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.

As the guard leaned down to look at the hedge, The Peacock shot in him in the face with a taser dart, sending him convulsing to the ground.  They started a choke hold, but the guard broke free, drew his handgun, and rolled to his feet.  Paxos swung with her stun baton, but he dodged it and another dart from The Peacock; luckily he wasn't able to stop her from breaching his system then disabling his eyes and smartgun link.  This left him open to another stun dart from The Peacock, which again hit him in the face.  Despite being blinded and electrocuted, the guard raised his pistol at The Peacock and pulled the trigger... which just went *click*.

Thankfully the gun had jammed; all kinds of cops and private security would be on them if they heard gunfire in North Oaks.  Paxos smashed him in the face with her stun baton and he finally went down, which allowed The Peacock to finally choke him out.  Just as they finished, Hua Luo walked outside, and The Peacock hit her with a stun dart to the forehead and knocked her out.  A quick check of their agents showed that Luo had Trauma Team, but the goon didn't.  Naturally, The Peacock killed the guard, and both were shoved in the trunk before they, too, drove down to the AV pickup.

On The Edge

There were a number of bored-looking execs and accompanying goons waiting at the landing pads, and after a short delay the crew boarded two separate AVs and flew to the tower.  Paxos and The Peacock got held up at the security check when they found the netrunner suit they were smuggling in; Paxos was eventually able to get it back by schmoozing with the guard, but it left the other team waiting at the meeting point on floor 40 for twenty minutes.  Fortunately, Jar's impeccable sense of style (he'd stolen Moneaux's outfit) was able to convince the guards that he was there on official business.

Finally, Paxos and The Peacock made it down, and they decided to proceed with the plan ahead of schedule; there was a good chance the execs would wake up and call somebody if they waited until the offices emptied out for the (mandatory) optional President's Day Celebration at noon.  They hustled down to the 33rd floor where the long-term holding cells were, and crept through, Paxos hacking cameras and Jar opening secured doors with his techhand.  They emphasized speed over stealth, and the loud *bang* of a door with a broken damper attracted some attention.  The guards were getting suspicious, but weren't sounding the alarms just yet.

They did end up making it to the center of the tower, where the cells were, before being caught, and Jar popped the last door into the hallway they were looking for, but a quick peak through spotted a man sitting on a chair at the end with a rifle resting beside him.  Upon closer inspection, it was the other gorilla that'd been at the meet with Emma and Jackie Wu.  The crew weighed their options; he was too far for Paxos to reliably hack his system, and it was unlikely any of their pistols could pierce his subdermals.  The decision was made: Specter would sneak in through the air vents, then drop down and engage him in CQC.

A few minutes of squeezing through ducts later, Specter dropped out of the ceiling, catching the seated man off guard, triggered his sandy, and slugged him in the face three times.  He spat out a tooth, but wasn't down.  The Peacock leapt into the hallway and fired off a burst.  It was a tough shot at that distance, but with their telescopic cybereye, The Peacock managed to hit the man directly in the eye, and that finished him off.

Notes:

Specter's "gang" doesn't really do normal crimes, apparently; they're just a bunch of solos that do solo jobs.

Specter failed his HT roll for the "super sandevistan", which meant he was down 7FP thirty seconds into the mission.

Hacking suffers from BAD in combat because it ignores all defenses.

That lucky gun jam on a 17 was really fortunate.  It would have been +2 levels of detection otherwise.

I said Tech skills default at -3, but they should default at -4.  Probably didn't matter.