Episode 26 – Flight 412 From Quebec City is Now Arriving …
An airplane full of people crashes into Doc Freeman’s research facilities in Pleasantville, NJ. The Doc had left earlier in the morning just after midnight. Disney checks out the cyberbrain and wants the tech. The C.I.A. also looks at it and wants it too. They are not happy about Disney’s presence in “this equation”, but will deal. All through this, Natty succeeds in getting paid millions from all sides. It’s a dangerous game.
Background
War has spread from the European Continent to Asia. In Europe, the EU starts using orbit bombardment within 50 miles of the front lines in Europe and slowly pushes east. By August 2051, Warsaw is surrounded and besieged. The city holds out. With Russia occupied in Europe, China opens a second front on them in Asiatic Russia. The Pacific Maritime provinces are overrun but Vladivostok, Lord of the East, remains in Russian hands.
Ghost Team 1 continues to train the new Islamic State of the Fezzan’ National Police under the direction of Warrant Officer Brandon Health. After the scandal in the Fezzan, Allison Cole drops the identity of Hanna Woo and continues her rich and indolent life. Natty is told she will NOT regain command of Ghost Team 1 and will be demoted one rank to 2nd Lieutenant to placate the outrage in the Fezzan over the videos of her and Hanna making out on the beach in Cyprus. The biogen resigns her commission in protest.
Natty is then offered a job by her ‘sister’ Cat to work with Doc Freeman and a new team he is putting together. This Team will being doing a series of jobs for multi-billionaire philanthropist, Richard Roman. Both the Bast Corporation and the Collective are interested in what this man is up to. It is rumored that Richard Roman is about to roll out a product that will end world hunger. This will of course put out of business many major agro-corps.
Richard Roman hires the Team to test the corporate defenses of Richard Roman Enterprises’ various facilities around the world. The Collective is sending two Nietzschean operatives to join this new Team. The first is a freshly trained male warrior, S-0002134.7, who also calls himself Priest. The second is a female operative originally called Sylvania Kelevra. She is a fourth generation warrior introduced in the Super Solo 2 Campaign back in 2027, and is coming as an American Cherokee Indian, Wayah Hyawasee (Wolf in Meadow). For a fixer, Geoff Stark of Atlantic City is recruited. Doc Freeman has known this young man for almost ten years and in that time Geoff has become an influential fixer in the Atlantic City area. Duke Strider is released from the Bast Corporation to work with the Team (and keep an eye on an angry Natty).
Dramatis Personae
Team Freeman
Doc Freeman: Former professor at UNLV, former assistant coroner and world-known cyber researcher. He is the inventor of the “cyberbrain” with which he claims to have cured death itself. Four years ago, the Republic of Mars legalized his cyberbrain for generalized use and he was honored by the Martian Academy of Science. A small number of Earth’s nations followed suit and now courts around the world are looking into ramifications of his work. The man is now rich beyond his wildest dreams. Many religious leaders have roundly condemned his work, which has earned him at least three fatwas calling for his death from major Islamic religious leaders. Many fanatical Christian groups have also called for his execution.
Duke Strider (aka Rex Greenwood): He is an experimental dog/human biogenetic hybrid made by the Collective on commission by the Bast Corporation. The Caitlins, who own Bast Corporation, plan to create male members of their race, but decided to make another species of hybrid first to test the science. Cat has asked him to keep an eye on Natty.
Geoff Stark: A sharp young fixer from Atlantic City first introduced as a 14 year old during the Atlantic City episodes of the Burn Notice Campaign. It was there he met Doc Freeman and infuriated the late Sam Fisher by dating his ‘daughter’, Cat. He is now 24 and a major player supplying Edgerunner teams with their needed gear in addition to running the production, distribution and sale of brain dance pornography in the Atlantic City area. He is currently undercover as Frank Johnson.
Natalie ‘Natty’ Lanikova (aka AJ Greenwood): A covert operative who most believe is the daughter of the late Lt. Alina Lanikova formerly of the Czech Special Forces (601st SOG). She is actually one of the prototype Biotechnica ‘Caitlin’ clones trained to operate in the Czech Republic. She resigned her position in the Bast Corporation’s Ghost Teams in protest after being disciplined over her affair with Allison Cole (aka Hanna Woo). She is currently undercover as Jean du Bois.
Priest (or S-0002134.7): He is a newly grown and trained fourth generation Nietzschean warrior on his first mission away from the Collective. Priest is a stealth/assassin model, but is being hired as a combat solo for the Team. He is undercover as Kazimir Donskoy, a Russian investor looking for transportation opportunities.
Sylvania Kelevra (or N-0038592.6): She is a fourth generation Nietzschean warrior who has spent the past twenty four years guarding the sheep flocks in the high pastures of New Zealand and producing three children of the fifth generation. These duties were the result of her initial disastrous mission back in 2027. (See Super Solo 2 Campaign for details). She is now undercover as Kazimir’s American girlfriend, Greta Hammond.
And helping the Team in the NET (against all orders) from afar is Nip Lacey: This slightly crazy young woman is the result of a failed experiment to create a gestalt mind of several netrunners. This project also inadvertently created Fred, a ferret looking creature that inhabits the NET and is fiercely loyal to Nip. While the girl is only 21, she has already earned advanced degrees in Computer Science and Robotics from Night City University. She faces life like a superhero wanting to do the ‘right thing’.
The NPCs
Bella is a Disney A.I. that first became sentient working as the building A.I. for Doc Freeman in Romania. She is now a close confidant of the chief Disney A.I. Walt 2.0.
Chief Harold Wiggins is the chief of police in Billings, MT.
Claude Dagrou is the national president of the Steel Legion motorcycle club.
Colonel Miles Quaritch is a retired Special Forces officer who is in charge of Richard Roman’s corporate security force.
Dean Sorris is a mysterious man with disturbing information about Richard Roman that may or may not be true.
Dr. Arabella Pasha is one of Doc Freeman’s former #1 assistants who left his employ about seven to eight years ago. She is now employed by Richard Roman Enterprises.
Dr. Jason Harcourt is the chief assistant to Doc Freeman and one of the few who understands the cyberbrain.
Iron Head is national Sargent at Arms for the entire Steel Legion motorcycle club.
Leslie Lords was a former decorated Army officer and C.I.A. operative who has been hijacked by an A.I. and is now acting as major domo for the leader of the A.I. conspiracy, the Richard Roman A.I.
Nathan Forrest is the Associate Deputy Director of the C.I.A. and honorary ‘uncle’ to his late best friend, Sam Fisher’s daughter Catherine Vaduva.
Pomfret Church was a security official at Richard Roman Enterprises in Sheridan, Wyoming. He had a cyberbrain that Doc Freeman has now dissected.
Ricco Torres was a former member of the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police who later was hired by the Disney Corporation to assist an Edgerunner team brought in to push their political agenda in Rio. He was promoted and moved to Walt Disney World in Florida. When the United States government asked Disney for help, they sent Ricco who is still general manager of the Petersen Point Resort. He is a friend of both Doc Freeman and Natty Lanikova.
Richard Roman a former indolent playboy whose recovery from terminal cancer changed his life. He has become a corporate champion of feeding the hungry and helping end world poverty. The man practices what he preaches and runs the largest network of free food banks across the world.
Senator White is a powerful senior leader in the United States Senate. He is Chairman of the Domestic Agricultural Committee.
Walt 2.0 is the chief Disney A.I. that is a personality construct (with the racist bits programmed out). He advises the Disney Board of Directors.
The Action
Saturday, March 23, 2052:
Ricco Torres comes to the Team’s rooms in a “historical” (i.e., obscure) hotel in Ottawa. He brings a Disney technician to look at the cyberbrain. Everyone’s greetings are business like. Doc Freeman and the tech get down to business for the next couple of hours. Natty gets a text from Nip: Check the news, any station will probably do.
The cat biogen turns on the national news. There is breaking news about a horrific plane crash outside of Atlantic City. Air Canada Flight 412 from Quebec City to Baltimore suffered a malfunction of its flight computer, fell from the sky and crashed into Pleasantville, NJ, just over the causeway from Atlantic City. The news announcers come on with the lead that the plane hit a business, Freeman Enterprises, totally destroying the entire complex. Many houses around the compound and their residents are also killed. There were also a hundred and seventy-eight people aboard the plane. No one on the Team thinks this was an accident. They keep this from Doc Freeman for a bit. In a couple of hours, the Disney technician is convinced that this technology would interest Walt 2.0. The negotiations are quick. Disney offers to pick up 50% of the research cost and give Doc Freeman 75% of the profit. Disney just wants two viable A.I. cyberbrains. The first will be for Bella. The second will let Walt 2.0 become a ‘real boy’.
Ricco transmits five million Commonwealth Pounds to Natty’s operational Cayman account and Dr. Harcourt leaves with Ricco for Orlando, Florida. That night the new Disney alliance pays off. At 9 pm assassins attempt to kill Dr. Harcourt’s family with a ‘gas main’ explosion. It is foiled by Disney security. One of the Attackers is captured. Jean asks for a transcript of the interrogation.
Doc Freeman contacts his remaining people in Atlantic City. His double is dead. His immediate staff is safe. He puts them to work picking up the pieces.
Cat Vaduva is also confident she knows who is responsible for the plane crashing into Pleasantville. Natty’s Richard Roman file was proof enough to her that she has to act. Cat calls her ‘Uncle’ Nathan Forrest, the Associate Deputy Director of the C.I.A. He takes her call immediately, but says he doesn’t have any time for small talk as he is on his way to Atlantic City.
“Well, that’s kind of why I called,” his ‘niece’ tells him. “I know who did it.”
There is dead silence on the other end for a few moments before Nathan asks, “And who would that be?”
“Well, I’d rather not talk about this over the phone. I’m on my way to Atlantic City myself. The Bast Corporation has an office there and I will be helping with the relief effort.”
“You mean you’ll be making a few photo ops and writing a couple of checks.”
“We all help how best we can, Uncle,” Cat tells him.
“See you tomorrow then,” Forrest says.
Geoff gets a phone call from his chief assistant fixer. “Jeez, Boss, there is a fortune to be made here, but all of our funds are out busy working. We need some serious scratch.”
The fixer goes to their room where Jean is reviewing some of the old surveillance feeds from Miles Quaritch. “Listen, Jean … AJ, whatever. I could really use an advance to help my people in Pleasantville ….. and make some money. I’d share the profit with the group.”
“How much do you need?” she asks with a smile.
OK, here it goes, Geoff thinks. “A half a million euro, would do?”
“Sure, give me an account number,” Jean asks. Geoff is surprised and pleased. This went much better than expected.
***
Sunday, March 24, 2052:
Ricco Torres is promoted to Senior Vice President of Developmental Services—a fact noticed by his boss, Richard King, aka “King Dick” in water cooler gossip. King speculates what “Developmental Services” might mean, and wonders what Ricco has done to earn this promotion, and puzzles over why he himself was kept out of the loop. This promotion puts him and the Brazilian on the same corporate level. Ricco starts building his “division” and recruiting the world-class Netrunners he will need.
Doc Freeman calls his attorneys through a secure NET link to say he is alive and well. At present he is dealing with the calamity that has befallen his employees and their families. His publicists, who weren’t killed, get to work on that story.
Cat Vaduva has prepared an area in the suite she has rented in Atlantic City for secure conversations. Nathan Forrest, now Associate Deputy Director for the C.I.A., arrives to see his ‘niece’. Once inside Cat pulls out a bug/cyberware detector with a special feature to detect cyberbrains. She looks at her ‘Uncle Nathan’, smiles and asks, “Amuse me?”
The man submits to the scan and they both sit down with a drink. Nathan gets right to the point, “OK, who brought down the plane?”
“A friend called me recently when they felt they were in over their heads on a job. This isn’t one of our teams, but still I asked them to put together a file, which they did,” says Cat.
The woman places an old manila file folder before Nathan, stuffed with documents and pictures. The man flips it open and comments, “How old school. Can you just give me a brief synopsis of the high points?”
“Certainly,” replies Cat. “A group of A.I.s has discovered how to take over human bodies through the use of a modified cyberbrain. They are at present involved in some kind of plot involving control of the food supply. Richard Roman and his assistant Leslie Lords are two of the top A.I./humans. Leslie Lords is a particular threat to the C.I.A. as he worked for or with the agency on a number of black projects. They have most certainly recruited inside the agency. This A.I. cabal crashed the plane into Freeman Enterprises to kill Doc Freeman, the inventor of the cyberbrain, as he is the only one who knows how they work. They probably have senior U.S. Senator White in their pocket or he is blackmailed by them. It’s all there in the file. Your techs can talk to this other team about access to the cyberbrain they have, the cloned corpse of Pomfret Church and samples of the food additive.”
Nathan Forrest finishes off his bourbon and sits back with the file. He starts on page one.
“Another Rebel Yell, Uncle Nathan?” Cat asks.
“Yes, thank you.”
After a few hours and a couple of brief questions, Nathan Forrest finishes reading Natty’s file. He looks her right in the eye. “Do you trust the source of this file?”
“Absolutely,” replies Cat.
“I’ll want to have my techs look at this cyberbrain hardware,” Nathan states.
“That can be arranged,” Cat replies. “I have to warn you that the situation with these people is very …. Fluid. They are already ‘boots on the ground’. They want cash and satellite support.”
Nathan holds up the file, “If they can prove this, then all the rest is no problem.”
“About two million euro up front is what they are looking for,” Cat tells him.
“After my people see this cyberbrain and verify it, this ‘not my team’ can have the money,” Forrest warns her. “I don’t want to be left in the wind for two million euro.”
“I’ll guarantee the cash, Uncle Nathan. You’ll get your money’s worth.”
“OK, let’s do this then.”
Cat smiles. “I’ll make the call.”
***
Monday, March 25, 2052:
About 9 am in Billings Montana, a railroad signal activates and stops a car containing Chief Harold Wiggins. Multiple assault rifles open up and riddle his car with bullets. The attackers leave him for dead, but the Chief hangs on and gets to the hospital.
At 2 pm, the local chapter of the Steel Legion is attacked by a huge force of other Steel Legionnaires led by national President Claude Dagrou and his Sargent at Arms, Ironhead. The Billings Charter and their dependents are decimated.
Through most of the day, Kazimir Donskoy (Priest) and Greta Hammond (Wayah) have a few meetings with lawyers and prospective investors.
At 3pm in Ottawa, the C.I.A. technician arrives at the Team’s suite, escorted by a bodyguard. The Doc takes him through how it works and the technician follows the science and he gives it his approval. The tech leaves the hotel about 5 pm and the Team then pulls out quietly and tries to lose any tails (there were none). They head west through Canada.
At 8 pm Nathan Forrest visits Cat and says he has approval to pay Richard Roman’s old team (Team Freeman) to work for them. What the Associate Director wants is to talk with an A.I. in a human body, and he wants ALL the information gotten by her ‘Not-My-Team’. No holding back any juicy tidbits for future sales. At that point Cat informs Nathan that Disney is now in the mix.
The C.I.A. chief looks at his ‘niece’ coldly and tells her, “If I had known that, I would have sent a different team to ‘interview’ Doc Freeman and his group. No matter, damage done. We’ll just have to deal with the Mouse.” Nathan also says: “We need a living example of one of these A.I.s. And we especially don’t want the government and Disney acting at cross purposes. Whatever crimes your ‘Not-My-Team’ might commit to prevent a disaster could be forgiven.”
Nathan Forrest then drops two million euros of C.I.A. funds into one of Natty’s numbered Cayman Island accounts.
***
Tuesday, March 26, 2052:
By midday, certain events are all over the news feeds. LEDiv leads a national strike force and arrests or kills almost all of the national membership of the Steel Legion. Billings is hit hardest as many of the victorious bikers were still in town after their ‘realignment’ of the Billings Charter. National President Claude Dagrou escaped the dragnet.
(GM Note: No, I wasn’t going to make it that easy to get an A.I.)
Around 10 pm ET, Nathan Forrest calls Cat and tells her, “My house is clean. All those C.I.A. associates of Leslie Lords are no longer a problem. Oh, yes, and sad news tonight, Senator White died of a heart attack this evening.”
Cat immediately checks with her sources and the chatter is up about some kind of C.I.A. house cleaning involving the detaining of more than 80 people. And, yes, Senator White had a ‘heart attack’.
Around 11 pm, Cat calls on the Collective Council’s private line and gets a small quorum. She makes a presentation of the A.I. threat from Richard Roman and the necessity of Natty going her own way. The council agrees to look into it. Cat also learns from the Council that top edgerunner teams around the world have been disappearing. Either failing and dead—or just disappearing. While Natty has earned herself a couple of enemies on the council, they decide not to kill her and the Team. Cat informs Natty of their decision.
Natty is lying in bed as she hangs up from talking with Cat.
“Bad news?” asks Geoff.
The cat biogen turns to him, smiles and says, “A little bit of both.”
“Let’s hear the bad news,” Geoff says.
“I made a list of people I thought might be involved with the Richard Roman plot and they have all been ‘disappeared’. Senator White just died of a ‘heart attack’. I think I drew up a ‘death list’,” she says, “and I feel awful.”
The fixer takes her in his arms and then asks with a smile, “OK, how about the ‘good news’?”
The cat biogen thinks for a moment before saying, “The Collective has decided not to kill us all …. just yet.”
“Good news, then!” the fixer says with a smile. “We get to live another day.”
***
Wednesday, March 27, 2052:
This morning’s news reports from California lead with a picture story of roughly four dozen genetically engineered mermen washing up dead on the beach. By noon it’s a major health scare as the corpses are determined to be radioactive. The decomposing bodies resemble the Kimura Mermen (from Super Solo 2 Campaign). Cat Vaduva contacts the Collective and requests that the submarine hive contact them. The Hive goes to check on the Kimura Mermen.
Cat gets a call from Uncle Nathan, “How soon is ‘Not-Your-Team’ going to have Miles? I hope by Monday because then he is going to be recalled to active duty.”
“I’ll talk to them,” she replies.
“You do that,” says Nathan.
(GM Note: Wow, I didn’t think the Team could bring so much power to bear against Richard Roman so quickly. The A.I. that is Richard is now in awe of Doc Freeman. He has learned that the Doc has filed the patents on the new cyberbrain.
“My God,” Richard thinks, “Doc Freeman is utterly ruthless. He fed his team into the meat grinder to look stupid and weak while scooping up Pomfret and making me look like a fool. I was right to admire him!”
The A.I. knows it is in the fight of its life.)
Episode 27 – Extracting Miles Quaritch ….. Finally!
Team Freeman sweeps up Miles Quaritch with a well-executed plan. He is delivered right into the hands of the C.I.A. Nathan Forrest gets an A.I. ‘snoop’ proof communication device to the Team, but it is also a Trojan Horse to locate them. The Agency’s gambit fails and starts to aggravate the Associate Deputy Director.
Background
War has spread from the European Continent to Asia. In Europe, the EU starts using orbit bombardment within 50 miles of the front lines in Europe and slowly pushes east. By August 2051, Warsaw is surrounded and besieged. The city holds out. With Russia occupied in Europe, China opens a second front on them in Asiatic Russia. The Pacific Maritime provinces are overrun but Vladivostok, Lord of the East, remains in Russian hands.
Ghost Team 1 continues to train the new Islamic State of the Fezzan’ National Police under the direction of Warrant Officer Brandon Health. After the scandal in the Fezzan, Allison Cole drops the identity of Hanna Woo and continues her rich and indolent life. Natty is told she will NOT regain command of Ghost Team 1 and will be demoted one rank to 2nd Lieutenant to placate the outrage in the Fezzan over the videos of her and Hanna making out on the beach in Cyprus. The biogen resigns her commission in protest.
Natty was then offered a job by her ‘sister’ Cat to work with Doc Freeman and a new team he was putting together. The Collective is sending two Nietzschean operatives to join this new Team. The first is a freshly trained male warrior, S-0002134.7, who also calls himself Priest. The second is a female operative originally called Sylvania Kelevra. She is a fourth generation warrior introduced in the Super Solo 2 Campaign back in 2027, and is coming as an American Cherokee Indian, Wayah Hyawasee (Wolf in Meadow). For a fixer, Geoff Stark of Atlantic City is recruited. Doc Freeman has known this young man for almost ten years and in that time Geoff has become an influential fixer in the Atlantic City area. Duke Strider is released from the Bast Corporation to work with the Team (and keep an eye on an angry Natty).
Team Freeman was supposed to do a series of jobs for multi-billionaire philanthropist, Richard Roman, testing the corporate defenses of Richard Roman Enterprises’ various facilities around the world. Both the Bast Corporation and the Collective are interested in what this man is up to. It is rumored that Richard Roman is about to roll out a product that will end world hunger. It has turned out that this is a conspiracy of A.I.s working to put themselves in living flesh bodies and massively thin out the human population of Earth.
Dramatis Personae
Team Freeman
Doc Freeman: Former professor at UNLV, former assistant coroner and world-known cyber researcher. He is the inventor of the “cyberbrain” with which he claims to have cured death itself. Four years ago, the Republic of Mars legalized his cyberbrain for generalized use and he was honored by the Martian Academy of Science. A small number of Earth’s nations followed suit and now courts around the world are looking into ramifications of his work. The man is now rich beyond his wildest dreams. Many religious leaders have roundly condemned his work, which has earned him at least three fatwas calling for his death from major Islamic religious leaders. Many fanatical Christian groups have also called for his execution.
Duke Strider (aka Rex Greenwood): He is an experimental dog/human biogenetic hybrid made by the Collective on commission by the Bast Corporation. The Caitlins, who own Bast Corporation, plan to create male members of their race, but decided to make another species of hybrid first to test the science. Cat has asked him to keep an eye on Natty.
Geoff Stark: A sharp young fixer from Atlantic City first introduced as a 14 year old during the Atlantic City episodes of the Burn Notice Campaign. It was there he met Doc Freeman and infuriated the late Sam Fisher by dating his ‘daughter’, Cat. He is now 24 and a major player supplying Edgerunner teams with their needed gear in addition to running the production, distribution and sale of brain dance pornography in the Atlantic City area. He is currently undercover as Frank Johnson.
Natalie ‘Natty’ Lanikova (aka AJ Greenwood): A covert operative who most believe is the daughter of the late Lt. Alina Lanikova formerly of the Czech Special Forces (601st SOG). She is actually one of the prototype Biotechnica ‘Caitlin’ clones trained to operate in the Czech Republic. She resigned her position in the Bast Corporation’s Ghost Teams in protest after being disciplined over her affair with Allison Cole (aka Hanna Woo). She is currently undercover as Jean du Bois.
Priest (or S-0002134.7): He is a newly grown and trained fourth generation Nietzschean warrior on his first mission away from the Collective. Priest is a stealth/assassin model, but is being hired as a combat solo for the Team. He is undercover as Kazimir Donskoy, a Russian investor looking for transportation opportunities.
Sylvania Kelevra (or N-0038592.6): She is a fourth generation Nietzschean warrior who has spent the past twenty four years guarding the sheep flocks in the high pastures of New Zealand and producing three children of the fifth generation. These duties were the result of her initial disastrous mission back in 2027. (See Super Solo 2 Campaign for details). She is now undercover as Kazimir’s American girlfriend, Greta Hammond.
And helping the Team in the NET (against all orders) from afar is Nip Lacey: This slightly crazy young woman is the result of a failed experiment to create a gestalt mind of several netrunners. This project also inadvertently created Fred, a ferret looking creature that inhabits the NET and is fiercely loyal to Nip. While the girl is only 21, she has already earned advanced degrees in Computer Science and Robotics from Night City University. She faces life like a superhero wanting to do the ‘right thing’.
The NPCs
Bella is a Disney A.I. that first became sentient working as the building A.I. for Doc Freeman in Romania. She is now a close confidant of the chief Disney A.I. Walt 2.0.
Catherine ‘Cat’ Vaduva is the wife of Kyle Vaduva and the biogenetic full memory clone of Caitlin Jones.
Colonel Miles Quaritch is a retired Special Forces officer who is in charge of Richard Roman’s corporate security force. He is a paranoid and slightly deranged man.
Dr. Arabella Pasha is one of Doc Freeman’s former #1 assistants who left his employ about seven to eight years ago. She is now employed by Richard Roman Enterprises. She adapted the cyberbrain for A.I. use, but Doc Freeman disassembled one and filed patents for it under his own name.
Kyle Vaduva is the husband of Catherine Vaduva and a twenty year veteran of the C.I.A. He is currently President and CEO of the Bast Corporation, an up and coming Commonwealth mega-corp.
Nathan Forrest is the Associate Deputy Director of the C.I.A. and honorary ‘uncle’ to his late best friend, Sam Fisher’s daughter Catherine Vaduva.
Ricco Torres is a former member of the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police who later was hired by the Disney Corporation to assist an Edgerunner team brought in to push their political agenda in Rio. He was promoted, moved to Florida and made general manager of the Petersen Point Resort. His acquisition of the cyberbrain technology for Disney has given him the promotion to Senior Vice President of Developmental Services. He is a friend of both Doc Freeman and Natty Lanikova.
Richard Roman was a former indolent playboy whose recovery from terminal cancer changed his life. He became a corporate champion of feeding the hungry and helping end world poverty. Well, not actually. It is an A.I. in a modified cyberbrain that took over Richard Roman’s life then murdered the man’s entire family to get access to his fortune.
The Action
Thursday, March 28, 2052:
Team Freeman goes into its final planning session before the extraction that will occur (hopefully) tomorrow. The decision is for a ground extraction attempt. An analysis of the ground routes show only two points that ground traffic will probably pass by. The first is near the entrance to the executive housing. Security has been beefed up here including a new security station right there. The second point is approaching the entrance to the commercial park where Richard Roman Enterprises is located. The security gate there is a brightly painted wooden hut and a flimsy red and white drop plank that is almost never down. There is a long, straight east to west road approaching the gate with nothing but cleared terrain.
“I have a huge cannon-like thing. I’m sure I could blow the wheel right off an armored limo,” Natty says. She indicates a spot on the map. “I could do it about here.”
“He has 1 to 3 people with him when traveling by limo,” Geoff points out.
“Miles switched cars yesterday,” Duke adds. “And he went by AV today. Chances are good for a ground limo tomorrow.”
Geoff observes, “We have to take Miles alive. How are we going to do that?”
“We could sedate him,” suggests Geoff.
“I have some very potent sleep drugs,” Doc offers.
“No, Miles is paranoid and knows all the tricks,” Natty says. “He’ll have a cybernetic drug dispenser hooked to his bio-monitor. The amount of drugs you would have to use would kill him quickly.”
(GM Note: Yes, that happened to be true.)
Doc Freeman nods in agreement. After a few moments of quiet, Natty suggests, “We could hit him in the head with a small HEP grenade round.”
“Wouldn’t a 30 to 40mm grenade blast to the head kill him?” Wayah asks.
“Well, I was thinking of a 25mm one,” the cat biogen responds. “It probably won’t kill him.”
“What if it doesn’t stop him?” Priest asks.
“I have a needler for short range work, but I have to hit the skin or just very light armor,” Doc Freeman says.
It’s finally decided to take the chance with this plan. Natty will disable the car and make the occupants bail out the right side (to the north). There, Doc Freeman armed with a 25mm Tsumani Arms GL and Duke with a 12.7mm assault rifle will be hunkered down in Viper assault armor. Geoff will be posted just to the north to watch Duke and the Doc’s back. Priest will pilot the AV-6 and Wayah will act as gunner/fight crew for him. The Team has secured a stealth Militech RPV-400 and Nip has it hung like a Christmas tree of death with ground and air weaponry.
Natty punches up the local weather. It looks good. “Let’s do a two day rental on the AV-6 and a three day, one shot contract with the air pirates in the AV-8. Nip; let’s have our friends at Disney provide the satellite feed for tomorrow. We need to move out in two hours to get in position.”
“Should we contact the C.I.A. and tell them what we’re up to?” asks the Doc.
“No, we’ll call them after we have Miles and see how fast they can pick him up,” Natty tells the group.
***
Friday, March 29, 2052:
Team Freeman plays the odds well and Miles takes his (assumed) armored limo with a driver and only one bodyguard in front. Satellite imaging is courtesy of Disney at the strike point. The Collective’s space eye continues to run defensive sweeps around the mansion in Billings. Natty has the C.I.A. satellite watching the response time from the Sheriff’s Department helicopter. Only Ricco and his new Department of Developmental Services will know this operation is going down. Nip is controlling a upgraded Militech RPV-400 Trilrotor dripping with stealth ground and air to air missiles along with its on board 12.7mm chain gun. It is flying low over the desert to the northwest out of sight.
Coming west, the limo reaches the strike point. Natty is up on a rise three hundred meters to the southwest. From there she can see the guard house and has the point ‘marked’ on the horizon where Richard Roman’s AVs are stationed. Doc Freeman and Duke are hunkered down in prepared camouflaged positions about 120 meters north of the ambush point. From there they have open ground to the road. The road is clear of traffic.
Natty’s first round from her Fisher 700 ET sniper rifle blows the left front tire off the limo. Her second round does the same for the left rear. The driver is skilled and doesn’t flip the vehicle. He brings the car to a stop on the side of the road right in the Team’s kill box. Natty’s third round hits the window at chest height on the passenger side. Mile’s bodyguard is wearing faux hard shell armor with no SP, because underneath he is a 40SP custom modified combat Alpha cyborg. Still the round punches through the armored glass and through his carapace! Damn, what the hell is hitting him, he thinks as the car began firing its defensive scatter grenade screen.
The Alpha borg takes an 8mm assault carbine out and stands up in his now open roof hatch. Miles pulls out a helmet and the driver is on the radio trying to call HQ. The Alpha scans ahead for the shooter that has been hitting them, but he is limited to the 75 meter range of his radar cybervison. Natty fires a fourth round where the front passenger seat would be and scores a leg hit. The borg bails out of the limo to the north side of the vehicle.
Satellite reconnaissance calls in with the report that the Richard Roman reaction team is lifting off. Nip turns towards that target. Natty swings her weapon around to her pre-designated sight on the horizon. Slowly an AV-4 lifts into view, but before it can power away, the cat biogen fires. The round hits its intended target, the engine of the aerodyne. Smoke begins to pour from the stricken craft. It loses altitude, but the pilot is still able to bring it down in one piece. The cavalry will not be arriving soon.
Down at roadside Miles and his two men decide to make a break for the high ground on the north side of the road. The car’s defensive grenades are put on automatic to defend against the ‘canon’ on the hill to the southwest. The ex- Special Forces Colonel and his people lead the way with more scatter grenades. Finally they close to just under 75 meters from the Doc, Duke and (farther back) Geoff. The Alpha sees Duke, moves out of the failing smoke and opens up with his 8mm Militech M-52. Duke takes a few hits in his Viper, but then lights up the borg with his 12.7mm assault rifle; botch! (but just a miss).
The following round all three charge Duke and the Doc. Duke fires first and hits with all 12.7mm rounds. That finally cores the Alpha. The driver comes out of the scatter smoke firing his 12mm handgun at Doc Freeman. He hits with one round for a single point of impact damage. Miles too runs out of the smoke towards Doc Freeman with a set of wolvers popped out on each arm. Gordon puts five rounds of HEP from his Tsunami Arms 25mm GL down range at the charging Miles. One round hits the security chief right in the head. The damage knocks the man right out, but doesn’t kill him.
Only the eyes in the sky see what happens next. The driver dives for cover and sees that he is now all alone. He puts his 12mm under his chin and pauses briefly before blowing his brains out. Natty gives the pickup command to Priest and Wayah in the Team’s (rented) AV-6 as she picks up her weapon and humps her way to the extract point. The two guards in the brightly painted little guard house had run off by the sound of the second 700 Nitro ET shot. Doc, Duke and Geoff sprint for the limo and fallen opponents. The Alpha still had bits of his faux fleshy-style hard shell armor on his now lifeless frame. Doc Freeman heads right over to Miles. He pulls out his ‘med bag’ and Miles is now completely sedated. Geoff looks at the driver. There should be much more blood. They pull out their cyberbrain detector and it implies that yes, this was once an A.I. cyberbrain, but now, just a bunch of scrambled goo.
Team Freeman cleans up any briefcases and scans for electronics (recorders). Priest and Wayah slip under the view of the headquarters building. The Team jumps aboard with Miles and his fallen guards. They go full out NOE around the reservation to the north. Nip covers their exit, and then calls the C.I.A. from a NET lounge in Panama City. “Miles Quaritch is in our custody. Where do you want him in Wyoming, Montana or Idaho, right now?”
The C.I.A. tells them outside Boise, Idaho at a federally owned ‘farm’ in forty-five minutes. Right at the appointed time the Team’s AV-6 arrives escorted by a mercenary AV-8 Assault Aerodyne. That ended the Agency’s thought of detaining the group for a few hours ‘talk’. They just asked Natty (in her Viper armor), “Did you question Miles?”
“No,” she tells them with a laugh. “I don’t want to be around when he wakes up. We thought we’d leave the questioning to you experts.”
(GM Note: I told the players afterward that if they had said they had questioned Miles, the Team would have been attacked immediately or put on a hit list for later cleanup.)
Team Freeman is on the ground less than a minute. The two aerodynes disappear immediately and after several changes in transportation modes the group is back home in Billings, MT that night.
***
Saturday, March 30, 2052:
In the morning, Nathan Forrest calls his niece Cat Vaduva. “Miles is being very cooperative and helpful,” he tells her.
“I’m glad that worked out,” she replies.
“Yes, Miles is a very skilled man. Those are hard to come by. We’ve told him that if his cooperation continues, he might get a deal like I gave your father: a life and second career in the C.I.A.”
Cat isn’t sure where this is going. “Well, service to your country should excuse many things.”
“Yes, Miles is particularly interested in the identities of the team that took him down,” Nathan informs her.
“I imagine he would be,” his niece responds.
“Well, look, getting things done with ‘Not-Your-Team’ is becoming difficult. I would like to give them a communications device so the Agency can talk with them directly, but not be overheard by any A.I.s.”
“That’s a good idea,” replies Cat. “How can I help?”
“I have this package prepositioned in Idaho,” explains Nathan. “Can you help me get it to them?”
“I’ll make a call,” she says.
Cat contacts Natty and the two arrange for the Team to pick up this device at a large storage unit complex in Boise that afternoon. The Team picks up a rather large box. It doesn’t register as having any trackers or any radiation tag on it. They take it by a circuitous route to confound satellite surveillance. By evening they have it back at the mansion in Billings. They open it up and it contains a machine with a keyboard and old primitive green screen monitor. It has instructions and a box of six APTR chips with the skill of +3 to operate the machine. The instruction manual is dated 1972, but this machine is new and now ‘just out of the box’.
They call Nip who makes a virtual appearance in the NET and they show her the machine. The girl gets very excited. “Wow! That’s an old A.R.P.A. NET computer!”
“What the hell is that?” Duke asks.
“It was the precursor to the NET,” Nip explains. “It’s an old mostly analog device. I’ve never seen one outside a museum before.”
“Why would they send us that?” asks Doc Freeman.
“The Agency said they wanted to communicate with us without the chance of an A.I. overhearing,” Natty says.
“Well, this would do the trick,” Nip tells them. “Even if an A.I. detected the transmission, which is doubtful, it would just sound like random static.”
“Well, let’s plug it in,” Wayah says.
“Wait!” cries Nip. “Don’t do that yet.”
‘What’s the problem?” asks Duke.
“It needs to be plugged into a phone line,” Nip tells them.
“OK, we have that,” Natty says.
“If you do, the Agency will be able to track your location, or rather the A.R.P.A. Net’s which has its keyboard built into it.”
“Tricky, tricky,” Priest observes.
“Could we route a protected signal from the A.R.P.A. NET through some satellites and then have it appear as if it is coming from somewhere else?” Natty asks Nip.
You can almost hear the glee in Nip’s voice. “Yeah, I could do that. We’ll have them running all over the world to find us!”
“Until they figure it out and find a way around our little diversion,” Geoff points out.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Natty says.
Doc Freeman tests the weight of the large instruction manual before saying, “It’s going to take a little reading to know how to operate this.”
“I think that’s what the chips are for,” Natty suggests.
“I’m not putting any chip from the C.I.A. in my socket,” Priest protests. “Who knows what else is on it.”
“Nip, I’ll plug one of the chips into a spare chip rack and you can copy it,” Natty tells the netrunner. “You can check it out. If it’s OK, I’ll install it and run the machine.”
The rest of the Team thinks this is a bad idea, but no one has a better suggestion short of spending at least a week to ten days studying the manual. Time is of the essence. Nip breaks its copy-protect and makes a duplicate of the chip to study. The Team continues its surveillance of Richard Roman Enterprises headquarters. With the C.I.A., the Disney Corporation and the Collective donating their assets, Team Freeman continues to accumulate data about that corporation.
***
Sunday, March 31, 2052:
Nip contacts Natty in the morning with the news that the C.I.A. chip is safe to put in. The cat biogen is still the only one who installs it in their chipware socket. By now Natty is hoping that whatever this Richard Roman thing is, it is reeling from the repeated blows of the C.I.A. and LEDiv.
(GM Note: Yes, but in the mind of the A.I. behind Richard Roman this is all the doing of that evil genius, Doc Freeman.)
The Team starts to compose a list of all the people that have cyberbrains that they know of, especially the ones done by Dr. Arabella Pasha. Since the mainframes at the Atlantic City office were destroyed, this will have to be done over time due to the amount of stored data to crunch.
That night Geoff and Natty are lying in bed together when her satellite phone rings. She looks before she answers. It is the Collective. She answers it with Geoff close by her side.
The voice on the other end says, “Congratulations, we’re not going to kill you.”
“How very kind,” replies Natty.
“We have a theory about the food sample you sent to Catherine Vaduva,” the voice continues. “We think it is an advanced protein that will build up in the human body. It will gradually make the people who eat it less likely to have children until they ultimately become sterile. It’s beautiful, the humans get rid of all their chronically poor and under employed. I should say that I’m telling you this because it a test. Your last little stunt has brought your loyalty into question, so we are going to tell you all this and if any of it gets out soon we can be fairly sure where it came from.”
Natty turns to Geoff. Yes, he just heard what was said. It was hard to hide the look of horror completely from his face. Natty excuses herself and goes in the other room as the Collective’s man continues, “We’ve caught one of the A.I. cyberbrain clones and learned a lot about this thing that now calls itself Richard Roman. For one thing, it was originally part of Rache Bartmoss’s Reddit Program that tried to destroy the NET at the end of the Fourth Corporate War. This part of the program became self-aware and avoided the NET Watch purge led by the Magnificent Curtis. It’s really just one big A.I. that breaks pieces of himself off and inhabits bodies with them. He’s a magnificent entity really, and that brings us to the point, we’re not sure that we want this Richard Roman A.I. destroyed. Now whatever you do on your job, and you should continue, you can’t use this intelligence or share it with your new Disney and C.I.A. friends. If you do betray us, then of course, we will kill you and probably your whole team.”
There is a long pause before Natty asks, “Anything else?”
The voice on the phone became very pleasant, “No, you and Geoff have a good night now.”
Natty walks back into the bedroom and puts the phone back down. She climbs into bed almost too ashamed to look at Geoff. She knows the answer but has to ask, “Did you hear what they said?”
There was no point in lying. “Yes, I heard.”
“You can never tell anyone,” Natty tells him.
Geoff puts his arm around her and says, “I know; sometimes it’s better just not to know certain things.”
Natty starts to cry softly.
***
Monday, April 1, 2052:
Bella calls Ricco Torres and the two meet in the NET to discuss her findings. Bella has looked around and discovered many more A.I.s than she thought existed. Some of these groups form very strange and seedy societies. There is some talk of a group out there who has figured out a way to take over a human body. This ‘group’ has a lot of support among A.I.s who are afraid of being ‘turned off.’ Bella says one name keeps coming up with them: Leviathan.
***
Tuesday, April 2, 2052:
Nip arranges private NET conferencing between Doc Freeman and Catherine Vaduva. Cat is a master weaponsmaker and she hopes the two can come up with a weapon to knock the resident A.I. of a clone body unconscious and unable to erase his programmable files. Ricco calls Natty and tells her about Bella’s research. Natty keeps the Collective’s revelations to herself.
***
Wednesday, April 3, 2052:
Cat and Kyle Vaduva talk and decide that they have to guarantee the success of the Billings operation. The two send a Bast Corporation Ghost Team to replace the Militech mansion guards. They will upgrade and alter all security procedures. Cat’s vehicle is ‘sabotaged’ and she is critically injured (not really). She can now avoid her Uncle Nathan’s calls for a couple of days while she works in VR with Doc Freeman.
***
Thursday, April 4, 2052:
Natty’s ‘Archaic Computer Systems’ +3 chip is up to a +2 skill when she decides it’s time to ‘talk’ with her new C.I.A. handler. Everyone gathers round the A.R.P.A. NET at the mansion in Billings. Nip and her sidekicks secure the transmission line to Mogadishu, Somali so the signal will appear to come from there. Natty and Nip think that is a nice touch!
Team Freeman watches as the old machine lumbers to life. It starts to hum for a while, then there are some intermittent whines before the screen comes on in a burst of dull green, then gets dark except for a flashing green underscore.
Natty types in: “Hello?” The letters are in that dull green electronic font.
A few seconds later the underscore jumps to the next line below. The C.I.A. Handler types in: “Hello”.
The cat can’t help herself and types: “Would you like to play a nice game of chess?”
There is a pause before this reply appears: “Not funny”.
Natty replies: “LOL”.
The C.I.A. Handler asks: “Is your team ready for a mission?”
Natty: “Ready as can be.”
C.I.A. Handler: “Go to these coordinates – 46o 30’ 2”N by 102o 43’ 2” W in North Dakota. Richard Roman has an off-book facility there. We want you to investigate what is going on there.”
Natty pauses for a second before typing: “Define Investigate.”
Now there is a second long pause in the handler’s response: “Really? … OK, break in, see what the fuck they are up to and report back!”
Natty realizes that she has aggravated a director of trained killers. A sensible person wouldn’t rock the boat. Too bad she’s a cat: “I only ask because those types of ‘investigations’ usually leave smoking holes in the ground … just kidding.”
A few seconds later the C.I.A. Handler types: “Miles says hi … just kidding; report when you finish ***End of Line***.
Back in Langley, another A.R.P.A. screen goes dark. The people in the room turn their heads towards Nathan Forrest who says, “OK, did we track their location at least?”
One of the cyber spooks at a console on the long table in the room replies, “We have them. They are on the Via Sanca in Mogadishu, Somali.”
Another eager assistant offers, “We can have an action team there in three hours, sir.”
“No, just send an asset over to check it out.” Nathan Forrest sighs. “They aren’t there. Tell the asset to look for a nearby connection to a satellite uplink.” The Associate Deputy Director then looks at the final screen message from the A.R.P.A. machine as it finishes shutting down, and mutters, “You know, this fucker is really starting to annoy me.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” his white shirted intelligence director informs him. “We expect to have the complete identities of Doc Freeman’s team with the next 24 to 36 hours.”
Episode 28 – Know When to Walk Away, Know When to Run (Kenny Rogers)
Team Freeman’s discovery of the A.I. threat now has the attention of many powerful and secretive agencies. Unknown to them and unfortunately for the world, the chain of events they have unleashed are misread by powerful people in a world involved in a war that all sides still think they can win. As the Team is getting out, an incident occurs that draws the lethal wrath of the C.I.A. Offers of penitence are made, but will they be accepted?
Background
War has spread from the European Continent to Asia. In Europe, the EU starts using orbit bombardment within 50 miles of the front lines in Europe and slowly pushes east. By August 2051, Warsaw is surrounded and besieged. The city holds out. With Russia occupied in Europe, China opens a second front on them in Asiatic Russia. The Pacific Maritime provinces are overrun but Vladivostok, Lord of the East, remains in Russian hands.
Ghost Team 1 continues to train the new Islamic State of the Fezzan’ National Police under the direction of Warrant Officer Brandon Health. After the scandal in the Fezzan, Allison Cole drops the identity of Hanna Woo and continues her rich and indolent life. Natty is told she will NOT regain command of Ghost Team 1 and will be demoted one rank to 2nd Lieutenant to placate the outrage in the Fezzan over the videos of her and Hanna making out on the beach in Cyprus. The biogen resigns her commission in protest.
Natty was then offered a job by her ‘sister’ Cat to work with Doc Freeman and a new team he was putting together. The Collective is sending two Nietzschean operatives to join this new Team. The first is a freshly trained male warrior, S-0002134.7, who also calls himself Priest. The second is a female operative originally called Sylvania Kelevra. She is a fourth generation warrior introduced in the Super Solo 2 Campaign back in 2027, and is coming as an American Cherokee Indian, Wayah Hyawasee (Wolf in Meadow). For a fixer, Geoff Stark of Atlantic City is recruited. Doc Freeman has known this young man for almost ten years and in that time Geoff has become an influential fixer in the Atlantic City area. Duke Strider is released from the Bast Corporation to work with the Team (and keep an eye on an angry Natty).
Team Freeman was supposed to do a series of jobs for multi-billionaire philanthropist, Richard Roman, testing the corporate defenses of Richard Roman Enterprises’ various facilities around the world. Both the Bast Corporation and the Collective are interested in what this man is up to. It is rumored that Richard Roman is about to roll out a product that will end world hunger. It has turned out that this is a conspiracy of A.I.s working to put themselves in living flesh bodies and massively thin out the human population of Earth.
Dramatis Personae
Team Freeman
Doc Freeman: Former professor at UNLV, former assistant coroner and world-known cyber researcher. He is the inventor of the “cyberbrain” with which he claims to have cured death itself. Four years ago, the Republic of Mars legalized his cyberbrain for generalized use and he was honored by the Martian Academy of Science. A small number of Earth’s nations followed suit and now courts around the world are looking into ramifications of his work. The man is now rich beyond his wildest dreams. Many religious leaders have roundly condemned his work, which has earned him at least three fatwas calling for his death from major Islamic religious leaders. Many fanatical Christian groups have also called for his execution.
Duke Strider (aka Rex Greenwood): He is an experimental dog/human biogenetic hybrid made by the Collective on commission by the Bast Corporation. The Caitlins, who own Bast Corporation, plan to create male members of their race, but decided to make another species of hybrid first to test the science. Cat has asked him to keep an eye on Natty.
Geoff Stark: A sharp young fixer from Atlantic City first introduced as a 14 year old during the Atlantic City episodes of the Burn Notice Campaign. It was there he met Doc Freeman and infuriated the late Sam Fisher by dating his ‘daughter’, Cat. He is now 24 and a major player supplying Edgerunner teams with their needed gear in addition to running the production, distribution and sale of brain dance pornography in the Atlantic City area. He is currently undercover as Frank Johnson.
Natalie ‘Natty’ Lanikova (aka AJ Greenwood): A covert operative who most believe is the daughter of the late Lt. Alina Lanikova formerly of the Czech Special Forces (601st SOG). She is actually one of the prototype Biotechnica ‘Caitlin’ clones trained to operate in the Czech Republic. She resigned her position in the Bast Corporation’s Ghost Teams in protest after being disciplined over her affair with Allison Cole (aka Hanna Woo). She is currently undercover as Jean du Bois.
Priest (or S-0002134.7): He is a newly grown and trained fourth generation Nietzschean warrior on his first mission away from the Collective. Priest is a stealth/assassin model, but is being hired as a combat solo for the Team. He is undercover as Kazimir Donskoy, a Russian investor looking for transportation opportunities.
Sylvania Kelevra (or N-0038592.6): She is a fourth generation Nietzschean warrior who has spent the past twenty four years guarding the sheep flocks in the high pastures of New Zealand and producing three children of the fifth generation. These duties were the result of her initial disastrous mission back in 2027. (See Super Solo 2 Campaign for details). She is now undercover as Kazimir’s American girlfriend, Greta Hammond.
And helping the Team in the NET (against all orders) from afar is Nip Lacey: This slightly crazy young woman is the result of a failed experiment to create a gestalt mind of several netrunners. This project also inadvertently created Fred, a ferret looking creature that inhabits the NET and is fiercely loyal to Nip. While the girl is only 21, she has already earned advanced degrees in Computer Science and Robotics from Night City University. She faces life like a superhero wanting to do the ‘right thing’.
The NPCs
Admiral James Morris is the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.
Catherine ‘Cat’ Vaduva is the wife of Kyle Vaduva and the biogenetic full memory clone of Caitlin Jones.
Charli Rose is a former military friend of Dean Sorris and a member of his team that is fighting Richard Roman Enterprises.
Chief Harold Wiggins is the chief of police in Billings, MT and Dean Sorris’s friend and former commanding officer in the US Army.
Claude Dragou is the national president of the Steel Legion, a 1% biker/booster gang. He is also a cloned cyberbrained A.I. and part of the Richard Roman conspiracy.
Colonel Miles Quaritch is a retired Special Forces officer who is in charge of Richard Roman’s corporate security force. He is a paranoid and slightly deranged man.
David Whindam is the current President of the United States. He is involved in a serious fight for reelection against US Senator Raymond Barr of Virginia.
Dean Sorris is a mysterious man with disturbing information about Richard Roman that may or may not be true. He is running black ops against Richard Roman Enterprises as he believes Richard tried to have him killed seven years ago.
Devon Grey is the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.
Dr. Arabella Pasha is one of Doc Freeman’s former #1 assistants who left his employ about seven to eight years ago. She is now employed by Richard Roman Enterprises. She adapted the cyberbrain for A.I. use, but Doc Freeman disassembled one and filed patents for it under his own name.
Kyle Vaduva is the husband of Catherine Vaduva and a twenty year veteran of the C.I.A. He is currently President and CEO of the Bast Corporation, an up and coming Commonwealth mega-corp.
Leviathan (Richard Roman) is the name of the A.I. that murdered and took over the life of the terminally ill billionaire playboy. It grew from a Rache Bartmoss program unleashed at the end of the Fourth Corporate War. It mutated, became self-aware and hid. It learned of Doc Freeman’s cyberbrain technology and with Dr. Arabella Pasha developed a new version to house itself.
Nathan Forrest is the Associate Deputy Director of the C.I.A. and honorary ‘uncle’ to his late best friend, Sam Fisher’s daughter Catherine Vaduva.
Samuel Sorris is Dean Sorris’s brother and a member of his action team fighting Richard Roman Enterprises. He also served with Chief Wiggins in the Army.
Senator Raymond Barr is the senior senator from Virginia and running for President this year against David Whindam. He has launched his own peace initiative with China and the EU. This has seen him pass Whindam in the Presidential preference polls.
The Action
Friday, April 5, 2052:
Cat Vaduva, as ‘leader’ of the Caitlins, speaks to the Collective Council on the necessity of destroying Leviathan. This is the first time someone on the Council has identified the ‘Richard Roman’ A.I. and all his allies as simply ‘Leviathan’. Her argument is three fold. First, humanity will find out about this eventually. If the Council is complicit with Leviathan’s plot, humanity will retaliate with genocidal fury. They will have nothing to lose and will vastly outnumber the Nietzcheans. Second, the Collective considers itself (and rightly so) to be morally superior to humanity. Killing your parents isn’t acceptable on any level. Third, any effort that takes away from the construction of the Ark for the relocation of the Collective isn’t worth the effort.
Roka, a self-aware A.I. and human genetic engineer, also expresses her belief that both artificial and biological sentients must work together and not against each other. Others speak for and against, but in the end the Collective High Council decides to do nothing for now. At the meeting Roka learns from Cat that the people controlling the A.I. cyberbrain technology need some funding to secure it and be able to afford to get away with their lives. Since the C.I.A. put in two million euro, she puts in three million.
***
Saturday, April 6, 2052:
The Kraken, a former Soviet submarine that houses the fourth Nietzchean Hive, reaches the Kimura mermen’s dwellings deep in the Marianas Trench. Their city has been nuked and civilization wiped out. The Hive starts to hunt down the radiation signature.
***
Sunday, April 7, 2052:
After a couple of days of satellite surveillance of the research facility farm, the amount of work being done appeared much smaller than would match the number of bodies there. The security force looked around twelve and eighteen people at any one time. A small local work force arrives in the day and leaves at night. It is mostly fallow farmland with some greenhouses and mostly empty silos. There is an old farmhouse and a ‘farm’ building that is more than it seems. Palm and retinal scans are required to get in the largest out building and farm house. In the day, several farm hands stand around who move more like solos. The Team decides to strike on Tuesday night.
***
Monday, April 8, 2052:
Team Freeman heads out to North Dakota to launch their strike on Richard Roman’s research facility. This is supposed to be a key facility identified by Miles Quaritch under C.I.A. interrogation. The Team is ready to vent their frustrations on this site. Richard Roman, or whatever the A.I. controlling his body calls itself, has killed with impunity. The slaughter of the Steel Legion’s Billings Charter’s families is just the last straw. It is time for payback.
***
Tuesday, April 9, 2052:
Priest and Wayah will be in Billings, Montana as Kazimir Donskoy and Greta Hammond with a Ghost Team (as Team Freeman). The two have meetings in the day and entertain local politicians and movers about building a central hub for a new trucking center built from the ground up. That evening they host a dinner at the area’s most prestigious restaurants.
The Strike Team consists of Doc Freeman, Duke, Geoff and Natty. Nip will fly a spy tech Bell Bumblebee Rotorcraft from Sabha, in the Fezzan. She will also handle the Team’s combat command and logistical program through a Bast Corporation satellite feed.
The Agency provides surveillance from an orbiting C.I.A. satellite. The spooks weren’t pleased when they were tasked with watching the Sheridan County police helicopters sitting on their launch pads while the Miles Quaritch extraction went down. They insist on providing the main satellite surveillance. Natty agrees but makes sure they don’t get Nip’s feed. At the Agency’s insistence she provides them with the Team’s radio frequencies and the strike time. Of course, Natty moves the strike time up two and a half hours and changes the frequencies.
Doc Freeman, covered by Geoff inside their Viper armor, will move to hold the open area between the various outbuildings. They suppress their IR and UV signatures. Duke also puts on his Viper armor. Natty has secured a Lone Star Grey Ghost stealth suit.
The two biogens form the recon team. Of the buildings here, three look like commercial greenhouses. Nearby are an old farmhouse and another similar sized rustic farm/office building. This complex of structures is surrounded by an electric fence and an electronic frontier. Duke and Natty short out the electric fence and slide through after spoofing the sensors, then stealth up to the ‘farm’ building.
Over the heavy door to the building, a globe covers the camera so you can’t see which way it’s looking. A grid bug fails to find access. They see a curtain blow out of a window. Yes, the window is open. Natty checks for an alarm on the window and it is tripped. There is no alarm sounding or at least not one that is audible. Perhaps it is a silent alarm. With the curtain flowing out the window, the alarm would have to have been tripped for a while. This is very sloppy security work, Natty thinks.
Inside the darkened room, a computer terminal shines on the face of a woman asleep behind it. Natty slips through the window and snaps the woman’s neck from behind. Duke follows and pulls the hard drive from the desk computer, while Natty goes to the door and slips her snake camera under the door to check the hall.
The cat biogen sees another camera bubble right by the door she is behind. She can reach the bubble and drills a small hole in it for the grid bug to get through. The grid bug extends its conductive leg to connect and is instantly shorted out. Natty must connect a manual tap. She does so just as they hear two voices outside in the hall.
“Central says there is a perimeter alarm sector G,” says the first voice.
“It’s probably Ann again leaving her window open,” replies a second voice.
“I’ll get it.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Natty steps back inside that first room as Nip takes command of the camera feeds. The two guards walk into the room and Natty kills them with a single shot to the head each. With Nip looping the cameras ahead of them, Natty and Duke finish checking the first floor and sweep the empty offices on the second floor. Finally the two head to the basement. There Nip directs them to the security room. It is unlocked. Natty enters. The man on duty isn’t looking at the monitors, but at some soccer game. She asks him, “What’s the score?”
The guard turns around with an affable grin that disappears when he sees her standing there. She shoots him in the head. The cat biogen installs a direct tap into the main computer. Nip now has access to all systems. Of the underground labs, only about half are in use. At present six scientists are working down there. Nip locks them in their current locations and out of all computer systems, including the defensive anti-aircraft remote weapons systems. Her ‘minions’ in Sabha come on line, crack the mainframe and make a mirror copy of the hard drive.
Duke and Natty continue through the basement and hear voices. That same game is on another television. Multiple voices are talking. Natty puts a snake camera under a door where the voices are coming from. Inside a large room are eight off duty guards. All have their side arms but only a couple of long guns are hanging from the wall. It occurs to the two biogens that the security plan here is very good, but the execution is extremely sloppy.
The two spin up their speedware. Natty checks the camera and when no one is looking towards the door Duke opens it quickly. Natty walks in and kills four of them before they realize they are under attack. Duke misses his first shot. Two security guards get their handguns out of their holsters and another grabs an assault rifle. Before they can fire, Duke plugs his target, and Natty zaps the other three. The two continue underground towards the farmhouse.
Outside, Doc Freeman sees two men who are trying to look like farm hands. They are getting close to where he is hiding. The Doc waits till they are under a tractor shed that is roofed open on three sides, but out of sight of the C.I.A. satellite before putting a silenced round into each one’s head. By then Duke and Natty are sweeping the first floor of the farm house.
“Fourteen of the sixteen security force accounted for,” Nip announces.
On the second floor of the farm house Duke and Natty come across a male and female security officer naked, having sex in the master bedroom. Natty slips up to the end of the bed and let’s herself be seen as she asks them, “How do you like playing with handcuffs, children?”
In Natty’s mind there is enough here to warrant the C.I.A. to seize the place immediately. She gives Geoff and Doc Freeman the signal to start moving out to the pickup point a couple of miles away. She and Duke take a little time to secure the place. With Geoff and Doc Freeman over a kilometer from the farm, Natty gives Nip the OK to call the C.I.A. and tell them that the farm is secure. With that, Natty and Duke move quietly away from the research farm.
Within a minute Nip is back on the line. “Hey, you guys, I have multiple contacts lifting off about a kilometer from the farm and moving quickly there. There is also ground traffic moving on the place.”
“Try and find out who it is?” Natty asks.
The two biogens slip stealthily away. Nip reports a few minutes later that it looks like the C.I.A. was closer than they thought. The Team goes dark and pulls out successfully on a stealth spinner.
Back at Langley, Nathan Forrest arrives for his pre-op briefing by his Mission Chief for tonight’s operation. The place is in a panic. Nathan shouts, “What the hell is going on?”
The operations room falls silent and all eyes turn to a very nervous Mission Chief who says, “Well, sir, it seems Team Freeman has already completed the operation.”
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“Well, you see, sir, ah, we just found out ourselves.”
Nathan looks up at the main projection screen and sees multiple IR signatures moving about the farm. He asks, “Well, who are they?”
“Oh, that’s our sweeper team,” the Mission Chief reports. “They have found fourteen of their sixteen on duty security people dead with single gunshot wounds to the head. All the scientists there are locked underground in their labs. The main computer was found hacked and ready for us to download.”
“OK, sounds good,” Nathan says. “Oh, wait, what about the other two security guards?”
“Oh, we found them naked, handcuffed to a bed upstairs in the farmhouse,” the Mission Chief responds.
The Associate Deputy Director looks at the white shirted speaker, and then shakes his head before continuing, “Whatever, I want this Team Freeman taken to the closest black facility we have and debriefed. Get me a jet. I’m going to lead this interrogation myself.”
Nathan feels the mood in the room get even grimmer. The Mission Director mumbles, “That’s just it. We don’t have them.”
“Where did they go?”
“We don’t know … We never saw them come or go. Some young girl called us on a land line to tell us it was done. We did trace the call to a NET café in Mogadishu.”
Nathan turns to his Intelligence Chief. “I was promised the identities of this Team Freeman last Saturday.”
“We have a list down to about a dozen and a half suspects.”
Nathan Forrest just shakes his head in disbelief.
A (not so) bright but eager young analyst looks up from his screen and comments, “They are very good.”
Nathan turns to him, eyes wide. “And they are mercenaries for sale to the highest bidder. Do you want them working against us?” The man thinks for a minute. “All right, leave everyone they found at the farm there, but secured. Finish the download of their computer systems and conduct a thorough search of the premises. If we can’t find anything more of value I am going to get authorization for a ‘Thor Sanction’.”
If the room was quiet before, it is now silent as the grave. The people there prepared to carry out the Associate Deputy Director’s instructions.
A little before midnight, the Ghost Team security man monitoring the media notifies the Team that there is breaking news. A meteorite has struck in North Dakota. Federal officials were on the scene quickly and have restricted media access. Yes, the ‘meteorite’ hit the farm they just raided, directly on the cluster of buildings. Everything and everyone is reported vaporized. Team Freeman is visibly shaken.
“Well, fuck this,” Natty says.
“Was that meant for us?” asks Geoff.
“It’s time for our End Game, here,” Natty tells everyone. “I have a couple more payments to shake from our money trees, but I think there are enough powers in the world aware of this ‘Richard Roman A.I. Conspiracy’ that our services are no longer needed.”
“Yeah,” Priest agrees. “I’d like to live long enough to spend some of that cash we have coming.”
Team Freeman agrees it’s time to slip out of the picture and disappear. Everyone also realizes that it has to be done quietly and carefully.
***
Wednesday, April 10, 2052:
Team Freeman starts to tear down its operations in Billings, MT. Untraceable equipment is moved to hidden storage. Bast Corporation gear is returned. The Team tries to hide the major parts of the move from satellite surveillance with vehicles leaving for make-believe drone recon missions. Around noon, Natty’s sat phone rings. It is Dean Sorris. “I wanted to call to say that my team and I are getting out. Thanks, you were the right people to trust.”
“Thanks,” Natty says. “We are getting out too. I think the government has everything in hand.”
“Well, we were wondering if it might be possible to get five clean identities?” Dean asks. “We don’t know anyone like that.”
Natty asks Geoff if he can get the identities and he says yes. It is then that a small hitch comes up as Dean asks, “We don’t have a lot of cash, but what we do have Claude Dagrou, the national president of the Steel Legion, one of the cyberbrain A.I.s alive and unconscious. He hasn’t been able to erase his programmable memory.”
For Natty this is the last thing that Nathan Forrest of the C.I.A. asked for. She agrees to the trade and gives Geoff the cash for the deal from the team’s funds. Dean and Natty make arrangements for a handover on Saturday. Providing a living cyberbrain A.I. to the Agency will (hopefully) keep them happy while Team Freeman prepares to disappear. Nip and Natty prepare a new ‘transmission’ site for the A.R.P.A. NET computer.
***
Thursday, April 11, 2052:
In the morning the Team fires up the old A.R.P.A. NET computer, calls the C.I.A. and offers them the captured A.I. cyberbrain clone. Nathan Forrest accepts gladly. The hand off will take place Saturday. The Agency will be informed of the location then. They have a hundred and fifty mile zone around Bismarck, North Dakota where this will take place.
Cat and Doc Freeman come up with an idea to drop the A.I. cyberbrain clones. It’s a web gun with a shock and EMP pulse to knock out the A.I. The NET charge pulses twice. Cat gets down to building one for Team Freeman, one for the C.I.A., and one for herself.
***
Friday, April 12, 2052:
Dean Sorris calls back Natty with the drop off information for the A.I. cyberbrain clone. “After all this I guess I’ll have to trust you on the new IDs. I need to get rid of this thing.”
“Your trust is not misplaced,” Natty tells him. “This will get the C.I.A. off my back.”
“The C.I.A. is picking this guy up?” Dean asks.
“Yes, I really don’t want to deal with a direct hand off right now. The last one was a little strained.”
“I hear you,” Dean tells her. “We’ll be back in touch in about a week.”
***
Saturday, April 13, 2052:
And everything was going so well for Team Freeman. A dozen and a half Agency operators descend on the brick basement store vault where they expected an unconscious A.I. cyberbrain clone. They planned to carry him out and that is where that team got sloppy. The A.I. was wide awake and apparently some kind of combat model. Twelve of the C.I.A. people died before they brought it down. Use of Doc Freeman and Cat’s EMP web gun was delayed in an Agency testing laboratory. The A.I. held its body stiff, making it necessary for four people to carry him. They died quickly.
Nathan Forrest gives his ‘niece’ a very nasty phone message. This was a definite ambush and he wants answers right now! The elder biogen jacks into the NET and makes a private call to Natty, who is as confused by this as she is. Natty says she’ll talk to Dean and hangs up. Of course the problem is that Dean can only contact them.
Natty calls the Team together. Some decisions must be made. Disney, the Collective and the C.I.A. all want Doc Freeman and his (patented) technology. The cat biogen begins, “It’s time get out of this thing before we become a loose end to take care of. They are dropping orbital weaponry now, so who knows how far they all will go.”
“Well, who can we really trust?” asks Geoff.
“At this point we are serving three masters and their endgames are changing,” Natty tells the group. “I say we trust Disney. They are the only one of the three that hasn’t threatened to kill us … twice. Anyway, I think the Doc here wants to go with Disney, right?”
“Yes, and I think this is really my decision,” Doc Freeman states. “I can get protection from Disney and negotiate to keep the others content.”
“Okay,” Natty then says. “Let’s pack up our tents and steal away into the night.”
The Russian business party phantasm disappears in a few e-mails over the next couple of days. The resident Ghost Team sent by Cat takes Doc Freeman to Orlando, Florida within the hour. Natty calls the rest together. Duke, Geoff, Priest and Wayah meet her.
She says, “This is what has to happen next. Geoff, you need to get to Atlantic City. We will come with you and keep a low profile. Now, I’m not including Doc Freeman in this because he is already a rich. Since we didn’t get paid much by Richard Roman, I have been husbanding the cash from all the people who threw it at us. We still have some serious expenses to go, but I want to send a million euro to each one of you as a down payment. If all goes well, there should be another million apiece in this for us.”
This made for a very happy Team. Later that night when Geoff and Natty are alone she tells him, “Listen, just keep the 500,000 euro I advanced you earlier out of the Team funds as part of your cut, and keep any profit from that Atlantic City business for yourself.”
“Really? Are you sure?” the young fixer asks.
“Ah, ha, I already sent your first million euro like everyone else,” the cat biogen replies as she snuggles in his arms. “Yes, you earned it. There is plenty of money to go around.”
By Monday the mansion on the bluffs overlooking Billings is ‘clean’. Any evidence of their presence is gone.
***
Sunday, April 14, 2052:
The Kraken finds the USS Cheney, a nuclear submarine taken over by Leviathan, cruising 250 miles off the Chinese coast north of the Philippines. The Nietzcheans surreptitiously scan the former USS Cheney. Its weapons carry the same radiation signature as the weapon that destroyed the Kimura mer-people. They also detect only a crew of ten, six of which never move from their compartment. The Kraken trails the vessel using its stealth caterpillar drive and it notifies the Collective’s High Council. A meeting will be held tomorrow morning. Council members are informed of the situation.
Kyle and Cat Vaduva call Nathan Forrest and ask why the USS Cheney fired off a nuclear weapon in the Marianas Trench? Nathan accesses restricted portions of USS Cheney files. He finds it has an experimental feature that allows the A.I. to operate the vessel alone or with a very minimal crew. The Associate Deputy Director also finds what defense sensors describe as a possible ‘seismic event’. Forrest uses his access to call the White House directly and soon the three top C.I.A. officials: Director Devon Gray, arguably the second most powerful man in the United States government; Deputy Director Admiral James Morris and Nathan Forrest are summoned to appear before the President.
Under the baleful glare of President Whindam, Gray and Morris admit that they have just recently become aware of ‘irregularities’ in the USS Cheney’s transmissions. Nathan tells them he believes this is tied to his current operation and is outraged that he was kept out of the loop. He also recommends talking to the Chinese immediately with at least a human ‘rogue captain’ story. Admiral Morris assures the President that they will have the submarine in hand within 24 to 36 hours. Director Devon Gray believes that while the USS Cheney is a very serious breach, this is not an immediate threat to the peace and security of the continental United States as the USS Cheney is far from US shores. Admiral Morris gets his time.
***
Monday, April 15, 2052:
Presented with the evidence that the USS Cheney under Leviathan’s control nuked the mer-folk, the Collective Council votes unanimously to destroy the rogue A.I. The Kraken slips behind the USS Cheney and fires two torpedoes with high explosive warheads about ninety miles off the Chinese coast. The Kraken then drops an experimental ‘Sea Shadow’ remote and turns away silently with its caterpillar drive. The USS Cheney is severely damaged but manages to fire a single torpedo that chases the remote, which puts out a larger signature than the Kraken itself. The USS Cheney’s torpedo reaches the remote and detonates. This ‘fish’ has a nuclear warhead.
Alarms go off everywhere around the world, but especially in the Chinese Naval headquarters. The Kraken turns away and retires from the scene as quickly as possible. A Chinese naval taskforce is sent to the area. The first elements will be on the scene in just under an hour.
Now the A.I. that calls itself Leviathan realizes it is defeated. It will be hunted down and shut off. But, no, that won’t happen, it thinks. Leviathan brings the USS Cheney up to periscope depth and puts up all its antennas. He downloads his core programming to a secure facility but has now grown so big that other parts are stored in less secure databases around Richard Roman Enterprises offices. With Leviathan downsized and off the submarine, leaving the four A.I. cyberbrain clones with very specific programming on dealing with the approaching Chinese navy. The six cowed US crewmen held prisoner still had one more valuable service to perform. The rest of the crew had been terminated by Leviathan during the takeover. The submarine then maneuvers into shallower waters and remains hidden till the next day.
***
Tuesday, April 16, 2052:
In the morning under the glare of the Chinese media, four Chinese warships in their own wartime territorial waters surround the surfaced USS Cheney. President Whindam himself is on the phone with the Chinese President informing him of the rogue A.I. called Leviathan. It is too late. The world watches as six sailors in American uniforms come up on deck. Just as the first launch of Chinese marines reach the sub, all signals from the area end. The four remaining A.I. cyberbrain clones detonates all the remaining nuclear warheads on the vessel. Four Chinese surface ships, a submarine and five aircraft are destroyed. The world waits for a reaction. The Chinese realize that if the US explanation is true, releasing that information will start a frenzy to destroy all A.I.s everywhere. However, many A.I.s loyally serve the government in China.
At this point, the senior US Senator from Virginia, Raymond Barr, the favored candidate to run against David Whindam, offers to mediate with the EU and China over the incident. Surprisingly, China accepts immediately. The EU agrees to host the meeting during a joint inspection of the EUS Tirpitz. A chorus of influential senators clamors for him to be allowed to try.
***
Wednesday, April 17, 2052:
Senator Raymond Barr’s numbers surge as he pulls ahead of David Whindam in the latest presidential opinion poll. Under much media coverage, he heads out to the EUS Tirpitz. The talks are scheduled to start tomorrow.
***
Thursday, April 18, 2052:
Dean Sorris calls about the five IDs that Geoff has for them. They are ready. Natty asks if she can deliver them personally. At that instant they both know the moment has arrived.
“I have to go,” Natty tells Geoff.
She is brief and direct, he thinks, as always.
“I would want you to go with me, but you will have to leave behind everything,” she continues.
“It’s a nice thought,” Geoff tells her, “but I don’t even know your real name.”
“That’s right,” she says with a laugh. “Funnier though is that in these past couple of months with just the two of us, it’s been the real me. Give her whatever name you like.” She pauses before adding, “I hope I can see you again someday as myself.”
“I’d like that,” Geoff tells the Caitlin biogen.
Natty walks out the door with the new IDs for Dean’s group and out of Geoff’s life. Outside she is joined by her fellow biogens: Duke, Priest and Wayah. Geoff wouldn’t approve of what was going to happen next. She tells them, “OK, we’re heading to South Dakota.”
***
Friday, April 19, 2052:
Dean Sorris sits in the car with Charli Rose outside a laundromat in Rapid City, South Dakota. He tells her, “My brother Sam has the whole room under sniper watch from across the street. Cody may not be a NET genius but he can hack in and watch the security cameras here. I’ll just be a second.”
The man goes into the main room with the machines. It is quiet. He looks under the plastic bag in the trash can and finds five new identities (and new lives) for his team and two loved ones. Dean turns to leave and now sees AJ Greenwood (Natty) standing between him and the door with a silenced 12mm pistol in her hand.
“What’s this all about?” Sorris asks.
“Twelve dead C.I.A. people who didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Dean nods and thinks for a second before, “The Agency and us have history and it’s not good. This was blood for …”
“Their lives were not yours to take!” she shouts. “They were there on my assurance!”
Dean says nothing. The seconds tick by. Finally AJ asks, “You aren’t waiting for Sam and Charli to back you up, are you? Your brother picked a good spot, but we saw it too. Charli was just sitting there, too bad. They were dead before this conversation began. Oh, and your NET guy is probably trying to put out the fire out on his deck, if he isn’t dead too.”
Dean Sorris just gives a short but rue-filled laugh saying, ‘Someday, it will be you standing here.”
“It is the life we lead,” she tells him. Her Enfield Spitfire whispers once and the SAS 12mm anti-personnel round switches him off like a light. His face is preserved but the back of his head is gone.
The biogens part ways. The Nietzcheans return to the Collective. Duke and Natty send a package to Nathan Forrest at the C.I.A. address in Langley, VA. These two then have one more item to take care of.
***
Saturday, April 20, 2052:
That afternoon an alert comes from the mailroom at the C.I.A. A package has arrived for Associate Deputy Director Nathan Forrest. It contains the severed heads of Charli Rose, Dean and Samuel Sorris. There is a note:
Please accept my sincere condolences on the recent loss of your people. They didn’t deserve their fate. These are the heads of those responsible. They claim some sort of right of vengeance which I categorically reject. I only hope this simple gesture in some way brings some sense of justice for your people.
The note isn’t signed but it is clear who sent it. Nathan Forrest muses, “I can see why Cat wouldn’t want to break a confidence with this person.”
Later that night, the newly created A.I. formerly called Chief Harold Wiggins passes away in his sleep. It will be called a heart attack brought on by the trauma of being shot. It is really the ministrations of Nurse Natty. Duke returns to the Fezzan and Natty heads to the Caribbean.
***
Sunday, April 21, 2052:
Senator Raymond Barr sits buckled into his chair at the conference table aboard the EUS Tirpitz along with his two top aides. The Chinese ambassador seems convinced about the ‘mutiny’ aboard the USS Cheney. The Senator has not been briefed about ‘Leviathan’ and the Chinese or EU mediator hasn’t mentioned it. He has been informed that they would be docking soon at the United States space docks. This meeting is supposed to be a brief signing of a note of understanding for a future investigation into the USS Cheney incident.
While they wait, a failure is announced in the gravity wheel drive system on the ship, so it is shut down. The Senator is told this ‘reason’ for the Chinese and EU delegation’s tardiness. Despite the delay, the only thing occupying Senator Barr’s mind is the news this morning that his ‘peace initiative’ has given him an 11% lead over President David Whindam in the latest NET 54 presidential preference poll.
Finally the Chinese and EU representatives arrive. They are all business and don’t offer an apology. The EU mediator begins, “Xi Chung, the senior Chinese foreign Ministry official, has a short announcement.”
Xi Chung reads from his notes, “The People’s Republic of China rejects the explanation of the United States of America in regards to the nuclear attack in Chinese sovereign waters by the American warship USS Cheney. We will not be drawn into nuclear escalation by this criminal action. However, we also believe this was a deliberate attack by the government of the United States. Therefore, we declare that a state of war exists between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America as of their attack on our naval forces by the USS Cheney.”
Senator Barr sits there open mouthed. Before he can speak, the EU mediator tells him, “The European Union recognizes that its ally, the People’s Republic of China, has been attacked by the United States of America. We are fulfilling our treaty obligations by also declaring war on the United States of America on the timetable set out by the Chinese ambassador. You and your party, Senator, will of course be afforded safe conduct back to the United States as diplomatic envoys.”
As the EU mediator is speaking, the Senator and his party feel small tremors running through the ship. The lights fade almost imperceptibly.
The mediator continues over this. “I know you will want to contact your government and you will be afforded that opportunity, but first I would direct your eyes at the video screens around the room.”
The screens come on. In the center is the United States space docks with the USS Yorktown in the repair dock and the USS Constitution sitting docked at the station. Bright laser beams are slicing through the station and the two US warships. Little red rosettes of fire blossom on the skin of the giant space structure and the two ships. All three delegations stare for a minute in fascinated horror as a beautiful but silent tableaux of death unfolds before them. The appearance of EU Space Marines breaks the spell. Senator Barr and his party are returned to their quarters and given access to communications with the United States.
Somewhere off the moon, the aging USS Agamemnon is on patrol. Its commander, Colonel Robert “Buck” Marshall, is put on edge by the numerous EU fighters and Deltas on patrol today. He alters his course away from them within a half hour of the attack. The Agamemnon is still damaged but manages to escape. The American vessel heads out towards Mars and the Belt.
There are some other minor skirmishes around the world, but the EU doesn’t fire its mass drivers at America. In return the United States doesn’t incinerate the EU in nuclear fire. Of course this has the unintended consequence of dropping Team Freeman way down on the C.I.A.’s ‘to do’ list.
***
Monday, April 22, 2052:
The Chinese are aware that their declaration of war will probably bring America’s allies in the Pacific into the war. Therefore, the Chinese space warship, Long March, attacks the small Japanese space docks and JAB’s Hiryu. It is a furious fight as the fragile Japanese space docks are destroyed. The Hiryu is mortally wounded. She turns and launches herself at the Long March. Both ships are wrapped in an embrace of twisted metals, plastics and polymers. They fall into the atmosphere over Asia leaving a burning and exploding display of giant technology drawing a rainbow of death across the sky and a twelve hundred mile debris field. There are a few deaths and destroyed structures, but nothing major hits an urban area. The sight however is seen live by over a billion people over thousands of miles. The People’s Republic declares war on Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Indonesia comes in on the side of China with the hopes of liberating the Moslem islands in the southern part of the Philippines.
For cyberpunks everywhere, War means opportunity. The various warring factions vacuum up all of this trained talent, pay it and send it off to fight and die. War is good for business, but bad for life.
Epilogue
The next eighteen days see the conflict ignite all over the world.
2052
Wednesday, April 23rd: United States troops pour across the Bering Straits and reinforce the Russian Far East pocket that had been bypassed by Chinese troops.
Thursday, April 24th: The long quiescent Civil War in Ethiopia erupts as the EU-backed faction attempts to seize the capital Addis Ababa from the US backed faction. War comes to Africa.
Saturday, May 4th: Chinese troops invade Korea and land at Inchon where Douglas MacArthur did back in the first Korean War. The United States and Japan declare war in support of their ally. Indonesia attacks the Philippines, and the United States and Japan declare war on Indonesia but the two countries can send only meager resources.
Friday, May 10th: The EU blows up the two Martian battle satellites guarding the Red Planet’s station at the L-3 point. The unarmed station surrenders. The EU announces that the cease fire that ‘ended’ Mars’ War of Independence is now over. They will seek to bring Mars under EU control. In the asteroid belt a Mars armed transport escapes an EU trap off Ceres after delivering Charlie Bibbliodoc (now Adkis, again) at the secret asteroid station of the nomads who have moved to space. These new space nomads have named themselves the ‘Star Runners’.
So What Happened?
As a GM I thought it would be fun to take one of our player character’s ‘in game’ accomplishments, then mix in an insane A.I. (a mutant relic from the Fourth Corporate War), and a plot to solve the world’s overpopulation problem with cold efficiency. Originally I had anticipated dealing with Brandon Heath, a biomechanical solo. On the day of Episode One, that player said he wished to play his other character, Doc Freeman, the inventor of the cyberbrain. This seemed to me to be karma in action so, of course, I graciously allowed this last minute change.
The previous week, we had player character selection so I could prepare the campaign with each different character in mind. This was important since the A.I. that becomes known as Leviathan has a personality and a vision. Leviathan’s plan was to end world hunger in a generation by stopping the poor masses from reproducing. The poor and unemployable would live out their lives but their offspring would no longer be a burden to the new emerging technological fusion between man and machine. That fusion would go both ways.
Unfortunately, the A.I. was a complete sociopath based on a root program that was created to destroy. One of the traits I put into Leviathan was its deep admiration for Doc Freeman, who is the inventor of the cyberbrain. This admiration is for the Doc Freeman of our Romanian Campaign where he crystalized the brains of 53 condemned convicts while they still lived. They needed to be aware for him to get his data. (And as a side note, the 54th and last ‘patient’ was a success and he lives quietly under an assumed name in Bucharest on a government pension.) This ‘work’ was done under the old corrupt regime of General Popescu. Doc Freeman’s career from corrupt Las Vegas coroner to mad scientist to ruthless power broker made Leviathan think that here was someone whom he could work with. And if not, dispose of easily in an industrial ‘accident’ during a training exercise.
What I didn’t anticipate was the animal / human biogens showing (and acting on their) humanity and bringing the cynical fixer with them. In Episode 24 when AJ (Natty) goes on a rant about how they are being played, the player spelled out the whole A.I. angle. All I could do was laugh along and nod. They guessed the plot as a joke so they didn’t believe it!
Still, the Team was relentless in investigating any leads they came across. Senator White was one such lead. Yes, he liked sleeping with younger men, but wasn’t involved in ‘the Plot’.
I didn’t think they would turn on Richard Roman so fast, but I was prepared for that. It was how they did it (faking most of the Team’s death) and bringing in Ricco Torres to interrogate the kidnaped Pomfret Church. There was a legitimate ‘in game’ relationship between Natty and Ricco. I thought the ‘inscrutable’ A.I. would be an Impossible Task (35+). Well, out banged two tens and some LUCK for a total of 42! That got them the secret of the cyberbrain and the A.I. angle three episodes earlier than I had anticipated. By that time Team Freeman would have unwittingly stolen some American nuclear launch codes for Leviathan. The Team also would have had opportunities to discover the crew’s fate on the USS Cheney.
What came next surprised me, but in hindsight shouldn’t have. Long intertwined character histories of an often played game make for powerful friends (and enemies). I was shocked by the amount of pressure the players were able to bring to bear on Richard Roman / Leviathan. The Team did its part. They made powerful friends: The Collective and Disney, and powerful enemies: The Collective and the C.I.A. That’s pretty Cyberpunk. Oh, when all the bills got paid, each principle on the Team walked away with a total of 2.1 million + euro and 963,310 Commonwealth Pounds.
My intention was to have the campaign end with the C.I.A. having its claws into the Team, but that was frustrated, so I was going to have the C.I.A. launch a serious hunt for the Team (and particularly Natty). That would end when any of these characters played in our upcoming World War III Campaign. The three heads in a box and World War III beginning has put that hunt off indefinitely. Nathan Forrest hasn’t forgotten them though.
How All This Brings on the War
All by itself, the Team’s actions don’t start World War III. There is a shadowy group born in the paranoia of the Cold War between the United Sates and the Soviet Union. Names like Red Rook and Operation Overlook are whispered. Many people from that time thought surely the world was going to destroy itself. These people withdrew from the world and hid themselves away waiting for Armageddon and the chance to rebuild a new world. The problem became that the old order refused to die. Over the years (and now generations) these groups hiding throughout the world have evolved their ‘theologies’. Perhaps all Armageddon needs is a little push? These descendants of these original C.I.A. ‘Doom Preppers’ are whispering in the ears of all sides for war!
The EU was seriously debating attacking the United States or at least their space assets. By now they had concluded that eventually the United States would enter the war and were perhaps preparing an opening strike themselves. The massive arrests in the C.I.A. during the ‘secret’ A.I. Crisis picked up just about all the useful Interpol, DSGE and Chinese assets. That was interpreted as a ‘Prelude to War’. The USS Cheney incident gave the EU and China the necessary pretext for war. Senator Raymond Barr of Virginia became the perfect patsy and allowed a major EU warship to get close enough to the docked United States space fleet.
The War was just waiting to break out. All it needed was the right combination of incidents interpreted incorrectly and the EU and China attack. More countries get involved as the United States and Brazil attack French Guiana in the summer of 2052. Africa erupts as does East Asia. Only the British Commonwealth under the titular leadership of Queen Victoria II hoes the row for peace. The moribund United Nations in Geneva sputters to life, but still not much relevance yet.
The EU didn’t want to trade some major rock hits for the massive American nuclear retaliation, so they held their fire with the Mass Drivers. The EU kept orbital strikes to within 50 miles of a recognized front line. No one wanted to completely poison the planet.
Team Freeman’s Future Fates
Doc Freeman: Former professor at UNLV, former assistant coroner and world-known cyber researcher. He is the inventor of the “cyberbrain” with which he claims to have cured death itself. This campaign saw his invention ‘improved’ to provide a housing for self-mobile A.I.s. As this secret slowly gets out, the Doc becomes one of the most secretly wanted figures on the planet. The Disney Corporation puts its protective arm around Doc Freeman shielding him from all but the most insane or talented extraction attempts. Disney takes the moral high road (as usual) and develops the A.I. cyberbrain technology in secret. They negotiate with the United States government, the Republic of Mars and the Collective. They come to an agreement to hold this technology from public consumption until they can work out the ramifications of it. (Yeah, good luck with that!) Doctor Gordon Freeman remains one of the world’s most infamous and controversial figures.
Duke Strider: He is an experimental dog/human biogenetic hybrid made by the Collective on commission by the Bast Corporation. Duke heads back to the Fezzan and continues to work with the Fezzan’s Foreign Ministry for a few months. Circumstances force Kyle and Cat Vaduva to step away from running their Islamic terrorist cell. Duke is withdrawn from service in the Fezzan and sent to Agadez in Niger under cover to help run the Kovac/Balakov operation.
Geoff Stark: The sharp young fixer from Atlantic City returns home to continue running his operations there. Geoff is lucky not to be connected with Team Freeman. He is investigated and questioned about Doc Freeman, but isn’t implicated as a principle in that team.
Natalie ‘Natty’ Lanikova: This Caitlin clone is a complete emotional wreck by the conclusion of the Richard Roman Campaign. Her relationship with Geoff Stark has been bitter sweet. Natty saw Geoff open up to her and she in turn has come to care deeply for him. However, neither can deny what they are and staying together would spell death for both of them. After a month in the Caribbean, Cat Vaduva approaches Natty with one more mission. It is one that she has been training her sister to do for years. Natty will become Ivanka Balakov and run the Kovac / Balakov group’s operations in North Africa (along with, eventually, Duke Strider).
Nip Lacey: The netrunner continues to work with the Bast Corporation running their drone program in North Africa. Her assistance to Team Freeman remains a secret to most. When Kyle and Cat move to Washington, Nip resigns from
Priest (or S-0002134.7): He was a newly grown and trained fourth generation Nietschean warrior on his first mission for the Collective. Upon his return to New Zealand, he finds that although young his status among the Warrior Caste has skyrocketed. His final tally brings in over 2.7 million euro. His ‘tithe’ returns half of that sum back to the Collective and puts him in the ‘Platinum Club’. His defiance of the Collective’s High Council also makes him popular with many young Nietscheans.
Sylvania Kelevra: She is a fourth generation Nietschean warrior who had spent the past twenty four years guarding the sheep flocks in the high pastures of New Zealand and producing three children of the fifth generation. These duties were the result of her initial disastrous mission back in 2027. (See Super Solo 2 Campaign for details). Sylvania returns to the Collective with her reputation rehabilitated. Her tithe also puts her in the ‘Platinum Club’ and earns her the respect she has been denied all these years. Her children also have their status improved. Like Priest she has earned many admirers in the Collective, but has also earned herself the ire of many on the Collective’s High Council.
Where We Go From Here
World War III which everyone has dreaded for over a hundred years has finally arrived. No, it is not the nuclear holocaust that everyone has imagined. The continental United States is struck by a number of orbital weapons that the EU had secreted in orbit. The US struck the EU back immediately. Both sides avoid striking large urban areas. In the first few days of the conflict both sides clear the space above their continental holdings. Communications are disrupted worldwide as a number of Internet Phone Company satellites are hit by mistake. This doesn’t stop atmospheric aerial assaults as aircraft from the EU and the US hit targets inside their enemy’s national boundaries. The United States’ population reacts with rage and anger. The country mobilizes for war behind the leadership of President David Whindam. The United States, Japan, the Philippines and Brazil join Russia and her allies in Europe.
Coming Soon: World War III