Six's blog. Run 5.

By N.Barnes

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Entry 5: 16.03.70

Man, some days it goes from bad to worse. And this is worse. Last night I had a brainwave. If tall, dark and scary had stuck one of the Notable Anarchists, they’d take him to their friendly neighbourhood Street Doc Mal.
I hauled Ash’s ass outta bed. Goon had been fishing FFS! We hit Mal’s together and found a welcoming party waiting for us – three of the NA who were looking after their mate Clive. Seems Ono got the bartender good before he went down! The fight was brief and bloody and with Mal still operating, oblivious to events outside the ER, we cleaned up and slunk off – can’t question an unconscious dude, can you?!

Ash, Ki-rinn and I hooked up and Snow put us in touch with a couple of heavies – some Ex-army Squaddie Squad going by the names Drifter and Freedom. Meantime, Ki-rinn gets a call from the Juggler on that PAYG telling him to hook up down near the naval base to interrogate a couple of the NA’s enemies. We figure they’ll be Ono and the Johnson so while Ki-rinn plays along, the rest of us hung nearby ready to roll into action.

Long story short, that turned out to be a trap. Seems Ono and the Johnson got smacked up on Sodium Pentathol and the Juggler drilled them for info.
The pair of ‘em sung like canaries and gave up Ki-rinn and the whole damn team. The bunker they’d been chained up in was one giant explosive booby trap and we were lucky Freedom knew something about plastique. Even with his ‘expertise’ the charges went off but the demo disposal work he’d done meant no lives were lost – not even the Suit!

We reverted to Plan A once Clive had regained consciousness and the team ran him through the mill. I kept out of it and out of sight, fortunately, but under duress Clive gave us the location of a flat the NA cell headed by O’Bannon had been using. We blazed on over and soon found ourselves in the middle of a full-on fire fight.

O’Bannon and the Juggler and a team of Notable Anarchists we’re getting the hell out of dodge. Maybe we’d made it a little too hot for them in San Fran but they’d called in a couple of choppers and we’re loading up their matching luggage – Samsonite cases stuffed with blank credsticks. We had a brief flurry of action in the corridor and flat followed by a running gun battle up the fire escape and in the elevators. Ki-rinn tried to scotch their whirlybirds with a swift hack but the Riggers just dumped out to manual and though we scored a couple of hits and racked up the body count a little the main men got away.

And then, the bombshell: A call from Johnson to say Cross Applied Technologies were pulling the plug. Gutted, much? I mean we put in days of legwork and effort on this freaking run and some suit just flushes the funding when we’re right on the brink of a breakthrough? Talk about pissed.

What the hell can we do though? Ki-rinn talked a good fight about making CAT regret it and Ash went for breach of contract (whatever Ash, get real man) but it was obvious to me we’d been hung out to dry and had no chance in Hell of doing anything about it.
Johnson was at least apologetic and humble about it all. Hell he even took into account the fact we pulled his fat out of the fire and showed his gratitude by liquidating his personal assets and offering the cash to us. No doubt we were out of pocket but I just couldn’t bring myself to take the guys money. It wasn’t like we were going to leave his ass to get blown to bits and we figured we were protecting our own investment when we helped out. I thanked the guy but said I couldn’t take his cash. Six has left the building.

In a way it made me feel a little better. No one likes to feel as if they’re not in control of their own lives and that was exactly how we all felt when CAT pulled the plug and we saw our wage disappear. But then there was cash on the table and I was back in control – I made the decision not to take Johnson’s dough, for my own reasons and it kinda made me feel as if I could finally walk away from the run with my head held high. Seems the team all agreed – except for Freedom. I hear the mercenary bastard took the cash and he’d only done half a job! Clearly not a team player – one to watch, closely if we have any further dealings.

Mood: Tired and pissed off (but morally fulfilled – if only morals paid the bills lol)

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