Jace is not my real name by the way, it is Andúril. Yes, my mother named me after a sword from a book. I shouldn’t be surprised, she was an Astrophysicist after all. Already 50 years ago, when they first started to find the galaxies from our early universe, and had not yet an idea how they actually came to be, they began to name stuff after the inhabitants of Middle-Earth. There’s an old star they named Earendel. But, honestly Mom, a sword? Could you choose anything more cringe? As if my mates at school had needed any more fuel to bully the hell out of me.
And yesterday I found myself pretty much up to my neck in shit again.
After a few good hours of sleep, no nightmares this time, I woke up to a message popping up on my commlink. I’m invited to a restaurant. How can I decline that? Also, it’s probably about a job, which I could really use right now.
But as I arrive I notice, that I am not the only one who has received the invite. Discord and Romeo both are already standing in silence outside the door. And there’s also Hunt0rKill0r69 dragging himself over from the nearest parking lot. So it is about a job. Maybe a follow up from our Run last night?
We nod at each other as Hunt0rKill0r69 wipes the sweat from his brow and slowly walk in.
The restaurant is quite a nice Italian place. I haven’t been in such a fancy restaurant for ages. The food smells delicious, and not a hint of soy. Also a lot of suits in here. I guess now Romeo’s outfit seems quite appropriate, and the rest of us look very much out of place. Me in my long black sleeveless coat, Discord looking quite gangster as usual, and… well, were would Hunt0rKill0r actually fit in? And that goes for places, and spaces.
We get ushered to a table with, you guessed it, more suits. A very old gentleman sits at the head of it. “Sit down, order something”, he welcomes us, with an extensive gesture and an Italian accent. He doesn’t have to tell me twice, I immediately order whatever he has, and then realise that I probably wouldn’t eat that! It so rarely happens that I come across real beef, that I kind of forgot to check that the dish wasn’t meat…
Before I can contemplate my dietary decisions any further, the gentleman continuous on in his firm, calm tone: “So, you are the ones who have been stealing from us.”
As his words start to sink in, a new message pops up on my comm. A single word stands out to me: OURS.
My head starts spinning. The first clear thought I can manage is Mrs McCoys voice in my brain: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and all his carpenter friends! Will this boy ever learn?!” Obviously not. With one little job I have successfully pissed off the people who took me from the street, gave me a home when I had non, and helped me on my way. I might as well be dead. On the bright side, I could be at any moment now. As Consigliere of the entire combined Seattle Mafia, Al Cavalieri is probably not one to waste two thoughts on low-lifes like us. And it had dawned on me, that the fragile elderly man in front of our little group, was exactly that gentleman.
I look around the room contemplating my options, but there don’t seem to be many. Each of the suits around us has a roughly concealed weapon on them. We’d never make it out alive. I still start to feel for the gun I’m carrying in a concealed holster behind my back.
But then suddenly Romeo speaks up and starts smooth-talking the Consiglieri. Not in a bag-for-our-lifes kind of way, but with the calm of someone discussing their dinner plans, he lays out to him, that we are very sorry about this misunderstanding. We certainly never intended to steal from him of all people. I have a feeling, that Romeo hasn’t got the slightest idea who he is talking to, nonetheless, he does it well. He offers our services in recovering the stolen items, but Mr. Cavalieri declines politely, mentioning, that they were not of much value anyways. As it turns out, we were a decoy. Of course. I knew not to trust that Johnson!
While we were doing our thing at the one warehouse, another team was robbing a different one. Hence the explosion. At least they were too eager to go in and messed up enough, so that they were only able to steal one crate of 40 Cyber Decks. If we could get that back for him, Mr. Cavalieri would be willing to forgive us our little misconduct.
He can even tell us, who the fuckers were who hired us, just to tip us off and throw us to the wolves. The Vory. The Russians, of course.
We get our own table were we can have our meal and discuss things over. I eat my sides, unsure what to do with the bloody steak on my plate, while I explain to Romeo and Discord who we are dealing with here, that it would be very wise of us to recover those stolen Decks, and we start to make a plan how to do that best.
Probably, we conclude, it makes sense to go to the warehouse and see what we can find out about the Runners who did the job, and to track them back to this sodding bastard of a Johnson.
Romeo strolls over to Mr Cavalieri to get permission for us to have a look at the security footage of the warehouse. As he returns with an actual piece of paper in his hand he suddenly announces: “Oh, that’s why the alarm went off!”
And I thought I can be a bit slow at times…
While Romeo spoke to the Consiglieri, Discord took a call from his contact, and asked him to find out all he could about this Johnson he, after all, had sent us to. And I text Miri, asking if I could meet her tonight. At least the message immediately gets read, but after a while of “…”s popping up to indicate someone writing back, and then disappearing again, it gets left on read.
Oh, by the way, Al Cavalieri also mentioned knowing about my initial message to Miri about the warehouse. Might at least have helped to safe our necks.
About three hours later we arrive at the warehouse and are actually allowed to speak to the Spider, the Rigger who controls the whole security for the building. They even wake him up, out of his trance, being one with the security network. We get to see all the footage he has. The Runners drove up, spiked the system (the Spider still has a headache from that experience), blew up a wall (not the most discreet way to get in, but very effective), and then ran right into the security forces who had just gotten ready to go after us. So they only got this one crate and had to make a run for it. We also get footage of their car, but with changeable colors and license plates these cars are a bitch to track, Hunt0rKill0r69 explains to us. He can do it, but it requires hacking into each and every single camera on the way, and it will take ages.
Luckily, that’s when Discords contact calls back. He has found ‘our’ Johnson. The guy is called Kristoff Wilczek and he operates out of a bar in northern Puyallup. No name, it’s an insider spot, but he can give us the location. He also warns us, the guy is dangerous.
So, another long drive. Discord tells us a bit about his interest in sounds and how he developed it in his childhood already. The guy remembers like every sound he has ever heard! That’s pretty impressive. I have a hard time remembering the names of people I only met once. Or twice. Or am supposed to call something in the morning…
Finally, we arrive at the place. It’s quite a bleak area. Dark in the evening twilight, no people, but many broken or barred windows. Kill0rHunt0r69 informs us, that the building the bar is supposed to be in is a digital dead-zone. Not a single signal is coming out of it. Well, I guess we are in the right place then. We stay in the car, observing, considering whether we have time for a stake out, or if we should rather just go in, gambling with our luck. Maybe Romeo would even be able to talk us out of the worst. By now I would no longer put this past him.
But then two guys come out to have a smoke, and Romeo mentions he’s got a FlySpy one could send back in with them. We might have to wait for the next smoke break to receive it’s footage, but that could very well be sooner than Kristoff showing his face out here.
Romeo doesn’t really have the equipment to drive the drone properly, he just bought it because it only cost 2000 Nuyen - for fuck’s sake, that’s a month’s rent! - but he can give Kill0rHunt0r69 permission to do it. So, when the guys go back in, the FlySpy follows and 69 does something to make sure it will explore the place on it’s own while the signal is gone. Don’t ask me, I never really got the hang of all this tech stuff.
As we wait I get a message on my comm. It’s Miri! “I thought you have to work tonight.” So she knows what is going on. That makes sense. She might not be all the way up there, yet, but she is a Made Man after all.
“i might drop by afterwards”, I reply, to which I get a thumps-up. So she too may forgive my honest mistake robbing her warehouse, but it can’t hurt to bring her some flowers or something like that that girls like.
Then, finally, the door opens again and we get our drones signal and some footage of the rooms inside. At least of those that had open doors for the FlySpy to go through.
In the bar we have eight guys, including the barkeeper. Humans, Orks, and a Troll, who we also saw earlier in the first group of smokers. No Kristoff. But there is a hallway at the back of the bar, leading to the toilets, a few locked doors, and to what seems to be a backdoor. There are no guards or anything around it, so we decide to make an entrance through the back and check out the rooms behind the closed doors. Maybe we will find Kristoff there. Or even better, the crate with the stolen Cyber Decks.
Of course Hunt0rKill0r69 remains put in the car. If we make sure to keep the back door from closing, he will stay in contact and support us from out there.
So, Romeo proves that he is not only useful to smooth-talk old people, but that he also knows how to break a lock, and sabotage a door so it can’t fall closed. That’s how easily we get in, staying completely unnoticed. Can’t be too hard to repeat that with the first of the two locked doors inside. It’s a nice one, with fake wood-panelling.
Discord, as our expert in sound, gets chosen to be the one to open the door without making any, after Romeo has hardwired and cracked the lock. We just need to open it far enough for the FlySpy to go through and have a look at the room. To be on the safe side, we keep our weapons ready, and Discord gets into position at the door with a make-shift cover.
The first thing we see as the drone goes in is Kristoff grabbing something from his desk and diving into cover behind it. Probably being quiet isn’t enough when you are opening a door right in someone’s line of sight. So we have to go in now!
Discord takes the lead, since he is our best chance of striking the Johnson unconscious with his tuning weapon. He almost succeeds, but Kristoff manages to duck out of the worst of his blow. And then the Vory shoots back. The guy’s got a fucking assault rifle! Who keeps a monster like that on his work desk?! Well, probably a paranoid Russian, I guess…
He hits Discord bad enough that he gets visibly hurt, so I follow him in immediately, take cover on the opposite side of Kristoffs desk, and fire a short burst at him. I hit him directly in the chest, but he soaks the blow completely. What the fuck does he have going on there? Just great armour, or some kind of cyberwear that we hadn’t noticed before?
He also tries to hit Discord with another burst from his rifle, but luckily misses him.
Romeo, in the meantime, throws a smoke grenade towards the hallway to the bar, in case the goons out there get alert by our gun shots.
I decide it is time to stop being gentle with Kristoff. He is far too dangerous. One good hit with this thing in his hands and one of us could be dead. I aim and shoot a quick prayer to the universe, before shooting a long one at the Russian. This time I hurt him, and I hurt him bad. Not bad enough, though, to keep him from jumping up and, like a maniac, shooting in full auto mode right at me while running past us, fleeing down the hallway and towards the bar where his men are.
I dodge as best as I can, but still feel a hissing pain in my left shoulder. It is not a bad hit, I was more than lucky. The universe really seems to have heard my prayer. We then even notice the crate, standing there in the now empty office. We better get it, and get out fast!
I give the guys some cover as we hurry, Discord with the crate, back out of the back door and return to the car. As we throw the doors shut and 69 takes off with us, we see the guys from the bar rush outside, shooting their weapons after us.
On the drive back to deliver the crate we take a look inside to make sure we have what we need. One deck is missing. I wonder what the Russians are planing to do with it. Hunt0erKill0r69 explains something about how cool these decks are and what you can do with them, but I don’t really listen.
Al Cavalieri, as it turns out, is very pleased with us. He even gifts one of the decks to Romeo, which seems to be quite a neat thing. The rest of us also get some money. Maybe Old Al is not as scary as I took him to be. At least not as long as you stay on the right side of his favour, I guess…
It’s getting late as we get to leave, but I still have things to do, so I ask 69 to drop me off at my place. There I quickly put on a nice shirt, one with sleeves to cover the bruise that keeps forming on my shoulder and upper arm, and head out again.