GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 14: The Konpeki Plaza Heist

Characters:

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

Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc     NPC

Getting In

While the others were out shopping, Paxos got a cybereye installed to make use of Chyron.  With their disguises in place (except for Jar, who as usual wore his signature white leather vest and matching pants), the crew boarded a motorboat on loan from Peacock's Nomad family and took it out into the bay.  Peacock shut off the engine and used the waves to maneuver it into a concealed location along the Arasaka Waterfront.  Everybody put on their borrowed scuba gear, put their gear into the drybags, and dove into the murky, polluted water.

Specter found the maintenance pipe entrance and cut off the bars of the grate, then the crew swum inside and up into the belly of Konpeki Plaza.  When they emerged inside the raw concrete maze of B3, Paxos and Jar were exhausted, but with no time to rest, the crew stripped off their wetsuits and re-equipped.  Peacock was keeping watch and saw an Arasaka heavy walking towards the maintenance corridor they'd arrived in.  At their insistence, Paxos, half-dressed in her stolen Danger Gal outfit, waddled over and started hacking into the commnet.  She only just finished breaking in before the guard arrived, and was able to send him away with a spoofed message from another guard asking to be relieved.

The crew finished getting dressed and headed out to the elevators with Paxos in the lead, Pinging and Controlling cameras to hide them as they walked past.  The rest of the floor seemed to be empty of personnel, so they arrived without further issue.  Specter pried the doors open then climbed up an emergency ladder two stories to B1, followed by Jar and Peacock, while Paxos kept watch; the cooler they'd brought along for the bioware was just tied off of Specter and clanged against the B2 doors, probably drawing attention.  Jar also struggled and slipped, kicking the door on his way past.

Back on B3, another Arasaka goon rounded a corner and closed in on Paxos and the (very obviously pried open) elevator door.  Fortunately, Paxos was able to convince her that someone had just set off the crazy purple knockout gas again, and the guard walked away to take the stairs, muttering something in japanese.  Once she was gone, Paxos followed the rest of the crew up the elevator shaft, closing the doors behind her, while above Specter opened the doors to B1 and once everyone had climbed up, took up the same formation with Paxos in the lead.

B1 was much nicer looking, all shining black surfaces and floor-to-ceiling glass walls dividing offices, but it was also much more populated.  They kept a good eye out and with Paxos in front were able to avoid any sudden ambushes, so the crew made it to the kitchens still largely undetected.  It was laid out in a very strange way, with dumbwaiters connected directly to the tables in the restaurant taking up much of the floorspace.  A cooking robot (which someone had taped a chef's hat to) was sitting idle in one corner, its eight tentacular arms flopped over on the counter.  All the cookware had been replaced with equipment to turn this into a makeshift R&D lab.  And, stationed directly in the way of the walk-in freezer with their prize, was a Danger Gal leaning against a wall and chewing bubblegum.

Taking advantage of the guard's boredom, Paxos went in and made small talk about how the 'Saka types were so snooty, and during this distraction the rest of the crew snuck over to the freezer, opened it, and walked in.  Jar immediately noticed that there were invisible criss-crossing lasers protecting the bioware container in addition to the electrified floor.  While he got to work disabling the floor, he gave Peacock some aluminum foil and glass lenses to bypass the lasers.  It took some acrobatics, but they got the job done.

Jar walked past all the disabled security and popped open the sleek black container, releasing a cloud of cold mist that spread along the floor, then transferred the rather unimpressive-looking bioware over to the cooler Specter was carrying.  Paxos continued her conversation with the guard for a long while, and only left when it felt natural so she was less suspicious; the rest of the crew easily snuck past with the distraction.

Getting Out

The crew walked back to the elevators, where Paxos, again in the lead, saw a pair of heavily-armoured Arasaka guards inspecting the doors.  Rather than engage them, the crew doubled back to take the stairs.  As Paxos went ahead to check it was clear, a trio of Danger Gals came out of the door and the rest of the crew scrambled back into cover.  She continued on, breaching and controlling the cameras in the stairwell so they'd be able to walk past unnoticed, but as she did this, Peacock heard footsteps coming down the hall behind them, leaving them trapped between the Danger Gals in front and this new group behind.

The crew waited until the last possible moment, then snuck out into the hallway, just as the Gals were past them; in a miracle, they were unnoticed, and regrouped with Paxos, then headed down the stairs to B3.  They made it past B2 uninterrupted, but when Paxos stepped out onto B3 she almost walked directly into another Danger Gal, who said there was something wrong with the elevators.  Paxos gave her some story about being here to look into the elevators which was sufficiently distracting for the rest of the crew to sneak by.  

They had to take a wide detour because the way back to the outflow pipe was blocked by a group of Arasaka guards in an animated argument with some Danger Gals.  The long way around ended up taking Paxos directly into a confrontation with the Arasaka guard who'd almost seen the elevators, and had now become suspicious of her.  She once again talked their way past, this time claiming to be an Arasaka plant who had gone undercover to get the Danger Gals fired.

At long last the crew arrived back at the maintenance corridor where they'd stashed their diving gear and started suiting back up.  Again Peacock kept watch, and again guards came by, this time a pair of Danger Gals with guns drawn who were walking purposefully towards their hiding spot.  Paxos walked out and, using her new Chyron in conjunction with Ping, hacked into their network from concealment and sent a fake alert that there was gunfire at the elevators.

Meeting Up

That set the guards running in the opposite directions, and with no one the wiser, the crew crawled back into the drainage pipe and swam out to the bay.  They boarded the boat, which had apparently gone unnoticed, then took it north of the city where Robin, one of Peacock's family, came and picked it up.  On the way, though, they received a call from Lin Ru: the drop-off was compromised, so they were going to have take a cab to the spillway northeast of Northside.  

The crew arrived before whoever Kang Tao was sending, so they took a bit to look around.  The spillway itself was full of trash, and the open ground of the shoulder was occupied by a few burned oil drums.  Overall, there was minimal lighting and minimal cover, though they could dive over the lip of the spillway and into the garbage if that turned out to be necessary.  Peacock headed up to a shadowed overlook and got into position to provide covering fire with their... pistol.  The others took up positions by the oil drums and waited.

It wasn't long before a pair of trucks in Kang Tao's orange and navy livery pulled up, their headlights stabbing out into the darkness.  Lin Ru got out of the lead vehicle, followed by five buzzcut goons in suits.  Jar stepped forward and said they had the stuff, if Lin had the money.  With a flourish, Lin produced a shard that glittered in the headlights: 44 large, as they'd agreed.  Specter brought up the cooler, and while Lin Ru inspected it, the crew all noticed something odd.

The goons had the telltale look of someone taking a holocall, and after a moment, Paxos used her 'deck to listen in.  She got just the tail end, a masculine voice giving an order: "Lin Ru has outlived his usefulness.  Kill him and the edgerunners".  Paxos sent the signal over comms, so nobody was surprised as the firefight broke out, except for Lin Ru, who took a burst of SMG fire to the spine.  Specter triggered his Sandy, dropped the cooler, slid behind one of the barrels, and sprayed bullets from his rifle at a pair of Kang Tao.

The bullets scattered and sparked across their torsos: they were sporting heavy subdermal armour.  Peacock opened fire from their perch and hit a goon in the neck, but it also just richoeted.  Paxos jumped into the garbage and started breaching into one of their systems.  Lin was still mobile and dashed over the lip into a pile of garbage to hide, followed by Jar.  The guards laid down more fire, but other than a stray bullet into Specter's shoulder nobody was hit.

Specter ran out around to get in front of one of them, then fired one precision shot that hit the poor bastard in the eye, dropping him.  Paxos finished breaching and set two mens' heads on fire; one rolled around screaming briefly before coming a stop, while the other successfully stop drop and rolled.  The remaining goons continued to lay down fire; this time Specter ate a burst to the face, and Jar's designer armoured leather jacket (it matched his non-armoured one!) failed to stop a bullet from embedding itself into his side.

In retaliation, Jar returned fire and killed one with a wild burst of shotgun fire that ended up sending a pellet directly into the man's eye.  Not to be outdone, Specter took out two goons with eye shots, one of whom had his entire skull explode from the force, leaving his body just standing there for a few seconds before toppling over.  Paxos finished off the rolling man by setting his arm aflame, then ducked behind a pile of garbage just as it was strafed by a hail of gunfire.

Specter dropped his rifle and quick drew his light pistol, then put a bullet into one of the two remaining goons' right eye socket, though the smaller caliber wasn't enough to kill outright.  Peacock, meanwhile, finally got a kill on the tally with an incredibly lucky shot at the other guy, leaving only one partially-blinded foe left.  He got into the SUV's far side and started to drive away; Jar ran up and fired his shotgun in through the window but the shots were all way off target.  Lin Ru finally finished hacking the guard and with a loud "pop", he went limp.

Checking In

At the same time, Specter finally passed out from his wounds, and the crew scrambled into one of the SUVs.  Jar grabbed Specter, Paxos grabbed the cooler, and Peacock took the wheel as they got the hell out of there before someone else showed up, Paxos making sure to run a Jam so they couldn't be traced.  Lin Ru seemed to be taking this in stride, more annoyed than anything, which pissed off Paxos.  He tried to shift blame to "Sokolov" for ordering the hit on him, then asked if they had a safehouse ready ("I know how this works").  They got into an argument over who was paying ("All my money is in Kang Tao accounts, and it's a safe bet those are already frozen"), but ultimately agreed to cover his fee.

They drove all the way to Carsten St in Santo, where Specter put in the call at Warsaw's pay phone.  He helped send some bribes to the appropriate people at Kang Tao, Arasaka, and the NCPD, but even so, they were screaming hot and needed to wait for things to cool down.  He had just the safehouse for them, though it was going to be a bit cramped.  Meanwhile, Lin Ru was semi-successfully trying to convince Paxos and Peacock to give him a cut of the 44k on the shard, and assured them that Sokolov was already going out on a limb and wouldn't be able to send more than a few more goons that they could totally handle after them.

The SUV was ditched, and they climbed back into the basement of the YumSnaxx factory for the next two weeks, eating up a large chunk of their pay.  The whole time, Lin insisted that Kang Tao didn't know their identities, just their skillsets, so he was in way more danger.  In the end, they fronted him the four grand the gonk needed to stay safe on the promise he'd pay them back once he got out.  On the upside, they had both the 44k and the bioware, which would presumably fetch a high price on the black market.

Notes:

Due to the players' work beforehand, they were able to split off the Arasaka and Danger Gal types into two separate detection clocks.  Had they not done this, the alarms would have gone off.

The players really earned this one.  It was very much not planned with going fully undetected in mind, hence the "distraction", but they pulled it off.

Robins, famous birds of prey.

Peacock went into the concealed overlook because Specter would rather be up close and personal with his Sandy.

The garbage pile at the spillway was supposed to have bad footing, but I forgot about it.  RIP Kang Tao randos, they would have fared slightly better.

At one point, it was suggested that Lin Ru could pay back his debt with his cyberware.

Me: "Are you going to threaten to forcibly remove his cyberware?"
Specter: "Well I'm not going to tell him about it"