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.

However, he also was worried that we might be a little under-staffed for the level of destruction we'd need to engage in, especially given that we'd be working on such a close timetable. Added to that, Mo was unavailable (He’s a busy Troll and he has a lot to do, not the least of which is keeping Dingus out of prison), which meant that we would already be short-handed. Fortunately, Lenny knew a bloke who could help us out and put us onto him.

Road Rage's car. And home

The Runner in question was an adept called Road Rage who lived out of his car (And not a bad one at that; a Ford V8 Interceptor which is a pretty amazing ride. Fast, powerful, looks cool and is a great baseline for modifications as well) and had a dog and was definitely hard-up for work. Since he was an Expat Yank who otherwise all he had was a doing a few guns and a vacant lot to park his car in, he was amenable to the idea and agreed to meet us.

We rendezvoused at a pub in Manly and discussed the plan over Nachos (Pub Nachos are an essential part of planning any run). Our plan was to go in at night when there'd be the least amount of people present, but first we needed to overcome the obstacle that was the CBD's traffic restrictions. Lenny was able to set us up with fake CBD licences for both my truck and Road Rage's car. True, they were anything but inconspicuous commercial traffic, but we figured that since it was late night less people would notice us, and that we were also going to spend as little time there as possible. Besides, they’d only be good for one use anyway.

Bas in the meantime was going to do his Matrix Thing and get us a detailed playout of the building, including the location of the server rooms and the details of the security. We found six in total; two each on the third and fifth floors, and then one each on the seventh and ninth. We also found that there was little more then standard security on-site; basically CorpSec drones with light armaments and no drones or Wage mages or the like. He also got us access to the carpark and disabled the security on the fire stairs.

So the plan was rather straightforward after that. Once we were inside, we'd split into two teams. Team A would consist of Orca, Road Rage and Bas; they'd work from the third floor and go up, destroying servers as they went. Team B would be me jumped into Flavio and the four Rotordrones; I'd be going from the ninth and working my way down. if all went well, we'd meet up and then get the hell out of there. Simple.

Of course it wasn’t going to work out, because that's what happens on a Run. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, the first few stages went fine. We got in, parked in the carpark, unloaded ourselves and our drones and went to work. We timed things so the first couple of servers would go down at the same time in order to confuse the security response, and so I took out the ninth floor server room (Machine Gun fire is a great way of smashing up a server farm or, for that matter, most things) while Orca got the first of the third floor ones with a ball lightning spell (Servers are okay with Electricity in properly managed doses. Not massive surges all at once).

And his delicate lockpicking technique

Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. The rather obvious sounds of shotguns and lighting alerted a patrol on the third floor, which quickly turned into a firefight. Orca wounded one with an arrow, but it was Road Rage's excessive gunplay with his Ruger Super Warhawk that put them both down fast. Unfortunately, this meant that we were sprung and had to step up the pace. Team A quickly destroyed the second server on the third floor, and then moved up.

Meanwhile, I'd gotten the seventh floor server room and had moved down to the fifth. I'd encountered a lone guard who tired to take cover in an office, but a burst of Machine Gun fire from Flavio took care of him (and the office). I took out the fifth floor servers and tried to meet up with the others.

As it turned out, they'd gotten bogged down in a gunfight on the stairs trying to get up to the fourth floor. The Baird security had tried to use smoke grenades to cover them, which had worked out to some degree. While it did slow them down, they weren’t ready for Road Rage and Orca simply rushing through the smoke and going point-blank with them. True, their effort became a bit redundant when I signalled that I’d taken out the fifth floor server rooms, but it did mean that at least now they were clear to retreat.

And that's when things really went tits up.

Team A came under fire from below, courtesy of a Cybered-up soldier in rather conspicuous red armour. At the same time, a similarly armoured trooper ran up to Flavio and impaled him with a fragging Katana. And while he didn't kill Flavio (because, you know, Steel Lynx may be a little baby tank but its still tough) he definitely made a mark, again courtesy of a lot of top of the line cyberware. Apparently our little server rampage had warranted the sudden intervention of a Red Sam team.

It's all fun and games until the Red Samurai show up

Flavio managed to deal with the Katana wielding madman by first pushing him down the stairs and then a heady dosage of machine gun fire. Unfortunately for me, a third Red Sam popped up who unleashed some sort of storm spirit on me, which would have bene very bad (because Drones and Electricity don't get on well either). Fortunately some grenades form the Rotordrones managed to deal with that before it could get its lighting freak on.

After a lot of farting around in the stairs on the other side (involving Orca trying to summon a fire spirit and VBas hacking a commlink to basically tell him that yes there were Red Sams in the building. Thanks for that, Captain Slow) saw the Cybered up Red Sam escape. However, Team A were able to get to the car otherwise unmolested.

On my side, the Red Sam mage decided to hammer my Rotordrones with an Ice Storm Spell while sheltering behind a car in the carpark. Fortunately, a pair of grenades took care of the car (and them) allowing me to get Flavio et all out of the stairwell. As the drones got out of there, I was surprised by a black SUV speeding away. I took a few shots at it, but it was fast moving and heavily armoured to boot. Rather than press the matter, the four of us decided instead to get the hell out of there.

It was only after we got our payment via Lenny that we found out that we were also well and truly rooted. It turned out that somebody had assassinated the CEO of Renraku Australia and a member of her Red Sam team... specifically, while she was visiting the Baird Communications building for whatever reason. Yeah, our team had been the distraction for somebody else's job, and we'd just had all the blame pinned on us. Which meant that we were now super unpopular and very wanted.

On the upside, in as far as there is one, Lenny said he had a job for us that would get us out of town for a while. It might be a good idea to take it...