Moravia Orbital Colony, Ulysses | 237d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System
Megacity Time: 8:11Maintenance Worker's Lounge
Quiet (+1 Intellect, -1 Stealth)
...
Headquarters, Floor 3
Professional Atmosphere (+1 Intellect)
"Probably, if I compensate for refraction. So, on the count of three..."
Atlos zaps the torus. If the window is clear, he does it through that. If it's tinted, he rolls in closer.
Initiative[1] Atlos
[1] Donut Creature
[5] Akatin
(6/2-1) Akatin enters the coffee store in total silence. You're not quite sure how he managed to unlatch the door without causing the locks to click and turn.
The strange, toroidal creature notices him as he creeps along the tables, however. The creature does not notice your laser assembly arming itself from behind the window, and instead forms itself into a round ball. You see a smart phone still lodged inside the creature's mass, its surface still reflecting pinpoints of light from the shop's fixtures. It doesn't seem to be corroded in any way.
The creature starts rolling toward Akatin, plunging off the table and into view. Luckily...
[5] vs (5) Your laser zaps the creature through the window, leaving a slight dark spot on the window, but it's nothing that can't be rectified by moving slightly to the left or the right. The creature distorts when hit into a flat shape, revealing a crisp brown pockmark as a result of the laser damage. A sign of weakness! It crawls out of your angle of fire before your laser can recharge, but as it did so you noticed its burnt flesh flowing outward, as if it tried to spread its injury over its total surface.
Akatin hurls himself over the counter, and emerges shortly with a large cooking pot and its lid. He hops back over and scuttles menacingly toward the suspicious animal, lunging at it with great speed [5] vs (1) and pinning it against the ground with the cookware! he lid of the pot, surprisingly thin, is easily slid under the container and locked in "high-pressure" mode, ensuring that the creature will not escape.
"This is Akatin, I've caught what appears to be an instance of the bioagent. It's the only one we've seen for now..."Just as he says this, you hear the sound of metal snapping under high strain. Looking back, you see that the doors to the garden (presumably locked before either automatically or by the paramedics) have been thrust open by a blob with a roughly one-meter radius. Its outer layer is sparsely populated with shoes, electronics, and clothes.
Maintenance Shafts
Hidden (+1 Stealth)
So the guard is working with the suspect. They both must be stopped.
Burst out of the hatch and jump onto the suspect again. If the 'guard' pulls out a laser, fire at it.
[4+1] As you emerge, you get a free attack on your target. Playing a pre-recorded voice clip, you pre-emptively fire at the security guard's holster, burning a hole through the synthetic leather and scragging the metal casing on whatever weapon it was. It appears you hit a charged capacitor or perhaps the energy cell, because it explodes in short order, tearing off the holster and weapon in addition to the section of uniform it occupied. The guard falls over, perhaps to take cover or because of the shock. Humans can be unpredictable.
The original suspect starts running toward the door. [6/5] You charge at him, but he leaps out of the way and you careen forward into the exit, stopping yourself from impacting the surface with your carapace by holding out a leg. Your leg impales the door and gets stuck.
...
Moravia Lab
High Security (-1 Stealth)
Nerin attempts to locate a device that's physically connected to a router that isn't locked down. Should he find one, he will go through a series of connection interface backdoors that have been the bane of cyber security since the time humanity was restricted to earth.
((Irl, most physical connections between computers have special software and hardware governing the interface, these also run on seperate OS's, meaning antiviruses can't do much about them, it's extremely easy to subvert the connection software. Computers almost never monitor connections either. And antivirus programs only target their native OS's, not specialized OS's designed to be difficult to access that are built into the plugs and external drives. USB is extremely vulnerable to this kind of virus. There's a reason people aren't supposed to bring their own USB's to work. No way to tell if infected, any device, including a phone can catch the virus and transfer it the moment it interfaces with anything physically. Firewalls don't block what is intended to be a door and it's near impossible to remove the potential backdoor without a complete reprogramming of the computer OS and making all USB and similar external drives obsolete, which would obviously be difficult and is only getting harder. I can post articles about this kind of virus if you want.))
[6/4-1] You would have had a much easier time finding a connection had the guards not either disconnected (to move around) most of the furniture and merchandise in the store. You do, however, find a distinct lack of wi-fi signals emanating from the office section that happens to be located in a separate hall connected to the store, past the security checkpoint. It is where the manager resides, and, being isolated from the rest of the store, was not evacuated immediately. The lack of signals can only mean that the computers inside are connected directly. That, or nobody is inside.
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Topic: 3008 AD: The Guild Chronicles Mission Thread - GAME OVER! See first post. (Read 49750 times)