>>OOC<<
The Pacific Northwest had always been known for unrelenting rain, and that day was no different. Not for Vancouver, not for Seattle, not for the Gulf Islands, and not fore The Belt[1], and not for the Orbital Air Center smack dab on the island that was once the Vancouver Int't Airport, bought out nearly 60 years ago.
Many of the individuals heading through security from the baggage claim were ordinary folks, or rather as ordinary as could be, seeing as they could afford the liberties of air and space travel. Two however glaringly stood out.
The first stood at nearly two meters in height, a cowboy hat, white shirt, leather jacket and denim pants concealed a majority of the man's form, however the lack of boots revealed metal and polymer feet, and the face of an Alpha Class full body conversion instead of a man gave no illusion to the nature of the being holding a comparatively small suitcase. Ahead of him in the line, a woman of equal height, yet the exact opposite in nature. A black denim jacket and acid washed jeans with a pair of combat boots, hair pulled into a somewhat messy ponytail, and no sign of any chrome beyond the endemic jack in the side of a person's head. She looked young, maybe late twenties if not thirties, the look in her eyes -and dated fashion sense- said otherwise however.
The two were singled out by security, and brought over to a much less public screening area, no doubt because of the IEC company IDs on their coat pockets.
As security opened their cases for a physical check, an excited "Holy shit!" was given out by the youngest, or newest, guard on the job, who's hand immediately went for his holster. His cry of surprise wasn't exactly expected, but understandable, given the dozen or so firearms, firearm parts, knifes, explosives, and general other things that indicated that the woman who owned that luggage wasn't here on ordinary corporate business. behind thw two checking their luggae, a duo of more heavily armed guards looked between themselves. The Full Borg, who's ID named him as Charlie McKinnon gave a tinny sigh, as the woman, who's own ID, Elza Van Der Knapp, simply stared impassively at the nervous guard.
The elder of the two simply started sorting through the luggage looking for what was considered hard contraband, things like animals, or anything that could be a biohazard. Charlie's luggage was comparatively less lethal in nature, being many copies of the clothing he was currently wearing, a photo of what looked like a family, and Likely the supervisor, he spoke in an almost bored tone, "Calm down Davy, so long as they're not using them on us, we don't care."
the younger of the "Are you seeing how many fucking guns she has in that luggage?"
With a tired tone, the supervisor sighed, "Yeah, she's also got an IEC Corporate ID, so unless you want to get locked out of your fridge, dishwasher, and toilet, you should probably let them go on with their business."
The nervous man looked at the supervisor with a mild look of incredulousness. before calming down and methodically sorting through the bag of guns.
The duo then went through the song and dance of getting scanned. The 15 second process gave Elza the all clear, though complications arose from Charlie stepping through. He looked expectedly over at the guard manning the scanner's display, "Sir, you mind disarming your weapon and stepping through again."
The weathered full borg spoke, in a southern drawl, "Ah, right." lifting up his shirt and jacker, his abdomen opened up revealing a revolver that wouldn't be out of place hunting dinosaurs. He handed it to the guard who approached him as he took a few strides back into the scanner, where it came back clean. Stepping out, the duo went on their way.
They turned heads as they made their way through the terminal, before leaving and entering an automated taxi. Pulling away the two comrades began to speak in earnest once they pulled away and were on the highway.
Elza was the first pulling her cyberdeck out, and tapping away at it, likely for the information regarding their assignment to the water soaked city, her voice had a notable accent to it, one that could only be vaguely attributed to the nations along the Rhine valley, without any specific pattern, "To recap, the case's GPS tracker was damaged during the initial ambush on the convoy over in Chilliwack. From the the case's distress beacon started linking with IEC appliances in range giving us a path of distress logs up to Mission. Which is kind of odd given the area's is mostly upper class or corporate housing."
Charlie's bassy drawl filled the cabin as he removed his hat, "You thinkin' espionage?"
Elza shook her head snorting a bit, "Maybe, but if so, whoever did it is an idiot. No, I think Mission was the in between point. The case loitered there for an hour and a half before connection was lost, either the battery died because it was damaged, or because the hijackers managed to turn it off. So we don't know if it was moved any further or if it's still there."
Charlie nodded, "So they either got away with it or they're still camping out in in their retired Nana's basement. Wonderful."
Elza shrugged, "The case had other methods of tracking it, just not as easy as this." the woman brought up her hand and started counting things off, "There's a geotag on it that pings every 48 hours, the handle will spray a funky invisible ink every 6 minutes, an auditory sensor that detects IEC IDs and starts an alarm if they're close, and a speaker on it that starts belting out canned orders trying to convince people to turn it in to IEC personnel if found."
"How much you want to bet the speaker's already done for?"
"I'm not stupid enough to fall for that." Elza stowed her cyberdeck and gazed out the window, "Regardless, it's gonna be another 12 hours before we get a notification from the geotag, we don't have the proper equipment for scanning for ink yet, and we're not close enough for it to yell at us, so we're doing it the old fashioned way."
"You mean the fun way." said Charlie, raising his finger.
Elza shook her head, "Maybe it was fun for you before cyberlimbs became a thing. But it's become a pain in the ass. You and I both know how much of a fucking shitshow it is to track someone who erases themselves from cameras."
Charlie chuckled, "That just makes it more fun."
Elza sighed, leaning her head back.
The Belt [1]: The portion of Cascadia that bridged the previous city limits of Greater Vancouver and Greater Seattle, effectively swallowed the coastline from Everett to Langley. The area around Burlington is the city's largest combat zone.