The Barons of the Barrens

The Barons of the Barrens
Date 2085-09-02 GM Sarcarian Location Puyallup City, Knight Errant Precinct 13 Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Gearheads	Knight Errant
Buck Chance John Galt Saint Veles	KE Goons KE Rigger KE Spiders
Casualties and losses
	Pride, mostly, as they are deftly outmaneuvered by shadowrunners. Minus two prisoners too.

Summary

The gang stage a prison break, spoons and saucy wallposters not required.

Background

On a crisp Seattle evening, Buck, over eight feet of leathery, minotaur wall, prepares to unwind after a day of tending to his blown-out Barrens homestead by preparing a home-cooked meal. In his classic barrens-chic tank top, torn jeans, and loaded firearm accessories at the hip, he is absolutely no Martha Stuart.

Nonetheless, he is well acquainted with having guests in his home.

As Buck glances into the reflection of his knife, he spies Cairn, present, silent, and waiting. When finally noticed, before he has even turned his back, Cairn has words, and an offer. "A compact is sought," he says. "An employer wishes to speak. A ganger who has requested assistance in breaking his own out of Knight Errant custody."

Buck, politely, asks if he can eat first, and Cairn, obviously, says of course. Buck offers him a steak, and he hums in contemplation before getting it well done.

Outside of Buck's barely renovated gas station, Chance strolls up, half-drunk, with a roughed up motorcycle dragged along in one hand, and a six-pack in the other. He screams Buck's name, and the minotaur, evidently used to things like this, lets him inside without much fanfare. Though he isn't so put off by the giant snake mashing his snout against overdone steak that he doesn't still want to drink, Buck has to explain to him that he's about to be on a job. Not tonight. Chance, around that time, receives a call himself, this time from Clint Wilder, who tells him there's a ganger who wants his boys out of prison down in Fife. Chance, by stroke of chance or good fortune, tells Buck that he might be on the exact same gig.

In stark contrast to the nervous energy that usually comes with a new gig, John Galt lies half-dead and wishing he could finish the job. His suit, which had been new and beautiful this morning, has already been marred by cigarettes and beer stains and an ocean of rippling wrinkles from being slept in. Everyone always thinks magic is so great, at least until the Drain hangover kicks in, and the stick-like, average-Joe looking man that he is is not physically cut out to handle it well.

That said, it pays the bills. Despite coming off another run just that morning, he receives his own fixer call, who informs him that he has a job, and that he shouldn't complain about being in high demand. Plus, the gig is last minute, and they've got no one else available - a Gearhead down in Fife wants to hit the pawns and win back some material, and they'll need proven mettle to make sure it goes off the way it's meant to. He reluctantly agrees, and rolls painfully out of bed and onto the floor.

Saint, riding her trusted and beloved Suzuki Mirage, pulls up to an intersection, readjusts the bag hanging off her shoulders, and receives a call from good ol' Alex Samson. By now, she's climbed out of enough fires she had no business climbing out of to earn a little respect from the man - when they trade pleasantries this time, it's actually almost pleasant. He has a job he thinks she'll like - hit the pawns right where they hurt. Break some boys out of prison. And maybe get paid while she's at it. It's exactly the kind of gig she needs to unwind. She peels out into the intersection, makes a sharp left turn, and heads for Tacoma.

Veles, who's borged up self is currently stuck in maintenance mode deep within the West Coast Monolith's Barrens hideout, discusses her ongoing blackouts and lapses in memory with Hextech and Unit-02. At the moment, they have no clear answer for her, and the prognosis is ongoing. It's not good news, it's not bad news - honestly, it's barely news at all. It's with little fanfare, then, that Bolt himself enters the room as forcefully as can be polite. Veles stands at attention.

Apparently, Bolt knows a guy. This is no surprise - the CO of the WCM knows lots of guys in the shadows. This guy also happens to need some help from them, which again, probably seems pretty par for the course. Even still, two bail jumpers who need to be busted out of Puyallup lockup seems a little beneath his pay-grade. And yeah, it is. That's why Veles is instructed to help on his behalf, while, of course, keeping casualties to an absolute zero. She does, of course, push back a little. She has much more use elsewhere. This is a pretty big gun for a small target, ne? Unfortunately, Bolt also happens to be a little in his debt as well. It's hard to ignore with that in mind.

He notes to Veles, additionally, that the boys are detained via simsense as well, blind of their senses. Run of the mill bar cutters won't serve to bust them out this time, if that helps her feel a little more necessary to the operation. Veles, of course, has no choice but to acquiesce.

The Meet

An unusual sight descends from the skies of Fife in Tacoma. An unmarked VTOL crosses by high above, and a figure falls from its wake. Veles has HALO jumped to the meet, and lands powerfully, meaningfully, in an hero's on that cracked asphalt.

Buck, meanwhile, pulls up behind her in a rusted out pick-up truck. He and his small crew of cohorts lumber out behind him, while Saint pulls up and skids to a halt just outside the junkyard garage.

Inside, half-a-dozen people tinker with vehicles of all sorts, while a certain geezer calling himself Pitty waves over the obvious shadowrunners. He offers them coffee, which Saint and John Galt gladly accept, though only one of them can stomach it. Barrens special, you know. They may as well brew it with raw sewage. Saint feels right at home, though John Galt empties his stomach for what is definitely not the first time today.

Onto business, Pitty's got connections to some local go-gangers - nothing dicey, he clarifies, they're just boys that like to street race - and they need a little help. A few of them broke parole and got caught up in a KE sting and fell for a pre-placed spike strip, and have since been taken into custody. They're good boys, though, and the Puyallup City precinct is bad news, corrupt and dirty cops from top to bottom. Right now they're in lockup, which is good, because it means they can still get to them - but once they get transferred to county, that chance slips away.

Pitty would like the runners to get them. Tonight. Any later, and they may as well not bother.

They've got their suped up car down in the impound lot a few blocks away from the station as well - pick that up for a little extra change, he tells 'em. Leave the pigs with nothing for their effort.

Payment is discussed, John Galt leading the charge, and Pitty lands on a clean 10k nuyen each right from his pocket. He'll even see about getting the runners a new ride from the junkyard on top of that too, and 5k up front to gear up for the operation.

Veles doesn't want it. She wants Spam. As much of it as he can provide. He knows suppliers, doesn't he? Smugglers? Stashes? Pitty acquiesces, he reckons he can rustle something up for her and leave it somewhere discreet.

With formalities decided, the runners decide it's time to get to work.

The Plan

Well, almost. John has realized that the Saint is here, and does not want to let the opportunity go to waste. He leans over close, whispers in her ear, and asks her bluntly if she would tell him to "Die." The red hot razorgirl is far too baffled to actually be angry. She asks him why, ever, would he want that, and that if he wants to die she can help, but that he definitely doesn't need her permission.

He, Buck, and Chance excitedly explain their entrepreneurship with the infamous "Die" T-shirt, while Chance himself pulls a wrinkled one out of the smuggling compartment of his trick. Saint, still wide-eyed, cock-browed, and bewildered, catches it out of the air as it's thrown to her. Buck says this shirt is for her, she should wear it ironically, and she turns away and finally tells him, unironically, to die. The faintest smile twitches on her lips.

Veles, meanwhile, unaccustomed to games or banter, reveals when the others are quite through that she is an infiltrator, doesn't use Matrix comms, and won't be killing cops on this job. Saint plainly asks her if she has cop friends, the accusation clear in her tone, and Veles says nothing in response. The others, now concerned however, ask for clarification, to which Veles gives none. She says it's not their business, with the loudest among them firing back with the fact that it absolutely is their business if someone who's buddy-buddy with cops is on the job where they're explicitly hitting cops. Rather than explain, confront, or deny, Veles instead chooses to leave, and Saint begrudgingly mumbles that if they end up on an APB she's going to have a bone to pick.

Chance reassures her, however - he's been fucking with cops in Puyallup district for months now, he explains. He knows how they tick. That said, they do ask that Saint not kill people. She offers her best effort - "as long as I don't have to." It'll have to do.

John Galt asks a spirit of man to scout the area on the astral, while Chance slips a ski-mask onto his sasquatch persona and slips into the host. The rest of the team discuss infiltration tactics in the meanwhile, though Veles insists she goes in alone, once threats outside of her range have been dealt with.

The host is the average fare for a police station, one of many linked up in a standardized Knight Errant array throughout the city. Precinct 13, however, doesn't always adhere to that - sometimes it pays to be a little quiet, a little forgetful, and a little off-grid. Even those times it doesn't have the additional support, it's no pushover at a solid Rating 6.

Veles, just off-site and hopping from neo-noir rooftop to neo-noir rooftop, spies on the building itself from afar. She notes that it's a very old building, Fifth World construction, and built in the clasically American Neo-Classical style that emulates ancient Rome. Cameras are everywhere, pop-up bollards can hamstring escape efforts in a pinch, window shutters, lockdown procedures, monowire fences, the works. Additionally, high security doors evidently each house palm scanners, at least in the prison area itself on the lowest floor.

She notes the weak points. Which windows are open. What are the patrol patterns, if any. Who pays attention, who does not. Every edge helps.

Noting that it's a tough nut to crack, John Galt opts to call in a favor as well, a friend of his called Chad Brent who knows some cops, and who only demands some kind of payment to the downtrodden to be passed along in return for his intel. The 13th Precinct has enemies on both sides of the law, it would seem. After their meet at some scummy runner bar, he'll arrange for a call out, and pass along some information on the internals of the location too - and John Galt insists he takes a little extra money as well, just to help keep his memory short.

Veles, meanwhile, finalizes a plan. Saint and the Barrens Boys can arrange a loud distraction - they seem well suited for it, after all. Get spray cans, get ski masks, raise hell in the impound lot. Shooting raises the alert levels, so keep it mischievous, keep it street level, and make it personal. Draw them out. She can handle the weakened station from there."

The impound lot is a little more manageable on the Matrix, thankfully, as Chance discovers, as is the lot itself. It shouldn't be much effort for four shadowrunners to sneak past a concrete barrier and a chainlink fence, make noise, and get out.

Plan in place, it's time to coordinate watches and roll out.

The Run

Chance hacks inside the host - the operation rests on his shoulders as he determines the layout of the prison, grabs MARKs on the cameras in order to hide Veles from sight, and finds the barnacle stuck to the target vehicle's windshield (the KE's preferred method of vehicle restraing), as well as the codes to its operation. With the device icons well within his little sasquatch claws, the team are well placed to begin the operation whenever needed.

With that as his cue, John Galt casts a trid phantasm of a decidedly non-cut through fence, and an invisibility spell to cover the team (Saint and Buck included). Obviously, they get right to making John a liar - they climb the concrete barrier and begin cutting the chainlink and razorwire. Though one guard is definitely making use of his magical threat readiness training in spotting out the shimmers of an unnatural invisibility, clever alteration of John Galt's trid phantasm to mimic a punk kid getting spotted doing magic and dashing away saves the operation. With the hole safely cut, and opfor even a little distracted from a false alarm, Buck magically sneaks through the hole in the fence. Saint, less gifted, leaps through on her own.

The two of them sneak carefully through the lot until finding their target - Buck's maybe a little too large, but the crew make it work. They give the signal, and Chance releases the barnacle, lowers the bollards at the entrance, and crashes nearly a dozen drones to kick things off as the runners peel out of the impound lot. Knight Errant dispatches a pursuit, and Veles, ready to shine as cruisers blare and burn away from the precinct, takes her chance.

She sneaks up to the fire escape and begins to climb, dispatching a fly-spy of her own to keep an eye on the area ahead. Just as Chad Brent has promised, someone has left a door open before going for a smoke break, very fortunately for the runners involved. Veles wedges a newspaper into the door and keeps moving, dashing ahead to poke mirrors around corners. She is a professional, and a ghost, and her RPC and expertise prove far, far above the capability of the manually staffed areas of Precinct 13 to spot out. Cameras, which might have stood a better chance, remain carefully looped by the team's decker. True to his cryptid heritage, he is blurry and beyond detection the Matrix as well.

As Veles is about to turn a corner however, her sensors pick up footsteps, and she retreats back to press herself against the corner's wall, narrowly avoiding a guard. However, this is it - the cell block proper, where their VIP inmates are held. They're typical Puyallup hicks, covered in soot and ash and proud of it. Veles opens the cell block, and though it's only the two they're after, there's nothing stopping every single one of those prisoners to clamber out as well, though out of all of them, only the two Veles personally guides make it out the same way as she came. As Veles melts into the concrete and thermal smoke she sets off to distance herself from a rapidly growing riot, she leaves the precinct to its fate, and brings their VIPs back to theirs.

They patter away quietly, the opposite direction, trusting that Saint and Buck will occupy the pursuant officers as long as needed.

Aftermath

Pitty is pleased as a peach back at the junkyard, and invites the team out for celebratory drinks. Veles, for multiple reasons, declines, and simply demands the dead drop of spam to be delivered soon. That said, celebration or not, the team can rest well knowing they've completed a job well done.

Rewards

REWARDS for "The Barons of the Barrens":

• 10,000 nuyen (5 RVP)
• 5 Karma (5 RVP)
• 10 CDP (4 RVP + 2 base)
• Optional Gear Reward: Vehicles/Vehicle Modifications
• Optional Contact: Pitty "Grease Lightning" McShane (C5/L1 Mechanic) for 5 RVP or 10 CDP
• Optional Contact: The Dukes (C3/L3 Drug Runners) for 5 RVP or 10 CDP

• For John:
  • Optional Contact: Chad Brent (C2/L2 Dirty Cop) for 3 RVP or 6 CDP

• For Veles:
  • A stolen truckload of Spam for the WCM's food stashes and charity efforts.

Game Quotes

Client: "You guys are hardcore shadowrunners. You do this kind of thing all the time, right?" Chance: "I smoke Betameth all the time, that doesn't make it reasonable or affordable." John Galt: "Jesus Christ, Chance."

[He leans in very close to Saint's ear and does a stage whisper.] "Can you tell me to die?" -John Galt, to Saint

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

John Galt: "Not gonna lie, was sweating my nuts off on this one. Got to meet THE SAINT, got to make a new drinking buddy, AND got to screw over some pawns to free some Seattle good ole boys. Fuck yea, great night. And the junkyard had a preem fuckin' phoenix I can tune right the fuck back up. Today is fucking preem shit."

Buck: "Y'know, any day I get to pull one over on the Pawns is a good day. Particularly if it means I get to bust out a couple of drekhead go-ganger hicks from lockup. Hell of a fun time with this squad, I hope I get to run with 'em again."

Chance: "I gtta quit doin' Pawn jobs. I gotta quit doin' Pawn jobs. I gotta quit doin' Pawn jobs. Holy drek I just back cracked a pawn host and threw open the doors for a buncha puyallup crusties to run amok. I think I may be elite now... also I think I can wedge another module slot in this hunka drek if I just......"

Saint: "Y'know, I'm starting to think saying 'die' ain't really getting my point across."