Home
Colonies
| 
| Hits: 42
The first Lunar Colony was put in place as a low-G research space and has since become something of a tourist destination with new tunnels and housing being dug so often that sometimes the environmental plant gets a bit testy. But the corporations that put it there don't really care - all they care about is the money that it generates for them. And boy, does it ever generate money - one of my targets was an accountant for Davidson Biosciences and their stake in the colony pulls in about 2 billion nuyen a quarter. Note: Unless you are willing to do things silently and make it look like something other than what it is, don't take an assassination job where the target is in the colony - sound carries through lunar basalt too well and the environmental plant doesn't handle the smell of gunpowder all that well.
The L5 colonies are the center of activity for the asteroid mining that goes on. Looking like little more than large cylinders they fill the area with kilometers of open space between them. Housing large populations complete with families they are considered the safest and most crime free places to live. Complete with zero-G research and production facilities they do make money for the Corporations that own them, but not so much to give them a good police force. However... The port controls on them make getting weapons onto a colony a problem - so you're left needing to acquire materials on-site for any jobs that target people on an L5 colony.
The asteroid colonies are rather rough places - and inaccessible unless you're employed as a deep-space miner by the Corporations. No job targeting a miner can be completed unless you're willing to "borrow" a hauler and get your ass out there the old-fashioned way.
Transport to any of the colonies is done via one of three methods - chemical rockets (these are cheap but don't have a lot of payload capacity), ION/VASIMIR thruster driven sleds after a hypersonic orbital transfer or the new Nuclear jobs that use jets of gaseous metal heated by a powerful pile. Of the three the chemical rocket is the cheapest choice, but the ride is horrendously noisy and sensitive equipment might not survive the vibrations of launch. The VASIMIR thruster driven sleds are used for orbital transfers and movement between colonies - the latest versions can give a steady .2G thrust and are excellent work-horses, but anything using them generally uses their lower-thrust modes and hence it takes hours to get anywhere. Now the new nuclear jobs are never used near the earth or L5 colonies, but are used from Lunar Orbit to transport things to and from the asteroid colonies. They are extremely powerful - I have seen reports of one that managed 7 G's of sustained thrust during its testing.
On Working
| | Hits: 101
I'm sure that all of you people catching this blog and reading the tales of my missions think I'm little more than a gun-loving sociopath. I'll admit, anyone could get that impression and it likely isn't that far off the mark. But what you have seen so far is me being pissed off or competing. Ask any of the employees of Light Speed Couriers and you'll get a different story - one of a somewhat obsessed but perfectly standard corporate boss.
See... There is a lot more to me than liking to find unique ways to kill people. Like having fun and starting competitions to draw out the best in my employees. Sure I break the law - what law actually exists that can cover a corporate executive. (Or someone that has remodeled their bodies into a more perfect form to survive a battle against someone like Reaper)
And it's time to face facts - I do like what I do. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing it! But the fact is that I do have a work ethic - do the job efficiently and properly the first time. What that means in the parcel delivery business is that the package gets to its destination as fast as possible and in pristine condition. In the killing business it's different - use the right weapon, respond to any opposition with overwhelming force and "there is no such thing as enough guns".
True, there are more rules to the killing business - many dealing with how to kill efficiently and effectively and more that were created to make the business more humane. Unless specifically requested to be otherwise by a client, I ignore them all and make the most of any contract. (Which is why, incidentally, that I like Reaper - he has the same simplicity of rulesets as myself)
Free Falling
| | Hits: 170
--Mission Log Section 44, UPS Takeover--
Reaper is a classic military type, to such a degree that I'm surprised he doesn't have some kind of rank insignia growing as a pattern in his fur. Which is why I was surprised that he hadn't thought of an aerial insertion when we were faced with slogging through the entirety of the UPS site security forces.
Not that my idea for an aerial insertion was possible for most people - no jetpacks, no parachutes, no antigrav... Just the recoil of our weapons and his damnable wings. But I wouldn't lose - the counter on my baby showed about 900,000 rounds to go and I had some other high-power goods stowed on my person. And then it was to the open cargo doors of the Persephone to stare at two kilometers of open space.
With Hal badgering me to think of his safety I jumped out of the Persephone, got my bearings and settled in for a nice, long flight. It'd be the perfect target shoot - safe as shooting at paper targets at my private range and as fun as, well, stopping the shit-brown stains from destroying the company I'd built from the ground up.
Chainguns - A Wolfs Favorite Toy
| | Hits: 245
Ah, how I love the rattle of falling casings and the roar of four thousand rounds per minute. Normally mounted on vehicles I've got this one specially modified so I can carry it. The recoil kicks - if I wasn't a walking poster-child for the enhanced I wouldn't be able to fire it.
As it is, the roar and the rate of fire are not a concern. The fine folks at Interactive Networks saw fit to outfit this weapon with a high-end nano-factory for the ammunition - that means that I have to "reload" once every million rounds or so. Not joking - she's nearing empty after my little stunt during the takeover of the Tri-State Metroplex Regional UPS office but "nearing" is a relative term - I've got about 400,000 rounds yet to go. Sadly I'm not sure how to reload the thing - I've never heard of the manufacturer of this particular "bottomless magazine", but it should be as simple as shoving in a block of materials.
But you're here looking for specifics, aren't you? Well... Hal tells me that my little friend is a Mark 40 Mod 3 'Slayer' - according to FedGov terminology it's an M504, .50 Caliber, Air Cooled Multi-Barrel Autocannon. Firing the venerable .50BMG round, it's capable of hitting targets accurately at least a mile away. But I keep her loaded with a round that the designers of the shell could only imagine. Depleted Uranium with a glassine tungsten penetrator fired by a small charge of high explosives. Now this doesn't matter for soft-targets - they rarely set it off - but hard targets like mechs and APC's turn into nice blocks of swiss cheese when hit. The DU gets through the outer layer of armor and the penetrator goes through the rest.
Now I know you're wondering why I don't upgrade it further - perhaps change it so its a railgun or a coilgun - but the fact is that the roar of the rounds firing is like the finest music to me. Even if I've pushed the throttle on my neurokinetics to emergency power the roar soothes me. (Though at full NK boost I often find myself wishing it could fire faster)
But now for the specifics:
- 6 barrels
- 4000 rounds per minute
- .50 BMG
- 33 kilos
- GreenView Military Technologies Bottomless Magazine
- Davidson Optical Clearview Remote Targeting System