Lone Star Security Services
Written by: Tahoma
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. First they lose their law-enforcement contract in Seattle after their failure to collar the Mayan Cutter in a timely matter, and then Raleigh city-council gets nervous and starts eyeing the possibility of jumping ship to Dragoon Tactical Investments. The local Public Security Arm was shuffled and culled extensively, and the people that remain along with the Corporate Arm are scrambling to hold onto its contracts with a white-knuckled grip.Panic's trickling down to the individuals working the beat too: Beat-cops and corpsec alike are leaping at anything suspicious looking for a front-page bust, and HTR units are going full Texas Ranger in a bid to get a medal and secure their future employment.Maybe Lone Star will make a spectacular rebirth, and maybe they'll get at it with a little help from the shadows, who knows. Until then, a little word of advice: Don't go thinking Lone Star's setbacks are gonna make 'em cautious in how they deal with shadowrunners. If you get HTR on your tail, they're gonna come in force.
Structure
Lone Star's structure in Raleigh follows the same song and dance it does everywhere else, taking inspiration from traditional police-precincts in their ranks and hierarchy for their law-enforcement wing.
Public Agenda
Lone Star continues to push its image as would-be Texas Rangers, but in wake of recent events has been pushing more of its private/corporate security side, likely looking to keep a backup in case their law-enforcement contract fails.
Assets
Doubling down on its responsibilities, Lone Star's drastically increased its presence in Raleigh with partial and total renovations of police precincts, new training regimes and an replacing aging equipment with new gear still warm from the factory. HTR are stepping up their game substantially, with their older police-grade vehicles getting mothballed and milspec APCs being sighted parked in HTR depots.
HTR are also seeing a lot more pressure from the brass to invest in combat cyberware as well, even going so far as to offer perks and discounts for having full suites installed.
Sourcing it all in the quantities Lone Star want is proving easier said than done mind you, with the pencil-pushers even contacting companies like Kurabokko Metahuman Technologies to see if their industrial cyberlimb packages can be modified for copsec specifications.
History
Lone Star have had an ongoing contract to run local law-enforcement with the city of Raleigh since 2039, following an incident where a gang-war spilled over into corp property being secured by Lone Star and HTR secured the area before local law-enforcement could put their jackboots on.
PR photos of the armored up cowboys escorting a couple of ziptied gangbangers into waiting police-cars endeared them as being 'responsible' security providers, ignoring that those two gangers were the only survivors out of the thirty-one that were fighting before Lone Star interrupted. One of the HTR operators got a bad case of PTSD from the whole thing and now he's running Shadows with the rest of us, here's to you, Outback.Not much to say about most of its reign as public-security providor, seeing as most of its cops were members of Raleigh's old public repartment just given new uniforms and a branded thermos for their police-discount soycaf. Quotas were met, citizens were harrasssed in numbers deemed acceptable, big busts were occasionally arranged to justify a juicy bump in funding, business as usual. Only thing of note for a while was the unusually high turnover in the position of police-chief, reaching its peak in '63 where after the public killing of Chief Alice Swann in the Clan of Sun fiasco after just two years on the force, her successor Alex Vincent remained in office for only five months before suffering an emotional breakdown and retiring from the force. The turnover's fallen since then, but the position's still got a reputation as being cursed, and promotions to chief are joked as being workplace abuse. Recently, Lone Star's presence in Raleigh has been shaken from security by the loss of its public-security contract in Seattle, with the Raleigh government getting the proverbial cold toes and begining discussions of a potential replacement for Lone Star.
The discussions were supposed to be hush-hush, but were leaked to the public when a 'third party' bugged the boardroom. You're welcome, by the way.Despite the noncommital tone of the discussion, Lone Start's blood froze. Budget boosts were requested from corporate and signed off in record time, and PR are hiring conslutants from all over looking for the perfect ad-campaign to secure the public's trust with them again. We'll see where this goes.
Founding Date
2017
Type
Military, Mercenary Group
Alternative Names
Tin-Star
Neutral
Lone Star and Valkyrja frequently butt heads over jurisdiction in hostage rescue situations, and incidents of violent misidentification have led to the latter being an unknowing thorn in the former's side.
Corporate Competition
With Dragoon expected to be Lone Star's replacement if their law-enforcement contract gets pulled, relations are as close as you can get to openly hostile while still retaining a transparent veneer of 'friendly competition'.
Comments