The group, working seperately, all seek to stop a plot to assassinate Senator Antilles.
Everyone but the Jedi
Corvo’s comm rings. It’s Illyan, trying to foil the snipers and get the hard information to a safe place. Everyone needs a piece of Corvo tonight.
Dag is on the way to a dance club in a J?hnii Cab, where Nayda seemed to be heading with his… clone? Whatever. Corvo calls him for backup, and he has to cut short the investigation/clearing his own name bit to help out. They head to the business block, where they note gunfire on the rooftop. Flying carefully to the roof, they notice a few blasted out windows here and there, then land on the roof. Illyan?s pinned down (two, maybe three snipers), so the pair swath the area in smoke grenades and get him into the back seat of speeder and to the nearest hospital.
At this point, nearly insensible, Illyan palms a deathstick to Corvo, telling him that all the information he needs to find the mole is on the stick.
Deathsticks were originally designed as disposable high-speed binary data carriers for low-end droids — sort of super-disks. Some genius figured out that if you hooked it up to a neuro-net interface worn by a person (or jacked it into an unshield cybernetic interface) and put it in ?download mode?, the pure stream of binary data slamming into the sentient?s cortext would get them high… it also carried tremendous addictive properties (albeit a higher-than-desireable mortality rate). They became so illegal they could even be used for their original purpose anymore.
Back at Antilles’s headquarters, the Senator digests the fact that Simon and Keema are engaged. After he gets past that, he tells the pair that he?s got something he needs to do — he?s perfectly willing to do it alone, but he figures they?ll both be happier if he only ditches the normal security detail, not them as well. They conditionally agree, but aren?t thrilled about it. After getting their agreement, he leads them to his office and a concealed lift that takes them to a private parking level, where the three of them pile into a Limo.
Antilles directs them to a relatively seedy neighborhood, where they pull up into a park and are told to wait for someone who?ll be coming to talk to Antilles here. While waiting, the car is approached by a wilding gang intent on messing up or stealing the car. Keema and Simon intervene, both ACHING to beat someone up, but both unwilling to draw attention to the Senator. How progressive. In the middle of the standoff, Antilles slimey contact shows up (in a bad suit) and crawls into the car, ignoring everyone else except for a ?How YOU doin??? to Keema.
A few minutes of idle threats pass by, the guy gets out and departs, the two get back in the car and start it up just as a security detail shows up. The gang skedaddles but not before smacking the car with a club first. Very brave, that lot.
Jedi
The Jedi hop in their jedimobile and take off after the caravan of land-speeders that apparently made off with all the loot. They catch up soon enough (being able to bypass alot of the winding ground-roads helps) and check out the opposition. The opposition has their stuff wired down tight: teams of scouts using speeder bikes and jet boots are constantly scanning in all directions — it will be very difficult to catch them unawares, so they trail the group at a distance and wait for their chance.
They never get it. Instead, the truck they are following comes upon the emptied ruins of the OTHER three trucks they?d been following… everyone?s dead and the cargo is gone — precise, military-grade hit. The remaining truck panics and beats feet for the town at full speed. The jedi investigate the attack site and then continue on.
Everyone else
Back at ASC, Corvo and Dag get Turin-the-Dick working on the Deathstick information and hooks him up with Sate Pestage?s super-duper data-slicing chip to help him do it. Meanwhile, they comm Keema and Simon to get brought up to date (something about ?The Senator took off with no security backup? got Corvo?s attention) and call them over to the ASC for a quick meeting.
After everyone arrives, Turin cracks the deathstick, but it?s no-joy — the data contained is only one-fourth of the whole file, spread out over three other deathsticks — where are those three? Dag thinks of the three he found at Nayda?s and groans inwardly — THAT makes sense, since Nayda HATES deathsticks and doesn?t ?use? (despite rumors to the contrary).
So where are the other three? Well… the forensic?s geek would have them. Corvo comms him, but he?s not answering. Hmm… mysterious. His car was parked at the facility (a nearby building/part of the security complex) almost an hour ago, but he?s not in the office and didn?t clock off. Security has him checking in at the parking garage, using the lift to his office… then nothing.
Jedi
Sharess does some gathering of info in town, trying to track down the group they?ve been tracking, which leads them to a bar with a fighting ring in the middle. Cedric gets a little attention by beating up the local champion and Sharess makes contact with the fixer who fronts for the gang they?re after… they were looking for contact info, but Sharess found out they?re looking for muscle right now and they?re undercover — using Cedric?s performance as a stepping stone, they ask for jobs with the gang.
Tricky, these jedi. Probably why nobody trusts em.
Everyone else
Splits up: two for the speeder and two for the lift. Both are clean and there’s no sign of the forensics guy.
Well…
Okay, Turin knows from the security cameras that the forensics guy got on the lift but never got off. Keema pops the access hatch to the roof of the lift and finds the guy — he?s not just dead, he?s broken; probably by something big and maybe even mechanical.
The deathsticks are, of course, gone.