| Laser trips and Pressure Pads Laser trips aren’t in use too much these days, but there’s just enough of them around to catch out the lazy break-and-enter artist. These are generally in a light-source and receiver setup. When the receiver stops receiving light, it sounds the alarm. These can be just avoided, but if you absolutely have to cross the beam, try using a small device which emits the same frequency of light, which you can get from various techies and maybe a stuffer shack if you’re real lucky (Search Shadowland for ‘Laser Trip Spoofers’ for a local dealer). Pressure pads are a pain. The best method to deal with these is to know where they are and make sure you don’t stand on them. I’ve heard of some physical adepts with specific means on avoiding these but I’m not really sure on the matter. Just try not to step on them. |
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| Electric Fences, barrier sensors. Most electric fences are signed, as a requirement. However sometimes they wont tell you, or the fence will be laced with wires that if cut, sound an intrusion alarm. The best way to know is to look, high voltage lines differ substantially in description to the normal fencing wires (if you know what to look for, at least), and sensor wires tend to be insulated, but very thin and hard to see at night. |
| One of the more reliable ways is to use a device that detects ozone; this will show evidence of an electrical current. The better ones even pick up the current in the sensor wires. Another type of barrier sensor is window glass/Perspex interlaced with wires, much like the demister on car’s rear windscreens. These are somewhat expensive and are only really used on sensitive areas (the rare sensitive areas dumb enough to have windows, that is) so make sure you look closely before applying your glasscutter. Keep in mind that since they’re embedded, your nifty ozone detector will not see these currents. Finally, a mean trick that certain corporations like Aztech, as well as government agencies use are dummy terminals. These are terminals that look just like any other, except they don’t actually do anything, and their jack points are wired to mains power. This, obviously, is something that is not only bad for a decker’s brain but their deck, too. There’s no real way to spot these, except that the terminal doesn’t do anything much apart from sit there and look mostly real. |
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| Sentry Guns Ah, sentry guns, my personal nemesis. These things I really hate with a passion. Sentry guns differ from automated turrets in that sentry guns are always searching an active, whereas turrets are usually only active on an alert. You usually only see sentry guns in open locations or places where there are never very many people around. Sentry guns are a pain because they differ widely in what their targeting sensors are, and how smart their software is so it’s a real lucky dip sometimes. Worse, most sentry guns use more than one sensor. They often react quickly and have a high ammo capacity, and they’re usually very loud. Most come with thermographic targeting, and most good ones also come equipped with ultrasound targeting or sonar targeting to deal with thermo dampeners and magic spells. Other sensors include low-powered radar, ultraviolet, low-light, and the like. The smarter ones even use expert software coupled with mapsofts for the people unlucky enough to get pinned down behind cover, and can guess where that person is going to come out. Ultrasound emitters and WNGs can confuse the ultrasound and sonar targeting systems, but the latter is a real gamble. Often, because the sonar system is both passive and active, the gun will not be confused at all, and just treat a white noise source as a normal noise source, and shoot the hell out of the poor fool holding the WNG. A WNG might be good for drawing fire, though, and mask other noises as you run the hell away from the WNG, but that’s only viable if you don’t mind the noise a machine gun makes. The best way to deal with these puppies is to stay out of LOS, get a radio badge if appropriate, or have your decker shut them down. Either that, or use a grenade launcher. It makes you feel better until the klaxons sound, anyway. |
| This article has covered most of the common electronic security devices, but some might have noticed, “Where’s the bit on cameras!?”. Sorry, chums. There’s no real way around cameras except sneaking. If you can get to the cameras, there are devices to set up loops but again, you can’t beat a decker with system access. This article also hasn’t touched on magical security, but I’m a technophile, not a mage-maggot. I leave that to people who really know what they’re talking about. Happy Hunting. Slippery Tom |