Monday, January 6, 2014

The Journal of Silvr (Entry 2)

That was a strange mission. It started off well enough, I suppose, but then the gang showed up and almost ruined it... The rat bastards. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

We met up at one of the usual meeting places, I won't say which, or when, just in case this datapad ever falls into the wrong hands. But we did, and our fearless leader came in and offered us a particularly lucrative... job opportunity.

The Lower Levels have been being shorted medical supplies and rations for a couple months now. At first it wasn't such a big deal, this sort of thing has been happening off and on for as long as any of the Residents can remember, but recently it has been happening both more often and for longer stretches.

So, our job was to intercept a cargo tram loaded down with supplies from the Factory Level headed up to the Upper Levels. Simple, easy, no bloodshed if it wasn't necessary. Just the way I like it. Also, the promised reward was pretty good, too.

My team and I needed some muscle for this particular job, and not just to move the crates... Luckily, just such an individual, a dark green Ork who calls himself Zeke, happened to fall into our laps. He was a brawler in one of the local fight clubs, and after betting a fair amount of cash on his win, I took it upon myself to invite him to join us on our little outing, and under the condition that he gets an equal cut in the reward, he accepted.

After we arranged for the use of a handcart and some various supplies, including fake ID's to get the rest of the team up to the Factory Level, everyone parted ways to prepare for the job. I went up to both scout out the area and rig the cameras around the lifts to loop out while we passed by, so our antics weren't being recorded by the authorities. As far as they know, we were never there.

After picking the best spot to intercept the tram, I went to a terminal close to the Worker Lift to setup my camera hack. Basically, I took a 45 second snapshot loop of the video feed that didn't look suspicious, saved it to the backup drive on the terminal, and wrote a tiny subroutine that whenever a certain button was pressed, it would play the snapshot loop overriding anything recording through the cameras. I did this for two reasons, the first, because it was basically undetectable, the second, I didn't have any external hardware to install a remote switch for the function.

Unfortunately, that meant that I needed to have someone there to actually push the button while we passed. Luckily, two members of my team volunteered. One, a Blackscale Lizardfolk named Vashuk Ashaka, has been an infiltrator for The Underground almost as long as it has been an organization. He would be manning the terminal and walkie-talkie. The other is a human sniper named Vayne. I don't actually know him well. I've only ever had cursory dealings with him prior to this mission.

The other two members of my team, Zeke the Ork and a human named John Reese, were to accompany me on the handcart, dressed as workers moving some cargo around. John Reese is a strange man... he claims he was a spy who worked for the Uppers at one point in his life, but I don't know. Apparently he got too much dirt on them, they tried to have him killed, and now he just wants revenge. While that's good enough for the fearless leader, I... I don't know... There's something about him that just seems... slithy. But he's decent with a handgun and better with words, so we keep him around, though he acts like an Upper most of the time.

The five of us and a crate made our way up the Citizen's Lift on the handcart about 30 minutes prior to the tram leaving the loading station. In retrospect, we probably should have just come up the Worker's Lift. We got stopped because the crate was considered suspicious by the guards at the Citizen's Lift. Luckily for us, the guards suck at their job, because they managed to miss Vayne's personal Dragunov that we were smuggling up with us when they searched the crate.

Anyway, the plan was to get to drop Vayne and Vashuk off at the terminal, get to the interception spot, intentionally derail the handcart and wait for the tram to show up so we could lure the driver out of the tram and knock him out. Meanwhile Vayne was to hold an elevated position close to Vashuk and with a good vantage point of the interception, just in case anything went sour. Luckily, aside from the tram running almost a half hour late, everything went smooth as silk. Just as expected, the driver hopped out to help us, I tazer'd him with a stungun, and Zeke knocked him out cold.

After taking his driver badge and stuffing him into a crate that we hid around the corner, I drove off with the tram. There was actually an officer that had been notified about our "accident" with the derailed handcart, but after seeing we'd gotten everything back in order, he let us go on about our business.

I drove through the Worker's Lift gates, while Zeke and Reese followed behind in the handcart. I radioed Vashuk who activated the video feed loop again, and everyone split up to rendezvous back at the depot. Vashuk and Vayne went back down the Citizen's Lift, Zeke, Reese and I took the Worker's Lift back down.

While we were on the lift back down, Reese jumped into the back of the tram to inspect the cargo, just in case we lifted something were weren't aware of, but everything checked out. We decided to swing wide past the Manufactory Sector of the slums to try to attract the least amount of attention to our tram. Despite our best efforts, a gang of four kobolds lead by a human ambushed us in the narrows between the Manufactory and the Market District.

I noticed movement up ahead on the tracks but couldn't really tell what it was, so I pull into a full stop and sent Zeke up to investigate while I alerted Vayne and Vashuk over the walkie-talkies about some possible trouble and requested they get there ASAP. The kobolds got the drop on Zeke, got a couple good stabs in before anyone could react, and the human leader started shooting at the tram with an assault rifle. I floored it from a full stop, which didn't do all that much... stupid trams don't accelerate well, and it was even more terrifying considering I was being sprayed with bullets the whole time.

We passed the ambush point going just over 10 miles per hour, and a kobold jumped into the driver's area to try to pull me out. I was stabbed in the process, but then I pulled out the stungun and shocked the little jackass. He just shrugged it off and stabbed me again. Zeke jumped into the back of the tram after breaking loose of the kobolds, while Reese managed to miss his shot against one of the kobolds he could see out of the back as two more jumped onto the side of the tram's canvas cover. Zeke then punched straight through the canvas cover like it was paper, but missed the kobold, who had moved to the side by the time he got there.

After struggling some more against the kobold, and dodging the bullet spray, I hit him a second time with my stungun and he seized up and fell out the side. All this happened just in time for me to straighten up and realize I was going around a wide curve in the tracks much too quickly. I slowed us down, but it wasn't quite enough, and the tram tilted precariously. In a moment of quick thinking and quicker reflexes, I threw my weight toward the side that was tilting up and we landed back on the tracks safely.

After that, Vayne and Vashuk were headed our way down the tracks, and good to his reputation, Vayne managed a kneeling hip-shot that took off the head of one of the kobolds that was riding along. After that, we zoomed past and they jumped onto the canvas side of the tram, much like the kobolds had done earlier. Speaking of, Zeke, who was enraged that he missed with his first punch, found the kobold, reached under the canvas top, grabbed him by both feet and dragged him into the tram like a doll. He then punched the little prick's lights out, knocking him unconscious in one mighty punch.

Our bullet ridden tram pulled through the Market District and into the depot past a crowd of gawking onlookers, but none were stupid enough to dare ask what happened. We got paid, we turned the kobold over to our fearless leader for some "quality time" and we went on about the rest of our business. Reese was very insistent that he wanted to join the kobold's "quality time", but the boss said no. I wonder what happened to the rest of the gang, because they didn't follow us. With our luck, they'll be back to be a thorn in our side.

Well, I think I'll take another hack at the encrypted files I took from the Doctor tonight, hopefully find out some more about the Gauntlet and it's functions

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