Episode Two: The Vial and Depraved Jobs

19th of Rand 292 (July 12-13, 2366)

Night asks you to meet her in the Crimson Diner, in a workers’ neighborhood of Old Dome: she has another job for you. She’s been doing more digging into Harb Bai and his division of Bai-St Pierre Pharmaceuticals, and an opportunity’s presented itself. The quarterly shipment of anti-rad drugs headed for the ExaSys fusion reactor, a major powergen facility in Koto City, is scheduled to go out in four days. Problem is, the execs, who aren’t much at risk, keep them for themselves and the line bosses, while the workers get radiation poisoning.

She’d like you to steal or redirect the shipment/van, and deliver the drugs (3,000 doses) to the union foreman instead. It’d be good to get the cashbox (NB150,000 after the transaction), but: on delivery, the management rep will test three doses at random, then key in their code into a portable, non-networked device. On return, the device is supposed to be connected to the corp financial network to complete the transaction. This is to ensure the transaction is hardwired, and can’t be remotely hacked.

But if you nab the box, before it’s overdue and shut down, it can be hacked, and shipment payment made anywhere.

The team plans: Paragon suggests a dummy delivery to get the recipient’s payment info. Virago and Starscream would then make the delivery, while Paragon and Carbide crack the box. Carbide suggests arranging for a new driver, then redirecting the van to a location under their control, and just taking the shipment. Paragon notes that work schedules aren’t high security: she should be able to get into the BSP net architecture and arrange for a new driver. Carbide suggests a distraction on the road to necessitate a detour. Starscream adds some social engineering: identify the scheduled driver, and she’ll roofie him, so there won’t be any need to hack for a replacement.

They consider how to incapacitate the van crew. Carbide gets schematics of the van from Night. It’s got a front air intake with a filter, for both the cab and rear. Virago suggests that off-the-street Blue Glass would work fine as an incapacitant.

As they’re planning, someone enters the diner, clearly looking for Night. They’re a full body replacement, a non-human-appearing synth. They’re amazed to find Starscream with Night: she was a huge inspiration to them! They introduce themselves as Shift: Friction sent them. They’re from offworld, and came to NeoTokyo for synthetic reassignment surgery. They got top of the line work done by The Horizon Group, the premiere full-body specialists – who did Starscream’s work, of course. It was everything they hoped for, but after a few months, they had a balance of payments problem (much of their income is from offworld royalties from holonovelas, and NeoTokyo banks hold up transfers for random amounts of time). When they fell into arrears, the VP of Client Services (Marcus Ashworth) called them in and blackmailed them: he’d repo their body unless they got gendered mods and became his sex toy. With the alternative as becoming a brain in a jar, they agreed. And that was awful, but manageable. Now, Ashworth wants them to become an assassin for him, and take out corporate rivals. They can’t do that, and are hoping the 4I can help somehow.

Night is noncommittal, but Starscream empathizes. She asks about Shift’s remaining debt (NB25K) and next payment (1800 on the 1st). Starscream suggests to Night that Shift could be useful to the 4I as a propagandist with galactic reach, and to Starscream herself. Night tells Shift that if they can come up with a workable plan, they’ll help them out, and will be in touch. Shift leaves, a little forlorn. Paragon notes that there’s no paying job here, and she won’t work for free – she’s not a charity. Night replies that the 4I is, and if they take the job, the 4I will subcontract to Paragon at going rates. Carbide states that he’s willing to take Shift’s mods out for free. Paragon suggests that Ashworth clearly has enemies: if the team leaks to them that Ashcroft’s gunning for them, they could solve the problem for everybody. Carbide suggests leaking to the media for more, er, leverage. They agree to work on the case, and turn back to planning for the Vial Job.

Carbide asks Night to arrange for a pothole on the road to the warehouse: when the van hits the pothole, that’ll cover the impact of a drug grenade on the intake grille. Night can get a boostergang (the Napalm Freaks) to create a custom pothole for NB100 off the top. Starscream demonstrates her undercover skills, changing her hair color and skin texture to be a conventionally cute brown-haired 16-year-old. Paragon leaves to hack BSP. The lobby approach looks too risky, despite a potentially convincing story for why an employee would be carrying a plush dino (the lunch thief!). She leaves Old Dome, skirting around the freeway-median exterior to find access to a node that isn’t an unduly suspicious place to hang out. The node has substantial defenses, but she cuts through them, bypassing one file she couldn’t access. The root file has what she needs: work schedules and personnel files. She exits, Cloaking her presence, and sends the files to Starscream. Meanwhile, Virago fails at buying street drugs, and turns to Night rather than risk getting beat up. Night procures the Blue Glass easily. Carbide builds a launcher for the drug grenade.

Paragon hacks the scheduled driver’s personal info and social media, and discovers he’s got a taste for nonbinaries. Starscream modifies her appearance to match a composite, and hits his favorite club – but strikes out! Looks like the driver’s had a bad day and not in a mood to party. Instead, she hits up the bartender, flirting with him and commiserating having struck out. She gets the bartender to agree to comp the driver a roofied drink and to take her home.

The driver, tripping balls, calls in sick. Next up on the roster is someone new to the route.

Everything’s in place to execute the plan.

They turn back to Shift’s case. Night does some research, identifying Horizon Group execs standing in the way of Ashworth’s advancement, and an EVP of Marketing who’s ruthless about protecting the company’s reputation.

Paragon hacks Ashworth’s personal accounts, and finds videos of coerced sex with multiple Horizon Group clients. She takes the videos to the EVP, who is eager for them but ruthlessly lowballs Paragon on the payout.

Shortly thereafter, the media reports that Ashworth has been terminated – with extreme prejudice.

Paragon donates half her payout (NB500) to the 4I, explicitly to be used for other victims. Night matches it personally, and begins working with Shift to get a 4I operation set up.

Star creates an epic composition for background music for Shift’s next production, and Shift creates a teaser reel for Star, to pitch a holo-biography of her.

Flashback: while Paragon was at the Bai-St. Pierre loading docks, after successfully hacking into the system architecture to collect route and driver information, she tried to hack the armored car, to change its delivery route. To her shock, the tiny mobile architecture had a powerful defender, which kicked her straight out, toasting her brain a bit.

The team moved to their fallback plan, and had Night make an arrangement with the pothole architects, the boostergang Napalm Freaks, to stage a diversion on the route. It cost them NB100 in “party supplies,” and they were happy to oblige.

The relief driver took the armored car as planned, diverted rather than plowing through the boostergang riot, but the professional driver managed to avoid the pothole. Vir took the shot with their gas grenade anyway, and hit, despite the driver swerving. The driver and guards checked out quickly. Carbide came over, hacked the door lock on the cab – and fortunately was wearing a gas mask, and so didn’t get a facefull of Blue Glass. He removed the gas bomb and turned the air circulation up to max, then opened the back. He, Starscream, and Paragon switched into the team’s uniforms, and he modified their IDs with their photos. They handed off all but the top tray of the drugs to Night, who drove up to take delivery.

Night and Vir headed off to the factory to deliver the drugs to the union foreman, who was pleased, but not overjoyed: the one-off would save some jobs and health, but not end the system of the company execs skimming. Night promised to look into a longer-term solution. The armored car team arrived at the company loading dock, and passed through security – more thanks to Carbide’s IDs than to Starscream’s ability to pass as a driver. The company rep sampled the top layer of actual drugs, which of course passed. He keyed in payment information, and the team drove off without incident. On the way back, Paragon hacked the cashbox, entering Night’s routing information and taking the payment.

On Night’s request, the team dropped off the armored truck for the boostergang: it was too hot and too expensive for Night to fence, so the best use was to have a gang owe them an immense favor. Starscream changed her look and clothes to pass as a gang member, so witnesses would only report an intra-gang handover.

The team took a couple weeks of downtime. Starscream got some effective therapy from Vir, Carbide built himself a cyberarm and had it installed in a hospital, and Paragon spent the time intensively practicing her forgery skills.