High on organic carrots

Just a short and sweet one here, actually; a simple job that went perfectly fine and according to plan. And, of course, might have long term implications that will come back to bite us, but that’ basically a given at this stage.

But we’ll get to that later. Things had been going pretty well for us. While Tyler had been out of town, we’d been chatting enough for me to make it clear that I’d like a second date (or more), and that I’d love to see more of his yacht. Likewise, he said that if I ever should need to get anywhere by boat, then he’d be the man to speak to. It’s something I like the idea of. A cruise on a luxury yacht with my rich arms dealer boyfriend... I could get used to that.

Shortcut, in the meantime, had been engaging in a little bit of creative work himself. He’d been setting up a series of spy cameras across the golf course so that he could watch the players and gather intel on them. This is the sort of personal project that is insanely useful for us runners, and I have no doubt that it’s going to yield us some very good results, especially given the amount of work we’ve gotten through the golf club already.

However, this job did not come from there, but rather my own fixer. Our Johnson was form the Draco Foundation, and arranged to meet us in a stupidly expensive upmarket Seattle Coffee shop that sold actual real coffee. No soy, no genetically modified, no nothing. Real coffee made form real beans. It was amazing. So me, Shortcut and Neon sat around slowly sipping our coffee while he explained the job.

The ideal home for the truly insane rich idiot

It was one of those ‘simple concept but with a twist’ issues. An eccentric, super-wealthy Financier by the name of Karl-Josef Fuchs had recently purchased a Renaissance era bust for his personal collection. What made it interesting to the Draco Foundation was that it contained a chunk of Orihalcum, which should have been impossible for something made five hundred years ago. The Foundation wanted it, so Johnson wanted us to steal it for him. And the twist in the job was that Fuchs lived entirely on a Zeppelin that slowly circled the region. He hadn’t left it in about twenty years, and it basically never touched the ground.

Obviously this represented an obstacle to our getting in there. Not that I was deterred, mind you. True, I was thinking of s running gunfight which ended with us skydiving off said airship and possibly it blowing up behind us, but hey. A girl can dream.

Getting back to it, the three of us went to work on the planning stage (The one day we really, really need Freddie and he’s not available, right? I mean, how parachuting out of his plane would be as a way to get in there...). The first issue was, of course, finding a way on to it. Some research told us that he’d equipped the Zeppelin with a safe soft nanite system, so it never needed any maintenance. However we also figured that he’d need to get regular food shipments and the like, given that it’d have relatively limited storage space. Furthermore, as he was a super-wealth eccentric, he’d probably demands shipments of only the finest real foods.

So we needed to find a caterer who did deliveries of quality food to an airship. That did massively narrow down the pool. What also helped was that we found out that Fuchs would be holding a dinner for a business partner that week, and as such, would be putting in a special order. Using that information, we narrowed it down to Ophidicus Logistics, a shipping company that had a long standing deal to deliver food and other supplies to him.

The next step was to do some recon. Ophidicus operated out of SeaTac airport, which gave us an easy way in. The three of us simply blended into the crowd, with Shortcut slipping away to get into their offices. A few distractions later and he was inside, slipping past their security with ease. After disabling a couple of workers, he stole one of their commlinks for Neon to datamine. He also pilfered a few uniforms, which would definitely come in handy later. One quick exit later and the three of us were out of there.

From what he’d recovered, we were able to find when this food delivery was taking place, which gave us the next stage of our plan. We were going to sneak back into the airport, disable and replace the crew and then fly on up to the ship. Once there, Shortcut would be delivered onto the ship inside one of the food trolleys. He would climb out, steal the bust and come back to be collected. Simple.

To aid in this venture, I pulled a few favours with Cwildred to get a container form her that could be used to remove the bust and transport it safely. It was a simplr padded affair that could be worn as a backpack and would shield the contents from most sensors and block RFIDs. Definitely useful for removing a priceless antique.

Finally, to cover our tracks, Neon did a quick malware bombing of SeaTac with Anarchist propaganda before leaving the stolen Commlink in a place where it would be found. While yes, this did heighten security on the ground, it also diverted attention away from there being a second, targeted stage to this attack. Rather, it was written off as bieng an anarchist prank.

Ares Venture. Some people even use them for legitimate
business

With all that in place, Me, Shortcut and Neon snuck back into the Ophidicus office, now in our stolen uniforms. We found the craft being used for the delivery, an Ares Venture VTOL, as it was being loaded. It was a simple enough matter to sneak past the ret-a-cops and disable the two crew loading the craft. Turned out that they were the same two that Shortcut had disabled last time he came through here. Sucks to be them.

Me and Neon got into the VTOL as the flight crew, with Shortcut hiding inside on of the trolleys. Fortunately for us, we didn’t really need to do any work, as most of it was being handled by a pre-programmed autopilot. Take off, fly to the airship, dock. Simple as that. En-route we decided to take advantage of the situation and sample the wares, with the three of us each having a fresh, crisp, entirely organically grown carrot. It was the best damned vegetable I have ever had.

Once there, however, we were met by Fuchs’ butler/bodyguard/cook/whatever else, who just happened to be loaded down with cyberware. He wanted us to make our delivery and get out of there fast, whereas Shortcut would need some time to get in, find the thing and steal it. Fortunately, I had planned for this occurrence. I span a story about how there was a malfunction in the VTOL, possibly caused by that dammed Anarchist attack. As such, we’d have to stay docked until the pilot debugged it. Otherwise who knew what could happen? While at first the butler was not too happy with me, when I mentioned that the outcomes could include our craft colliding with the Airship he quickly relented and let us wait.

A sample luxury item that only the ultra rich can afford

Meanwhile, Shortcut was doing his thing and sneaking through the Airship like nobody’s business. He reached the main dining room where the bust was located. Unfortunately, Fuchs was also there having a pre-dinner drink or six. Shortcut did a bit of quick thinking, using a Control Thoughts spell to get him to leave the room. That gave him the opening to get in there and steal the bust, stuffing it into the back before scampering back to the kitchen.

I was still there, talking at the unhappy Butler/whatever and keeping him nicely distracted. Shortcut took the opportunity to climb into the trolley, signalling me that he was done. I relayed this to Neon, who reported an all-clear on the non-existent malfunction. We got out of his face, with me wheeling the trolley back to the VTOL. The three of us were away and safely on the ground before anyone knew what had happened, and easily made it out of the airport.

We reported back to Mister Johnson, who was very happy to have the piece intact and with minimal disruption too. True, I didn’t get to jump out of a burning airship, but I wasn’t going to argue with getting paid.

There was one interesting turn-up form this day out, however. The man Fuchs was scheduled to have dinner with was Marcus Ferrera, a high-ranking Aztechnolgy suit. He also happened to be the man who had gotten Shortcut into Shadowrunning and bene giving him (and by extension the rest of us) some interesting jobs.