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The Company
Time: Thursday, January 20, 2011 (evening).
Place: Darmstadt.
Last Event: A meeting with Ms. Staedert.
The meeting with Staedert comes to a close with her declaring that the Agents will be "deprogrammed, processed, and reintegrated," which apparently involves being drafted as test subjects for experimental medical scanning and cosmetic surgery. Staedert's assistant, Ms. Chang, issues plastic bracelets to Anabel, Hamid, Qoqa, Vinnie, Wen, and Zhang, and then escorts the six to a distant wing of the Darmatech facility. There, anonymous technicians in white coats examine them for tracking technologies of all kinds. After that, it's time to meet with the surgeons.
Darmatech's research into cosmetic surgery revolves around two innovations. The first is a complex computer model based on thousands of images of real people – from ordinary folks to media stars – sorted by age, ethnicity, and body type, and ranked for appeal and deviations from sundry norms. Each Agent is photographed from every angle and facially scanned with ultrasound, and then these data are analyzed by the software. This quickly identifies the degree of change possible given starting features and available surgical techniques, offering mathematical ratings of "appropriateness" and "typicality," and even numerical odds of passing as natural. Estimated post-surgical appearance is displayed visually, showing the effects of hypothetical nips and tucks.
Each Agent is interviewed, scanned into the system, and shown the computer's projection of a new face that has acceptably low odds of recognition by current biometric technologies. On Staedert's orders, the surgeons then ask for any specific changes desired, within the limits of what the model is capable of rendering. The answers vary:
• Anabel wants her looks altered to fall in line with what the model considers the "classic brunette": a consensus composite of the most attractive brunettes from over 60 years of film and television. Given her already-attractive features, this is mostly a matter of making minor adjustments to facial lines – well within the surgeons' abilities, even a little boring.
• Hamid asks to have his face tweaked to be closer to the statistical norms for an attractive man of North African background – vain, but also useful for someone who routinely engages in social engineering.
• Qoqa decides not to go for anything fancy; "different" is good enough. However, when she gets wind of the fact that Darmatech is also pioneering advanced laser correction of eyesight, she requests that treatment so that she can get rid of her contact lenses. The surgeons agree.
• Vinnie goes for something fancy that, if it works, won't look fancy. Namely, he asks to have his looks brought as close as possible to what the computer model claims is the generic "everyman" – the most normal and forgettable of faces.
• Wen wants her features altered from Chinese-typical to halfway between that and Japanese-typical, so that she can pose as Japanese if needed. She also desires a similar averaging between looks consistent with her age and those of a teenager, better to use her slight stature to pass as someone younger. It's a tall order, but the surgeons rub their hands together with glee at the chance to try.
• Zhang, like Anabel and Vinnie, is fascinated with the model's ability to estimate archetypes and move people closer to them. His plan is to have his face brought as close as possible to what's considered attractive for Chinese men in photographs. That is, he wants to look good in stills. The surgeons are fascinated by this challenge, too.
The other major development that Darmatech is testing is "rapid-recovery" cosmetic surgery involving lasers, micro-laparoscopes, and novel pharmaceuticals. As the project leader all-too-enthusiastically explains, "Quick recovery times mean lower barriers to acceptance – and that means higher profits. Coupled with our modeling system, we hope that anybody with the money could walk in, pick the face she wants from a computer screen, get outpatient surgery, and show off the results two weeks later. That is, if everything works as intended . . . but we firmly believe in our product. You are so lucky to be the first!"
The procedures are scheduled a day apart, with Anabel going in on the 21st, Wen on the 22nd, Zhang on the 23rd, Hamid on the 24th, Vinnie on the 25th, and Qoqa on the 26th. Estimated recovery time is, as the lead surgeon said, two weeks. As the team's medic, Qoqa manages to get Staedert to agree to let her observe the first five operations, which she does. As it turns out, Qoqa's comments on Darmatech's methods prove useful, and a few processes are optimized in time for Qoqa to benefit from the lessons learned.
Fortunately for the Agents, the procedures go smoothly. It's too soon to tell whether the surgeons delivered what was promised, but nobody is in terrible pain or otherwise feeling unwell. As the recovery period is being monitored, the six must bide their time in the gleaming white medical wing. Most of them read, play games, or otherwise kill time, but Qoqa – forbidden to smoke – pretends that she wants to quit and volunteers to test Darmatech's groundbreaking nicotine-delivery products, while Zhang uses experimental nutritional supplements and works out in the ergonomically optimized gym. Based on healing times (the computer tracks and models that, too), the projected discharge date is February 6.
—
Back in Canada, Chaturvedi, Alfred, and the other six Agents have been keeping their heads down on the old farm that Alfred found for them near Irricana. Things have been wonderfully uneventful since their associates left to make their way to Europe on December 29. Alfred has been using the time to work on his armored truck; Klas and Lev, to modify old C1 and C2 rifles from Alfred's armory; Ben, Chaturvedi, and JB, to catch up on their reading and world-watching; and Jili and Paul, to work on the relationship they started in Belfast. The month has been more about rest than work, all told.
However, Jili has remained in contact with the traveling squad via e-mail, periodically relaying news back and forth between them and Chaturvedi. She and the others at the farmhouse are aware that their associates have been confined to an observation facility in Darmstadt, recovering from surgery, since January 21. The six patients have been sending a lot of correspondence to kill time, and handling this has fallen to Jili, the comms expert. Not that she minds – the eight-hour time difference gives her an excuse to stay up late and mess with computers, which is how she prefers to spend nights. This is what Jili is doing at 04:00 on January 29 when she hears a scratching noise at the front door.
Jili is no newcomer to covert operations – she knows the sound of someone picking a lock. She immediately stands up and starts sneaking toward the staircase, her goal being to get upstairs and alert her sleeping associates. She isn't even halfway to her goal when the power goes out, dousing the lights and her computers. Before she can pick up the pace, the door opens and several shadowy figures move in. She freezes and flattens herself in the shadows as the intruders carefully scan the room, their silhouettes suggesting night-vision gear.
Suddenly, one of the prowlers catches sight of Jili somewhere in the gloom. He turns to point his carbine her way, but Jili has her head down and is crawling away behind the furniture before the man can get a clear shot. In a show of poor discipline that suggests that the intruders aren't experienced at clearing rooms, somebody panics at losing sight of Jili and tosses a flash-bang over Jili's head and into the next room, the most likely hiding place for ambushers. Despite being well-concealed when the grenade goes off, Jili is momentarily stunned by the bright light and deafening explosion. An instant later, she feels two sharp thumps in the center of her chest, followed by searing pain. Before she can cry out, she collapses on the floor.
Upstairs, the other seven are awakened by the flash-bang and individually conclude that there's serious trouble downstairs. Klas and Paul also hear suppressed gunfire, which baffles them – why would somebody use a loud stun munition if they were trying not to be heard? The combination suggests either the work of amateurs or a panic reaction. Panic means that somebody most likely surprised the shooters . . . and since only Jili was up, that somebody was likely her, and she has probably been shot. Everybody springs into action:
• Ben and JB are in the room nearest the top of the stairs. They go for their pistols. JB, being a quick-witted bodyguard, has his right there by the bed; he snatches it up and points it at the door. Ben, being a medic and not a shooter, keeps his gun unloaded in a drawer; he starts fumbling around for it.
• Klas and Lev are in the room just across from Ben and JB's, still in sight of the stairs. Both are trained riflemen and both have tricked-out FALs in reach – heavy-barreled, full-auto weapons outfitted with bipods, tritium sights, and 30-round magazines. They snatch up their guns and assume shooting positions facing the hallway. As Klas listens to the creaking of the stairs, he realizes that a good-sized squad is on its way. He silently gestures this to Lev and points his weapon slightly to the left. Lev covers the right.
• Paul is alone in the room nearest the stairs after that. Worried about Jili, and very experienced with nighttime assassinations after living through the Troubles, he's leaps out of bed, grabs his loaded pistol from the bedside table, and starts opening the window.
• Alfred and Chaturvedi share the room at the very end of the hall. Alfred grabs the M79 slung over the bedpost and pops in a 40mm buckshot cartridge, while Chaturvedi snatches up the loaded pistol that Alfred insisted he keep on the bedside table. Alfred kicks out the window and hisses, "Boss, you have to escape! Leave this to me! There's a fueled-up snowmobile under a tarp by the woodpile! Get the Swede to drive you out of here!"
The tension is suddenly shattered when Ben and JB's door flies inward with a loud crash. In the light from the window, the two catch a glimpse of men in night-vision goggles, crouched in shooting positions with leveled M4 carbines. Being unarmed and hidden in the shadows, Ben immediately dives for the window. As he does, he hears the sound of a double-tap and sees JB fall, almost surely dead. At the same time, bullets track him through the air, chewing up the wall as he smashes through the windowpane. Ben feels a rib cave in and glass slice into his side, but he knows wounds inside and out – even as he bounces along the icy porch roof, he's certain that he hasn't been hit.
Klas and Lev decide that it's make-or-break time – somebody else just got shot, and unless they seize the initiative, it'll be their turn soon. Lev kicks open the door with one foot so that he and Klas can see what they're shooting at. This reveals several figures silhouetted against the light from window in Ben and JB's room, almost directly across the way. It looks as if two gunmen are facing away, shooting out the window, while two more are watching the shooters' backs, facing Klas and Lev directly.
Lev and Klas open fire, rounds from their heavy rifles tearing into the enemy security element and the backs of JB's killers. There's blood and screams and falling bodies, and after that, just ringing in the ears from two battle rifles barking away in a small room. Some of the targets manage to shoot back, clipping both Lev and Klas. However, while suppressed M4s hurt, full-powered FALs are considerably deadlier. Klas and Lev have felt better, but they've had worse. The four men they just shot mostly aren't moving, aside from one guy trying to crawl down the stairs with two useless legs.
This ruckus triggers all manner of action on both sides. Up the hall, Paul hears stray rounds perforate the walls and concludes that it's time to bug out – he isn't taking on rifles with a handgun! Being the athletic type, he opts to climb out the window and onto the porch roof. There, he finds Ben lying dazed in a mess of blood and shattered glass. He confirms that Ben isn't seriously hurt and helps the medic up, warning him that enemy killers are just behind him.
Chaturvedi, urged on by Alfred, also goes out a window. This exit deposits him on the roof of the one-story kitchen at the back of the farmhouse. No thanks to his artificial leg, he promptly slips and lands on the ground. Miraculously, he isn't hurt beyond a sore rear end and a bruised tailbone. Once Chaturvedi has escaped, Alfred heads for the bedroom door with his grenade launcher.
Meanwhile, the remaining attackers – headed up the hall to take care of the other two bedrooms and deal with the targets out on the porch roof – realize that their people have just been ambushed. On turning around, they see their associates being gunned down and bright muzzle flashes erupting from Klas and Lev's room. They return fire at the doorway, shooting from an oblique angle that hides them from Lev and Klas' sight. Luckily for Klas and Lev, they don't hit anything but wall, doorframe, and furniture.
At this juncture, Alfred steps out into the hall behind the men shooting at Klas and Lev, and fires a massive blast of shot across their legs. They go down with leg wounds, but they're not out. Both shoot up at Alfred, scoring multiple hits. Alfred is killed where he stands, his corpse falling back into his room.
This is all the distraction that Klas and Lev need, however. They reload, stagger out into the hallway, and finish what Alfred started, unloading long bursts of gunfire into the mess of bodies on the floor. This brings two more men out of the doorway to Paul's room. They're fast and have the advantage of night vision, but they aren't shooters of Klas' caliber. Before they can do anything, Klas walks his burst onto them, putting both of them down, one with an almost assuredly fatal brain injury. After that, the shooting stops.
Outside, Ben and Paul see the silhouette of a helicopter landed on the property in the distance. Fearing snipers with night-vision gear, or simply heavy weapons on the chopper, they clamber down out of sight of the vehicle and hug the shadows. As they pass the breached front door, Paul tells Ben that he needs to find out whether Jili made it, and asks Ben to get to Alfred's stash in the barn, dig out the medical supplies, and get ready to save lives. Ben agrees, and starts making his way to the barn as stealthily as he can, while Paul belly crawls indoors.
Upstairs, Klas and Lev verify that none of the intruders is conscious, and then top up and start checking the second storey room-by-room. They find Alfred and JB's corpses, and see evidence that at least three windows were used for escape – presumably by Ben, Paul, and Chaturvedi. They don't encounter any further resistance, nor do they find any of their surviving allies. Cautiously, they approach the staircase, climbing over a man who passed out there, and head downstairs, where they run into Paul. Fortunately, none of the three shoots a friend.
Paul signals that he's searching for Jili, and the three men fan out, weapons at the ready, to find her. It doesn't take long. She's unconscious and in bad shape, blood bubbling from her chest as she draws short, ragged breaths. Paul yells into Klas' ear that he's going to take Jili to Ben, who's waiting out in the barn, and that there's a helicopter out front. Klas and Lev exchange glances – there might not be much that Ben can do for Jili, and a helicopter isn't good news at all.
While Paul carefully gathers up Jili, Lev helps the wounded Klas over to the front door, where they both go prone and take a look. Klas has remarkable vision, and can pick out four shadowy figures by the helicopter. His best guess is a sniper, a spotter, a door gunner, and a fourth man, although he'd need binoculars to be sure. When he and Lev rejoin Paul, they tell him to head out the back way, keeping the building between them and the helicopter. With Paul carrying Jili and Klas and Lev supporting one another, the men make their way to the barn.
The gap between the farmhouse and the barn isn't huge, but it's exposed – and with Paul carrying Jili and the other two staggering from their wounds, it isn't a short run. The Agents decide to take it as a group, and start moving. About 3/4 of the way across, a shot rings out. Paul hears it impact nearby, but nobody is hurt. Then Lev kicks open the barn door and everybody piles inside, taking cover behind Alfred's armored tractor unit. There, they find Chaturvedi, flattened out behind the monster vehicle, and Ben, digging out medical gear from one of the lockers.
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Were the players particularly prepared/unprepared?
Seems like they recovered quite quickly, and I am not sure that a real sentry would have faired much better than Jili not when facing opponents with snipers and night vision.
But I would have thought a dummy sentry, maybe a trip wire with some sort of firework/trap to disable night vision would have been the kind of things to have prepared each night
no subject
Traps and dummy sentries are pretty much the opposite of comfortable. They're fine for the occasional night in the jungle, but not so great when you have eight people keeping strange hours in close quarters 24/7 for a month. I enforce security vs. convenience as a kind of rule, so long before the bad guys showed up, somebody would most likely have slipped up and set the place on fire, ended up shot, etc. Thus, having an alert, well-trained Agent up at any given hour was seen as a sensible compromise.
Locking the place down like a fort wouldn't have been sensible for nights on end. That sort of thing is fine for goofy genres like dungeon fantasy, or for a real fort, but nobody much does it when trying to live life and keep a low profile without going nuts. If the players had gone overboard with stuff like that, they wouldn't have needed the bad guys to mess them up.
Now if everybody had spent a point on Standard Operating Procedure (Safehouse Security) or something, I'd have waived these considerations and let people pick their way past a web of tripwires whenever they want to step out on the porch for a smoke. But so far, I've had no takers! All told, we felt it was realistic that in a house full of armed people, somebody awake with the lights on would be good enough. One scream and anybody breaking in would be toast. The problem here was that Jili didn't scream.
And of course the other problem was that it was Jili. She's the worst choice for night duty, but she was pulling 1/7 of the shifts (Chaturvedi, being the boss, got to sit it out) and I rolled her at random. Had it been Lev, things would have gone differently. He's the sort to sit in the dark in a rocking chair with a loaded battle rifle. He's also scarily capable of fighting through a flash-bang; his toughness isn't that clear from the recaps, but it's worth noting that he's been shot and stabbed more than everybody else, but he still wakes up in the morning and runs a mile.
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Though they got to the front door before the power got cut and I was thinking battery run anyway.
Even a 'barking dog' alarm when someone walked in front of the door might be good. Or just motion detector lights that automatically went on. Would have had the plus of blinding them for a little bit.
Ofcourse I imagine some of the necessary parts would have been contignent on a scrounging roll or two.
no subject
Helicopter Attacks Suck
Damn Cold. Wish I had been there.
Re: Helicopter Attacks Suck
Re: Helicopter Attacks Suck