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- Okay so when we left Pudding he was with the gang meeting an arms dealer. After that meeting ends,
- Pudding splits from the team to make hiis way home, talkign great care to remain hidden from the PCC
- forces still out searching for him. As he walks, a van pulls up alongside him and the side door
- slides open; one of his contacts, a Darcy O'Hara, yells at him to get in immediately. Judging the
- ride to be safer than strolling the streets, he hops in.
- Darcy was the person offering a previous job through her contacts in the anarchist group 'The Cutting
- Bullets'. As she explains, they have formed a team of members from several groups labelled as
- terrorists by the PCC, but still lack a decker. She reminds Pudding he does still owe her, and thusly
- he accepts the job.
- Darcy introduces the rest of the team sitting around her; there is Sembue (One-eye), a member of the
- Ute tribe, recently annexed by the PCC; a man named Needle, who is also a member of the Cutting
- Bullets; and a strange reptilian man with quills or feathers extending from the back of his head and
- wrists, introduced as Juruparu. She does nto mention Juru's organisation, but he was the one who gave
- the information about the weapon cache.
- The job itself is straightforward: in the heart of the militarty-restricted toxic zone is the
- abandoned Pendleton military base, buried under tonnes of rubble, sediment and toxic sludge from when
- the Big Two and the subsequent tsunami hit. Waste from the destroyed nuclear plant seeped into the
- waters and dirt, creating something of a radiactive swampland. With the area lying next to the Aztlan
- border, it had been abandoned and then restricted by the PCC military to act as a buffer zone. They
- base was home to an extensive store of military-grade weapons and munitions: these are the prizes
- they seek.
- Pudding accepts the job but informs his employer he requires time to heal and resupply, which is
- fine. Sembue escorts Pudding home so he may restock on ammo. At a pinch, he uses the unknonwn
- chemical composition he calls 'Red Acid' from the barrel of waste he still has laying around in his
- apartment.
- A couple of days pass before the job can finally begin. Pudding meets the team at the San Clemente
- dock south of the sprawl, the plan is to board a barge which will sail out beyond the exclusion zone
- being guarded around the coastline, then take a motorised inflatable raft under cover of darkness to
- the shore. Once the barge has reached its destination, Pudding does a scan and hacks into one of the
- drones patrolling the area. The drones report back to base every few minutes, if they do not it would
- rouse suspicion, so Pudding sets the team's departure to avoid detection by the patrols, allowing
- them to enter the restricted zone without raising the alarm.
- The decision is the made to take the raft straight into the Pendleton harbour and attempt to make it
- as far into the flooded mainland as possible. This irks Needle, who has not taken a liking to the
- half-Japanese ork in the group, but he is shouted down by the others who do not wish to waste time
- exploring the coast for other loot.
- They make it some way inland but must abandon the raft when they reach a raised bank of sediment and
- overturned vehicles. The team choose to ignore floating crates and wreckage, again annoying Needle.
- Once they land however, a body is spotted floating in the nearby debris. Not wishing to risk it
- becoming a Shedim problem later, Pudding approaches with his shovel used as a push-stick. As soon as
- his spade touches the 'corpse', it rears up revealing itself to be a Merrow (mermaid), and lunges for
- Pudding. Drawing his machine pistol, Pudding lets off a volley and wounds the creature, which
- finishes its lunge and rakes one side of his body with its razor-sharp claws. The Merrow is quickly
- finished off with another acid round but Pudding is quite hurt. The wounds are bandaged to stem the
- bleeding and halt infection, and plasters applied to help re-seal his suit. Needle seems unimpressed.
- Again, Pudding uses his (low) Charisma to steer the team towards what appears to be a hospital
- sitting across from the battered freeway. Obviously this is to search for environmental protection
- gear for the team and not for medical supplies for himself. They opt to take the more direct route,
- crossing knee-deep water to the ambulance bay, Sembue leads the way as their guide, his one augmented
- eye scanning the terrain for trouble.
- Trouble is does find as he motions the group to halt and backup. He has spotted half a dozen humanoid
- creatures crawling around the entrance, they seem to be eating. The team sidle along the shore into
- some heavy brush to use as cover, then, they make their attack. Four of the feral ghouls are injured
- in the assault, one of which directly attacks Sembue, but is then cut down with his smartgun-linked
- tomahawk and hunting knife combo. the rest of the creatures flee. Pudding notices something moving in
- the water in his peripheral vision. Piles of dismembered bodies lay in piles dotting the area. Sembue
- questions where the bodies are coming from.
- They find a gap in the strewn debris blocking the ambulance bay entrance and widen it to slip
- through. Inside a collapsed ceiling acts as a ramp to the 1st flooor; they investigate, two abreast
- in the wide corridor, searching each room of the ward, finding a single HazMat suit. Needle
- immediately claims the suit and dons it over his armour clothing. Signs at the end of the corridor
- point to a staging area at the rear of the building (as a military hopsital this would be used to
- practice for large scale epidemics/quarantine situations). The team head for the staging area.
- Outside is dark, the staging area stretches across a large concrete lot and is littered with gurneys,
- stretchers, tents and skeletons. At some point after the tsunami hit, this area had been setup to act
- as a live medical unit. Years had passed, and the victims were now rotted to down to the bone.
- undeterred, the team stalks across to the tents. The largest is ignored in favour of a closed smaller
- one. Pudding nominates Needle to enter on point; Pudding follows in second; the others trail in
- after. The tent is moist, fetid and unreaosnably dark. Sembue voices his sense of something
- malignant. With his enhanced vision, Pudding sees a shape lunging from behind a curtained area,
- straight for Needle. Pudding grabs the man's shoulder with one hand and pulls him back, then lets out
- a shot with his weapon. The rotting flesh of the assailant fills the air with a foul odour as the
- thing falls upon Needle. Pudding drops his weapon and draws his shovel, takes aim, and golf-swings it
- full-force into the creature's head, unleashing a charge of taser-electricity.
- The corpse-creature ignores the surge of electrical damage and tears into Needle with a ferocious
- rage. The man's dying screams fade as Pudding finishes the creature off with another round of acid to
- its head. Juruparu sidles alongside Pudding, leans down and relieves the dead man of his belongings.
- Pudding does a secondary rifling and takes the man's necklance: a bullet on a chain. It bears an
- inscription 'with all my love, Darcy'. Sembue comments that now Pudding is representing the Cutting
- Bullets' interest in this venture.
- They push on, leaving Neddle's corpse for the ghouls which are starting to again amass. The terrain
- is difficult and the night draws on, so they opt to take the more direct path, and wade into the
- waters. The deepest section of the swamp has them chest-high in the unpleasant goop, but they pass
- this point unhindered. Then, just as the water reaches belly-height, Pudding again notices the
- underwater presence. It appears log-like and circles the trio sevral times, getting closer with each
- pass. The rhythmic fashion of its movement provides brief opportunity to make a shot at its exposed
- spine, which is covered in a slick hairy sheen. Pudding takes a shot and successfully hits. this
- seems to aggravate the thing and it makes a beeline for (Pudding chooses)... Juruparu.
- Juruparu cleaves down hard with his obsidian axe but misses completely. He is dragged down and away
- by the beast, eventually disappearing in a cloud of blood. Pudding and Sembue sprint as best they can
- for the shore. Heaving through respirators as they make 'dry' land, a field of soft sludge, Sembue
- asks what will they do now that their guide is lost? Pudding tries a Matrix scan but there is no
- Matrix signal here. They find the deserted Pendleton base and start searching.
- They know the target of their mission was a facility housing a cache of weapons and munitions, so
- they begin looking for an appropriate building. With Pudding's technologically-enhanced eyes and
- Sembue's tracking skills, they locate what would appear to be a likely candidate; a small bunker-like
- entrance with heavy-set doors and thick, reinforced walls.
- The only access point in this structure are the doors, which are far too thick to burn through with
- acid. Beside the doors is a panel, presumably some sort of hand or fingerprint scanner. Pudding
- smahes it open with acid and shovel, then draws the wiring out so he can jack-in directly. The Host
- is powerful but not impossibly so. Pudding manages to break into the Host and locate several server
- nodes; a set of data stores, the main functional systems, security node and something he's never seen
- before. It looks like a container of some sort.
- He focuses on the functional systems, which would control the facility's doors, lifts, lights, etc.
- It controls all but one set of doors in the lowest level. Pudding sets everything on/open and jacks-
- out. Coming to, he sees Sembue standing watch, the facility lights are on and the doors open.
- Immediately inside is a large elevator which can travel 14 floors down, but only open at the bottom
- three; B1, B2 and B3. As the lift descends, Pudding smahses the ceiling panel with his shovel and
- climbs up, then promptly falls down again as he is tasered. In a second attempt, he thrusts his
- shock-shovel upward and shorts out the taser-field on the elevator roof, the shovel losing all it's
- electrical charges in the process. He and Sembue climb up and wait.
- They arrive at B1, the lift doors open, light streams in. Nothing. They wait a few minutes before
- climbing down and entering the floor. It seems deserted. Offices lie in all directions of the T-
- junction hallway, doors open, lights on, termminals running without staff. A canteen seems untouched,
- office chairs still have jackets wrapped around them: someone left in a hurry. unperturbed, PUdding
- finds a terminal and jacks-in to the Host directly. Again, he finds the server nodes and evades the
- security systems in place, his decoy clone crawing their attention whilst he cracks a data store open
- and downloads as much of the petabytes of data as his physical storage will allow.
- Rushed for time before the security closes in on him, he rifles through the downloaded data for re-
- occuring phrases or references to the base itself. He discovers the facility is concerned with some
- sort of research which involves every imaginable piece of military data available. B1 is the
- office/lab, B2 is the security and storage area, B3 is some sort of holding cell.
- B2, great, he shoves the files under his virtual arm and turns to vacate the node. An IC blocks his
- path; a great faceless grey-black figure. It demands identification. Flummoxed, Pudding stalls for
- time. Then, he recieves a text on his virtual commlink in his virtual pocket which until this point
- did not exist. 'Hi, you seem to be in a spot of bother, would you like some help?'
- Cautiously, Pudding accepts. 'Oh, you'll need to do me a small favour in return. Just go to B3 and
- open the door for me. If you activate your decoy program again, it'll take care of security long
- enough to hack in. I promise.'
- With a sigh of inevitability, Pudding agrees and turns to the IC program blocking his path. A voice
- sounds over a virtual tannoy system, calling all guards to sector 14. The IC leaves and Pudding makes
- his escape, jacking-out. Sembue immediately enquires about the information, Pudding informs him what
- they seek is on B2, but first they must open something in B3. Agaain they board the elevator, again
- they climb into the roof and wait. B3 is but a single corridor ending in another set of reinforced
- doors. Drone rails line the ceiling, suggesting an armed respones. Pudding has Sembue take watch
- again and slumps into VR mode after jacking himself into the eye-scanner panel by the doors.
- Inside the host, alarms are flashing. Pudding activates his decoy program, which normally appears as
- a clone of himself. This time, the clone startes to fade, then glow red, then multiplies, again and
- again until the line stretches to the virtual horizon. The decoys run amok, tagging and distrupting
- systems all over the Host. Pudding sets about cracking the unknown node which sits in the centre of
- the Host; a strange multi-faced orb with revolving spikes. This node is of a higher rating than the
- rest of the Host, which is unheard of, it's almost like a Host within a Host. Regardless, Pudding
- cracks in, doubling up his ability by slaving his secondary deck to his usual one.
- Almost instantly, the inner-Host stops moving, the decoys disappear, the alarms fade. A message
- appears for Pudding, 'Thank you! Could you please do me one more little favour, friend? There are
- drones located in B2, where you are headed, I need you to plug one of them into the terminal access
- point. I will deactivate all the security measures so you can make your way there.' Pudding agrees,
- but barters for transport to leave the base, to which the 'friend' agrees. Pudding will have
- approximately fifteen mintes once the drone has been plugged in before trasport arrives, then six
- minutes before corporate security also makes the scene. He jacks-out again. Sembue still stands
- guard, no drones have attacked. They two acsend to B2.
- B2 is a maze of huge hangars, laboratories and armouries. The corridors are spattered with dry blood
- and makeshift barricades, skeletons line the doorways and bullet holes/burnmarks decorate shutdown
- drones. Pudding and Sembue find the drone station as instructed, at the doorway a skeleton lays on
- the floor with a cyberdeck under one arm. It is damaged but Pudding pockets it afer rolling high on
- what model it is. A heavily armoured drone stands immediately beyond the station doorway,
- inoperative. 'Well, that could have been us if it were not for your hacking skills.' comments Sembue,
- who is now in awe of Pudding's abilities. Pudding finds the drone he's been told to jack-in. He doe
- snot at this time and instead leads Sembue to the armoury.
- The armoury is stocked with assault rifles, pistols, ammo, explosives, grenades, armour and even a
- flamethrower. The duo opt to load a trolley with plastic explosives and an array of detonator types,
- they are taking these for terrorist groups after all. As Sembue rolls the trolley with some 30 kilos
- of explosives towards the lift, Pudding sprints to the drone station and connect the drone up; a
- monsterous beast with tracked wheels, heavy armour and twin-machine guns. He runs for the lift, then
- is overtaken by the drone which is headed in the same direction. Pudding calls 'friend', who
- apparently has left a number on his actual commlink somehow. 'I uh, you aren't going to leave me
- behind are you?' 'No of course not my friend, but hurry.'
- Pudding and Sembue squeeze into the lift with the drone and trolley. As soon as the doors open, the
- drone takes off at full speed across the base. Looking to where they came from, the terrorist pair
- spot a tall man-shape, covered in hair slick and sheen like a wet rat, with an alligator's head. The
- figure raises its arms and lets out a strange croaking-bellow. Suddenly they are surrounded by a
- horde of feral ghouls, some of which are clearly the ones they injured previously. They need to last
- at least fifteen minutes before the transport arrives. Sembue draws his tomahawk and blade, Pudding
- his assault rifle.
- the take down two, four, six of the ghousl racong towards them. Pudding has to reload, Sembue makes a
- break for the alligator-man-thing. Unfortunately, Sembue does not manage to break through the
- oncoming ghouls and is weighed down under a flurry of claws and gnashing teeth, of which Pudding is
- unable to gun down quick enough. Our intrepid acid-flinger makes a break for a nearby building,
- sclaing the rusted ladders and loosening their hold with his acid ammo. Kicking the ladders away, he
- makes a shot at the gator-man and strikes his hide. This appears to send the gator-man into a furious
- animalistic rage, and he races towards Pudding on all fours at breackneck speed. Burning through his
- ammo, Pudding makes the kill-shot and sends the sprinting reptilian rolling.
- This seems to break the coherency of the ghouls, who lose interest in PUdding and head back to finish
- devouring Sembue's corpse. Pudding picks one of them off and the others flee in terror. Sembue's
- native trinkets are retrieved, along with his tomahawk, before the military flatbed truck arrives,
- seemingly on auto-pilot. Explosives are loaded and the pilot set to the inflatable raft's location.
- The truck pilot hits a sludge bank and gets itself stuck a short way from the destination. Pudding
- finds a bag in the driver compartment and salvages a handful of explosive cases (about 14 kilos
- worth, plus detonators). He make it to the raft and launches for the other transport, a watercraft,
- that his friend had agreed to also.
- Whilst switching to the speedboat, a band of Merrow attempt to knock Pudding into the murky waters
- but are unsuccessful. He speeds off to the barge to have an uncomfrtable conversation with Darcy
- about Needle. Leaving the speedboat behind, presumably it could be tracked, the barge makes for
- harbour.
- Pudding makes shore, meets Darcy, gets paid. She repeatedly asks if Needle relayed a secondary
- objective. Pudding lets it known he did nto, but they did run into soemthing else at the base. Darcy
- mentions Winternight, Pudding confirms this was the 'friend' he encountered. This news excites Darcy
- and sends her into a long ramble about the second coming, breaking of society, mad cultish stuff.
- Pudding finds somewhere to lie low and lick his wounds.
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