Characters:
Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc NPC
Setting Sail
Before nightfall, the crew finished up some last-minute preparations. To avoid the freighter's sensors, Jar covered Peacock's speedboat in radar absorbent paint. Specter picked up some smart glasses with night vision lenses. Paxos went over the shipping manifests to see if there was anything else worth grabbing, but it was slim pickings. There was merch for the Night City Corsairs (the city's football team), a lot of bulk seafood, various athletic wear, mostly shoes, and several dozen containers of rice.
Under heavy cloud cover, they boarded the speedboat and set out for the Chim Bồ Câu, and several hours later Peacock brought them alongside. It was an older vessel, and thick layers of paint suggested it had been renamed multiple times. Specter fired a grapple gun at a railing above and then climbed up. At one point he lost his footing on the slippery surface, but he managed to make it to the top without falling into the drink.
Once up top, he moved to the shadows, careful to avoid the tiny gecko drones that were watching for intruders, and started looking through the stacks of crates for the ones they were interested in. 40 minutes later, Peacock comm'd to ask what was taking so long, and finally discovered that Specter had gotten distracted and had just been marveling at being on a boat for the first time. They snapped him out of it, and he got back to searching for their containers, but couldn't find them. After a bit of debate, Paxos climbed up another rope to the deck.
The pair on board then snuck into the crew quarters, looking for a terminal to hack so they could gain access to the local network. In a stroke of luck, Paxos found one without running into any crew, and located the containers they needed. They returned to the top deck and headed to the first container, where Paxos would need to install a backdoor on the radio transmitter. Fortunately, it was out of view, so after they climbed (and fell) to it, they didn't have to worry about being spotted and could take their time.
Paxos picked the lock and swung the container door open, revealing a false wall made of a photo of bananas. Pushing that aside, they found that the drone components were in a wooden crate that was nailed shut. Neither of them could pry it open with their bare hands, so they called back to the boat: Jar was going to have to come up and crowbar it. He also got a bit banged up on the climb up, then had a nasty fall while maneuvering around the containers, but eventually found the others and popped the crate open.
They looked over the drone's sleek grey body until Jar found a port to access the radio, and Paxos got to work. She installed the backdoor easily enough, then realized she could install a second backdoor for their own use. It'd be a bit trickier, but having a pocket drone strike might be worth it. After some discussion, she was talked down, and they put everything back the way it was before proceeding to scope out the other container they needed to access.
This one was in the open and well-lit, meaning they'd need to be quick. After some time watching the drones, they identified when they'd have a gap in their coverage, which Paxos extended by hacking and controlling it to look just barely away while keeping its movement normal. Meanwhile, Jar ran down and picked open the lock, followed shortly by Specter and Paxos. They pushed aside the fake banana wall again, and found a terminal which Paxos plugged the the shard they'd been given into.
Before they left, though, they noticed that there was a stack of missiles just lining one wall. Though they were tempted, in the end they decided against taking one, and all returned to the speedboat. Their job done, they returned to Night City, with no one the wiser. They surprised Regina Jones by notifying her that they'd finished the mission one day early.
Downtime
Specter borrowed a truck from the Birds of Prey (Peacock's nomad family), and then went and picked up his whole gang and did a "drive-by" of a Tyger Claws hideout with his rocket launcher. Meanwhile, Peacock went out and scouted some potential drivers for their taxi company, though they didn't have cars yet. Paxos finally decided on the country she'd be going to hide out from Militech in: Peru. The series of LatAm wars had left it, and its neighbouring countries, fractured and under the control of a variety of petty warlords, which meant the corps didn't operate except for in their own small bases.
She then spent the next week building up as real a presence as she could for her new persona from thousands of miles away. Before the end of August, Peacock decided to move out for a nicer apartment, still in Little China, since they were moving up in the world. Everybody then spent the first week of September laying low so some of their heat would go away. After that, Jar got a call from Oni Tokugawa, a fixer out of Little China, and told the rest of the crew to swing by Hennesy's Pub that night.
Killer On The Loose
Hennesy's was a dive bar in a 20th century style, though instead of wood finish everything was cheap plastic. Oni Tokugawa was easy to spot at the bar; a big man in a black trenchcoat with a red katana on his back, he looked more like a merc than a fixer. He had a visible lump at the base of his skull, suggesting some sort of neuralware and stood as they approached, his 360 degree monovisor visible as he turned. He motioned for them to sit and started talking in a rumbling voice.
Someone was killing off the Russian mob, and they were looking for someone to bring the killer in alive. This was an odd one: the mob would typically handle this internally, which meant something was up. The pay was quite persuasive, though: 20,000 eddies, which Jar was able to talk up to 28k. Peacock asked how serious they'd be about not killing the target, and Oni shrugged and replied that they'd specified alive, but sometimes you'd luck out. He wouldn't bet on it.
Once the crew formally accepted the job, Oni gave them the info for their contact in the mob, The Raven (Peacock: "Huh, he earned the The?"), and an address for Medved Imports, a warehouse in Northside they were using as a front. On the drive over, Paxos did some research into The Raven: he was from Chechnya, some sort of military background (though it was hard to find details), seemed like the guy who gets called in when Things Had Gone Wrong. This just made it more suspicious: if this expert wasn't able to catch this killer, what was going on?
As rain drizzled down, they arrived outside the Medved warehouse, indicated by hastily-done stenciled letters and a crude logo of a bear rampant. Jar called in to The Raven, introducing himself as "The Jar" (until Peacock corrected him that he hadn't earned the "the"), and that they had been hired by Tokugawa. The Raven told them to come out of the rain, and Peacock obliged, taking the car in through the gate.
There were armed goons standing around, and they were led by one to the front office where, waiting at a folding table, was The Raven. He was maybe mid-40s, with slicked-back black hair, and greeted Jar warmly, then waved them all over to take a seat. Some goon brought out a physical file folder (a rarity in 2077) and The Raven spread five photos on the table, each depicting a gruesome murder. He explained that five of his men had been killed, and though there was no consistent method, they were certain it was targeted because these had all happened within the last two weeks.
The Raven wanted whoever was responsible, so that they could have a "pleasant discussion" with them. Peacock asked why they were certain it was one person and not a group, and The Raven declined to answer, saying only that they were confident it was. Figuring he probably knew specifically who it was, Peacock checked if the mob would need any proof. The Raven again refused to give specifics, but claimed that many things would come up through "pleasant discussions", and that some of the killings suggested a certain skillset, tapping a photo as he said so.
The photo in question showed a man whose flesh and skull had been burned away, revealing cyberware underneath. This, The Raven said, was the work of a netrunner. Further, some of their accounts had been hit, supposedly drained by the victims after their deaths. Another victim had been shot, but their autopsy had discovered that his cyberware had been overloaded prior to death. Paxos looked more closely at the photos and got the impression that the killer was going out of their way to make these killings grisly. Specter opined that it might be a cyberpsycho.
Paxos asked how many of his people were left, and The Raven replied that there were ten or so; this meant that not everyone in the mob was involved, as they'd passed more than that on their way in. At that point they were interrupted by a goon walking up and talking to The Raven in Russian. After a brief moment, he turned back to them and explained that they were now down to 9 men, but there was a fresh crime scene for them to investigate at a brothel in Kabuki.
Further questioning revealed that all of the victims had been killed in Northside and Kabuki. Paxos asked about whether to remove the target's cyberdeck, but The Raven left it up to them; the mob would have no problem disabling it so long as they were unconscious.
The Scene of the Crime
The crew arrived outside a converted apartment complex, about 6 stories tall, and jogged over to cover to get out of the rain. As Jar was asking a pair of mob goons what the situation was, Peacock spotted someone on the rooftop across the street, who quickly moved out of sight. They lamented not heading back to arm up, because nobody was wearing any armour or carrying anything heavier than a pistol. Specter and Paxos headed into the building across the street, also a short apartment complex, moving slowly so Paxos could keep a Jam up, while Jar asked the goons to keep an eye on the front door then drove around back with Peacock to sit at the rear entrance.
The inside of the building was a mess with piles of garbage in the stairwells, but they didn't run into anyone on the way up to the roof. The door was locked, but Paxos just hacked it open and they stepped cautiously out into the rain, both drawing their handguns. There was nobody around, and no visible tracks. Specter took a look at an adjacent rooftop and spotted an abandoned smart pistol lying in a puddle. While Paxos kept the Jam up, Specter jumped over the gap between buildings to take a closer look.
It was an Arasaka model, which was pretty expensive, and Specter called down to Jar to come take a look, since it was possibly boobytrapped. Jar and Peacock came up together (it was a bad idea to go alone with a killer on the loose), and he took a look. It wasn't boobytrapped, but it was a Sakura Mk4, which weren't even supposed to be on the market yet. This was some kinda prototype straight outta Chiba. Figuring the coast was clear, Paxos dropped the Jam and hopped over to their rooftop. Peacock pocketed the smart pistol, and they headed back to the brothel to look at the body.
The goons they'd asked to keep watch hadn't seen anything, and they were led up to the room where the man had been killed, not seeing anyone else on the way. He was lying on a bed, extremely naked and extremely dead, his implanted agent torn free and just hanging on by a cable. Jar examined the body for a while and determined that he'd had his brain fried, and that the agent had been removed after death. Peacock looked around for clues, and found a flap of synthskin shoved under the mattress, the kind netrunners occasionally used to hide a neural port.
Paxos asked a goon if they had cameras she could check, and he gestured to back room and told her to go nuts; it had been fried. She discovered that it had been physically sabotaged, and nothing was recoverable. She went outside to look for cameras on any other buildings, and spotted one watching the adjoining alley that was entirely unsecured. Paxos scrubbed through the footage and found the aftermath of the killing: all the joytoys were shuttled out to an alley, and while most of them yelled at the goons as they slammed the door on them, one woman that she recognized walked across the street: Scarlet, Specter's ex.
The crew regrouped and Paxos informed the others of what they'd found, and they grilled Specter for info on Scarlet. Turned out he didn't know much and hadn't been too attentive (there's a reason he has so many ex's). Scarlet hadn't been a murderer back when they'd been dating, that much he was sure of, and he didn't recall any ties to the Russians. She'd lived on her own in Northside, and he hadn't met any of her friends or family, though she had mentioned a ripperdoc once or twice. Named Gold or something.
Peacock thought for a moment and asked if he meant Casey Gold? They were a ripper in Kabuki, near the roundabout, and Specter said that sounded right. They decided to rest for the night and go scope out Casey's place the next day and ask some questions. So that nobody was vulnerable to ambush, everyone crashed in Peacock's spare room (which featured raw concrete floor and a boarded up window).
Rise and Shine
After quick detour around the city to grab their weapons and armour, the crew walked down to Casey's (Specter's place was in walking distance). An open stall sat out front with holograms of various cyberware on offer, with the shop in back, but the shutters were closed and a sign just reading "SURGERY" was out front. While they were waiting, Specter spotted a group of Tyger Claws. After his stunt with the rocket launcher, they were probably looking for him, so he had to hide.
They were openly carrying highly-illegal SMGs, probably getting away with it due to the gang's 'Saka ties. Paxos hacked into a speaker that was playing ads and played a news clip with gunfire then cranked the volume as a distraction while Specter turned on his Chameleon Skin and fled. Some time later the gangers left and Peacock gave the all-clear, just as Casey Gold was finishing their work. A man stepped out with fresh red scars running the length of his right arm, rotating his shoulder then testing his fingers. From inside, Casey shouted to remember to take his fuckin' suppressants.
Notes:
The 40 minute duration was randomly rolled, and meant the crew of the freighter had a few chances to notice the boat beside them on radar. They failed.
I spent some of Jar's XP on 1 rank each of Lockpicking and Forced Entry. Never again will the crew be stymied by a padlock.
Jar was 1HP away from having an arm crippled with that fall, which would have complicated their plans somewhat.
Jar was kind of played by whoever wanted to. Peacock's player took control during the scene on the freighter, and Specter did it during the RP with The Raven.
The Medved warehouse was dubbed The Nest and/or The Perch.
Paxos rolled a natural 3 on the "luck check" to see if there were any other cameras.
Specter got to make up some of Scarlet's backstory here.
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