Ghost in the City: Early Chapter 84 (Patreon)

Once everyone ate and had a break we jumped back in. I was back on the net. This time following the Van backwards along its path with my team helping out. And then to our delight, the van was on a different road back.

*It’s on Longshore! It just came off the Ringroad!* Malcolm called out through the call.

The Van hadn’t gone into City Central using the freeways through NC. It had been mostly on the street level. Using Congress St to go around Corpo Plaza to reach Corporation.

But if they were using the Ring road to come back? It meant Corporation St. Was close to where our scavs made their dropoff.

*I’m checking what I can find around Corporation. If they are on the Ringroad… I can’t find any good cameras in that area, everything is high end. I’m stretching out and looking for smaller shops.* I called out to my chooms as I blurred through cyberspace, trying to find something with eyes.

*Motoko. Check for 25/7’s. They tend to be all over the place down there, since the corpos use them to buy cigarettes or a beer while working.* Hiromi cut in, and I blinked.

What the fuck was a 25/7?

It took me a few seconds to find out. They were capsule shops. They could be put just about anywhere, and were basically gas stations without the gas.

Interesting!

I did a quick net search for them, finding a few of the capsules all over the area.

The trouble came instantly as I slipped onto their server net.

All of the recordings for all the shops went to a main server. It was a chain shop after all.

But the place was crazy secure. I had to duck back out instantly just to avoid the security Daemons they had liberally placed throughout.

“Slow Motoko. Take it slow.” I reminded myself. Then I began breaching. Slipping my Daemons into their system in return. Blinding their security, as I wormed my way in.

It helped that I wasn’t trying to access their most secure data. Their payment, and shipping information was heavily secured. The digital access point looked like a hallway full of lasers and things heading towards a vault.

But the camera data wasn’t something they could store that securely. There would be just too much information coming in. It would make a weakness in the security. So it was far easier to access for that reason.

Or they just didn’t care to protect it.

So I managed to slip into that section of the server without trouble, bypassing the security Daemons.

I was just starting to access the cameras, looking for the shops on Corporation st when I felt it.

Someone knew I was here.

Danger Sense.

I turned throwing up my ICE Shield, which saved me.

A Daemon shaped like a devil was rushing me, its open mouth full of chainsaw teeth that spun and buzzed. Honestly it looked more like a blender than a mouth.

But even as the Daemon hit my shield and slowed down frosting over it was the netrunner behind it that I was focused on.

“Sorry kid. Nothing personal.” He said as his hand shifted.

Barrier spun around me. The neon shields bursting to life, filling space with a flood of junk data, that when the ray of neon green light shot out, I was able to actually dodge as the incredibly fast hack stalled on the barriers before managing to work their way through.

Hell Flame burst around me slamming into the Daemon, causing the Daemon stuck in my ICE to begin to dissolve. Removing it as a threat.

“Hey can’t we talk about this? Not looking to cause trouble here.” I called out even as I continued to prepare more defenses, and looking for an escape route.

“Breaking into my server? That is trouble.” He said and I had to sacrifice another of my barriers to keep the ray of light from striking me.

“Not here to damage your biz!” I called out, sending a wave of Hell Fire at the runner who stopped attacking to throw up a solid wall of ICE to fizzle it out.

Yeah this guy knew what he was doing, and he was in his own server. I was gonna have to delta.

Unfortunately he wasn’t going to let me. Even as I started making my way to move out of the server lobby, the security Daemon dogs were gathering at the exits. Blocking my way.

Fucker.

“Yeah what exactly would a kid netrunner be doing sneaking in here? Oh did you just trip and your access connector happen to slide into the server port?”

I actually snorted, out a laugh at the joke.

“Not exactly, how about we have a-fuck!” I yelped as I dodged another ray. I was running low on barriers. Throwing up another set was only a stop gap measure. “How about we have a minute where we talk! No need to go killing each other here.”

“I don’t know from my angle. I seem to be on the winning side of this.” He called out mocking, but, keeping him talking was keeping him from blasting me.

Fine I would just flip it around. A new set of barriers surrounded him now. Leaving me without my best defense, but the Daemon was dead, so ICE burst up creating a barrier between us.

“Oh fuck off.” He grumbled and started bashing the spam barriers with his laser.

I took a moment to get a scan of it and had to whistle. That was a nasty virus. Like my fire it would try to delete anything it touched.

“How about we just talk, yeah?” I called out and while it didn’t make him stop blasting the barriers it did cause him to respond again.

“Yeah? Why should I? Some thief coming into my server? It’s my job to clean up the trash!” He yelled blasting a few more of the barriers down.

“Okay first? Ouch. Second. I’m not here to steal anything! I just need your camera records to see if I can track down a Scav group.” I waited, peaking my head out from around my ICE barrier. I was counting on the fact everyone hated scavs to give me a few seconds here.

My trash barriers were all gone, but he wasn’t attacking me anymore.

“I’m supposed to believe you are hunting Scavs?”

“Well… Yeah! Look at where I am! I’m accessing your camera records.” I said waving at the data I had been poking at.

“Worker profiles and other things are in that database too. How do I know you aren’t up to something.”

“Cause I’m trying to talk to you and not just trashing your server as I make my escape?”

“You got one minute, convince me.” He said arms crossed over his chest, the netrunners face was mostly blocked by a set of net goggles, but at least he wasn’t shooting lasers at me.

Or sicking his daemon dogs on me.

“Okay so I’ve been following a group of scavs from their hideout through the city. I knew where they started, but I need to find out where they came from. I lose them in city central on Corporation. Near Berkley. I know they get on the Ring Road, but I can’t tell from where.”

The netrunner was quiet for a minute before nodding slowly. “The security in Center is better, so you can’t… Have you been hacking into every Camera you can get your hands on?” He asked, sounding almost bewildered.

“Well yeah?”

“How are you not dead? Black ICE should have fried you by now.”

“I mean… I’m pretty good at breaching systems, and if the system is too dangerous I just skip it.”

“No wonder I didn’t notice your intrusion.” He mumbled more to himself than me, but he raised and then lowered his hands, and suddenly the Daemon dogs seemed to relax, going back to searching for intruders and not trying to eat me.

“Fine. I’ll walk you through the recordings if you don’t steal any records, and leave when you get what you want.”

“Deal!” I called out with a sigh, slowly letting my ICE down, and cleaning up the mess on the server with a bit of manual maintenance.

“Let’s get this over with kid.” He said with a grumbly sigh.

And we did. He walked over and once I told him the day and time he was able to pull up the cameras on the little shopping pods and we started looking.

“There.” I pointed out when I saw it.

It was still going westbound on Corporation. Past Berkley. What the hell? There wasn’t even much out there. Just a wave breaker road.

“Wait, that's the truck you are looking for? I thought you said you were searching for scavs?” The netrunner said looking to me with suspicion.

“Yeah I am! Those guys are with a scav group up in westbrook. I’ve tracked them all the way here from their hideout.”

“If that’s the case why are they dressed up as Gold Beach Marina dock workers?” He asked and I looked back at the camera.

The passenger. He had changed his clothes at some point. Throwing over a Blue and white jumpsuit. While the driver had on a yellow hazard vest.

“Gold Beach Marina?” I wondered aloud. The name not meaning anything to me.

“Yeah the jumpsuit the passenger is wearing, that’s their janitor staff uniform. We get them stopping in to buy smokes while they work all the time. Seen them a million times. On the camera when I need to look for thieves.”

“Gold Beach Marina… Thanks Choom.” I told him, throwing up a thumbs up as I made to log out.

“Whoa kid. These guys are Marina staff, not Scavs, what are you playing at?”

“That’s what I want to know.” I said, irritated and did a quick log out of the server. He didn’t have the Daemons guarding the access points so I was easily able to buzz back out and into the net.

But I didn’t stick around. I went straight back to my body.

—--

“Gold Beach Marina. Super high end place, has a bar and a cafe… And a bar.” Hiromi offered as she looked at the laptop she had pulled up the marina’s information from. “Private club, can’t get in unless you make more eddies than you could even try to waste.”

“Why are the scavs going to a place like that?”

“Maybe some high end scav boss has a connection there? Could park his yacht right there and load it up. The security is crazy, but if he okays the scavs that come to make deliveries registering them as staff… Fuck that would work.” Ichi mentioned looking infuriated.

“Does it? The cost for access to a place like that must be crazy! Even a scav wouldn’t make money affording it. And it’s just a yacht marina. A yacht can’t transport that sort of stuff across the pacific! So that means they have to stop somewhere else! Is a yacht like that big enough to even make a profit if you are shipping all the chrome out of the city on it?” I asked frowning.

I get where Ichi was coming from, but when you are shipping something across an ocean, that’s time and money. Boxes of Chrome are certainly a good amount of eddies into their pocket…

But enough to cover all the costs this would entail?

A yacht. Fuel. Repairs. Crew. Payment to the scavs. Equipment to the scavs.

“Something about this is fishy as fuck.”

“Well it is a marina-Ow!” Malcolm winced as Hiromi slugged him in the arm for the joke.

“At least we found them.” Ichi offered with a shrug. “Does any of the rest matter? We could go and loot up.”

“You want to steal chrome from a high security area owned by bajillionaires?” I asked frowning. “I was expecting a boat and a hidden dock, like old smugglers. Not this.”

I didn’t exactly want the sort of heat that people with fuck off money could bring.

Oh I’m sure we could steal the stuff. I was fairly confident in my ability there, but stealing the stuff and not having someone track us down after?

Just like we had done. It was totally possible someone could follow us the same way.

No, we had to figure out a way of stealing this thing without a trace if we were going to do it.

“Okay. It’s late guys. We did it, We tracked down the scavs. But we aren’t getting into the Marina security from here, so take a break. Go to sleep. I’m going to go check out the Marina tonight while it’s late.” I said, we needed information. I could collect it.

“Motoko stop being a gonk. You’ve been netrunning and going nonstop for hours and hours. We all need a break. We can continue tomorrow. If you want to check the place when it’s dark out, then tomorrow night will be good.” Hiromi said cutting me off to my surprise as she grabbed my shoulders and pushed me towards one of the couches.

“Wha-Hiromi! I’m fine.”

“Go to sleep.” Hiromi muttered, rubbing her eyes.

In the end Ichi and Malcolm passed out on the couch, while Hiromi took my net chair.

I guess it was sleepover time. I rolled my eyes and just decided to go with it. Hiromi was right. No need to rush this.

—-

The next morning we all drove out to the Marina to get a look at what we were facing.

My Quadra, and Ichi’s truck stood out like a sore thumb when we pulled out into the Marina from Corporation st.

But that was fine. We were just information gathering.

“Look at that ship.” Malcolm muttered, staring at the big black yacht that was one of the few ships in the marina. The thing looked like a stealth ship from the old world, but considering where it was, it was likely just a luxury yacht with a weird style.

“Do you think that’s it?” Ichi asked me and I shrugged.

“No way to know. They could be out on the seas right now. Or they could just be using a warehouse or something connected to the marina until a bigger ship comes by to pick it all up, right under the nose of customs… If that’s even a thing here.” I muttered wondering what customs was even like in Night City.

It was technically a city state.

Interesting but unimportant.

“Okay so yeah we aren’t getting in there easily.” Ichi muttered looking across the small marina from the parking lot we were idling in.

There was only one way into the Marina which had barricades, a security station, and guards.

There were even cameras I could see all over the area.

Yep. They weren’t interested in having riff raff enter their marina.

“Can you netrun into their stuff? You know like take over the cameras, or cause an alert that all the guards run to the wrong area to take care of or something?” Malcolm asked, and I had to snort, shaking my head.

“It doesn’t really work like that. Considering the money in the place, I’d be shocked if they didn’t have a netrunner keeping an eye on things… Which sucks, makes everything harder… I’ll probably have to get into their security room to get anything.” I said looking at the small set of buildings in the marina. One of which had the computer I would need to access.

“So got the pictures you need?”

“Yeah.” I said with a smirk already seeing the perfect way in. “I’ll need to do this at night, so we should get out of here. Break up until later. Want to get some food?”

“I could eat.” Malcolm said hand raised and grinning.

—--

“These fries are actually pretty good.” I muttered staring at my plate of steak fries in surprise.

“Yeah? What about them?” Malcolm asked, looking like he was about to try and sneak one, since I didn’t want to stab the gonk for stealing. I gestured at the plate that he could try and he did with a big smile.

“I don’t know, they just taste good. I’m kinda surprised.”

“Pfft. Picky! Motoko is picky.” Ichi said teasing, but I got a look of sympathy from Hiromi.

Made sense. While her parents weren’t the absolute high level executives in Arasaka, they were still rich. So they ate better than normal people. Hiromi must have grown up eating better foods.

I was just surprised these french fries actually tasted like french fries.

They weren’t. But they tasted close enough. No potato involved.

We had gone to a diner once we left City Center, and just crashed a booth. The four of us surrounded by food and just pigging out.

It was nice.

“I still can’t believe you became a netrunner so fast. I mean… Omaeda worked on it for a while and he was only like… Okay at it.” Malcolm said changing the subject from food taste and once again Ichi didn’t look happy.

“Omaeda thought he was hot shit, but couldn’t do anything.” Ichi retorted coldly before stuffing some of his own fries in his face.

“Kinda mean Ichi. He just didn’t have much gear. You saw his deck.”

“Ah the suitcase Cyberdeck… Yeah.” I mentioned frowning. My own knowledge let me know just how out of date that thing would have been.

No wonder he couldn’t break into the cars security on that gig so long ago.

Wow I hadn’t thought about that night and my first kills in a long time.

“Well I for one am perfectly happy with Motoko acting as our netrunner. And I don’t want to split the payouts another way. So shh.” Hiromi said as she stuck a piece of her… Pizza? Lasagna? I have no idea what it was, but she liked it. Into her mouth.

“Yeah I guess that’s fair. I’m just worried about him.”

“If you are worried about your choom Malcolm. Go check on him. I mean… I’m glad I reached out to you guys. This stuff would be way harder without you covering my back. I’m glad I cleared the air.” I said, earning smiles from Malcolm and a slow nod as he finished another bite of his own meal.

“Yeah me too.” Ichi said, smiling seemingly ignoring Omaeda’s existence. “I do have a question ‘Toko. Do we want to hit the first place we found? I know we got the big one to focus on, but that place is just sitting there.” Ichi said purposefully not saying scav as we were in public.

No reason to let anyone know what we were up to.

I hummed at the idea.

Positives and negatives.

But I shook my head. “As much as I hate the idea of leaving ‘them’ to keep doing their thing. I don’t want there to be any chance that someone realizes we are on to their higher ups.”

While I knew everyone was unhappy with the decision we all nodded to each other.

In the end, there wasn’t anything further we could do at the moment without the marina’s cameras. So we all split up for the day.

We would meet up tomorrow after I hopefully had the records we needed.