Shadows and Dark Secrets [Solo] : S1 E0.2

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The Lay Of The Land (Season 1, Episode 0.2)

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Lextrin Qualit in transit on the slide-train

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I headed out to Hydrodome 17. If you'd never been to Prismata - and who would want to? - you'd realize quickly the limitations on water due to a very dry planet. The planet has tens of billion of people on the planet and water is a highly valued commodity. The Hydrodomes are combinations of massive reservoirs, water purfication systems, and some water structures that the well-behaved, professional class get to enjoy. The really rich have their own pools it is said, but if you aren't one, you'll never know.

Meeting at a Hydrodome probably reduces the odds of overt violence and might get me some useful intel from Kuron so I can figure out if I can get the work done and get paid. And not getting killed is another nice to have feature.

Lextrin Qualit at Hydrodome 17

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I've arrived at Hydrodome 17 and am ambling around the arboretum. I see Kuron sitting on a bench about 15 meters away. She looks agitated or ready for something to break out. I'm not armed - the Peacekeepers would take a lethally dangerous view of any such thing. I think I spot as many as three folk interested in Kuron. I know she's seen me. She gets up and walks to the wet field. I follow as if I have no interest other than the lovely grass and simulated blue sky - another oddity... why blue? Our sky is never blue.

Kuron finishes her lunch and dumps it into a garbage can. She then takes off her coat and heads into the wet field (a big field with sprinklers). She looks like she's having fun to the average person, but the fast-snap reactions we all learned shows if you know what to look for.

I see one of the tails is lagging... probably checking out the bench and the garbage receptacle. He'll be busy for a while. One of the others has reluctantly went onto the wet field, but at the farthest side. I suppose that is supposed to make her noticeable... well, it doesn't work. The last one, another man, is reading a paper and looking out over the aquaduct.

I knew Kuron would hit the comfort stations - not because she needs to, just to make another one of them go diving. She'll gather up her stuff, shake off, then go for a bit of a run. Not a sprint, just enough to force the trails to decide if they fired up. Kuron has athletic shoes, they don't. She'd have a bug in her coat now, but she'd sanitize it when she got back to work.

When Kuron jogs by, she stops for a drink at the citrus juice bar. Then she goes to sit on the railing overlooking the aquaduct. She'll lounge there and look all around. The tails probably aren't going to close up to her. When she is finished, she'll call a trans-urb zipcar. That'll get her back to work. And they'll never notice the high tech earbud she picked up. I set it down in a napkin just before she picked up her order.

She'd be calling me with a crypted comm when she gets to work. I'll get what she has for me and I'll ask her if she needs an extraction. I owe her one. But she won't. These three clowns? She could have taken all three of them without perspiration.

And that's what went down, just like expected. The things I didn't get were the things she dropped on me on the secure comm.

Lextrin Qualit at and about

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I got the call. Kuron told me the mission was a high value extraction and the target is a young female. I poked to find out the client... Kuron was cagey which probably meant she wasn't 100% sure the comms' crypto were dependable. I asked about where the target was last seen. She sent some images. Kuron doesn't have a current location, just one 4 weeks ago when this all started. So far this looks about as lousy as one can expect. I told her to not work to hard and stop worrying. She knew that meant stay sharp and don't let your guard down. I let her know that if there was any worries, she could call me and I'd cheer her up. That really meant I'd initiate a hostile extraction to pull her out.

I figured I might not get the info I needed and I don't like working for unknown clients, even if they are vouched for by those I trust implicitly. I did spent those years on the wrong side of the law. Those folks have ears everywhere. Time to shake some of my contacts to see what comes out.

I started with with Ayisha. Not many know that name, her real one. She runs under many pseudonyms and usually is in disguise and her net diving gear is heavily protected and anonymized. She's was a military black hat cyber sleuth with counterstrike capability. She just didn't like other humans too close.

She meets me and we talk. She does some background hacks. She runs some of the weakly defended parts of the undernet. She pokes into some organized crime data havens. She has a deft hand and doesn't set off the cyber watchdogs.

So, the guy I'm doing this for is a decorated Marine Major and it's his daughter that is the one that has disappeared. Some deeper diving in the underworld data havens showed there had been some money offered for some 'package pickup' but it wasn't clear if anyone took the work; It may still be unfulfilled. The cyber watchdogs were snuffing around so Ayisha bailed because we don't want to tip off anyone this early.

Ayisha gave me some info from the target's socials and some stuff other stuff that wasn't well protected. Then she bowed out and vanished to lay down a defensive path back home, wherever she was living now. She'll be watching her backtrail.

Next step: review the data and figure out where the first transit will need to head. It'll also give me how big of a team I need and then figure out if I can pursuade them.

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Name	Ayisha (AYE-ee-shah) (insert varied last names)		Nationality	Prismatan
Nicknames & Aliases		Slice, Ring Zero King, Gibson
Career(s)	Rogue/Hacker at the end of a 4th term now
Biometrics
Species	Human	Gender	Male	Age	31
Skin	Black, medium loose	Eyes	Hazel	Size & Weight	1.87 m, 90 kg
Attributes
Muscles	0	Hardiness	+1	Agility	+1
Intellect	+2	Knowledge	+1	Gravitas	0
Contacts Target Values
Hackers	4	Criminal	4	Family (?)	8
Talents	Gestalt(Computers, +2 on any electonics or computers tasks or the like)		Burdens	Cannot Abide People Getting Close (roll Intellect -2 if anyone gets really close to her)
Skills
Tech(Computers) 3 Criminal(Streetwise) 2 Small Blade 2 Covert(Intrusion) 1 Brawling (Dirty Fighting) 1 Tech(Electronics) 1 Criminal(Forgery) 1 Tech(Sensor Ops) 1 Medical(Trauma Aid) 1 Criminal(Escape) 1 Sidearm(Kinetic) 0 Professional(Legal) 0

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Notes

I have realized that I will, at least for now, write the chronicle from Lextrin's perspective. In case I want to have other prespectives at some point, as I may want to, I will put some information in the narrative as to which character is doing the thinking or talking.

The surprising parts as I gamed through this was: The contact (Kuron) was scared from the outset. And she was holding back information. The unwillingness to divulge the client was a twist. When we got Ayisha involved, I figured she'd get stonewalled, but the double sixes said otherwise. A lot of data to be sifted and hopefully enough to travel to the last known location and gather more info.