ that hurt! Look I like Jink, but I don’t like ALL Ysoki. Fry me like that again and I may test my new blade against you!
Nilan and Jink, both with their supernatural reflexes, dive out of the way and manage to take no damage from the jolting electricity.
5-AM and the other androids aren't as lucky - one of them takes a sizable zap and staggers back, but isn't dead yet.
Glitch takes a peek inside and sees that the recharge rate on the electricity is about a minute - so Glitch hurriedly disables that.
With that, the door opens, revealing dark steps into the ground.
"Ooo, that really did a number on you," Caloo says to the AAF agent who got the worst of it. "Here, this will help."
Caloo extends his hand-thing (the one that doesn't have a scary stinger in it), and a few spindly little mechanical arms extend out of it and begin applying biomass to the android's wound.
"I didn't ask you to stand directly behind me. At safe distance with your gun pointed at the door if anyone came out would work too."
"But I'm also grateful for volunteers who think they can do better than me!" Glitch snarls at Blask.
The crew cautiously descends down the stairs into the darkness of the facility - though thankfully everyone's natural abilities or enhancements allow them to see in the dark. Rounding the corner to where Glitch and Blask typically would hand off supplies to the workers, there's one drastic thing different - one, the automated lights do not turn on as you descend. And two, the flashing red light in the area seems to indicate that some sort of alarm may have been triggered during the 'mishap' at the door.
Hmm, this probably cant be good. The light ain’t on
Nilan draws his pistol and holds it at the ready
I'm pretty sure this is bad...
Nilan and Caloo both manage to notice something other than a feeling of overwhelming dread - movement on a catwalk above the dark room.
Nilan
Things 1, 4
Jink
Thing 2
Caloo, Blask
Thing 3
Glitch
Nilan looks around for cover and hides....
As long as you have access to your custom scanner, as a move action you can target a creature within 30 feet that is within your line of sight and attempt a special skill check to identify it: if the creature is living, this is a Life Science check, and if the creature is unliving, it is a Physical Science check. The DC of this check is tied to the creature’s rarity, as presented on the Creature Rarity table on page 133 of the Core Rulebook.
Caloo points his custom scanner at the movement with one hand and with his other hand shines his comm unit's flashlight on the spot.
Nilan drops back into the hallway.
From the catwalk, two of the shapes drop to the ground - Caloo doesn't need much science at all to identify them as androids. They advance towards the party, various machine tools in hand trapping Blask and those behind him in the hallway.
Meanwhile, the two that have not dropped down advance along the catwalks, drawing some sort of pistol as they move.
Nilan
Things 1, 4
Jink
Thing 2
Caloo, Blask
Thing 3
Glitch
Nothing personal guys, but Slivvy has pissed me off too many times
For Glitch's taste there is much too little stealth and sneakiness involved in these missions and too much shooting. With that kind of approach the group should buy a tank and be blunt about it.
But it is as it is and he opens fire together with kitty.
Caloo opens fire with his laser pistol!
Jink steps back and fires his rifle at an android.
Nilan tries to spray sparks, aiming for a glancing shot off the wall to harm #1 - followed by a bullet while the foe is distracted. The shot strikes home.
Androids 1 hits Blask like a dervish, ducking and swinging in entirely unpredictable ways - their arms and legs become a blur. Android 4, meanwhile, sprays shots of freezing cold at the vesk.
The vesk, used to battle, allows the more accurate attacks to be absorbed by his armor while he dodges the more flail-y attempts.
Jink's shot goes wide, skittering away into the darkness.
Android 2 tries to maintain the focused fire on Blask, dodging and weaving like the others as he fires.
Blask takes a freezing cold blast of energy to the face, feeling his jaw go numb and the crackle of ice upon his eyes.
Blask has undoubtedly suffered worse, though, and powers through, suffering no additional ill effects.
Caloo fires at 1, who drops like a puppet with the strings cut.
Blask can't get a bead on the standing android, whose whirling attacks are disorienting, for the first hit - but by dodging the first swing, it puts the android directly in the way of the vesk's second attack. The android's head snaps back from the powerful clawed uppercut.
The android doesn't seem to flinch from Blask's powerful blow, engaging in the same deadly whirl as his dying comrade.
Again, though, the blow connects with Blask's armor without hurting the vesk. And then Glitch lands a solid scorchmark across the android.
Nilan
Android 4
Jink
Android 2
Caloo, Blask [-8 sp]
Android 3 [-22 sp]
Glitch
Jink draws his arc pistol and fires at the android in front of blask.
The blast surges through the android causing a few short circuits throughout it's sensory equipment.
Glitch keeps torturing the batteries of his gun. He hopes they will last longer than thos androids.
Blask doesn’t even flinch as it will take a lot more to make him rethink things. He takes another few claws at the Android standing before him.
"Why are they so quiet, what's wrong with them? They're acting like assassins with their normal-person clothes but deadly combat skills..."
Caloo turns to look for their ally, 5-AM. "You seen this before, Early Bird?"
He takes another shot with the pistol at the remaining killer androids.
Nilan moves forward, shooting from behind Blask and dropping the android in front of him with a carefully-placed shot.
Android 4 drops off of the catwalk with a leap and moves behind cover in one of the alcoves, taking a careful shot at Blask.
Jink, robbed of his target by Nilan, nevertheless draws a careful bead on the remaining catwalk gunman and lands a precise shot on the android.
Android two jumps off the catwalk as well and begins backing towards the door, firing as he goes.
Another shot to the face - at this point, you can see icicles forming on Blask. He does not seem to be slowed at all by this development, though.
Caloo shoots for the running android, Blask charges the one taking cover, and Kitty and Glitch stride forward spraying covering fire - Android 4 goes down to Glitch, and Kitty scores a hit in the back of discombobulated #2.
5-AM and the other AAF members follow suit, faces stoic despite the carnage. "I've never seen anything like this before," 5-AM says with a steely, resolved voice. "I won't say everyone is always jumping for joy to see us, and I've had some struggles from andorids that were really in it deep - but nothing like that. These guys were acting like pros." He nudges one of the dead androids with his foot. "I'm sorry we were too late," he mutters quietly to the corpse.
Yeah... let's make sure no more of your mates get caught up with Slivvy.
Nilan reloads his pistol and motions the others to continue forward...
"Just to clarify that there was no misunderstanding - were not going to shoot our way through that on a one after one basis, are we? We got something big at hand, once we know where to aim it at, right?" Glitch inquires.
"Just to clarify that there was no misunderstanding - were not going to shoot our way through that on a one after one basis, are we? We got something big at hand, once we know where to aim it at, right?" Glitch inquires.
Early Bird gives Glitch a long and measured stare. "This is a rescue mission, right? Traditionally you try to have survivors for one of those. But..." He gives a meaningful pat to a bulge on on inside pocket of his suit. "If it doesn't look like anyone's making it out, I have a way to send a real clear message, if that's what you're talking about. Be prepared and all that."
The door ahead is unlocked, and opens into a small intersection - there appears to be some sort of dormitories ahead, without a door, and a bathroom to the righthand side. The hallway proceeds to the left, and seems to descend at a pretty steep angle.
"Good to know." Glitch replies.
He then turns away and towards Jink with a raised brow and question marks in his eyes.