Welcome back to our exploits in Night City, where we get to meet Lethal One and negotiate a big slice of pie.
We had encountered Lethal One several months ago, coming to Lethal’s attention when we were running my Trauma Team franchise, essentially because we had use of an AV.
Lethal was a fixer of some renown in Night City, although no-one knew the identity. We had speculated and in hindsight it is interesting to see how close we were to knowing the truth.
Mission planning
So, we’re going ahead with this plan to seize this container ship inbound for Night City. It’s the Night City thing to do and no way we will let this drift by. We spoke to friends and contacts and arranged for AV hire for three teams. Two mercenary teams and a third command and technical team ie my edgerunner team, my interns Dice and Spice and Ingen, a friend and technical expert from our local community. We knew there would be hostiles so we tried to prepare as best we could.
Ultimately, we knew we would have to call it in and ask Lethal One for help. We couldn’t afford the upfront fees alone and ultimately a slice of pie is better than no slice. So, I arranged to meet with one of Lethal One’s agents. You never get to meet Lethal One in person. It was easy. Once I mentioned we wanted to secure this cargo ship, the agent agreed terms. Lethal One would front the mission and on successful completion, we would get a decent one-off payment, plus an ongoing stipend that will cover our basic needs going forward. As it turned out, we ended up with more…
Landing
We landed safely without incident. We knew it was only a matter of time before we encountered hostiles, but for now we had a window of opportunity. We secured the bridge and deployed the mercenaries to clear out the passageways and secure the engine room. We started to investigate the systems and Ingen was like a child with excitement as the prospect of exploring the tech on board. Meanwhile my solos went out for recon whilst the two mercenary leaders, Mongoose and Snake took up a command post on the bridge and led their teams from there. I put Spice onto hacking into the systems to work out what we were up against. This was a trying time. We knew the ship was called Crimson Star and the crew had a crimson uniform, but before we could dive deeper, we had an issue.
A fractured AI
Well, it turns out that the ship AI was active and was trying to engage with us. It used the holo image of a child with a toy bear to engage with us, so I called out we are friends which made it happy. Unfortunately, Spice detected something rather alarming.
As she was in cyberspace looking around, she saw the child morph into a large and somewhat angry bear. Spice was getting nervous; the bear was becoming threatening. I asked Spice to stay with it, but before long the angry bear was attacking her causing her to pull out. Well, I couldn’t blame her.
So, here we were. The AI had we suspected had become fractured. Naturally we thought ‘can we pull the plug out?’ So, I called out to the team for us to go hunting for the server room.
We had worked out that a lot of energy was being used in an apparent dead space, so we headed to the spot in a quiet corridor and discovered a secret access panel. We were in and discovered a large set of servers overheating and then the child and the large bear made their appearances. I’m not sure what happened really, but I placated the child and the tech did their bit and eventually the two merged. We decided to leave the server room then because we now had mercenaries engaging with hostiles.
Parley by the lifts
We ran to support our team clear out one set of hostiles, it was in the balance as to who would come out on top. We descended on two lifts to a lower deck, and I made sure Menendez in his frame was with me and my interns. You know Dice is on the surface my PA, but really, she’s a covert ops gal. Spice acts as my IT support, but obviously she’s my netrunner. Anyway, this was proving to be invaluable field experience for them.
Our lift started to malfunction. Presuming a trap, I told Menendez to force the doors open and then we carefully climbed out into the dark. It turns out this was a good move as we heard a commotion where the remainder of my team was. There appeared to find they were surrounded by hostiles. There was a bad reaction and a grenade went off but thankfully not a full-scale firefight.
This gave me the opportunity to step forward and call out Chavez, correctly deducing it must be him leading the enemy team. (Chavez was this Militech executive who tried to take out Paltrowe). Chavez to his credit, gave a command to his team to stand by and he came over. One of my team took a risk to seize the initiative, Chavez got hit, but I called for calm and Chavez and the team around me stayed cool. Menendez ran to step in front of me and Dice was combat ready at my side. This is how you do it. We could easily have started shooting and many would’ve died, but far better to talk. It’s the Night City way and what I’m (Slice) good at!
Eventually, although we were in a difficult position we agreed to work together to take over the ship and both benefit from the profits. There was a hint I might have to go against Lethal One’s plan for us, by agreeing with Chavez, but then Lethal One joined the conversation, or should I say, Crimson Star.
Crimson Star
It turns out that Crimson Star is the AI and Lethal One is an alias it uses when interacting with the world. We had successfully helped merge to two fractured identities and now the AI took on a new holo projection, crimson in colour. Crimson wanted to drop the name of Lethal One but we persuaded it to retain it to help protect its identity.
We agreed terms in a deal which saw Militech take over the military protection and we gained our reward. In addition, we now had use of a new sea base and Crimson’s friendship which was useful too for Crimson in rebuilding its persona.
So, there we are. A great team effort, a successful gig with a large payout and another base. When we reached the mainland, I heard the news I had received another promotion and was now taking over a newly created division (In mechanical terms I was now Executive level 8!).
We then wanted to do something different, something from our own initiative and we wanted to celebrate. Remember Luna Eleven from our first mission? Well, this rockergal owed us and through Crimson we negotiated a deal where she would perform a one-time only gig on the ship and we would be there to offer security as well as to enjoy, but more on that next time…
About the author:
As well as playing board games, Neil has been playing a variety of roleplaying games since 1982, including creating campaigns as a GM and espousing the art and craft of being a good GM and the therapeutic value of games generally.
