| NEW MEXICO COPS, SESSION FIVE a Cyberpunk 2020 game run by Gary Astleford |  |
NEW MEXICO STATE POLICE OUTLINE #5 1) Justin Scheumaker. Justin Sheumaker, Biotechnicia's representative for Crossroads, will show up in a blue and green helicopter with an armed (pistol only) corporate bodyguard. He'll shake hands, check up on people, and stay for a while. He'll give the characters a thumbs up on their performance, tell them how much the corporation appreciates them, and then he'll hand out $1000 checks to each and every officer. If the officers ACCEPT the money, well, that's as good as a gratuity. Worse yet, it's as good as a bribe, ensuring future blackmail. This guy was a slimy suit with a smile. We refused the money and sent him on his way. 2) Wasteland Warriors ride into town. How many? Let's say that there are five of them, just for kicks:
This group will drive in on three bikes (Skull's thundergod, Sybil on a similar hog, and Dirge on a rice-grinding crotch rocket, as well as Frankie and Gremlin in an old beat-up RX-7. They're not in the best of moods, and won't be none too overjoyed to see cops. The first thing they'll run into will be law enforcement's intervention. That is, however, if the Cowboys don't get them first. I suppose I'll have to have the cops show up downtown before I unleash my dogs of war upon the coppers. Say there's a face-off between cop and Waste(land Warriors), and just when it's looking either real good or real bad, the cowboys pop one of them (maybe Dirge) from a roof. Chaos ensues. Could be good. Yup. Grayson (Katrina) and Burke (Joe) were, I think, eating lunch in the Tumbleweed at the time. Maitland and Ingles (Brant) were stocking up on toilet paper, beer, and other necessary sundries at the grocery when the Waste rode into town. They pulled up right in front of the Tumbleweed, stormed in, and demanded to know where their friends were (the Fliedermaus guys, from earlier). When Grayson attempted to talk reasonably to them, they beat the crap out of her and took her hostage. Yee-haw. Things Were Looking Bad for Our Heroes... Grayson's on the ground outside the Tumbleweed with Dyke holding a pistol to her head, Burke's stuck inside, being covered by Frankie; Ingles and Maitland are down the street, but we can neither advance nor open fire without getting Grayson's head blown inside-out. Enter the Cowboys. While we're facing off, we see the three (Strawberry, Mary-Ann, and Cagney) take up positions around the Tumbleweed and the building across the street. With no words spoken, Burke teams up with Cagney (on the roof opposite), and Maitland kinda hung out with Strawberry. Then all hell breaks loose. Once again, we had an absolutely amazing fight in which everyone got shot, but thanks to armor, etc., the officers made it out with only minor wounds. Even Grayson survived. I suppose that once done with their job, the cowboys will get on their bikes and leave, unless the cops try to detain them, which won't happen without a fight. They'd better watch it. Fight's over, Cowboys are saddling up, Ingles and Maitland mosey up. "Welp," says Maitland, "Guess we're supposed to arrest you three now." Nobody says anything. The Cowboys continue to pack their gear. Ingles and I look at each other. Cagney, without looking up, says, "Uh-huh." Keeps packing. Long pause. "Guess that would be a bad idea," says Maitland. Cagney, still packing: "Uh-huh." Longer pause. Ingles and Maitland mosey away. The Cowboys leave town, never to be seen again. 3) Char forces Amy to submit to an exam. He'll take a sample from her, and then tell her the results of Joe's exam, versus the two army goons. Thing is, he's showing signs of some sort of chemical in his blood and tissue. Char doesn't know what it is, but he found far greater quantities in both of the army boy's samples. He'd like to perform sampling on everyone, if he could. He'd also like a copy of the autopsies done of the army corpses. Problem here is that the corpses were taken by the army less than an hour after landing. Seems the army goons had all the proper paperwork. What's Joe got inside him? Well, someone (or something) did a good one on him. This chemical will remain a mystery for a long time. I'm not sure now what it does. I'll say it's just an alien knock-out drug. Why not? This requires some explanation. Earlier in the game, after Scheumaker showed up but before the Wasteland Warriors-Cowboy incident, Burke (Joe) was out patrolling the outlying farms one night. He got out of his car to look at the stars, and after he came back to the station, he found out that he'd been incommunicado for several hours, none of which he remembered. Upon physical examination (everyone thought he'd been out there shooting up with some of Char's stash), we found airhypo marks on his neck. We never found out what had happened. Chalk it up to alien abduction. Just more of the general craziness that marked this game. 4) The lights. Anyone on watch at around 11:15 pm one night will look up from whatever they were doing, because the lights in the sky over the base are out. Kaput. Like flipping a switch. About a minute or so later, loud noises will be heard from that quarter: booms, bangs, and the occasional ground-shaking KA-BOOM. The sky over there will light up as if someone were setting off fireworks. This lasts about 15 minutes, and then ends. Whoever was on watch woke everybody up, and we all stood out on the roof for the next few minutes, watching the festivities. At around 2:30 am, three AV-8 Assault Aerodynes will start flying around the town. They will be unresponsive to all but military communications. If the players attempt to radio Santa Fe (or Albequerque or wherever), their transmission will be jammed by an AV-8 rigged for electronic warfare. The AV's look like they're looking for something. Several more AV-6 Combat Aerodynes will start to fly in, each packed with eight combat-ready troops. They will land in pairs at each of the four compass points of the town, and set up roadblocks. Anyone resisting will be subdued. The army doesn't care how. One of these AV's will land near the police building. The officer will inform the PC's that the town is under military quarantine and that they have orders to search every building in the area. This could get ugly if the PC's resist. By this time, the phone should be ringing off the hook. Mahr is calling, etc. The army has landed at his place and is searching through his houses. Two of Mahr's workers have been shot because they resisted. One is dead, one is only wounded, but bleeding heavily. Mahr's call will be cut short. We got this call before the AV-6 carrying the officer listed above landed, so Ingles (Brant) and Grayson (Katrina), being fastest to get their shit together, were sent out to see what the hell was going down out at Mahr's farm. Maitland and Burke (Joe) were to follow, but we were intercepted by the officer, and Maitland ended up having a shouting match with him out in front of our garage while Burke barred the soldiers from entering the station. She managed to intimidate the officer, who decided to call back for direct orders from Colonel Tagge before forcing his way inside our building and massacring all the officers... bad public relations, as you recall. We told Tina Livingston, still prisoner, to get under her bunk and stay there, and I wish we could have joined her. An AV-9 Transport will land in the center of town. Four Dragoon full conversion 'borgs will emerge and begin to search the area. Each is armed with a 25mm Grenade Launcher (MM pg 77) which is armed with a mix of flash/bang and tear gas shells, a weapon equal to a 12mm submachine-gun armed with gel rounds (SMG 0 - - 2d6+3Gel 200 30 ST 150m.), another weapon that equals the Arasaka Restraint Caster with some changes (P -1 - - Tangle 15 1 ST 25m), and a nozzle which delivers the solvent needed to break the restraints. Here is where we knew we were in serious trouble, because one of them broke off and joined the soldiers outside the station. As it so happens, the military has lost an alien test subject, which they've nicknamed "Ellie" after the acronym EL (Extraterrestrial Lifeform). They need to recover Ellie as soon as possible, before Ellie eludes them and escapes into Texas (where they legally couldn't follow without risking an incident). There was a short in the base's main power building, which led to an explosion. In the ensuing chaos, Ellie escaped. Far from being a "little green man", Ellie is more or less similar to the traditional "Close Encounters" alien, or as I will refer to him, as a "sectoid" (a la X-Com). Ellie is about four feet tall, has a large head and big, black eyes. His skin is a pale whitish-grey. His facial features include a hole on each side of his head (ears), two holes in the center of his face (nose), and a slit for a mouth. Ellie's stats follow: Extraterrestrial Lifeform ("Ellie") -
Chemistry +8 Hide/Evade +6 Physics +6 Brawling +4 Melee +2 Pilot UFO +8 Electronics +6 Elect. Security +6 Basic Tech +6 Alien Tech +6 Notes - Ellie was one of two survivors of an alien crash site, and was recoved by the US Military some years previous. Since then, he has been poked, prodded, and tested. Linguists have come in and attempted to communicate with him. Despite the humans' petty attempts, he has refused to cooperate. He eats the protein-rich slop they give him for nourishment, but only because he's been waiting for a way to escape. The other alien survivor was injured badly in the original crash, and died due to a combination of his wounds and a loss of his will to live. Ellie was (originally) a pilot, and as such can probably figure any vehicle out given time. His goal is to get away, but now that he's seen the army's recovery force, he's starting to doubt the wisdom of his plan. He knows that his race's ships frequent the area, and his goal now is to find a radio, modify it, and use it to transmit his own SOS. Ellie, once entering town, will head towards the first structure he sees (which will be, coincidentally, the station). He'll scale the walls, and go down the trap door into the garage area. He'll quietly explore the station via air ducts, looking for anything usable for his cause. The police radio would be perfect, with a little subtle modification, but he's got to get past the humans first. He'll stay hidden until the humans leave. He'll then crawl out and steal the radio, and any tools he can find (probably the ones in Katrina's stuff). He'll begin to modify the radio, and once complete, will send his SOS. Response from his alien buddies should take about five to ten minutes. When they arrive, they'll zap the whole area with alien technological goodies, take Ellie, and escape. All anyone will see is a bright flash of light, and the UFO will be gone. A perfect scenario revolves around the players dealing with the military, having the aliens leave, and then having the army depart back to base with its tail between its legs. The players will discover that the radio is gone, as are Kat's tools. If they scrounge around, they will find the modified radio up on the roof. It will be switched to "on". Mods are subtle, of course, but noticable to anyone rolling Electronics above 15. The radio is transmitting a binary code that repeats at intervals of 30 seconds. Still, Ellie might be found by a PC before he has time to finish his chore. This could mean death for Ellie. I doubt that the players will want to give him to the army. Besides, anyone actually seeing "Ellie" will be apprehended and "debriefed", not a likeable alternative at all. The army could conceivably catch Ellie and take it away. This probably won't happen without the PC's help, anyway. All army soldiers have average stats. Each is armed with a Militech Mk IV assault weapon, several grenades, and a bayonet. Officers are armed with Militech Dragon light assault weapons and Colt AMT 2000 pistols. Every soldier will be wearing a flak vest (SP20) and a ballistic helmet (SP20). Military personnel include 24 Pilots/Crew Chiefs (2 per aerodyne), 4 field officers (one per 16-man squad), and 60 soldiers (15 per every two AV-6's with the officers mentioned above). There are also the four Dragoons which have been programmed to find and subdue Ellie (civillians are secondary, and the Dragoons are programmed to subdue any that compromise mission success). Ellie evidently gained access to the station right when the soldiers arrived, because when Burke changed guard duty with Maitland, Char (the NPC paramedic) informed us that something weird was crawling around inside the station, and the radio had been screwed with. We were too pissed off (and scared of) the Army to tell them that the thing was in the station, since if it was classified, they'd assume we'd seen it or helped it and probably nuke the whole station once they got it out. We were hoping to hold off the Army, and then either kill or flush out the thing once they left, but nothing doing--orders came back from Tagge, and it was either get the hell out of the building or get shot. Burke was forced out and taken into custody, and the Dragoon kicked the door down and shot Char with a restraint caster, nearly killing him. Rather than face the Dragoon, Maitland elected to go into the air vents after Ellie. She was hoping to catch it and somehow use it to negotiate with the Army; it was valuable, and we weren't, and maybe one plus the other equalled us getting out of this mess alive. Here she is with a dying flashlight, crawling through ducts thick with two inches of twenty-year old dust (the air conditioning never worked), while the Army starts to search the building. The thing's trail led to the roof. Maitland crawled out of the vent inside and up through our trap-door onto the roof after it, and outside is utter chaos -- AV's shining spotlights all over, Dragoons crashing through the town, Army guys tearing the hell out of the station under her feet. She went around the airvent and came face-to-face with Ellie in all his Sectoid, Communion-esque glory. He hissed at her, she yelled... and the Dragoon, attracted by the noise, jumped onto the roof. Now she's staring down the barrel of the Dragoon's minigun. One desperate leap later, she's lying on the floor of the station, staring up at a bright pink tangleweb spread out over the hatch. That's when Ellie's friends pulled their little flashbulb-EMP trick. There's a heavy thud! as the Dragoon on the roof falls over, and screams from the blinded Army men outside. When the light clears, Ellie was gone, and the Dragoon's memory was wiped. The cleanup was short and, for the Army, rather embarrassing. Maitland had an extremely uncomfortable meeting with Colonel Tagge -- my first of the game -- when he arrived at the station to take charge of the debacle. Tagge: "I understand someone was on the roof at the time of the incident." Maitland: (lying through her teeth, visions of needles and bright lights dancing in her head) "Nope." Tagge: (not believing a word) "I see." That was about the end of the game. Captain Morris came down a few days later, and told Maitland she had a choice: rotate back up to Santa Fe and ride desk for the rest of her career (at Lt. rank), or take a promotion to Captain, and run the station in Crossroads. You can guess what she picked. Fiona Grayson (Katrina), Bruce "Wheels" Ingles (Brant), and Johnathan Burke (Joe) all elected to get the hell out. Can't say I blame them. |