That Handsome Devil - Pills for Everything
| That Handsome Devil - Pills for Everything | |||||||||
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| Part of Aftermath - The Ex-Neonet Story | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven CAPTAIN FREEFALL "Dandy" Dale Hardin Never Steel Enduring Resistance |
Rusted Stilettos Ionizing Trade Data Pack | ||||||||
| The ShadowHaven team rescued rescued and returned the captured ex-NeoNet SINless to Dr. Merritt. | |||||||||
Summary
The ShadowHaven team rescued a number of ex-NeoNet SINless from enslavement as cookers/mules by the Ionizing Trade, an offshoot of the Rusted Stilettos.
Background
Dr. Merritt is a human female who runs an off-the-grid hospital for the SINless in the carcass of a former Neo-Net building in Kingston, Redmond. She tries to help the locals because she and her former corpmates are now SINless themselves after the dissolution of Neo-Net. A number of her residents have disappeared after looking at other outlets to make some nuyen and one resident came back suffering from an overdose of novacoke from the mule packets inside her and now sporting a cranial bomb that shorted out instead of exploding when she ran.
Please note, the novacoke produced by Ionizing Trade is known as "blues" on the street due to its blue color from the rat poison used to cut the product.
Please also note, Merritt's hospital was already threatened with extortion by a technotribe called the Data Pack, who locked the hospitals Matrix files in a data bomb and ransomed the data's safe return.
The Meet
The ShadowHaven team met Dr. Merritt at her hospital in Kingston. She explained her situation, showed the one female ork who managed to come home and asked for the safe return of the rest of the ex-NeoNet SINless taken in by Ionizing Trade. She noted that her hands are a rather tied by a lack of resources and a current extortion attempt by the Data Pack.
The ShadowHaven team negotiated 4,000 nuyen each, plus a promise of future medical services as needed. Never also negotiated a separate deal to bring in expert assistance to deal with the terminally ill and seal off their bodies to prevent shedim from rising in their place. She honestly made the good doctor cry.
The Legwork
First, the ShadowHaven team needed to deal with the data bomb from the Data Pack to access camera footage to help track Ionizing Trade recruitment efforts.
Captain Freefall was able to convince a contact from another reporting beat (or was it the District Attorney's office?) to part with the known password used by the Data Pack to defuse their data bombs (and the stupid fraggers always used the same password).
Dandy pulled in a favor from Enduring Resistance to send in some technical help and just had to pay them with the Data Pack password (and some warnings to not overuse it). The deckers from Enduring Resistance sliced through the hospital's host and brought up the images needed, patched in a commcall with the Black Cross, and noted they had seen the blue novacoke on the streets. They even found a street dealer hyping the goods on a street corner in Touristville through a Facespace page.
The runners and the deckers piled into Dandy's truck to find the street dealers, finding a pair of the (one human and one dwarf) on the street. Dandy pulled up close to the curb, the deckers jumped right onto the curb, Captain Freefall jumped onto the sidewalk to the front of the pickup to block them, Steel jumped to block the sidewalk at the rear of the pickup and Never just pulled out her guns from the bed of the pickup and shot the mouthier one in the knee. After a little more interrogation from Never, both pushers were started to freak because the cranial bombs in their heads started to go off. The deckers from Enduring Resistance were able to defuse the dwarf's bomb, but Captain Freefall somehow managed to suck down the explosion in the human's head like a fine Cuban cigar, leaving him completely untouched (wait until the doctors see this one).
Steel pressed both of the now ex-pushers into service as guards for Dr. Merritt's hospital, but they also completely spilled the beans on Ionizing Trade's operation. They have multiple cookhouses all over the Redmond Barrens, but once a day they turn their cooks into mules by swallowing all the packaged novacoke from that day and drop the people off at a site at the edge of Glow City. The product is then rerouted for distribution and sale. Dandy and Never scouted out the location ahead of time and built a sniper nest on top of an abandoned department store nearby.
The Plan
Ionizing Trade has a "drop-off" point at the Body Mall, just outside of Glow City in the parking lot of an abandoned department store. Every day at 4am, the gang gathers with their captive cooks now serving as metahuman mules with packets of the blue novacoke inside them. This is the point and time that they are transferring their stock from the manufacturers to the distributors. It's the weakest point of their distribution chain, but each of the mules have cranial bombs installed to ensure their compliance.
Captain Freefall will literally hang out about 100 meters above the drop-off site and then jump down when the signal is given.
Dandy has set up a sniper nest on top of an old department store across the street from the drop-off site .
Never will join Dandy in the sniper nest to cover us with spirits, spells and her rifle.
Steel is camouflaged as a homeless bum at street level of the department store and will charge in at the signal.
The deckers from Enduring Resistance will provide Matrix support with a focus on either defusing or delaying the cranial bombs.
Dr. Merritt has provided a medtech team of ex-NeoNet SINless to assist with any injuries, but they are staged a block away.
The Run
Ionizing Trade rolled up at the drop-off site with eight soldiers in total (half troll and half human) and eight ex-NeoNet SINless of mixed human and ork heritage currently serving as mules.
The two ShadowHaven trolls bracketed the location, with Captain Freefall closing off the far side from above and Steel closing off the near side from across the street. Dandy immediately started whittling down the Ionizing Trade trolls and Never covered about half of the metahuman mules with a mind control spell. The metahuman mules who were not under Never's control fought back against the Shadowrunners under duress from their implanted bombs. This complicated the fight until the Ionizing Trade trolls finally dropped. At that point, the remaining gangers had no hope of resisting the runners and the mules finally complied with the orders Never sent through her spell.
Never performed one last sweep of the field of battle to cover the team's rear as the others gathered up the rescued SINless to return to the medtech team.
Aftermath
All of the captive cooks/mules were liberated from Ionizing Trade and returned to Dr. Merritt's hospital to have the cranial bombs safely removed. Ionizing Trade lost all eight soldiers who were handling the drop-off that morning and all active mules were released, putting their operation in severe jeopardy.
Captain Freefall and Dandy turned down the nuyen. Steel is too broke to turn down the creds.
Rewards
- 6 Karma
- 4,000 nuyen
- +1 Rep to ex-NeoNet SINless
- Captain Freefall gains +1 to Public Awareness
- Never has a full belly.
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
- Captain Freefall -
- Dandy -
- Never -
- Steel -