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.

The pair of us were then referred to Mister Macquarie who was trying to set up the run. Macquarie arranged to meet us at a Pub located outside the Paramatta Corp enclave, which sounded plenty dubious. What it we actually found was even worse; it was a run-down hellhole in the middle of a borderline warzone of a suburb that fell well within KE's 'don't even bother' level of response. Added to that there was a row of bikes parked outside, mostly recent models liable to be preferred by gangers, which suggested that this place would also be one of their preferred hangouts.

Immediately I was figuring that Mister Macquarie had to be pretty damned ballsy if he wanted to meet in a place like this. There's low key, not likely to meet somebody you know places and then there's a total hellhole where you're liable to get yourself knifed if you don't watch your back and where the roaches get in everything places. This was definitely one of the latter. On the upside, there was no risk of Orca getting carded because nobody gives a crap about what happens in a place like this as long as you pay for your drinks

The local clientele was not that encouraging either. Sure enough there was a group of gangers being as obnoxious as they could in their corner of the pub, including hazing what looked like an initiate. The others were mostly unremarkable; people keeping to themselves, people playing pool and so on, save for two groups. The first was what was clearly our Mister Macquarie who looked as out of place as could be in his nice suit and tie. The second was an elderly couple having a quiet drink there and managing to be entirely casual about it despite the presence of a bunch of drunken drongos.

We'd barely gotten in the door when everything went completely tits up. The junior gang initiate, clearly nervous despite the amount of booze he'd been plied with, headed over towards our Macquarie with a gun in hand. Neither of us wanted this, especially given that was our payday, so we both sprang into action.

Let me tell you this now, Orca was as mad as a cut snake once she got her thing going. She was leaping around place, laying out the gangers left right and center with her augmented punches and even a couple of actual spells. Those drongos pretty much didn't have a chance against her, and I bet she could have cleared the bloody place on her own, My part in the ensuing brawl was largely limited to shooting my taser at a couple of them and actually hitting once or twice. Like I said, this is not my thing.

So we cleared out the gangers, but we had a couple of new problems. See, Granny had a heart attack in the middle of the fight, and was about to drop dead on the spot if she didn't get medical attention ASAP. (As to what she was doing there, it turned out that this had been their local pub for decades, even before it turned into a radioactive hellhole) Only problem was given where we were, she would be dead as a doornail long before anyone arrived, so I opted to go the medevac route and rush her to the nearest emergency room in my truck. Orca in the meantime had opted to evac Mister Macquarie, figuring that it was good to get him away from the place where he almost got shot as a part of an initiation and where he would be an easy target for any retaliation.

Me I was going total leadfoot to get Granny to the emergency ward despite going through some of the worst roads that Sydney had to offer (which is saying an awful lot, by the way). This is where having a truck that's as fast as buggery and able to handle whatever sort of terrain the world can throw at it helps, as does a driver who's good at what she does and is happy to take whatever route will get her there in the least amount of time, regardless of what it will be. So I managed to get Granny to the emergency ward just in time, dropping her off then getting the hell out of there before anyone was able to ask any questions.

Meanwhile, Orca had absconded with Mister Macquarie to a nearby abandoned storefront, and was sitting tight until I got there myself. Once I did, we actually tried to get the run off the ground. See, it turned out that Macquarie here worked for SingSiam Telecommunications and was the chief of a design team working on a new commlink that was about to hit the market. Unfortunately, Baird was about to beat them to the punch, so he wanted it sabotaged so it wouldn’t steal their thunder.

It was only when we pressed for details that things began to get a bit vague, And the more we probed, the worse it got. See, Macquarie heard about what the rival commlink from one of his friends (and co-workers), who had 'suggested' that it would be good for the company to try and make sure this didn't happen. And to Orca and I that looked less like this was an actual problem as it did like his mate was trying to get rid of him so he could take all the credit for the new com for himself. Bloody corporate politics at work.

We suggested that we could fix it by taking care of his boss, but Mister Macquarie was adamant that he could deal with it. He talked about going through 'proper channels' and the like, which to my mind pretty much amounted to him signing his own bloody death warrant. But corporate loyalty seemed to over-ride common sense, and that was the end of it. He was on his way leaving the pair of us without a job.

So we didn’t get anything out of it (Well, we got a few thousand Yens, but it was more of a downpayment then what we would have got, but the poitn stands), but we at least got the foundations of a team. Which means we came out a bit ahead, I suppose.