Scot Free

…Continued. From the shadows of the darkened hallway, still crouched, Ditch exposed only his shotgun, using its HUD-linked scope to line up a corner-shot on thug number-five, but took a lucky burst from his target’s assault carbine through the sheet-rock wall—as before, the shots failed to penetrate his armor, but the continued abuse had taken a toll. He managed to keep his aim on-target, but missed; the shotgun was now empty, so he fell back to a dark corner to wait for number-six, coming to flank him.

At the same time, number-five had moved to a new position further back into the warehouse; Paladin, still gravely injured, dropped down from the crane assembly onto the top of the thugs’ van, and stumbled down to the floor; Mr. M sprinted around the edges of the warehouse floor in a wide flanking move, using support pillars for cover; Bookworm advanced to the nearest corner and prepared a thrown Stun spell, popping briefly around to throw it but falling short; and Ivory scrambled evasively to the center pile of crates to number-five’s flank, which caught his attention as she tried to circle around. Finding himself now cornered, number-five frantically fell back to the offices behind him and slammed the door shut.

Meanwhile, number-six had crossed the conference room and approached the door to Ditch’s hallway, carefully easing it open, cutting tactically around the corner, rifle-first, to avoid exposing himself to a surprise attack. Ditch was hiding in the corner, reeling from his earlier battering, knives bared and waiting in ambush. As number-six came into view in the doorway, Ditch sprang forward with a one-two swing of his blades that the thug knocked away with his rifle—which was cut deep, but not destroyed, flinging bits of plastic hand-guard everywhere—followed by another one-two, a high fake that caused the thug to duck his head into the follow-up swing, resulting in Ditch’s monowire blade bisecting his head from crown to palate.

Back on the other side of the warehouse, Bookworm had moved to the side of the door that number-five had fled through, while Ivory and Mr. M had advanced through the nearby hallway and were in position at another door to the same office, while Paladin quietly crossed through some adjacent office-rooms in a flanking move. Nearly-simultaneously, they all forced their way in to find number-five ducked behind a desk (his back to Paladin), and another thug, number-seven, in the far corner screaming for backup into a land-line phone receiver. In a matter of seconds and a cacophonous hail of small-arms fire from all directions, the two remaining thugs were bleeding out on the floor. In the process, Bookworm had reflexively used Return Missile to reflect part of a burst of rifle-fire meant for him back into his attacker, number-five, but one bullet struck him through anyway, penetrating his light armor; he was seriously wounded, though clinging to consciousness.

With all immediate foes out of action and expecting reinforcements at any moment, the DXM team quickly surveyed the aftermath: it appeared that this last office was, in fact, the BTL production facility, so Mr. M set about working on one of the less bullet-riddled computers to recover the “Cecilia” source code. Ditch tossed Bookworm a diagnostic smart bandage; Paladin applied it for him, to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized—ironic, as Bookworm usually does the “healing”—and then carried him to the back of the van, their impromptu method of egress. While M continued to work on the computers, the others looted the van’s keys, assault carbines, ammunition, and certified credsticks from the fallen. Once Mr. M had located the code, he made a copy for return to Freedom Entertainment, the client, and erased all the hard-drives they could find, including the on-site security camera recordings; all the production equipment was piled up, and Ditch put a couple of high-explosive rounds from his shotgun into the pile (after deciding EMP might not be quite “permanent” enough). With no time to spare, M took the driver’s seat of the van as the rest of the team piled in where they could, and they hasted toward the facility’s gate, smashed through it, and continued up the street at a more-casual pace, out of the area. They were passed by an incoming Lone Star vehicle whose occupants appeared to take no notice of them; a clean getaway, it seemed.

The team took the van to a lonely parking area in a less-patrolled part of Redmond Barrens and put it to the torch, hoping to eliminate any further evidence of their involvement. Ivory made the call to Claudia to announce the mission’s completion, and arrange a meeting to hand off the remaining chips—at Transporters—while the others flagged down a taxi. Some time later, they arrived at the bar. Vapor was about to lock up for the night…er, morning, but he let his old comrades in, marveling at their battered and/or bloodied appearance—all but Ivory had been shot—and remembering why he was retiring from shadowrunning. Punctual as always, Claudia showed up and greeted Vapor, who escorted her to the staff-room where the team awaited; again, Vapor hung around to listen in, but was distracted by Ivory’s flirting. Though Claudia had already offered to handle the negotiations with the client, she offered the team the opportunity to handle it themselves, but they were too hurt and exhausted to bother, ready to get it over with. Mr. M handed over the chips, including the new ones in the metal case that “Cho” had gifted to Ghoul (though Ivory had to be “prompted” to let go her prize), and they gave their assurances that there was no more to be had but what had already been sold on the street. Claudia asked if there was anything they wanted to add to the negotiations; they didn’t capture Cho/Tanaka, their secondary objective, but they said to let the company know his real name, and that he was Yakuza, and the client could do with that information what they would. Their business concluded, Claudia thanked the team for a job well done (and less messy than usual) and said she’d be in touch regarding payment, and she left the bar; she was followed shortly by the rest of the team as they went their separate ways, to rest and heal.

Ditch went to a street-doc near home to get patched up, and after a day’s rest, went to recover his bike left two blocks down from the scene; Paladin did pretty much the same. Bookworm went home to recover, and took around four days to magically heal himself to full health before attempting to recover his car, left a bit closer, about a block away from the scene. As his taxi passed close enough by his car, he cast a quick Detect Observation spell on it, felt that it was being watched, and decided to come back another time. A week later, he tried again, but his car was no longer there, presumably impounded, so he decided to count it a loss.

DXM would hear later of some violence at the hotel where Ghoul was supposed to have met “Ann Benoit” for their date, and of a hefty price put by the Yakuza on her fictitious head, as well as her compatriots—there were some exceptionally-vague descriptions that the team guessed to be Ditch and Paladin, from being sighted at Ghoul’s place. They made enemies, not friends, this time around. Their payday, less Claudia’s cut and split five ways, would come to ¥16,000 apiece—a good haul for a night’s work.

Notes

• This session ended up a week late due to absences the previous week
• We discovered a bit late in the process that we really hadn’t discussed any sort of escape plan prior to committing to the break-in operation; we had to improvise once the area was pacified
• Again, the characters would probably have left Vapor and his retirement alone if not for the meta-game purpose of setting up a proper headquarters for the Team
• After it was over, the GM gave us, as a group, a “temporary” Enemy (Yakuza) that would last for a d6 (result=4) months. He would have given us an extra CP for a “clean getaway” except we had to be reminded about the security camera footage
• This is the last session of this run; until next time. It would have run a bit longer, probably, if not for the extra-long sessions