On the second day, some of their serious hardware, and some more ordered for the job, arrived at the Unterellmau, as “lost luggage forwarded from the starport with apologies”. 

Finally, the agreed coded message from Namkad arrived; (“Hey, these meds solved My embarrassing problem!”) and they responded as planned, “Hello fellow Christian, I need your help getting MCr53 out of the country” indicating that tomorrow was the day.

Tynmos Arcology and Winter Sports Resort, Collace/District 268/Spinward, 053/1105

Feng walked into Cartiff’s in her bright red dress, made of Diffusion fabric, and unarmed except for an EMP grenade in her capacious handbag. The security arch made not a flicker and one of the four door guards tipped her an outrageous wink, confirming that the real staff were all enjoying an all-expenses-paid day off. Playing the rich lady shopping for goodies, she soon had the very best stock laid out around her. At which point she casually reached into her handbag and triggered the grenade. 

All the security cameras, alarms and detectors in the shop went offline, as did the guards’ radio helmets and the voice-triggered steel shutters. As this happened, Nevada and Wombat, in flak armour and toting rifles, marched in and started herding staff to the back out of sight of the windows. Inevitably, some of the shoppers in Godfrey Plaza noticed this, and probably called the police. However, around this time, Namkad’s diversion - a fake terrorist bomb at the western Docks - kicked in and most of the police were engaged with that.

With the cameras down, the fake staff cheerfully co-operated in tying each other up, though when Nevada added some realism with a few bruises he got the odd glare. He also knocked Feng about a bit to build her role as hostage. Then they scooped the best of the jewelry into Cartiff carrier bags while Wombat used his medical laser scalpel to cut open the gem display case and bag the sample gems.

Then, with Nevada holding a knife to Feng’s neck, they hustled out and headed for the van. As they did so, the shoppers in the plaza were gathered in groups, and two brave heroes decided to Have a Go. One in his fifties drew his service revolver and pointed it at Nevada from twenty metres, shouting “Freeze!” A man nearby, encouraged by this, also pulled a pistol but dived into cover as a first move. 

Nevada levelled his gauss rifle and put a single round into the first man’s pistol, shattering it and breaking several fingers; the hero dropped either fainting or stunned. The second man stayed put, discouraged, and Wombat stunned him as they moved past. With shots fired the plaza cleared like magic.

Gaining the van, the raiders bundled into the back and started changing outfits while Sturnn got them moving, heading for the eastern docks. The diversion worked for a while, but then a sensor drone spotted them. Nevada shot it, and they ran down a beat policeman brave enough to try and shoot at them, but then a police air/raft appeared and they had no choice but to bring it down with the spare EMP grenade. As the inert mass smashed into the concrete Nevada cursed; they’d wanted zero fatalities. At the next block two more converged on them and Wombat and Nevada downed these as well - the vehicles were civilian not military and not armoured. 

Reaching the dock, they located the Speedy Delivery Taxis Ltd and parked up before hurrying inside. The staff here were all having an unexpected holiday as well, so they loaded all their gear into the prepared grav taxi and Wombat opened the hanger doors. Sturnn took them out, set a course and had them through the air lock and away before anyone could react. 

In the early hours of the following morning, they came over the ocean towards Staerla City.  The oldest city on the planet, it had been built conventionally before the atmosphere was tainted and population pressure demanded arcologies. Now, it was run-down, dystopian, nearly lawless and a dangerous place to be; its’ local nickname was Dark City. All told, a perfect place to disappear into the underworld.

All their ID and equipment for their previous fake identities had gone into the sea on the way, and they had assumed completely new ones, far less respectable ones, but ones that the locals should be able to see through to identify them as the daring criminals who knocked over Cartiff’s.

The city did have an airport for landing transport, but the party elected to land on the beach outside the city limits. Setting the taxi to fly out to sea and submerge itself, they shouldered their bags and headed into town.

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Session Date Mar 7, 2023