| Forum Posts | | |
| Help Keep Yoggie Going... |
|
Yog-Sothoth Needs You!
|
|
Donat-o-Meter Stats
|
|
February´s Goal:
|
$99.00
|
| Due Date: |
Feb 28 |
| Gross Amount: |
$35.00 |
| Net Balance: |
$32.47 |
| Left to go: |
$66.53 |
| © | | Donations | | Anonymous | | lordof1 | | fidelblastro | | krypter |
| |
| Become a Patron |
Support from $5/monthgains you access to extras, ( 10+ GB of extra content) while helping to keep YSDC online.
Click for More Info
| |
 | |
|
Yog-Sothoth.com: Users Journal |
|
|
Oh you pretty things: chapter 16: the Galt audit Posted on: 06-22-2009 @ 06:28 am |
|
|
Spoilers for Delta Green and delta green countdown; Dead Letter from DG: Countdown; Third Time the Charm from Goatswood and Other less pleasant places; Black Seal: Resolution Zero; Beyond the Mountains of Madness
Reprise: Joe has stowed Haifa with professor wu at the british museum to recover from her latest sanity blasting ordeal and is on his way back to Brichester. Joe and Gene believe there is a plot to create a nuclear disaster at the Cormed plant and have received a dog’s head in the post…
Joe drives back from London, Haifa’s sickness heavy on his mind. At junction 14 of the M4 he calls Balfour, half afraid that the oldman’s paranoria has already come true. But the phone is answered, the voice modulating effect giving no clue to the colonel’s state of mind.
Balfour says: “ No I’m fine, I don’ know, may be it was nothing. Am I under threat? Who knows – I’m an old man who has been hiding under hedgerows for too long. What do you need to know?”
They discuss Antarctica and the Construct. “Yes I was there in 46 under Cornwall. The Germans came onto the ice in one last desparate push – they’d tortured it out one of the old Dusseldorf set of polar explorers and tried to open one last front from South America. We were dropped in just in time, with the Americans. Not a moment too soon. The Nazis had over-run one of the old camps and got over the mountains. They knew what they were looking for.
“We caught up with them. Don’t ask me where, I’m not telling you. It was grim work.
“The Construct? My God, there are generations have died defending that secret. There are Controls who didn’t know about it. It has to be kept out of the wrong hands, Joe. They almost had it. I know the price we paid. No-one can imagine. I wouldnt talk about it now but I am afraid the old guard will die out and no-one will know the danger. It is very important and very dangerous. I fear it won’t hold. And the mad men in their haciendas are living long and growing stronger.”
Balfour refuses to say anything more. They move onto Magonia and Crampton. “Who’s Crampton? In my time Crampton was a gnat, I wouldn’t have put him in charge of a toad dissection. What do I know – it’s all changed now. He has his playset now. Magonia used to be a proper centre of science – God knows it was a dangerous place even then but we knew what we were about. Yes it was a prison but now Toby says it is a zoo at best, at worst the seventh circle of hell.
“Wilbur is there, Toby says. I don’t know personally but Toby says he is the most dangerous subject they have had. And someone like Crampton in charge, for God’s sake. There is a thin line between learning from your enemy and becoming your enemy.”
Balfour tells Joe that Gene’s gutted team left an equipment cache in Brichester before they were exposed - it might be an idea to have a look.
“And if they do come for me, Joe, it’ll be quick. I’ll try and get a message to you before I disappear into the system. It would be nice to meet one day.”
Meanwhile Gene sits in the draughty confines of the Yellow Storage Facility and researches the Cormed nuclear facility and the SANE protester group.
The package with the dog’s head had “Tom Irons” had a return address. It doesn’t take long to find out that irons is an activist with SANE (and a long history of anti-state action) who lives in Berkeley and is under surveillance from Special Branch. The file records him as living with a girlfriend Susan Michaels, who works for a local cleaning company under the alias of Sarah Connor. Oddly Gene finds that further details in irons’ police file have been classified.
Some work on Cormed finds that a nuclear waste train is due to visit the plant that night – and that a SANE protest is planned outside tomorrow. The same day a shareholders meeting has been called – there is no agenda but it lists participants as Corman, Turner, Corman’s finance director Roger Thur and Marjorie Rittingham, the chief executive of Severn Aerospace – and unknown names and numbers of shareholders.
In the afternoon Joe and gene meet up and they raid the Delta Green cache. They recover three radiation suits, a gigacounter and a collection of documents that add up to a partial operations manual for the Cormed facilty. There is also a listening bug disguised as a business card for “Michael Bingham, HM Government Nuclear Inspectorate”
Gene knows that the manual will be enough to tell him what has been going on, and perhaps how to stop it, if he can get access to the facility’s compueter network long enough. It certainly tells him that nothing in the facility, on the face of it, would have the power to create a nuclear disaster – they don’t have enough power. But he also knows that the California raid involved a huge and unexplained energy source.
His research tells him that Cormed made two purchases at the end of last year – one of processing equipment and one of nuclear fissile material. One purchase is in Berne and one in Madrid. Both are licensed although gene doubts the licences. Both purchases can be traced to a Bolivian finance house called Eagle Capital.
Gene’s research suggests that Cormed has used injections of money from Eagle Capital to finance its own work while also producing un-specified products for EC. The two projects seems tightly compartmentalised.
Gene scopes out the security, downloading floorplans (there is a large section on the ground floor that remains classified). He also gets a list of key personnel – the operations director Ray Turner, security chief Robert Daschiel and scientists, Metreaux, Crisp and Beauchamp. He finds out that the previous operations director killed himself nine months ago and Turner was brought in from elsewhere in Cormed. Two of the scientists were assigned to the plant in January, shortly after the plant was shut down for two days. A scheduled government inspection has been delayed from March until April.
Joe and gene have a plan. They call toby and arrange to be smuggled onto the nuclear waste train that is due to arrive at the Cormed facility at midnight that night. They discusss possible diverserions and Toby agrees to use his connections to arrange a rent-a-mob element to the SANE protest due to happen the next day. Toby says he has a man on the inside of SANE who might be able to help – otherwise he will bus them in. The plan is to create enough of a threat at the front gates to draw guards away…
They also order essential supplies via Toby – H&K machine pistols with silencers, knives and garrottes, plastic explosives, eletromagntic disruption devices, camera, cs gas, coshs, boltcutters, memory stick and body armour. Toby says he’ll see what he can do…
In the meantime joe cases out Ton Irons’ flat in Berkeley. He parks round the corner and calls the listed number. A woman answers – no she doesn’t know where Tom is. The conversation is short
Joe calls back. “Tom sent us a parcel. We want to talk to him about it” The woman says she doesn’t know anything about a parcel. But there is something about her tone that sounds more measured, more cautious. They talk a little more. No, she hasn’t seen Tom for a while. Yes he is involved in SANE – is Joe from the police?
There is a little more jousting and Susan agrees to meet in a café round the corner. A few minutes later she emerges, red hair and a demin jacket. Joe meets her at the café. She says she is afraid of what is happening at Cormed – “do you know what happened to Tom. Whatever you say, you sound like a cop. Those students at SANE say Tom was dodgy but he wasn’t the grass.”
Joe shows her a picture of Kenny Robson at a SANE protest at the Cormed facility the previous year.
Suddenly she seems to make a decision. “I don’t know who you are with but I’m on the job, undercover. There’s something heavy going on at Cormed.. I’ve been inside SANE for 18 months and with Irons for 12. I am signed up with a cleaning company working at the plant. Tom didn’t know who I am but I had passes and was going to get him in. But he jumped the gun and went in with Robson and two others using ID from Manning. I haven’t seen him since but the 24-7 camp clocked an ambulance coming out in the morning.”
They negotiate. If he can get into the facility grounds she agrees to get him into the building and hand over a cleaning uniform and pass. They agree to make contact once he is inside.
Joe leaves her and calls Toby. They discuss her trustworthiness. They decide to keep Gene’s presence as a wildcard. They discuss why irons apparently posted the package so long after he was last seen by Susan.
Joe and Gene discuss how to use the bug. After various options are discarded they decide to courier the card to Rittingham at the Cormed plant with a letter purported to be from the nuclear iknspectorate requesting an interview. They hope she will pocket the bug when she arrives for the shareholders meeting, giving them an eavesdrop.
Toby rings back – he has arranged to get them on the back carriage of the train – the driver and guard won’t know they are there. The train will leave a stationyard at 11.30, get to Cormed at midnight and remain there for 24 hours before departing. The pair rest.
Later at the station they meet up with Toby and pick up the gear. Knight says he will be bringing in troublemakers to spice up the SANE protest and create as much of a diversion as possible.
About 20 minutes later after speeding through the pitchblack countryside, the train stops for a few minutes on the edge of the plant. Then the train slides silently through a now opened gate and stops at the loading gantry. The pair can see two guards emerge from the loading entry attached to the main building and two drivers jump down from the front carriage. They follow one of the guards into the building while one guard remains.
They are far enough away for Gene and Joe to exit the train with little risk and move away from the track and behind one of the four 50 foot tall cylindrical reactors. Joe puts his hand on the concrete but cannot feel any heat or power. Crouching in the darkness they make out the fire exit. They notice that there are no windows visible on the ground floor though the first floor looks to be ordinary offices and all the lights are on. Joe texts Susan and gets a reply to wait for half an hour.
At about 1.30 the door suddenly opens and an ear splitting siren immediately goes off. Joe slips inside and finds Susan in a cleaners tabard and a floor polishing room – she gestures to a toilet door a metres away. Joe hurries in and quickly unpacks a handgun from his pack – he conceals under his tabard and stow the rest of his gear in the bin for later. He can hear Susan tell a guard she opened the door accidentally while cleaning and he seems to believe her.
After a few minutes she taps on the door and they sneak up some stairs to an unlocked office on the first floor (she tells him the labs and sensitive offices are locked at night but normal offices are accessible.
Joe confesses that he has a partner still out in the cold that he didn’t want to reveal until he trusted her a bit more. She grumpily concurs with the logic but says she can’t get away with the dumb cleaner trick again. Joe calls Gene and together decide to lower a rope from the office window to get him in. Gene successfully shimmies up and they take stock – it’s 1.30am.
They know they will need access to the mainframe room and safety system room – Susan tells them both are secure at night. Their best bets are either to gain access after 6 when the first shift arrives or to wait until the shareholders meeting and SANE protest create diversions.
Gene gets onto the network using his access codes and for the next couple of hours scans interesting looking documents. There is no one hugely sensitive thing but he pieces together that an initial product was shipped to a company owned by Eagle Capital at the end of last year but since then two scheduled shipments in January and February were missed. Is this the reason for the emergency shareholders meeting.
Cormed’s own work is curiously product-free – the main activity seems to be getting the reactors online, which is due to happen any day. The work for Eagle Capital is more specific and appears to be producing a form of radioactive material that could repair severed nerve ganglia in brain-damage victims. However it is clear that a) Cormed is producing a product to specification and doesn’t fully understand it and b) from mid January secrecy around the product increased and was restricted to a small group of scientists under Metreaux.
While Gene reads, Joe sneaks downstairs to get his gear. A guard spots him but is fooled by his cleaner uniform.
The guard gestures at him. “You, tell the other cleaners, you all need to be out early. Be at the front desk with your gear at 5. No delays, understand.”
Joe nods dumbly and watches him go into the men’s room. He consider knocking him out and stealing his uniform but instead goes into the women’s bathroom and retrieves his gear from the bin. He goes back upstairs to the room where Gene is still working away.
Susan arrives and they discuss a plan. They decide that they will secret Gene in the supply room on the ground floor, and then Joe will join them before 5. Susan will then call the front desk and pretend that something has gone wrong enough to necessitate a visit by a guard to the supply room. Cue knock on head and steal uniform.
So at about 4am they sneak Gene down and into the supply room where Gene hides in a big laundry basket.
Joe pretends to clean the floor by the main reception where he can keep on eye on the security office. He sees on one of the screens a car arrive at the main gate and be waved through. It parks at the front of the office building and a tall, gaunt man hurries out and into the building. The guard greets him as Mr Turner.
Turner tells the guard that the plant will be shut that day with only a handful of senior staff arriving in the next half hour. “and make sure the cleaners are off site by 5…” he picks up the letter to Rittingham and pockets it.
He goes up to his office on the first floor. A few minutes later a woman also arrives at the plant and joins Turner in his office. Joe retreats to the supply room. They call Susan who says she is planning to leave and will call the guard to set up the ruse in an hour.
Turner and the woman talk hurriedly. Turner: “Eagle’s accountants are arriving at any moment. They are trying to catch us off guard – they suspect something – they might even know about the accident. We have to stall them until the meeting later. Corman cannot know anything is putting the core strategy at risk.
Woman: “You should have told him about your breakthrough – who knows, Corman might have…”
Turner: “Fool – it would have been a distraction at best, at worst a compromise of the core strategy. It could still be my trump card. When all is laid waste and the beast is rampant, then those with knowledge will be valued. Even Corman is on a leash. Quiet…”
Gene and Joe can hear others join the meeting – three others over the course of 10 minutes. Small talk ensues.
They can hear Turner bring the meeting to order. “I’m sorry to bring you all here at short notice but the shareholders have brought forward the meeting. They will be arriving by helicopter at any moment.” General consternation follows, interrupted by a male voice: “We must have been right about the leak. They must know something!”
Turner insists: “We don’t know that but we’ll have to be very careful. I’m not informing Mr Corman or Ms Rittingham about the change of plan and my hope is we can contain the problem. We will be shutting the plant so we have the minimum number of people onsite – the cleaners are already leaving and we will getting the word out to the workforce.”
A male voice (Gene notices it is slightly slurred): “How are we going to keep them away from Lab 6?” Turner: “They have never visited the plant before – we will set up lab 4 and 5 and explain they are offline because of problems with the equipment.”
The phone rings and Turner answers. The auditors are here. “Dr Metreaux, secure Lab 6. You two prepare 4 and 5 and be prepared to answer questions – I am told our guests are thorough, though I am sure ignorant of the finer workings of this kind of facility. Daschiel, come with me, we can show them the Sapphire unit to keep them occupied.
Joe and Gene can hear Turner walk down to the reception. “Gentlemen, welcome. This was short notice but will give us more time to show you our work.”
A man replies in a clipped German accent: “We will be requiring to do a full audit of the plant. We have missed two deliveries and your explanations have been inadequate. Two of my colleagues will need to run over your production records – please provide them with network access in a secure room. Meanwhile I will need a complete and immediate tour.”
“Of course. Where would you like to start, Mr…?”
“Galt. My name is Galt.”
From their laundry basket, in the supply cupboard, Gene and Joe look at each other. Joe textsToby…. |
|
Last updated on 06-22-2009 @ 06:28 am
|
