The hacker Whitenoise contacts us, having looked into corp suicide squads like ours. A decade ago there were many rumours of corps doing these, but they were concluded to be unsubstantiated and they fizzled out, until rather recently it came up again in the dark webs. One common pattern is that eventually, the team always seems to get removed somehow, either as a cleanup or screwup. He wants to help us get out, so offers to examine one of the implants, and Styx happily volunteers.

Approaching his hacker bar meetup, he struggles to connect to Styx due to the luddite’s complete lack of access ports. Bob’s proved more fruitful, and confirmed there is a cranial bomb pinging a Seattle tower, but also a secondary mod powered by it…

On the morning of the launch, our contact explained the Shadowlands data we harvested earlier was the Mitsuhama Commercial station Heaven’s orbital data, but offset a bit, which they determined was actually a secret Research station hiding in the shadow of the larger station, keeping Heaven between Earth and it. We’ll start with a ticket to Heaven, meet an operative who has a ship for us, and then fly it to the Research Station. Once there, we plant a backpack (which smells suspiciously of phosphorous) along the station’s spine, connect to the comms station, and then flee by our ship.

Orbital Commercial Station: Heaven

alright, set your lasers to “stun”
heh, “stun settings” – The Zombiemancer
you just like bodies too much

Our touristy ride up went well, except for those of us who need a manasphere, who were oh so very seasick. Heaven’s port backs onto a Vegas-like strip, with all the eccentric & questionable amenities of an extraterritorial extravagence that caters to the ultra-wealthy.

Chester schmoozed with the VIP’s, and heard that there seems to be a lot of Mitsu operatives wandering around, trying to blend in badly, may be some sort of security or running some social experiment. Awhile back someone saw a blip on a scanner up in the bridge that looked like a station out past us, but they fixed it real quick. After many drinks, one engineer admitted to being yanked onto a shuttle for an emergency repair job, drove 30m, doors opened to a different station that was much smaller and yet evidently very close to Heaven. They had him fix a docking port, everything there was built very redundant, everything can be fixed from inside or out.

The rest of the gang decided to relax and enjoy the amenities of the station, with some people gambling, Raptor won some money on the slots; Styx decided slots seemed like a good idea; as does Bob Ross; Hawkeye hangs around; and Nightshade has some drinks at the bar.

Just so everyone knows, English isn’t my native language. I’m from South Africa, so I figured I’d speak Zulu – Bob Ross
How has this not come up yet?? Aren’t you like, a programmer? Do you just get by with Emoji’s or something?

Meeting up with our contact, he took us to a docking bay - though we noticed we were tailed by a pair of those Mitsu operatives clearly wearing hidden armor. Nightshade and Raptor peel off from the group to try to draw one of them off, but the operatives stick with us.

Styx and Chester get closer under the guise of needing directions, and manage to drunkenly get their hands on their shoulders. Meanwhile, Nightshade and Raptor continue down the hall and get stopped by three more agents, who ask (with guns drawn) to accompany them back to the centre ring.

“What the fuck is the centre ring?” Nightshade asks with her typical indignation

• Nightshade and Raptor exchange a look and a nod and decide to strike first the Mitsu Agents. Raptor’s legendary legs hit the first two guards, with expected results. the first guard and then quickly knocks the second guard on his ass. Nightshade whips out her collapsible bow and shoots the third guard, but he is still standing after the hit.
• The two mages simultaneously activate their Shock Gloves, toasting (and stunning, in Chester’s mild mannered way) them instantly.
• The hackers, Bob Ross and Haweye work together to jam the headsets of the guards
• Nightshade and Raptor quickly finish off the guards they are fighting and drag the bodies to dock.

“We can fucking jettison the bodies into space! This is great!” – Nightshade

Once the smoke cleared, we hid the bodies in the docking ring and ran aboard our new ship: it looks like a fancy, sleek, very fast ship, that’s been painted to look like a run-down salvage hauler. With a guard’s gunshot still ringing through the halls, we blasted off towards the Research station.

Hidden Research Station: Shadowed

Hawkeye is at the helm, guiding us with stealth to the station, using the shadows cast from Heaven to hide us from anything that could be potentially looking for us. Bob Ross works with Hawkeye to hide the electronic systems from being discovered and does a damned good job at it.

We discuss our plans for how best to infiltrate the station, given the docking doors are closed, and decide to start with the comms array exterior. Bob plugs in, with the rest of us preparing to jump any engineers that come out of access hatches, but is unable to directly control it from outside, and opts instead some light sabotage. Sure enough some EVA suits come out of a hatch, and Bob’s Doberman drone (which was flown over by 10x Dragonflies) lights em up easily, with Raptor and Night entering the hatch they left open.

Actually lets keep the heavy Doberman outside, they uhh, don’t want to see his inside voice.

• Boarding the station triggered an alarm, of course
• Three security come out of the hall
• Raptor shoots two rounds with his lazor gun, its ok but makes a great pew pew sound!
• Nightshade obliterates another guard with a single arrow

  The last guard takes off running away, wanting absolutely no part of this terrifying archer in space. – GM

• With the guards taken care of, Nightshade and Raptor head up the elevator, to the Research level, more guards, more arrows to the face

I’m really good at intimidation, its my one social skill! – Nightshade … your sheet says specialization in torture

Hacking through the last blast door to command, they easily intimidate the few nerds inside, and enable the exterior comms controls for Bob to work with. We suddenly receive a video call from our handler, who sullenly explains that SK has terminated our squad program and that our heads are going to explode the moment we restore Matrix access. He at least had the courtesy to send us the cranial bomb schematics, before we disconnect the comms array. Screw SK. Nightshade and Raptor book it to the station’s medbay. Chester encourages the others to go on ahead to the medbay, he’ll stay on the ship alone waiting for them - no really its fine you can trust him, go ahea—

Chester and Hawkeye see a giant railgun round blast towards the station, which gets shattered at the last moment by station defences, sending shrapnel through the station’s top ring and putting giant holes in our poor ship. While it spirals out of control towards the station, Chester and Hawkeye run to the airlock, leaping just in time for the ship to decapitate the station’s top ring.

Brain Surgery

The six of us reunite in medbay, having seen many scared people running through the halls to safety, paying us no mind. Medbay has a shiny highlevel autodoc that Styx lies down in and Hawkeye begins to program the autodoc. We phone a friend in to Whitenoise over satelite, who adds his safe-disable mod to the Autodoc’s procedure. The second mod spotted earlier turns out to be an additional explosive embedded in the heart, wired to the first, but Hawkeye’s surprising trauma surgery specialization combined with improvised explosives familiarity allowed her to remove the payload and reinsert the empty cranial bomb. A tense series of similar surgeries clear all the brain booms, intersperced with more railgun shrapnel impacts for extra fun medicine checks!

Brains clear, we descend to the docking bays - first one’s ship is quite salvaged, second one’s been hit by shrapnel, and the third bay is empty - with the ship 200m away, covered in guards trying to get in. After sniping one, the rest of the guards start to panic, a follow up shot strikes another guard, which is when the dragonfly swarm descends, shredding them before carrying the ship to us.

Just as we’re hypothetically pondering going back to pick up parts from that excellent medbay, a final railgun round lands true, obliterating the station. We sailed our unregistered, probably-does-not-officially-exist, pirated space ship back to Earth - landing us nowhere near Seattle.

– Transcribed by Chester and Nightshade

Previous Chapter: Working with the Enemy

Next Chapter: Berlin

Dramatis Personae

• B - Chester, exceptionally charismatic Dryad
• N - Raptor, The Big Kick
• R - Styx, Tactical Zombiemancer
• T - Bob Ross, Drone Master
• M - Nightshade, Uncouth Assassin
• M - Hawkeye, Pilot Hacker Extraordinaire