Week 70 Mission Debrief: So THAT'S What They're Used For!

The mission:

To infiltrate a top secret Comoros reverse engineering facility in Lhasa, located in tunnels beneath a Buddhist monastery, and recover any data and/or prototypes present that had been stolen from the nearby Ai Jinn manufacturing facilities.

The team:

Karishma, Han, Hugo, Coraline, Stephen

What happened:

First, the team had a short meeting where they compiled everything they knew about the monastery, such as where the entrance to the tunnels was hidden, and what the monastery’s usual schedule was (and Stephen passed around delicious muffins).  It was then decided that they would infiltrate during the monks’ courtyard show, when the visitors and residents would be out of the way and at their most distracted.

Before entering, Karishma’s hornet drones were used to scout the monastery to assess its security and check for cameras, after Coraline tweaked one of the drones to allow her to take direct control of it.  Once this was done, the infiltration began; Coraline used her impressive skills to disguise herself as one of the monks, while the rest of the team relied on invisibility and their stealth abilities to remain undetected.  Stephen and Karishma entered by scaling the perimeter wall, while Han and Hugo slipped in through the front entrance, and Coraline acted and lied her way inside under cover of her disguise.

Once inside, the team headed to the location of the tunnel entrance: a secret door hidden somewhere inside the monks’ sleeping quarters.  Managing not to wake the two monks who were sleeping right next to them, Han X-rayed the floor of the room, discovering the entrance underneath one of the unoccupied beds which Hugo then extremely deftly and silently lifted out of the way, placing it to one side.  Han then set to work; he very competently made short work of the lock mechanism, then used a borrowed mechtronics toolkit laser to access and bypass the pressure plates set up at the entrance, allowing the team to safely enter the tunnel undetected.

Hugo entered first, followed quickly by Han, then Karishma, with Stephen behind her and Coraline taking the rear.  The passage was pitch black inside, but turned out to have a good airflow and wasn’t musty, seeming to be in regular use.  Undeterred by the darkness, the team advanced down the tunnel cautiously, and soon the footsteps of three people were detected up ahead by Hugo, Coraline and Han.  Remaining cautious, the group moved closer to the footsteps until they were within the range of linear hearing. Coraline and Karishma were just able to hear voices ahead, but Han was able to clearly make out that the people were speaking in Hindi, catching one of them saying “Hurry up, we need to get out of here.  Grab the stuff!”

It was immediately decided that the team would sneak up on the unidentified trio to ascertain who they were and what they were doing before a further course of action was decided upon.  When they got closer, the team could see that through a doorway up ahead was a well-lit room, and that the three people they had detected earlier were inside.  Unfortunately, as they approached the doorway, Coraline caused a small noise in her attempt to remain silent, and this was heard by the people inside the room, putting them on alert and causing them to accelerate whatever it was that they were doing.

Han, Hugo and Karishma slowly crept forward until they had a clear view inside the room and of its occupants.  Karishma quickly recognised some of the many mechtronics tools strewn across the floor as typical reverse engineering equipment, while Han and Hugo noticed that the three obviously reverse engineers were carrying partially stripped-down, unusual tactical weapons.  It was also evident to them that the engineers were packing up their equipment in preparation to leave.  Coraline and Stephen stayed a short distance behind, keeping their weapons trained on the open doorway just in case.  Through a little skill and a lot of luck, Karishma was able to slip into the room unnoticed and hid behind a table which still had some of the weapon parts lying on it.  A quick appraisal of the parts revealed them to be some kind of focussing lenses for laser weaponry.  Han also slipped into the room, hiding behind the same table.

While this was happening Hugo also entered, walking calmly, quietly and thoroughly invisibly around the outskirts of the room.  It was at this point that one of the three engineers happened to glance across to check that they had picked up everything important, and noticed a slight shimmer in the air where Hugo was standing.  Lifting his odd weapon nervously, he fired a continuous beam laser in an arc across the room, which harmlessly traced across Hugo’s large and heavily armoured form, instantly revealing him.  This caused a simultaneous gasp of recognition and understanding from those of the team who had encountered these weapons before.

As soon as he was detected, Hugo deactivated his invisibility and attempted to convince the three reverse engineers to surrender without violence.  Despite his best efforts though, the three engineers ignored him completely.  One of them attempted to escape down a further passage and was shot by Stephen, but he continued to run in spite of this and was given chase by Hugo.  Han proceeded to vault the table he’d been hiding behind, quickly closing the distance to the second engineer and putting two powerful and well-aimed shotgun blasts into him, doing seemingly serious damage and knocking the man to the floor.  The one who had discovered Hugo had his laser ripped out of his hands by Karishma using telekinesis, and was then thrown to the floor by an unusually powerful assault from her.  However, as he fell he let loose a flash bang, stunning Karishma, Coraline and Stephen.  Han however was unaffected and succeeded in intimidating the disarmed engineer into compliance, who was then quickly psi-cuffed and EMP’d by Coraline to prevent further resistance.  Coraline then quickly headed to the aid of the engineer that Han had shot, intending to staunch his horrifically bleeding injuries... which turned out to be non-existent as he jumped up from the pool of his own blood and set off yet another flash bang.  Thankfully, the team was ready for it this time, with nobody stunned.  Stephen put two quick sniper shots into him, and then Han dealt with the threat by brutally blasting off one of the man’s legs with his shotguns, rendering him unconscious and allowing him to be restrained while Coraline ensured that his injuries were non-lethal.

At this point, Karishma decided to go and assist Hugo; however by the time she caught up to him he had already subdued and restrained the escaping engineer, who was admittedly slightly distracted by Una.  Seeing this, Karishma instead launched her two hornet drones to scout the tunnels ahead, and then accompanied Hugo as he dragged the engineer back to the room, rejoining the rest of the team.  An interrogation of the two conscious engineers was then attempted, and it was gleaned from them that their main facility was further down the tunnels, but both were knocked out once it was established that they were not going to reveal any more information.  They were then searched for valuable equipment.  This included a PDA, which was hacked by a data leach and its information extracted.

Shortly after this, the hornet drones reported back on their mapping of the passages up ahead; they had found the door leading to the main facility.  While Hugo headed off to investigate this, the rest of the team debated what to do with the now unconscious enemy agents.  After much back and forth discussion it was decided to take them along either to ransom later, or simply to ditch outside where they would be out of harm’s way.  Once at the door, Han took over from Hugo and once again made short notice of the lock, and one of the hornet drones was sent through the door to scout out the room beyond.  Immediately inside was an uncomfortable looking cot against one wall, a computer bank against another and a man sat meditating between them.

Understanding the threat posed by an agent from Comoros meditating, it was decided that diplomacy would be attempted in order to avoid further combat, although Hugo made sure to make a set of psi-cuffs available, just in case.  On knocking upon the door, the team was cordially invited inside by the Comoros agent, and after calm negotiation it was agreed that, in exchange for the return of his unconscious personnel and the continued secrecy of the existence of their facility, the agent would allow the team access to data that had been stolen from the Ai Jinn.  The agents were handed over, and Han offered to pay for the replacement of the leg he had blown off, but this was kindly refused.  In addition, most of the equipment taken from the unconscious agents was handed over, including the laser weapon lenses since the weapon had been encountered multiple times in the past.

On inspection of the stolen data, it was determined that they were schematics for some kind of Ai Jinn vehicle, possibly a small cyberlin or mag tank, showing a control system that allowed a neural jack connection.

Negotiations complete, the team then left the facility peacefully and retreated from the monastery with the data.

Items recovered to be placed in the room:

• Ai Jinn vehicle schematics
• Data leach of PDA

Karishma's comments:

This was a well-executed mission, with no lethalities on either side, and a surprisingly peaceful conclusion.  Despite my own attempts at leadership being admittedly not the best, everyone performed extremely professionally and competently, and we were able to secure some potentially very valuable data.  Good work, everyone!