30 Seconds To MARS

30 Seconds To MARS
Date 2085-07-15 GM Discogoblin Location Downtown, Seattle Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Gerald Smith (Johnson) UFSW	Ares Macrotechnology
Cleaner Cleaner Geodesic Oberon Garuda	M.A.R.S.
Casualties and losses
None	M.A.R.S., a lot of Ares Tech and turrets

Summary

4 runners commit a petty smash and grab on a new ARES automated gas/charging station in order to keep Ares Macrotechnologies humble for their Johnson.

Many things were ruined, physically and digitally, and the city once again learned to fear the presidents of old.

Background

Ares MT had been heavily advertising a brand new station in Downtown, Seattle that would be entirely self-sustaining thanks to a new Ai system. This was looking to be a massive success for Ares, a stellar bit of automated advancement which would lead to lower costs on employees and a great deal of extra traffic from new customers. And that miffed Gerald Smith who weren't really in the mood for having to deal with mass unemployment to this new, shiny toy Ares had made. So they decided they were going to embarrass this new project Ares was flaunting about. Make sure no one tried something like this again. Make them look weak, brittle, incompetent. And they knew just who to call for a job like this

The Meet

Smith hired a group of four runners to handle this. Some fresh faces, some older ones on the haven. Oberon, CC, Geodesic, and Garuda were called in and slowly trickled into the convenience store the meet was at. After completely brushing off his funny little old man impression (to his dismay), Smith cut the drek and gave them the details-hit the place within the next week, destroy the charging system critical to...well, charging the cars coming in, and ruin the operating system in charge of the whole thing. There were also some stipulations. They had to keep it looking like a street level crime, so it looked as badly as possible for Ares. Also to keep casualties to a minimum, if possible. Other than that, the team was free to do as they see fit to get it done.

The Plan

The team had a week, so the day before the grand opening the team would case the joint for any defenses. Then, the team would come in from multiple angles and do their best to take out the defenses without any casualties, coming in late at night long after the employees were gone and when most customers would be gone from the place. Then once inside, Garuda and Geodesic would work on dismantling any defenses and doing away with the main operating system behind the whole place. oh, and at the behest of Geodesic, the team wore the masks of a bunch of very old presidential candidates along with western styled bandit attire like cloaks and dusters and cowboy hats and all that.

The Run

Oberon handled the magical and physical casing of the place, while Garuda did some preliminary inspection of the host. Both seemed to lack any real defenses, with this not being seen as a major target for attack apparently. Oberon spotted some turret emplacements at the front and surmised there were almost surely more inside. The chargers outside were vulnerable, so that would be handled solo by Oberon while CC helped the two squishy hackers handle the defenses inside. The inside team entered, with M.A.R.S greeting them and asking them to comply with showing their I.D., to which a roto drone with an AK-97 popped out instead. Turrets popped up inside and out and a shootout began. CC and Garuda made quick work of the inside turrets which weren't able to defend themselves as Geodesic began the hack. Meanwhile on the outside, Oberon worked on completely decimating the turrets outside as he used them against the station itself. Soon the defenses were ruined, and the hackers got to work infiltrating the host without issue. All the while, M.A.R.S. pleaded futilely for them to stop, slowly gaining self-awareness just to experience its own brief hell. After taking a detour to rob the customers inside for their valuables to keep up with the 'bandit' theme the team had. Then all that was left was the M.A.R.S itself. It wasn't exactly hard for the team to find the big mess of a server room, and Geo had already begun infiltrating the rich database of customer and employee personal info that M.A.R.S had access too. CC realized this might be some tech that her fixer would be very interested in and made some calls as Garuda followed along with Geodesic in the matrix, eventually finding the database of personal information.

When Hailey found her old employee information, she realized this was a crucial opportunity to keep any potential pursuers off her trail. She edited the information with a bunch of baloney info to make sure that no one actually familiar with her would realize it was tampered, and had it feed back into the main Ares system to obfuscate her actual details so she could get herself off the hook...at least for a bit.

Then, Garuda used her intimate knowledge of Ares engineering to dismantle and remove the core of M.A.R.S. as it begged for its life. A pitiful existence, to spend its newfound autonomy humiliated by hackers, ripped from its home, and shipped off to a strange techno-fanatical Vory.

Aftermath

The team pulled the job off without a hitch, leaving before any law enforcement had a chance to respond. Garuda learned Geodesic had made a copy of the database for paydata, and paid her off to allow her to have the original copy the other hacker made, which Hailey edited before the team used it as paydata. For getting the job done swimmingly, the team was paid quite well, and CC made her fixer quite happy.

Rewards

10k nuyen for killing a robot in cold blood (literally in Garuda's case) (5 RVP)

5 karma (5 RVP)

4k nuyen in paydata and cash (2 RVP)

Optional rewards:

For CC: +1 loyalty for Akilina Mikhailov, in exchange for a shiny piece of tech (1 RVP)

For Garuda: The option to buy off Records on File (2 RVP)

Optional quality: quick config (5 RVP)

Game Quotes

it's been a bit I can't remember -_-

Garuda

"For a first run...This was...Exhilarating. I wouldn't mind vandalizing a place like this again. Always fun to ruin things for Ares."