A little down time after the Poland mission. I spent some time trying to establish a safe house. I needed to be able to put people up in Hamburg after they are extracted but don't have a final destination - yet. After three weeks I found a place and purchased some air mattresses and food, etc. It's a studio apartment in a big building in a not terrible neighborhood. It's not done, but it's livable.
Blitz told me he was trying to track down those who could teach him Ritual magic, which he wanted to use to find his missing mother. I know a little about the story; he lost track of her when he was at the military academy attached to her work in the Ukraine.
Spark was busy building a shop for her cybernetics - a lab in her crappy dwelling.
I got a call from Oskar. He had a job: infiltration, recovery of tech, extraction. In Germany, fairly close by.
Code in hand I was off to make contact. The guy wanted to meet at the Blonde Scorpion, a bar we've met contacts at before. He said he'd be in the reflective vest. "See you tonight." Once we were there, it was easy to find him at the end of the bar. Fashion is strange.
I made introductions and he found us a table, though it was in the middle of the room. I did not approve, but he was paying for the job. Luckily it was too loud for eavesdropping. "You can call me Mr. H. I'd like to know the others I'm working with."
The target would be Alder Tech, a German development company that is under Saeder-Krupp. The item we were stealing was a bit of rigger tech, a platform, a prototype that had just been completed. It integrates multiple items at once, and is funded by the Russians unbeknownst to the devs.
"We don't want this tech in the reckless hands of the Russians," Mr. H. said. He wanted us to snag it and bring it to a drop point.
In my amateur style I tried to suss out his loyalties but I'm bad at it and he's not dumb. He didn't give away anything.
The terms were arranged, including a bonus if we didn't harm any civilians or damage the facility. I tried to negotiate a little better payday and lo and behold I did squeeze better terms out of the client. He complimented our professionalism and agreed to up the price of the job.
We were given an address for the lab, which is off the beaten path in a decommissioned Army depot. We had three to four days before the Russians arrived to collect the prototype.
There is a highway nearby, with an exit 15 kilometers from the site. There's a truck stop, gas station, restaurant and motel.
Spark did some computer shenanigans and got us cover IDs for the small scrap company that goes to the lab site to get waste metal.
Blitz went to Otto's, the scrap yard, to get hats with their distinctive patches on them. I had to help buy a few of them. I was so charming! But we had to wait two days for an order to be put in so we were a little nervous that the timing would be too tight. It worked out.
After that I walked the route between the motel and the lab compound to see if there was a path we could take if we needed to hoof it in and out. There was, through the woods to the back of the facility via a northwest approach. There was a four-meter tall perimeter fence with vines growing on it, indicating that it was NOT electrified and that it was not maintained. There was gravel for about seven meters to the scrap pile, with a gate at the yard. There was also a building, two stories in concrete with a guard tower on top. Another building sat on the other side of the yard.
I scrambled to borrow a Tiffani Defiance Protector stun gun, so that I had a non-lethal option to get the bonus pay.
In the morning, I kitted up with pistol, taser, knives, climbing gear, wire cutters and medical kit. On the way to the site, I stopped about a kilometer out and stashed my crossbow in a tree in case I needed more bang on the way out.
We walked in via the route I scoped out previously. It was 5 a.m. We heard the echo of a car door closing from the front of the facility. Next came the sound of tires on gravel, which faded away. After that, it was all quiet.
I led the team quietly to the edge of the fence. We went in through a sliding gate and were into the scrap yard. We used the debris as cover to sneak to the rear of the single story building at the back of the site. There was a security camera affixed to a swivel but we ducked past it.
While I guarded our six Spark was looking for an external cyber-terminal to hack. What she found was an air conditioning unit with a camera honing in on her movements. She ducked it and stumbled onto the terminal, and got access.
There was power to both buildings, and they were connected via underground tunnel. There was also a single-wide trailer toward the front of the site. Blitz did his astral thing - the sight-beyond-sight move - to see if there were people in the buildings.
There was one person in the trailer-building. We considered sneaking over there intent on capturing the person inside and use the tech inside to find the prototype. WAIT, instead... why not walk right in as Otto's employees with a question for personnel? Maybe we can barge in and neutralize the person.
Spark entered, shoving a device in the man's face to get him to sign off on a work order. When he went to sign, I jabbed the taser in his ribs and shocked the drek out of him. He went down in a blubbering heap. Spark had already found a computer linked to the facility's network. The idiot at the desk was auto-logged on. Spark went to work cutting security then on to a complex layout.
We headed for what the computer calls The Garage, the two-story building with the tower on top. There was a big garage door on one side and a set of conventional double doors on the other. Taser in hand, I pushed open the double doors. There was an anteroom with more double doors beyond that. Through the glass it was dark though it was obvious there was a large area, perhaps the entire first floor.
Dimly glowing LEDs and my cyber eyes show it to be a room full of drones. Blitz's magical senses didn't detect any life inside. Spark and I started looking around while Blitz went to check out the tower upstairs.
"What does a rigger platform look like?!" I asked Spark as I rummaged through desks and drawers. She showed me the headware and associated tech from the data Mr. H. gave us. There was hardware and software. Our focus would be hardware, Spark noted. The hum of Blitz's open channel droned in my ear. There was a 3-D printer that tipped me off that I might be in the right place. Spark found a digital paper trail identifying Kurtis Blomkampf as the person the prototype is installed in, and that he was convalescing in the other building, the one we'd been hiding behind earlier.
Spark headed upstairs to get Blitz. I gripped the taser in my off hand and drew my Ares Predator, ready for whatever trouble was bound to come.
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