You Owe a Debt.
It wasn't long before Wakako called me in to collect on the debt I had accrued in that meeting. I had been helping Malcom with his racing by giving him a rival on the street courses when I got the call. It didn't stop me though, even as I rounded the corner avoiding traffic and overtaking Malcom on the inside in an epic drift while I answered my agent.
"Heyo, what's up granny Wakako?" I asked eyeing Malcom out the window as I passed him giving him a smirk as I did so.
"Kusinagi, it is time you honour your debt to me, meet me at the parlour." she said hanging up immediately after. she thinks she's clever using phrases like that, what does she think she is some kind of spider, well I ain't no fly that's for sure.
I was gonna finish this race with Malcom only two more corners left and it finished in Westbrook anyway so not far from Jig-Jig Street and its seedy queen of information. I quickly hopped on a call with Malcom to let him know I'd not be waiting for him at the finish and that we might have some work for section 9 if things worked out, so he should gather the crew and gear up at the basement ready for planning.
I pulled up outside Jig-Jig Streets bollard protected pedestrian only area drifting my quadra into a space between a black van with a satellite dish on the top, Netwatch really need to up their stealth game, and a couple of Kusinagi bikes parked up for the local Tigers. As I got out of the Quadra, I dismissed the driving XP and notifications, I would deal with those later if it became relevant, Wakako's parlour wasn't far from the entrance to Jig-Jig, with two Tiger Claws flanking the entrance, probably the ones who own those bikes I'd parked next to given the looks they gave me as I passed them. As per usual the whole den was a cloud of smoke with an older generation of degenerate gambler and retired Claws filling most of the machines. I paid them little to no attention as I strode through into the back through, beaded curtains pretending to be a door.
"Yo, so wha' da' ya' need granny Wakako?" I asked irreverently as I pulled up a chair to watch the TV drama with her as she explained the job. It must have been serious though because she even bothered to turn off the TV and put out her ever-present cigarette, one of those that the corpos like too. Seeing this I sat up and paid a bit more attention giving her a raised eyebrow as I did.
"I have need of a ghost, someone who can get in and out, leaving no evidence, no trace, absolutely cannot be tied back to myself or the Tigers. You are currently the closest matching solo with the skills required. However, you could still be better. As such I have tracked a shipment from Kang-Tao, that will be arriving in the city in two days' time via AV. This shipment will contain a prototype thermo-optical camo that you will acquire. This job must also remain quiet, there must be no casualties. Here is the shard with the job information, destroy it when you are finished, you may not record this for your braindance fan club with the Mox." She said, dismissing me as she lit up another cigarette and turn her dramas back on.
I was in a state of shock as I left her parlour, here it was everything I could want in the stealth chrome field and I didn't even need to ask around for it. I could practically taste the webs that spider queen was trying to ensnare me with, but that's the thing, I might like the woman but if she thinks I'm agreeing to go exclusive with her I will need to set her strait. I took my Quadra back to the SLS apartment block and parked it up, the rest of the gang must already be here judging by the vehicles parked up there was; Hiromi's Kusinagi, Malcom's Caliburn, Rebecca's Makinaw and Ichi's (please help me put his car here I have forgotten it and will edit it in.) all parked up leaving me a space closest to the door.
"Woo! So, what's the job are we gonna shoot up some gangers and take down an XBD ring? I can't wait to use these babies to mow some gonks down." Becca shouted, gesturing to her new arms, almost as soon as I entered the room.
"Unfortunately, not, this is gonna be a stealth snatch and grab." I replied this made Ichi and Malcom sit up and pay attention, they had often been on the movement of heavy goods and this would likely involve them. I inserted Wakako's shard into my rig and displayed the data to the group. It outlined the flight path of the AV from a Kang-Tao ship that would be arriving off the coast in two days, across town to a militarised research and development fortress just outside of North Oaks. It would take the river route avoiding all tall buildings however, it would have to pass by megabuilding H8 on the way to the North Oak facility. The shard included a manifest of cyberware, there was easily half a million eddies in cyberware on board. The AV would be piloted by a Kang-Tao droid, a variation on the Arasaka Mk. II multipurpose automaton, this was useful as they would share the same base code and drivers, hopefully exploits too. I could reach out to The Kitsune for one of those favours she owes me now and see if she could get me some soft on short notice for taking care of them.
"It will be very tricky to extract that much cyberware unnoticed from a facility that well-guarded, especially in North Oak, the traffic there is more rich pricks and supercars, not behemoths and trucks. we won't get far if there is any kind of alert" Hiromi pointed out having seen where the destination was for the AV.
"Yeah, look I'm all for shooting up a place but that is for sure a blaze of glory we ain't coming back from." Becca added.
"It needs to be quiet anyway." I said as I enlarged the flight path past the megabuilding. "I have an idea." I said.
Two Days Later.
I was ready for this, two days of calls on my agent and intensive VR training on piloting these things I could do it. Looking down now I could only barely make out the city streets bellow and even then, only because my Kiroshii's were good. From up here, atop megabuilding H8 you could see the layer of smog and pollution choking the city, as well as my target on approach along the river. I readied myself, in my self-engineered wing suit to jump off the roof of this towering monument to inequality, the wind was harsh and strong up here, but that would help when it came to getting myself on top of the AV. I took a deep breath and let the feeling of cold-blood wash over me as I became Mokoto the Ghost instead of Mokoto the teen, one final check as my Kiroshii's did the calculations and overlayed the flight path on my vision and I jumped.
"Ghost, free." I spoke to the team listening via agent. "Radio silent." signing off the call for the others to meet at their pre-arranged spots. Ichi, Malcom and Becca were waiting at an underpass between North Oak and Japan Town to keep the Behemoth out of sight until it was time to load up. with them being on the flight path it would allow some time before the AV was noticed off course. Hiromi was based with my destination in the Badlands.
I could see the tracking on my Kiroshiis update as the AV came into view underneath me, with some slight adjustments to put myself directly on top, I was able to gently touch down using my newly acquired perk: Ninja Running, to not make a sound as I did. the research from The Kitsune paid off here I had been able to get more details on the AV and found that it had an external jack in port for finalising programming at manufacture. I was able to use that to override the door controls with a bit of basic netrunning. from here I had to be quick before the droid reacted, while I had overridden the AV systems to report the door closed still, the droid would still use its own sensors to notice the discrepancy. I quickly sung in summersaulting mid-air and landing with a superhero pose, quiet but painful on the knees.
I darted to the opposite corner as the droid came to manually close the door leaving the AV on autopilot. This couldn't be better I had intended to hack the thing and do it this way but I couldn't resist this. I gave the robot a jab with my concealed blade, the only weapon I had been able to bring, cutting off power to the head unit and sensors, as per The Kistunes information package, and Spartan kicked it out of the open door. I quickly dashed to the pilot seat and inserted my personal link to the jack on the dashboard, I was able to upload the hack we had acquired allowing for manual control as well as overriding the tracking soft, we would still need to strip it down to remove the hard tracking but this would give us time before they could trace us. I activated the pilot jack and inserted the cord into one of my available slots and took control. It was only because a two-day piloting crash course synergised with my driving skill that I was able to pilot the damn thing. I kept to the flight path so that, the Night City air traffic control wouldn't issue a citation and alert Kang-Tao early.
As I was about to cross the overpass separating the rich from the masses I swung the AV low and under the road, were Ichi, Malcom and Becca were waiting for me. It looked like they had run into a little trouble with a local as they seemed to have had to shoot some gonks wanting to try their luck, fortunately Becca had been strapped with iron for this very reason.
"Quickly, get it unloaded!" I ordered, taking a weapon offered by Becca. It didn't take long for the boys to transfer all the goods to the Behemoth, I gave them a nod and Becca hopped in her Makinaw and escorted them to the basement to offload our selection of goods from the manifest. The rest would be going to some ripper docs around town that Hiromi had contacted to receive a shipment, it should be spread out enough that it shouldn't be tracked back to this theft, Vic would be getting first pick as our team ripper. with that offloaded I hopped back into the pilot seat and jacked back in for my trip to the destination.
I had to fly low and between rock formations, this is when the training really paid off. I was able to stay off flight tracking systems by hugging canyon walls and dipping below bridges until I got to a cave opening north of the Aldicaldo's camp where Hiromi was waiting for me with Mitch, Scorpion, Panam and a disgruntled looking Saul. They had agreed to buy the AV from us as even Saul had seen the value in it, but only if the job went off without a hitch, they didn't want this being traced back to them either, hence meeting way out here. We had forwarded the schematics to Mitch once the agreement was made, he had previous experience with these during the war and had brought in some help to strip it down and rebuild it with hacked soft and no tracking hard. Hiromi was here as my transport back; she had driven my Quadra out here and I would be driving us back.
"See no fuss, this is going to be preem! we can start taking some longer-range jobs now." Panam said excitedly.
"Not so fast, it's still got tracking hard in it for now, gotta get that fixed first girly." Mitch responded halting her enthusiasm.
"Even still, we have to keep it off the books for now, at least six months before we can use it, we don't want anything from this coming back on us." Saul ordered, dampening her spirits even more. "Still, it's a big boost to our capability once we can use it, you really came through for us on this one Kusinagi. It'll take a few months to get you the eddies for this but I'll see you get paid, not to worry, you're one us."
"Thanks Saul, I know you're good for it. Don't worry about Hiromi, sometimes she just can't keep that corpo at the office instead of among friends." I replied.
"Well, I wouldn't have to if you weren't so irresponsible with money!" Hiromi complained, much to the amusement of Mitch and Saul, who she had been dealing with for this job.
With the job done, we were to drive back to Night City and meet up with Becca and the boys at Lizzies for a celebratory drink and party.
tell me how I did and help me fix the mistakes with lore I couldnt find car names and Im not even sure if Ichi is the other friend not malcom, also im never sure which is the hgv driver. bad memory :/