Crowley, the Corporate Technomancer
Under the cover of a black desert night on the planet Morran, four men belonging to a Corp sponsored find-and-retrieve team gathered around a keypad secured door. They were there to retrieve a valuable asset that just so happened to take the form of a less-than-willing-to-cooperate Elf technomancer named Cassius Crowley. Apparently, he had cut ties with the Halberd Weapons Manufactorum and was believed to be in possession of experimental weapon schematics. Halberd was willing to pay top dollar to make sure that no other Corps got ahold of them. They also wanted their Elf back, who was an alleged genius when it came to designing weapons.
The four members of the team had worked together for the past 7 years, and were fairly confident in their ability to bring in one stubborn Elf. They were dressed in all black wetwork suits, each decorated to set themselves apart, and overall looked the part of the Scary Goon Squad for Hire.
Draxus, the team leader, looked to his resident hacker, a gnome by the name of Vex. Vex nodded, pulled out his tools and plugged a thin red cable into a slot in the keypad.
“I thought this git was supposed to be a prodigy,” Vex chuckled after examining the keypad, “What the hell is he using such simple security for? The Ajax Mk. II's were discontinued ages ago. Give me two minutes, tops.” Draxus smiled under his helmet. He'd seen Vex crack systems that were supposed to be unbreakable. He was humble, too; if he was sure he could get in, he could get in. The gnome punched code with blinding speed into the datapad the other end of the cable was plugged into, then made a confused grunting sound.
“What the fu-“ was all he managed to say before arcing electricity leapt from the keypad, traced its way down the cable, and put thousands of volts through the tiny figure. Vex shook uncontrollably as the other three men watched, dumbfounded. Their friend eventually stopped and his body lay still, charred and smoking.
Before the rest of them could say anything, a tinny male voice projected itself through the keypad. “Attention, dipshits,” it said, “To answer the gnome's question, I use Mk II's because they're volatile enough to send that much power through remotely. Anyway, you haven’t even made it into the building yet and one of you has already been turned into a crispy filet. I highly advise you turn around while you still have all your nerve endings. Good day.” It cut out.
Draxus's usual calm and collected self was replaced by a newfound sense of vendetta against the smarmy Elf on the other end of the comm. He decided then and there that this whole op had become personal, and that Halberd would be getting Crowley back minus a couple limbs. He didn’t even care if they used some of his pay to buy the augments.
He glanced at Vex's datapad and found that the door had been unlocked. Wordlessly, he motioned for the rest of his team to follow him into the building. Grimly, they did.
The Elf had set up shop in an abandoned factory. Crowley had picked his safe house well; the factory was a mass of dead ends, doors blocked by collapsed supports, and a veritable labyrinth. The men picked their way through rubble and, now that they knew to look for them, carefully avoided the nasty traps their target had set up. His dossier had failed to mention anything about trapmaking skills, which is what Draxus now blamed for Vex's grisly death. What kind of Corp doesn’t know anything about its employees?, he asked himself, Like, for instance, that said employee could turn laser rifle batteries into friggin' landmines. He shuffled around one of the unorthodox mines and instructed his men to do the rest.
After about ten minutes of aimless wandering, Bloodhound (what they called their Shirren tracking expert; their real names were absurdly complicated), suddenly stopped. Draxus grinned. Bloodhound had an ability very few Shirren did; using his innate telepathy, he could actually detect thinking organisms within a limited range. They had the Elf dead to rights.
“He's this way,” the telepathic bug creature projected to them, pointing down the leftmost of the two hallways they found themselves at. Draxus and Mikhail followed, laser rifles raised. They walked down the dusty hall, and stopped at an ancient looking steel door.
“Crowley,” Draxus shouted, “We're either walking through this door, or we're blasting through it. Is it unlocked?”
He waited a few seconds, then heard the shuffling of papers and an exasperated groan. Light footsteps padded their way towards the door, and the same voice from the intercom yelled, “It's unlocked.”
Draxus gave Bloodhound the go ahead to open the door, and was surprised to find that the moment the door started to creak open, a hand holding a laser pistol battery shot out and touched Bloodhound's hand. A horrible stench filled the air as the Elf muttered some phrase and the battery expunged all its charge and then some into the Shirreen. He fell backwards onto the floor, and started twitching like a spider that'd been stepped on.
“You bastard!”, Draxus cried, storming into the room. The Elf raised his hands, still holding the now empty battery.
“Weapons on the ground,” the burly team leader instructed.
The Elf rolled his eyes, and with incredible speed grabbed Draxus's laser rifle and muttered another unintelligible phrase. Draxus pulled the trigger, but his gun pinged to notify him the battery was out of charge.
Shoving the battery that had until moments ago been empty into an arc pistol laying on his workstation, Crowley whirled around and pulled the trigger. A burst of lightning far too powerful to come from any weapon of such make zipped towards Mikhail, who was just getting a shot lined up on Crowley's leg. The man dropped, his sudden muscle spasms causing the laser rifle to go off randomly, but ultimately harmlessly for a few seconds before they stopped altogether.
Crowley admired his handiwork, pleasantly surprised at how powerful his Supercharge spell had been, and then stared down the handgun Draxus had pulled from its holster.
“It's over, Crowley,” the Corp merc said, through gritted teeth, “I'll blow your head off before you pull any more tricks. You’re not killing me.”
Crowley gestured behind him and shrugged, then said, “Yeah, you’re right. That’s what he's for.”
Draxus's eyes went wide under his helmet as a 10 inch combat knife severed his spinal cord. The 8-foot-tall Haan bug monster holding the knife shook his head at Crowley, who was complaining loudly about having his work disturbed by ‘these brain dead Corp hooligans'.
“I swear, Hal,” he said, settling back into his chair with a sigh, “They just keep getting dumber.”
As the Haan began relocating the dead mercs, the technomancer chewed on a pen and stared at the stacks of paper on his desk. Almost as an afterthought, he swiveled around in his chair to face the alien and asked, “When do you think they'll realize I don’t have their schematics?”
(The first part of a series of Starfinder stories honoring an incredible campaign I'm in the middle of. Next up is "Haalach'Nu, the Haan Assassin".)
