Auntie Cheng was still out of town, but she forwarded a message about a mission she thought might particularly interest us. An employee at Easter Tiger Corporation – a huge Korean megacorp – wanted us to steal some research data and samples from his own company. He was named Tigath Wright, and he claimed ETC was involved in some fragged-up R-and-D. Human test subjects. Genetic experiments. Nasty stuff. He wanted to expose what they were doing, but was afraid of retribution against his wife and child in Seoul. So he wanted us to copy the data, destroy the originals, contact him, and release the evidence anonymously.
The research was on a cargo ship – the MV Nalchi – on the way back to Korea. The Nalchi was battened up in Hong Kong harbor waiting out a huge off-shore storm. This gave us a prime shot to hit the ship while comms were poor, eyes in the sky were offline, and the crew were distracted.
Captain Jomo snuck us out to the Nalchi – a big rust-bucket that looked like it had been at sea since the 80s. Between the dark and the weather there was no sign anyone saw us approach.
Once we got on board Iz easily hacked the security cams – an “ancient relic” that had no modern ICE, Barely locked down at all. She pulled feeds from throughout the ship. Set up so she could monitor them on her PDA. This gave us fantastic SA on the upper deck, but spottier coverage down below. It seems the system was so old that some of the cams had failed entirely and sections of the ship were completely uncovered.
The cam feeds let us get through the upper deck without much interference from security.
And let us take out guards quickly and quietly when they couldn’t be avoided.
Below decks was another matter. Fortunately, Gobbet came equipped with a non-tech alternative.
Madness and Folly found a secured doorway with better armored guards . We could probably have taken them out quickly enough to not raise an alarm… but Iz offered another way.
The ship’s monitoring systems were just as old as the security cams. Iz hacked them to fake an overload in one of the other holds. That drew away enough guards to give us a clear path to the target.
What we found inside was… monstrous. Cancerous, deformed, twisted “things” floating in tanks. Alive. With tortured Astral auras broadcasting Pain. Nothing but Pain.
Iz decked into the lab comps to grab the data and scrub the archives. The project was called “Omega Sequence”. The things in the tanks were technically elves. They were genetic experiments trying to solve the meta-genes for elven long life. Testing included accelerated aging of embryos – with the side effect of massive amounts of cancer. They were chasing the rumors that some elves could be immortal. It felt beyond evil. I could see why Wright wanted to expose it. But I wondered why he hadn’t said anything about the test subjects. We shut down the support systems for the tanks. No-one deserved to live like that. No-one.
We reported back to Wright, but he sounded nervous. Said we needed to change the plan. He was being watched and was worried that remote payment could be tracked back to him. He wanted us to meet him at a park in Ho Chung and trade the data for payment in person. I was getting a bad vibe about the meet. The whole plan had been for us to arrange release of the data to keep him in the clear. I didn’t see how handing the data to him directly was supposed to keep him any safer…
As soon as I hung up I got a call from a man named Hwang. A bigshot in the Blue Heaven Soulpa ring. Korean triad. He said Wright’s security was terrible. They’d hacked his phone and called us back from his own call. Hwang wanted to get in good with Auntie Cheng, and he also offered “information that could save our lives”…
Blue Heaven had been hired by Eastern Tiger to secure the “Omega Sequence” data. The entire reason it was being shipped to Korea was because of earlier frakked runs… also hired by Wright. Wright had never worked for Eastern Tiger. He’d never had any family at all. He worked for Tír Tairngire – the reclusive elf nation. He was no whistleblower. He was fragging Tir intelligence! He’d hired runner teams to hit the Nalchi at every port where it had stopped. And *every single team* had been burned afterwards. Iz was furiously verifying as he data-dumped. The dirt she could find was consistent with the story. Frag.
We clearly couldn’t trust Wright. But I wasn’t about to hand everything back to Eastern Tiger either. I *knew* they had blood on their hands. Hwang changed tack, threatening to wipe us out as an object lesson in defying Blue Heaven. So I hung up on him. Bite me.
We headed back to Heoi with Jomo, and then took the metro to Ho Chung. But I wasn’t about to dive in without scoping things out. The locals told us a large number of “heavily armed Koreans” had showed up just a little while ago. Hwang’s goons were already here.
Iz hacked the local traffic cams to look around. Didn’t take long to find Wright. Or to find footage from earlier in the day of him meeting with a tall elf. A tall celtic elf covered in silver tattoos with a runic sword on his back.
Tír Tairngire. Almost certainly.
We checked out the park where Wright wanted to meet, watched him for a bit, and then headed in. Leaving Iz in hiding as backup.
Wright tried to keep up the act, pretending to be a scared researcher trying to do the deal and get out. But when I let him know we were savvy his attitude changed. He said the Tir Princes wanted to bury the research because it “fueled prejudice against elves”. He didn’t have an answer for why, if that was his goal, he wanted the data turned over to him rather than burned. He tried to salvage the deal, offering us a hefty bonus.
But at that point Hwang showed. Backed up by Soulpa goons. He said if we gave him the datastick he’d let us walk away before he gunned down Wright.
At which point Wright gestured wish his hand and his own squad stepped out of hiding. A full Tir strike squad. Lovely.
The standoff was getting ugly, with both sides threatening us and each other trying to claim the datastick.
So ugly that they didn’t notice as I started slightly levitating. Just as they hadn’t really noticed when Dunk and Gob fell back. Hwang and Wright caught on just as I gave Iz the signal… and she flipped the power main for the derelict building nearby. The power main which had been turned OFF because it had a power feed exposed to the puddles snaking all through the park…
That took out some of the closest uglies – mostly some of Hwang’s crew. But it also kicked off open war between the elves and the thugs. With both of them just as keen on taking us out as each other!
I was most worried about the elves. The Soulpa weren’t anything we hadn’t seen before. More of them – but Triad thugs are Triad thugs. The elves though… those were something else. Particularly the lead. He stuck out like a flare in Astral. An Adept. A wizard who channeled magic through his body rather then slinging it like me. Which made fighting him a lot like fighting a chromed up street samurai – with two big, big differences.
He was as good at defending himself against magic as any spell slinger.
And he could cut right through my defences..
Dunk charged in to get the fragger before he finished me off, but Dunk wasn’t really equipped to deal with him either.
Fortunately he still distracted the guy enough that he left me for dead to concentrate on Dunk. Which left him just as vulnerable as anybody else to a shocking grasp he never saw coming.
That still left us in bad shape, with me bleeding out. Gob hid us in fog to give Iz a chance to stabilize me.
Unfortunately that put Gob herself in the crosshairs..
Things were going bad fast. I was on the edge of blacking out. Gob was hurt. Dunk and Iz were pinned. And there were still an unknown number of gangsters and Tir agents battling around us. I was desperate enough to grab whatever power I could find from whatever node was near. I’d worry about the price later.
Item one, erase the fraggin sniper that hit Gob.
Item two, I’d had just about enough of Soulpa gangsters.
That just about gassed me out, but it gave the others the space to focus fire on what was left of the Tir team.
But when all was clear and I woke back up, there was still one major obstacle. A troll manning a mini-gun behind the former Tir position. He looked strong, tough, and deadly. And he was staring at me as if he wasn’t quite sure how lucky he felt. Unfortunately for him I was still juiced up, and in no mood to play.
Mr “Wright” was looking around at the destruction in absolute shock. “That was an elite strike team!“,”Top end!”. I limped over to him, and he backed away at the look on my face. I held out the stick. With all the data that Iz had copied.
“All for this?”, I demanded. “You never gave a damn about the poor bastards they tortured for it. You didn’t even bother to tell us they were there. And you couldn’t just hire us to do the job straight?!?“
“You don’t understand! That could be the secret to immortality! For all elves everywhere, not just ancients! We can’t trust anyone! You’re an elf. This is your birthright too!” I just stared. Held out his damned data stick, fried it to a crisp, and let the ashes fall into his hands.
“Next time you get clever and double-cross runners, don’t cheap out on the firepower dreck-for-brains. As far as I’M concerned we fulfilled the contract *to the letter*. If we don’t get paid in FULL, we WILL be back to continue the discussion. No matter how many fraggin’ ‘elites’ you hire.“
And with that we headed home. I needed a good long date with a doc-wagon, a hot shower, and a bed. Tomorrow could figure itself out. But I would bring up to Auntie that I wasn’t happy with the vetting of the Johnson on this mission. Somebody dropped the ball.
Author’s Notes:
Today was my “credit refresh” day, so I went nuts spending out with high quality AI images and playing with movies before they renewed. Still not sure how cost-effective it all is, but it can sure be fun to splurge!..
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