[Story]Shadowrunning.

[Dartz]

A big chunk of stuff from Myself, Robkelk and Henning.

Some slight changes to the Noah Scott piece to fit better.... Jet's been taking her time to build up information on Roland's home and routine, so it's at least 5 days to a week after to robbery again she asks for help.... and Jet asks for a hacker (Because that's what Cathy does, and it has to be her)

Dublin agreement refers to that Irish housing thing from 2014.... since there was no official name for it I could find

Trying to give Jet a distinctive style of working and skillset. It's usually easier for her to just break into somewhere and not get caught, than do it 'properly'.

Also trying to make Ford an interesting character on her own... to the point where She and Cathy will be the main showrunner in the second part of the story infiltrating a Zwilnik base to find the real meaty information, while Jet and the Kunstler sit aboard the Destiny Nova, waiting for a signal going slowly stir crazy with boredom....

And the Buster Corps is something I thought about for shits and giggles while figuring how Jet uses her mental hardware different to others, since Jet was part-inspired by Nono....

The next few days were dull.

Roland Foster was a dull subject, working mostly from home, spending time browsing through the Roughrider’s sales site.... or occasionally the Soviets. The pair took it in shifts to watch the apartment... over video feed of course... split up by their own daily routines. Ford still had to see to customers downstairs, Jet still had to keep an eye on the Engel’s training.... and keep her own edge in.

Three hours a day.

Adjust for operational concerns.

It was time to think. Time not to think. Time to focus on reaction and form. Time to allow herself to fill out into her body, to merge with the hardware and fuse it to herself. Time to wonder if.... had things been only a little different.... she wouldn’t be sitting in Roland’s place?

A matter of picking a different bottle, and the interventions of fate.

Jet could understand. Jet could sympathise. There was a big difference between understanding and forgiveness, however. Jet promised herself she’d make him pay for what he did to Jana. She threw a punch so hard, it nearly spun her around...

She stopped for a few moments to regain her centre. It’d been over a year since the war ended, and that was still giving her trouble.

Jet didn’t laugh at all that warsie talk about the Dark Side any more. Those months after SerenityCon had proven it was a very real danger. She’d seen others fall to it. She felt it inside herself, gnawing away.

Looking at the video feed of Roland, fixing a lightbulb. She knew what she could do She knew a hundred visceral ways to make sure he paid....

And knew she could still put the brakes on it hard when needed.

Jet finished her routine, and spent the next few hours idly doodling her thoughts, before handing over to Ford.

Ford Sierra took the time to balance her books, and take care of all that paperwork that always caught up on her. O2 use, gas releases into Sara’s atmosphere. Import, export. Biomass use and re-use. Waste extraction. Parts expected to come up from the ‘danelaw. Sure Jet’d suggested she use an Irish-registered shell corporation for it.... after the Dublin agreement the taxes were a great deal less than Oz.... but all the extra paperwork the Irish authorities demanded was a pain.

She glanced up every now and then... watching Foster go about his routine. She noted a few things down in the logbook, before noticing that she might aswell have been gundecking them. It was frustrating. It was weirdly fascinating.

How could someone have a daily routine, set down to the minute?

She really just wanted to see him break it. Or do something crazy. Not be an apparently mild mannered computer geek. He didn’t do anything weird... he just worked from home a lot, popping out for a morning run around the city, or to get something to eat.

She didn’t blame him for it. As condo’s in Fenspace went, his was a palace. Better than her cluster of shipping containers at any rate.

She noted down a video Foster was watching, flipping over the page because the last one had finished. What she found, were some pen doodles.

Something about Jet in the centre, and a lot of little things called ‘Buster Corps’.... What the heck was a Diebuster?

No wonder Jet had seemed bothered.

She made a mental note of it, and got back to watching Roland. Then started sketching up ideas for an avatar for Jet. Something suitably embarrassing, but not excessively painful. Her aunt’s old friend...perhaps. Who barely came up to Jet’s chest...

After a few days of watching and gathering....along with a few quick probes at Roland’s computer using some simple scripted tools, and some discussion over breakfast, they had their answer.

“The computer,” Jet said. “What we want’s on there,”

Sierra mumbled her assent through a mouthful of ersatz-bacon... made from flavoured tofu. “How we get it?”

“Usual way, probably,” the cyborg said.

Jet’s usual way was a good bit different from most troubleshooters.

“He’s not out of his apartment for long enough,” Sierra pointed out the flaw. “Maybe we could trick him into downloading something. I got a virus on my laptop that way once, which stole my mail accounts. He spends a lot of time on the Roughriders site... And you know they’d help bait him.”

“Maybe...” she started to tap her finger table.

“Hire a real hacker to write the virus,” Because that was way beyond Jet’s skill level. “Should be a total no problemo.”

“Still a lot of chance in that.”

“Chance in everything,” she smirked. “But it works enough that I know about it.... and I know as much about computers as you’d know about guns,”

Jet nodded, still thinking it over. Jet knew enough to know what was reasonably possible to do, if not how to do it. Most of Jet’s hacking tools were just that.... tools designed for inexpert use. designed by someone with far more skill. Plug them in, and they did the work.

“It’d also take a while,” she said. “But...” she stopped for a second. A light went on behind her eyes as Jet found a way to get back to her original plan. “If we could get someone who’s got field experience.... then wecan have the virus idea as a fallback if they can’t do it fast enough.

Sierra shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes, I think you just like B and E’”

Jet chuckled with a savage grin, It was fun. And she’d already planned her way in.

“But it seems fine. And if that don’t work...” Use more gun. They nab Roland, bring him in and have a friendly little chat. But that’s came with its own troubles.

Jet put the request in through headquarters, asking for a hacker who was able to get inside a building without getting noticed, and who could be out at Marsbase Sara within a day. Jet was almost certain that’d leave out who she really wanted, but they’d probably be busy anyway.

Jet also needed to keep this as quiet as possible. Any hint that Great Justice were investigating the link between Roland and the robbery, and the link would break. That meant going around Haruhi, while making sure Haruhi didn’t know you were going around her.

Like most troubleshooters, Jet had long since learned how the secret. The secret was known by those who knew it as ‘Haruhi Snacks’.

Just enough information to make her bite and go along with it. Not enough for her to want to get involved and blow the op. She’d pass it over to someone who could really do the work, and who’d understand that the issued request was far more complex.

Now it was just a matter of waiting, and seeing who they sent back.

-----------

The red phone rang. Noah hated when the red phone rang - four times out of five, someone he didn't want to talk to was on the other end. "Scott here."

"Noah, it's Mikuru."

It was Noah's lucky day - this was the other one time out of five - although he suspected his luck wouldn't last. "Hello, Mikuru. I assume this isn't a social call?"

"You assume correctly, unfortunately. A few days ago, a convoy that was being escorted by the Panzer Kunst Gruppe was robbed."

"I already know about that," interrupted Noah.

"You do??"

"Takami brought it to my attention, along with some emails she received because she's on the Cybernet.tech mailing list."

"This is that big?" Both of them knew just how good Takami was at spotting patterns, and at ignoring false matches. They also knew that she didn't like bothering her employer with matters that didn't directly affect his business... unless the matters were very important. "That helps explain why the Panzer Kunst Gruppe wanted a top troubleshooter. They didn't want to provide their reasons over an unsecured channel." Mikuru sighed - everyone knew that anything that made its way to Haruhi counted as "unsecured".

Noah echoed the sigh. "If Takami is right, then this is very big, and not something to discuss over a secure channel, either. Whichever troubleshooters get assigned to this will have to see them face-to-face. And before you ask, Katz and I aren't the right troubleshooters to solve it. A.C., maybe, if she's not busy ..."

"She is."

"... but none of the free OF-8s have the necessary skills. You want to put an OF-6 or OF-7 on this one. Have whoever you pick contact Takami; I'll have her send the files she thinks are relevant."

"Thanks, Noah. When are you going to stop by Arisia Station and say hello to everyone?"

Noah grimaced. He didn't want to tell Mikuru "when Hell freezes over", but he didn't want to lie to her, either... "I'm very busy here, sorry. In fact, I'm going to have to let you go now; my assistant just came in with more paperwork."

"All right. I'll talk to you later." And the connection went silent.

Great, he thought. I've pissed her off. And she's the only one in that group that I can tolerate enough to work with. It's never a good day when that damned phone rings.

--------

Cathy was lounging on the driver seat of the Stargazer, happily soaking up the sunlight flooding in through the transparent ceiling of the spacecraft.

Some strange ringing tone was disrupting her cat nap.

“Cathy, you have got a phone call...” Cortana said, sounding amused.“I think you should take it...”

Cathy yawned and rolled onto her other side on her seat of the Stargazer. “Just a few more minutes... its most likely not important... we never get important calls anymore.”

Now that the victory parties of the end of the war were long over, everything was getting very normal again....As normal as Fenspace got. Technically she was still on the active roster, in the same way that the HMS Victory was still perpetually commissioned. She still wasn’t expected to actually do anything.

Cortana sighed mentally, Cats were always difficult to rouse... especially when they were just taking a short nap. She cut power to Cathys ‘comfort blanket’ and chuckled. There were always ways to get her cat’s attention.

She changed to a nice and innocent sounding voice. “Shall I take the call and tell someone at the Headquarter of Operation Great Justice that you were just taking a nap and will call back later ?”

“Wait, what?” Cathy suddenly jumped up and had her eyes wide open... “No, wait, I....” She took a deep breath to calm down. Damn, that much adrenalin was nastywhen you just were on the edge of sleeping in.

“Activate the call... Here is Cathy, who is calling ?”

An unknown voice came out of the speaker of the radio.

“Good morning Cathy, this is Mr Johnson.” The voice was obviously artificial. “Identity is Imaginos.” Her blood chilled cold. She checked the digital signatures. She checked the encryptions. All matched.

The voice continued. “We have a mission that requires your skills. You are proceed to the coordinates transmitted as an attachment and meet there with a Mrs. Stingray. Do not talk with anyone else about the mission before you meet.”

Cathy looked suspiciously at the radio system, checking the digital signature and encryption of the incoming call a second time,. Nothing had changed since the first time. No one would use a signature like this for a joke...

“Understood... we are currently near L5 of Earth, we should get there within an hour. Cathy out...”

Cortana deactivated the radio and Cathy shook her head.

“Without the signature I would bet its a joke from some of the Senshis back on Venus. “ she said, leaning back onto into the driver’s seat.

“I have received a databurst of mission details.” Cortana told her. Cortana’d read it through in the half second it’d taken her to announce that “It looks like fun,”

Cathy sighed. “Anything is better than staying bored. Lets fire up the engine and get out of here... the next adventure is waiting... or at least some action of any kind, I don’t care.”

The engine field of the Stargazer peaked, the waved Skoda accelerating hard out into open space.

----

Despite the progress of the last year, Mars’ average population still hovered somewhere around 0 per square kilometre. Maybe in the future you’d have to call a tower and request landing coordinates, but the sky over Mars was still empty enough that you could just dive straight in, so long as you kept an eye on where you were going. Outside some controlled areas VFR was the rule.

The Stargazer had passed by Phobos and was now entering the upper atmosphere of the planet, it speed low enough to keeping from stressing the shield . After a few rough rough minutes they dropped subsonic. their vision clearing as the flames of reentry died back. The digitized map on the display already showed the icon of Marsbase Sara directly in front of them, only a few hundred kilometres away.

Cathy carefully merged her spacecraft into the traffic streams towards the base, still thinking about the mysterious call. She would have never thought that Operation Great Justice HQ would call people with such a ‘cloak and dagger’ style... or should she say ‘Runner and Johnson’?

They touched down at a public landing strip, before pulling into a pressurised hanger, alongside a bipedal mecha whith a big autocannon, and a big V engine on it’s back.

Cathy stepped out of her car into an atmosphere laced with engine fumes and oil vapours.

She stretched, exhaling a long breath. “Marsbase Sara, here we are.... Cortana, do you have already tracked down the place with the coordinates?”

“I am still looking for details Cathy.” the AI answered through a remote on her sleve “I have three slightly conflicting maps from different servers and I am not sure which is the right one.” The monitor highlighted the conflicts, pointing them out in a mix of Red, yellow and green. “But its definitely somewhere down in the Bunker levels, not in the new surface level dome. We can get a parking slot at the entrance, but you will have to go down yourself, looking for the exact place. The inertial tracking system in you suits phone should do fine.”

She thought about keeping her normal shirt and trousers, but this was maybe the start of an official mission, so it always paid to be prepared for trouble. She fetched her skinsuit from the backseat and reentered the car to get into it, then put shirt and trousers above the suit. Then she grabbed her gyrojet pistol from the glove compartment and put it into the holster.

That was a lesson she’d learned long ago

“Okay, make sure that no one borrows the Stargazer Cortana” she said with a big grin, “I will see what Miss. Stingray wants from us. If someone else from OGJ calls us, take the call and send me a text message if its important.”

She left the hanger and headed for the long ramp downwards into the bunker area. The coordinates appeared be on the second or third floor underground. A cyborg on the entrance looked over to her and nodded. Poor guy.... cool tail, though.

“First time here in Marsbase Sara?” he asked, eyeing Cathy carefully.

“Yes, first visit here... I will most likely stay a few hours, nothing more” Cathy replied with a smile.

The cyborg pointed at the pistol in the holster. “Expecting trouble ?”

“No... just a six shot Gyrojet pistol. enough for self defense.” Cathy explained.

The cyborg seemed to be amused. “Armor piercing shots for self defense? Don’t you think..:”

Cathy shook her head. “Be reasonable, if I used a normal gun I could just take a few stones and throw them, most likely your cleaner would be to heavily armored to even notice the normal bullets!”

The cyborg laughed and nodded again. “Yeah, good point... and welcome to Marsbase Sara.”

Cathy left the small checkpoint at the entrance behind and began to descent into the depths of the base, looking onto the coordinate display of the suits computer every few minutes.

The first thing that struck her about the base was the heat. The deeper she went, the hotter it got. The air was humid with ozone and the myriad smells of mechanics. Electric ozone mingled with oilsmoke and the unique scents of hundreds of individuals... a number of anthromorphs, and some huge guy riding in the back of a six-legged construction vehicle, which held girders in it’s manipulator arms.

It trundled forward, skirting around her. The driver flipped her the bird

One of those Avatar walkers stomped passed, waving a friendly hi. She smiled back at the pilot.

Finally she was standing in front of a small bar three levels below the surface.

“Okay, here should it be... The Heavy Gear... strange name for a bar...lets see Mrs Stingray, what you have to offer” she murmured and entered the bar.

There were several round tables and a bar, well populated by a mixture of pilots in flight gear, one or two cyborgs, a few mechanics clustered in the corning bragging about who had the best colour electoos

The bar was sparcely lighted and some invisible speakers were playing some techno music mix from a neon jukebox. A roaring laugh rose up from the midst of the mechanics.... it didn’t seem to concern her, so she

Cathy sauntered over to the counter to order herself a cheap drink, then headed towards one of the corners of the bar, sitting down at an empty table. She checked her navigator. ‘Okay, that’s it... down to the meter if these coordinates are exact’ Cathy thought and leaned back, slowly looking through the bar.

‘I am already looking forward to be out of here again’ she whispered to herself.

She was on her second drink when she saw another obvious mechanic walk in. If the overalls under her jacket hadn’t given it away, she could smell the engine oil and.... gunsmoke. She could see the tell-tale bulge of a handgun holster under her coat, just to the side of her bust. Biomod?, Cathy wondered.

She had dusky skin, and darker hair with bright brown eyes that scanned the room, specifically noting her presence before deliberately not paying her any attention. A flash of light glinted off metal fingers on her right hand... a cyber too?

Cathy watched her order a drink... a bottle of Half Acre ale, and nurse it for a few moments before inconspicuously making her way over to her table.

“Seat’s free?” the mechanic asked, in a strong American accident.

“Ja,” Cathy nodded. The woman sat down, placing the bottle on the table. Some suds crawled over the bottle’s mouth. “Miss Stingray?” Cathy presumed

“She’s outside waiting,” the woman told her. “Call me Misty,” she said pleasantly. “I’m Stingrays partner.” In both senses of the word.

This really was getting Cyberpunk 2020.

“Can we go now?”

“After we have a beer.” Misty assured her, leaning forward onto the table “So, tell me about yourself Cathy,”

Cathy shrank back a little. This was strange. Where they just being careful? “I run a tour business out of my fencraft with Cortana, the AI,” she said. “I spent the war with the Senshi Armed Milicia.”

“Specialising in...?”

“Communications, computers.” Cathy was being careful.

“Great. That’s perfect.” she beamed, taking a large slug from her bottle.

The catgirl narrowed her eyes.

“Is there a point to this?”

“It’s a sin to waste expensive beer, especially when you pay to import it specially.”

Cathy sighed. She would get one of those PC’s.

It took only a few minutes for them to finish up, filled by small-talk mostly. Misty was from Chicago, was one of the early Fen, and had lost her arm in an accident. And her leg. And her hearing. Cathy’d only lost her manhood...

Misty seemed especially interested in autobahns.... she claimed to have accrued enough speeding tickets to have a State warrant for her arrest active. And that was one thing the Kandor treaty didn’t pardon.

“So, let’s go,” Misty finally said, standing up.

Cathy bit back on her annoyance, following her out of the front door, then around into the darkness of the side alley. She double checked her Gyrojet, feeling just that little bit uneasy. She glanced back to the light of the main concourse.... wondering if she could make a run for it.

She smelled lilac, and became aware of something very heavy lurking in the shadows. Somebody tall and bulky was standing beside her.

She yelped and sprang back. The armour took one heavy step forward, coming half into the light. Blue and white sparks reflected off the edges, paint slightly pearlescent and glinting in the light.

“I’m Stingray,” it said in a woman’s voice, slightly husky but nowhere near as threatening as the faceless helmet staring at her was.

“Cathy,” she managed to get out.

“Told you we should’ve done this in the ladies room,” Misty whispered.

Stingray seemed to glare at her for a second... at least, if Cathy had judged her body language right she was glaring. But, it was strangely playful...

“I need you for a job.” Stingray said, still sounding calm.

Cathy drew herself up to her full height, tail curling defensively up behind her. “I’m from Operation Great Justice. Someone from the Panzer Kunst Gruppe called for assistance, and I was told to meet you here.”

Stingray nodded. “I need to know how good you are. Assuming you had physical access to a computer, how long would it take you to crack it, and set it up so that it would be possible to any information on the harddisk from a remote source”

Cathy thought, “With a connection to Cortana.... an AI“ she did some quick Maths in her head, drawing on her experience. “Five to ten minutes.”

Misty smiled at her.

“Right so,” Stingray continued in a strange accent Cathy knew wasn’t American... nor Australian, or even British, but somehow a little of all three. It was weird. “How good are you in the field, at getting in and out a places without being seen or drawing any attention to yourself?

“’I have done it before,” Cathy said, now a little worried. “A few times.”

“Sounds perfect,” The cyber concluded.

“Yepperoni,” Misty concluded.

The cyber pulled something from a pouch on her hip with one armoured hand, while fumbling with what appeared to be a helmet. With a hiss of escaping gas, the visor lifted up, revealing a smiling woman’s face with cheery blue eyes framed by unnaturally red hair. It matched the picture on the Great Justice warrant card offered to her, along with an offer of a handshake.

“Jet Jaguar. Panzer Kunst Gruppe troubleshooter. This is my partner, Ford Sierra,”

“In all meanings of the word,” Ford added, nudging up beside the cyber. “I do things Jet can’t. Jet does things I can’t.”

Cathy went wideeyed for a moment, both at the warrant card, just how big Jet was in her armour, how strong her grip was and how cold the armour was.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Back to the garage to plan,” Ford told her.

-----

"Nothing on passive sensors," Mari reported, placing the binoculars on the console in front of her. The starfield was as unchanging as ever.

"Oh *do* grow up, " Desmond harrumphed, the elderly hologram turning away, before disappearing altogether.

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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?