Behind the Crown [IC], Behind the crown are shadows Options

[Koekepan]

Jaxx nods, seriously while he says: """You got it, Karmaphase. Lost comrade, I understand. I'll give it up for the hottest I can get, and that's drekhot all night. I'll even cover the difference, but maybe the paydata on the deck will cover it. Mean time, I could use a little messenger service myself."""

[pbangarth]

Blue thinks to himself, +++ Man, it's like a pile of clothes hangers. You think you have one pulled out, but three more come attached. Side jobs upon side jobs. +++

He is reminded of Billy's niece. A hanger that hasn't left him alone. But, business is business right now.

"""What did you have in mind?"""

[Koekepan]

"""Oh, nothing big or difficult. There's a slot who's been annoying the wrong people, and I prefer it when stupid kids stay alive, and productive, rather than dead and decompositional. Eventually they smarten up and get more usefully productive, rather than forgotten stains in an organ tank someplace. I'd like it if some public-spirited folks could go to him and give him a pep talk and a reason to change his ways."""

[pbangarth]

"""How peppy do you want the talk to be? """ Blue asks. """I'm not all that interested in hurting someone.""" He remembers with some chagrin the thug in the diner. Well, he did do some healing afterwards. Oh, yeah. The car in the parking lot with miss PoliDemos. But she was snotty and drew her ... wait that was after he nuked her vehicle.

Then there was the fire elemental. But he did apologize ahead of time.

Hmmm. Slippery slope, anyone?

[Koekepan]

Jaxx waves a hand casually, before going in for another sip of his drink. """No, really no more than it absolutely has to be. I have all the details, you'll have plenty of ins and outs for a pointed sermon. Fragitall, I'd do it myself if I didn't have so much else on my cooker. Basically, he's been skimming custom biologics that he was couriering, and that's a quick way to end up as biologics yourself."""

[pbangarth]

Red flags are waving in the back of Blue's brain. +++ Are we ever going to be free of those people? +++

With a knowing glance to Karmakaze, and emphasis on the key words, Blue asks, """What kind of custom biologics are we talking about here? And to whom was he selling them? """

[Koekepan]

"""Various kinds. Last batch was a colon cancer treatment. Very specialised, tailored to the patient, unique to the cancer, strictly custom stuff. He shows up, fifty micrograms short. What he did with it? I have no idea, but I just don't want him wasted over a mosquito wing's worth of hoop cancer drug, scan?"""

[pbangarth]

Blue's anxiety level drops. """ Odd. That kind of thing could not be sold to just anyone. Only the person for whom it was designed. And if you try to sell it at a stolen goods, desperate buyer markup, the police get involved. That is kind of stupid.

"""Hmmm. Unless a competitor producer wanted to do some reverse engineering. That might work. We could have a police angle to work in that regard. """ He glances at Karmakaze.

[Bastard]

"""I guess we have to take it. We are just going to be waiting on the decker anyways. Where do we find this hoop?"""

[Koekepan]

Jaxx sits back and says: """At any given moment? Anywhere; he's a courier. But I know where his homebase is. It's a logistics hub not far from here. Makes sense, yaknow? Halfway between Seattle and Tacoma, near the airport, near the sea. He on-again, off-again runs with a crew, as a sort of associate member, and they do all the exotic transport. He's land-only, but he's good."""

[Bastard]

"""Right. We will go find him. Let him know what is up. Tell the decker to call me directly when he has some answers or some data. Our investigation started a week behind, and then this Billy bastard wasted another day."""

Karma looks the place up on her link, looks at a satmap of the area, to see where the best place to park for some surveillance work.

[Koekepan]

The satnav lays it out pretty well; the logistics hub is a sort of older truck stop that went metastatic and now incorporates some warehouses, utility businesses such as fuel, repair, a rail interconnection, a couple of cranes and a pad for thunderbirds. There are two probable nerve centres; the office building (which appears to be some old prefab structures that have stood the test of time), and a diner close by the truck facilities. The whole thing is on an east/west axis, running alongside the old 405 near the run up the hill to Burien and Seatac. The ground is just high enough that it wasn't wiped out by Mount Rainier dumping a lahar on Puyallup, and it looks as if whoever runs the show picked up facilities here on the cheap. The whole area is rebuilding.

A little more research, pretty much reflexive, shows that the area is a known base for a go-gang called the FedUpExpress, known for go-gang style but smuggler finances. Their style is loud but deceptive, rather than sneaky. They specialise in running tailchasers, rapid vehicle changes and changes of transport mode so as to frustrate pursuit. Nine times out of ten, security providers and corpsec teams figure out that FedUpExpress smuggled something by seeing that they moved, and finished moving before a response team could even get moving. This makes them expensive but effective.

Surveillance shouldn't actually be too difficult because the facilities in the logistics hub are actually real; many people move in, out and through all the time.

[pbangarth]

""" Alright, stakeout expert, how do we do this? """

[Bastard]

"""We park someplace without a lot of stationary people, who will wonder why we are stationary. Or find a cafe or something with outdoor or window seating. Or the easiest way I have discovered in the past few days is send a spirit to do the boring work.

"""It wouldn't hurt to do both.

"""Once we spot our target, we tail him until we can catch him off guard and alone."""

[pbangarth]

Blue considers Karmakaze's suggestions. """Yeah, the thing with my kind of spirits is they don't cross domain boundaries. So, if I call a spirit inside his place, it won't go out. I call a spirit out here, it won't go in. So if he heads out somewhere, we could have a spirit tail him till he ducks into a building or something. Let's pick where we want to sit and I'll figure out the spirit to call. """

[Bastard]

"""Sounds good. Lets move and get into place."""

She turns to her fixer, """Jaxx, have this decker contact me with anything he finds, if he is comfortable with that. We could really use a decker we can trust."""

[Koekepan]

Jaxx grins at Karmakaze. """Null sweat, Karma-Kram. I'll get you something back as soon as he can drill it. Meantime, have a link of a message for the courier.""" He stands from the table, on the way telling his 'link to drop Karmakaze a file.

It's not particularly big or dramatic; a list of drops, and a list of missing quantities or contents. It doesn't look as if any analytics were done on them, so Karmakaze might be able to figure something out while waiting in a stakeout.

Jaxx wanders out, taking the confiscated 'deck with him, whistling softly to himself.

[Bastard]

Karmakaze makes a loop around the complex looking for the best place to park with good view of where the subject hangs out. Finding something suitable, she parks where there isn't too much stagnant foot traffic.

"""You think you can call upon a spirit to alert us when they see "the Messanger"?"""

[pbangarth]

The drive over gave Blue a chance to rest some. He waits a few more minutes until his head clears completely, studies the image of the messenger, and then summons a city spirit.

[ Spoiler ]

Don't need one too strong for surveillance, so Force 2.
Target 2+2=4, 6 dice: 5 successes so 5 services.

Resist Drain target 4(L), 4 dice: 2 successes so no Drain

::: Thank you for answering my call. I seek a person who looks like this, ::: He brings the image of the courier to mind. ::: Over there, ::: he indicates the hangout, ::: is where I expect him to be, either coming out of that building or coming to it. Patrol near there. If you detect him, alert me. :::

"""It's done. A spirit will look for him. One of us should be able to see him. I have a spell that can help, if things get tricky.

[Koekepan]

The spirit whiffles off like the puff of dieselsmoke that it looks like. With that settled, the ambient noises of the environment infiltrate the car. The rush of tyres on wet roads, the hum of charging transformers, the shouts of workers transloading containers to or from trucks with their massive robot cranes.

It's busier than one would think, but nobody pays the slightest attention to the small car.

[pbangarth]

Blue remarks to himself the appearance of the spirit, which reminds him of Acidsalt Dieselsmog, the poor bugger who fried itself doing Blue's bidding. Once its time of healing back home is up, maybe Blue will try to summon it specifically in order to thank it personally.

Blue doesn't know if he actually can summon a specific spirit. Knowing a Free Spirit's true name is useful in that regard, but he's not sure in this case.

[Bastard]

The two sat in the car for a quite a while, but hadn't spotted their man, or anything else suspicious yet. Karma couldn't afford to get tunnel vision on her target, while they still had a target on theirs. At least this was a way to kill the time while they waited on the decker to work his magic.

[Koekepan]

After a while of sitting and waiting, Karmakaze gets a notification courtesy of Jaxx. It's in the form of a map and a set of documents, apparently produced by his decker of choice and forwarded.

The gist of it appears to be that Daisy, or someone who looks amazingly like her, was part of a shipment of people who were shipped out (apparently unwillingly) by pressures within the region. The bus in which they were moving headed north, out of the enclave, and into the native lands. Now there's no guarantee what happened out there, but the bus went as far as what had been Skagit county, turned east into the hills up to old Concrete, and then returned to Seattle. What's left of Concrete these days is a few ruins overrun by a return of nature, and a sort of relict settlement. It's about as off-grid as you'll find short of trekking into the middle of the Cascades.

While Karmakaze digests this information, the spirit returns to alert Blue to the arrival of a fellow on a ... bicycle. That's right, an actual, pedal-driven bicycle. Well, wait, it seems to have a battery. Perhaps it's electric-boosted.

[pbangarth]

""" Heads up, """ Blue alerts Karmakaze. """ My spirit tells me that someone matching our target's appearance has just arrived on a bicycle. """

[Bastard]

"""Can you or the spirit knock him to the ground as I approach? Then I can help him up with a warning."""