GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 34: Riding Off Into the Moonset

Characters:

Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Buntaro "Flex" Tanaka - Replacement Solo

Shutdown

Flex continued brawling with the surviving Molecule Smasher, slowly wearing away at the armour on its one remaining arm, while The Peacock landed an aimed shot to the sensors on the "skull" only for the bullet to ricochet harmlessly off of the protective diamond lenses.  Jar hefted the HMG he'd cut off the deceased Smasher and the ensuing wild spray caught the mechanical monster in the torso a few times with high-caliber rounds that seemed able to wound, but not to kill.

Paxos hacked into Smasher's systems and turned off the "super sandevistan" on its spine before it could ramp up to full heat, succeeding at the hack the exact moment that a pair of cooling vents opened on its back.  Noticing the electronic threat, Smasher turned and a panel fell away from its chest as it fired an incendiary grenade at the back of the cabin; the entire crew but Flex were set aflame, and while Jar was able to ignore it with his armoured skin, Paxos and The Peacock dropped and started rolling.

Despite the sandevistan being shut down, it was clear that Smasher's reaction time was still increasing, as it effortlessly batted away the next pair of strikes from Flex, then forced him back with a devastating right hook that he barely managed to parry in time.  Though Jar was fine, the HMG didn't like being on fire and jammed, but after a quick smack it was back to firing full-auto while making some concerning noises.  With another quick hack from Paxos to shut down one of Smasher's legs, the sustained fire was enough to drive him down to the floor, sparking.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 33: Beginning of the End

Characters:

Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Buntaro "Flex" Tanaka - Replacement Solo

Final Preparations

Before anyone else could board, Jar popped open a locked maintenance hatch in the ceiling of the cargo hatch, and took a look around the cabin; the hatch came out in the kitchen, which looked out into the main seating area where a meeting table took up half the length, but there were too many cameras in for Paxos to deal with them all at once, so he retreated back to the hatch and sat tight with everyone else.  Within twenty minutes, they heard a loud bang outside and the main hatch to the outside slid open to reveal a spiderlike luggage drone sliding up a ramp that had mated to the outside of the hull.

Paxos quickly hacked it to ignore them, and it dutifully placed Yorinobu's things, including two refrigerated crates which were connected to the kitchen above via dumbwaiter.  As the drone worked, the ship shook as the passenger gondola attached to the cabin above them and crew began to board.  The luggage drone retreated to the ramp and the exterior hatch slid shut, and soon enough the crew were pressed down into the hard metal floor as a dull roar reverberated through the ship from the engines and they took flight.

Within a few minutes they were out of the atmosphere and into zero-g.  Jar couldn't handle being in space very well and lost his lunch, and Flex was looking a little green, but Paxos and The Peacock were unbothered.  After doing their best to clean up the floating vomit, the crew settled in and waited for food to start moving up the dumbwaiter.  The plan was for Flex to burst through the door to the meeting room with his mantis blades out while everyone was busy eating their fancy bento boxes (or whatever rich people ate on a private suborbital).

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 32: One Last Job

Characters:

Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Buntaro "Flex" Tanaka - Replacement Solo

The Calm Before The Storm

The crew jumped out of the traincar as the doors were closing, and The Peacock took a look at the assailant Flex had decapitated.  They had a burner agent, but they had left it connected to their implanted one, an obvious security breach which revealed that they were Militech after all.  They took a few more steps to the severed head and recognized it as one of the goons they'd seen in the building behind the Tyger Claws base they'd just raided in the last mission.  The agent seemed to have a wealth of information on the crew's activities, but they heard people walking up on to the train platform and got away from the scene before somebody called the cops.

As they left the station, they noticed there were none of the usual transit cops, which combined with the empty station implied that Militech had paid them off.  not that it mattered; their assailants were dead, and at some point the corp would right this whole op off.  After the incident on the NCART, they all splurged on some taxis ($60!) to get the rest of the way home.  Close to a month passed before their next job.  The Peacock spent time with their sisters, and started making preparations for leaving the city with their nomad family.

Paxos spent a week filling out (forged) documents for her upcoming move to Peru, but unfortunately the weak and fragmented administration she was hoping to take advantage of lost her paperwork in the mail.  Flex continued just hanging out around the city, while Jar ran his ripperdoc business to kill time.  Some news broke during their time off: Militech was cleared of all accusations of illegal human cloning when no clones could be found, and Jackie Wu was released from house arrest.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 31: Turned Tables

Characters:

Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Smoke Cloud

After a quick bribe tossed to the local PD, the crew spent two days arranging to purchase some gear on the black market.  At the meet in empty lot in Japantown, the seller showed up in a van with a small crew.  Eddies and a briefcase full of armour-piercing ammo and flashbangs changed hands, but as the seller turned to leave, a sniper took him down with a round to the back.  The rest of his group piled into the van and left the crew on their own, in a gravel lot with precious little cover save a light rain, their own car over 50m away.

The Peacock could tell where the shot had come from, and turned around to see the glint of a sniper's scope on the rooftop of a vocational school across the minor street behind them.  They quickly pulled a smoke grenade from their armour's tactical pockets and dropped it at their feet, concealing the entire crew.  Paxos ran a ping, and with that, The Peacock took aim at the sniper through the smoke, but unfortunately the shot went wide.

The sniper dropped down and crawled out of sight, but the crew were a bit pre-occupied by fully-automatic fire coming in from the direction of their car.  Fortunately, the smoke hid them, and of the torrent of bullets, only a single shot hit Paxos in the thigh, largely stopped by her armour.  The crew ran south, abandoning the car and leaving the smoke and an outbuilding between themselves and their assailants, then jumped two stories down onto a pile of garbage in an alley.  Other than Jar landing face-first, nobody was harmed, and they dusted themselves off and escaped.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 30: A Specter Is Haunting Northside

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Explosive Finale

As Specter bounded up the stairs, the majority of the gunfire missed due to his chameleon skin, and the bullets that did connect merely bounced harmlessly off of his metalgear armour.  He got a good look at the person he figured must be Sota Nagasawa, who was holding a fancy tech rifle.  His hair was lime green, and his black and gold biker gear had a katana at the hip.  He appeared otherwise unarmoured, and stood beside the rifleman at the top of the stairs and behind four other Tyger Claws with big pistols.  Specter returned fire, turning all four of the goons into red mist and hosing down Sota as well.

Unfortunately, he had subdermal armour and took only light damage, though his torso was a mess of shattered metal and synskin.  Sota dropped his rifle and his katana flew into his hand as he lunged down the stairs, swinging wide and missing Specter's midsection.  The rifleman fired a burst and in a stroke of phenomenal luck, hit Specter in the head five times.  His heavy armourjack helmet deflected most of the bullets harmlessly, but one struck in the one gap between armour plates and penetrated into his brain... killing him instantly.

As he fell, Specter's arm acted on reflex and his internal grenade launcher activated and fired into the ceiling.  A concussive blastwave full of shrapnel blew into Sato and the gunman, though they both survived, and just as the coast looked clear, a chunk of concrete the size of a table broke free from the ceiling and fell onto Specter's corpse, crushing all but his right hand into chunky salsa.  The others heard his communicator go dead, but figured it had probably just been damaged in the explosion.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 29: One Man Army

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Silent Assassin

The lead ganger opened the door, and was shocked when Specter greeted him with a flurry of cybernetic fists to the gut, that he somehow managed to block.  The Peacock, meanwhile, snuck out a side door and got the enemy netrunner in the neck with a taser dart, leaving them spasming on the floor.  Paxos fried one through the walls with a short circuit, and Jar punched the goon Specter had been working in the groin, the shock of which knocked him straight out with a short yelp.  Specter ran up to the last gangoon still on his feet and took him out with a blow to the solar plexus that sent him stumbling past The Peacock.  

The crew teamed up to stomp the 'runner until they were out of commission (with Jar, of all people, dealing the final blow), then dragged their defeated foes into the "body pile" in the excavation room and got back to digging.  Specter took a break, exhausted from the strain of his sandy and the chameleon skin, while Paxos kept watch through the walls with her Ping soft.  After another half-hour, their shovelling was rewarded with the satisfying *thunk* of metal-on-metal, and Jar got out the plasma cutter to break into the vault itself.

While he was cutting, another ganger came into Paxos' x-ray vision at the base of the stairs, and, though muffled through the doors, his voice was loud enough that they got the gist: he'd brought a bunch of the initiates to help move bodies.  The leader moved into the parking garage and asked where everyone was, in a shout, and where the lights were.  With some quick hacking into the dead netrunner and the shouting ganger's agents, she was able to send a message that appeared to be from the 'runner saying that they didn't want any kids getting in the way.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 28: Garage Door Opener

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Waiting For Grout To Dry

The crew debated over what to do next for a while until they realized that the gunfire had stopped.  The Peacock could hear what sounded like casual chatter from upstairs, suggesting the Tyger Claws had won, and Specter was sent up to take a look.  Through eavesdropping, he learned that they were calling Sota in early, so security would be ramping up tomorrow, then headed back down the stairs to regroup.  The crew decided to climb back out the hole in the cells, but as The Peacock went they knocked loose some concrete chunks which were followed by a pile of soil: if anyone looked in the cells in the next few days, it'd be obvious that something had been inside the basement.

On their way back to the car, they rounded a corner directly into the results of a firefight.  A Trauma Team medic was going from body to body, checking for paying clients and then loading them into the gleaming white AV, while a pair of armed guards stood with assault rifles at the ready.  When they saw the crew, they raised them, and one ordered them to freeze, but the other lowered his rifle whispered "hey, that's the Jar!  Better leave these guys alone".  The medic finished loading the last of the wounded then banged his fist twice on the side of the hull; at that, the guards loaded up and the AV sped off towards the nearest hospital.

Paxos looked over those the four who were left: two of them looked to be small-time gang members judging by their lime green bandanas, while the other two seemed to have been their victims.  They hadn't been harmless, though; judging by the wounds on the gangers, one of the victims had pulled a gun and been a good enough shot to take them down with her.  Paxos asked for the first-aid kit and stopped the bleeding of the non-gang members, and started patching one up as best she could.  Before she could start tending to the other, The Peacock got bored and said they were leaving with the car.  Her desire to help outweighed by her desire to not take transit, Paxos went along.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 27: But He's Not Just Any Man

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

He's Skeleton Man

The chrome skeleton just stood there, emitting a "growling" sound of many different tones layered on top of each other.  After a brief mute conference on the cell phones in their skulls, the crew decided to back away slowly and take the long way to the bus stop, and it did not pursue.  On the way, Jar opined that it was probably heavily resistant to bullets, what with being a skeleton and all.

The next day, they got down to planning the specifics of the digging, vault-cracking, and powering the computers, eventually settling on using expansive demolition grout for the dig, followed by shoveling.  Their Militech plans suggested the door had an electronic lock, but without power, they couldn't spoof it, and digging down to find the external power lines was just going to add more time, so they elected to get a plasma torch.  As for power, a portable battery bank should get the computers going long enough to get the files they were after.

After a shopping trip to pick up their "construction equipment", the crew headed back to the VRcade so Jar could rig the sound system to act as a distraction by playing sounds of a firefight.  Meanwhile, The Peacock used the scope built into their cybereyes to take a closer look at the hotel room where they'd spotted the Militech team earlier.  There were only two people there today, and judging by the supplies, they were loading up to take the precinct by force sometime soon.  Later, Sarah, member of the Animals and Specter's ex, showed up again, slowly walking down the street smoking a cigarette.  She was a lot more noticeable, but stealth wasn't really the Animals' style.  

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 26: Many People Think He's Just a Regular Man

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Under New Management

Jar picked up a black market grenade launcher implant plus a dozen or so grenades for Specter, who went and got it installed at Chromedome's; it was an extensive surgery and he was out for a week.  Meanwhile, the rest of the crew continued their planning.  They knew the pre-crash data vault was somewhere under the abandoned Offshore Dr NCPD station that the Tyger Claws had taken over, but not where exactly.  According to the dossier, it was hooked up to the old city grid, which meant they'd have to bring in an external supply to run it, and it likely had nerve gas defense measures, though hopefully they'd have decayed in the decades since the crash.

To deal with the location problem, they went to the Watson district administrative building in Little China to hopefully find someone from the records department who'd give them survey data.  Jar hit on one of the clerks, but they weren't receptive ("Maybe if he wasn't wearing the alligator-skin shoes"), but between Paxos and The Peacock, they got the data they were after.  It looked like the ground under the police station was rubble with some loose soil mixed in, so it'd be quite a bit of work to get down to the vault, which had shown up in the survey but was ignored in the name of expediency.

Some quick comparisons to their recollections of the inside of a pre-fab NCPD precinct suggested the vault was under the armory, which meant it wasn't too far from the sewers, but those came with their own problems.  The city government had installed kill drones and occasionally unleashed nerve gas to kill the homeless "rats" that lived there.  Either way, when it came to digging through the concrete, they had a couple options.  Some heavy tools like a rock saw or jackhammer would be faster, but loud, or they could go with some expansive demolition foam which would take a long time but be much quieter.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 25: Ambush!

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Surprise Attack

Specter triggered his Sandy and looked around for whoever had pointed the laser sight at Paxos but saw noone.  He ran over to the take cover at a dumpster across the parking lot from them, hoping he'd be out of the line of fire, while The Peacock moved behind the only parked car and shouted out that they were on the roof of the building above the dumpster.  There looked to be five of them, one sniper and the rest with rifles, and just as the words left their mouth, the assassins opened fire.  Paxos dove backwards, avoiding the sniper's shot, but a follow-up burst from one of the rifleman hit her twice, leaving her writhing in pain; since they were just going to a meet, she'd ditched the netrunner suit for an unarmored dress, and was regretting it now.  At least she was mostly in cover.

Jar was slow to react and by the time he started running, he had already been hit in the back with five rounds.  They damaged his subdermals but left him otherwise unharmed, and he made it down the staircase that led to the Afterlife and out of line of sight.  The Peacock hit the floor behind the car but still got hit twice on their way down.  The last rifleman had to lean over the edge of the building to shoot at Specter, who dove to the ground, but the long burst managed to strike him in the back once anyway.  He leapt back up to his feet and ran towards an alley to flee.

The Peacock scrambled to their knees and got fully behind the car's chassis.  A sniper round pinged off the concrete an inch away from Paxos' stomach, and two more bursts of fire were blocked by the concrete pillar she was partially behind.  Specter wasn't so lucky, and took four rounds to the back, which left him sprawled on the concrete.  Jar shouted up the stairs, asking if anyone else was still alive (The Peacock: "Our reputation's in shambles!").  Paxos crawled backward then lurched over the railing to the floor below; the fall broke a rib, but it was better than being shot.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 24: Making The News

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Negotiations

Chromedome finished working on Paxos, then walked over to Specter, still wearing his blood-covered smock and yellow rubber gloves.  The ripper made it clear that he needed payment, and that this wasn't a safehouse.  Specter took out his agent and wired him the eddies, then dialed The Peacock and said they'd be out of his hair soon.  As the doc shuffled away, Peacock answered and welcomed Specter back into the land of the living, then asked after the status of the other two; Specter replied "Mad, but physically fine".  They chatted about the safehouse in Little China that they'd checked out with Jar, then The Peacock said they'd bring the AV around soon and hung up.

City Center had closed their airspace after the crew's activities an hour ago, so they were forced to detour around through Westbrook, which also started to close its air space just as they made it across the river into Arroyo.  They landed in the parking lot of the department store and headed over to retrieve their companions.  The sign said "CLOSED", but Jar did the secret knock on the front door to get "CD" to answer.  Chromedome gave Jar an elbowbump (he still had on the blood-spattered rubber gloves), and led them into the waiting room, mentioning he was looking to get them outta there as soon as possible.

Specter gave them a wave, then The Peacock went over to have a chat with Emma.  They apologized for the gunshot wounds/kidnapping/brain surgery, but she was understandably hostile, and refused to acknowledge that they were her sibling.  The Peacock claimed that they were just looking out for Mary Jane, but Emma scoffed and asked how street criminals could provide better medical care than one of the big three corps in the city.  When they talked about doctors, did they mean more people like "Chromedome"?

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 23: Emergency Brain Surgery

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Takeoff

Jar broke into the electronic locks and hotwired the AV while Paxos and The Peacock dragged Specter and Emma aboard, followed by Mary Jane on the stretcher.  Paxos tried to Jam all the trackers in everyone/everything, but failed due to the euphoria from the uppers she was on, which meant Jar was going to have to do some open-brain surgery (with only a first aid kit) to disable/remove everything before they switched to the getaway AV under the overpass in Japantown.  He started on Mary Jane as The Peacock throttled up the thrusters and they lifted off.

A single large drone shot out of a magnetic launcher and opened up with a hail of fire from its gun, but The Peacock was able to put sufficient distance between them for it to be ineffective.  As they flew away, something in Mary Jane's skull started beeping, and Jar shouted for The Peacock to turn around: she had a cranial bomb installed and it looked like it was rigged to blow if she got too far away from Militech Tower.  They took the AV back into a circling pattern around the tower to stall for time, but Jar would need 8 minutes, which was an eternity when fleeing from armed drones.

More drones were launching every minute from the launchers, and soon enough an entire swarm was after them, but The Peacock outmaneuvered them with ease with the luxury AV's superior handling and speed.  It was all going too smoothly, so nobody was surprised when an NCPD attack helicopter swooped up from the skyscrapers and commanded them over the radio to land or be fired upon.  Rather than landing, The Peacock went off in a tighter spiraling pattern around and down the tower.  Trying to keep up, a pair of the severely-outclassed drones rammed into one of the AV landing pads on the side of the tower, sending it plunging down to the streets below.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 22: Family Reunion

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Kidnapping

With the guard bleeding out of his empty eye socket on the floor, the crew headed down the hall to regroup with Specter.  There were four cells with floor-to-ceiling glass (assumed bulletproof) facing the hallway, one of which was blocked off by curtains.  The cell adjacent held a bunch of medical equipment and was connected to the curtained room by a door inside.  Paxos ran a Ping on the curtained room and detected the kind of devices you'd see if someone was living there (TV, kettle, microwave, etc).  There was also a person with the typical cyberware, including a biomonitor.  The dying man on the floor also had a biomonitor.

Paxos spun up a Jam to hopefully convince whoever was monitoring the biomonitor that it was a false alarm or something while frantically getting into her netrunner suit as quickly as possible.  While she was undressing, she also let the others know that there were gun turrets concealed in the ceiling of the hall, though if they came online odds were the crew were dead anyway.  The Peacock searched the guard's body and grabbed his ID badge, which they swiped through the card reader on the cell with the medical equipment.  It blinked green and the glass door slid open.

Specter and The Peacock drew their weapons and continued onto the side door and went into the curtained room, which looked to have been converted into something resembling a slightly large studio apartment.  Standing in the corner was Mary Jane, The Peacock's sister, though she looked gaunt and sickly, with an IV running to her arm.  The Peacock told her who they were, but given they'd had extensive reconstructive surgery a month or so ago, she didn't believe them.  They tried to think of some touching family memory only the two of them would know, but came up totally blank.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 21: Execution

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Get in the Trunk

Specter picked up some kevlar suits for himself and The Peacock to better look like bodyguards, while Paxos went over the footage of Hua Luo: turned out she wore glasses, which meant Paxos could bring her own pair of smart glasses.  Jar threw together a collapsible stretcher for carrying Mary-Jane out of Millitech tower, and The Peacock stashed an AV from their nomad family under the highway in Japantown and covered it with a tarp.  When the day came, they split up and went to North Oaks to kidnap and impersonate the execs; Specter and Jar went to Fenris Moneaux's mansion, and Paxos and The Peacock went to Luo's.

Jar disabled the security fence, and cut a hole for himself and Specter with his toolhand, then the pair snuck across the lawns to the front door, where Moneaux's bodyguard was waiting for the exec.  Once he emerged from the mansion, Specter snuck up behind the two of them, triggered his sandy, and knocked Moneaux out with a blow to the back of the head; the goon, though, reacted quickly enough to block it.  This led to a brief scuffle where Specter overpowered him and knocked him out as well, but it left Specter with a few new bruises.  Jar swapped into Fenris' clothes (some ridiculous haute couture), and the pair stuffed the bodies in the bodyguard's car's trunk and drove off to the AV pickup at the edge of Charter Hills.

Meanwhile, Paxos and The Peacock were climbing over the wall of Hua Luo's mansion.  Paxos hacked into the cameras and looped them, letting them make it to the front door, which she also hacked to shut down its camera.  She hit the buzzer and said she was here to pick up Ms. Luo, who replied over the intercom that the camera seemed to be on the fritz, and that she'd be down shortly.  Before Luo made it down, though, the actual security guard showed up, forcing them to scuttle into a hedge to hide.  They didn't fully escape his notice, though, and the guard relayed over his radio that he was going to take a closer look.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 20: Setup

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Coming Up With A Plan

With help from Jar on the back-end, The Peacock impersonated a Night Corp employee and called into Militech's logistics division, asking for plans for the tower because they were getting a new set of automated garbage trucks and needed precise measurements.  Plans in hand, Paxos and Specter analyzed them, looking for weak points and places suited for long-term habitation where they might be storing Mary-Jane, The Peacock's sister.  Two places stuck out: animal pens (used for live ammunition tests, naturally), and some of the security holding cells about halfway up the tower.

Typically, the cells were for relatively short-term while they worked out extradition treaties with whichever company's agents had been captured (mercenaries like the crew would simply be killed).  In terms of alternate entry points, there were multiple AV landing pads at different heights, rather than a single hangar, and the "gorilla chute" which let out waste from the animal pens on the fifth floor.  They also learned some fun facts: at 71 stories aboveground, it is 1 higher than Arasaka Tower.  After its construction was completed, a city ordinance was passed banning construction over 69 stories.

Figuring flying in on AV sounded better than the gorilla chute, they started looking into them.  Jar looked into the specific models that were in use so they'd blend in, while The Peacock reached out to, Kei Honda, a certified pilot they knew who flew under Airs United, one of many fly-by-night (literally!) companies that existed to ferry executives who felt being driving to work was below them.  Kei wasn't working with Militech at the moment, but to give them a start she knew a company that did: 1776 Holdings.  Specter went dumpster diving outside their offices to see if they'd thrown out anything interesting, but got distracted instead and didn't find anything.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 19: Jumping Out Of Windows

 Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "The Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Back In The Safehouse

Two hundred large was more than enough for the crew, so they took Fernandez' offer ("Specter, what do you think?" "Give me the money") and then went off to each do their own thing with their ill-gotten gains.  It was the holidays, so naturally nobody did anything fun; The Peacock got therapy, and Paxos ignored her boyfriend to arrange bribes to officials in Peru.  Specter arranged to move into a penthouse suite starting on the 1st, but he spent the rest of 2078 skulking in the ventilation ducts of Tyger Claw hangouts to gain intel for the Wingless Dragons.  

In the new year, the crew picked up word that, despite their best efforts, Arasaka had gotten an idea of who had robbed them and was hunting them down.  Figuring it was because The Peacock had suspiciously never shown up again after the heist, they got extreme cosmetic surgery (a 6" height increase + alterations to their bone structure and skin to look Japanese, and started styling their hair in the undercut style of fem-V from the game), then they all went to ground in a safehouse Downtown.

After two weeks, The Peacock (aka Peacock, The) got sick of "wasting" time and left the safehouse to go look for more intel on Mary Jane, their missing sister.  They tracked down Bonya Slade, who was working under Rin Shimamura at Konpeki Plaza, and eavesdropped in on a girls' night out.  Over a long night and many drinks, they eventually confirmed that the person whose DNA had been used for the clones (who The Peacock knew to be Mary Jane), was on the books as a Militech employee. 

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 18: The Arasaka Tower Heist

 Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Infiltration

Jar picked up a suit of Arasaka body armour on the black market for Paxos to wear during their infiltration; she then went and picked up the revolver and rifle the guards used.  The next morning, Peacock finally heard back from Arasaka and went in for their first day under their assumed name "Hermione Granger".  They would be working as the bodyguard for Katsuri Sugimoto, a junior division head in intelligence, whose last bodyguard had died in the line of duty.  Orientation wasn't exciting; they got their ID card and corporate licenses for their firearms, which had to be signed in at the end of every shift.

A typical day would involve arriving at Arasaka Tower at 4AM, suiting up in the barracks on the 30th floor, then heading back downstairs where they would then pile into a convoy of armoured trucks that went to pick up the mid-levels from their heavily guarded apartment compound.  They would then serve as Sugimoto's shadow for the rest of the day until he returned home, typically around 8PM.  The onboarding took even longer, so by the time Peacock had arranged for a getaway vehicle with the Birds of Prey, their nomad family, they were completely exhausted and had no time to properly rest.

On the day of the heist, Peacock drove in, their fancy tech pistol concealed in a newly-implanted hidden holster and a scrambler smuggled inside a secret pocket, and parked the getaway car in the employee parking lot.  They then suited up and boarded the armoured convoy to pick up Sugimoto.  From there, they proceeded to shadow their charge to his office without incident (other than a spilt coffee).  Later in the morning, Paxos hacked the cameras and she, Jar, and Specter snuck in through a loading bay, their fake IDs granting them access through most locked doors, and Paxos was able to use her stolen uniform to scout ahead.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 17: Job Interview

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Plans Within Plans

Peacock reached out to an old buddy, Walker O'heron, who owed them a favour and learned that the passkeys held by Kazumi Kanata and Yorinobu were probably the zetatech K-series, but when Paxos dove into the 'Saka net to confirm this, she got zapped by a black ICE databomb that had been left in the financial documents.  Flames shot out of her neural port and cybereyes, but she was able to jack out and then put out the fires before they got any worse.  Still, it put her in the hospital for a few days while she got skin grafts.  While she was recovering, she went through the photos Jennifer Thracker had taken from inside Arasaka Tower and compiled what useful information she could.

Peacock, meanwhile, went to Corpo Plaza with the intent of observing the tower security and maybe lip-reading employees on smoke breaks but unexpectedly struck gold: some HR employee was going on a rant to a coworker in Reconciliation Park (while never once turning away from where Peacock was watching!) about how a whole bunch of security staff had jumped ship to one of the other factions over this conflict with Kang Tao.  Apparently, Arasaka was hiring, and for once they were looking explicitly for non-japanese applicants with no scruples to become bodyguards for mid-level execs.

The next day, Peacock came back when work let out with a badge scanner hidden in a laptop bag to get some credentials for the techies to work with.  They had to get almost right up against people to scan them, but that wasn't a problem with the crowd.  While that was happening, Paxos was scouring Arasaka press releases, hoping she'd find something that would require the execs to access the data vault on their own.  Unfortunately, the closest thing she found was Yojimbo Kageki 3, a video game that wasn't due for digital release for several weeks.  Even if it was in the vault, it was past their deadline anyway.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 16: Request of the Clone

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Personal Details

Paxos sent her boyfriend, Mitch, into the bedroom and gave him a pistol "in case", then buzzed over the intercom to ask the clone at her door what she wanted.  The young girl said she was looking for Ruby Lang, a woman who might lived here at one point.  Maybe she knew her?  Paxos asked why she was looking for her, and the clone said she needed her help with a job stealing software from Arasaka.  Paxos examined the girl on the camera for a bit then Pinged her to scan for weapons, but ultimately figured she was sincere (and unarmed) and let her in.

The clone looked like she was 10 or 11, but clones almost always aged at an altered rate, so that didn't mean much.  They sat down on the couch and, after Paxos confirmed that she was Ruby, the girl made her request.  She wanted Paxos to steal a program from Arasaka, and in exchange, the girl would give her legitimate credentials to a corpo datafortress.  Paxos eyed the girl warily; while it depended on the corp, those credentials were tens of thousands of eddies at the minimum.  Before agreeing to anything, she wanted to know who the clone was working for, and how she'd found her.

She insisted she'd come on her own and was only working with her sisters, and that she'd found her name and old address in a collection of files available to someone called "Ruslan Sokolov" that had been left behind by an employee who had been terminated.  There had been some sort of shakeup, leaving Sokolov out of the picture but the data was still around, and she'd gotten access.  With that, she'd gone to Paxos' old landlord and was able to get her current address with a bit more investigating.

GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 15: Fencing a Brainchip

Characters:

Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Layin' Low

By the time the crew left the safehouse and walked out into the cool rain, it was already halfway through October.  They decided to keep a low profile through to November to give the heat some time to clear before they took on any new jobs or tried to fence the bioware.  Once that was done, they went out shopping for new gear and furthering their goals; Peacock in particular picked up a heavy tech pistol so they could punch through armour.  Specter bribed the front-desk employees of the No-Tell Motel to let him know when someone worth blackmailing came through so that he could send a gang underling to take incriminating photos.  Paxos did more research into Peru to get a sense for the local language, and also started learning Spanish.

Peacock, meanwhile, started carjacking people to get some vehicles for their taxi company.  A risky proposition, but they didn't see any consequences so far.  During the day, they would look into the shard they'd gotten from Jennifer Thracker several months ago, the one about the Militech operation that had been cloning their sister Mary Jane, and came out with two names.  Jackie Wu, one of Specter's many ex-girlfriends, was a Militech exec in charge of the cloning program, and had provided their Mary's DNA.  Rin Shimamura, an Arasaka scientist (and recent defector from Yorinobu's faction to Michiko's), had provided the patents and formulae needed for the brain implants and the firmitas anti-psychotic.

They decided to start looking into Shimamura, as she was lower ranking, and tracked down someone at Arasaka who might know more: Bonya Slade, who was Jar's ex-lover.  Specter continued strengthening the Wingless Dragon Gang's position by stealing a shipment of cyberware from Maelstrom and planting it at a Tyger Claws hideout.  The death rate in Watson doubled overnight.  Paxos did another course of luxury therapy, and felt much better about all the killing.