Oooh, but actually having a rep for coming up with the goods, surviving, and getting them sold off discreetly? Worth more than rubies. That's prime runner territory, and make no mistake.

If this paydata is compromised of several parts this is what you could do:

1) Disguise yourself and the team.
2) Steal a low end car.
3) Drive to a Barrens fringe.
4) Leave part 1 of the paydata in car.
5) Observe the car until some poor idiot steals it.
6) Observe poor idiot as he tries to sell the paydata.
7) Stalk the poor idiot. He will likely draw the attention of rival megacorp, but if by some fluke he doesn't, you can step in and sell the rest of the data.
7a) Kill and collect the bounty on poor idiot.
7b) Observe what steps the megacorp will take to

I don't like the open sea in the way you have in mind; a ship has a record, even a stolen one and can be tracked by air, satellite and radar, IIRC. But you have the right idea in your last sentence.

Is your team just "holy shit, awesome!" when it comes to water ways? Well, then, how about submarine or dive platforms/vehicles? You could try using underwater currents and only activate the package's GPS/radio beacon by longwave (IIRC the sub communication tech correctly) as a method of anonymized flexible delivery but there are too many risks on the open sea what with magical creatures, pirates, corporate merchant fleets and what have you, IMHO. I say, if your team are wiz with water, use a combination of abandoned sewers/storm drains and a water front/docks combined with wired, shielded passive surveillance and throw away anonymous drones and hapless dock riff raff you've anonymously conned after stalking and profiling them with a proper background check, aka know they can be bribed/hired by a person they never see and carry out the simple task you set out for them.

There are two movies that come to mind for a fictional perspective on surviving a big trade: Assassins (1995) and Speed (1994). Yes, I know, neither of those deals actually worked out for the characters involved but their examples on how to exchange to safely get the merchandise to the buyer while at the same time getting the payment were sound, IMHO. One used the HVAC system in a huge building to get the money by drone and delivered the pay data by closed circuit. The other convinced the ones setting the trap on the drop that it was stationary while it was actually mobile. They just didn't go far enough with their degrees of separation and heck, they were written to get caught - that doesn't have to be the case for your team o'never do wells.

Also, it should be noted that when payments get into the scale as you describe it, that stuff is a bit beyond a certified cred stick being slipped under a nap kin. How might you respond to accepting alternate methods of payments? Shares, stock, business transactions, large ticket gear, lands, holdings, or who knows, a upper position at the corp in question (or a subsidiary of your choosing) with a golden parachute (and not in isolation either, but combined with the other possible "gifts")?

Though, you could be over estimating the worth of this pay data, if it is still like 10 years off to being on the market with further research needed, that is no guarantee this is as big a thing as you may think it is because the Research & Development that produced the pay data is still chugging along - now, if you knew their R&D was almost to market but just happened to burn to the ground with all their copies, including the employees whose brains came up with the eureka moments, that would be worth a ton more to a prospective client because they would get exclusivity at way reduced risk, they could pay a tenth of what the other guy spend on R&D and come way out on top hitting the market before them because they were back at square one practically. But if that R&D producer of the pay data still exists, new pay data can be made and perhaps even result in fighting chance for their products on the market, they could rush to market despite bugs that they would just hope to iron out in later versions but having already established themselves as the leader in their uber tech. I hope that makes some sense, in a world where copies are easy, its the R&D department that produces it that matters.

I think Ghremdal has the right idea, set some unlucky SoBs up and watch what happens. I think then getting as many interested buyers as possible is a good idea to by releasing that same snippet the unlucky bastard stumbled upon across the matrix anonymously is good too.

Whatever you come up with, play to your strengths, pick your battlefield, and prepare it to be able to adapt for stealth, speed, and ferocity of action - keep them reacting, forcing your buyers down the path you picked for them ... if they start making demands, they are probably trying to force you down the path they want and its probably time to atomize the observation post then try a different buyer on a new battlefield.

If we can pull this one, then sure. The temptation is almost to much to bear.



I'm thinking about it right now. First of all, if we opt for shares, the trade will shift from 'you're the cow, we come to milk you' to the 'that's the entry fee to be let into the house', which is more profitable to both sides. The corp side at least. And it gives us some hard credit and protection. After all, if we are shareholders, we should be of corporation, and corps tend to look for their (significant) own.



I personally don't really like the idea of setting up innocent bystanders. I spent a great deal of time trying to tell our 'social ninja' that starting an interrogation or negotiation by chopping off the other party's legs is a bad idea, to start suggesting something like this myself


That's what we are trying to do. But there are so many crucial details that I can forget about, and neglected, they can lead to disaster, so it's better to ask advice than risk the murky waters by ourselves.
And unfortunately our main forte is magic and magical... I say everything. Too bad we can't meet on a metaplane. Wait. Can't we?