Knock Knock

Knock Knock
Part of Swarming Season
Date 2084-11-10 GM Asmodeus Location Kansas Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Erika	Kansas Swarm	UCAS
Bunny Hop Marrisa Red Ribbon Rurosha	Mother Hunter Wasp Spirit Lots of Bugs	Al-Ahmar
Casualties and losses
Red Ribbon's Bulldog's Paint Job and Tire	Some Bugs	None

Summary

Wherein the team are hired by Wychking to escort a bug to a hive. Things do not go as planned, and then they do.

Background

The opposition: The Kansas Swarm, who need no introduction. The state of Kansas and city of Wichita are overrun with the bastards, and the UCAS have not been the most successful in combating it.

The protagonists: Wychking and the good folks over at Erika, who have devised a scheme to grease the wheels of warfare for the government. With a mostly defanged mother wasp spirit in tow (kept in check by Wychking's steady hand and the promise of violence against its young), the crew are tasked with escorting this unusual VIP through the infested region surrounding Wichita, Kansas.

The goal: Use the spirit's innate ability to locate hives to pinpoint the location of the Kansas Swarm's primary hiding place. Once located, get out quick, and inform the UCAS of its location to clear the way for a bombing run. Easy, ne? If only the UCAS were willing to help - their way is one of slow safety and inefficacy. Outside help getting things done is bad for optics, and so the runners must evade both factions at play if they are to succeed.

The Meet

The runners greet their Johnson at the airport, where they are briefed on the mission at hand. Given eighteen hours to prepare to depart, the crew set about planning and gathering their things, most opting to bring only the bare essentials (which, for their rigger Red Ribbon, includes a bulldog as their primary transportation). Wychking also offers to loan the runners anti-insect spirit firepower, primarily in the form of KE-V gas grenades. Bunny Hop performs some preliminary legwork to pinpoint the exact locations of UCAS encampments within the territory of the swarm, which will be under extra scrutiny.

The Plan

With everything running smoothly so far, the crew reiterate their plan to follow the insect spirit's guidance, using heavy foliage to block the view of satellites overhead, and camouflaged vehicles to stay hidden from ground forces.

The Run

And so it goes for a while - the wasp spirit points East, and so the crew drive carefully and stealthily toward Heston. With some sharp eyes, the crew easily deal with landmines blocking their intended path, as well as bugs hiding in trees, UCAS satellites above, and UCAS drones below. Red Ribbon's prowess proves invaluable in keeping the team hidden enough to stay alive.

Their first major hiccup comes with the issue of how to cross I-135. With the insect spirit pointing Southeast, the crew must eventually cross the Interstate in order to advance. A quick assessment of the area with a microdrone reveals two cameras pointing in opposite directions along the Interstate, leaving a only a small gap between them to squeeze through. The problem, of course, is the guardrail dividing the highway, which is impassable to the Bulldog. Assessing the Matrix landscape, Bunny Hop discovers an overwhelming Firewall protecting these cameras, though the devices themselves are only DR1. Judging that these are devices slaved to a PAN, an impromptu plan forms. Have Wychking make their hacker invisible, have her don a Chameleon Suit, and hope she can sneak her way to the device in question to hack it directly.

Plans rarely survive reality, however, and Bunny Hop is spotted out very quickly by one particularly observant bug spirit. Instantly she is slowed and left without movement, and she alerts the team over DNI that she's been spotted out. With their cover blown and the nature of hiveminds well in the runners' minds, they abandon subtlety. Rurosha ru-rushes at a breakneck pace out of the bulldog and across the Interstate, where she begins to quickly slice and dice the flesh forms with relative ease. Red Ribbon burns rubber out of the treeline to pick up Bunny Hop, who is still largely immobilized due to magic.

Bunny Hop drops into sim to assist the team, and finds a menacing shadow of a persona staring back at her. Though her will is strong, the opfor hacker is stronger, slithering an aggressive number of marks onto her persona. Though the rabbit slips away and mounts a small defense, ultimately the front of the Matrix is deemed too hot to handle, and the team go offline. After the combat adepts handle the most immediate threats, the team speed Southeast in order to follow the insect spirit's guidance.

Things are okay for a short time, although the team notice that they are being led into a particularly precarious. Surrounded by heavy opposition on all sides, the UCAS to the North and bugs to the East and South, it is Wychking who points out that the walking corpses they seem to notice on the highway up ahead might be an additional outbreak of Shedim in the area, and the team make to move around them.

This plan, however, is short lived. Sensing danger, Rurosha is nonetheless unable to warn Wychking in time to prevent a sudden betrayal. The Wasp spirit lets out a sudden screech that powers through the surrounding area, alerting bug and UCAS alike. The military begin to shell the area with artillery, and the distant chitter of an endless horde begins to rise. The patter of dozens of bodies around and atop the team's ride meet their ears, and blades of all sorts move to pop their tires, stranding them. Red Ribbon's smart evasive maneuvering and the impressive fortitude of her bulldog stave them off, for the moment.

Marrisa and Rurosha both move to bust open the backdoor and unload their weapons into the swarm, Rurosha getting especially antsy for combat and leaping atop the vehicle. Unfortunately shaken off from Red Ribbon's maneuvering, it nonetheless leaves her in a perfect position to pursue the Wasp spirit, who takes the chance that chaos provides by leaping out the back door, evading Marrisa's noble attempt to cut her off. Rurosha gives chase, but ultimately, the spirit astral projects and escapes. With the bulldog on the brink of being on cinderblocks and the VIP gone rogue, Red Ribbon makes an executive decision to cut their losses. She breaks away from the horde, who have since torn away from Rurosha, unable to hurt her, swings back around to pick up their stray runner, and departs for the extraction point back West. Wychking concurs with the decision, and informs the runners that additional intel has changed the nature of their operation.

Aftermath

Back at the extraction point, the crew load themselves and their gear up into the waiting VTOL while Wychking, with her face in her hands, explains that the entire run had been a memory op. With the insect spirit's aura memorized, she devised a scheme to drop the Wasp spirit into the heart of the Kansas swarm and track its aura to the nest it chooses to hunt, calling down an attack only after that point. In order to avoid knowledge of this leaking to the spirit itself, however, an alternate plan was devised - that described above - and her memory wiped to believe that such had always been the case. None the wiser, and with that memory securely entrusted with a spirit, Wychking, the runners, and the wasp spirit were to descend into the swarm entirely under false pretenses in order to maximize the infosec of their plot.

The bad news? Though they got close, they couldn't pinpoint the hive during their excursion. The good news? They were never supposed to after all.

Wychking rewards the runners with a golden credstick each, loaded with their pay, as well as her sincere thanks.

Rewards

Run Rewards for Knock Knock (Deadly, 20 RVP)

• 20,000 Nuyen (10 RVP)
• 6,000 Nuyen (Negotiation)
• 6 Karma (6 RVP)
• 10 CDP (4 RVP)
• +1 Erika Reputation
• No negative UCAS Army rep since you remained under the radar mostly!
• The Scarlet King has seen BHop's persona.

Optional Rewards

• Taina Kauhava, 5/1 Erika Saleswoman (5 RVP or 10 CDP)
• Anthrodrones & Mods, RCCs, Agents and Magical Lodge Materials at Gear Rates
• Rurosha may increase her adoptive father's Connection by 1 with any RVP due to establishing an importer contract with him for Erika products

Game Quotes

"Firewall eleven? The device rating must be four."

"DAMN MAN IS IT OFFICE WORKER DAY 'CAUSE THERE'S A WHOLE LOTTA TIES"

[screams in hotsim]

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Marrisa: That was fun! Can't believe I got to work with the Wychking herself! Would have preferred to have gotten to kill a few more of the spirits, but I guess we did what we were payed for. Bunny Hop needs to work on her self confidence, I feel like she can become a truly skilled person. Red Ribbon was still fun to run with. Rurosha was quite a nice lady, had the right idea with these spirits.

Bunny Hop

Chikusho... Kono kuyashisa... I couldn't even fight back. Kimoi, like my blood gelatinizing on the meat, getting brain-fragged with tentacles on the grid by opfor like I don't even have a firewall. And everyone else, all of them, professionals. Ribbon too. And those two others, swinging swords, vaulting over highways, firing away - all of that and I can't hack a camera. I could've died. They could've died. In front of Wychking too - aaaah! Hazukashii, frag!

Why did you pull away from me again? Was I asking for too much? ... I need to be better, instead of having you fight all my battles for me...

Red Ribbon

Huh. Wychking. After hearing all that fanfare... seems just like a woman with a job, or a goal. Very effective, though, to keep a spirit like that in check the whole time - that I can't deny in the slightest. The greatest casualty of this mission was my van. Poor thing, it didn't deserve so many cicada bites.

I hope Hop's okay. The way she was freaking out, I would have been fried in a nanosecond.