Into the Void

Into the Void
Date 2085-07-25 GM Sarcarian Location Las Vegas, PCC / Area 51
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Horizon
Bunny Hop Fennec Pulse Shy	Horizon Spiders Horizon Guards
Casualties and losses
	So, SO Much InfoSec, and one of their spiders is definitely getting biodroned for this

Summary

If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss compels you to hire shadowrunners.

Background

Bunny Hop, with research AROs scattered to the wind, quietly dissociates in her futon when her commlink rings a familiar tune. Her clouded eyes become clear, and she forces chipper small talk with her fixer, Anhe, who is calling about a big job. Mister Johnson would like a group of shadowrunners to meet him at Syberspace in Downtown - conveniently for the rabbit, a mixed reality bar. She rises, washes her face to wake up, and slips into Virtual Reality where her better half makes her way to the meet.

Independent journalist Fennec diligently streams an exclusive report about an extensive network of moon rocks being smuggled through Seattle Stuffer Shacks. She's on the verge of blowing this whole thing wide open when she's interrupted by a call, on stream, from her fixer. In classic Fennec fashion, she doesn't even stop. Syberspace is the place, and after a quick wrap-up, wink, and promise to tell all next time, she flits away to prepare for an unplanned night out.

Pulse, exploring crumbling infrastructure with his curious companion Alexandria, discusses with her the finer points of human society and urban decay.

Shy surfaces from a diving expedition only to be faced with Lt. Cmdr Yennefer Kerrigan. Through her connections, she has heard of an operation meant to infiltrate a secure Horizon facility located in Area 51, and under cover of this operation, would like Shy to liberate from that facility some sensitive information for their organization. Although Shy is skeptical about infiltrating a place as heavily guarded as Area 51, she is dutiful to a fault, and agrees to retrieve a hard drive from their on-site server farm.

The Meet

Meet at Club Penumbra

Shy wears Kimono to meet, with a pistol palmed because of her widely Wanted status.

Fennec blows everyone out of the water, struts in, uses Resonance to look better than the rest.

Pulse spots three drones recording outside, team discusses disabling them merits.

Team follow ARO trail upstairs to the meet.

Horizon sattelite. Job is to deliver a module to the space station and swap it with what comes stock. Launch site in Area 51. Need to infiltrate. Aliens?

Fennec negotiates. Johnson reveals that they had budgeted 150k for the job, but still ups the pay from 30k to 34k. Pulse double checks that the contents of the package (4 ft x 3 ft) aren't explosive, radioactive, or otherwise dangerous, and the Johnson insists he'd want them to know it's a bomb. The team, staring *very* intently, choose to trust him.

Fennec clocks that the J isn't quite all there, and Shy, squinting *very* hard on the astral, clocks that he is only *masking* as a mundane, when in actuality, he is an Aware. Aura is engulfed in bright, yellow-whitish light. He and Shy have a moment on the Astral where they acknowledge one another.

Johnson thanks the team, offers handshakes, and leaves. Runners leave the bar to meet somewhere more secure, and find those three drones from earlier smashed on the ground. Weird! Fennec pokes one, looks around for more, and waves to a Horizon blimp.

The Plan

Pulse gives Bhop access to his host on the NeoNET grid (Bladerunner dystopia city) (Pulse Host is a mancave-ass little game room/work room, bean bag chairs, files spread everywhere, star shaped bed).

Pulse opens up about his past as a spider super soldier project. Bhop and Fennec relate.

Fennec says she respects safe houses. Shy promptly loses her shit and punches Fennec out. Pulse revives her, tells Shy to take a brisk walk, and Pulse and Bhop begin to question if Fennec is okay. Fennec insists she is, to the doctor's protests, but reluctantly agrees to be in a different room from Shy for the rest of the run if it would make Bhop feel better.

R10 Data Host Cargo Manifest - Section 48J R10 Industrial

Big salt flat. Air field, sattelite, administrative hub. Security clearance areas. Network is running on older protocols.

Pulse prepares a deeper dive to get more information, and in preparation, Fennec and Bhop work together to custom fit rabbit-themed power armor onto Pulse's persona. Pulse, more powerful than GOD, sets forth to hack a TransGlobal host.

The host is an atompunk rrocket launch facility. The spider, an astronaut, glances right past Pulse's graffiti inspired persona. Pulse, on a power trip, *completely* has his way with the host - a teleporter pad catches his eye, the entrance to the foundation, as well as many, *many* files.

Pulse leaves, gets cleaned off by Bhop and Fennec, and goes back in. Drunk with power, he resolves to take *everything,* not just related to the job, but vtuber recruitment metrics as well. Forged documents, but anyhting more than what they've already gotten is going to require a *very* beefy Horizon SIN. The squad close up shop for the day, after a failed call to Alias, to rest up and explore their options.

The Run

Alias comes through after two days. Pulse knows a sasquatch with a van (Jerry) who can drive them out to Vegas - when they get there, he leaves to go play slots. The gang, geared up with new synthskin masks and Horizon disguises and beefy R6 Burner SINs, set out to travel to Area 51. Shy gets dropped off way out in the desert with the package in tow, and makes her way, again I cannot stress this enough, *directly through the Mojave desert* to this highly restricted Horizon facility.

Bhop FAQs Pulse's Paladin without him noticing and promptly flips her shit, however, thankfully holds it together long enough to avoid blowing the enormous breach of opsec she's just committed. She immediately brushes against Fennec's hand to skinlink the simsense experience she just underwent.

FastJack personally handed Pulse his deck. (Sarc will fill in details here)

Entering the facility, Fennec crafts a convincing lie regarding being specialist cybersecurity experts and IT specialists from Dawkins Group here to do a once over before the launch to make sure it's up to spec. Horizon takes the two technos aside and shoves them into a Farraday caged room pending approval of their story.

Shy makes her way into the area of the facility as well, sneaking through defenses.

Ace Powers descends in an alien spacecraft. Holy shit. An actual little flying saucer. What the fuck. Ace Powers exchanges business cards (AROs) with Bhop and Fennec's Dawkins Group-sonas.

Pulse, flanked by Bhop and Fennec, hacks into the host with very little difficulty. Shy is on hand to have a spare part delivered later today, after the Matrix crew fake a failure of that component and a necessity to be replaced. Pulse, power-armored up, descends into the host.

While Pulse is hacking the manifest, Shy, in the sub-basement, comes across a keypad, and remembering the code from earlier, gains access after pressing, like, thirty digits. Shy continues to sneak past some of the unorthodox defenses in the sub-basement server stacks, a mysterious creature that still, despite very good senses, cannot find her. It squelches as it walks away. Probably cool and normal Horizon things!

Shy extracts the hard drive she's after on special request from her fixer, and makes her way toward the warehouse where she'll drop off the package. Pulse, still assisted by the team, makes to completely edit the manifest with the false information.

Pulse, insane, leaves his signature directly on the spider's desk inside the host. He paints "You Just Got Pulse'd!" in bright, bold letters. Pulse continues to hack doors and cameras to clear the way for Shy to enter the warehouse and place the package, where it is promptly scooped up by a big drone forklift and taken awy. Pulse also puts his MARK on the command console, and leaves a note for the Spider, urging him to use his hacking pwoers for good instead of the benefit of a global megacorporation.

Loose ends and moralizing tied up, the team pack up and make to quietly leave, their Dawkins jobs apparently done.

Aftermath

Shy, with a bead on the van as it leaves the Horizon facility, debates the merits of doming Fennec right then and there. Is it worth it? Is it now or never?

Game Quotes

"I'm going to make a Rick and Morty reference, I'm sorry in advance." -Sarcarian

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Fennec: Wow! I love sneaking into super secret facilities! What a great time, playing at being a Dawkins Agent so I can get two power-nerds (and they are powerful, powerful nerds!) into a facility. I'm the best, y'know that? Now, if only I couldn't feel the sensation of a sniper rifle aimed directly at my head. Also, the feeling of my nose being broken into my skull - that - didn't hurt at all! It didn't hurt at all. Not even a little.

Shy : A simple mission, if you put Fennec aside. Didn't thought that i could take a stroll into Area-51 that easily, that's where i realized how good i am now...Yet i should have pulled the damned trigger. Soon enough though.