[IC] 20,000 nY Under the Sea, CHAPTER 3 :: First Leg, in Many Ways Options

[Simon Kerimov]

The shooting stops, followed by splashes as the alleged pirate crew makes their exit. The remaining diesel fuel slowly sputters out, occasionally sparking on some pollutant in the seawater. The smell of hot brass and cordite competes with the sickly sweet tang of scorched long pork and the acrid diesel smoke. After a few short moments of silence, a few locals quickly and quietly retrieve the fallen puppy and its concussed owner.

GIL
Gil looks through his boat to see what the "pirates" had stolen. It is plainly evident that nothing was stolen, no locks were forced, and the vehicle has not been disabled. An access panel has been removed, and the ships computer is hanging by bare optical cables, but appears unharmed. The smuggler in Gil felt something just not right about this scene.

KENSEI
The electronics he had been wearing are torched. His contacts have melted to his eyes, and he is forced to claw the front of his eyes off to let his natural regeneration push the fused plastic out of the wound, and he'd had to burst his eardrums repeatedly to dig the carbonized remains of his earbuds out. All of his electronics he was wearing were burned, but somehow Ricardo was calling him. That bastard had had a commlink dropped in Kensei's room, and it was ringing. He probably wanted a blow-by-blow so he could impress his drinking friends with his proximity to the event. Ricardo would probably be able to use that story for free beer off of every tourist coming through this forsaken human nest for the next twenty years.

KEY
The soothing coolness of the water only lasts a brief moment before the painfully bright sunlight evaporates away her skin of water. She caught herself feeling body-shy again. How had she managed to grow up in the confines of an aquacology and still come out of it afraid someone was stripping her with their eyes? Fuck it. Fuck them. They are only land creatures, after all. None of them understood how dependent they will be on her once they come into her world. The dolphins would understand; having to act like trained dogs for those soldiers must be grating on them. They might not even comprehend the danger they were being put in, and might not appreciate it if they knew.

Gear time now, kill them all later. It's so much harder to get away from a knife when struggling underwater, don't you think?

B BANDIT
After closing her eyes for less than a minute, B Bandit smiles in triumph. Gobs of data and a clean get away. She can't believe the "pirates" are relying on such cheap-shit hardware. She hasn't pulled this much paydata from a system this open since she was avoiding school as a child. Sure, the Firewall hadn't been a slouch, but she also hadn't been a Technomancer as a child, so it balanced.

The pirates had full scream sheets on everyone, including the drake magician who ducked out early. This is good, it means the opposition's news is stale, and it isn't comprehensive. B Bandit is especially proud of their lack of details on herself. It's a little thing, but in the end, aren't those the only things that matter?

Now she will just need to have a small, sharp conversation with this Simon, who's grasp of security is so gods-be-fracking-damned terrible that he probably uses 'god' as his log on password. Seriously! Who posts on a public forum and doesn't clean it up? Is that gold-plated commlink of his an off-the-shelf Fairlight Caliban, or is he just that dangerously useless with it? The butler seems on the ball, probably a bodyguard at that, so what gives?

FINS
This rum is really quite excellent. He wonders if Simon or his elf butler will care if he claim a few, dozen, bottles as part of his pay? Call it a bonus for a fight well survived. Would they even notice?

It seems like the rest of the team managed decently against that CAS SEAL team. Bunch of punks are lucky they were only on a bugging mission, so they were packing less-lethal armaments. He would bet a bottle of Simon's rum that the SEALs had been operating off a list of targets, and he was sure as shit that the rich brat was in the "political disaster" section of that list. This? This is going to be a daisy run, neh?