If you had the equipment, were crazy enough, and were getting paid enough (honestly though, how much would be enough?) how would you do it?

I think the "easiest" way to do it would be from space. And you'd still fail.

I'd go by way of matrix, most likely a simulator, and still end up botching the run. Now if by infiltrate you mean "shoot out of the sky because I accidently crashed into it" I'd say 500k plus expenses.

Hijack a shuttle and bail out just before ramming it.

Better make that two shuttles. One for the getaway car.

There is no way any runner could live on earth after even attempting this. All the corps would be actively hunting anyone involved in that run.

Just look at what happened after 9/11; wars in two countries. (No, I don't say this with any intention of discussing it in any way shape or form. I'm just pointing out the probable response from the powers that be.)

Shuttle to ram it? Killsats destroy you.

Unauthorized access? No, not likely. Corporate download went over security, it is impossible to infiltrate or destroy short of firing a swarm of missles.

The eight most powerful and untrusting Megacorps in the world have their interests strongly represented on the station. It isn't going down. Ever.

I'm not talking bringing it down...I was thinking more along the lines of managing to get into ZO??

Same response.

Pretty much impossible. More people than registered on a space station means more oxygen used up and more carbon dioxide being produced. They could even detect you from your pheromones (which are unregistered) if they have a really sharp system! And I'd expect them to have.

The only way I could think about would be to develop a special shapechange spell to shapechange into some person who's supposed to be up there, and impersonate them (having disabled these people before). You'd still have to fool the security mages on the spaceport. I don't want to think about what they use to check passengers. You'd likely have to have, on top of the shapechange spell, inside help in Spaceport security. Yes, I know every suborbital can theoretically reach orbit, but if your flight isn't registered, you'll be blasted out of space faster than you can say "unauthorized access".

Of course, you would need a lot of time and ressources only preparing this - not many people go up and down there, I imagine, and those who do are tightly watched.

And then, to top it all off ... what would you want to *do* up there? There's no pile of gold there, that's all down in some old swiss nuclear shelter, guarded with everything magic and technology can muster. And gold is, let me tell you, ridiculously heavy. The only reason I can think of to go up there is to kill some of the permanent residents (Wilma Graff-Beloit, for instance, if your campaign is playing still in the 50s). There's no research up, there're no orbital labs, only computers, and those are easier hacked than infiltrated. Unles there's a closed system. Like Wilma's diary and anti-Loffy plotting notes. Then direct access would be nescessary.

That's a very, VERY high-profile run though. VERY. Requires a lot of sophistication, gear, money and top-notch contacts.

What could they check astrally in space though? On the surface yea, but it's dangerous once out of the atmosphere. You'd have to catch them in-flight, but not so that anyone on the sat or the ground was alerted to make that switch.

Huh?

I'm willing to bet that anything in orbit can be taken down. Getting aboard - sure, ultimately impossible without someone on the inside to do it for you, but destroying Z-O should be doable. Large amount of small debris in a counter-orbit ought to at least do a good job against it, and though there are certainly countermeasures, it'd be tough to stop a whole cloud of little things. Some sort of directed-energy weapon either from another orbital platform or from the ground (yeah, atmospheric bloom is a bitch, but I'm sure they can get around it in 2063 if they can make workable pistol-lasers) would be even better.

From an administrative standpoint, there's probably less hoops to jump through to smuggle something aboard an outbound shuttle, than to get it all the way on the station. Some sort of high-yield weapon in close? Tough, but it should be doable.

OF course, the cost of any of these options would be prohibitive...

Since I have't read that, where does it occur (i.e. in which book/novel)?

Hmm... Presuming we had an unlimited budget...

First I'd invest a few billion in making cybernetic bodies/making myself one step short of a cyberzombie, with all sorts of bells and whistles, including air tanks, and a much smaller frame.

Then I'd get a custom suborbital with a smaller shuttle inside, coated with rhuethumium, and a bunch of other stuff to help avoid radar, all that jazz.

Then I'd take all that stuff and run away, laughing, and live the rest of my life quietly in some dark corner of Amazonia.

Doesn't mean outside shadowrunners did the deed though.

The 'Staff' - theres got to be people up there performing maintenance - cleaning, servicing equipment, preparing food - etc. Use them - either spend some time to infiltrate via that route - a decent face, a decker, and a year or so should do it.

I would think that the staff gets rotated in and out, you wouldn't want to stay up there for very long, and the corps wouldn't want to got through the hassel of training and clearing employee after employee - they could be on a six month rotation, with some back ups available.

Or snag a fam member of a staff member, that'll get you some access. Depends on what you want.

Blow it up? Access the Mainframe? Deliver a Pizza? (Just so you could say you did)

If it were possible to generate a manasphere, I would simply use a physical manipulation spell ("Increase Relative Gravity" or the like) and create a gargantuan ball of metallic debris, then fling it at the space station. Laser weapons would just turn it into a giant ball of semi-liquid metal, and if it were moving sufficiently fast, it would be impossible to shoot down.
Otherwise, just drill small cavities in tiny meteorites, which would likely just be absorbed by the station's outer "skin." (From what I've heard, NASA is working on a system for preventing meteorite damage that works by sandwiching thin aluminum sheets between 1" layers of foam. Projectiles moving at 2,000 kph. or more would be stopped harmlessly.) A few thousand of these, each holding ~10g of C4 and detonated by a few with a tiny time bomb placed inside instead, could blow up a good bit of the station, and likely cause explosive decompression.

And the space station could just move out of the way of any swarm of objects, because these are quite visible in space. There're quite enough ways to trace anything larger than a shard of metal - and anything smaller would not suffice, since any decent spaceship is armoured.

Space stations can move, you know. they have jets. They're basically spaceships with no big engines that hover in one place.

Unless you extend Earth's Manasphere and do ST's DragonballZ-style attack (what was it called again? Haduken?).

Finally, the shapechange spell in my suggestion should be permanent, too, and not require any upkeep. Maybe cosmetic surgery would be a better way, though. Just been reading too much Harry Potter lately, I guess.

No, but they'd notice the leaks, and they'd be perfectly able to reverse-calculate their course. Then, they'd check their sensors' recordings, exchange data with spysats of allied corps and governments, and they have you nailed down.

And if you slowly want to erode a part of the hull? ZO has repair drones, you know.

I'd probably do something with nanites. Some kind of Von Neumann machines could be landed on the skin of the station undetected, then go to work increasing their number. Once there were enough of them, they could possibly construct and place explosives sufficient to disable the facility.

If they didn't have any countermeasures on board, you could always go for a grey goo scenario. Endlessly replicating nanites make more of themselves until there's simply no station left. The whole mess either falls into the atmosphere and burns (good) or is brought back down to Earth by visiting ships (very bad).

There wa sa run in BoB, I believe on the Daedalus station, where te team was sent up as a tech repair team. If I remember corretly, the team has a Johnson on the inside that was able to set up all of their information through the proper channels, and it said that it would only work if it was done 'legitly', and there was no hope of faking it. Pretty much how I see the ZO being. THere i no reason that they couldn't do an inceredibly detailed background check, even going so far as to verify DNA before sending you up (even some credsticks can do that). So it would be very difficult to fake your way on without being extremely familiar with their system.

Magic is out (with the exception of permanent spells) although a level 10 initiate could use an optical telescope to blow the station out of the sky from earth I don’t think that was the intent of the rules.

If all you want is to destroy it then find a nova hot Decker give him a nova hot deck and deck anti sat weapons stations you could even blame a single corp (if you max your masking and go in masking mode you could avoid any notice if your lucky)

The on bord computer systems could be taken with the same decker as above but it wont be easy. The hard part is more locating the san than getting threw there system.

Gaining physical access is the hardest one, you could try going buy space walk in armoured space suits with ruthenium, thermal dampening and radar absorbents materials but it may not work. The staff selection system is designed to stop a single corp. being able to send up agents and staff families are protected from interference (held hostage buy the court) so you wont likely be able to coerce one. If you could find out enough about the system for verifying identities as staff bord there shuttle you may be able to hack it but it will be hard, unlike the other hack jobs you need to succeed every time, not just have the system ignore you while you try again. Or you can go the fake id rout and hope it stands up to there exceedingly high rating scanner.

Edward

I say a mage with an optical telescope and a high-force Powerbolt is your best shot.

You'd probably want to know the Sacifice and Centering metamagics, though, so you don't kill yourself with the Drain.

yeah, but how many people get to play an AI ( not counting the GM)

Why would you even want to hack the ZO, anyways?

I think there was something on a dumpshock site about why it's ultimately pointless to hack the ZO. Something about if the security were compromised, all nuyen would be suddenly devalued.

Now that I actually think about it, it's kind of a flimsy premise. Besides, you could do a lot better just making your own nuyen, thanks to SSG.

The mana is still there, just apply mana warp penalties.

Anybody know what the OR on a space station is?

I gotta be with hermit on this one... No Magic outside the Manasphere - Period. I don't care if they printed this "Backround Count" garbage in T:W, in my games it just can't happen.

Your game, your rules. I think the social and life-safety implications of attacking are sufficient deterrent. The magic can happen per canon, but it would be damn near impossible without sacrificing or massive ritual magic.

Actually, that is probably a better way to go. Massively initiated circle of mages with a ritual sending.

How about a sustained control thoughts on somebody who's going up there? If you could somehow get him past magical security it should keep working right?

Have a free spirit inhabit and control a worker on leave. The rest is history.

Yep, when the spirit hits the mana warp it is most definitely history.

Angelone: we've got no evidence to support that a spell will hold when taken into a mana warp. This is not, however, addressed significantly in canon that I remember.

~J

That's what I thought aswell. I always wondered that so I just threw it out.

Sorry for the double post. I just thought of something else what about drones? How big a drone would the defenses pick up? If you buffed up a spider drone and got it fairly close with another drone could it get in?

Re attacking Z-O with magic: I'm pretty sure that Z-O is huge enough to have a Hull of 3 or more, not mere Body rating, therefore *any* damaging spell cast at it is automatically ignored.

Bad apprentices, bad! Go read your Tomes of Magic Theory again!

In my world, a good mage *can* try to use magic to attack objects outside manasphere, but pulling off such a stunt is extremely unlikely given all the problems he will face. Oh, BTW, no mage in my games ever felt the need to do something so crazy...

One wonders how many Awakening-era mages died trying to Powerbolt the moon…

~J

Hmmm, the master plan:

1. Have kid.
2. Train kid to want to be on the ZO staff from birth.
3. "Manchurian Candidate" the kid.
4. Send a loving email to the kid with the trigger hidden inside it.
5. Lean back and wait for the Thor shot.

Cost:

A solid orichalcum toilet.