Secure the Tanker

Secure the Tanker
Date 2083-07-15 GM Pokemonemocow7 Location Downtown Highway 5 Status Threat Level: High/Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Evo Corporation	Major Corp Universal Omnitech
Ryan Danes Bulldozer Canter	Character1 Character2

Summary

Mr. Johnson, on behalf of a major corporation, gathers a small group of runners to do a smash and grab on a secure transport on behalf of a rival corporation, the item in question being certain, 'live magical cargo.'

The Meet

The meet was early in the morning, the moment the Seattle Space Needle opened up to the public, arriving up at the top, the group met with a rather sharply-dressed Mr. Johnson, struggling in vain to contain their accent, mannerisms, and propaganda-spewing that openly revealed them as a member of the Evo Corporation, which M3chan1c and Canter were quick to start toying with them on, seemingly to the delight of their client. After a rather persistent set of extensive, prodding questions, the group finally agreed to go for the job, after negotiating a nice little bump-up in their running fees. According to the Johnson, a rival corporation would be transporting a high-value, magical being within an unassuming Tanker truck, with the towed unit being a cleverly disguised containment pod. After prodding for specifics and spotting some poorly-concealed expressions from the client, it turned out that their objective was actually a SURGE victim with a high magical potential. With a bit more banter about the Johnson's inability to disguise their allegiance, the group shook on matters, promising to do what they could to retrieve the cargo alive and deliver them to the Docks where the client would be prepared to receive them, with their worse case scenario netting them a penalty to their reward money in the event their objective dies in transit, something both the runners and the Johnson seemed rather inclined to avoid.

The Plan

The group, after showing off their equipment, immediately decided they would all pile up into Canter's Rhino APC to chase down the tanker, with Canter claiming the holy privilege of 'driver picks the music' for their chase. After moving over a decent collection of explosives, drones, and a few spare guns from M3chan1c's truck, the party sped off, with M3chan1c dropping into the matrix to hunt down for the target vehicle after the runners all collectively groaned at the realization that they had never gotten the actual description of the transport vehicle. Going into a deep dive, M3chan1c spent a few hours trying to pin down the specific truck before dropping into meatspace and cursing up a storm and ordering some comfort food before dipping back into the matrix and running a much simpler, understandable search to generalize things, this managed to succeed! Giving the party the model of the vehicle they would be looking for, one which M3chan1c was intimately familiar with, due to his extensive knowledge of vehicles, he was able to pass a schematic for the truck to the party, pointing out a few locations and insisting they discover the location of the driver before pressing their attack for a quick takedown. Canter summoned a guardian spirit to handle the extraction of the package, leaving the runners to focus on eliminating hostiles and keeping the heat off of the spirit.

After a period of waiting, poor attempts at jokes and communication between the riggers and their rather stoic Street Samurai, and greasy burgers, the truck came down the highway, alone, unassuming, and completely vulnerable.

The Run

Canter immediately kicked off the assault with a masterfully placed shot to the target vehicle's antennae, disabling their wireless connections and blocking them off from calling for help, unknown to the party, the enemy Rigger was left helpless due to this action, as they were hardwired into the truck's system for their drone controls, with this single action, they could only issue odd commands to the drones in their current situation, with no access to the vehicle or its controls. This was immediately followed by M3chan1c firing the laser cannon mounted on Canter's Steel Lynx drone, crippling the enemy truck with a well-placed axle shot, dropping their speed immensely as the guardian spirit bolted over to extract the package. As the spirit started to open the hatch on top of the tanker, the passenger of the truck leaned out the window and fired off a spell to try and dissuade them, missing, and exposing their identity as the treasured mage of the run. After some advice to leave the mage to Canter, Bulldozer turned his weapon on the vehicle itself, using a bulls-eye blast to utterly destroy the axle system, further hampering the once-intimidating truck into a grinding, sparking mess. As the enemy drones deployed and seemed to disappear, Canter turned and fired off another shot, taking aim at the poorly-concealed mage and blasting them into unconsciousness with a nausea-inducing shot from their shriek rifle.
As M3chan1c scanned the area for his next shot, he noticed something, or rather, didn't notice something he should have spotted by now... the enemy drone. With some common sense, he realized that their foe was underneath them, screaming a warming into the DNI system and dropping into cold sim, Canter knew what to do. As the group was alerted to the explosive, mag-locked drone connected to their vehicle, the party braced themselves as Canter forcefully spun the vehicle around, sending the drone flying off over the edge of the elevated highway as its detonation countdown ticked down, causing a lovely explosion out of sight of the party as they faced off against the hostile rigger, a rather pissed-off dwarf who was forced to exit their Cocoon in order to maintain control of the struggling vehicle. Though, as they met the gaze of three heavily-armed and rather determined shadowrunners, this seemed to be a downhill battle. Under the spray of unbridled firepower, it was another shot from the nauseating shriek rifle that did the Rigger in, their nerve finally breaking, they emptied their stomach out the window as they finally went unconscious due to the barrage. Canter didn't stop there, as the vehicle started to lose control, they used an impressively-timed PIT maneuver to stop the momentum of the uncontrolled truck, preventing it from flying over the guardrail and into potential civilians below.

The guardian spirit quickly dropped off their objective, a rather odd, squid-like being which had been submerged in a liquid within the tanker's hold, into its new temporary transport, a cobbled-together aquarium in the back of the Rhino. Of course, the sound of approaching sirens, Knight-errant was on their way, but Canter had another trick up her sleeves, gunning the acceleration, the approaching officers watched in disbelief as the heavily-modified APC sped forward towards the guardrail and a gridlink-locked car, turned in just the right way to send the vehicle tumbling, and performed a barrel roll over the car without harming the passengers, and sending the runners down an 8 meter drop onto street level, losing the twin Dodge Charger tail, and knocking their objective unconscious within the makeshift tank which somehow held sturdy under the shock, leaving them with just the helicopter to get away from, with a few shots harmlessly sparking off of the heavily-armored exterior of the APC, the runners sped off to Tacoma, cheering their driver on for their impressive stunts as the helicopter disappeared over the horizon behind them.

Aftermath

The party arrived at the Tacoma docks without any tails or casualties to speak of, rather proudly dropping off the unconscious SURGE victim with an odd deflection suggesting that the target must have been knocked out due to the hostile group's maneuvering during the fight. With a few farewells and a round of cheers, the party sped off with their reward into the night.

Rewards

22k Nuyen or Double in Geneware, Bioware, Cyberware, or Electronics. (11 RVP)

5 Karma (5 RVP)

2 CDP (0 RVP)

+5 EVO Rep

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

The APC is currently in the process of doing a barrel roll over an elevated highway's guardrail (and a car)
Party: "Screaming"
M3chan1c's post-edge soak roll: Merpkiller:7 OGODPLEASEDON'THURTMEMR.GRAVITY

"Please link me to that contact so I can make the GM try to speak in that voice on another run."

Aurora: "Alright, I'm going to do something stupid right now, hear me out." Toaster: "Oh boy.." Merpkiller: "Well we're runners, we like stupid."

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

M3chan1c: "Holy shit, finally got a chance to ride in a Rhino and that thing straight up POWERS through anything you throw at it, I definitely have to get me one of them, don't know what the hell we pulled out of that tanker, but as long as it's gettin' me paid and not in the hands of that other corp it was going to, I'm a happy camper 'ere."

Bulldozer: "the job this time was, different than before and i didn't get to do much beyond puncturing tires considering i waesn't allowed to use my anti-armor arsenal considering the package we were after was somewhat fragile.. also i have a feeling our 'new' driver for this run is slowly getting too senile which isn't good in this line of work.. regardless from my own family experience i can say this much, never underestimate old people"