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.

Once we were in there, the pair of us met somebody else who was apparently there for the same reason. What made this person stand out was that they were the most well-dressed and politely spoken Troll I had ever seen. A bit of chatting confirmed that he was indeed put in contact with the same Macquarie and that his name was Mo. We agreed to put heads together, figuring that we could best help each other by cooperating. Also it always pays to be nice to the Troll.

Our Macquarie stepped forward and introduced himself, explaining what all the fuss was about and why he'd called us here. It turns out that Lin Yao, a woman working for one of the Hong Kong Triads had 'disappeared' while in possession of info that was valuable to both them and Wuxing. She’d been tracked to Sydney where she got off a Qantas flight and then promptly vanished without a trace. And if it wasn't already bloody obvious, he wanted us to get her back before she did anything stupid with it.

During this little chat, another person had entered the conversation, being an Elf who while rather well-groomed also was pretty clearly on the shabby side of it. I'd seen him earlier but just assumed he was the sort of flake that you got in a place like this, but it turned out that he was another Runner who had been directed here by his own contacts. He introduced himself as VBas, and said that he could do 'matrix stuff' for us. The three of us figured that he could be useful to the job, and the Macquarie (Who at this point was almost certainly Triad, Wuxing or both, but we weren't going to say anything about it) agreed to let him into the job.

So then it was time for the four of us to get to work.

First things first was to check point of Entry. A little poking around the airport confirmed that she'd come into the country and gave us a date, time, flight number and all that. The bad news was that she'd basically vanished the instant she was out of the airport, which didn't give us much to work with. What we had gathered told us that she was apparently travelling alone, which meant that she likely wasn’t coming to meet somebody. It was useful, as it meant that she was likely to still be in the wind and thus still able to be caught.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales. Sometimes a run
will take you to a classy place

Orca in the meantime had worked her underworld connections (She seems to have had a very exciting life for somebody who's only nineteen) which had gotten her and Mo in to a meeting with a Triad boss at a nice restaurant in Chinatown. They were asked to deliver a package for the Curator of Transgenic art as a ‘favour’. As payment for their effort, the found that Lin was in possession of some valuable financial information that could be very valuable to other parties, and was almost certainly looking to sell it. This suggested to us that she was going to try and evade detection for as long as possible.

From there, we figured that the next logical thing she'd do would be to get a fake SIN, as walking around with one that said 'Hi, I'm the woman who the Triads are looking for' would be a great way to get yourself killed deader than a dingo on a highway. Added to that, it seemed that Mo was in the market for a new SIN himself, because of some fracas with his cousin Dave who might have set fire to a police car or something to that effect (Good one, Dave), which gave us a bit of 'bait' to lure out a potential contact.

Sure enough we were able to find one thanks to Mo's fast talking. The good news was that he was free to meet us. Bad news was that he was in the White Rabbit, a club in Miller's Point, specifically a loud, packed, people filled one. I should mention at this point that I don't like loud, packed, people-filled spaces, so I declined to go met him in parson. Rather, Mo went with him and I had Louie ride shotgun so we could all listen in on the conversation (One of the advantages of a fly-sized fly-shaped drone is that bloody flies are everywhere in Sydney. Louie blends in effortlessly)

So Mo got him talking about SIN prices and options and the like, which quickly began to go south after he realised that getting anything good would cost him a lot more then he had. Turns out that thanks to Dave/Dingus/Drongo's actions, Mo was flagged as a career criminal and also was up to his eyeballs in debt (and when you're a Troll, that's a long way up). The good news was that while he was talking and tyring to hammer something out, we had another option for finding hm.

See, it turns out that VBas was a Technomancer, and so his way of doing 'Matrix Stuff' was with his brain rather then a Cyberdeck. So while Mo had him talking, VB was busy rifling through the guy's commlink to find his recent sales history, complete with the details of who he'd sold them to and the new identities he'd crafted for them. He found us one good match, which fit her enough to allow her to get around the city without being immediately knifed by the first Triad goon who passed her by.

Well this bodes

VB did a Bit more of his Matrix magic, and found that she (Under her new name of Summer Xaio) had gone to the Sydney Civic Council building. On foot investigation by Mo allowed him to be his amazingly charismatic and suave self and found out that she had a meeting scheduled with an Aztechnology rep, but he had cancelled for some reason. She’d left in a hurry, so we followed her trail through Mo messing with the cameras.

Problem was, her trail ended at one of the checkpoints Knight Errant keeps around the Sydney Harbour Bridge. See, after their last effort to clean it out was so insanely unsuccessful, the Sydney City Council decided that containment was a better policy than anything else. They blocked off the old road entrances, and any foot access to the bridge is stopped with KE checkpoints and SIN scanners. They don't give to pieces of wombat crap who goes on the bridge, but if you want to get off it they you might be in trouble.

At least the Harbour Bridge
doesn't have tolls any more

Given that the bridge was a haven for all things criminal, it would be a great place for somebody to hide until they could hand over some valuable paydata. So we took a two pronged approach, with me and Orca coming in from the North and Mo and VB from the south, working our way through the shantytown looking for our girl. We managed to get a good lead, which saw the four of us rendezvous outside a bar on the roadway (Thank Christ on a crutch that it wasn't a 'topside' joint!) where we spied our target. Only problem was, she was meeting with a bunch of Aztechnology goons.

Oh, and there as an Azzie chopper on the way too, adding a sense of urgency to the proceedings.

We sprung into action straight away, I called on the Rotordrones but they would take a while to get there. Orca in the meantime had a more immediate plan; she summoned a whopping great Lava Monster in the middle of the bloody bridge, which surprised the Azzies to say the least. It hit them with some sort of spell that left them disoriented and confused, which helped a lot. A Cybered-up Ork tried to grab our target, so I tasered him out. I then got her to boot so that she didn’t escape in the chaos. VB lent support with the aid of a Shotty he had hidden under his coat. Mo... Hit one of them with a Stun Baton. Yeah

We were able to dispatch the Azzies pretty bloody fast, leaving us with our unconscious target and a gunship on the way. We quickly trussed her up and got Sid, Ollie, Dickhead and Fatso to airlift her (and our guns) out of there, aiming to rendezvous with me at my truck in North Sydney. We then headed towards the Northern checkpoint, only to hit a small snag. Turns out that of the four of us, only one of us (ie, me) had a fake SIN worth a brass dubloon. The rest would either flag as fake or criminal the instant we got to the KE checkpoint. Fortunately, VB did a bit more of his Matrix woogie-woogie and got us all through unharmed.

A few quick phone calls later and we were able to drop of Ms Triad with the Maquarie, and we were all a couple of thousand Yens richer. Added to that, Mo and VB agreed to stay in contact with Orca and I, forming the basis for a permanent team. Not bad for a first time out.