Phones, Drones and Automobiles

Okay, still fuming over the whole "Pierce" thing, but at least I'm a bit more settled. This summary will be somewhat more coherent, at least.

Our investigations into the matter were somewhat sidetracked when Dayglo pointed out the fact that we hadn't gotten paid in some time and that giant elaborate penthouse apartments don't pay for themselves. This much was true; we'd been doing waaaaaay too many unpaid jobs of late looking into this, so some money would be good. Plus I was personally itching for something to do that wasn't related to this whole trainwreck. So when Dayglo said that she had a potential job lines up, I was all over it.

We met the Johnson at a park bench in Central Park. Don't get me wrong, the park is a great location and all and it's very Cold War chic, but come on, this is New York! We should be meeting in super-exclusive trendy clubs or swanky resturants that charge a small fortune just to look at the menu. Anyway, the meet was with a sharp Human Asian woman who had an interesting job offer for us.

This is a very swanky hotel

The deal was rather simple In five days, there was going to be a charity event for MDC executives at The Carlyle hotel, a swanky, art-deco building on the upper East side of Central park. One of the people there was an EVO exec by the name of Atyon Lebedev (A troll, because EVO). All we needed to do was steal his Commlink, clone its data and then replace it with a copy. Simple enough. I mean, true, it wasn't the sort of high-explosive all action run that I preferred (I mean, the odds of my having to leap from the building as it exploded were pretty slim) but it was still paying work.

We began to develop the outlines of a plan. Me, Freddie and Neon would attend the event by abusing our high-end fake SINs. Once in there, I would pickpocket Ayton's phone and Neon would clone it. Then we could make our excuses and get the hell out of there, Simple, huh?

The first stage went off well with me and Neon going to the tea room in the Carlyle to have real cake and coffee while she hacked the guest list (to add us too it) and also got a set of building specs. It was only after that point where we hit one huge problem, one born of one of our group thinking that they're clever. Neon's cyberdeck is built into her cyberarm. The elaborately customized, bulky, oversized arm with a decorative casemod to give it a neon pink trim. Or, in other words, the sort of limb that would look insanely out of place at a swanky corp ball.

...both inside and out

So while Neon could wear her Decoy arm to the event, she'd be lacking her main hacking tool. While everyone was trying to think of options, I commented about attaching her hacker arm to a Drone and having it crawl around in the vents. Thing is, Freddie agreed with me and thought it was a great idea. Neon was aghast, but really couldn't think of a better plan at all, no matter how hard she protested (or how sooky she got. But since sooky Neon is also insanely cute, I do encourage it)

Freddie went to work and came up with a design almost immediately. He would get an EVO Proletariat done, equip it with Gecko Grip wheels and replace its service arm with Neon's arm. Easy. He then had to go and overcomplicate it by going through his drone dealer in Seattle who was going to charge him an arm and a leg (Pun unintended) for parts, assembly, labour and shipping it across the continent. In instead suggested that her go down to the nearest Hardware store and just buy one and the Gecko Grip mods because they’re stock, off the shelf items. Freddie relented and went with that idea instead. I swear, this team would never get anything done without me.

After all that, modifying the Prol to carry Neon's arm was too easy. Using the plans we'd stolen before, Freddie was able to enter the building as a maintenance man and slip the reworked Prol into the vents and allow it to slowly make its way up to the ballroom. He'd go back to retrieve it the next morning, and then Neon would be reunited with her arm and maybe stop sulking (As if).

On rolled the big night, which saw me, Freddie and Neon rock on up to the event with our fake SINs in play, pretending to be  high rollers. Dayglo was on reserve outside to astrally watch the building; she didn't have a Fake SIN good enough to get her in the door, and besides which, her giant pink mohawk would have not fit in with the general 'swanky corp event' feel of the place. And it was swanky as all hell. A string quartet provided ambient musing, while the ourderves were made from real food and accompanied by genuine champagne. More money had probably been spent on the food then the Seattle city council puts into health care in a year.

I was able to effortlessly blend in, falling aback on years of corporate education and BS to throw around the right words and act like I was the sort of person who did this kind of thing all the time. Freddie, on the other hand, was well out of his depth, especially given his amazing inability to lie. He fumbled something that he was a consultant with the Forestry Department who was working on managing Central Park's greenery with drones, figuring that it would be as boring as all hell and that nobody would be interested. Instead he became the center of attention as people in New York think that the park is a treasure. And Neon, for her part, was doing a great impression of a bored Corp brat.

EVO Prol. The drone of the working classes, replacing the
working classes

After enough mingling to make me look like I really belonged there I made my move on Atyon. I engaged in a nice casual bump, only to find that he didn't actually have his Commlink on him. Pulling back, I put this to Neon and Freddie, who immediately went to work. The Prol was now in place, and between the pair of them they were able to do a scan of the area to find the device in question. The problem was that it was being carried by Atyon's bodyguard, a chunky Ork by the name of Mustafar Murtah that the Johnson had warned us about. In all fairness, we'd overlooked him since this didn't look like a job where the bodyguard would be a problem. And besides, who has a bodyguard hold their commlink?

Adding to the problems, Freddie's efforts to get the drone into place had attracted some unwanted attention. The Carlyle had put at least one Dragonfly Drone into the ducting to prevent this sort of thing from happening. (Big old buildings like this have so many security holes that it’s impossible to bring them up to Sixth World standards without tearing the place down and starting over). Freddie engaged in a bit of quick thinking and used Neon's shock hand to fry the stupid thing before it could strike, which meant that while the immediate threat was over, somebody was going to notice the missing drone eventually.

Using the info we had, Neon put in a call to Atyon's commlink. As Mustafar retrieved it, I deliberately bumped him causing him to drop it. I picked it up, quickly swapped the real one ofr hte fake and had a data tap on the real one before they knew what was going on. Atyon answered the call (Neon faking a wrong number) and simply handed the fake Commlink back to his bodyguard, unaware that Neon was cloning the data from it as we went.

Once we were confident we had all we’d come for, the three of us left separately, rendezvousing with Dayglo outside. She admitted that she hadn't been able to do a thing, as somebody had put a Mana Barrier around the ballroom anyway. We contacted the Johnson (Who we now were pretty sure worked for Shiawase) and got our pay for the run, Dayglo admitted she'd felt a little useless, and used her share to cover the cost of the Prol and it's mods. Oh, and neon got her arm back, so she stopped sulking.

There was one unrelated matter, in that Freddie was invited to a drag race by Ripstar. I opted out (Drag races are boring. You go fast in a straight line. Big deal) but Freddie was keen to get involved and make his mark on the New York racing scene. He, Benny and Neon worked to improve the Bulldog's speed, pulling an all-nighter to get it up to spec. I helped by going out clubbing and dancing with cute dumb elf guys.

Hyudai Shin-Hung, the preferred ride of the snot-nosed
corp brat

He showed up on the day of the race, with Ripstar immediately saying he was incredibly brave for entering, especially given the rules. The race was being run by a jerk called Acer who also was one of the entrants. Under his rules, the second and third places got prize money paid out of the total prize pool. The winner got last place's car. Yeah, I see no way that this would be open to abuse.

The race itself was a gratuitous screw-job on all involved bar one. Ripstar's car kind of spluttered at the start, leaving her behind. One of the other drivers got wiped out at an intersection to boot. Acer came first, Freddie second and Ripstar and one other tied for third. So Acer decided that under their rules, he got both their cars. What a complete rip.