Hoi, chummers. Don't know if I've run into any of your meat bodies before, but this is Gyro, until recently of the Seattle 'plex. Finally scraped up the nuyen to get myself a Shadowland account, and I need some info.

A friend of mine recently ran into a Johnson looking for protection somewhere around Crete, needed outside expertise and heard this was the spot for the best shadows in the business. That was his story, anyways, and he had the nuyen to get my pal interested. My chummer here isn't stupid, though, and in the face of so much nuyen he decided he needed more than his usual team to make sure they all lived to see the cash. So he looked up me and a couple other guys.

Now, my line ain't straight chrome and death...I'm just a gun dealer who loves the trade and happens to be blessed with a bit of a magical advantage, and if it so happens a deal doesn't go down right, it pays to be good with the merchandise, right? Anyways, my friend told me what was up and so I agreed. It was only a couple weeks and a lot of nuyen to go towards my comfortably non-perforated early retirement.

So they fly us out there and we set up around this fraggin' huge yacht. We pretty much stayed in and around the dock area with the electronics geniuses up on the boat to make sure anyone who might get past us didn't try to play Titanic. It was pretty quiet...even the street punks knew better than to mess with a yacht this big. Which got me wondering. Why were we here? Sure, we were getting paid not to ask questions, but the money this guy had could have gone towards lots of cold cyber and hot led. Sure, it would be a little more obvious and have somewhat less finesse, but it would get the job done. Why fly out to Seattle?

Anyways, eventually we were told that the yacht was ready and we were on our way out. Now, it had been implied that we were supposed to guard a certain somebody onboard, but I was never introduced. That was weird...all we knew was we were supposed to protect the yacht. We were never introduced to the guy who embodied our paycheck.

About two days into the journey is when things got hosed. It was the damndest thing...the weather was clear as a bell, you could see tiny schools of fish racing through the water...and they hit us. In plain daylight. We even had plenty of warning...when radar picked 'em up out of the sky we grabbed our gear and got ready to rumble. I had my pride and joy out, a Franchi Spas action with some serious personal touches. Even had some EX ammo in that baby. Right tools for the right job, chummer.

These kids weren't messing around, though. First they came in firing miniguns off the sides of the choppers-there were four, two of 'em came strafing down the sides. Didn't hit anybody but it kept our heads down while the other two choppers landed fraggers on our heads. These boys and girls had big gas masks on, black vests and red uniforms. I've never seen 'em anywhere, and nobody here in Crete whom I've been able to make trusted contact with knows who they are either.

Oh man, we got slagged. They moved fast...I've never seen anyone move like that in my life. Cyber or mojo, our chrome sammys met their match and then some. After only sixty seconds or so it was down to me, the chummer who brought me on, and our resident mojo-slinger, who looked like he had blacked out. We had about eight runners altogether, and even with the five down I only saw a couple black vests who weren't going to be pulling a paycheck soon. I don't know if either of them was even one I helped with-I was so busy pumping EX that I barely had time to breathe.

So me and my chummer grabbed the wizkid and jumped ship. I left a couple grenades behind sans pins and the explosion helped to keep them occupied while we tried to do our best impression of debris. There sure was enough of it...debris and bodies. The crew of the ship was a lot worse off than we had been. I didn't see any of 'em alive past the first thirty seconds or so.

We managed to make it back to Crete after about a day or so...holed up with a guy I know from a couple of big deals back in the day. Thankfullly, we got a good chunk up front for this, at least enough so I can write it off in the long run. The thing is, we need to know: who are these guys, why did they hit the yacht, and is it safe to try and make it back to sweet, sweet Seattle any time soon?

Red and Black eh.. Well I am no decker but I have ran my share of the biz. And those colors are usually associated with the big R. But hey everyone knows that so it could be someone framing them. Or it could just be a coincidence....

Glad to hear you made it off the boat though, sounded rough. I hate boat jobs, your so.. isolated.

Though I haven't tangled with myself, they seems to fit the discription and Mo (air drop)of a small group of mercs that goes by the name of red commandos. Mainly Spec ops from what i heard which isn't alot. Was there armour soft or Mil spec?

Though it could be RS there armour is very distinctive which rules out anybody trying to look like them. Also the last i heard the Renraku still didn't let females into the RS. But i'm a little behind there.

Their armor was pretty soft, looked like they weren't loaded out for heavy operations-at least, where we were concerned. Their tactics seemed to emphasize speed, so either they were trying to get something on the ship, were trying to make it look like they were trying to get something on the ship, or that style of manuevers is typical of them.

Now, I still don't know if somebody was supposed to survive that wreck or not. And I didn't get enough of a look at their transport to see if it was particularly well cared for or not, which would give me a better idea of how independent they were. Now, in the past I've been privy to some datafiles Renraku lost off the back of a truck that detailed some of the more commonly used RS tactical procedures. These guys didn't fit the bill-and, like you said, they had women present. So either Renraku is starting a new branch of the Red Samurai, or this is somebody else.

Knowing Renraku, I'd say the former is pretty slim.

Armour was soft you say?? hmm not that sure then.

From what i know for them they were light mil spec, with Smg's.

But the speed fits.
Tho with their gear they could be mistaken for Corp Spec ops and not mercs. Tho they frequently have corp sponsership.

Anybody heard of any new merc groups making a name for themselves recently?