C08: Help With a Coverup

To all our loyal soldiers,

So I survived the meeting. thanks for asking, I find your concern so deeply touching!

In terms of the fortification of Atlas, I was able to establish a large number of heavy artillery all over the place and I was able to whip up some propaganda about us “strategically retreating” from the Smoke that seemed to placate the citizens for the time being.

We were able to scrap the majority of the androids in Atlas and Rivers End. We have a handful of units that are unaccounted for which is going to be a fun problem to deal with.

In terms of the meeting, I won’t sugarcoat it, the Council of 20 are pissed. They were honestly less enraged than when I killed one of them (long story and I’m not telling). So, I kind of ran my mouth and said a massive lie to placate them. I told them that we have an insurgent unit in the Underworld Collective that can turn the tide of the war.

Whoops.

They told me to prove it by having them collapse the tunnels underneath one of the Underworld Collective’s territories. This will be an absolute pain to figure out but if my head is in the guillotine, I’m pulling you under the blade too.

In terms of how we go about this, that will depend on which territory we target.

The territories we can cut off from the Circuit’s supplies are: Level 99, The Circuits, Valhalla, and The Smoke.

Level 99 is the home base of the Underworld Collective and will definitely rattle rebel morale if a bomb was detonated underneath their homes. However, it’s the only Underworld Collective territory where we don’t have any resources or contacts. The best method would be to abduct someone, torture them to their breaking point, then send them through the tunnels with a bomb in their pocket. That can be effective but there’s a few variables.

The Circuits would be the most effective target, blocking everything off but it is by far the hardest to conduct any kind of operations in. We have a few merchant contacts in the area that sell us our weapons but if we lose them or our contacts are found out, we would lose a major war asset. Additionally, I don’t think they would be too keen on limiting access to their other customers and their absence will definitely be noticed so we can’t just do the good ‘ol kidnap and torture. The only way we could do this is by ordering a load of explosives to be smuggled into Atlas, stop them halfway through, then push it past the Circuits/Atlas border. However, that would be extremely hard to pull off because any shipment bound for Atlas will be heavily inspected.

Valhalla is an extremely easy to pull off operations in because we have multiple contacts in the region (mostly retired commanders) that have a massive grudge against the Underworld Collective. The only issue is that Valhalla isn’t that great a target, while it holds a mountain of moolah, it wouldn’t exactly be “changing the tide of the war” to cut their access off to the Circuits. We would have enough contacts where we could form a raid party (of mostly old people) to plant a few dirty bombs in the tunnels.

The Smoke would be a prime target, however, much like Level 99 we don’t have any contacts to act as insurgents. However, if we were able to cut off materials going from the Circuits to the factory, that could cripple their bot production. We would have to sneak someone from another territory and sneak them into the tunnels. Whoever we sneak across would have to hope that the bots don’t turn on while they’re on the other side of the border or else the tunnel will be swarming with them.

I really hope you’ve made peace with yourselves because if this doesn’t work, I will make sure that I haunt you for the rest of your lives!

Jerit | Head of Public Relations and Target Elimination