I'm beginning to suspect I'm really, really
bad at GMing. Every time things go way the hell cattywompus, I improvise, and when I improvise, things go weird.
So, here's the deal. I decided that the captain of the cargo ship had, indeed, dumped the cargo. The Ancients lieutenant who took a shine to the human mage came by to deliver this personally, since you don't really want to transmit a recorded call between Vory over the Matrix, lest they find out and, at the very least, secure their calls better. The Vory were going with a two-pronged approach; the Seattle Vory were sending their hired smuggler (at additional fee, no doubt) south to look for it in the ocean, while their contact in Los Angeles hired someone to look for it as well. They all had the position of the boat when it dumped the cargo, more or less, and their man from L.A. had a head-start. (The smuggler is still going to be a while sailing down.)
They sent a Spirit who Searched for it, and found it after four hours, ten minutes. I'd rolled privately to determine how far it had been swept towards shore, and determined that it had traveled more kilometers toward shore than it was kilometers
from shore. So now the thing is on a beach on the Lost Coast (an actual part of California,
not the the one being shelled with headcrab artillery by the Combine.)
My players, being the eternally-springing optimists they are, decided that this was, in fact, absolutely fantastic news. After I talked them down from their idea to have a Spirit of Man Possess the nanofax and then turn into an alligator which would be hustled by another spirit's Movement power and then motorboat its way all the way back to Seattle, they decided they had to get down there and grab it. The Ancients agreed to smuggle them and their gear immediately, because they still want to have a horse in this race, but they don't "do" wilderness. Once my players land in San Fransisco, it's up to them to get a boat big enough to travel 450 miles (both ways,) someone who can sail it, and head on out there.
The smart course of action, naturally, would be to hire a local 'Runner with a boat. Knowing them, they're probably going to do something crazy like steal one from a marina and use a possession Spirit to possess it and drive it.
They don't have to get the Nanofax back to Seattle, though. The Ancients can take possession of it anywhere there is "civilization," which basically means if they just get the sucker to a highway, the Ancients can pull up in a semi-trailer to take it from them.
Still, it looks like it's going to be a race. They're going to have to deal with the guys from L.A., whom are definitely going to be freelancers - that is, other 'Runners - who are probably going to show up after they've started unloading the cargo from its container. They're also in deep wilderness, so an encounter with wild animals wouldn't go amiss. They're only about 130 miles from Hestaby's lair, and in pristine wilderness, so not even a dracoform is entirely out-of-the-question, but I was thinking more along the lines of a pair of Boobrie or maybe some Lesser Rocs.
And if that wasn't crazy enough, the group is getting split up, because neither the AI nor the cyber ninja showed up for today's game, and the ninja probably wouldn't have wanted to entrust the Ancients with a complete list of his ware, anyway. I need to figure out something to do with that because the Sammie is getting absolutely restless and wants to kill something.
[e]Oh, and as an amusing aside, the human mage that the elf go-ganger took a shine too, has been acting completely awkward around her, either he doesn't take a hint or he's nervous, since she made it clear she wanted to do impure things to him at the breakfast table. (She stayed while they were Searching, because she was curious as hell.) Then he wound up making her attraction to him go through the roof because he scared the piss out of her (figuratively;) by joking around with the other mage about whether or not to pack the nuke. Then he walked past her with a pile of scrap levitated and Physical Masked into an obvious, scary nuke.
So now an elf biker is determined to make him make her his joytoy, and she's not remotely subtle about it, pulling a punch for the heart-stopping scare that was the nuke, expressing her opinion of his mental stability (or lack thereof,) then slamming him against a wall and kissing him. Boy plays his cards right, he could make a free contact. Plays them wrong, and... Well, hell hath no fury and all that.