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).

When the time came, Paxos ran a Ping to see where everyone was and get an idea of how dangerous this was going to be.  All of Yorinobu's bodyguards had SMGs and swords, though on the plus side they were in normal clothes and only moderately cyber'd up; there'd be no sandevistans to worry about here.  Once everyone was ready (didn't take long, nobody really had equipment to prepare), she hacked into a microwave in the kitchen and turned it on as a distraction.

Mission Complete

Flex was first up the hatch and knocked the chef out with a blow to the temple, followed by choking out one of the stewardesses who happened to be in the kitchen with him.  After stuffing them into a corner, the rest of the crew came up and they prepared for battle.  The Peacock grabbed a knife from a magnetic rack, so they'd have some weapon, while Paxos prepared to hack through the walls and Jar was hoping to just steal someone's gun.

Flex cracked the door to the meeting room open, then crawled along the floor and under the meeting table, completely avoiding the notice of Yorinobu and his bodyguards until it was far too late.  Springing up behind Yorinobu, who was complaining about the treachery of his sisters, Flex brought his mantis blades down in an X and decapitated the CEO.  Before the shocked guards could react, Flex moved onto one in one smooth motion and removed his head as well.

As the heads bounced off of each other above the meeting table in the zero g, Jar ran into the room and started wrestling with one of the guards, trying to steal his SMG.  Paxos used her chyron to see through the walls, hacked into the same goon's systems and detonated an internal battery in his skull.  The Peacock, meanwhile, was staying put in the back; they hadn't been able to bring in a gun and didn't have Jar's subdermal armour, which meant the main area was too dangerous.

The guy wrestling with Jar broke free, spun his chair around, and fired off a long burst into Jar's groin, but the bullets harmlessly bounced off, and the shooter lost consciousness as he continued to burn.  Another guard sprayed at Flex, who dropped down behind a chair as cover, while the last survivor crawled towards Yorinobu's headless body while drawing his sword.  On the floor, Flex grabbed the SMG from the man he'd just beheaded and landed a burst to the torso of the one who'd shot at him, while Paxos lit that guy's head on fire for good measure.

Jar picked up the SMG of the guy who'd passed out on fire and fired it into the back of the swordsman who was still moving toward Yorinobu, but his light subdermals kept him relatively safe.  Paxos was starting to burn up from all the hacking without any cooling and slowed down; it was up to Flex and Jar now.  The man with his head on fire returned fire at Flex, who nimbly dodged by rolling on the floor, then finished him off with a mantis blade to the legs.

The last surviving bodyguard made it to Yorinobu's body, withdrew a small touch-screen device from a pocket, and activated it.  A cloud of smoke hissed out of one of the passenger seats further up, which Paxos' earlier Ping had detected as being empty, as what looked like some sort of metal crate flipped open.  Between another long burst from Jar and a floor-swipe from Flex, the last guard dropped.

Molecule Smasher

Paxos scrambled to clear the jam that had been covering the front seat and suddenly two figures popped up in their chyrons, which let them see cybernetics through the smoke.  Too tall for the confines of the spaceplane, they stood hunched over, a massive cyborg body with an extremely long and thin spine connecting to a "skull" several feet above the shoulders that bristled with dozens of sensors.  Strangely, there seemed to be some sort of data flowing back and forth between the two, but whatever these thing were, they were hardened against and she couldn't learn any more.

The things finished unfurling and moved forward out of the smoke, where Flex and Jar could see that what had looked like empty space between the neck and "skull" was actually a child in a straightjacket.  Their hips joined with the main body's neck, while the "skull" covered most of their face and the spine was presumably attached to their back.  One hand was an enormous fist, while the other ended in an HMG.  The Peacock chanced a glance from around the kitchen door and confirmed their fears: the children were the clones of Mary Jane they'd "rescued" from Militech.  

A grating electronic voice emanated from the two figures, growling "Woke me up in a fucking sardine can?".  Flex, who was the closest, could also hear the far fainter sound of the girls' voices saying the same thing.  He announced that this was "Not namaste, brothers", and went to his knees.  The Peacock ran into the passenger compartment and looked for a body with a gun they could loot, while Jar opened fire at the "gooey center" of the monstrosity: the child.

She screamed out in pain while the Molecule Smashers began to laugh maniacally then sprung into motion.  In perfect synchronization, one of them took a step, reached out, grabbed the doctor, then ripped him in half, while the other repeated the same motions but only hit empty air.  The laughter fell to a grim, droning static as they spun and punched entirely through the pair of nurses and their seats, a gore-covered fist stopping just shy of Flex's face as he regained his footing.

The Peacock grabbed a dead man's SMG and joined Jar in shooting the wounded Smasher, eliciting more screams from the clone of their sister.  The Smashers ran up and punched at Flex and thin air, respectively, and he managed to block the colossal fist with his mantis blades, but was forced backwards by the impact.  He responded by stepping forwards and cutting an X through the torso of the child, and a fountain of viscera gushed out as she gurgled a death cry.

Her sister shrieked momentarily before her Smasher collapsed to the floor as a river of blood ran down from the "skull" encasing the second girl's head.  The smasher with the bisected girl stayed on its feet, however, and the laughter stopped.  Before it could make another move, Flex swung at its machine gun arm, scoring only a minor wound on the heavily-armoured limb.  The Peacock continued to hose down Smasher, to no effect, while Jar ran up to the "dead" one and started arming its HMG for manual use.

Paxos ran out to help Jar lift the heavy machine gun, while Flex continued to duel with Smasher.  Its skulls lowered, crunching the remains of the child in its "neck", and threw a haymaker that Flex nimbly dodged before severing its gun arm at the wrist in return.  Jar wildly hip-fired the HMG and caught Smasher in the leg with a round; fortunately, none pierced the hull of the ship.

Notes:

Technically the combat is taking place entirely in zero gravity, but to reduce rules complexity (and also because I forgot) we're just treating it as using normal movement rules.

The crew briefly thought about turning the lights off so they'd have an advantage, but this was cancelled when they realized the guards all had infrared implants.

Flex crit on his Stealth roll to sneak into the passenger compartment.  Without doing that this would have gone very differently.

Molecule Smasher had been a running joke for the entire campaign, so of course he/it/they had to be the final boss.

To paraphrase an exchange between Paxos and The Peacock:
"Oh yeah let's fight Molecule Smasher up here instead of retreating, seems super safe."
"It's fiiiiiiine."
"YOU'RE MADE OF MOLECULES!"