DIDO Shadowrun 'Project Eden'
Drop in/Drop Out Shadowrun Campaign Test
Codename: 'Project EDEN' Mission Objective: Sink Gerald R. Ford Class Super Carrier being used as a super tanker. Pay Packet: 50,000 Nuyen, 25,000 in advance
--Session One-- In a night club on the upper meeting levels, Mister Johnston laid out his plan with red wine and firm, swift speech. He had a problem, and it was something only experts could solve. Mike, the spy type, Emily, the infiltration expert and Shade, the digital wonder sat across from him as he explained. Johnson had a ship he needed to sink, a super carrier that had been converted into a super tanker for bulk transport. One catch, he didn't actually know where the ship was, the team had to find it first. As part of their mission intel, the Johnston provided extensive information on a data storage facility, which apparently held the key to the ship's location, as well as extensive blueprints of the orignal configuration.
Back at base, the team examined the blueprints, while Shade chased information about their Johnston. A quick bash into some lightly defended facilities revealed their Johnston to be a Mister William McWilliamson, Vice President of Accounts Recieveable at Aztectechonlogy HQ in Seattle. This raised some questions as to why Mr McWilliamson was doing his own dirty work and not working through 'safe' middle management which could be burned at will. More questions arose when their down payment cleared into an unnamed Cayman Islands account which neither party actually owned but had access to. This payment was cleared into a team account. With money in hand, they began to plot out their next move.
Emily, with a background in engineering concluded that without exacting information on the changes made to the ship, making a plan to sink it would be almost impossible. They sent Shade back into the matrix to find out where the work had been done, and after digging around in their fileservers, they found the order of work to be done, but the blueprints were redacted after the fact. They would have to enter the facility and physically recover the data. Plans were made and after some quick intel gathering, the team certified that the shipwright facility was nearly unguarded, with only a few token guards to keep hoons away.
Once inside (And after looting an ancient piece of tech), the team located a vault of sorts located underneath one of the buildings, an actual piece of the super carrier they were after, an entire section of bulkhead being used as a vault. Busting open the door, they rummaged through a hundred and fifty years worth of documents and blueprints until finding the correct information. After retrieving it, Shade, who apparently was feeling a little psychotic that morning, hacked into the building's fire suppression and alarm system and disabled them, while lighting up the records with a high explosive round, resulting in a massive fire that, ultimately, destroyed the entire facility overnight as by the time alarm was raised, it was too late to control the blaze. Brown and Sons ShipWrighters, Established 1900 suffered massive losses with the loss of it's historic records, and the hertiage listed company collapsed and disbanded.
Back at home base, the team poured over the documents. CVN-65, U.S.S. George Washington was purchased by Aztechnology in 2050 when it was replaced by the newer, magically protected Broadsword class. Aztec almost at once placed the ship in for refitting as the documents showed, ripping the guts out of the ship and keeping only a handful of decks on the bottom, underneath the flight deck and a mere quarter of the hangar bay, and leaving just one access lift. The rest of the ship was gutted and cut into ten sections, massive tanker bays, designed for holding liquid. CVN-65 was recommisioned under a new designator, RR-95, but with no listed name. In addition, the ship kept some of it's primary armament, two E. Sea Sparrow Missile launch systems, four tubes a piece and two Goalkeeper CIWS emplacements, one forward and one aft of the Island tower, and all slaved to a dedicated radar control and warning system atop the Conn tower. The ship's small hangar bay also held room for five or six planes, fuel and ammunition.
--Session Two-- With blueprints in hand, the team moved to get the location of the super carrier so they could build a plan to sink it. Reading through the documents they had been provided, they learned that the data storage facility had existed in this building, under several different owners since the early 2040's, but the server building was bought by a six time subsidary of Aztec in 2050. After purchase, Aztec installed an antenna on top of the building, further inspection revealed it to be either an exact copy or the orignal item of CVN-65's Island Antenna mast, complete with all of it's now ancient communication technology. The ship and this server building were able to talk to each other without possibility of eavsdrop because they were likely the only two objects even still able to use those frequencies any more.
With this knowledge in hand, Shade was able to compile a trojan horse of sorts, which would piggyback an outgoing signal from the data centre to the ship, and on the return message, would bring back the ship's location, allowing the team to gain an exact position on where the ship was at any given time. The plan was built, in broad daylight they would enter the facility. Mike would pose as a businessman looking for more server space. Shade, his IT professional and Emily his bodyguard and muscle. Talking their way into seeing the servers, and seeing some very... inventive server cooling, as well as the worst case of old man syndrome ever imagined, Shade and Emily were able to find the correct server which linked to the antenna, and jacked in their trojan horse.
They retreated back to base and waited for the information to pay off. They began to build a plan on how to sink RR-95. Using her engineering expertise, Emily concluded that five blast points would do the trick. Two thousand pounds of high explosive inside on the bottom level at the aft end between the propshafts and two thousand more at the bow bulb. Three more charges consisting of three kilograms of C-12 each in the middle at bulkhead points, also on the bottom deck would be enough to blow out the hull of the ship, seriously damage it's skeleton and wreck enough bulkheads to send her to the bottom. With this plan agreed upon, they set to tasks of how to accomplish it. Mike had Shade craft up some fake command codes to feed to his ex-wife the police captain to convince her to call in a few favours with the coast guard for them to donate a high speed, high endurance cutter to a complete unknown, so long as it was returned intact.
Emily on the other hand, called in a favour with an old runner friend of hers, Titanium, a helicopter pilot who specalised in smuggling and requested two things. A favour called in to take possession of four Mk. 22 Iron Bombs with thousand pound explosive yield each, and twelve (!) kilograms of Compound 12 High Explosive Demolition bricks, divided into one kilogram blocks. The second was an offer of work, payment to be made in the form of 'if you can take it you can have it' which just so happened to include a current era, eighth generation fighter jet complete with ordnance. Titanium agreed, and made a plan to arrive on the cutter at it's arranged dock with the explosives. Other runners from the team were called in, as well as some Triad muscle.
They got their information. RR-95 was 4500 Nautical Miles off Seattle and practically stationary. Some overlays and quick maths lead the group to a conclusion, in three months, the super carrier would crash onto the shores of Russia thanks to the ocean currents.
--Session Three-- Jack, a heavy weapons specalist was called in for his demolitions, his long rifle, grenade launcher and for knowing how to effectively use the cutter's 3" deck gun and Daniel, called in for his ship piloting expierence and his weapons skill. Shade, who feared what might happen should they spend three weeks out of matrix connection in the open ocean, opted out and wished the group good luck, taking with her the paydata already retrieved as her future payday. The cutter arrived as promised with no on on board, and the team quickly moved it to a more private location and began to make their modifications, adding enough fuel, food and water onto the ship for the three week journey. The ship carried a thousand rounds of sabot incendary ammunition for the main cannon, as well as anti-submarine warfare equipment, anti-missile flares and an extensive speaker and noise maker system.
The next day Titanium landed with the explosives and her own kit, and advised that the Starwind helicopter she flew in and landed on the cutter was fitted with extended range droptanks and that her maximum flight time was roughly a thousand nautical miles, which made the last chance for supplies or other equipment 500 NM out of Seattle. With that knowledge firmly on board, everyone saddled up, got ready to learn how to basketweave and set off. A near collision with an oil tanker as they departed dock did little to dampen their spirits.
Further plans were made during the trip. The super carrier still had anti-ship missiles which could blast the cutter in two from miles away, and up close it still carried the Goalkeeper CIWS system, which up to five kilometres could just slice them into ribbons. Dedicated study of the blueprints revealed a weakness in the tanker's design, that without most of the internal structure, weapons control had been moved exclusively to the island tower, where it was controlled from a central battery of radar and electronic sensor equipment. Directed fire to this tower would neutralise the ship's capability of locking or launching missiles as well as take out its ability to fire the close in system.
A week in, they hit bad weather, storm and heavy rain as well as rough seas. By mistake, a pirate corvette mistook the cutter for an easy target and opened fire. With the radar jammed by bad weather, the team was taken by surprise, and quickly made for evasive action. Jack made for the gun control centre, Emily worked on clearing the radar screens, Daniel taking rapid evasive action while Mike attempted to talk down the hostiles. After apparently failing to do so, he took the next logical step, and blared loud scary music in an attempt intimidate them. USCGS Gearing took two hits on the belt, protected by its armour and through several bursts of the main cannon, Jack scored several hits, resulting in a massive fire on the ship's superstructure. Ablaze and likely taking on water, whatever was left of the crew moved to damage control, and the team moved on, leaving them to sink.
Two weeks later, in clear skies, no wind, perfect conditions, they spotted RR-95, afloat and idle, dead ahead. As was the plan, Jack mounted up the 3" deck gun and ripped the radar equipment right off and into the ocean. Apparently he was feeling a bit trigger happy this morning because he didn't stop firing until the Island Tower was ablaze in a towering inferno. With the ship's ability to counter attack eliminated, they boarded Titanium's helicopter and took off for the ship with triad muscle on board. They fast roped down onto the flight deck, ordered the Triads to secure the exits further aft, and headed for the catapults at the bow. Entering onto the AA platforms and the doors leading into the ship itself, rusted shut they could not get them open. Jack tried his universal problem solver and blew the door in before the other side of the ship could get theirs open.
Inside, they probed the ship and found it empty, stumbling only across a strange reception desk with a holographic computer interface that was protected by password, and a logo on the wall, a large circle with two crossed roses complete with thorns, and a single word written across the middle, 'E D E N'. The whole team attempted to guess the password while Titanium flew back to the cutter and prepared to board by boat, engaging in such guesses as 'lucky guess', 'password', '1234', '0000', 'fuckface', 'fagwhore', 'fagstack', 'm1lfhunter', '420' and many more attempts until Emily decided to try something new and shot her gun through the screen, which, predicably, fried the all in one device.
Moving on, they proceeded to find an elevator, and rode on top of it down to the 2nd to last deck, engineering. There they discovered the nuclear power plants and a staircase, which took them to deck three, where all the quarters were located. Above that the stairs ended abruptly, with three inches of steel plate welded right through the middle of the stairwell. After deciding that everyone onboard the ship had been in the command tower, now ablaze, they decided to rummage through some personal belongings, finding pictures of loved ones and heart felt letters from their last time on shore. Titanium called them up to the hangar bay, where she was looking over the aircraft stored there. Between five fighter jets, she was most interested in an electronic warfare early warning aircraft, but reported that she couldn't get the lift elevator moving, it didn't have any power.
"Wouldn't that switch be in the conn tower?" asked one of the team enterprisingly. "Sure," Said another, "But someone set the fucking thing on fire" they said, looking accusingly to Jack. Titanium elborated, that switch would likely be a tell switch, where the actual physical switch would be in a switchboard. According to the blueprints, the circuit boards were all moved and located in one location, in Pod three, far forward. Putting their blinkers on, the team trudged off in search of the switchboard, set to ignore everything else.
Entering an airlock into Pod Ten revealed a slaughtered security guard, an ex British Navy Land Operations Specalist who had been retired five years. He had been shot four times with low velocity rounds, and had been dead about a month. Having died in front of his computer and unaware, he was still logged into his terminal and account, and the team began to digitally ransack his office. There they learned the name of the ship ('Eden') and her role as a research vessel. Most of the files were classified or restricted, but it was clear that only two people on the ship were armed, this guy, named M. Reynolds and another security officer (Whose name was redacted). With nothing more to learn, they moved onwards. In the gap between Pod ten and Pod nine, they found another reception desk, eerily similar to the one from before. This computer terminal had access to all of the security camera footage, which revealed that exactly one month ago, half the cameras ceased to function, just recording and displaying static. Earlier images show doctors and scientists working on expirements and patients.
Moving on into Nine and eight they discovered the ship overrun with plant life, growing out of steel bulkheads and wooden tables alike. Massive trees had pierced the hull plating all the way up, whereas branches and vines grew unchecked, damaging and destroying equipment. At the airlock into Pod five they encountered hostile life, a giantic man sized plant with vines more than capable of slicing through steel bulkheads (as it was all too happy to demonstrate) attacked them. The team lit it up with machine gun fire and grenades and eventually killed it. Deciding not to linger, they advanced rapidly into Pod three and located the ciruit breaker, hidden behind a classroom of sorts with a blackboard showing an incredibly complicated chemical compound. Daniel erased this before throwing all of the fuses (And scaring the shit out of everyone by crashing the lights three times) before pulling the correct one and restoring power to the elevator.
Power restored, they went to the flight deck to retrieve the explosives and plant them. At the elevator, with the bombs planted, Jack had to wire the detonators to fire off in sequence so they would all detonate and sink the ship. It had to be done properly as they would not get a second chance. While he was wiring the explosives however, a giant, literally massive tree like creature burst into the hallway, intent on destruction and death. Plenty of machinegun fire ensued, driving the tree thing back long enough for Jack to wire the detonator, which he nearly detonated on the spot ("NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO. NO. NO! NO! NONO! NO!" -Literally everyone). Rapidly retreating the way they came, exiting onto the flight deck just in time to see Titanium in her newly aqquired fighter jet get launched off the ship from the carrier's catapult.
The team used the rope they came down from on the helicopter to slide down to the cutter (Which had been moved closer to use it's crane to load the bombs onto the supercarrier), and landing just in time to see the tree creature burst from the flight deck. Jack hit the detonator and several muted thumps heralded the end of the carrier's life as it's bow blew out, it's propellers and propshafts were ripped asunder and most of the bottom hull shattered into bits. The inhuman, impossible screech of the treething as it hit the water, only the blazing fire of the Island Tower above the rapidly rising water as the ship went straight to the bottom.