The Ork Underground

Writing: David Hyatt and Brian Schoner
Additional Writing: Robert Boyle
HTML Conversion/Layout: David Hyatt

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

I can hear you already: if the arcology is buttoned up so fraggin' tight, how did Peregrine and company get out? Or, for the reckless ones who want to try collecting some of Renraku's lost data and tech toys, How do I get in? Well, wonder no more, chummer. An unofficial alliance has sprung up between the arcology resistance and some residents of Seattle's ork underground, in which supplies and volunteers are shipped into the arc, while rescued prisoners and the occasional technotoy are smuggled out. After a few discussions (and a night at the Big Rhino that my head and stomach still haven't recovered from), I convinced one of the orks involved to spill what she knew about that arrangement. For reasons that may or may not be apparent, she's not using her real name; we'll call her Hazel.
:: Posted By Captain Chaos on 5 February 2060 at 10:01:46 (EST) ::

There's a lot going on in the Underground that smoothies never see. Some of it's ugly, some of it's weird, some of it's wonderful, but it's all down here in the U because somebody didn't want it topside. Like me. I still go up topside to work sometimes, courier work and light muscle mostly; they treat me fine when somebody up there needs me. But that's just for money; the rest of the time, I live down here.

My dad showed me the arc entrance about a year ago, a few months before he died. We were walking some of his old turf on the South End when we came to a little side tunnel that he wanted us to go down. It didn't look finished, the walls were all rough, and it ended in a big patch of wall that looked like it had been ripped up and then rebuilt. When I asked him about it, he looked real sad and said that a long time ago, about fifteen years or so, he was helping some tunnelers when they broke through into a parking garage underneath a building. They didn't know it was the arc, but they knew it was bad for them to have broken through, so they sent my dad back to tell the Mayor.

The ork underground has a mayor? I don't see that on any of the government org charts.
:: Posted By City Hauler ::

We have a lot of things down here that you don't know about, smoothie.
:: Posted By Dig Doug ::

When he got back with the Mayor and some of the Council, they saw a bunch of smoothies in red uniforms at the end of the tunnel, and there was a lot of blood. Most of the tunnelers were dead, and the rest were up against the wall with guns pointed at them. The guards in the arc responded to an alarm, and when they saw all the tunnelers coming through the hole in the wall, they thought they were trying to break in or invade or something. So they shot them. Dad said the Mayor and some of the arc people argued about it a long time, and in the end the arc people paid the Mayor a whole bunch of money as long as we didn't tell anybody about it. The Mayor used the money to rebuild the Southside ventilation system, and the arc people walled the tunnel back up.

I said I thought that was a pretty rotten deal, and he said yeah, it was. Then he told me that a few months afterward, they made another tunnel into the arc garage, this time on purpose. He took me to see it. It opened up high on a wall, almost on the ceiling, between two support beams so it was in a lot of shadow. You wouldn't see it unless you knew where it was; that's how they kept it secret for so long. I asked what they used it for, and dad said not much anymore. At first, people used to sneak into the garage and steal stuff from the unlocked cars, but too many of them got caught and most of the cars were locked anyway. Nowadays they just use it once in a while, if somebody really needs to get in or out that way.

You're telling me that the Renraku arcology, one of the most secure buildings in Seattle, has had a big fragging hole leading from its parking garage to the middle of the Ork Underground for the past fifteen years, and the reason nobody found it is because it's in the fraggin' dark?!?
:: Posted By Rapier ::

When you're dealing with a corp like Renraku, you can't out-tech them. Sometimes you just need to go to the other extreme.
:: Posted By Carver ::

I pretty much forgot about it after that until we heard the news from topside that the arc had gotten shut down or taken over or something. The Council wanted somebody to go and check out the tunnel, to see if it was safe or if we should close it off. Me and a couple of my chummers volunteered, so we got some gear from the storehouse and went in.

So I take it "Hazel" is in some kind of Underground Guard or police force or something?
:: Posted By BlackWolf ::

Nope, she's pretty much a freelance courier, like she said. Good instincts, too; she'll be a real pro by the time she hits fifteen, if she chooses to go that way.
:: Posted By Twiggs ::

Wait a tick. This Underground Council asks somebody to go into the occupied arcology to check it out, and a few people just stick their hands up and go "hoi," and the Council says, "Okay, here are some guns, go get 'em"?
:: Posted By BlackWolf ::

Basically.
:: Posted By Dig Doug ::

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
:: Posted By BlackWolf ::

Not really. When you live in an insular culture with no outside assistance to depend on, you tend to realize that if somebody doesn't do it, it isn't gonna get done. So if something needs doing and you think it's important, you do it. It's a wonderfully simple way to function. Too bad Congress doesn't emulate it.
:: Posted By Peabody ::

Me, Sledge, Bulldog and Reg went on the trip. Sledge stuck his head through first to scope the place out, and when he said it was clear we all went through into that big garage. There were a lot of cars inside, but nobody was pulling in or out. There weren't any people there at all, at least at first, and it was real quiet. We spread out a little bit and headed toward the ramp leading down, 'cause Bulldog wanted to get a look at the bus station on the next floor down.

Every fifty meters or so we saw these big booths, like clear plastic boxes big enough for three people (maybe four, or five smoothies). They had bright yellow tape all around the tops and the edges, and it said "SAFE ZONE" in big red letters on each one. Most of the doors were open, and you could see benches and PANICBUTTONs inside.

Hey, she forgot the TM!
:: Posted By Thumper ::

Frag, I'm just impressed the little trog can read.
:: Posted By Anatole ::

This is your official warning, Anatole, and you don't get another one. Keep the racist drek off the public boards.
:: Posted By Captain Chaos on 11 February 2060 at 19:49:22 (EST)

We were about halfway to the ramp when we came to a booth that was closed. A red light was flashing on each side of it, like an alarm, but there wasn't anybody around. I went up close to look and there was somebody inside it-a smoothie in a business suit, dead. His fingertips were crusted with dried blood, and there was some on the door too, like he'd tried to pry the door open with his bare hands. The walls were all scuffed up, and his briefcase was broken open. he had a phone and a pocket secretary and some other stuff in there with him; Reg wanted to break in and take it. But Bulldog said no, because if he couldn't get out, we probably couldn't get in, and if we did it would make too much noise. So we left him there.

Good plan. Those booths are designed to stop anything short of a shotgun blast, and the alarm systems are pretty sensitive to tampering. The poor fragger in the suit was probably on his way to his car when the takeover hit, and decided to seal himself in and call security. Too bad for him that Deus was taking over security at the time. If he'd run for his car, he might have made it.
:: Posted By Renraku Fox ::

Not necessarily. Deus triggered the barriers and tire spikes at the exit ramps on all four garage levels. By the time anyone knew what was going on inside, there was no way out.
:: Posted By Peregrine ::

When we got to the ramp, we went about halfway down so we could see the bus station. It was huge, and there were three or four buses there, but nobody was getting on or off. The whole place was deserted. Bulldog said there must be some radio communications or something, so Reg pulled out his little signal tracker thing. He fiddled around with it for a few minutes, then found a signal and started following it back up the ramp. He said it was a homing signal, like the kind a stolen car gives off. We tracked it to a van with a satellite dish on top, labeled "KSAF News Trideo-News As It Happens." We knocked on the back door, but there was no answer, so Reg worked the lock for a few minutes and got it open. It had lots of electronics inside, flashing and blinking and everything. Made Reg's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

I've been watching KSAF for a few years now, ever since I read about them on Shadowland. I never saw a thing about the arc or the shutdown, though. You think Renraku put the squeeze on them to keep it quiet?
:: Posted By Knight of Diamonds ::

More likely the news never made it out of the arc. KSAF isn't a big enough station to afford real-time satellite transmission of their news feeds, so they use short-haul transmitter links that shunt the camera footage back to a recording deck in the news van. They can do rough editing right in the van if there's something that needs to be aired in a hurry, but most of the footage gets polished up after the van gets back to the station. Looks like they snooped a little too deep this time.
:: Posted By Talking Ed ::

So whatever footage they took during the takeover is still stored on an editing deck in that van?
:: Posted By Demonseed Elite ::

Frag, DE, I think you're right. Now that would be worth some nuyen; any of the major trid networks would pay a bundle for footage like that, especially if they were the first ones to break the story. And Renraku or the UCAS Army might want to take a gander at it for their own purposes.
:: Posted By Kaptain Krude ::

I'll go you one better, Kaptain K. If "Hazel" and her ork buddies found a bunch of live equipment in the van, it's possible the van is still receiving a signal from the camera, wherever it is in the arc. How much do you think a live feed from inside the arc would be worth?
:: Posted By Talking Ed ::

Reg climbed in and started trying to disconnect some of the gear. He said the electronics would be worth a couple thousand nuyen, easy. So Sledge and I climbed in to help him, and Bulldog stayed outside on lookout.

Typical orks. People are being massacred upstairs, and they're looting their cars for a quick payoff.
:: Posted By Anatole ::

That's it, Anatole. I just got the results from the trace program we ran on you, and I've dumped the output (along with a transcript of your last several comments) into Shadowland's Metahuman Rights chatroom. I know a few militant orks and trolls over there who'd just love to pay you a visit. Have fun-and don't come back.
:: Posted By Captain Chaos on 11 February 2060 at 20:00:37 (EST) ::

Remind me never to get on your bad side, Cap.
:: Posted By Kaptain Krude ::

Before we'd gotten anything disconnected, we heard shots. We piled out of the van, and Bulldog pointed toward the ramp from upstairs. A dwarf and three or four smoothies were running down it, and one or two of them were shooting back up the ramp at something we couldn't see. Suddenly there was a big flash, like lightning, and one of the smoothies dropped like a rock. Another one, a woman, screamed, then turned around and started shooting like crazy. She had a little pistol, a Beretta or something, and she kept firing until the clip was empty. One of the other guys grabbed her then and started dragging her off. She was still screaming and crying while she tried to reload.

We got a little closer, but tried to stay hidden until we could tell what was going on. They were maybe five meters past the bottom of the ramp when we saw what was chasing them. There were three of the things, maybe a meter and a half long each, with shiny fur all over them; they looked kind of like big devil rats or something, but with extra arms and an extra tail. And they were fast; I knew the rest of the smoothies couldn't outrun them. The dwarf tripped on something as he turned around to fire, and he fell down. One of the things leaped maybe ten meters through the air toward him. It was going to land on him, but he got his shotgun up and fired right as it was coming down, and blew it back away from him. He was wearing a Renraku security uniform, though it was pretty beat up.

The woman who'd been crying must have seen us then, because she started yelling, "Help us! For God's sake help us!" I didn't know what side to be on, since Renraku security is pretty bad news, but then one of the things turned our way. That made our choice easy.

The things took a lot of hits to bring down, but we eventually killed all three. Bulldog got cut up pretty bad, Sledge and the dwarf were both hurt but able to walk, and another smoothie was dead. We tried to ask them what was going on, but they said we had to hurry because more of the things-they called them Medusas-would probably be coming. One of the smoothies asked us where we came from. We all looked at Bulldog, because he was kind of leading, and we didn't want anybody to know about the entrance we used. So Bulldog just said, "the Underground."

They all got real excited at that. The woman-she told us her name was Shirley-said that they were with some resistance group that was trying to get people out of the arcology, because a computer had taken it over or something. It sounded like a bad episode of Drake Stone, Monster Hunter. They'd been on the top floor of the garage, checking out the highway onramps to see if they could get out that way, when the Medusas attacked them. The onramps were blocked, she said, and there was no way to get back up to the arc, so they had to run farther down into the garage. She said they thought they were dead, but that if we got in from the Underground, there must be a way out after all.

When Bulldog said they couldn't come back with us, Shirley started screaming that there were a hundred thousand people inside the arc, and they were all gonna die unless they could get away from this computer, and how could we just sit by and let it happen? I could tell Bulldog was starting to get mad, so I said we should bring them back and let the Council decide. If the Council thought they knew too much, they might keep them from returning topside, but I didn't say that. Even Bulldog could see that they were really scared and in bad shape, so he agreed.

We were back at the hole and boosting the wounded through when we heard a whirring noise a ways behind us, like a high-speed ventilation fan or something. The smoothie who'd asked where we came from-his name was Chad-said there was a dervish coming after us, and he was going to lead it away from the hole. He looked at me and said, "Please help us. There's no other way out. Help Shirley make them understand." And then he was off and running between two rows of parked cars, back toward the noise. I never saw him again.

So we went to the Council and told our story. Right away, Councilman Jonas said we didn't want outsiders in the Underground, especially if the crazy computer might find the entrance and send the robots after us. Shirley said she understood, but that innocent people were dying, and all they needed was a helping hand. Eventually the Council decided to let the Resistance bring people into the U, as long as they took them straight to the nearest exit. They also said they'd hold the Resistance responsible if the computer found out how to get into the Underground.

Wait a minute-isn't the Ork Underground open to the public? They have tours and stores and everything. Why are they so uptight about a bunch of refugees?
:: Posted By Whatzit ::

Technically, yes, the Underground is open to the public. So are the nastier parts of the Redmond Barrens. But unless you're stupid, or suicidal, or have a very good reason for being there, you shouldn't go wandering around in either place if you're not a resident. The Underground is effectively the orks' private city, and they plan to keep it that way. The folks on the Council are mostly older orks who remember the Night of Rage, and they're not too fond of outsiders. Frankly, after what they've been through, I can't blame them.
:: Posted By Razor ::

All that went down about a month ago. We've been bringing people through the garage ever since-sometimes fifteen or twenty a day, sometimes only one or two in a whole week. The Resistance has been careful not to go anywhere near the hole if they even think they're being followed, and the computer doesn't seem to have figured out where we are yet. We rigged the area with explosives, just in case. Some of the tunnelers are digging backup tunnels in case we have to seal off the main one. I'm working with the Resistance now, helping to coordinate things with the Council. We get the survivors out and help Resistance members get back in. Some of us are letting the wounded stay with us, and we're chipping in to help get them supplies to take back inside.

A lot of people in the U are still unhappy about the whole thing, and there've been a few incidents between them and the survivors coming out of the arc. Some of us who are trying to help got killed inside the arc, and that made people even angrier, but I'm not going to let them close this down until we get everybody out. A few people have threatened me, called me a human sympathizer, but I don't care. These people don't deserve to die, and if I can help them, I will. I've seen what they look like when they come out; most of them are bleeding, all of them are dirty, and they look like they've been through a war. I guess they have.

One of the Resistance guys told me Shirley was dead. He said the computer's guards were about to capture her, and she blew her brains out so they couldn't find out where the Resistance was taking people. She died to keep the escape route open. if I have to make some enemies to help finish what she started, then that's what I'll do.

Brave girl. I hope she makes this work.
:: Posted By Hadrian ::