Freezing Shadows, Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Retail Therapy

It was tempting to just go to the store the moment we turned in the rental and returned to our base, and just start ordering everything we could afford. After all, we were walking into a trap, so we might as well get everything we could to prepare, right? That was a trap, however. Before we started picking out goodies, we needed to make a plan, especially since some of our purchases were going to be long-term investments, like the boat.

A boat, especially the kind we were thinking of getting, needed to be kept on (or at least near) the water, which meant we needed space at the local marina. Preferably an actual water berth, rather than a storage berth, since we’d be able to go in and out when we needed to that way. That was an extra lifestyle expense, especially if we wanted to be discrete about things. Our warehouse was near the water, but not directly on it, after all.

A check of the local marinas turned up an option. Some of the recent ‘untimely accidents’ in the area had opened up a slot at the Summer Breeze Marina. They were offering a permanent berth, no month-by-month contracting. The berth was large enough that we could keep two good-sized boats there, or one yacht, but was not set up to be a living space. Security was pretty good, but being a marina there wasn’t much in the way of cover, and anyone with a zoom lens could look in on what was happening. Likewise, there really wasn’t anything in the way of astral security in the area. But it did have free access to the Matrix, and the neighbors were generally nice enough, and probably wouldn’t call the cops if we had a ‘loud party’.

At 10k, it was a good deal. Only problem was that it needed a legit SIN to pick up. They didn’t want ‘riff-raff’ in the neighborhood, after all. Which meant that one of us needed to have it tied to a real identity. I decided that I’d take that bullet.

Since we had room for two boats, as long as we weren’t getting some huge yacht, we decided that we would fill both spots. One berth would be for the ‘work boat’. Basically, whatever speedy thing we ended up getting put together. For the other spot, we decided to get something flashy, to hide in plain sight amongst the people who owned the other berths. It also needed to give us a reason to come and go whenever we needed to.

I had a bunch of money, and nothing really to spend it on. Plus, since we were using my SIN for the purchase, it made sense that if anyone was living at the marina, it was the runaway elven noble. The fact that I was going to use my fake SIN for everything besides the actual berth added to the disguise. I just had to make sure we didn’t track trouble back to the marina.

With that in mind, I opened up the storefront. This wasn’t going to be our work vehicle, so we could afford to have some wait time on it being delivered. There was a nice houseboat available for customization, which would be perfect for our needs.

Mitsubishi Water Home

Body

16

Sensor

1

Handling

-2

Firewall

3

Pilot

2

Response

3

Signal

3

Initiative

5

Initiative Passes

3

Physical Condition Monitor

16/16

Armor (Vehicle)

10

Land Speed

5m/10m

Max: 20m

Mods

Amenities (High), Concealed Armor (10), Morphing License Plate, Pimped Ride (2) Satellite Communication, Spoof Chips, Vehicle Tag Eraser, Weapon Mount (Turret, Concealed, Remote)

Programs

Targeting Autosoft (Heavy Weapons) 3

Weapons

Ingram White Knight LMG (belt of 100 rounds APDS ammo) 6P, -5 AP

Cost

128400

I may have gone a little overboard with the modifications. Maybe. But Berzerker and I were going to be switching our main residence to this boat to help sell the story, so if someone wanted to come and play, they’d learn I liked to play hardball. At any rate, the modifications were set to take a month, which would run out the time on the current contract on my condo, so that worked.

Meanwhile, everyone took advantage of the store access to order a bunch of APDS ammo. Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot ammunition was basically a needle of something hard with some filler around it to make it fly out of a gun barrel easily. It was very good at piercing armor, as the name suggested. Berzerker also spent some of her money on a brand-new assault cannon, and plenty of ammo for it. Because she didn’t want to be left out of the fun if we had to take on a tank, or something. And considering that we knew we were likely walking into a trap, I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as overkill. Especially since we wouldn’t be able to get all our gear over there.

Simply put, there was no way we were driving all the way to where the target’s property was. They were on an island, and the only way to get a van over there was with a ferry, and even that required several hours of driving, and crossing a national border. Not great.

On top of that, ferries and other choke points like that had gotten bad raps during the Beta. Anywhere that kept you in a defined space for too long, where everyone knew exactly where you were going to be? Bad plan, because you had no room to maneuver, which meant you were fucked if someone was waiting at the other end, if they didn’t hit you en route. Sometimes, it was unavoidable, like taking the elevator instead of walking seventy flights of stairs, or catching a flight to go to other cities. But generally? If there was an option where you had room to change routes on the fly, you took it.

So, a boat was needed, and since I was getting our cover at the dock together, Twilight decided to pick up the tab for the boat we were going to trick out, going with a Mixsanto Nightrunner. The stock boat was next-day delivery, and nicely included a trailer for hauling it. As it was, the boat was still a decent boat for what we were doing, but Twilight also ordered all the ‘upgrades’ that we wanted for it. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to wait on the fully upgraded boat, so Babydoll was going to have to step up and make the upgrades.

Not that this was much of a problem. She had the mechanical skills to do the work, and she picked up a couple more drones, one of the repair drones she already had for the cars and flying drones, and one for general repairs around the warehouse. Basically, with all of that, she made it so that we could probably repair most of our vehicles and even our main base without needing to call in outside help, who would typically have to be paid a bit extra not to see anything they weren’t supposed to see.

We also went and upgraded our armor as much as possible. There was a limit on how much we could equip without the excess weight holding us back. The limit was based on our Body, though, which was hard to raise without a bunch of karma. That meant that, minus certain edge cases, there was a limit to how much we could beef up our armor. At a certain point, you ended up building different armor sets.

Armor sets were what we called it in the Beta, but there weren’t any actual ‘set bonuses’ or anything like that. Basically, people would get copies of almost the same loadout of gear, but have different add-ons to them. Guys you’re going against love their Stick-n-Shock ammo? Bring out your nonconductivity set, so you can resist more of that. These guys like fire? Bring the fire resistance set. And so on.

Shadowgirl also decided to add to the fun and games, and get Babydoll a new toy to play with. She went through the database, and found a fucking military tilt-wing combat drone with vertical take-off and landing capabilities! Like one actually used by national and corporate militaries. Of course, she didn’t get the stock model. She ordered an up-armored version, that also had signature masking on it, to make the thing harder to spot with radar. Oh, and since the thing came with two weapon mounts, she set an LMG on one of them, and had a missile launcher on the other. Not quite loaded for dragon, but about as good as any Shadowmen team was going to be.

The only problem was we weren’t going to be able to use that toy on our job, since it looked like it was going to be three or four weeks before it was ready. But it would be a powerful tool in the arsenal later, if we ever needed something like that. But that wasn’t something that we could just keep around with us all the time. It would need to stay in the warehouse most of the time.

As we finished up our orders, I leaned back in my chair, and looked at the others. We were all sitting in the living area of the base. As good a place as any for a virtual shopping spree. But now we had to start prepping for the real work.

“All right. We know this job is fucked. We don’t have enough of a rep to turn down jobs on a whim, which is why we’re still taking the job. Either the intel is crap, or they’re going to be looking to take us out when we come to get the rest of our money. We all know it. So, our job is to not die, and make a big enough point that they learn not to try it again, at least for a while.”

I took a breath, and then continued. “Twilight, I need you digging into that property’s server, if you can. If you don’t think you can get in without tripping alarms, let us know, and we’ll come up with another plan. Babydoll, I want your blimp drone with the satellite comms in the air. The one that can change color to match the sky behind it. Spend the next couple days flying around, get views of as much of the area as possible without drawing attention, but definitely get us pictures of the property, from the water.”

“What about the rest of us?” Berzerker asked.

“When the boat Twilight ordered gets here, the rest of us are going to take turns out on the water. Babydoll is still our main wheelwoman, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t at least know the basics of the boat. I don’t expect any of us to do fancy tricks without the skills, but if Babydoll goes down, we will still need to get out of there.” I looked over to Babydoll, and said, “Obviously, we’ll try and get you stable, at least, even if we can’t do real medical work while running, but we can’t put everything on just you. No offense.”

“None taken,” the rigger said. “We all saw how you got caught pretty good last time. And we weren’t even expecting a big fight, that time. This time? I’d be shocked if we all got out clean, so planning on people getting hurt is just smart. Just promise me that if any of us bite it, we’ll make the bastards pay.”

“Obviously,” I grinned. “We’ll make them pay in blood, and then take their credits, too. And, if someone does go for a reroll, we’ll get you back, once the intro quest happens.”

“Intro quest?” Twilight frowned.

“Something we found out in the Beta. If you want to connect with your former team off the bat, you have to do a special quest, to ‘earn’ that knowledge. Otherwise, the game doesn’t erase your memories, exactly, but you get fuzzy on the details, and you have to meet up in game without being able to talk OOC about your old ‘life’. Serves as a way to combat stalkers or other types who need the concept of ‘no’ introduced to them at muzzle velocity.”