The Unstoppable Truth

[Reverend Del]

A week of surveillance had passed and now it was time to see what they had, Fastjack had set up the entire tech they would need to make this briefing as efficient as possible.
They were sat around a table that was almost transparent; cables ran from it to a monitor on the wall, and around that monitor Fastjack had set up a dizzying variety of tools and equipment. He had in fact emptied one entire crate of Fixers equipment just to set this meting up. Sometimes Tank hated him. When he was finally ready Fastjack turned and nodded to Tank.

Tank looked at his team, Nymph looking as cool as ever, Tank had read the obituary of Max Black, such a shame that an oppressor of the people had had such a massive coronary failure. Silverfire was sitting on a crate swinging her legs too and fro like a child waiting to go someplace. Fastjack was playing with his electronics the very embodiment of Cortex Geek. Well enough daydreaming, it was time to figure out how they were going to get this done.

"Nymph, you're up first. What did you get me?"

Nymph handed Fastjack a data crystal. "Plug that in. I got everything you asked for. Max played along nicely, and then the poor dear just couldn't take it anymore. Seems I got him all worked up over nothing." She smiled. She enjoyed her work, she enjoyed it a lot.

Fastjack plugged the crystal into one of his units and a holo of the architectural plans of the Archive sprouted from the table. Every corridor, every room, all glowing with a pale blue light. Fastjack looked at it.

"Okay, from what I found out in that system the room were looking for is on the 52nd floor. In order to get there well need to pass through twenty security checkpoints. All of them have scanners and all of them will pick up any weapons were carrying apart from the snub noses, as those weapons are ceramic. You gotta love the old SiN|Tech weapons catalogue. "

"Weapons wise all our gear breaks down into tools, or at least things that look like tools, including the HMG, SMGs have a set-up time of two minutes, and the HMG requires five." This was Tanks area of expertise, guns, demolitions; basically any way of making things die with the minimum of effort and the maximum visibility. Tank was not subtle. Tank was often referred to as Plan B. If it all went wrong, he was the man who dragged their asses out of the fire. On a good run he was never needed. Shots were never fired, it was in and out.

"I've set-up the explosives, all have remote detonators and all can be set for a timer. They are discreet, well as discreet as military grade explosives get."

Tank settled down again. It was getting near the time and they could all feel it, the legwork was done all they needed to do was put it all together and come up with a plan.

"Okay so whats our entrance strategy?"

Fastjack spoke again. "We've got three external companies that service this place, all local, all difficult to infiltrate at the source, the first is the gardening outfit we've seen three times this week, the Archive has living quarters for the folks who do the really top level stuff, so they also have arboretums so those folks can avoid getting too stressed out, this is the company that tends them. Its a family corp., just a tier 1 affair. Manhattan based. So not an appropriate target, they aren't a factor in Liberty's corruption, in fact I'd go so far as to say they are a prime example of what we are after, keeping the workers in Liberty. Even if I wanted to do them some damage, I'd say that this corp. is out on principle.

"The next corp. is an interesting one, took me a long time to find the info on the Cortex but it turns out to be a subsidiary corp. owned entirely, through ridiculous amounts of shell companies and other financial nonsense, by Bowex. However anyone from this company that goes into that archive is given a rigorous background check, its sourced out to some of the best corporate hackers so it's thorough. Theres no industrial espionage opportunity. Simply put we don't have three months to go through that, and I'm not sure I trust Fixers IDs to be that airtight.

So were left with one corporation, the local tech maintenance firm. A-Tech, at first glance its a tier 1 Liberty corporation, nice and simple. Dig deeper and you find that its run by Ageira, which makes sense. We can get to these guys but its tough work. Maintenance is done on the low security hosts once a week, A-Tech doesn't handle the higher level stuff, but thats okay because we aren't after that. Were after Gunboat specs. The fact is these guys are our only hope of getting in there without raising an alarm."

"So how do we get to them?" Silverfire was intrigued.

"Not easy but it can be done. The maintenance crew runs from a local building about 20 minutes from the Archive, theres four possible land routes between the two, and the crews choice is randomised the day before they go out, so as to minimise the possibility of them being intercepted. Simply put we need that route. We cant get in without it. The next maintenance is scheduled for this Wednesday which means the route will be generated on Tuesday, somebody needs to fetch it so we can intercept that team and get in that building."

Silverfire was getting even twitchier, rocking backwards and forwards in anticipation of what Tank would say next, she knew there was only one person who could get in and out undetected, and it was her. She decided she wasn't going to wait for Tank.

"I'll do it. I can get in there, and get out again. It'll be easy. I bet they haven't even got that great security, better to keep the illusion, but I bet they come down hard on folks they catch, so Ill have to make sure I don't get caught. But I can do it."

Tank smiled, her enthusiasm for the job could be annoying at times, but there wasn't anyone better.

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Saint Del is considered a holy healer of diseases of children, but also as a protector of cattle.