[adamu]

Al held off on doing anything while Robyn made her try with the guards. He'd learned not to underestimate her. If she could get some traction with these guys, he'd play along.

Fearing, however, that these guys were in a state beyond reason and charm, he kept scanning the room for any possible useful detail - he noted the hand gestures the guards used to direct the drones, marked all exits from the bay, and scanned the sec guys' kit for weapons and electronics. There were only two of them. There were no doubt more in the facility...but that didn't mean they were necessarily all compromised...what if this Cooper guy and some others were somewhere else, doing something else?

All he knew for sure was that everything here and now was balls-out wrong. No organization that cared so much about morale that it went to the tremendous effort to keep a place like this at one atmosphere treated its people like cattle this way. The potential explanations were endless without getting more info to narrow them down...maybe Robyn would talk them into some sort of access, and that would show them more of the picture...or she'd fail and things would go to shit in a shirtwrapper, and that'd sure enough show them more of the picture too.

And getting herded off to processing, that'd show them more of the picture too - but that was one info nugget he figured he could without.

He turned his attention to the guard's expression as Robyn worked her magic on him....

[adamu]

It was quickly apparent that Robyn's speech may as well have been directed at a wall. The only response she got was that the more she talked, the more forceful the sec-zombie and his drones got about herding her, along with the rest, toward "processing."

Al had been lingering close enough to be part of her story, but now faded back into the crowd. Positioning himself nearer the other guard, he waited for his moment - there, some manager's wife was asking if her designer-blue chihuahua should go to processing, too - and he lifted what looked like a dedicated-function commlink off the guy's belt and slinked smoothly toward a nearby side room that had its door ajar.

[adamu]

As usual, Al's execution was flawless. Once he was safely in the storeroom, he split his time between congratulating himself and examining his prize. Sure enough, this would let him control the cargo loaders. Piece of cake, and fun too, but what if someone noticed his tomfoolery? Or tried to intercept his commands? Or saw what was happening and locked him out - and then tracked him with the damned 'link.

He voice-texted the ladies: <<Here's the marks on sec-boy's 'link - it controls the drones. We don't wanna make a fuss till the others git down here, but jist use 'em ta create enough distraction we can git clear, work behind the scenes till we suss this cluster-fuck out.>>

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn smiles at the guard even though he pretty much ignores her.  She stays to the side and allows the other passengers to go past her while she tries to talk to the guard then tosses her arms up in defeat before following the rest of the group and makes a pretense of moving in the direction of the processing room.  She reaches out and pulls Silk closer to her as she places her marks on the device Al takes off the guard.  She is not quite certain how he has done it, but she has learned that Al can pretty much do anything.  At least almost anything except talk to her about love and happiness.  Still, this is not the time to get caught up in that sort of thinking and she focuses on getting to a room.  She also does not want to create a situation that might get Rick or ISaint in trouble or delayed in arriving.  No one has said anything about her drones so she keeps them deployed, which allows her to know that she is approaching a maintenance room on her right.  Her last act before making her move is to drop one of her two flying drones on to the lapel of Derek Coker.

Robyn sends out some feelers and unlocks the door then sends commands to the drones herding the people to push a couple of them and create a very small disturbance ahead of her, giving her the chance and the time to slip into the room, pulling Silk with her if she wants to come.  Once Inside the room, Robyn locks the door and uses her remaining drone to locate the fuse box some of the electrical circuits.  Smiling, Robyn pulls a small cable from the side of her neck and makes a direct connection into the power grid of the base.  Sitting down on the floor, she puts her back against the wall and lets her consciousness roam the system, trying to see what she can.

[adamu]

Al cracked the storeroom door to make sure the ladies got away safely.

As he watched, he also recorded the scene on his eyes - showing his coworkers what awaited them would be better than any text message he could send.

He also slaved the captured commlink's text and voice traffic as a second channel on his earbud - just in case zombie guards talked to each other. Even if they didn't, someone was giving them their marching orders...

Robyn's execution with the drones was more subtle than he'd have managed, and he congratulated himself on delegating the task to her. Once he confrmed that she and Silk were safe (for the moment) from processing, he cracked the back of the captured 'link and disabled the tracking function.

Then as he looked around the room for anything useful, he put the images of what had happened in the bay in a message for Rick and Isaint from his own Fairlight and set a timer for it to start sending on repeat starting fifty-five minutes from now, right about when he figured they'd be coming into range.

<<Alrighty ladies, we lie low an' we look an' we listen, figure out all we can while we wait fer the others. Any trouble give a shout - I'm a hop, skip, an' a jump away.>>

[adamu]

As always the voodoo gods were with Al (and why wouldn't they be?), as a quick scan of the room confirmed that Vernie had done his job - there was their crate.

He broke the seals and grabbed his shotgun and the various tools he'd stowed, then edited the message he'd be sending the incoming team with a marker for the crate's location.

He voice texted the ladies - <<Got our toys here, bring yours at such time as I break cover.>> - then continued to monitor comm traffic. Not only the channel the guard had been on, but also setting the device to scan through all the unit's pre-set frequencies in case they'd gone to a different channel on discovering the guard was missing his 'link. He was pretty sure they'd gone unnoticed, but if he was wrong they could be staging a breach, and he'd want to know if that was happening.

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn settles in on the floor of the room with her back to the wall under the junction box and smiles to herself.  She has recently undergone a couple of painful and expensive surgeries to upgrade some of her hardware and add something new and she is glad of the chance to put the new gear through its paces.  She sinks into her Transys Graygul and enters the matrix of the site.  If the drones and guards are still being controlled wirelessly, it stands to reason that she can access that capability here.

She slips into HOT SIM VR and begins her assault on the Host.  The first step is to gain a mark on the device she is connected to, which will give her a mark on the host as well as anything slaved to the host.  The attempt succeeds but she wants a bit of extra insurance and takes the time to get a second mark.  Once she has both marks, she enters the Host and sends a note to the team that she is in.  She uses Wrapper to make sure that her icon on the Host is consistent with the others she sees there and continues to run silently as she begins to explore the environment.  It looks like many of the icons are relaxing on the beach with laptop devices allowing them access to the Host's files so she puts on a very nice bikini to match the other women she sees and creates a small laptop device.  She walks to an empty beach chair and takes a seat before plugging her device into the system and looking around.  She makes sure that her baby monitor software is running so she can clear out before convergence happens.

[Aria]

[Tuesday September 15th, 2076; CTec Aquaology, Tonga Trench]

The moments go by in tense anticipation of Isaint and Deckard’s arrival and the hope that someone doesn’t do a head count.  Robyn’s drone feeds suggest that ‘Processing’ mostly involves locking the personnel up in the side room and waiting around outside.  There are some muted demands to know what is going on, and then a little later for some water but the guards remain impassive, and the drones even more so…

In the host everything seems to similarly be moving slowly.  Robyn can’t see any other metahuman avatars and is glad of the wrapper program enabling her to blend in to the scenery.  Probe IC, in the form of whispy zephyrs, move past periodically but until she starts anything less legal they don’t appear to be hunting for her…

On the comms there is some chatter between the security forces, a brief instruction to wait for the next lift before bringing everyone down.  The impression is that there aren’t many voices so whatever is going on hasn’t involved all of the twenty strong sec forces, or they are really really untalkative…

***
#20

[adamu]

As Al sat in his hidey-hole sharing information with Silk and Robyn - relaying his overheard comm chatter to them, and getting infobits from Robyn in return - he was pretty sure he was being watched. He'd slipped the meat guards easily enough, but the panopticon he'd found on his return to the "world" was a grating reality he seldom overlooked. He had little doubt there were micro cams here in the room with him, but he was too lazy to look for them. Let 'em look.

The fact that he was almost certainly being observed yet no one was coming to kill him combined with the small number of guards, the limited comm chatter, and the fact that the new arrivals were merely being shunted aside to paint a picture that lent weight to his theory that there was more than one faction at work in this place. If that was true, they could probably use it. Well, they could if they had a lot more data, anyway.

He cogitated the situation and reached out to Silk and Robyn on his transceiver. <<Listen, seein' as how all they doin' with this processin' is stickin' folk inna holdin' room, reckon we let 'em do the same with the next batch. All them corp sheep'll be collateral damage at best, an' pains inna ass at worst. Guards doin' us a damned favor gittin' 'em out the way for us. Once they's all locked away, then Robyn disables the drones an' we take out the two lousy guards quiet as we can. Take things from there with one foot inna door, so ta speak.>>

He edited his video message to Isaint and Rick, adding the instruction to find a way to slip into one of two marked rooms during the processing, with the aim of taking the guards out once the corpers were out of the way. Then he settled in to watch, wait, and listen.

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn feels pretty sure that as long as she does nothing illegal her overwatch score will not increase too much more than it is.  She looks around and sees the drone icons and notes that they are slaved to the host.  >>I already have some control over the drones and can either try to disable them or use then as tools and weapons when the time comes to do something.  I think that I can isolate the icons of the guards' weapons and communications devices so could certainly toss some data spike around.<<

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn's bikini clad avatar notices that she is the only person on the beach at this time who is relaxing, although a couple of whispy forms that she believes to be patrol IC have come by and moved on.  They seemed to ignore her presence other than to nod at her, but she feels like she is standing out by being here, and standing out in front of patrol IC is never a good thing, so she heads off to one of the beach cabanas and changes her clothing to be more professional looking.  Emerging from the small structure, she walks towards the nearest of the taller buildings, in appearance nothing more than another wage slave carrying a tablet in her hand.  Entering the building, she takes a look at the board listing what offices are on which floor.

She is wary of IC, but has done nothing illegal since jumping into the host and feels pretty good right now about her overwatch score.

[Jack_Spade]

It took ages until finally the next BS surfaced - again without anyone exiting. The storm had gotten worse and the crew had decided to securely tow the boat to the artificial Island and weather the storm within the aquacology, even though they couldn't contact the below. Not even on the hardwired lines anyone picked up - Isaint had overheard a frustrated crew member complaining to his peer that only a friendly computer voice answered, talking about "technical difficulties with the communication equipment."

Still, they had to get of this platform, so Isaint pulled Rick aside and led him away from the masses, steering him and himself to the small bathroom section so they could return under the shield of a Physical Mask spell and his Spirits Concealment Power to enter the BS unseen while no prying camera eyes from below were able to notice them. As a bunch of unremarkable maintenance drones they joined the assembly.

The ride down was an exercise in self control and avoiding being stepped on. The sphere was large but also quite packed. Luckily the noise level was high and the light was dim, so they didn't have to be too careful.

As promised, they found a drone with messages from Al and Robyn. Reviewing them confirmed his suspicions - something fishy was going on down there and it was high time that someone with astral sight took a closer look at those guards. From nanobots, spirit possession, enchantement up to shapechangers the sixth world had no shortage of possible ways to explain this sort of behavior.

Finally, they arrived. The sphere was secured and people began to flood out of it with Isaint and Rick waiting to go out last and making a beeline for the hiding place of the crate.
Over microtransceiver he explained: <<Alright folks - first order of the day: Finding out what the frag is happening here. Rick get some spirit support online and see what the astral is like here. I'll take a closer look on those guards to see if they are themselves or someone else.>>

[spoiler]
Assensing:
Assensing: 9d6t5 5[9d6t5=6, 2, 1, 6, 5, 5, 2, 1, 5]
Woohoo, that should show even nanite infestations 

[/spoiler]

[adamu]

When the door to his storeroom opened, Al nodded in the direction of what he assumed were his invisible coworkers. He was reclined in a corner against the wall, his the butt of his upright shotgun resting on his knee, an unlit Lucky Strike dangling from between his lips, and his big stainless steel Zippo twitching restlessly in his scarred hand.

As they retrieved their gear, he got to his feet. He figured everything they didn't take belonged to the girls, so he gathered all that up to take to them once they broke cover to link up.

[Aria]

[Tuesday September 15th, 2076; CTec Aquaology, Tonga Trench]
 
To Isaint’s astral view the atmosphere here is generally a bit nicer than your average wageslave sinkhole without the miasma of low grade despair that often accompanies the poor souls that have sold theirs to the corporations.  The anxiety of the corpers being herded in to Processing is evident but of more interest is the sec guards.  Although difficult to get a clear view of them through the crowds, once those thin it is possible to glimpse their worryingly impassive auras.  The level of health and polluting cyber is about what you’d expect from a sec officer and there is no obvious signs of magical cohersion.  Peering closer it is possible to get a feel at least for the nanite load that is far far higher than you might expect and the fears of CFD suddenly become all too real!
 
Over the captured comm line Al hears what he has been waiting for, instruction to lock down the entrance bay and for the two officers to return to the job in hand, whatever the hell that may be and frustratingly with no further discussion…
 
***
#21
 
 

[Jack_Spade]

<<Bad news my friends, it seems like those guards aren't magically possessed, but rather by nanites. I can't be sure of course, but avoid getting any bodily fluids from anyone on you. Keep those breathing apparatuses handy. We probably should get a move on since they are about to close the gates to this area and I don't feel confident cutting my way through. Rick, can you manage another three invisibility spells?>>

Isaint reported back, while getting into position to move through the barrier before it closed.