When Chukk is all healed up, The Chief calls the three of you into his lab.

The briefing: All the entrances and exits to The Tunnels have automated defenses. If it doesn't recognize an intruder, the automatic defense system gasses them (if they're organic) or shocks them (if they're a robot) or both (if they're a cyborg). Then, the rebels of the Tunnels often clear the cache of the robots' recent memories, or they place organic intruders to wake up outside a hole that LOOKS like the entrance they tried to use... but which only goes back a dozen or so feet. (Digging this sort of short tunnel quickly is like nothing for scavs.)

However, one Tunnel entrance/exit has a glitch-- the defenses don't work at all-- not even the alarms. There's some sort of glitch-- the drivers will have to be re-installed.

However, this is old technology... The drivers can't just be downloaded from the Nebula servers. They need to be physically uploaded again from a memory stick...

Fortunately, a recent scouting party realized that there's a MegaCorp location that uses a similar system-- and that the appropriate drivers will be kept there, too.

It's MegaCorp's Warren Mine #6, a mine for extracting cavorite, a very useful element for gravitic/anti-gravitic technologies.

The corporate administrator's manual states that the drivers for all mine security systems should be kept on a memory stick the mine supervisor's office at all times, on the second sub-floor of the mine (so, not very far below the surface).

After the success in fixing The Daffodil Incident, the Smith/Chukk'Chee/Elern team has been tapped to go get the memory stick with the drivers.

The Plan:
--Step One: Go to Mine #6. Easy.
--Step Two: Upload the glitch from the glitched Tunnel entrance to one of the entrances to the mine, shutting down security at that location without even raising an alarm.
--Step Three: Go down one level to the administrator's office.
--Step Four: Find the memory stick in question.
--Step Five: Return.


And so, here you are, near the mine's main entrance, watching it from up high on a canyon wall from a rocky hiding spot.

How do you proceed?

"Well, getting here was easy enough."

Smith peered down the rocky canyon wall. Taking the "quick way" down wasn't a very enticing option, and not just because it reminded him of the "quick exit" MegaCorp showed him when they unceremoniously tossed him out on some concrete stairs to end his employment.

He briefly glanced at his partners-in-crime, or partners-in-justice(!) as Smith saw them, before returning his gaze to the mine's entrance and the routes between.

"We could take the long way and follow that road the Hover-Haulers use to send-off the cavorite ore, but I bet there's a a more subtle way to get there than a three-rebel parade down the most obvious route in, with no cover."

Smith fidgeted with a dial on the side of the souvenir helmet Elern had gifted him from their first foray into organized resistance. The optics weren't amazing, but almost anything had advantages over the naked eye. He took a slow Look Around the canyon-scape for an approach that might allow them to be stealthy.

17:48, Today: Smith rolled 1d6 with roll of 3.  Avoid Danger (Motivation)

10:21, Today: Smith rolled 4 using 1d6 with rolls of 4.  Look Around (Helmet!)
This message was last edited by the player at 17:23, Thu 23 Sept 2021.

"Maybe we can sneak in in an empty ore container," Chukk suggested. "They go out full, but they come back empty. There should be plenty of room in one."

"Chukk, as a MegaCorp engineer I've heard A LOT of dumb ideas in my day..."

Smith turns to Chukk, flipping up his helmet's optic visor in dramatic fashion

"... but that might be a good idea."

(--On a 4 or 5, the GM chooses the question and answers it:
· What is dangerous here?
· What is valuable here?
· What has recently happened here?
· What is hidden here?)

The helmet's sensors pick up on a hidden entrance to the mine, way back off to the right, almost entirely obscured behind a tree.

"Hold up..." Smith puts both hands to his head as if to steady his helmet, intently looking a ways off to the right of the mine's main entryway.

"... I think there's another way in; it branches off to the side there," Smith points towards the tree, "...might even leaf us straight to the admin's level," his voice raises slightly as he gestures at the tree, "... maybe right to the root of our objective!" he removes his helmet and stares excitedly at the tree.

Chukk looked long and hard at Smith.

"...barking mad," he muttered.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:43, Sun 26 Sept 2021.

A serious, deadpan look overtakes Smith's face as he slowly turns to glare at Chukk. With thick, palpable tension in the air Smith refuses to break eye contact. One lip quivers, his eyes widen slightly, his second lip involuntarily pulls into what looks like an angry sneer and it's clear repressed emotions are surging behind the metaphorical dam Smith is straining to hold together.

He begins to shake, then nearly implodes with a stifled scream, instantly clamping his hands over his mouth in a desperate ploy to maintain the group's secrecy from any prying ears near the mine...

"AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"! the muffled sound ekes out through his fingers before he manages to cut it off at the source deep in his throat, throwing has hands straight into the air before giving Chukk a surprise bear-hug! A huge smile is plastered across Smith's mug and he loudly whispers through near-tears; "I appreciate you."

A long sigh follows the sudden chain of events, and Smith chuckles while wiping his eyes with his sleeves.

Elern is his normal quite self, taking everything in and walking softly.
He watched the two otherd with no real emotion.

With their current actions he opens up the screen of his watch.  For a moment flipping though files and reading them.
No violence, same sex, different species,  Odd action.  Ah: Answer, group bonding?
Again forgetting the two are right in front of him.

Looking over at the tree Smith pointed out.  Let us head down the tunnel and see if it helps us.

He pulls some more data up on his watch and then set up an illusion that make clothes the group have on look like the rocks around them.

OCC:
22:11, Today: Elern rolled 9 using 3d6 with rolls of 2,5,2.  Don’t Get Caught (1) Illusion (2) Watch data (3) Elern Motivations.
Highest roll:- 5

"That was... different," Chukk said, more to himself than anyone else. He'd never been hugged by a human before, and wasn't entirely sure what the appropriate response was. "But I, uh... appreciate you, too."

To be fair, Smith had bandaged him up after he'd been stabbed pretty badly on their last mission. He did appreciate the hairless giant.

"So, yeah, let's get down the tunnel before the guards twig to our location," he added for good measure, then followed Pony Boy.

Smith audibly holds in a giggle as he joins the end of their procession for the hike down. After a minute he returns to focusing on the task ahead, suggesting

"Once we get down to the tree we could stop if either of you would like, ..."

He takes a deep breath in and quickly exhales it all at once in a deflating wheeze; "... FOR-REST." After a few moments of facial gymnastics Smith manages to not break into a crippling, hysterical fit of laughter.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:54, Tue 28 Sept 2021.

(--On a 4 or 5, choose one:
· The deception will not last long
· You are exposed to danger somehow)

OOC:
The deception will not last long.

Camouflaged, the trio move to the mine entrance unnoticed.

It turns out to be an emergency exit in case something happens and the main entrance were to get blocked. But uploading the glitch should still work...

...And it does. The mine door opens... No audible alarms go off, no lights flash, no automated defenses activate.

There are even some mining hats with lights waiting on hooks nearby. (They don't fit scavs, though.)

Still, there is also dim lighting in this tunnel, leading downward...

"At least this ones already dug, eh Chukk?" Smith softly bumps Chukk'Chee on the shoulder with an elbow.

"Tunnels almost feel like home these days. Shall we?" he grabs then hands Elern a miner's hard hat, then picks one up for himself, studying it momentarily.

"Whelp, souvenir for now." Smith says, mostly to himself as he walks off down the tunnel miner's hat in hand.

The dim light wasn't much but he'd dealt with worse in the maintenance shafts and crawl spaces crisscrossing the bowels of MegaCorp's planet-side operations. As he strolled he took a long Look Around. 23:03, Today: Smith rolled 1 using 1d6 (1)

Maybe it IS pretty dark.

As Smith is walking, a miner in a dirty yellow jumpsuit appears via a side-tunnel. "Hey," he head-nods. Then he gets a better look. "Hey, who are you guys? And what's with the scav?"

"Hey, Scavs dig the best holes," Chukk snapped back, the helmet now teetering loosely and uselessly on his head. He was hoping to ensure that they Don’t Get Caught, but the story was obviously a bad one. "Who better to mine this place?"

Chukk'Chee rolled 5 using 1d6 ((5)).
· The deception will not last long