[adamu]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

The high street ahead was meant to be two lanes, but rows of cars parked along both sides narrowed it to barely one. Knowing he'd be screwed if there was any oncoming traffic, he nearly rolled the van and almost sideswiped Snow making a hard left into an alley. By the time he emerged from the other side he was pushing a pile of old crates, two oil barrels, and some homeless schmuck's house in front of him. Reemerging into a wider thoroughfare and shaking off the blinding load of debris, he looked back and saw the Jackrabbit and the Americar - who'd been surprised by his sudden turn - also come out of the alley and accelerate back to their positions on his flanks.

Around then was when he realized that the family behind him was screaming like banshees. The father was in the smuggler compartment, and they could all see but not touch him. It was sound-baffled, but from his face he was shrieking as loudly as his wife and kids. They'd been surprisingly calm in the face of extraction, explosions, giant earth demons, and bullets, but apparently speeding along the street in apparent flight was too much for them. The girl yelled something obscene and despairing and tried to jump free, but simply crashed into an invisible side panel. Well, at least she was quiet now.

Al was just about to be impressed that Spike was keeping his cool so well when, just as a huge tipper truck (what they called dump trucks in this crazy country) was bearing straight down on him, the huge hound leaped with a whine onto his lap, the beast's weight dragging both of Al's skinny arms off the steering wheel. Desperately trying to wrestle the slobbering, panicked dog off, Al just managed to catch his right knee on the wheel while stamping on the brake with his left foot, sending him into a power slide that missed the clueless monster lorry by a few coats of paint.

The dog wasn't budging, but Al managed to get one hand back on the wheel. <<We goin' anywhere in pertickalar, or's ol' Al jist takin' in the sights here?>>

[gilga]

Solo approaches Al, and go over the driver window to speak, to him the car is not invisible. "you have some remarkable driving skills - I think I learned quite a bit just trying to follow you. We need to discreetly remove you and the family from the van - and keep the invisible van going until it makes an accident or something. That will buy us some time to get you guys new wheels and to send the new car to a new safehouse. We need to be quick while the lead is still flying.  I rather have the special forces storm an empty van then fight with the family so close. "

[adamu]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

Al heard Solo's plan over the road noise and through the window, but just barely. Eyes glued to the road, he groped along the invisible armrest for the right button and put the window halfway down. Part of his brain wondered if this meant people could see his head now, but he was way past caring.

Spike wasted no time in trying to squeeze out through the small space, forcing Al to grip the confused animal's foreleg to keep him from escaping. Pushing his own face alongside the slobbering dog's, Al shouted back, "Now that's got good idear written all over it..."...a  glob of canine saliva blew back into one cybereye as he swerved to avoid an ambulance at a busy intersection, but he never stopped talking..."...'cept fer one thing - this is my ride an' I ain't leavin' it. You'll have a better chance anyway if'n I keep drivin' 'er. Figure how ya wanna make the switch, an' we'll make 'er happen."

[ScytheKnight]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

As Snow Crash tries to get the car into a flanking position he quickly realizes that more than just the engine was hit, that was the cause of many of the warning lights sure, but it's the control systems with no warnings that where the issue, completely shot out and non-functional making the car barely controllable.

Patching through to Al's subvocal system and Solo's coms "Frag, OK here's the deal chummers. We keep driving like this, I stick with. But if this starts turning into a chase I'm gonna peel off and head down some side streets. This car is fragged, I can't even keep it in a straight line anymore, if I tried any fancy stunt driving I'm going to lose what little control I've got, best I can do in a pursuit is try and draw attention away."

[gilga]

Solo ads:
"We just took all their Deckers away... Tobias is also in that jackrabbit... he is a matrix animal tough.
The way I see it this is your ride and Snow's car is busted. We have the jackrabbit that is only good for two and is undamaged, we also have the fancy ride for the hotel but it has room for 4 or maybe 5 people.  Al - I am not sure that we can full everyone with an invisible cars... plans that depend only on magic are unpredictable. The rental and my bike are not far from here. I think we could use the rental and jackrabbit as new rides. What do you guys say?

[adamu]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

<<Ten-four to a Chinese fire drill>> Al replied, still struggling to get his dog out of his field of vision. <<Lead the way to the back-up rides. Anyhoo, looks like our boon compadres done stopped anyone tailin' us, so let's slow things down and de-invisblize. That was a right slick play, but now it's attractin' more attention than it's avoidin'.>>

As if to puncuate his point, no sooner had he finished speaking than a rice rocket and leather-clad rider plowed right into the side of the Bulldog. Al sped along merrily, but did poke his head out the window to yell, "Hey, look where yer goin'!"

<<Well, maybe jist let me git 'round the corner now, an' then stop the spell.>> All he needed was another hit-and-run talled up on his favorite fake registration.

Slowing down to a less breakneck pace, much to the relief of his gasping van, he realized that, once they did get the family into new cars and made sure there was no pursuit, they now had nowhere to take them.

[gilga]

The spirit Solo summoned was a succubus, a creature of passion, of love and life. The sight of the helicopter spiraling down from the sky seemed disturbing. Many people were about to die, and being a creature of mana she could sense the fear in the well trained soldiers auras.

"Solo you have to look at this... something really bad is about to happen. Please, I am begging you release me of these magical bounds... I cannot just idly watch them crush." She was crying, as much as spirits could cry.
 
Spirits were manipulative but no spirit ever begged him of anything, they were proud creatures and usually happy to work with Solo being curious about his nature.

"Okay spirit I will help you. Your next service is to free these people. I leave it vague in order to give you enough room for improvisation. I will help you. You need to materialize in the cockpit and turn wireless on. I'll bring one of the flying eyes so I can see and guide you what to do. We have the telepathic link so just describe what you see and I'll try to locate the right bottom to press".


Solo Yelled for Tobias and Snow: "GUYS!!! that copter is wifi dark and is about to crush in the middle of london. My spirit is trying to get wireless on - use your matrix skills and try to learn how to do it. Once she does - if we want to be on the winning team, hack it quicker than the other team can reclaim control over it."

Solo then fired a broadcast in all frequencies <<Turn copter online it is going to crush!!!>>

The spirit materialized in the cock pit as Solo instructed and started describing what she sees. In the meanwhile Solo tired to browse the matrix and find any kind of data on these helicopters, get a visual with his flying eyes and try to understand what bottom to press in order to turn the copter wireless active.



Search manual of helicopter turn wifi on: 16d6t5 4

[Jack_Spade]

Isaint's shots hit their mark with uncanny precision as if the saints themselves hat guided bis hand to bring down the dragon. But now the machine started to spin around its own axis and rapidly lost altitude.

Well, shit. That worked horribly right. Isaint hadn't expected that there would be no autopilot active. And now the Frenchman was falling - not unlike himself in Istanbul but without the benefit of a nearby swimming pool but at least it was only 6 meters to the roof and not 60.

And yet he felt only little guilt: It had not been bis decision to stage a war here. The survival oft bis team came first.
<<Team, the heli is going down, brace for impact and disengage from the enemy. There is nothing to win for us here.>>

Again he let bis rifle drop into its sling and started to run to bis bike, weaving and dodging to avoid gunfire and little bits of helicopter that shortly would litter the ground around here.

Ini: 15+4d6 29
Full defense, running to bike, getting the hell out of this alley.
#56

[ScytheKnight]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

Snow Crash to the team channel "The chopper is crashing? What the fragging hell is going on out there?! Anyway I can't help, I'm no rigger, I know frag all about flying aircraft and I need all my focus just to keep this car moving vaguely in the direction I want."

All the albino decker could do was shake his head and keep an even more white knuckle grip on the wheel making the constant corrections needed to keep a vehicle unable to drive in a straight line moving in the one direction.

Should have done this a while back... total post tally 41

[Crossbow]

When the mage is out and stuffed in a convenient closet, Smiley begins moving in the direction of the remaining snipers.  While doing so he places a call, "Art, you had better start talking fast, what the frag is going on?"

[gilga]

Solo has no time to explain.
<<Snow, just try to find what bottom to press to activate wireless - then we can take control>>

[Triskavanski]

[Tobbis -Thursday June 18th, 2076 - By the bloody stars - Little Car - Current condition 0 Stun damage -In VR- Silent - Solo's Chatroom]
"Busy" was the response over the radio. Tobbis didn't have time to put a mark or three on the helichopper and then save it. That would take far too long for him to do. If only some one had some magical powers to fling it a different direction. Instead, he was focused on his job, removing the only matrix threat he could see.

And he knew the best way to do it.Sadly, the guy was not in VR, but could be running a hotsim card in his deck for super AR mode. But that would have to wait.. Instead strands of resonance begin to circle around the drekhead

<<Assist me.>> he says to his data sprite, before sending out another message.

<<I'm taking on their decker. If something is bad in meat, then it has to be dealt with in meat. Use the thing that picked up the one thing.>>



24 posts worth add to sheet - 32th Post - Correcting a bit of mistake from eariler. Only the first 24 were added, while I was at 25.
So far Solo and Hal have cameras 8/10 cameras left in my possession.
Hal has a Datatap of mine
Every combat round Tobbis spends 10 Initiative points to go into total matrix defense so his willpower is added to all his defense tests.

Matrix Perception vs thier hacker: 13d6t5 6    13d6t5: 4 [13d6t5=2, 3, 1, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2, 2, 1, 3, 6, 3

Defense vs Matrix Perception: 12d6t5 212d6t5: 2 [12d6t5=4, 2, 1, 5, 1, 3, 3, 6, 3, 2, 4, 3]

I wasn't suppose to put rule of six on this, but accidentally did. Luckily it puts whatever explodes into brackets with the first number being the one actually rolled. So its just 11 hits on my brute force defense.
Defense vs Brute Force: 21d6h5 12 21d6h5: 12 [21d6h5=[6, 6, 4], 1, 2, [6, 4], [6, 1], 5, 4, [6, 4], 1, [6, 1], 3, 5, 1, [6, 1], 1, 3, [6, 1], 3, [6, 1], 1, 5]

Hopefully he tries to brute force me. Cause this was less than spectacular. However, I would spend edge on this if needed to reroll lost hits.
Defense against Hack on the Fly/Dataspike: 19d6t5 319d6t5: 3 [19d6t5=4, 4, 2, 1, 3, 6, 3, 4, 4, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2, 5, 2, 1, 2, 5]

Getting Data Sprite to Assist adding +5 dice to my next test for a complex form.

[gilga]

Solo barely saw Tobias reply, he had his own problem trying to nail a nova hot Decker. Solo was used to working alone, he was sure that he is capable of saving that helicopter. However, when he worked alone there were rarely HTR teams or helicopters that collapse in the middle of London. The job was smaller the risk was lower and with some decking magic and talking he'd get the job done.

He had to try, the spirit was crying - she was a part of a small group of spirits that kept answering his calls, always giving him more force than he asked for, asking questions about him. He had special relationship with the spirit world - and if a proud spirit that was smarter than any meta human could hope to be, asked for a favor - Solo just had to do his best. Beside - innocent deaths were unwanted no matter how desperate you are. 
Solo either killed already, or helped killing he was not sure what was going on but with the spirit and its astral fighting, the automatic fire and some martial art was it? That mage was geeked alright. But the mage was hardly innocent - you do not provoke some of the best runners in London and hope to survive you just do not do these things. Shooting a chopper out of the sky, stuck wifi dark without autopilot or any method of remote control... Having it crush in a populated area, this is the kind of stuff that reaches the news headlines - and this kind of attention is very bad for business.

[ScytheKnight]

Fragging hell, this is getting out of hand... I can't both try and fly a chopper and drive this hunk of dreck.

There was really only one way to get out of this mess.

patching through to Al and Solo "Alright, I can try and grab control of the chopper, but I can't do it while trying to drive this pile of dreck.. pull over, and we can pile the rest of my kit in Solo's car then I can take the back seat while I try and grab the chopper. Sure as dreck can't promise any fancy flying but I should at least be able to gain basic control over it."

[adamu]

[Thursday June 18th, 2076, ~01:25, Soho, London]

The van turning visible had caused a few screeches of tires and brakes, but Al just snorted - he'd been going to miss them anyway. The weird thing was the feeling of a physical jolt - although the cessation of the satanic dweomer had no effect on the inertia of the vehicle, the abrupt resumption of visual stimuli made him swear they'd been rear-ended by a semi.

But no time to think about that now - apparently the SWAT ninjas' chopper was about to crash into some tenement or other, and the wizards needed to know what button would connect it to their computer geeks.

Exactly who was going to do the button pressing he had no idea, but he spoke into his lapel mic: <<There's a line of four switches above the pilot's head an' a little to the left, each with an indicator light. All four gotta be inna up position.>>

Even if they got the switches flipped, if that bird was going down, they'd have to be fast - but then those VR types were on a whole different time scale in their imaginary little world.

Having done all he could to help, he had plenty else to worry about. His own console also had its fair share of indicator lights, and a whole lot of them were on. Looked like his radiator was a sieve - he had to slow down or she'd overheat. Losing transmission pressure - he could nurse that along for a bit. And he reckoned he'd need to swap out the carb, but she'd run for now, even if only on a couple of cylinders.

If any of that was a worry, you'd never know from looking at Spike. Somehow, he was back up on his seat, and when Al shot him a remonstrative glance he just looked back as if nothing had happened. Cheeky mutt.

Sounded like Snow needed him to stop, so he pulled off the street under an overpass behind a parked truck that looked like it was blocking the traffic cam fairly well, and the first thing he did was turn his commlink back on, switch the ID on his PA/N, and morph his plates and spoof his reg chip to match, broadcasting at the minimum legally required strength, as usual.

<<Okay, do what yer gonna - I done cleaned my sig, an' wanna keep movin'. Anyone know yet where we takin' these folks?>>