1/16/2024 IRL. 1/16/2045 IG.
- Augustin Adams, Tech (Jerod)
- Malloc Smith, Netrunner (Joe)
- Glitch Tanaka, Solo (Keith)
The Meet
Glitch invited Adams and Smith to meet him at Fader Dojo at the edge of the Vintner Court Collective, a gang-infested neighborhood of mostly stacked cargo containers in South Night City. The three of them were back in Night City after working for Valkyr Corp in paramilitary actions mostly in North Africa after the last few years, a gig that got them most of their cybers and a fair percentage of their scars. Valkyr was knocked apart by rivals, so they were unemployed, and they gravitated back to Valkyr’s old headquarters in Night City because that’s where their few civilian contacts still lived.
One of those civilian contacts was Glitch’s old mentor Cordite, who ran the Fader Dojo. As they arrived, Cordite welcomed them back to the city and waxed philosophical. His pupil Essedra was handling the mop and cleaning the place up, and she was itching to try out her training against veteran old guard, but none of the edgerunners were interested in a scrap; Cordite considered their judgement wise. He had agreed to train Essedra on the condition she did not use what he taught her to kill people, and of course his teachings included general wisdom and discipline and life skills, broadening the scope of his prohibition. The tongue-in-cheek wisdom ran thick until the last visitor arrived.
Grace
A local fixer, Grace, arrived. He had been instrumental in cleaning up after Glitch in his impulsive youth before Valkyr, and now he was the fixer for Adams, getting him work with local gangs. Grace welcomed them back to Night City and had business to discuss, so they relocated to the Copperplate (a local bar) and turned on some cheap counter-eavesdropping devices so they could talk business.
Grace wanted to provide his services as a fixer, but before they could work together, he explained two rules. One, don’t kill needlessly. Two, if you get a job from him, do your best to do the job and don’t screw the client. The netrunners found those terms generally agreeable, so Grace offered them a small “audition job” to try working together.
Broken Toy
Grace explained that Ziggurat Corp was building the Dunweather Falls Arcology in Vintner Court, and it would eventually be a massive edifice housing thousands of residents of South Night City if it was ever finished. Legal trouble, permits, funding bottlenecks, and other issues ground construction to a halt after finishing a tiny fraction of the project; one six-storey tower that was the ops center for the site.
This tower had its own security staff and corp residents that lived there full-time. “Thunderdrone” rapid response fliers could deploy all over the site, and buzzed around to keep an eye on things. For additional security, Ziggurat brought in a refurbished military walker drone, a Barker 88 that had been wiped by an EMP in a battle. The firmware was a bit dodgy still, and a recent software patch messed with its systems. About 5% of the time, the Barker’s targeting system identified bats as incoming missiles, and fired off a stream of overpressured armor-piercing jacketed rounds to intercept the threat. Considering the site was surrounded by stacked cargo containers where people lived, the rounds went right through multiple containers and whatever was inside. So far, 8 deaths and 22 injuries.
Ms. Ran lost a granddaughter. Even before that, she complained to the site manager, Denbra, who threatened her with violence if she didn’t back off. She went to Rapfeld, the public contact for Triptarch Security, the law enforcement for the neighborhood; he had been bought off and he did nothing. She complained to the exec in charge of the arcology project, Ms. Sellica, and couldn’t get a meeting. She presented a petition with 8,600 signatures to the city council rep, and got nowhere. So, in desperation, she approached a local fixer, Grace. He put together this job.
The Plan
In broad strokes, the plan Grace devised was to smuggle the edgerunners past security in a false compartment in a delivery truck driven by Danville, a regular driver for Ziggurat. He would drive up the ramp to the roof of the Oversight Tower, and then he would use an exoframe to load the truck. This would take him about an hour, after which he would drive back out, as usual.
The edgerunners would have maintenance uniforms, cases to conceal their armor and weapons and gear, and very basic badge passes. They also got climbing harnesses and knockout spray (just in case).
They were to break into the top of the elevator shaft, rappel down to the carriage, and come up to the second floor from maintenance in the sub-level. From there, they would pass the guard and get to the freight elevator that accessed the empty vehicle bay on the ground level.
The access points for the Architecture network were physically armored and underground, difficult for netrunners to reach. However, one was barely accessible in the corner of the vehicle bay, so if Smith laid on the ground, he should be able to squeeze into its local signal. He was to dive to the bottom level of the Architecture to where the control node for the Barker 88 was housed, and implant a subtle virus that would cause it to have a weapons malfunction that would detonate it, in a way that looked like an accident, a few days later.
Undetected, the edgerunners would then return to the roof and get back into the truck so Danville could drive them out. If it all went wrong, they could signal Grace, and he would drive a remote-controlled dump truck through the fencing in the northeast corner and they could hope for the best, shooting their way out.
For future work, they could plan their own missions, but for the first one he scouted it and put together a plan and equipment for them. The rewards were thin, as it was crowd-funded by frustrated poor residents of Vintner Court; 1,500 Eurobucks each, about a month’s living expenses. They took the job.
Mission Prep
Smith purchased some software for his netrunning deck, and labored over crafting a custom virus to force an “accident” with the Barker’s ammo pods. Adams reviewed the specs for the elevator shaft and security systems he would run into in the Control Tower. He also cobbled together a makeshift emp burster bomb, just in case they had to deal with drone combat. Glitch bought a bag of restraints (zip ties, head bags, and the like).
Glitch also scouted the arcology site with his tactical expertise, dressed as a homeless man and observing from multiple vantage points. He spotted an alternative exit, saw the somewhat random path of the Barker was influenced by more exposed power nodes (it liked to bask) and saw it was erratic in its movements. The local security were loath to be around it, so it must have shot at them at some point in the past too. The uniforms had subsystem transmitters to identify as friendlies, so impersonating them took more than putting on the gear; there must be some password and code too.
Infiltration
The edgerunners piled into the truck’s hidden compartment, and got through the bored and sleepy security easily enough. As Danville strapped into the exosuit and started loading the truck, Adams expertly dismantled the security and machinery at the top of the elevator shaft, and the edgerunners slid down their climbing gear to the elevator carriage. Once inside, they adjusted their jumpsuits to look unremarkable, stowing the climbing gear in a case.
Adams and Smith were overqualified to handle any tech questions that might rise for maintenance workers, and they prepped Glitch to reply with some filtration task specifics. Maintenance was always servicing the ventilation!
A somewhat bored guard challenged them, and they said they were headed down to change out filtration. They got past him, and accessed the elevator to the vehicle bay below. The doors slid shut, then they had to bypass the security. Smith took a crack at it, hardly paying attention as the task was beneath him; the system set to amber, and one more misstep would trigger a security response. The next attempt succeeded, and the elevator chugged down to the empty bay.
Into the Architecture
The bay was dim and quiet. Glitch set up in a defensive position, and Adams moved some crates to provide some concealment to Smith, who lay on the floor and dove into the Architecture. Smith easily beat the black ICE defensive programming and passwords, and he reached the bottom of the Architecture and downloaded some maintenance schedules and shift rosters. Moving back up, he took a branch in the Architecture and defeated the “demon” programs running the alarms and drones, reaching the bottom to the control node for the Barker. Smith planted the virus and resurfaced in under a minute.
Exfiltration
The edgerunners returned to the freight elevator and bypassed security again, rising up to the second level. The guard was chatting with another worker; they were surprised the maintenance crew did their work so fast. A quick retort, something about internal and external ventilation, covered the brief awkwardness, and the edgerunners wasted no time getting back in the elevator and heading down.
Putting on the climbing gear took a nervous minute, as the carriage could go up or down if summoned. They managed, and had a laborious climb; there were some awkward pauses and slips, but they made it to the top, working around the carriage being called to move from floor to floor as they tried to outpace it with their climbing.
They crawled out of the roof access, and Adams reassembled it like they were never there. They had time to spare, piling into the truck’s secret compartment and catching their breath as Danville finished loading the truck.
The truck drove down the spiral ramp, past the guards, and away. The edgerunners were ghosts who were never there, and the mission went smoothly, a complete success!
Fictive Fantasies 