O'Borg

Jason wakes from his half-doze.

"Don't worry Estabon, if that thing goes boom, the passenger compartments will take several minutes to fall to the ground. Enough time to get your sins absolved."

"Well, some of them anyway."

OOC : I was aware of that actually, Jason wanted to do some shopping for his own stuff. Some armour, backup handgun, personal effects etc. as well as some personal tools.

Jason looks back at Cutter.

"Well son, I'm a small boat and marine engine specialist. What do you do?"

"And you want to know what I can get in New York I can't get here? Well y'see, due to the extreme dilligance of my ex-collegues in the BCF Customs and Excise Regiment when leaving England, I find myself on these shores with oh," he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a handful of loose change, and makes a pretense of counting it "about sixty eurobucks and the shirt on my back. Now seeing as we dont get any cash up-front until we're on the airship and halfway to bloody nowhere, that means I can get about nine-hundred and forty Eurobucks worth of things in New York I cant get here. Capiche?"

"Unless you'd rather have me patching up the teams equipment with duck tape and rubber bands?"

Jason blinks at Nikolai.

"Oh I'm terribly sorry, but I thought you just said you had a mechanism in place for transporting sensitive equipment to the target area. I was unaware such a devilishly cunning and well planned operation was incapable of transporting goods from New York as well as here."

"I stand cor-rected." he says slowly.

Jason pipes up yet again.

"Yeah just a quick one - if we purchase any equipment at the stopovers in New York or London that cant be taken aboard the airship, is there anyway to get it shipped to our destination within a reasonable timeframe?"

Jason looks at Damien.

"You're pretty confident then that the hotel's Arasaka guards removed ALL the bugs from this room when THEY scanned it, aren't you?"

He sighs theatrically.

"When this meetings over you can go out the doors first, we'll all wait five minutes to see what happens."

Jason looks a lot calmer once reassured he wont have to go through UK customs. (Or rather, UK Customs wont be going through him )

"Okay, once last question then : with regards to our rate of pay, is it too late to lie about just how damn good I am at my job?"

OOC - Actually thats what I meant when Jason said 'Slush Fund'. Probably a more British than American slang term.

"London?" Jason's eyebrows raise so high they nearly hit his hairline. "We stopover in London? Well unless you can come up with a grade A fake ID or you got Rache Bartmoss on staff to hack the Immigration databases, that'll be as far as I get on this job. My name sets off alarms. I can look forward to a week of bloody interrogation and body cavity searches no matter how clean I am."

He shakes his head sadly.

"I take it you mean that Azerbyjan is a free-fire zone as far as your concerned?"

Jason raises a hand.

"Just a couple of questions - whats the size of the group slush fund, and how much is our personal advance?"

He flicks a quick glance at the commando team.

"Oh, and whats the policy on collateral damage?"

Jason nods shortly to Damien as they settle down.

"It's a bit beyond not liking them," he says quietly. "Arasaka won the contract to police Belfast some years back. Lasted about 3 weeks before they realised they were in over their heads. SAS had to go in and rescue their bossman and his family. I don't haveta tell you they dont like losing face, especially to a government run outfit."

After mingling and eating some brunch, Jason will speak to Nikolai as soon as an opportunity presents itself.

"Nikolai, before we get into the interesting stuff, I just wanted to ask - are the Arasaka crew yours or do they come with the hotel?"

Like most BCF or ex-BCF personnel, he has a deep distrust of Arasaka as a whole, and was less than keen to have to turn over his weapon to them at the entrance.

(OOC - In game terms, this is likely to be known to the ex-Seals or other characters who've had past interaction with the British Military, although AFAIK its only mentioned in the Rough Guide to the UK sourcebook)

Jason picks over the buffet and circulates amongst the others with a beer in hand, picking up snatches of others conversations but starting none of his own.

"Pleased to meet you Nikolai." Jason says neutrally as he offers his hand to the Russian.

Jason glances around at the others, shrugs, and introduces himself quietly to the lady with the placard.

"Jason Creedy, I believe I'm on the invite list?"

(OOC : Stating the obvious )

Jason sets his wristwatch alarm for 8:55, then kills time cleaning and checking his gun and magazines, studying the map of the area around the Marriott hotel, and watching TV.

At 8:55 he'll go hang about at the pickup point and get on the shuttle, getting off half a block before the Marriott and having a quick scout around if he has the time - or if not he'll get off outside and go right in rather than be late.

(OOC - Sorry, I went to reply last night but couldnt get on the forums)

After getting his alarm call, Jason goes to the hotels gym for a quick workout before going back to his room for a shower, then a good breakfast.

After that, he packs his kit and enquires at the front desk about bus times to the Marriott Hotel. (He'll get a cab using his own money if required)

He'll endevour to arrive at the Marriott half an hour early and recce the area before going in.

After dinner, Jason gets a hardcopy printout of the map of the area around the Marriot, folds it up and tucks it inside his armoured jacket.

Assuming a hotel like this has a gym, he'll go down and run through a light workout, (mainly treadmill and endurance exercises rather than bodybuilding) before heading back upstairs, double checking his alarm call for the next morning, and hitting the sack for the night.

(If the hotel doesnt have a gym, he'll settle for a callasthenics workout in his hotel room.)

Jason looks at the bill, then at the fish, and groans sadly.

"So much for booking a cab on the hotels tab tommorow."

He then enjoys a good meal, secure in the knowledge he'll be walking it off tommorow morning.

Jason will throw on a bath robe (or a large towel if the hotel doesnt have them and answer the door, his pistol held ready behind his back.

(OOC - Yeah I know its cliche and its unlikely that characters will be in danger at this stage, but Jason is a relative stranger to the U.S. and isnt taking any chances.)

After fetching his meal, he'll look over the map of the city whilst eating, paying particular attention to the area around the Marriott Hotel where they are due to meet tommorow.

Jason stares at the bellboy for a long few seconds, then bursts out laughing.

"What the hell, tip yourself a fiver. Ain't like its costing me anything. Tell you what, if you can rustle me up some fried fish and chips, a few beers and a map of the city, in about oh," he glances at his watch "an hours time, you can make it a ten."

When the bellboy departs, Jason will check and clean his pistol, lock the doors, check the windows are secure, then take a long hot bath.

Hey Thumper, could you post up the URL for your game website here?

I dont have it on both my works and home PCs, and it'd save the lot of us trawling the last thread for it if we didnt bookmark it.

Cheers

Jason confirms his room details at the front desk of his hotel, asks for a wakeup call half an hour before breakfast is served, and then turns to the expectant bell-boy.

"Sorry son," he says sadly, holding his battered navy blue holdall. "This here is the only stuff I got, and I'm so broke the tramps and winos are giving me their spare change. Just point me in the direction of my room and I'll take it from there."

He heads to his room, looking forward to a hot bath and his first good meal since leaving the UK.

-----------------------------

O'Borg / Jason Creedey (Tech)

Well, my ability to think of names is second only to my ability to fly whilst wearing concrete overshoes, so when I pick one I tend to stick with it.

A long time ago, in an office that (thank Glod) is far far away, I worked for my local cable company, and a perk of the job was that each office had its own TV. Ours used to sit mainly on MTV/VH1 or Sky One after 4pm.

Then they decided to merge two of the branches, and the IT department I worked in was merged too.

It went something like this -

"Right, we'll do this, that, and change these bits to be the same as our ones."

"Okay, what do we do?"

"Well, I suppose you can get the tea if you want."

Needless to say we were not impressed.

"This isnt a merger!" I cried, upon hearing this from the boss one afternoon after a re-run of Star Trek TNG. "We're being bloody assimilated!"

Now this was at the same time that the cable company were starting up their own ISP, and staff got free accounts.

So my first ever internet email address was "Ricardus Of Borg@CrappyCable.Co.UK"

And it was quite funny, at the time.

Since then I used "The Borg" or more recently "O'Borg" as my internet handle for chatrooms, forums and as a pen name.

Actually, people have asked if O'Borg is Irish.  

Actually I work (indirectly) for a big insurance company (IE they insure Planes, Ships, buildings, etc) and they do insurance policies against kidnapping - it happens a lot in Central America.

As part of that, they actually employ a group of people (a lot of ex SAS types apparently) to 'negotiate' with the kidnappers.

How much negotiation is done with the aid of a silenced 9mm is not revealed.