ShadowRock, Chapter 11 (Patreon)

Chapter 11: Meet

A couple weeks after our first gig in this new team, KittyKat called us over after we finished practicing for our next live show, which was this Friday. We were awesome, and I knew people were going to love us. But we were more than just the hottest all-female pop-rock band in the NCSA. We were shadowmen, and that meant we had other work, too. Even if the music career kept us in enough nucred that we could be choosy on our jobs.

One of KittyKat’s contacts, a fixer by the name of Joe Calhoun, got wind of a job. He couldn’t get much information from his people on the particulars, just that the job looked legit, and the credits were real. He was professional enough to make sure KittyKat knew that going in, which was what a good fixer does. Fixers who got a reputation for sending teams out to die were lucky if they simply no longer had people willing to work with them, after all.

Which explained why we were now in Apex, one of the most popular nightclubs in Atlanta. Well, not ‘in’ Atlanta. It was in Cumberland, which was just outside the Perimeter (OTP for the locals), where I-285 met I-75 on the north end of town. It was purely coincidence that this was the same club we’d be playing at on Friday, but this was Monday, and we were using one of the private booths in the VIP room as a meeting space, which was just one of the ways Apex branched out from just door charges and selling drinks, and into ‘alternative revenue streams’. They didn’t advertise it, but if you wanted something chemical to enhance your night, then Apex had a hookup. And the guy who owned Apex also owned the hotel next door, which charged by the hour.

Our Mr. Johnson for this gig was an ork, and black, which was doubly ‘unfortunate’ considering that certain parts of the NCSA (most definitely including the capital of Atlanta) tended to have very definite and unflattering opinions about anyone who wasn’t white, straight, male, and human. The exact mix of what those opinions were varied from person to person, and on how pretty you were, which is why elves always had it better than trolls.

Of course, most didn’t take it quite to the level of blond-haired, blue-eyed supermen, but the old prejudices still ran deep, and just had new ones layered on for the metahumans, Awakened, and Emerged. Worse, there was also that veneer of Southern Hospitality running over everything, so people weren’t always as open about their ‘opinions’ as you might find in other places. Surviving in the city meant navigating those ‘opinions’ without putting too many holes in people, and avoiding people putting holes in you, at least any that couldn’t be patched up.

“Thank you for taking this meeting,” Mr. Johnson started things off. “The job is simple enough. It has come to certain individuals’ attention that the Ghostronics factory in Kennesaw is being used as a cover for specialty trideo movie productions of the adult variety. That is not the concern. The concern is that these adult trideo productions have embedded malware in them, allowing the people running the show to track and access any devices or networks that the trids are viewed on, and they can then spread the tracking and control malware to other devices from there. This allows Ghostronics to obtain a great deal of data from their customers. Data that certain individuals are willing to pay to obtain.”

He looked at us, and said, “The job is simple. Head up to Kennesaw, get in, get the data from their systems, and get out. Low security expected, low stakes. Milk run, basically, but it won’t take much of your time. Pay is fifteen thousand nucred, with half in advance.”

Pussycat’s Negotiation test: 14d6 = 6 Hits, 3 Miss

Mr. Johnson’s opposed Negotiation: 10d6 = 3 Hits, 1 Miss (3 Net Hits)

I frowned, visibly, and shook my head. “That’s an insult, not a paycheck. If you wanted to pay scrub prices, you should have gone and hired some gangers. But that will get you ganger results. You want professional results, from a professional team? Then you pay professional prices. Thirty-six thousand, half in advance.”

Now, it was the ork’s turn to be pissed, but he papered over the emotion almost as soon as it crossed his face. “That is unacceptable, especially for the level of risk involved. Twenty thousand.”

“Twenty-four thousand, or we walk, and you go find some gangers to do the job.”

Mr. Johnson looked as though he’d bit into a lemon, but he nodded once. “Fine. Twenty-four, with twelve thousand up front, rest on delivery.”

“Deal,” I nodded.

The ork tapped a few commands on his commlink, and then passed a credstick and a datachip over. “The datachip has the basic intel package, and a comm code for when you have the data. For your sake, I hope you’re as good as you think you are.”

I distributed the funds as the ork left, while TechKat slotted the datachip, to start checking things out. “Well, this has gotten off to a bit of an ominous start.”

Cougar chuckled, and said, “Well, I’ve still got most of our last unlucky contestant in my freezer, but I did get one of those big chest freezers, so I have room for more, if we need to add this ork to the butcher’s block. Fortunately, as long as I let it thaw ‘naturally’, freezing doesn’t affect the meat. Putting it in the microwave or cooking it changes it enough that it upsets my stomach.”

Lioness chuckled. “Our favorite ghoul’s tummy issues aside, what are we looking at, TechKat? Anything juicy in the intel packet?”

The hacker shook her head. “No, nothing special. They have the location for the factory, and what they know of the security system. Wooded area, north of Kennesaw. Probably an hour’s drive from here, if the traffic stays good. As for the security? Looks like we’re dealing with a few guards on site, and cameras. Closed system, though. Hardwired. There’s an alarm, connected to the outside, and the guards have commlinks so they can call for help. Not exactly corporate stronghold, here.”

KittyKat frowned. “There a reason for the lax security?”

“Security through obscurity,” TechKat said, immediately. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before. You make the surface dull and uninteresting, so people don’t go poking around. If the secret porn studio and malware lab is there, then it is probably buried under a second layer of security. Maybe even a second network entirely, one hidden from public view. I’d have to be there, looking, to know for sure.”

Tigress nodded, as well. “Yeah, my Corporate Security Tactics knowledge skill is telling me that keeping a second network in hidden mode is a favorite tactic. Especially if you don’t bridge between the two networks. The secondary network doesn’t have to be completely isolated, but if you give someone an obvious boring target, they usually aren’t going to look deeper, unless they have a reason to be looking. For operations that can’t invest in high-end security, having a boring front that doesn’t draw attention is better than turning someplace into a fortress.”

I nodded slowly. “So, they don’t keep a lot of visible security, because locking a place down means they have something to hide, but have a couple security guards and basic security because a factory that doesn’t even have a night watchman is suspicious for all sorts of other reasons. What does Ghostronics make, officially?”

TechKat looked through the intel package again, and laughed. “Officially? The factory makes custom shells for various electronics. You either go through a list of pre-done designs, or upload your own, pay them money, and they make the design and send it to your house, so you can pop off the manufacturer casing, and give your commlink or glasses some flair. Doesn’t touch internals at all, which dovetails nicely with it being too boring for anyone to really look at.”

“That’s not a bad racket, actually,” Lioness said. “Small enough that you aren’t expecting semis making regular runs, the materials are too cheap to be worth stealing, and the small batch or custom work means you’re looking at couriers usually coming and going, or maybe a package delivery group swinging by every couple days to haul a stack of packages to send out. And a place like that still needs some workers, so a couple cars in the lot aren’t going to look out of place. Basically, no one is really going to pay much attention to them, unless they screw up and do something to draw attention to themselves.”

I nodded slowly. “Busy enough that no one really questions a few cars in the lot, or wonders how they keep lights on, but not so busy that people start saying they are definitely up to something. All right what about the filming area, and whatever fun and games they might have between us and the server?”

TechKat tossed an image to our different cybereyes, glasses, and the like, with the building blueprints. “The blueprints on file are fairly bare-bones, but it looks like there’s a basement floor with an access staircase near the manager’s office. Though there’s a note, here, saying that there have likely been some internal modifications to the factory, which haven’t been reported to the government.”

Cougar nodded. “No one’s going to have their shady trid studio and malware haven up on the ground floor, where anyone can see it, but people tend to question when there’s a door to nowhere. Since no one has said anything, the choices are that either everyone working for the factory is in on it, anyone who asks questions gets quietly eliminated, or they’ve hidden the door. Possibly more than one of those options.”

I took a breath. “Has everyone rearmed since our last gig? Gotten the toys squared away and all that?”

Lioness waggled her hand up and down in the ‘so-so’ motion. “Reloaded, sure. Haven’t fully kitted out the new van, yet. Still need more nucred to do it up properly, with some good armor and the chameleon coating. Maybe putting a weapon mount on it, and a weapon to fit it. But that’s lots of nucred, and I don’t want have to take the extra time to touch up the chameleon coating for further issues. Which means waiting until the big things are installed. But my drone-carrier is ready, and all drones are prepped and good to go.”

All the other girls were prepped and ready, at least as they could be. We hadn’t spent too many rounds on the last job, because, well, it had been a ‘talky’ job for the most part. The only action had come from the double-cross, and we wiped out the gangers the Mr. Johnson used for the ambush team before anything could happen. So, not too much for us to actually replace, which was always good.

“All right, then. We’ll try and see if this run pays extra, like the last one ended up doing. Maybe then we’ll be able to get Lioness’s second van kitted out. Either way, we’ll be getting some rep out of this, and at least some nucred.”

“You know the Johnson’s going to be a dick about paying us after the run, right?” KittyKat grinned.

“Well, if he proceeds to get into a dick-measuring contest, he’ll quickly find out ours are bigger than his, and we’re all women. Either way, we’re getting paid for our work. I think we all have our ‘work’ rides here, so saddle up, and we’ll head out to Kennesaw, and see about slipping into this factory.”