So Freddie’s still on the shelf
thanks to a combination of extensive cybersurgery (new reaction enhancers and
an updated control rig) and a desire to spend even more time tuning up his van.
I thought this left just me and Neon active on the team with Abbey doing her
usually lurking and not being noticed thing, but, well it turned out I was
wrong, unfortunately.
Our latest cruel mockery of a job
began when Captain Cancer (And isn’t that a bad enough start already?) got a
call. The person on the other end didn’t identify themselves, but it was clear
that they were in pain just form their voice. They said that they were a Runner
and that they had been double-crossed by their Johnson, and that they needed help.
They offered to pay us what they would have been paid by the Johnson.
Captain Cancer agreed to help this
sight unseen and as yet unidentified person out, and then called up me and
Neon. As wary as I was that this would turn out to be another (!) freebie, I
agreed to help on the grounds that a) helping out another runner can’t hurt our
rep (Or in my case, help me turn it around form that whole ‘saving Matrix
Hitler’ thing) and b) sticking it to a Johnson who tried to stiff a runner is
always fun. Me and Neon grabbed our bikes (Yes Neon, you have a bike, remember?
The thing you used to ride around on before you moved into Freddie’s van) and
met up with Captain Cancer to figure out what we were going to do.
 |
| This is the sort of place you hide when you really don't want to be found. Mostly because no sane man would go there |
The fragger in question was hiding
out in a derelict factory deep in Redmond, but we didn’t really have a good
idea of where. Once we got on-site I took charge of the situation and
immediately came up with a plan. I would recce the site on foot, while Captain
Cancer was going to go astral to find the guy. Neon would hang back with CC’s
body while keeping an eye open for Matrix activity, just in case Johnson had
sent somebody to finish him off.
Good news was that Captain Cancer
was able to locate him, even if he was hiding in the bottom level of the most
remote building. The bad news is that it was Snig the Axe. Ah frag. Snig
explained that he (and Slackintosh) had done a job for this Johnson but, when
he’d met to get his pay, the Johnson’s bodyguard had shot him instead. Snig had
gotten away and crashed down here, while he looked for a way out. He also had
no idea where Slackintosh was, but he also didn’t really care. Which, given
that it’s Slack, is entirely fair.
Captain Cancer manifested and used
magic to stabilise Snig and try to get him able to move if nothing else. This
was good, as Neon had picked up a half dozen people moving on the factory,
likely headed after Snig. And while he is a jerk, if Snig died we wouldn’t get
paid. They’d split up into two three-man groups, with one of them near me and
the other getting close to Snig.
I was able to spot the first and
identify them. The good news was that they weren’t a corp hit team or the like.
The bad was that they were a bunch of Halloweeners, which meant that they were
violent idiot clowns who kill people and set them on fire for laughs. So whole
yes, they weren’t as armed or tactically astute as a hit team would be, they
also would likely do stupid things for the sake of it and not back off form a
bad situation.
 |
| Snig may be a jerk, but he does have a cool bike |
I was drawing a bead on the first threesome
when they found Snig’s bike. Now for all that I have to say about Snig (and I
do have a lot) his choice of rife, a Yamaha Nodachi combat bike, is pretty
impressive. So when one of the Halloweenies decided that they were going to
torch it with a Motolov for the sake of it, I had to take action, I jumped the
guy and smashed the Molotov into his face, leaving him to run around while
self-immolating. The other two went down fast thanks to my skills and the fact
that they couldn’t shoot for crap.
Meanwhile, the other three were
closing on Snig. Captain Cancer managed to distract them with an illusion spell
of Snig running and shouting, while also using a Physical Mask to disguise Snig
as a hobo (jokes aside). So rather than torch him they instead chased after
illusionary Snig, and ran straight into an ambush by yours truly. A couple of
gas grenades knocked them out before they knew what was going on. We stripped
them of their weapons and com-links and left them zip-tied in the middle of the
wasteland for them to figure out their own next move.
 |
| Snig's safehouse is as charming and attractive as he is |
Snig was now stabilised enough to
ride (or at least try to and not admit how much pain he was in) and lead us
back to his own safehouse under an abandoned gas station. In there he explained
the full situation to us. Snig and Slack had done a job for the Jonson and come
back to him to get their pay. He had out and called Snig scum to his face (No
comment) and all but laughed at him about how he didn’t need to pay them and
then had his bodyguard shoot Snig. He’d managed to get away (Slack being the
paranoid jackarse that she is wasn’t even at the meet) leading to him being in
the situation he was.
We put out a few feelers to our own
people to try to find out who this idiot was and what was going on. It came
back that he was John Bartlett, an up-and-comer at Aztechnology who had just
transferred into the Seattle Division. This was interesting in and of itself
simply because it went contrary to the usual Azzie approach; they know that
Runners hate them, so they actually make an effort at playing nice before
screwing you over.
Using this info, we put info out
through Snig’s fixer (Now there is a very brave man) that we were interested in
working for him and doing violent, dirty jobs. This got him interested, and so
we arranged a meet in the same derelict factory that we’d rescued Snig from. Of
course, we weren’t going to actually be there to get shot at; rather, Captain
Cancer and I would be lurking above to take him and his bodyguard out, while
Neon cut of their comms. The plan was not to kill them but rather disable them
so we could a) question Bartlett and find out why he screwed over Snig and b)
get our money from him.
But to make it work, we needed
something that could act as bait. After all, if Bartlett turned up to a meeting
with nobody there he would know it was a trap and get the hell out. Not wanting
to put any of us into the firing line, I came up with a brilliant plan. We get
one of Captain Cancer’s old suits and put it on Thinman. Neon gave us a huge
‘what the hell’ in reply, but we went ahead and did it anyway.
We also needed to talk Snig down
from joining us, on the grounds that hr was still half-dead and Recovering from
being gutshot. Snig wasn’t happy about this, but then, is he ever?
 |
| Bartlett was evil, greedy and stupid. You can tell that was going to work out well for him |
The first part of the trap worked
perfectly. Bartlett rocked up in his big, expensive luxury sports sedan to the
meeting with his bodyguard. The pair of them headed over to Thinman, not
realising what was going on until it was too late. I opened up first, dumping a
gas grenade on both of them. Bartlett went down fast. His bodyguard... Didn’t.
Not going to lie, that fragger was tough. In the end, it took two bursts of
assault rifle fire, a pile of stick and shock and a couple of manabolts before
he actually went down. If we hadn’t been in a rush to evacuate the site, I’d
have loved to see what was making him tick. Or, you know, see if any of it was
re-sellable.
Also, amazingly enough, Thinman
didn’t explode.
We rendered Bartlett to a warehouse
for questioning. Despite the fact that he was alone, in the middle of the
Barrens and being held by a trio of angry Runners, he was convinced that he was
in control of the situation. My nearly but not quite shooting him in the head
did disabuse him of some of those notions. Combined with an influence spell
from Captain Cancer, he was more than ready to spill the beans. In short, he’d
never intended to pay Snig. He simply saw all runners as being greedy
expendable assets, and it was more prudent for him to simply have them killed
and pocket his operational budget for himself.
So in short, he was an utter
hoop-hat dreckhead. He did pay Snig (and us) off, though, and we had pretty
much made it clear that we would put his name and photo around every Runner we
knew and ensure that he never worked in Seattle again, But we also agreed to
let him go, part because we had burned him so bad and part because of the
perverse glee that would come from seeing him try to extract himself from the
Barrens and get back to his safe little corp enclave home.
And then Snig kicked down the door
and killed Barrtlett with his axe. That works too.
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