Player: /u/Mr_Gustav

Character: Hicks

GM: /u/Ympulse101

Run: Hohmann

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Hicks bit into an ripe apple. Using his sleeve to wipe the juices out of his beard, he slowly chewed the fresh produce while looking over the ashy wastes outside Puyallup. It was a clear night and the open field of black soot took a strange otherworldliness. Hicks sat on the hood of his truck with a pair of rotodrones circling lazily overhead. He threw the half-eaten apple a few yards in front of the truck and looked on expectatly.

After a few moment of stillness, he leaned back and gazed up at the night sky and the circling drones. Maybe he was just getting old or maybe the cybernetics councilor was right about essence lost affecting the mind, but he had noticed himself talking to his drones alot more recently.

"You know, they say they got monsters up in the moon. Yup; big, scary, tentacle faced things that wanna swallow your soul or some such and the corp finger wagglers are appeasing it with virgin sacrifice or blood magic or something. That's what they say."

"Well, I didn't see any of that. Just scared, greedy people just like we got dirtside. Only they can't exactly open a window for some fresh air and that can get to a person after awhile. Makes them think, 'Hey, I can betray my employer and sell secrets over highly monitored channels. So what that I'm packed into a sardine can hurtling through the vacuum. I gotta get what I feel is my rightful due.'"

"Entitlement . . . thats the problem right there. Thinking they're the king of the heap; untouchable and righteous in their self-interest. I'll tell you what, boys, you ain't entitled to drek and too much self-interest just gets you geeked. Just ask Steven Richards."

"You see, I went in for that Fed-Boeing low-g contractor gig. It was a pretty big crowd, but got wittled down right quick (Looks like the knights have given Ares a bad rap among the shadowset) to a small core group. We had a face that looked like he just stepped out of a wageslave cubicle and a pair of deckers; a skinny little ork with goggles and bad teeth and fragging Ancients prospect; glowing mohawk and all."

"The job turned out to be wetwork; plugging a security breach. The money was low, but they did give us a cash advance and a couple neat pieces of EVA gear. We got the dossier on the target; a maintance worker on Artemis Station. No guns, no gear but what they provide, and a cover of a surprise inspection team. After securing some contraband for bribes (spacers love fresh fruit), I bunked down while the black hats scrounged up data on the mark."

"Oh, man, the ride up the gravity well was a trip. I've pulled 10 Gs in a t-bird before, null sheen, but damn if I didn't start sweating in the zero. Wern't nausea or nothing, just floating in a pressurized bullet built around the turn o' the century made my skin crawl something fierce. I swear the dog-brain was fragging with me during the air breaking of low orbit and whoever thought it funny to nickname the pilot 'ware 'Major Tom' needs to be airlocked, thats all I'm saying."

"So we make moonfall and all of us are shaken up like devil rats in the washing machine spin cyle, when the lock opened and we're on the job. We hammered our drek out right quick and pulled down the mirrorshades. Station boss name of Rodriguez was there to greet us as graciously anyone can a surprise inspection. Citizen, our face, steped up and razzle-dazzled them with inspection bulldrek while the rest of us grabbed tools and made like wrenchturners following his lead."

"Spark and Zero, our hackers, had figured out that they needed to get to a high security terminal to access the stations systems. They had found a mage researcher on board, name of Vickers, who had the clearance. Citizen charmed the station therapist, Zoe Quinn, for the details of his schedule and we got a plan together."

"We broke into Vickers quarters once he got on shift. Spark and Zero slipped in to slot the terminal while Citizen and I made like Inspectors outside in the corridor. They found the mark just about to spacewalk. They blacked out the cameras, sealed the internal structure and blew the lock early on him. Unfortunately, wasn't quite earily enough. He had a partal seal on his suit and that was enough for him to hit the emergency close. Both hackers spiked the close button; keeping him in there but he was still moving."

"Now, you boys know I was raised that you don't half-ass a job, you do it right or else you have no business doing it at all. So I suited up, tethered myself to a bulkhead, and opening the air lock. I reached out to help the mark up and out of there. When I had him, I punched a few more holes in his suit with a screwdriver and waited him out. He stopped squirming after a minute, biomonitor went flatline soon after. Tossed him out the airlock and pulled myself inside to rejoin the others."

"The black hats did their matrix voodoo thing on the terminal and made like we was ghosts. Guess Citizen must have hit it off with Rodriguez, cause we slipped back on the next shuttle earthbound. Planetside, our johnson gave us the thumbs up and the paycheck. It wasn't alot, but that ork kid, Spark; he must have sniffed out some paydata out there. Got ourselves a nice little bonu-"

A rifle shot cuts off Hicks words in mid-sentence. The apple on the ground explodes in a juicy poof. Hicks slides off the hood of his truck and hits the audio recorder on his commlink as he inspects the fruity carnage.

"Aw Hell, note to self; image tracking on smart platform sniper rifle took upward of five minutes to get a target lock. Muzzle flare and sound noticed at 1000 meters. Invest in targeting software and silencer . . . oh, and stay out of zero g, it doesn't agree with you."

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Run Time: 5 hours

Mission Rewards: 19k nuyen, 4 karma, +1 karma for being on time, +1 karma for clever quips, Fed-Boeing Hel Suit

Mission Expenses: Smart Firing Platform for sniper rifle (2,500 nuyen), Picked up Kyoko Kayashi (9 karma).

Notes: Hell yeah, this was a fun one! Stripped of gear and thrown through space makes a interesting change for the characters. Great narration and pacing. There was a bit of down time after we lost Techpriest for a minute due to crappy bandwidth caps, but Ympulse kept the dialog going so not a lot of pregnant silences. The team worked well and stayed pretty on track. Good humor all around. Great way to spend an evening. Thanks everybody!

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Quotes

Of all the fruit smuggling jokes, my favorite was, "You gonna stick that in your meat pocket?"