Shooting Stars [IC]
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Shooting Stars [IC]
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<<Al, Becky, Lilly — looks like we’re relying on you and your guns and bows. That RCC is hot as a Halloweener’s new car, and I’m as cold as the Winters back home. I’ll keep trying, but feel free to hog all the destruction for yourselves.>>
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Rebbeca arms her bow and waits until the drones are in range. “Target practice!… these are mine” she says to make sure not to waste time. She fires at an impressive rate, not bothering to wait and see if the arrow hit before launching another one.
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Preston needn’t have to worry: Between Al, Lily and Becky, the drones didn’t even get close enough to fire their own weapons – but they exploded with quite a lot of force for such small objects. Whatever weapons they had been outfitted with, had had either very explosive ammo or a very high capacity battery.
With the boats disabled and the drone threat neutralized, the rest of the journey was smooth sailing… or motoring. Just as Panama Harbor came into view, a little *Ding* noise indicated that Veljanov had been safely restored from his waking coma and began to stir in his high tech coffin.
“Would you terribly mind if you let me out from here?” his muffled voice came from within. -
“Rise and shine sweetie” Rebbeca says and opens his coffin door. She helps the man exits and then says “Welcome to Panama Harbor… You were not very far from being an astronaut. “
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Al extended a scarred hand. “Alouicious Harlan Guthrie, esquire an’ fellow Master Thespian. Reckon i can take or leave that stuff yer passin’ off fer music, but big fan o’ the show.”
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Veljanov was a tall, thin elf, clad only in a hospital gown that made him look like a failed attempt at playing a ghost on halloween.
Although he started with a smile, his face went through the rapid changes that most people showed when meeting Al for the first time and shaking his hand: Surprise, disgust, puzzlement and finally a small smile as Al’s charm hit them.
“Thanks. Always nice to meet a fan. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have some clothes on board? It’s a bit drafty around my backside.”
He looked around in amazement: “So Panama and the space elevator? Those crazy bastards.
While you are looking for clothes, maybe you can get me a commlink as well. I think I need to make some calls.” -
* Oleg: People like him are dangerous, best to keep my distance
* Coleman: People like him are opportunity, I should make sure he knows my name
* Eliza: People like him are still people, and I should be politePreston dug into the small bag he had brought on board the ship, and pulled out a metalink. He tossed it to the elf, saying “Barely a link, but it’s all I have here that isn’t stuck inside my skull. Maybe one of the others has a better burner with them? Anyway, handle is Preston, and I’m very pleased to see you on your feet and brain not trapped in a dying sim.”
* Monkey: People like him have awesome parties, maybe I’ll get an invite some day!
* Gamma: At his last party he was abducted by incredibly sophisticated drones and trapped in a sim for days
* AAAAA: aaaaaaaaaa! -
Rebbeca says “I’d hold on the calls until we’re back to safety. Our next goal is to move you quietly. I’ll appreciate it if you don’t make hiding you any harder than it should be. Ghost knows how eager they are to retrieve you because the crazy spacemen can definitely afford professional help.” That said, she does nothing to prevent him from accepting the Metalink from Preston, knowing that such a link would be useless in open waters. She takes up some training from her duffel bag and hands them to. “They’ll fit, but let’s hope that you are not photoed by paparazzi in them.”[/color] She looks at Al to see if he has something more masculine to offer. While her training clothes are mostly unisex. They’ll be a bit short on Veljanov as Rebbeca is a head shorter.
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“Frag, right, clothes. Most of what I have will be too short on you, but it is Panama so t-shirt and shorts shouldn’t stand out too much, and I do have spares of those with me. You can mix and match between what I have and what she has and see what works. But speaking of calls and all of that, I’m going to go do a matrix sweep of the ship.”
After he’d passed over the clothes he he went and lay down again, wrapped around his deck. After enjoying the caress of hot-sim for a bit he started the tedious work of pouring over the ship and the many links and devices on it, looking for marks that could potentially be used to trace their location.
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Veljanov took the offered clothes gratefully and all in all seemed to be an amiable fellow for a milleniogenerian. The matrix sweep showed no MARKs, but then, the boat did have an official navigation beacon which wouldn’t make it particularly hard for anyone to find it again.
As soon as they were close enough to coast, Thorn organized transport – for the team as well as for the stolen antigrav drone.
He said: “My boss is quite happy with how this turned out. But you probably should not stay here for much longer. Those wayfarers are certainly loaded enough to have assets here in town. The boss recommends you for your work and wants to keep you on his file of contacts.”Veljanov added: “Alright, so does this rescue include a flight back to Seattle? I think you earned yourself a little party.”
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“Nothin’ but first class fer you, amigo. Got my plan moored jist off shore of a quiet little Ciudad No-questions Asked a hop, skip, an’ a jump up the coast. Rented Hotspur’ll git us up there from the port here in an’ hour.”
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Rebbeca grins “I bet you throw the best parties… “ Then she wonders if Lady Tanya would like to accompany her as Roger might not want to be seen with her in such a public occasion. “We barely see each other anymore” she then realizes, and wonders exactly where things changed. Was it the body modifications, or the fact that she became deadly? The fact she grew colder the more professional she got? None of it actually, she knew that Roger was madly attracted to her. Perhaps it was because she no longer needed him, she was not dependent on him anymore, and needed no rescue. Perhaps he was that kind of person.
“Does this rescue includes some spoilers or backstage gossip?”
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“Gossip, sure, but for spoilers Ernst would have my head.” Veljanov sat down on a pile of nets.
“A direct flight out sounds good. I’ve got some influencial people around here who won’t tolerate my presence at all.”
The boat finally navigated into the harbor and found a pier for small craft. -
[Saturday September 10, 2078; In the water, off the coast of Panama]
Lily had almost giggled at the thought of a party with a famed trid star… she took a leaf out of Becky and Al’s book and tried to show calm restraint but her eyes were twinkling. She’d not had many opportunities to party hanging out with the Mechanicals, with the hunters still looking for her she needed to keep a low profile, but she suspected that after this little escapade security around Alex Veljanov would be extremely tight for a while…
“A party sounds good. I’m Lily” and she proffered a metallic hand to Alex…
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#52
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The immortal shook her hand and grinned back: “Also, it looks like I could use a few capable bodyguards until the studio gets its arse in gear. It would be my pleasure to keep you around for a bit longer.”
Spoiler: -
“Security at your house looked pretty good, but they got you with social engineering. Probably doesn’t hurt to have a few people around who you are paying for, for now. But if you are planning a party you’ll need to decide if we are there as security or as guests.”
Spoiler: -
Preston was not so deep into the conversation that he would miss the smal group of burly men closing in on the boat. They looked like a higher class of criminals: Enforcers for some kind of drug lord or Mafia Don.
To be fair, they moved pretty well through the lively harbor, drawing very little attention to themselves.
He counted seven men and two women in total. At the moment they didn’t move particularly fast, but gained steadily on their position.Veljanov answered: “Yeah, that’s a fair question, I guess. Let’s just say, I’ll sponsor your stay with me, but there is no need to actually stay sober if you don’t want to.”
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“Drunk guards aren’t the best guards. And speaking of guards, it looks like there is a group of heavies coming our way. We don’t have Tecumseh here to make us all vanish, so are we waiting for them to close in and talk with us, or are we going to take more, uh, proactive measures?”
Preston took the opportunity to make sure that he had all of his usual gear back in its usual places, now that there was no worry of it weighting him down in the ocean.
* Oleg: I should have learned my lesson by now, and be ready to leave the fights to the experts
* Coleman: Never know when something might slip past them, and I’ll need to do something.
* Monkey: Besides it is funny how people spasm when you hit them with a stun baton! -
As soon as he spotted the goon squad, Al started looking for secondary threats – probably these thugs were all the Mars freaks could muster on short notice, but he made a habit of assuming that any attack as obvious as this was possibly a distraction from some other, more deadly threat….
His first thought was to answer Preston with a glib “Both,” the hacker and himself keeping the elf moving towards their vehicle, leaving Lily and Becky behind to intercept their pursuers.
But that didn’t seem very gentlemanly, leaving the ladies to do the dirty work. Besides, there were a lot of people here. And it wouldn’t hurt to have some idea of who these people were before they started doing grievous bodily harm to them…”Thorny baby, ya know these cats?”
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[Saturday September 10, 2078; In the water, off the coast of Panama]
Lily quietly hoped the goons were something to do with Alex rather than her own past coming to haunt her… either way she made sure that her pistols were loaded with stun rounds and easily accessible…
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#53
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