[Story]Shadowrunning.

[Dartz]

Pretty sure Laser eavesdropping can't do exactly this... but it's cool sounding.

Structure of Helium I sort of guessed at.... but since nobody's set much in there yet I took a pot shot at something that sounded cool and let me do the stuff I wanted. It's a bit Minas Tirith in some ways.

A green F-250 superduty was approaching the runway at Burroughs Spaceport. Ford Sierra downshifted as she lined the truck up with the centre line, approaching at a speed somewhere north of 250 kph. The old powerstroke rumbled and grumbled, coughing black smoke.

Jet sat beside her, with her feet stretched through the space where the original passenger seat would’ve been. She watched the ground approach with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Dragon Wagon, final approach,” Sierra radioed. “Crossing runway threshold,”

Landing a vehicle which was never intended to fly wasn’t the easiest trick to pull off. There were plenty of divots and trenches dug out either side of the runway which testified to that. A big Peacemaker thundered off into the sky from the OGJ base at the other end of the port, trailing a dark cloud of smoke as it climbed.

Controls that’d originally been intended solely to alter the pitch of the steering wheel where now being used to guide the pickup truck down to something of a landing. Up a little... down a little. Sierra fought against aerodynamics not well suited to flight and a vicious headwind which kept trying to lift the front up.

The rear wheels hit first with a screech of burning rubber, pressed down into the dirt by the weight of the towing gear in the back. With a jolt, the front came down, the truck lurching to the side a little. Sierra swore as she tried to correct it, stepping hard on the brakes.

Quickly, she reached down to the gearstick and flicked a switch, locking the truck back into land mode. The engine backfired, belching smoke and flame as it pushed against the brakes and transmission for a few moments before it finally started to come under control.

The speedometer needle flicked around with a mind of it’s own, before finally figuring out that it was supposed to read groundspeed. It then promptly decided it should read off-scale high, pointing to a non-existent number somewhere before zero.

It quickly dropped, Jet bracing herself with her leg to keep from flying forward against the dashboard. There was a dent in the floorpan where she’d managed to nearly put her foot through the sheet steel.

“Phew!” Sierra wiped her brow with the back of her driving glove. “No problemo,”

The radio crackled “Dragon Wagon. Welcome to Burroughs. Taxi Route 3 Left onto main.”

“Wilco,” Ford broadcast.

The truck was still hammering down the runway at a speed north of 160. Sierra kept her foot in, brakes starting to overheat a little. It took another few seconds for the speed to drop to a value sensible enough to try make a sharp turn.

Tyres squealed and Jet clung on as the truck pitched around, threatening to roll over. At the far end of the runway behind them, a white twin-engined fighter jet was beginning it’s take-off roll.

Jeddaks tower glistened in the evening sun, throwing a long black shadow in the direction of Hellas Basin. Lights were starting to come on in Jeddara tower, while the newer, smaller triplets Gathol, Thark and Zor were still mostly lit by sunlight.

The white jet took off behind them with a roar, powering into the sky. Behind it, a Blackbird was already angling in to land.

Unlike the aircraft-based fencraft which had to be parked up at the hangers, Ford could just drive her truck straight out the main gate, joining the track heading towards the main city. The pair filled the cabin with idle conversation, mostly about the proper way to shoot a gun.

Jet itched to get out the door and onto the red soil beyond. It was so different to Noctis. Sierra made sure she had her own personal breather to hand, just in case.

“So, where is the Mark again,”

“Thark Tower, Llana building,” Jet said.

“Usual deal,”

“Yea, surveillance first.”

There was a whole crate full of gear hidden under the Tonneau cover beside the usual towing harness and mechanic’s tools.

-----------

The sun had gone down by the time they’d driven through the airlock, into the tower proper. The city’s lights were ablaze, crystal windows shining like diamonds set in glistening steel frames. Rivetted steel ribs supported arching bridges between local spires and towers, forming a network of roads which ran through, over and around the individual structures. The main routes climbed through the core of the tower, before fanning out radially to local street levels.

Sierra eased the truck up the roadway, low buildings on outside allowing most of the inner apartments a better view of Hellas basin while mounting the main support beams for the dome. Cranes danced between building in the upper levels, bearing names of contractors Jet had once recognised from her hometown.

The city was going up like a rocket. People were flooding in from both Fenspace, and from that little blue dot sitting in the sky, lost among the lights reflecting from inside. Helium was genuine boomtown. Even if half the newcomers didn’t even want to know what a Barsoom was.

A bar they passed was playing that Cosmonaut’s rock song...Jet couldn’t recall the name, and didn’t care to look it up again.

Jet wasn’t quite sure how, but Helium always seemed far more light and airy than the Crystal Cities on Venus. Even the breeze coming through the truck’s open window seemed cooler, helping assuage the claustrophobia of the cabin a little. There were green areas, small playing fields or picnic areas built on the rooves of some buildings that filled the air with the scent of cut grass.

Ford just grumbled about traffic, and some moron on a Vespa using their own biomod bioluminescence as a brakelight.

the too-cheerful navigator adivsed.

It could navigate you anywhere in Fenspace. It would do so in an irritating cornball accident. The truck swung round the bend, passing a shop offering the latest in skintight pressure suits. It’s name was yet another variation on the “Have Spacesuit....” theme.

> The navigator beamed

Jet looked up. “That’s the place,”

“They got a carpark ?” Sierra wondered aloud, glancing around.

A sign on the wall pointed towards an under-street hangar bay instead.

“Will that do?”

“Sure... Hanger bay? I wonder if it’s got direct access to the outside?,”

Ford steered the truck down. For a spacecraft, it was small. For a fencar, it was pretty big and unweildy. Still, it seemed to be happy to at least be running in an oxygen atmosphere once more.

She crawled through the carpark, parking up close to the airlock at the far end. It was a big space... running right under the street above. Centimeter’s thick windows in the floor gave spectacular views of the streets and buildings below.... to those who had a head for heights anyway.

Three other vehicles were parked down there.... one a rather nice DeLorean with flight mods that made Jet jealous. If you absolutely had to travel in a car.... might aswell be something with a little style after all.

Jet was the first out of the truck, practically jumping out as soon as it had stopped. The cyborg stretched and spread her wings. She was easily recognised as Jet Jaguar... there was little chance of her hiding who she was outside of wearing an oversized trench-coat.

It didn’t matter, however. The only people who knew Jet Jaguar as a troubleshooter, were other troubleshooters. It also helped that people often assumed that the five publicly acknowledged troubleshooters, were the only troubleshooters.

Nobody even blinked as herself and Ford pulled their crate of gear from the back of the truck. Jet was taking structural notes, counting columns and comparing them to blueprints she’d accessed from the Helium City planning office.

One ran straight up through the target’s apartment. Good.

Jet strapped some gear to her back, and launched clean up through the entrance with a turbine howl. Ford strapped her tools and gear to her belt, and set off up through the building, with The Seatbelts on her headphones.

Not one person gave her a second glance.

She rode the lift to the tenth floor, timing it as she went. 45 seconds, she noted. She timed her walk to Roland’s door. That took about 15 seconds at an easy pace.

Her toolbelt rattled as she walked, and she couldn’t help but note how opulent everything was, compared to her garage home. Carpet was soft underneath her booted feet. There was wallpaper on the walls. Lights and fittings were milled from brass.

It was a high class place.

She took note the type of lock on the doors, before breaking out her toolkit and setting to work on the light exactly opposite. A woman walked passed with her kids, not even noticing her prying the light off.

She was in mechanics overalls, working with clean tools, looked like she knew exactly what she was doing, and was acting like she had every right to be doing what she was doing.

People just made the natural conclusion. Someone had been called in to fix the light. Even though it wasn’t broken.

Mounting the camera was simple enough. Wire it into the light’s own power supply, connect the antennae to the metal casing and make a small modification to the light cover. Try not to dance to the music. Try not to touch the live metal... getting zapped unconscious halfway through installing a spy camera just outside his door might just make the target suspicious.

She smirked to herself.

Right until she heard the door open behind her. A cold draft came out, running down her spine. She forced herself not to look around, instead burying her thoughts in the job. A lump rose up the back of her throat as she made sure she still had her pistol inside her jacket.

It’s familiar weight pressing on her chest reassured her.

“Goddamit.” the man behind her spat. She winced. “I report that broken light three times and when someone finally does show up, they fix the wrong light,”

He even threw in the exhasperated sigh, raising his arms to the heavens as if he expected the God’s themselves to give him strength to deal with such incompetence.

Ford slowly turned her head around. Roland Foster was glaring up at her through his glasses, as if he was the Great Dalmuti himself, and she was just a greater Peon. He had these weird broad cheeks and eyes which hinted at a face that was designed to be cheerful, but hadn’t been for a very long time.

Something about him made her think of a sour jellybaby.

“That one, down there.” Roland pointed, “That’s the one,”

She looked at it, flickering away happily to itself, then looked at him trying her damnedest not to smile.

“Not my job,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “I was told to fix this light. I fix this light,” Ford knocked on the case.

“Goddamn mundanes,” Roland spat.

“Take it up with the union,” she drawled, layering her Chicago accent on as thick as she could. “I got my workorder, I can’t go against that,”

Foster sneered at her, huffed, turned on his heel and marched towards the elevator.

Sierra got back to work, trying her damnedest not to start laughing. Finishing up was easy enough, just refit the cover and check it was transmitting a good signal. A good picture came up on the monitor of her datapad.

She packed up and left, not really feeling very hurried, strolling to the elevator. Coming up, she met some electrician carrying a toolbox.

The hardest thing was to keep a straight face as she watched him through the closing doors.

She took a few private moments in the elevator to cool off. For just one instant, she’d been certain Roland was going to figure out what she’d been doing.

But he didn’t.

Amen, Hallelujah, Big Mac.

Far above her, lost in the shadows among the trusses supporting the the outer dome, Jet was busy adjusting an infra-red laser to point directly at Roland’s window in such a way that it wouldn’t bake his eyeballs out of their sockets, but still get a return signal that’d intersect with another truss.

It was a small device out of the standard troubleshooter toolkit, about the size of a pringles tin and covered in a chamelon material which matched the colour of whatever it was mounted to. A waved power supply to give it the output needed for a useful resolution. With that set, Jet moved to another truss and set up a camera, facing straight at the window, getting a full view of the apartment in visible and infra-red spectra.

Now for the fun part. She routed the infra-red signal through her own hardware to check the laser’s alignment. It came up as a bright spot on the reflective glass. She switched it over to a specialised signal processor and listened in.

She heard the door slam, followed by a man’s voice grumbling about incompetent electricians and how the city was getting worse the more people move in. She heard his footsteps cross the floor, and something hitting the bed before he sat down to work at his computer.

Hmmm... she thought with mild surprise, this laser eavesdropper thing really works. It wasn’t crystal clear, sounding a little like an AM radio that wasn’t tuned in exactly right, but it was clear enough. There was a nasty crunching on the signal though...

A quick glance at the visual output showed Roland sitting at his computer... munching on cheetos.

She hooked it into the local cellular network, and from then on to the main satellite systems, where it was relayed simultaneously to Jet’s own workstation, and Ford’s mechanic’s shop. A quick check to see if things where being received.

Then jump off and rocket away into the night.

There was a bar nearby they’d both been meaning to try out.

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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?