[Csjarrat]

@Saithor____________
She stumbles over her words, coughing up a bit of blood and spitting it out onto the knackered wooden floorboards
before you could even react, the heavy revolver flew across the floor and into the awakened bloke's hand.
I suggest you start talking, and quick[/]
She looked at you, tearful and agonised and spoke.
It was an agent of Smith. We know her as Bex. {she spits another gob of blood onto the floor}
He cocks the revolver and takes a step forward;
Alright, alright! for fuck's sake. They were trying to do Valjenov a favour. get the Vory off his back. Said something "sinister" had been creating power vacuums; disrupting business-as-usual for years, the swooping in and getting more and more powerful.
He took another step and put the gun to the back of her head;
WHO? WHO the FUCK are you talking about?!
She sniffles and sobs, bleating out an answer;
I don't fucking know, {coughs} I just don't know. Neither did Bex. Whoever it is, Smith is royally pissed about it and is passing a lot of work out through his network and they're responding.
{coughs again, more blood spat out} The Vory must have already been reached by them, used it as an opportunity to take you out of the game once and for all. Look, I'm sorry. We're sorry.
We just wanted to help...
She starts to openly sob, genuine tears of fear rolling down her face as the revolver is pulled away from her head and into his jacket pocket.
The heavy stood next to her clips her handcuffs off and mutters;
Get the fuck out of here, GO!
She struggles to stand and wavers slowly towards you

@Profgast_________
The howl repeats, this time from up the hill on your left somewhere and is met with further howls in reply.
Something unnatural about the howls chilled you to the bone, almost making you want to run.
You pick up the pace and feel vastly safer with the van door slammed shut and locked behind you, triple checking the sensor feeds just to make sure nothing was creeping about the scrub to your right.
The driving was slow-going, the road tires occasionally struggling for grip in places but the bulk of the van provided more than enough momentum to blast through the worst of it.
Eventually the co-ords were as near to the ones given as you could get, the true central position of the GPS lay off the road and somewhere in a lightly wooded area off to your left.
You'd come to rest at the top of the old north pennine pass, the view off to your right was staggering, just truly beautiful. The hill steeply dropped off and rolling moorland spread as far as the eye could see, a crisp white blanket covered the land and the morning sun glinted off it's crystalline constituents and sparkled like a frozen sea.
i'm happy enough with your dicepool and threshold modifiers that i don't need a vehicle test for snowy driving as you're not under any pressure and can take your time.
Its about 10.30 by the time you coerce the heavy van up the snowy hill passes and arrive at your location.

@Lumen_________
: 1d6t5 0 with the -ve mods involved for this guy, thats hardly surprising!
He recoils from your slap, smacking into the machinery and slumping down into a sitting position on the floor. Your lads laugh for effect and menacingly draw their weapons too and you can see the coveralls of the sailor dampen around the crotch. The second sailor yammers something at him in a language you don't understand and he talks, looking at you with begging eyes.
Please don't kill them, they just try to keep Maxwell's happy. They try to override drive from bridge to engines, get out to open water. Please, don't kill them.
One of the lads piped up, Oi, Knives, deck map 'ere mate, gesturing to an old half-sepia with age harcopy deck-plan printed on the back of the door you came in.
The engine room is two decks down at the far rear of the craft. Access stairs to below decks are out behind the bridge room you're in now

@Zwei________
Yeah, I'm sorry about the timing, but we need to move quickly. I'll need you onsite. Area is pretty much off-grid since the crash so anything you find will probably be routed through some obsolete protocols to keep it quiet or on some encrypted sat-link. I've trawled it myself but came up blank. I'm hoping putting you onsite will yield better results than trying it from here in the 'Smoke. <<File transfer initiated>>
Its way up North. We'll get you on a train to Newcastle and get the Recce specialist to pick you up. You'll be working as part of a team for this one. We'll put you all in touch once we've got the details sorted.<<50% downloaded>> It'll be a few days while we get everything in order, so make the most of the time with family. It'll be 5k pay, before you ask. <<100% downloaded, view now?>> Her avatar smiled and her head tilted slightly the way she did in person. the file contains a rough aerial/satellite composite image showing a bleak area of moorland, a quick zoom out showed it lay on the old old road between the old A1 and the M6 at the top end of the Pennine range
The sprite coalesced into form, taking Bex by surprise as its shimmering, irregular appearance hovered by your side.
It acknowledged your command and vanished from the host as Bex's avatar looking at you quizzically. That's one bizarre looking agent?!

[saithor]

Silas grabbed Callie as she drew near. "It's alright lass, you're okay," he said comfortingly, before saying to the assorted toughs "I see any of you gentlemen again, you better stay the **** out of my way." With that he scooped up the shotgun, and supporting Callie as much as possible despite the height distance, got her out of the door. He chose a random direction, started walking, and a few block later said "So, you got a place we can hide out? Because I don't think my apartment would cut it."

[Lumen]

Knives snarls at the sailor, "I won't... unless they make me..."  He then turns to glance at the map before addressing the lads, "Keep an eye on these two and for the rest of our crew.  I'm going below."

With that he draws his second blade back out and heads out and down the stairs to the engine room below.

[Zweiblumen]

@Zwei________
Yeah, I'm sorry about the timing, but we need to move quickly. I'll need you onsite. Area is pretty much off-grid since the crash so anything you find will probably be routed through some obsolete protocols to keep it quiet or on some encrypted sat-link. I've trawled it myself but came up blank. I'm hoping putting you onsite will yield better results than trying it from here in the 'Smoke. <<File transfer initiated>>
Its way up North. We'll get you on a train to Newcastle and get the Recce specialist to pick you up. You'll be working as part of a team for this one. We'll put you all in touch once we've got the details sorted.<<50% downloaded>> It'll be a few days while we get everything in order, so make the most of the time with family. It'll be 5k pay, before you ask. <<100% downloaded, view now?>> Her avatar smiled and her head tilted slightly the way she did in person.

Mams thinks about the ¥5k and how this one job will pay a full month of bills.  He knows he can't turn it down even though he wants to stay.
<<You know I'm not one to let ye down luv.>>
He opens the file Bex send him in a window off to the side and throws a couple of map overlays on it, old and new and lets out a low whistle.
<<Absolute middle of nowhere indeed.  ¥5k plus expenses and I'm your man.  Send me the train reservation and I'll head up North.  Monday?>>

The sprite coalesced into form, taking Bex by surprise as its shimmering, irregular appearance hovered by your side.
It acknowledged your command and vanished from the host as Bex's avatar looking at you quizzically. That's one bizarre looking agent?!

<<What that thing?  Oh, it's just a little program I picked up of off one of the Azzie sub-grids when I was doing some work out that way.  You find odd things around and start collecting oddities.  You know how it goes>>

I can't remember any more, but I thought that Bex knew Mams was a TM?

[ProfGast]

Ena pulls her vehicle to a stop as she nears the target destination and stretches in her seat.

Those howls must've been the critters I was warned about.  Not something I want to run into I don't think.

After taking a quick stock of the surrounding area using the GMC's sensors, Ena also checks on the status of her drone recharges.

Definitely not used to being this far off the grid though, they wouldn't have lost power like that if we'd been in the sprawl…

Redline's taking in what she can right now, recording using the vehicle sensors and her contacts for later broadcast.  Sensor Check: 10d6t5 5 2 Hits (limited by Sensor rating)
Visual Perception Check: 12d6t5 0 Man.  Those dice…. No hits.

[Csjarrat]

@Profgast___________
The sensor sweep shows pretty much the same as what you can see with your eyes, woods off to your left up a large hill, a huge expanse of snowy landscape rolling downhill to your right.
the road ahead rises up the hill which blocks your view further up.
The drones had nearly recharged, the fly-spy was at 97% whilst the lower capacity flying eye sat at 86% charge, more than enough for a decent flight.


@Zwei________
I'll let you know. Be prepped for monday but it might be tuesday or weds, I'll send the details over for you as soon as I've got them sorted. Take the time to get ready, its fricking cold up there this time of year.
The avatar gives you a knowing look and a smile and bex logs out, leaving you alone in the white walled host.

@Lumen_______
The lads nodded, the one with the hammer taking to pushing the sailors over into the corner and the slimmer one with the blade took to monitoring the security feeds.
You headed back out onto deck to hit the stairway and saw the lads on the dockside dealing with the last of the loaders and beginning to root through the crates and boxes on the dockside for their contents.
Hitting the stairways, the smell of stale fart and cigarette smoke caught the back of your throat

@Saithor______
They don't even look at you as you make your retort, they just gather in the corner and yammer at each other in their own language, probably discussing their next move.
She slumps into your arms in considerable pain.
Yeah, get us to Dulwich. I've got a car and a crash pad there. Can get the fuck out of town for a few weeks whilst shit blows over.
She rubbed a tear from her eye and the last bit of blood from her fattening lip and looked at you.
I'm sorry Silas, this has gone to shit. I need to call Smith, let him know what's gone down here
The fresh air of the outside was incredibly welcome, even though the winter chill was pervasive and did its best to get into the cracks in your clothing.
You got any wheels with you or you wanna call a cab?

[Zweiblumen]

Mams nods to Bex as she heads out, then crafts himself a chair to sit on.  Enjoying the solitude of the empty host for a short time.  Escapism is needed at least as much in the Shadows as it is in the SINner's world.

He knows he can wait anywhere or even return to the meat for his sprite to return with some data, but he waits here in the empty white-walled host.  A solitary white plastic chair in the middle.  This lets him think about his mother and how there's nothing he can do about that in a slightly more detached way.  He'll do everything he can to take care of her, there's no doubt of that.  It just looks like it might require him being away.  He'll have to setup some kind of mechanism for her to keep in touch with him that's secure.  Can't risk too much.

Once the sprite sends him the limited data it was able to find it returns to the Resonance and he releases the form he was threading.  He walks out of the host and it disappears, its purpose complete.

<<<@Ralphy [Taylor]  I'll head over to your flat in the morning.  Don't forget to activate my access code.>>>

[saithor]

"Don't have any wheels, so a cab it is." SIlas said, setting his comn to flag down a cab, setting it to advertise to one's not coming out of where they had come from.

[Lumen]

Knives scowls as he hits the stench and heads down the stairs, "I fackin hate ships..."  He quickly scurries down the stairs, sheathing one blade and signaling his taser into his hand.  There was no need to kill these guys and experience has taught him taking one down quick was an excellent negotiating tactic.

[Csjarrat]

@Lumen____________
The taser seats perfectly in your palm as you round out the last of the stairs and hit a metal grated walkway on the lowest deck. it ran a short way to your right before hitting a bulkhead door and a much longer way to your left before hitting a similar bulkhead. You knew the engines were to your left and the bottom of the cargo section was probably to your right.
Focussing on the immediacy of the task ahead, you ploughed on towards the engine room.
It smelt of a potent mix of sweat and diesel down here and the irregular sounding misfires of the engine did nothing to steady your nerve.
You heaved and heaved at the bulkhead, drawing mana into your muscles to augment your strength and eventually it gave, releasing with a heavy clunk of something solid on the far side against the metal grating.
Shouts echoed off the metal chamber and you saw three figures separately darting for cover as you poked your head around the corner.
Two looked like they were in overalls, probably the sailors you saw on the screen, but the third was garbed in black and dropped off the railings above you down behind a large stack of machinery, some 5-10 metres nearer the engines than your current position.

the room is built around two engines, both about 3m long, same height and attached to the far bulkhead wall. your entry point is a small walkway splitting left and right to allow access to both engines, with a narrow ladder at your end going up to a small catwalk to access a myriad of other equipment (pumps and such). the long distance to the far bulkhead is about 15m, and about 3-5M intervals are the gearboxes and drive shafts for the bow thrusters, providing chest high cover. The dark garbed figure dropped off the railing behind one of those, but was that quick, you couldnt tell which.
The ambient noise of the engines puts audio perception at -2.
Roll initiative

@Saithor_______________
A battered looking auto-taxi pulled up about 5 minutes after you called it. Callie spent all her time frantically tapping on an AR terminal, you assumed calling in favours and letting her contacts know of the impending shitstorm.
You knew it would be a good idea to lay low for a while whilst the Romanians lashed out at whoever they thought betrayed them and the Vory tidied up their loose ends but the matter of where was the issue.
The Smoke had always had its hidey-holes, but it wasn't that big a place if you knew where to look.
You helped Callie in and she painfully tapped in the destination on the terminal, wincing a bit as her sore ribs protested against her movement.
She leaned back on the tired fabric seats and rubbed her face, smudging her mascara even more after her tears.
Bex knows its fucked up.. She's gonna get Smith onside and get us the fuck out of town for a while. You don't have to take their offer at all, but I figured you'd at least want to hear it yourself.

@Zwei_______________
The reply came through swiftly, he'd probably be in the middle of winding his night down with a trid or two and a cuppa on his sofa.
//Ralphy//<<No problems mate, no rush on my end. Hows your Mum doing?>>
The sprite returns after some serious delay. It was subdued on its return, almost as if it "felt" guilty for not returning with much.
<<Sprite>>//The search parameters are mostly a void. Some data streams detected from light vehicles, two data streams through very slow satellite connections.
Unfortunately that is all I can report//

[Zweiblumen]

Taylor isn't surprised at the sprite's response, but can't hide his disappointment.

Back in the meat, he responds via AR to Ralphy.  <<<@Ralphy [Taylor] Mum is a fighter, you know her.  She came out of her coma today, so good so far.  At least she recognized me, so while the damage may be bad she's not all gone.  There's plenty to be hopeful for. 
As for this weekend, gotta do something to keep busy.  Your kit is as good as anything.  Nosh before, or are you on shift tomorrow?>>>

He lays in the simple bunk.  The privacy is nice, but he misses his own bed.  He takes a moment to go and check in on his mum one last time for the night and sees she's sleeping soundly.  He gets a bit of a scolding for being here in non-visiting hours, but the sisters are rather understanding.  He stays quiet and then retreats back to the visitor's room for a few hours of restless sleep.


He'll respond in the positive to either option Ralphy gets back to him with.

[saithor]

"Probably. Questions are the usual; Who the hell are they, who do they work for, what do they want, usual drek," Silas said. "Hell, as long as they're square-dealers and pay good I'm all for them." He had his Shotgun hidden back in it's paper package, although he was keeping a good eye on the cab driver in case he tried something. "Probably should have him drop us just a street shy of our actual destination."

[ProfGast]

"Well I guess it's time to earn my pay then."

Ena breaks out another ration bar while taking a sip of water and boots the Flyspy up.  After a short diagnostic she sends it out the window to check on prevailing wind conditions before prepping a slow spiralling upwards flight to get an initial lay of the land.

Let's hope that there aren't too many more surprises.

[Csjarrat]

@Profgast________
The atmoshpere sensors pinged back a south easterly wind, rushing up the hillside from the plains below.
Holding station with the drone would be harder work than usual, flying across it's gusts even more so. thankfully, a recce flight didn't call for pinpoint accuracy, just a nice steady recording.
As you gained altitude and began your first sweep, the small drone began to be buffeted by the crosswind, finding its little wings less of a match for the wind speed than you'd hoped.
It was going to take a bit of wrestling with if your data was to be of any use.
Heavy gusty crosswind will put you at a threshold increase of 2 for all vehicle tests.
Can i get a pilot test for your first flight and a sensor test for it as well?

@Zwei_______
//That's as good a set of news as you can hope for mate, it could have been a damn site worse. She's a fighter, a tough old bird. I'm sure she'll be 'reet. I'm on a late tomorrow, so could grab a bite before hand if thats good? say 10.30am? You choose this time//

@Saithor________
She smiled a pained half-grin at you and rattled off an answer Smith is a serious bigwig. No-one really knows how big, or what kind of wig even, but he's playing at corp level. Got eyes and ears in government and all sorts. Deals through intermediaries mostly as you can imagine. Bex is his right-hand man at the moment. Runner background herself, likes to get her hands dirty. Tech-stuff mainly. Nice lass. {thumbs wildly at her comm screen, distracted for a second}.
Erm.. Yeah where was I. Erm, yeah, Smith. He's a bigwig. Plays behind the scenes, likes to orchestrate stuff as far as I can tell. Uses a lot of runner teams and word is that he's been increasing his activity over the past few years to counter something new, something sinister. Scuttlebutt would have you believe there's something nasty and insidious worming its way into the city through the cracks and the corruption, but common sense would tell you the city's already full of shit and one more won't make a difference, even if it were true. I'm not convinced he's anything more than a paranoid ex-banker myself but I’ve done good business off the back of it, as have most of the right-minded fixers round the 'smoke.
Feel free to rattle back any questions you've got, otherwise you arrive after 20-30 minutes in a darkened back alley at the back of some knackered tenement housing.

[ProfGast]

Ena jumps into her Flying Eye as it climbs into the air, feeling the eddies and currents of the winds with the mechanical body of the drone and taking in the snowy landscape through its eyes.

Pilot Roll Flyspy: 13d6t5 6 All 6 hits should count due to modifiers to drone handling while jumped in.
Sensor Check: 11d6t5 4 Again all 4 hits should count