Longshore Crew session 9
Session 9 of the Longshore Crew campaign.
Note: in this session, for various reasons, only three players were able to turn up. This is the reason for the small cast in this session.
In the morning, the Crew decided to follow up Travar's leads obtained from Splasher. They decided that Maker had something to hide, and that something was probably contact with Defender and the Blue Water Circle. They wanted to put a bug on Maker so that they could track his movements, follow him to Defender, and then arrest them both. This led to a long discussion of how to sneak up to a 'fin to place a bug, and how to subdue a 'fin that doesn't want to be arrested.
For the first stage, they decided to invite Maker into the Crew's police station for a chat. Maker agreed and sent his remote. Just after Maker's remote arrived, an engineered diversion covered Joe placing a small bug in it. Maker and Travar had an inconsequential chat, and Maker's remote returned to Maker's CICADA which returned to Maker's side. Maker then attended the scheduled CWT meeting and afterwards, as expected, left Longshore and travelled east along the coast.
This is where the second part of the plan came into effect. Milo had adapted a couple of fast underwater remotes to carry small spearguns. The spears were tipped with hypodemics darts that contained a powerful anasthetic. The remotes were left on standby just off the beach. When Maker swam away from Longshore, Travar, Max, and Milo followed in a fast boat with the remotes tagging along behind.
Maker stopped in a sheltered spot about 5km from Longshore. The passive sonar on the boat suggested that he had met another 'fin, this one without a CICADA. The Crew decided to pounce and rushed in.
The two fins swam off in different directions, but the Crew concentrated on the one that wasn't Maker. After a brief chase with the remotes through a kelp patch and around a rocky reef, the 'fin was shot and sedated. A brief examination confirmed that it was Defender and the now unconscious 'fin was towed back to Longshore, to be revived by Gary before he suffocated.
On the way back, Joe reported that the bug in Maker's drone had detected a phone call made by Maker. CommCore was searched, and the callee's phone number found. It was registered to a Native-turned-prospecter who was apparently currently in Longshore, probably to trade with the Hanover emporium ship. By the time they had discovered this, the people in the boat had returned to Longshore.
Thinking that the prospecting could be cover for a BWC operative, the Crew rushed to his lodging house at the west end of town. By the time they got there, he'd gone. They phoned the prospector, feigning a wrong number. Base station usage of his phone put him in the centre of town, and his voice suggested that he was walking quickly. The Crew moved back east. A few moments later, there were reports of gunfire from the Rangoon hotel. Lots of gunfire.
Milo, Max, and Travar arrived at the hotel first. All was quiet. Milo rushed up the stairs to the Hanover rooms, only to be seriously wounded by a burst of machine-gun fire from the landing. Max returned fire and dropped the gunman, a Native. Approaching the rooms, they noticed the body of a HSS man lying in the corridor, and the smell of blood and binary propellant. They found several more bodies in the rooms, both HSS and Native. Prof. Schmidt was unhurt, though one surviving Native had taken an HSS man hostage was holding back Aachen. Travar failed to persuade the Native to release his hostage, so Max shot the Native through the wall from the next room. Aachen then killed him off.
Aachen immediately left Longshore with Schmidt, and that's where we left it. Of course, there was more going on with Hanover, including the fact that at least one of the HSS men had been shot by Aachen, but we ran out of time to explore that.