Story:

Project Daylight

Letter from Cora Sawyer to Elder Emma Markishtum, 2050.12.03

My Aunt,

Over the last two months, things have been a little bit more quiet.  Thanks to Sonny D's contacts and Dunkelzahn's funding, we've established a pretty nice clinic and lodge here in Redmond.  Sonny found us a good piece of property where, somehow, astral space is much cleaner than in the rest of the Barrens.  There's a little creek that goes through the property, there are trees, and a good-sized house.  Best of all, you really can't tell from the street that the place is, well, different.  David and I spent several weeks creating a lodge.

We've discovered that the house is inhabited by a spirit, who seems to be a bit of a prankster with an unusual fondness for walnuts.  It can usually be distracted with an offering of walnuts.  There are more spirits around, but they're less meddlesome.  Some water and forest spirits keep rearranging the grounds, though.

As for the rest of Redmond, it seems to be recovering from the Vitas outbreak and the destruction of the hospital.  In fact, the area around the burnt-down remains of the hospital is now "cleaner" than it used to be.  Figures.  Some of the personnel that weren't corrupt are now working part-time with us at the new clinic, like Babette and Barbara.  Just the other day, I spotted Gary driving around in a van labelled for "Gary's Medical Services."  Don't know what that's all about.

And speaking of former colleagues, Arco and Sharon stayed with us.  Arco has recovered pretty well and is now more, hmm, flamboyant than ever.  Seems to have a "thing" going with Garett, of all people!  Sharon is still in bad shape mentally, and may never recover completely. 

Garett and Susan are still working on and off for Dunklezahn, but we don't see the others very much.  The Big D brought in a couple of new people, though.  One is a decker called Jason White, a.k.a. Gnomenklature; he's "tall for a Dwarf", with black slicked-back hair, a Fu Manchu mustache, and blue eyes.  The other is a sad case, an Indian without a tribe, or at least part Indian.  His name is Gideon Goesforbroke, and is a shady drinking sort of guy with a knack for spotting the nuyen opportunities.

We'd been settling in nicely when Garrett called us in and let us know we'd got a "care package" from the Big D himself.  We were getting our first official 'runner mission.  The package contained a bunch of notes and schematics about a Tir firm, Universal Omnitech. 

Universal Omnitech is located in Portland, in the Swan Island Business Park.  Area security was reportedly rated "D".  It works as a cutting edge R&D facility set up for specific lab on behalf of other agencies.  The company is less than two years old and it subcontracts lab work for Mitsuhama, Fuchi, Saeder-Krupp, Aztechnology, and some thirty other corporations.  The CEO is Prince Sean Laverty.  Dunkelzahn was interested because UO had reportedly been pushing its research into the interface between technology and magic. 

Getting into Tir Tairngire wasn't going to be easy.  The Tir works real hard at making that as tough as possible.  The package contained notes on Tir security that didn't make illegal immigration more appealing.  Our options were pretty much between going in legally and obtaining the equipment we would need once we were in the Tir, or getting in illegally with as much gear as we could sneak in, for example by hijacking a transport.  But the notes also gave us a contact, an Elf going by Banshee, who would get in touch with us soon.

A few hours later that day, we had a visitor.  She gave her handle as Misery Chick and I could see how she came by it; She was was thin, pale, all dressed in black, and had that cheerless look of a downtown Goth.  She said she had been contacted by Banshee, who she had met on a previous job, to bring us a business card and an invite.  The card was Banshee's, and the invite gave us a time and said Banshee would meet us at Crusher 495.

Because we're paranoid little runners, we checked out Misery Chick and Banshee's correspondence.  Sure enough, the card was bugged; recording audio and set for burst transmission.  Misery Chick, or Amanda Swift as her SIN said, turned a little red for a change.  I had a feeling (an assenssing feeling!) that she hadn't known about that and was mightily P.O.ed at Banshee for setting her up.  Gnome set up a rider signal and scrambler.  We decided we'd go meet Banshee, but David went astral to check things out.  He discovered a watcher spirit over Crusher 495, but left it undisturbed.

So Garrett, Gnomenklature, Gideon, Misery Chick and I showed up at Crusher 495 and met with this Banshee, acting like everything was hunky-dory.  We discussed the specifics of the run.  She offered us 50,000¥ apiece to get into the Tir and investigate Universal Omnitech.  She claimed that we had a five-day window to get in: a recent fire had damaged some office space at Universal Omnitech, and we could pass ourselves for the repair crew.  She could provide us with the necessary identities.

We figured she was double-dipping, getting paid by both Dunkelzahn's organization and the Tir.  After letting her outline the job, Gnome and Misery Chick confronted her with the bugged business card.  Banshee pulled a gun on us, but Garrett aced her first.  On the astral plane, David slapped down the watcher spirit before it could squawk, but some other spirit managed to get away.  We searched Banshee's body and went home; Sonny D's personnel cleaned up after us.

We decided to keep Misery Chick on the Trauma Team because she had useful skills as a techie, she seemed on the level – and we'd rather keep her under watch if she wasn't.

On examination, Banshee's gear turned out to be Tir military issue.  Back at the clubhouse, David contacted Dunkelzahn through the astral and informed him that the mission was probably compromised.  The Big D offered double pay if we could carry the mission through and do it within 72 hours. 

We scrambled.  Gnomenklature tracked the automated and now scrambled burst transmission from Banshee's card to a Tir military satellite.  From the way it was encrypted and piggybacked, Gnome wasn't sure if this was standard Tir Tairngire military triple-redundant paranoia, or whether someone in high places was actually using militiray channels for private purposes.  Gnome also contacted the false ID provider Banshee had indicated; it was probably too early for her contacts to know she was no longer running the show.  We got the credentials. 

That still left the matter of getting into the Tir.  Gideon got in touch with some of his smuggler contacts to dredge out a weaselly little human guy called Brahma.  He took us to the banks of the Columbia River by truck, then we had to stuff ourselves into small tube cages that were pressure-driven through former dam sluice-pipes that were apparently a prime smuggling conduit into the Tir.  But before that, Brahma stiffed of 8,000¥ a head above what we'd already agreed on, for a total of 48,000¥.  To top it off, he didn't give their cut to the Tir smugglers on the other side, who were not too happy with us.  That's not even mentioning the most horrible ride of our lives under the river.  Enough said.

After we sorted things out with the Tir-side smugglers and checked that our gear had been protected by the waterproof bags, our contact, a Cascade Ork called Zack, took us to a safe house in the warehouse district along the Willamette River.  In the morning (naturally, the smuggling across the river border had been done at night), I checked out astral space (which was a blue haze of cobwebs), then shapechanged into a crow and went to reconnoitre the Universal Omnitech grounds.

I saw some pretty darn interesting things.  From the outside, the place looked like what you expect of a high-tech research complex in a high security industrial park.  Clean, sterile, with manicured landscaping no one ever looks at.  I perched in a tree and observed; I was interested in the comings and goings: deliveries, pick-ups, and visitors.  Not too long after I started my watch, an unmarked truck came in and backed to the loading dock.  The roll-up doors went up, and personnel in vague uniforms brought out a crate down the UO ramp and loaded it onto the truck.  The crate interested me because it moved and rocked as if there was something moving in it, something that wasn't happy to be in.  The crate looked like it was equipped with external oxygen tanks.

As the crate was being loaded onto the truck, a limo pulled into the UO parking lot, clearly marked with the Renraku logo.  I got a view of a generously wired bodyguard and a small, older-looking Asian man, going into the UO building.  But the truck was pulling out and I decided to follow it as far as I could.  It went down along the Willamette, across a bridge, then back up into Willamette Heights, almost to the same latitude as the Swan Island business park whe Universal Omnitech sat.  It slowed down in the posh neighbourhood, and drove to a mansion that looked well protected from magical intrusions; it wouldn't be long before I was spotted.  A gilt sign announced it was Prince Sean Laverty's manor. 

Half a dozen Orc and Human slaves (I could tell from the collars) rolled out the crate and surrounded it; behind them, as many Elven knights with swords and armours formed another line.  A worker in a loader exosuit picked up the crate and started carrying it towards the house; the box was shaking like mad, and from this better vantage I glimpsed a hungry Elf-thing howling inside the crate.  But that was as much as I had time for; a posse of watcher air spirits had detected me and started trying to round me up, although the Elves hadn't noticed anything.  I high-tailed it back to the safe house and told everybody the results of my morning work.

Meanwhile, Gnomenklature had been busy too.  He had jacked into the LTG to lookup Carter Contracting Co., the contractors that were supposed to carry the repairs at Universal Omnitech – and who were supposed to be our cover.  Carter Co. consisted of three Orc brothers, Sandy, Cliff, and Archer.  Their system was simple and Gnome had no trouble taking it over.  But he discovered that the company had been taken over about 72 hours ago, and the brothers thrown into a basement.  Gnome shook one name out of the system, Eddie Bruschetti, who had apparently only cheap security on his cell phone and led straight into Carter Contracting.  At that point, military-grade black ICE activated, going through Tir Tairngire military satellites, but Gnomenklature got out in time.

David and I decided to go pay an astral visit to Universal Omnitech, and check the security measures.  We stayed cautiously back, but I dentified the primary systems, and particularly the security deckers. 

We put all our information together and had a team brainstorming.  Should we go with the original plan, knowing it was compromised, or come up with a new approach?  It looked like someone within the Tir itself, with high-level military contacts, wanted to use us and piggyback our mission to investigate Universal Omnitech's operation.  For sure, we would be completely disposable once they had the information they wanted.  We decided to stick close to the original plan, but without contacting Carter Contracting.  We had to move fast, before the competition sorted things out.

It wasn't too hard to get a couple of vehicles.  One was a small van we painted with a Carter Contracting logo; the other was a nice tricked-out SUV that would serve as a getaway wheels.  Gideon and Misery Chick would take the SUV and meet us at the rendez-vous point on the waterfront; David, Gnomenklature, Garrett and I dressed up as drywallers complete with handy toolkits, packed ourselves in the work van, and headed for Swan Island.

Our IDs got us in without problems.  A security guard took us to the area that had been damaged by the fire and partly demolished already.  We started clearing what was left of the debris, then taking lots of measurements.  As soon as we had a chance, David and I went astral and neutralized the two security deckers.  That allowed Gnome to jack in, take control of the security camera, and make sure no one would check on us.  Then he went deep into the system, while David, Garrett and I monitored his lifesigns and sweated bullets.

Meanwhile, Misery Chick and Gideon were waiting for us at the waterfront.  They saw a sleek-looking cigarette boat

(To be continued.)

Cora Open-Hand Sawyer
 

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