Private Roots of a Different Kind

[Wise Eye]

You arrived in the Llanic System, once notorious for its many shadowports and dominance of the Spice trade at the edge of Hutt Space.

You were recruited for a job, but the details were sparse. Computer expertise was a must, and there was also the promise of a large sum paid out in the currency of your choice.

The employer proved just as cryptic as the job itself. Yet, through criminal back-channels and word of mouth, the source seemed legitimate enough.

As for why you accepted the gig? Only you could tell.

Of course, you didn't just arrive to take your starship for a spin around the local star, you had a destination provided to you by the same cryptic means as the job offer itself. Hidden within an asteroid belt was a large station that appeared to be a cluster of starships welded to the scaffolding of a shipyard from a bygone empire. To make matters more curious, the immediate vicinity was surrounded by the wreckage of scorched freighters and starfighters, all fairly recent and suggestive that some kind of fight had gone down.

The only other vessel that appeared docked with the station was an old beater of a frigate and a swarm of repair drones that appeared in the middle of a major retrofit.

As if already recognized, the station pinged your ship with permission to dock.

Das

 

[Das]

//:...mission-link-established...
//:...location=UNDEFINED...

​

The automated ping that cleared her ship for landing made Das’ eyebrows raise. She put her datapad aside, the one she stored falsified docking codes in for cheesing past spaceport security. Looking a gift horse in the mouth wasn’t becoming, but in her line of work, Das had learned not to accept anything at face value.

Everything about this job had been a red flag, in fact, but she was incredibly desperate for credits. The Corporate Sector Authority had collapsed from under her, rended apart both literally and metaphorically by the Planeshift. She was on Etti IV when it was spun from its orbit, resting in the furthest reaches of the Slice nearly half the galaxy away from home.

Das waited just long enough to hear on the shadowfeed that Castor Crane had not only survived, but had dissolved the CSA and fled Etti with an entourage of Corpo cronies and billions of credits worth of crystalline vertices. When she learned that the former ExO was heading for Denon, she felt a haunting chill in her chest. She’d have to go back home, back to the planet she abandoned when its corporatist government initiated lockdowns and hunted her people.

But a cross-galaxy trip would cost thousands of credits, something Das didn’t have. Even if her severed connections to Code Zero were handy, she’d still have to scrape together few slicing jobs to make ends meet. Hence why she accepted such a curious and frankly suspicious job. It paid an impressive sum of cash and required “computer expertise,” which naturally meant hacking or slicing skills. Luckily, Das grew up with a cyberdeck and digipick at her hip.

She kept her eyes on the cockpit window as she brought her ship around, navigating it to the designated dock. But as she drew nearer, she became aware of how quiet the port was. Only a single ship besides her own was visible, a junker freighter docked at the same port where she was qdesignated. The environs were ominously strewn with fresh debris, clear signs of some form of engagement.

Das landed against her better judgment, touching down as far from the freighter as she could in case it was trapped; it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been thrown by a derelict ship rigged to blow. For that reason, she stepped carefully out of her ship with a cyberdeck in hand. Maybe she’d get lucky enough to defuse a trap before it goes off.

If not, maybe it’d kill her quickly.

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Wise Eye​

 

[Wise Eye]

Docking with the ship had been simple enough, despite how uncanny the resemblance to a trap. Indeed, the whole setup lacked usual credibility, and this was a very large station to just sit--seemingly empty--in the vast asteroid field of a down-and-out pirate system.

A comm channel would click on. A feed from the station itself.

"Security has been informed that you are... a guest in these parts." Spoke a masculine voice. "Before you board, however, there are a few ground rules I would like to discuss."

"First--"

He began to have a coughing fit not unlike a serial smoker's and cleared his throat. "First. Do not disturb the workers, especially the droids."

"Second. You will be led from your starship to the designated work site. En route, you will undoubtedly notice details about our operation, and you will absolutely display the utmost discretion."

"Finally... You will under no circumstances wander the facility during your stay. This is for your safety, as our station has suffered a series of 'setbacks' due to a recent misunderstanding. You may have noticed when you flew in."

The comms cut off, and then the station's interior airlock slid open.

Das

 

[Das]

//:...mission-link-established...
//:...location=UNDEFINED...

​

Das’ approach must have triggered some sort of sensor; she hadn’t made it far before a disjointed voice crackled to life into her ear. The shadowrunner stopped in her tracks, frozen mid-stride to scan her surroundings. Over a channel originating from the station itself, the voice spoke through a hacking smoker’s cough. It belonged to a man, but that was about as much as she could discern. He wasted little time delivering a triple dose of guidelines for navigating the station, then dropped the line as suddenly as he raised it.

“What the feth…?” Das muttered when the comms cut out.

She corrected her posture, resuming a more comfortable—yet still entirely cautious—stance. The junker’s inner airlock slid open with a hiss that reminded her of the rusted apartment doors on Altier. Das didn’t miss that junkyard planet in the slightest, but she was rather fond of the people. That’s where she first met Cinder, a runaway technomancer who was hiding out in the scrap from CorpSec. The two grew quite close after winning a scrap bot battle together, but Das hadn’t seen Cindy since absconding to Etti IV with Sam Kolburn and the rest of what would become Code Zero.

Das sighed, wondering if the scratchy-voiced man in her comms could see her. She adjusted the melancholic slouch she’d grown accustomed to wearing and stepped toward the freighter, which by now seemed rather comfortable compared to running into whoever… or whatever the station had a “misunderstanding” with.

“Here goes nothing,” Das said to herself with a tone of acceptance. She placed a hand against the hull of the ship and used the other to hoist herself up and into the airlock.

Tags:
Wise Eye​

 

[Wise Eye]

Inside, the young splicer would be greeted by a man busy with his datapad, after all had pressure had been properly readjusted.

He quirked a brow. "You're not what I expected," he said with a half-scoff, and waved her to follow along. "Alrightie, it's a bit of a walk, so stay close." He insisted.

Eventually, they made it into the station proper. It was once an imperial shipyard, designated for the construction of capital ships of various sizes and their repair. Now, it was rust city by all comparisons. Much of the interior had been damaged--scorch marks showed signs of battle. Recent fighting, too. There were only a handful of organic workers within and throughout, with the majority of labor being handled by very old droids.

It was loud, all things considered, but the trail did not end here.

The man continued to lead her further back, beyond a checkpoint guarded by broken-down droidekas, since retrofitted into makeshift turrets. Their sensors tracked the two until they crossed the threshold into the next area.

Much smaller, self-contained. A workshop. Wires and power cables were strewn about, and in the back of the room was where it all connected. A BRT supercomputer. Once upon a time, these things were used to control every kind of civil infrastructure on the wealthiest worlds in the galaxy. They were so effective that began to put millions out of jobs, so they were largely shuttered and disassembled.

Only a few such computers remained in existence, and this happened to be one such computer. Only now it was being used for a far less ambitious purpose--to automate an entire space station.

"Our system is suffering from malfunctions," the man explained. "Dr. Windill is our lead on this project and will join you shortly. He'll explain the rest."

Das

 

[Das]

//:...mission-link-established...
//:...location=UNDEFINED...

​

Das wore a thin-lipped expression but her side-eye was incredibly noticeable. The man inside was likewise not what she expected, but that was usually the case when you dealt in cryptic, anonymous jobs sprinkled on the DarkNet.

She stayed quiet as she followed him deeper into the station, feeling more like a lost puppy trailing him home than a well-practiced slicer hired to solve a problem. It probably didn’t help that she was looking around the entire time. Das just couldn’t believe how this place all came together.

It was like one those artificial reefs built from cleaned up starship hulls, except this one was anchored in a planetary orbit instead of the sea floor. Everything here was old, too. Even the droids. Das gave the droidekas a small wave as she passed their retrofitted bodies.

The next area was clearly a workshop of some kind. All the loose wires, hastily sorted parts, and worn tools gave it away. She traced a finger lazily over the handle of a fusion cutter. It reminded her of her dad’s workshop back on Denon. He had so many projects, most of which were left unfinished and entirely unexplained when he disappeared.

When her client spoke about the station’s malfunctions, Das brought her eyes to the system on the far side of the room. He didn’t have to explain what she was looking at for her to recognize it.

“Ooh, chit! That’s a BRT, isn’t it?”

She nodded to the supercomputer with raised eyebrows as if asking permission to take a look.

“Dr. Windill’s got good tastes,” Das said with a smirk. She stepped closer and looked from the brain to the man. Her angsty teen disposition had shifted to that of an excited engineer, perhaps befitting what he’d expected a bit more now.

She quirked her head to the side a bit as she looked him over. “I didn’t catch your name,” she said before thrusting a hand for him to shake. “I’m Das.”

Tags:
Wise Eye​

 

[Wise Eye]

"Aw, my name?" The man chewed on it harder than molasses. "Tonn, I guess?"

He gestured towards the supercomputer. "Take a look. That's why we're paying you, right?"

Just as he said so, a door on the other side of the room slid open and in entered a strange man indeed. He looked middle-aged, but his skin was sickly and damaged, with a slight purple discoloration. Human, not near-human, not another species. Almost as if he had full-body frostbite. More peculiarly, he wore an old imperial uniform--some kind of science division, but it was honestly tattered and largely obscured under his heavy poncho, which he wore like it was raining.

Tonn stood sharply at attention before giving Das a nervous glance. "Gotta go," he muttered before heading off to find some excuse not to be present.

The new man approached, and he looked her up and down with the scrutiny of a drill instructor.

"I am Doctor Ron Windill. You may call me Dr. Windill or just Doctor. I trust you're our specialist? Not what I would've picked, but the boss doesn't let me choose my own help, now does she?" He then began to mutter incoherently under his breath.

He turned his attention to the BRT. "What can you tell me about this system?" A test of her credentials.

Das

 

[Das]

//:...mission-link-established...
//:...location=UNDEFINED...

​

A brief moment passed before the good doctor arrived, and while she was glad to finally meet the man face-to-face, she pursed her lips when she discovered he wasn’t actually the head honcho around these parts; an unknown female ‘boss’ seemed to be calling the shots. Das set her piqued interest aside and listened as Dr. Windill spoke.

“I’m uh, Das,” she said awkwardly.

She turned to face the old supercomputer and shrugged as she nonchalantly answered his question. “Introduced in the 200s, self-aware and efficient… pissed off the organics to no end.”

Her boots thudded against the floor as she stepped close enough to pat the mainframe fondly, as if she sympathized with it.

“Anti-droid movements force them off the market. Most were scrapped. Some,” she said, turning to face the doctor, “survived.”

She crossed her arms. “Very rare, and very hard to maintain without access to compatible parts.”

That’s where she came in. An experienced slicer should be able to get a damaged BRT functional again with the proper equipment and resources. Without one or both of those, Das could still manage, but the workload would be exponentially higher. That’s probably why the paycheck was so generous.

“Tell me more about the problems you’re facing. I can sus out the problem faster if I know what’s going on.”

Tags:
Wise Eye​