The nefarius Mr Steel had been traced to a huge office block in the Avenue, the same part of the LongRoad as the task force's previous adventures have been taking place in.
This huge office block was a high skyscraper, with higher, more prestigous offices above a sky lobby in the middle, and less prestigous ones below. Mr Steel's office belonged to the upper part. The scyscraper was filled with military and military-related businesses, so the 16th legion was running security for the building. Some of the companies were even conducting live-fire mecha exercises in the lower part.
JorgenCallain found through a fellow gun nut that there would be a major masked toga party in the building, so he got an invitation for himself, Urgus and EricEmebovadille. Tuft got in uninvited by simply showing up.
Inside, Steel was seen going around, engaging people in small private conversations, which EricEmebovadille documented by sneak photography.
Tuft got one of the persons Steel had just talked to to offer her a drink, and then talked to him. He proved to be a young navy officer, at the moment lacking in rank and position, but with heavy gambling debts. Steel had offered him an advantageous honor loan.
JorgenCallain talked to a bugbear colonel who was in charge of renting offices, and got an offer for a not-to-high class office. Got the phone number to the colonels assistant, and an offer to look at one of the offices. Unfortunately, the assistant was extremely busy, and could only show the office at 3AM. To that assistant's dismay, JorgenCallain agreed to the appointment.
Tuft tried to listen in on Steel's conversations to get a gist of what he was doing. He seemed to be spending a lot of money on young officers: buying drinks, losing at cards, offering advantageous loans.
The officers he approached seemed to be passionate careerist, hotheads, duellist, and war party supporters.
The task force withdrew from the still-going-strong party, Tuft with some difficulty.
--
At the appointed time of 3AM, the entire taskforce, now reinforced with Belnik showed up for the appointed meeting - and finds the assistant sleeping. They borrowed his pass key, and swiftly proceeded to Mr Steel's office.
The office proved to have an extra, advanced lock, with alarm, which Tuft picked. It was also protected by rather sophisticated magic, which needed bypassing.
Once inside, Belnik detected that magic was used quite often in the office, and set up protections from magical detection.
JorgenCallain set up a ward outside door to detect unwelcome interruptions.
Tuft started breaking into Steel's safe.
JorgenCallain checked the computer and found lists of contacts: the officers, the ColdOne, the Hornets gang. Steel had apparently spent millions on the Hornets.
EricEmebovadille noted the style and atmosphere of the office. It hinted to a noble military background, non-magician, old money, old navy - a stable blue dragon loyalist.
Suddenly Urgus thought he saw one of the old suits of armour in the office move slightly, while Belnik was convinced it did not. This started an intense discussion, while Tuft tried to concentrate on the safe. Just as Tuft finished the last work on the safe, an alarm sounded, and the suits of armour showed their true nature: Iron Golems!
With joint effort Tuft and JorgenCallain silenced the alarm almost immediately, while Urgus and EricEmebovadille addressed the golems. EricEmebovadille proved to have just the right ammunition in his guns, while Urgus gave them a sound pounding.
JorgenCallain traced the alarm's way in the office block's computers, and tried to stop it spreading any further, while Tuft and Belnik photographed the contents of the safe: IOU's, loan safeties and money.
While Urgus kept the golems in check, EricEmebovadille tried to plant red herrings to indicate that someone from the party tried to break into the office to hunt for booze, and Tuft and Belnik wiped the safe from traces of break-in.
After leaving the offices, the task force tried to analyze their findings, and found:
- Steel had a rich sponsor
- Steel collected details on his contacts
- Steel supportred various groups, but did not try to control them
- Steel had sponsored hits on various, apparently random, businesses
- Steel had shown no interest in the biowares as such. Or?
--
Then JorgenCallain contacted the task force's sponsor, who ordered "hands off" Steel and a renewed concentration on the bioware trail.