The Hard Way

The Hard Way
Part of Nanomachines, Son
Date 2080-12-08 GM Darklordiablo Location Seattle
Belligerents
Kani Purkinje Rambozo Spider	Stockade Herolife Paige Developments
Casualties and losses
Purkinje severely injured Moderate damage to Spider's cyberdeck	1 Security Professional 1 Rating 2 Host (fully deleted) 1 Nanotech production plant (and anyone caught in it) 1 HTR Decker 1 Null Council Hunter Cyborg 1 Fenrir Wolf 1 Null Form (defragged) Unknown casualties among DocWagon and Knight-Errant HTR

Summary

After learning of several small corporations involved in the trafficking of technomancers and forced cyberzombie conversion thereof, a team of shadowrunners decides to go on a rampage across the Seattle sprawl to punish them. Oh, and locate a certain file that could help track down other people doing the same thing. That too.

Background

After the events of Tools of War, the Order of the Delayed Calamity had secured Search Protocol 5 and prepared to use it to track down and erase all remaining copies of Silicon Technologies' emergent cyberzombie project. However, they needed a copy of the file in question to use as a template for the search. They hired a team of runners to locate one.

The Meet

Entering a secure host that appeared from the outside as a golden bubble, the team found themselves in a vast library. The clients were seated at a massive war table with an interactive display map of the matrix. The client explained the situation and named five corporations flagged by sprites and technomancers searching through the Great Connection as possibly having the file: Paige Developments, Herolife, Apexi, Stockade Data Bank, and Souldream. They agreed to pay 40,000¥ for a copy of the file, split evenly among the four runners.

Legwork

Analyzing publicly available numbers informed by knowledge MCT was looking for the file and Souldream was a small subsidiary of theirs, Spider determined Souldream almost certainly did not have the file. Purkinje searched for available information about the remaining four corps, finding that Stockade was an ominous datavault contractor that likely didn't know the contents of the file in its vault if it were there, or at least not their significance, that Apexi was a nanotech corp that only dealt in single-use disposable applications of small concentrations of nanites without any indication they were changing direction, that Herolife was an augmentation firm with a nanotech program that had recently taken a turn toward something dark as indicated by a disgruntled employee, and finally that Paige Developments was a general tech firm with numerous vague and off-the-books projects, one of which included deliveries marked as "virtuakinetic assets" and "nanotech." Kani and Rambozo scouted the physical locations of Stockade and Paige Developments for more information, finding that Stockade's datavault was a spire of offline data storage units and physical vaults leaning over the bay downtown, ready to disengage and drop underwater to prevent physical access and hacking if something went wrong. Paige Developments was more of a small production plant, but not an unsecured one.

With this information, Purkinje spotted a silent Stockade host containing a database with pointers to all of their vaults in the spire and vague outlines about who they were rented to. There were also some secure files with numbers matching the client list. With Spider, she went on a netrun to make copies of these files. Spider discovered inside that the spire's release switch was also slaved to this host and made a mental note to come back later when they were ready to trigger an alarm. The stolen files gave enough info to find the exact vaults they needed to approach inside the spire. They also noted a concerning client named TNC, which Spider knew was involved in some very shady matrix dealings. Legwork done, the team reconvened to discuss their options.

The Plan

Purkinje demanded the recovery of the "virtuakinetic assets" or the destruction thereof were they to be non-living biomass. The rest of the team agreed, but noted that Stockade was a difficult target to approach, and they should perhaps be handled first while the team was at full strength and ready. They decided to assault the spire outright, shoving their way inside before it could drop, then performing the hack while it was submerged in the bay. Dandy was called in as a getaway driver, and one of Kani's contacts lent him a boat that had been converted into a submersible, allowing the team to perform a water exfiltration. This came with two caveats: the contents of Vault 17 needed to be recovered, and a future run was promised to them. Purkinje bought one-thousand datachips and called her fixer to have a tailor sew them into a skin-tight bodysuit she could wear under her clothes, allowing her to transfer the massive amounts of data on all the vaults. Purkinje brought her diving gear from Tools of War as well as sealed armor, and with a few purchases, the team was ready to handle a water extraction. They decided they would reassess the situation with the other corps once they had the information in the datavault.

Rewards

• 20,000¥
• 3 Karma
• Up to 20,000¥ of gear no higher than 16 Availability OR 5 additional karma
• +3 Faction Rep: Order of the Delayed Calamity
• -2 Faction Rep: The Null Council
• +2,000¥ for Purkinje