We all Run in a Yellow Submarine

While we were looking for ways to get around the Mister Johnson from Lone Star job series, we had another one to attend to. It was one that I'd been looking forward to for some time, actually, simply because of the sort of stuff we'd be dealing with. The premise of the run was simple and intended to be stealthy; we had to break into a manufacturing facility and sabotage the production of a new product. However, we had to do it in a subtle way so that it wasn't immediately obvious. What the Macquarie wanted was for the product to fail at launch in a very public and embarrassing way.

So that would be simple enough in and of itself, but there was a catch. Although the catch was what made the job so interesting, so maybe it wasn't as big a problem as it seemed. Anyway, the problem was that the target was a Proteus AG Arkoblock in the middle of Bass Straight, so it wasn't the most easily accessible place in the world. Fortunately, we'd rented a minisub which covered half of the accessibility issues.

Gang politics, conspicuous cars and aggressive statuary

All our moral quandaries over what we were going to do regarding Mister Johnson's job offer were nicely put aside when we got a request for a meeting from Big Zam. Given that he was the one providing our housing (Oh and that he was a mob boss and a Cyclops and had several Minotaurs on call...) Orca and I pretty much dropped everything and headed to his restaurant where he wanted to meet. And after a nice light lunch we got down to business.

This was a follow through of sorts to our previous job we'd done for him where we sabotaged Metatron, a drone racer. It seemed that Big Zam was not the only one interested in fixing drone racing, as one of the other racers, an adept by the name of Bok-Bok had disappeared. Mister Zam wasn't happy with this, because with her disappearance, there was every chance that Metatron could get a shot at the finals again, which was not what he wanted. Added to that, the next race was in two days, so we needed to find her fast. He offered us a generous amount of pay, so we agreed to locate her for him. That and, again, housing and Cyclops mob boss.

Melbourne drivers and other hazards

We've more or less settled in to life in Melbourne now. Our new home in a converted garage is okay, and for Orca and Road Rage it’s even something of a step up. True, Bas continues to sleep outside in his Van, but by this point, we've come to expect that from him. If not for the fact that it's Melbourne, I'd say we're doing pretty okay for ourselves. Hell, I can even make right hand turns, as long as they're those weird hook turns they insist on. Oh, and I can put up with the Melbourne drivers.

Of course, us being Runners meant that we still needed to find work. Fortunately enough, not one but two offers dropped in our laps right away. The first was from a Macquarie that we'd worked for before, being the same slightly stodgy but well playing guy who got us the job with the Wuxing freighter. He arranged another one of his Matrix meets to roll out his newest offer, and I must admit that it was rather fascinating.

Road Rage: Drive Angry

Road Rage is the newest member of the team, and I’ve worked with him for a whole two runs now. And one of those was our longest single run to date, so that has to count for something. I figured it was about time to throw together my own thoughts on him and what he does and the like. He's also going a long way towards reinforcing the 'unconventional' nature of our team; still no Sam or Decker or whatever else, but now we're double-dipping on the adepts.

First up, Road Rage is an ex-pat Yank who wound up Down Under With very little to his name at all. I haven't really probed where he's from (When you’re Australian, "Yank" could mean the UCAS or CAS or CFS. Or possibly even the NAN if you were really stretching it. Hell, you could even mean Ares Macrotechnology) why he ended up here, as I figure it's a sore spot and not something that I'm not going to poke until he's ready to talk about it. Of course, that means it could come back to kill us, but hey. That's what being a Runner's all about, right?

A day (or two) at the races

We'd settled down in our Melbourne house (well, save for Bas who was living in his van somewhere else because reasons) but we also had a number of matters that we needed to attend to. The first and most important was that out housing was provided by Big Zam in return for doing him a favour, and he needed it done fast. And yes, it was a favour of the distinctly illegal kind as well, because when you're a Shadowrunner that's what happens.

Bas in the meantime was buy farting around with the case we'd salvaged from the Impulse we'd fought on the way down here. He'd managed to open it, only to find three vials of unidentified liquid inside. They’d been padded enough to survive falling of an exploding truck at high speeds intact, which suggested they were either incredibly valuable, incredibly lethal or both. Interrogating the case yielded that it had a back to base alarm that was triggered to go off if it wasn't accounted for after a certain period of time, which meant that he only had so long to fart around with it until he drew unwanted attention.

Highway to Hell (And by that, I mean Melbourne)

As mentioned, thanks to our being implicated in the assassination of a high-ranking Renraku exec and three Red Sam Guards (Yes, I did kill one of them, but that was in self-defense) we had decided that it was probably for the best if we got out of Sydney for a while. The good news was that Orca's Kebab Vendor/Fixer had gotten us a job to escort a refrigerated truck down to Melbourne, which would both get us out of town and get us paid along the way. This is a plan.

After getting something that resembled a good night's sleep I prepped for the trip by doing a round of repairs on Flavio, Ollie and Dickhead after how badly they got banged in the Renraku raid, With the aid of Adam and Jamie, I was able to get them all back into shape in a couple of hours, leaving enough time for me to pack my travelling stuff and do some last minute lawn care (ha!) before heading down to the pub for some Pub Nachos.

Denial of service attack

After the little adventure on the boat, things had settled down a bit and allowed us some breathing time. Collectively, the team had been working on improving various skills; for example, Orca is getting better at picking locks, while I'm learning how to act like a Drone when I’m jumped into one. I asked Orca to spot the difference between me controlling Adam and Jamie running autonomously, and she couldn't, which means I must be doing something right.

Unfortunately, we also need money because drones, arrows, car parts and such don't pay for themselves. Fortunately, Orca's Fixer (a Kebab stand owner called Lenny), was able to come up with one that needed doing urgently and that he felt we were suited for. It was rather simple; the client needed us to break into the Sydney CBD HQ of Baird Communications and destroy a bunch of their servers. They were paying a flat fee for the first two server rooms we killed, and then were offering a bonus for each server room we took down after that, It seemed straightforward enough, even if he needed it done in the next couple of days.

Life on the Coathanger

I’ve mentioned the Bridge before and it's already factored into one of our runs, so I might as well talk a bit more about it. It's a key part of the Sydney Shadow Community landscape while also being the city council's single biggest sticking point. It's definitely not the sort of thing you see on the tourist ads either, and for a good reason.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge copped it pretty bad in the first mana Storm. it suffered severe structural damage and had to be closed for a long-term repair project. Unfortunately, the resulting abandonment of Sydney and the entire country turning feral resulted in a massive influx of poor and desperate refugees from not just the country but even the outer parts of the city. They wound up funneling through the 'controlled areas of North Sydney and the CBD and squatting en-masse on the then abandoned bridge. Sure it was a creaky mess that could have fallen down at any moment, but it wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go.

In a drone, on a boat

Things have been going pretty okay for the last week since our first run. Orca's settled in here and doing pretty nicely for herself. She says that my place is a Huge upgrade from her old place which, from what I could tell, seemed to be a hovel that was about to fall down. So better living conditions, a better suburb and she still has access to a Surf beach, so what more could she want?

But then we got another job offer, which we all leaped at. I guess the need for more drones/arrows/keeping your brother out of jail/whatever it is VBas spends his money on (Not sure I want to know) was a good enough incentive to get us all going even if everything seemed a bit strange from the get go. Mister Macquarie wanted to meet us at a seedy, run-down, dockside pub in Botany of all places, which was far from what you assume to be a typical meet.

Breaking and Interior Decorating

Now that we had a team, it was time to get more work. In this case, our next run came form an odd source. That was okay in a way because the run itself was rather odd in nature. In this case, the source of the job was a Government Agent that VBas knows, one who’s exact job and agency they work for remains pretty enigmatic (as does the reason why he's talking with a hobo Technomancer, but that's by the by). At any rate, he put us into contact with Mister Macquarie, who gave us the details.

As you can imagine, they were odd. We met Mister Macquarie in a private Matrix host. He wanted us to place a mirror that was at least half a meter square in a specific spot in a specific conference room inside the headquarters of the Sydney Fire Brigade. And we needed to do it before 9:30 AM on Thursday, but do it as close to time as possible.

See? Odd.

VBas: Hobo with a Shotgun

So I've talked about how unconventional our team are. We have no Sam, for starters. And we have a mage who likes to surf and punch sharks. And we have a Face who is an articulate, well dressed, pacifist troll. It should probably come as no surprise by now that our Matrix support also doesn't follow the stereotypes.

VBas (or VB for short, not to be confused with awful cat-piss tasting beer) is our Matrix support, doing all the things you want out of them. Find data, look for info, mess with enemy security and electronics, shut down cameras, screw with their equipment and all that sort of fancy stuff. (As opposed to me who mainly uses the Matrix for 'run drones' and 'get drones to shoot stuff'). What makes VB so very different is how he does it. Rather than being a Decker, he's a full-blown Technomancer. And, to make it even more crazy, he's of a rather specific type.

A Run that actually was a Run

My second run with this team was the first one that actually had a team. And added to that, it actually happened, which was a bit leg-up over the first one. Okay, that was probably a bit confusing. Let me start again.

It steered off when Orca's fixer (And the guy she gets her take-away Kebabs from) set her up with a job, so she got in contact with me. The pair of us were to meet at a new-age shop of all places down south, which struck me as the most Earth shatteringly bizarre spot to get a job from a Macquarie. So with a combination of piqued curiosity and a need to get a job and make some money, I agreed to meet her there and see what the hell was going on.

Mo: Trollface

So remembering what I was saying about non-traditional teams? Yeah, even when we do have one 'traditional' role, it's filled in a most unexpected way. Not saying it's bad, it's just different, that's all.

Many teams have a 'face', the guy who's job is to be the frontman of the team, He handles the meetings, negotiations and the business end of the job. He's the guy who tries to get the best deal out of Mister Macquarie, while also doing his best to convince the guy not to tool you over. He's a key part of the legwork phase of a run, meeting people, playing nice with them and trying to play them for a bit of key info that could make the difference between life and death. Finally, a good face can talk you out of a bad situation, using their charm and wit and silver tongue to suggest that it's in everyone's best interests if we don’t try to kill each other,

The Run that Wasn't

Now that we have a frame of reference for me, Orca, Sydney and a few other things, it's time to start talking runs themselves. Only my career got off to a rather inglorious start with a Run that never actually happened.

To get the ball rolling, one of Orca's contacts put her in contact with me as a way of building up a team. So we arranged a meet at a pub near where I live and things went rather well there. We discovered a mutual love of hot chips made form actual potatoes which was a great icebreaker, and as a bonus she figured that I had access to a good surf beach so obviously she could spend time up here working on runner stuff while also indulging in her favourite pastime. She also had a quick tour of the house so she knew where I was working form with an eye to using it as a base of operations. Apparently my place beats her fall down tenement any day, so she's cool with that too. All in all the foundations of a good team.

Sadly, that wound up being the only thing that went right all day.

Orca: Punch the Shark

As a runner, you generally only work alone if you're the best thing in the universe or a right burke. Since I’m neither, I have a team of sorts that I run with. They're pretty damned eclectic and don't follow a lot of your standard Runner team "rules" (Everyone had a Sam, a Decker and a Shaman/Mage, right?. We don't have two of those and the third is an interesting case) so we have to do a lot of our stuff through non-traditional means. For example, I’m the team's "big gun" even though I'm not there in person like a Sam would be.

Orca's our magic. How she does that is pretty interesting, even if I don't pretend to have a clue about how it all works. What it means, however, is that she can do a lot of interesting things and definitely is not someone that you can immediately figure how she's going to do it.

Welcome to Post-Apocalyptic Sydney

Flag of the semi-autonomous corporate enclave of Sydney

I figured that while I’m explaining things, I should spill out a few key facts about Sydney and what it's like to Run there. Calling it different would be an understatement.

The first thing you need to understand is that Sydney is sort of kind of but not quite a part of the Republic of Australia, except for those times that it is. Strictly speaking, it's not even a part of the state of New South Wales any more either. That's a rather complicated story, and is a big part of the 'different' that I mentioned above. You see, Sydney is ground zero for a massive, semi-permanent Mana Storm. It fluctuates in strength and intensity, and some days it's almost normal, but the point is that it's there pretty much all time. The storms are massively disruptive and incredibly damaging, and have gone a long way to the city's current state.

Trucks, Drones, Guns and other essentials

So I've mentioned that I am a Rigger. It's a very tech-intensive role, which suits me just fine. I enjoy working with machinery, and have done ever since I was big enough to wave a wrench at something. So there's a lot of tools that I use in my job as a Runner.

I appreciate quality in my equipment. There's no sense in buying something because it's cheap if you know it's going to break down when you need it most. Sure, some piece of Azzie crap drone might be half the price, but you're gonna hate yourself for forking out when it chucks a digital sicko the middle of a fight or begins chundering up parts when you need it most. So I'm willing to pay a little more for something that's reliable and not going to explode just because it bumped a Wombat or something. (Actually that’s a lie. You hit a Wombat and you will notice it, no matter what)

Who I am and what I do

Right, let's start with the basics, shall we?

This is me (and my truck)

My Street Name is Rev. You don't get to know my real name, sorry. Personal privacy and committing blatantly illegal acts and all that. I am a twenty-eight(ish) year old female human, with fair skin, blue eyes and ginger hair. I live (and for now, work) in the city of Sydney which is kind of sort of but not quite a part of the Republic of Australia. More on that to come. What makes me really interesting is what I actually do.

I am what's known as a Shadowrunner. I'm a part of the massive, illegal industry that serves as the soldiers in the quiet war between the megacorporations, the Governments and whoever else is willing to couch up the quid to have somebody do something to their rivals. I'm paid to do dirty deeds in a way that is deniable and does not trace back to the source, usually by people who prefer not to be indentified themselves. My employer, no matter who they are or who they work for, will usually go by the name of Mister Macquarie (Note to Americans reading this: What you call Mr Johnson). Even if they're a Ms, or whatever else.

Unlike other runners my job is not to stand up and fight; well, sort of. I'm what's known as a Rigger, somebody who uses cyberware and other equipment to control vehicles and drones as if they were an extension of their own body. I can drive anything that I can connect to, and do what no normal driver could do in the process. There's no reaction times, no hand-eye coordination; I drive at the speed of thought

Vehicles and Drones are the tools of the trade for me. You need something delivered in a hurry? I'm your Sheila. You need a fast getaway? I can be gone before the Corp Cops even know what's happened. You need a small army of backup? I have a fleet of drones that can bring more firepower to a fight then blowflies at a barbie. And I can do all this without being anywhere near what I’m doing at the time. I can control my vehicles and drones through the matrix or by jumping into them and sizing direct control or whatever else. I could be in the passenger seat next to you, I could be around the block or I could be on the other side of the city. Isn't technology bloody awesome?

This is also me (But no truck)

So that's a bit about me. If you’re lucky I’ll be the best driver/drone swarm/whatever the hell else you need you can get. Otherwise, you had better start running from the bloody drones and get out of my way