[center][h2]||SHAMASH||[/h2][/center]

OBJECTIVE: [i]One of the High Gods is visiting. The Annunaki are all abuzz, and there will be a triumphal parade from the landing pads on the far side of the city to the Temple of Ishtar, which has recently stepped up their security. Making a play there is foolhardy. No, what we want is to make a play. Preferably one that doesn't lead to us getting nuked from orbit.

OB1: Acquire one of the Fleet Keys that Shamash carries and replace them with these forgeries. The Fleet Keys are concentrated data shaped into rods instead of tablets, hanging upon their breastplate. If #MAT can take one apart, she'll be able to put together a "skeleton key" - something that identifies you to the ship's systems as having the authority of one of the High Gods. 
OB2: Identify what Shamash is doing here. Ideally, figure out some way to get them to leave. We don't need the attention on this city in particular.
OB3: do NOT allow yourselves to be compromised. As long as Shamash is here, this city does NOT have revolutionaries. It is law-abiding and smoothly operational. The reprisal would be terrible if anything were otherwise.[/i]

***

The chariots are a host darkening the sky. There are at least fifty of them, heavily-armed and expertly piloted. Work crews in Caphtor Below frantically finish their realignment of the intricate hangar systems as they begin their final approach, after seven times soaring over the city. It is impossible to tell which one is piloted not by one of the Annunaki but by Shamash themselves.

If you are human in the city, you are either collapsed in bed after three days of double shifts or rushing to finish your tasks under the watchful eyes of your overseers. There is a nervous mania in the air: what Shamash has decided to do is almost unthinkable, breaking with centuries of tradition. While it is understood that Shamash must by necessity often leave Babylon, they never stoop so low as to descend upon a planet personally. (Excepting, of course, upper atmosphere dogfights, where the unworthy foe seeks to hide in the winds and the clouds, but even then they do not land.) It is not done.

But now it is happening. (And of course, the Annunaki nervously joke, if any of the High Gods [i]were[/i] to do this, of course it would be Shamash, wild and free, touched by the spirit of adventure that so define the ab-Shamashi. Of course it is them, and not Ishtar or Ereshkigal.) The rumors as to the reason for their appearance are wild and excited and impossible.

Name your approaches.