Dramatis Personae
Runners
Harmony Craig Bottow
Ivan the Jackle
“K”
Asp
Ramose Hotep
Scrounge
Others
Lefty
Tendo
April O’Mally
Mr Johnson
Barry Goldstein
Dead

On Mars, the team is preparing to take out Tendo, who Wade told them snitched them out to Halfman and the BS. Scrounge gets in touch with Ivan, looking for work, and Ivan tells him that the team believes Scrounge owes them some money from the Gavral job. Scrounge agrees to help with Tendo. UB! goes to lay low with Ultraman for a while and collect himself after his first big job. Ivan tells April he will help with Yann’s hospital bills once he has money, as it was apparently extremely expensive. The team meets up at Slot, where Ivan buys everyone drinks, much to the chagrin of the rest of the team, who are trying to maintain a low profile, as they are officially wanted. Ivan introduces Scrounge to the new members, and K checks him out while he checks everyone else out. RH reminds everyone that they need to rescue HCB.

Scrounge and K agree to work together to scout out Tendo’s hideout astrally, while the team drives their meat bodies there. Scrounge also summons a spirit in preparation. They find the building mostly due to K’s amazing astral navigation, and determine that Tendo appears to be under guard on the second floor. Ivan drives up and they park a block and a half away. The building has plywood nailed up over all the windows. K flies out the sunroof, RH activates his camo-armor and jogs down the street, Asp and Lefty scout ahead, Scrounge sneaks along while sustaining invisibility. Ivan prepares to send in the cat. Asp is throwing sticks with Lefty and casually approaches the front door, where he knocks. K flies up to the roof, Scrounge heads around to the back alley, RH waits across the street. Asp asks for water for his dog, while the guy inside repeatedly tells him to fuck off. He eventually opens the door, pointing a gun at Asp, who tries to disarm him, failing the first time, but succeeding on the second attempt. He is shot while doing this. From across the street, RH’s autoinjector triggers and he charges once he sees the fighting start, and he impales the guy in the door with his vibroblade even though Asp tells him not to since the guy is unarmed. Asp gets sprayed with blood.

At the same time, Ivan has pulled up to the corner and fired a shell thru the ground floor window to the right of the door. As Asp and RH enter the ground floor with the cat, they see two detached legs standing right behind the splintered plywood which was covering the window, and a sea of viscera on the walls and floor nearby. Ivan is thrilled. RH, Asp and Lefty head for the stairs at the back of the hall. K blasts open the stair access door on the roof, and enters, descending to the third floor. Ivan begins shelling the third floor from the street. Scrounge begins ascending the fire escape in the rear. K rounds a corner, and sees 2 armed BS looking goons temporarily distracted by Ivan’s firing, however he makes a bit too much noise and they spot him. They exchange gun- and spellfire, and K retreats to the roof while Ivan continues firing. One of the goons follows him and he launches him off the roof to his death with a powerbolt. Ivan pulls around back just in time to see him splat on the ground. Scrounge begins blasting thru the plywood on the rear second floor window while Asp and RH engage the two goons in hallway, plus 1 more that shows up from the 3rd floor. Scrounge sends in his spirit, which is quickly killed, and Asp also takes some damage, but between K from above, and the cat, RH, and Asp from below, the goons don’t last long. Once again, Asp disarms one only to have RH eviserate him immediately, showering Asp with more blood. Picking a door at random, RH barges thru, and in a brief second sees an ork looking figure tied to a chair. His vision is then obscured by a massive explosion, which knocks him down and almost unconscious. The cat manages to avoid damage down at the end of the hall but Asp, Scrounge and K all take severe damage.

RH attempts to regain his footing in the trap room, and is hit by sniper round. Another round knocks Scrounge out-he is bleeding heavily from the wound. RH hauls him out to the hallway to get him out of sniper range, while Asp sprints down the stairs and across the street with Lefty to try to get to the snipers. K heads for the roof, planning to escape off the back of the building to avoid the snipers, but is shot down by a burst of heavy machine gun fire. He is extremely near death-fortunately a pigeon flew in front of some of the bullets and lessened their impact as K was taking off from the roof. Ivan replays some of his car camera footage and is able to figure out which window across the alley the machine gun is firing from, and begins lobbing shells in, setting off a huge explosion on the second shot. He also has the cat begin pulling Scrounge to the car. RH heads up the roof to grab K at the same time, but is knocked out by more sniper fire. Ivan sets up a bucket brigade with the cat to get the 3 unconscious team members to the car.

Meanwhile, Asp, has taken some fire while crossing the street, but gains access to safety in the building lobby by breaking the door. It seems to be apartments. Aps tries to call the cops to report a disturbance in the area, hoping they could help cover the team’s escape, but the cops just laugh him off and mockingly say they will be right there before hanging up. He decides to head for the 4th floor (out of 5) and finds there are 8 apartments facing across the street. He waits and listens for more shots. As the cat crosses the roof pulling RH, he hears them. He busts in the door of the apartment he believes the shots came from, and takes two pistol rounds in the chest-there is a sniper set up, and another guy watching his back. Asp charges the pistol guy while the sniper jumps up and grabs his sidearm. Asp dispatches the first guy, but is ko’d by two more pistol shots from the sniper. Lefty comes to Asp’s aid, attacking the sniper with limited effect, and is himself ko’d fairly quickly. He seems to be just hanging on to life. Ivan is yelling at Asp to get back to the car the whole while.

In the alley, Ivan has finally gotten the whole team in the car, along with the cat, and begins driving off, before deciding to go back for Asp. He slaps trauma patches on Scrounge and K, stabilizing them for now, and slaps a few stimpatches on RH to get him going again. RH (still affected by the kamikaze) and the cat enter thru the busted front door, and are making for the stairs while Ivan tries to talk to Asp thru the micro-tranceiver. He hears his own voice thru the cat’s sensors and figures out that it is coming from the elevators before the tranceiver shuts down. RH presses the open button and lobs in a narco grenade before the doors slam shut again. He then opens the door again and grabs an unconscious Asp and BS goon. Ivan calls Wade and tells him about the fiasco, Wade apologizes but chides Ivan for not doing more prepwork. They drop off the BS goon for Wade and Doc Todd to question, and then heal up for a while. Once they are able, K and Asp head for their homes where they can heal up independently. Asp is horribly depressed about Lefty’s assumed death, and begins taking in way more animals than he can feasibly care for. Wade calls Ivan and tells him that he got a dog’s severed head mailed to him from Long Pig, Ivan decided not to tell Asp for now. Ivan makes a necklace of the BS goons severed thumbs for Asp, and puts it around his neck in the hospital while he is unconscious. He also offers a firm hand on the shoulder in support.

Mr J gets ahold of Ivan about the Deimos job and tells him to bring the team to decipher HCB’s coded message. When they meet, Mr J seems surprised that the team doesn’t seem to know anything about the job, or HCB’s plans to get himself imprisoned, or the specifics of his secret code. They scramble to figure out what HCB meant, and where the dropzone is based on the limited maps that Mr J has been able to reconstruct from ex-inmates. They eventually settle on a spot a bit southeast of the main complex, and hope they are on.

Mr J tells them they only have a few hours to get prepared, and the team scrambles to get all the supplies they need. They buy a variety of streetdrugs off of Barry, get some industrial poisons thru Ango, and pick up a few bottles of fine whisky. RH leaves his ceremonial armor behind, but they decide to bring the cat. They meet back at the spaceport, and load into a private shuttle, after having a toast to their future successes. They are all issued prison jumpsuits (but can still wear anything form fitting underneath) and bring only small arms. They are also all injected with nano-trackers, in case LS scans them. They are each loaded into a cramped pod, which quickly fills with a gel, which fills their lungs and seems to cushion them. They are loaded onto a small private vessel and take off from Mars, approaching Deimos. Once they are at the limits of LS’s control zone, their pods are launched. Beginning with Ivan and ending with the equipment pod, they are separated out and shunted down a long acceleration tube and then blasted into space towards the target spot on Deimos. They are pressed back into the gel, and can still sense the extreme pressure. Their heads are pressed back, but they have a limited view out the open fronts of the pods, and can see the moon rapidly filling their field of vision. After they enter atmosphere, the pods deploy some long veined spines with fabric between them, which slow them significantly, although they still hit the ground pretty hard. They are able to get a little bit of a look at the layout of the place while coming down. Once they hit the ground (in a fairly tight circle-nice work Mr J), their pods split open and inform the occupants that they have 10 seconds to vacate. The team scrambles to grab the gear and clear the area as the pods completely incinerate.

HCB emerges from the high crops nearby and greets them, showing off his tattoo. They chat for a while, and the cat tells them to get a move on. They are all a bit surprised. Apparently, Mr J has put a construct of himself into the catbrain in order to provide some advice and mission support. Ivan tries to engage in electronic warfare but is rebuffed, after which Mr J suggests not messing with him, as only he knows how to get them off Deimos again. HCB tells everyone that their cover is that they are Yak farm workers who transferred out of the main facility recently. He takes the metas into Trogville to deliver the drugs, as well as the booze and poison for safekeeping. Dead accepts, and HCB says they will be back before the Humanis raid.

But first, the big race!