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Chance359
Dec 20th, 2073

The agent monitoring the public node of "We B Moving" looks like a longshoreman, knit cap and all. With a quick nod, he authenticates your company ID. A small virtual bulletin board appears behind him, listing special jobs to be done off the books. The board is pretty empty right now, only two jobs are listed:

Job 1

Seattle to Spirit Lake Iowa

"I need your help, my boss is trying to temp some investors from Wuxing to funding a new project. He told me to get 400 kilos of fresh pacific ocean fish here in 2 days, he's out of his mind. I'll transfer you 15,000 for the fish, and 20,000 to deliver it here in 3 days." -About to be fired


Job 2

All around NA

"I have 4 cargo pallets, each weighing 600KG that I need each dropped off at a different locations across NA. Coordinates will be provided upon acceptance. Job pays 20,000 per pallet as long as the individual containers containers are unopened. Interested?" -Miss X


The job postings are sent through to your crew, what do you want to do?
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Within the VR of the node, Rifter seemed honestly to be ignoring the agent and the boards entirely, instead off in some corner looking to be examining a wall, of all things. The hand of her persona seemed to be rubbing along the edges of the wall, almost as if she was looking for a secret panel or something. Within the boundaries of the node, she seemed to look like what one might expect a shaman character on a shadowrunner trid show might look like: tall, lithe, elven with long flowing silver hair, feathers tied into the hair, form fitting black leather encasing her entire body, with various pieces of equipment strapped to various parts of the outfit: a handgun to her thigh, a set of NVG style goggles on her forehead, a knife on one arm..... etc etc. Looking non-chalantly in the direction of the agent, she finally spoke up.

"Agent, do you have any further details on either job? When was job 1 posted? Is there a time frame on job 2? What is the dropoff point for job 1? Please provide further details."
Chance359
The agent lowers his head as he pears around the room before speaking.

"Job 1 was posted 34 minutes ago. Miss X did not choose to list a time frame for completion of job 2, in clear violation of established user regulations. Job 1's drop point will be at Gull Point State Park along the west side of the lake.
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Thinking briefly for a moment, she closes her eyes and runs her fingers through her hair, playing with the feathers a bit, as she focuses on the necessary code to perform the task at hand, and then as she feels it come into being, her persona suddenly has a worn commlink and datapad in one hand, at which she starts searching for information, trying to find out how far away the state park is and what other information she can find on the park.
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Looking over the information she pulls up on the State Park, she looks confused. "Three days to move something that should take only one.... hmmm.... something fishy is going on with that job, pun fully intended. Agent, what details can you give me on the pallets? Are they electronic, climate controlled inside, or older style pallets made entirely of wood or metal? What do we know about the contents?"
J. Packer
Dec 20th, 2073

Padre had a look at the two jobs that were posted to his comm, and looked up at the ceiling. "'Thou crownest the year with thy bounty,'" he says, then glances sidelong at Rifter. "Psalms 65:11," he says, as though she had inquired.

"The good lord has provided two jobs for us in our time of need! What do you say, Val? Can that bird of yours handle that much cargo?"
Zyerne
Dec 20th, 2073

Val was logged on from her apartment, sipping soycaf and frowning slightly as she perused the jobs on offer.

"Sam, do you have availability for the cargo About to Fired requires? Also, please request delivery timeframe and vehicle types required to make said deliveries from Miss X."

While she let the agent handle her queries, she answered the Padre's question. "She can handle it but the pallets will take 2 trips. Question is can the delivery sites handle her."
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Sighing as the others talk among themselves while in the meat, she starts browsing some more on her datapad, looking for the kind of cargo necessary for the first job. "400 kilos.... fresh.... pacific....less than 10k.... immediately available...." She paced about the node as she played about with the datapad.
Zyerne
Dec 20th 2073

I hate the fragging matrix Val thought, not for the first or even the hundreth time. "Rifter, you out there. Can you run a trace on our mysterious Miss X?"
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

"Rifter's not here right now, she's off doing work, please leave a message, and stop insulting her skills. Agent, give me the contact info for Miss X, everything she left with us. While you're at it, give me the same for About to be fired. Let's see what dirty secrets these two are keeping from us."
Chance359
Rifter for the first few seconds the window is full of spam offering the freshest fish on the west coast. After filtering and narrowing, you find you best options are as follows, hit Pike's Place market early, buy individual fish, see if you can grab a whole truck load before delivery ( buy or steal). Your last round of searching yields the contact information to a ship's captain willing to sell live fish right off her ship.
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Passing the info she gathered on to everyone else, she concentrates a moment and then lets the code she had brought together dissipate back into the digital ether, the datapad vanishing as she does so. As she waits for the agent to give her the contact information for the two customers, she paces about the node some more, concentrating on the Resonance surrounding her, trying to bring it into a form, and finding that it's not answering her, begins pacing in the other direction, trying one more, and this time the code begins to coalesce into a form in front of her, a slight headache starting to come with it. She tried to ignore it as she code finally took the shape of a giant, ethereal head. "All right, let's hunt down these two and see what we can see."
Chance359
"Sam" the node agent relays the following information from his systems:

About to be Fired is a new user, user inquired about special needs shipping and was prompted to put up the standard retainer as well as personal information.

Miss X is a registered user, fifty six completed transactions no negative marks against her by other teams.
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Sighing to herself, that wasn't much to go one, she turned to the ethereal head floating beside her, and spoke directly to it with her mind so no one else could hear. Well Holmes, think you can follow her trail just off the limited account information we have? If so, let's get to it and find this woman.
J. Packer
Dec 20th, 2073

"I'm alright being a fishmonger, just lets leave the loaves out of it?"

Padre will put in a call to his friend and talismonger Samhain.

<<@Samhain: Sa! Might be taking a little vacation jaunt over into UCAS - Iowa area. You wouldn't have anything you needed picked up there, or that might make a splash on the scene when I arrive, would you?>>

In reply to the options for acquiring fish, he says "I'm not normally one to suggest such larceny, but I'm skint. I'd have a hard time affording a cup of soykaff from a soup kitchen right now, so I'm wondering what you all think about seeing if we can't appropriate a load of the appropriate fish." He smiles a bit at his own wordplay.
Zyerne
Dec 20th, 2073

"Lets not borrow trouble we don't need, eh Padre? There's an advance on that job to cover upfront costs, if we can't clear a little profit on that.." Val's voice on the AR link trailed off as in her appartment she was shrugging to herself. As a thought struck her, she addressed the Agent again. "Sam, why was About to's request routed to us and not handled through routine channels?"
Chance359
Behind Sam windows begin blinking open, Salish-Shidhe law, Sioux law, UCAS law, and a half dozen local ordinances filling them.

"Simple really, the legal paperwork required to transport this cargo, the fees, the distance, the client found it easier to simply to attempt to bypass all of it and buy direct as possible.

Padre/J.Packer
[ Spoiler ]


Rifter/Sleepincarnate
[ Spoiler ]
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

[ Spoiler ]


Meanwhile she sent a thought back to the others, which came back as audio in their links. "Yes, let's try to avoid anything that's too terribly shady.... I've got enough going on here tracking down Miss X. Either we've found the wrong place, or she's in a node with a spider watching over, and it's not public. I like the decor though, very back alley urban brawl ring feel to it."
Chance359
Rifter:
[ Spoiler ]



Edits in this color
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

[ Spoiler ]


As she finishes her search, she grins to herself and sends another comm message back to the others. "Oh you guys are gonna love this. I tracked Miss X back to a place known as the Outpost, it's a node built for mercs. There's only two ways in, invited by a member, or the more..... exciting method. Thing is, this place is built pretty damn tough, not a complete fortress, there's stronger out there, but this ranks up there. If I'm going to dig deeper on her, I suggest trying the former method. You guys want me to go deeper on her, or switch to finding out about the other guy?"
Zyerne
Dec 20th, 2073

"Hold of on Miss X, lets see if she gets back to Sam with that info I requested. Anything a merc wants moving is likely to be to be trouble so no way I'm taking that one blind. In the meantime, I'll make a couple of calls and see if I can get anything on this Outpost."
J. Packer
"I agree, hold off for a little bit. If the answer we get back from official channels is unsatisfactory, I know a guy..."

[ Spoiler ]
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

"Alright, sounds like a plan. I'll look into the other then." And with that, she looks again at the ethereal, disembodied head with a magnifying glass, and gives him the information on About to be Fired. Alright Holmes, only one last thing I'm going to ask of you before letting you go back free in the wilds of the Resonance, or whatever. Not sure I'm ready to find out what you do in your free time. Anyways, let's go find Mr Fired here, see what we can learn from him. Or rather, about him. This job he's asking for is too clean and neat, I don't like it.
Zadaine
Dec 20th, 2073

Signing on to his comm, Asher checks through the log and finds the job listings. "If About to be Fired's on the up and up, I may be able to get some more nuyen out of him. Harder to do that with a merc..." he mumbles to himself. He then picks up with, "Either way, I'll see what I can do. Maybe something with travel costs?" before trailing off again.
Ramaloke
Dec 20th, 2073

Adrian listens to the others discuss the options. He pours over the data sent to him by Rifter. The job seemed simple enough, pick up a bunch of fish, maybe at a negotiated discount, and then freight it. At the same time though the job posted by Miss X though was more interesting, if only because of how vaguely it was worded.

"Hey, Rifter, any chance on running a trace on some of these old transactions by our friend Miss X? Maybe some of the other teams will give us some clues about what she's up to. Regardless, I'd like some verification on the authenticity of those claims as well. I wonder whats in the pallets, maybe my sensors would be able to give us a clue."
Zyerne
Dec 20th, 2073
Val logged off from the company node, pacing around her apartment to clear her head. Fetching a fresh mug of soycaf, she stretched out on the couch, feet up on the somewhat battered coffee table.

"Ok, Jessie's probably heard of it, gotta be a lot of mercs in Caracas right now. No idea what the hell time it is down there right now though. Zeke, maybe not, but if he has, he's more likely to know a way in. Joe's a longshot but the Quonset's only 10 minutes away....

After firing off a quick message to in Caracas and her fixer in Denver <<<Heard of the Outpost? Call me, Val>>> she called Joe at the Quonset Hut.
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

"Working on finding our friend About to be Fired first, then I'll maybe look into Miss X a bit more, if we decide that we may still give the job a shot."
LurkerOutThere
Tex watches the others for a bit from the AR window his status display indicating he's currently working in the garage area. In virtual reality space he begins to build out a 3D representation of the cargo capacity of the ground and air based options they have. The more sketchy cargo is gonna be a heckuva lot more compact especially when we figure in the ice, on the other hand we're less likely to get shot up over fish. He says stating the obvious.
Xiuhaun
Dec 20th, 2073

Hotuaekhaashtait logs on to an anonymous forum to send a coded message to Jaime Patrick...

Forum post is as follows:
[ Spoiler ]


Then, with a deep sigh, makes the hardest call of the day... Mom

[ Spoiler ]
Chance359
Zyerne
[ Spoiler ]


SleepIncarnate
[ Spoiler ]
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Turning to Holmes, she smiles and bows slightly. Thank you for your help, feel free to return to the Resonance, your help is much appreciated.

"Looks like our other customer is the full time owner of a catering company after his partner, who was also his brother, had a bit of an "accident." He also only has one client right now, a Mr. Colton Hughes. Looking into him now to see if his end of this job is remotely legit. We already know our direct customer, the middle man here, isn't legit."
J. Packer
"Ah, well, that's business in the cutthroat world of catering, I guess. Sounds pretty amateurish to me - if he were a real threat, he'd have disposed of the body better. Sounds like something worth looking into, but I'm not too impressed with the level of danger..."

One more drag on the cheroot, and Padre continues. "I do want to hear more about Mr. Hughes..."
SleepIncarnate
Dec 20th, 2073

Grinning to herself and shaking her head, she looks up.

"Ok, this is more what I was expecting to find. Hughes is a lightly cybered, specifically headware, former employee for Horizon, working out of New York New, known for being agressive. Six months ago he took early retirement and started doing freelance stuff. Our other associate, About to be Fired, also known as Marcus Jensen, and his brother Lewis, running their own company, were approached by Mr. Hughes about 3 months ago for a limited partnership in the catering world. Two weeks later, Lewis had a nasty boating accident, where he fell into the lake and was run over a dozen times. Lewis's shares of stock in the company moved to Marcus, but Hughes is still the majority holder, and Marcus is looking for a way to edge him out. My guess? Hughes wanted something impressive like lobster or filet minoin and Colton's ordering fish instead to make Hughes look like an idiot, especially if someone important at this meeting is allergic to fish and would take it as an insult. And he's working through us because he wants plausible deniability. Any questions?"

While waiting for a response, she thinks for a second and sends a message off to the members of her tribe.

<<@COTR [Rifter] Hey, any of you know anything about the Outpost? You know, the merc node. Trying to broaden my horizons a bit.>>
Zyerne
"Maybe. Might be somewhere worth looking for work, mercs have to move stuff like anyone else."
LurkerOutThere
QUOTE (SleepIncarnate @ Dec 30 2010, 03:56 AM) *
Dec 20th, 2073
My guess? Hughes wanted something impressive like lobster or filet minoin and Colton's ordering fish instead to make Hughes look like an idiot, especially if someone important at this meeting is allergic to fish and would take it as an insult. And he's working through us because he wants plausible deniability. Any questions?"


"Well don't that beat all! Doesn't seem like the sorta fella that would pay his transport bill on time unless pressed. I think if we're going to take that job we should look into an escrow or something so we don't get gyped. Hmmm maybe I can help, i'm more a barbeque man but if we do take this gig I might be able to select our fish in such a way to hedge our bets, make sure we've got something we can sell if he stiffs us.
Xiuhaun
Dec 20th, 2073

Hotuaekhaashtait heads out of his shack to the local gym to put an hour or two into the weights. Getting ready to wrap up after about 90 minutes of various weight exercises, a rather large ork steps up behind him and hollars, "Hey, Hotu, up for a spar? Been itching for a good rumble lately".

Hotu grins, and turns around to shake hands with the local trainer, Jared. "Sup J. Gonna mop the floor with me like last time?" Jared replies with a chuckle, "Nah, I'll take it easy on ya this time."

Not being particularly skilled at hand-to-hand, Jared had a fairly easy time putting Hotu to the mat plenty of times over the next 45 minutes, though the troll was able to use his size advantage to get a few lucky knocks in. Finally, Hotu, lying on his back for the last time today, gave the mat a hard smack and announced, "I'm out... whew you just like pickin' on the big guys dont ya Jared?" Jared replied, "Nah, its good for business" making reference to the crowd that had gathered to watch, half of which would probably be paying for lessons by the end of the week "but, sure... I miss tossing trolls around" he finished with a wink.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, Hotu heads down to the shooting range to take out his frustration of getting manhandled by an ork out on some paper targets with his Pred4, a box or two should do it.
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