Farmageddon

So remember what I was saying about Captain Cancer relying a lot on technological gear rather than his own magic? Yeah, well there’s times when he really gets carried away with that. And then there’s other times when he goes so decidedly off-mission that I wonder why I even put up with him. Don’t get me wrong, this time did actually work out well for us, but at the same time also made our newest job a lot more complicated for the sake of it.

Having recovered from nearly killing himself on the last job, he was ready to go for this newest one. Our contact in this case was a doctor working in the Ork Underground who had a distinct beef with Aztechnology (But then, who doesn’t?). He also was rather creepy, but that was by the by. We met in his office in the underground. Oh, and in the name of making things nice and awkward, Captain Cancer insisted on wearing a physical mask spell to make him look like an Ork, which is a massive no-no and a good way to get yourself killed if caught. Or, you know, I could have killed him myself.

Anyway, having recovered from the embarrassment of Captain Cancer’s actions, Doctor Johnson outlined his pitch. Between damage done by dragons and then collateral from dragon-killing Bioweapons, Aztechnology had suffered massive crop failures in the last few years Added to that, they had lost the farmlands themselves and they were now either burned to a crisp or saturated with residual unspeakableness. In turn, they were now reliant on imports from Horizon and the PCC to save the Atzlan population form starvation, a move they were not happy about at all.

To counter this problem, Aztechnology had been investing heavily into bio-engineered crops and the like, which is where we came in. A research farm owned by Astrafarm had recently made some key breakthroughs in engineering more resistant crops that would be abler to overcome this problem. While not publicly admitted, Astrafarm is a subsidiary of Aztechnology, albeit through several layers of ownership. Much of the work had come from one Ruben Jorge Diaz, a researcher ‘borrowed’ from Gentique, which happened to be another Aztechnology subsidiary. The farm was located on Cascade Ork territory, which made it rather nicely concealed from prying eyes, giving the Azzies the secrecy to work on their project without disruption. On the upside for us, it alos meant that the Azzies would not be able to call in a HRT, giving us the time to do what we had to and be as destructive as we killed.

Doctor Creep-Ork had found out about this and wanted to kill the project. Our job was to get to the farm, destroy the data, destroy any prototype crops they had and take out Mister Jorge Diaz so that he couldn’t replicate the work. Pretty simple stuff. We agreed to the job, with him giving us a substantial amount up-front so we could buy gear and make arrangements for the trip.

The first issue was, of course, getting there. International border crossings are always an issue, especially when it involves going deep into the territory of a people who are double-disenfranchised and see smuggling as their main industry. Since it was obstinately Salish territory, Wraith could have probably just walked in the front door and talked our way in with no questions but... He wasn’t here. So we had to make other arrangements. Fortunately, that wasn’t too hard. Offroad, a Dwarf Rigger and smuggler who we had bailed out once before owed us a favour was more then happy to get us there. After all, it was the sort of thing he did all the time. So that solved that problem.

And then along came Captain Cancer to create some more. He’d gotten this idea that rather than geeking the target we could extract him and try to sell him to the highest bidder (Figuring that Horizon would love to get the inside scoop on Aztechnology agritech. I somehow allowed myself to get talked into this, but only on the priviso that Captain Cancer was willing to do all the work needed to make this extraction happen. Sure enough, he did, spending a fortune of drugs, a biomonitor bodybag and one of those Second Skin adaptive suits. The sight of him in which made me want to rip my own cybereyes out.

Offroad's Truck is a zillion or so times bigger then he is

With that horrible image forever scarred into my consciousness we met up with Offroad and set out. Most of the trip was done inside his truck’s smuggling compartment, which was only a minor living hell. Neon managed to sleep through the whole thing so I used her as a pillow. Hey, you use what you can get. After we were over the border we were able to transfer back to the cabin, which meant putting up with Offroad’s long stories about driving the open roads and the like. Which, while dull, were still better than being stuck in a tiny little box for hours on end.

We’d come up with the vaguest outline of a plan along the way, but we still had the issue of getting Jorge Diaz out. In the end, Captain Cancer and I reached a compromise of sorts; we would extract him if we could, but If such was not possible, we would geek him.

The last stage of the trek there was on foot; it wasn’t too bad as the forests gave us plenty of cover to get there without being spotted. Not that it would have mattered, given that the security on the farm itself was shockingly light. A wire fence, some cameras and a few men on the ground was about it. Those men, by the way, were local boys who were armed with pistols and very little else. The biggest apparent threat was a quartet of massive harvester drones that were working the fields, and that was simply because they could run us over.

Captain Cancer did a bit of astral recon that told us a bit more about the situation, The good news was that mot of the guards had little to no cyberwear and that none of them were Awakened. The bad news was that there were a pair of heavily cybered-up agents inside the main building, as well as several distinctly non-human forms moving around in the fields. Since we needed to get into the main building anyway, that could be a problem.

Harvester Drones. Big, slow, near indestructible and a great
way to run stuff over

We managed to get into the Grounds with no problems (Well, save for me and Neon being scarred for life by the sight of Captain Cancer in a skin-tight suit) whereupon I came up with an idea to buy us some time and cover. I got Neon to hack into one of the harvester drones and take over its navigation controls, sending it on a random course across the fields while locking out its remote controls. So while there were technicians scrambling out to try and shut it down or get it under control and others simply running for their lives, we were able to slip into the main building.

Inside were the two cybered-up goons that our Astral Recon had discovered earlier. We got the drop on them, with both going down fast to a grenade from my rifle. Stepping over them we got into the main lab where the target was and quickly subdued him. Captain Cancer drugged him and stuffed him into a biomoinitor body bag while Neon went to work on their system. While she was destroying the data, she found that they’d gone live with a test of the crops, and had them growing on one of the fields on-site. The good news is that I had prepared for that possibility.

A Cerberus Hound, featuring three heads, acidic drool
and a taste for metahuman flesh

The bad news was that they had a pair of Cerberus Hounds on-site that rushed into the facility at me. I got one of them, but the other one hit me with some sort of fear magic that threw me off. I very nearly was covered in acidic doggy slobber before I was able to recover and, with Captain Cancer’s help, take it down. With that obstacle dealt with and Neon having burned the data (and burned their system just to be sure) we got the hell out of there. I sent Captain Cancer and Neon off into the woods with the body bag while I made one last stop. I’d bought a bunch of incendiary grenades for just this eventuality, and spent a few moments launching them into the fields to torch the experimental crop.

We met Offroad and made it back to Seattle without further incident. Of course, that also left us with the issue of what to do with Jorge Diaz. We stashed him in a safe house before I went to meet Doc Creep. We explained that we had dragged him off into the woods to kill him in order to ensure that he was dead and make it hard for Aztechnology to even find the body, and presented some faked up footage to that effect. He seemed to buy it, and was happy with our work, handing over the rest of our payment.

After a bit of searching around, I managed to make contact with a Horizon Johnson who was rather interested in taking the good doctor off our hands. I arranged a meeting over coffee and they basically offered us as much again as we got for the job, which I accepted. Except when the Horizon rep showed up at the safehouse to collect them, Captain Cancer got suddenly paranoid, even to the point of getting the coffer the Horizon Rep handed him tested. What the hell, man?

But we did make a lot of Yens off the sale. Well, except for Captain Cancer, who between the two jobs ended up spending more on his gadgets and drugs then he made. Well planned.