Chapter 86

Chapter 86

I was still hammering through the issue in my head when I got back home. I would call the team together soon to chat about what to do, but we had been running around for a few days now. Best to give everyone some time to decompress.

Unluckily for me. Jun wasnt home which was disappointing. I really wanted to talk to him about what to do.

So instead I flopped onto the couch and pulled up all the data. All the recordings and pictures.

Oh! Hiromi had actually sent me a dossier on the owner of the yacht

Well it wasnt quite that professional, but it had the information I had asked for.

Bartolomeo Mordellini. I muttered as I read through the information. Apparently he was a purveyor of certain kinds of entertainment for the rich and famous. Parties. Drugs. BD. He did them all, and was apparently rich and popular enough his parties could even have high entry costs. The sort of thing that the rich and famous could get involved in to make themselves seem even richer and more important than the people that couldnt get in.

His yacht the GEIshhhA was a common party spot.

Im sure the parties were all very respectful and drugs and other entertainment wasnt allowed.

Sure.

But there was a benefit here. As popular as he was. He wasnt a member of a corp. If he disappeared some people might be annoyed at the lack of parties, but I doubted I would have corpo hit squads after me and my chooms.

Why Scavs? I didnt get the connection though. He obviously wasnt one himself. But why would a guy who hosted parties help out Scavs?

Money?

I doubted it. If he was hosting parties with the rich and famous he was already quite wealthy. So what was going on?

I shook it off. Whatever deal he had didnt matter. Fuck the Scavs, and fuck this asshole who worked with them.

So how do I come away with this gig without getting burned.

To start with. I would need to move the yacht. I would have to make sure it even had fuel, if it didnt it certainly wouldnt be able to move. That would be tricky.

I would need to do this hopefully without having the marina realize until it was too late.

Then I would need to sail the boat down the coast to somewhere I could loot the thing, hopefully NCPD didnt have a coast guard element or if they did, they would just ignore what I was doing. I gave it a 50/50 either way.

Then I would need to have enough people to unload the ship. To pack it away into trucks and get it the hell out of there to hide it somewhere else. All without having Raffen or other scavengers come to take it from me.

The Nomads not helping made it more difficult.

I sighed.

Did I want to try bringing in the SLS into this?

I winced at the very idea.

Sure they obviously knew how to loot, but bringing a bunch of kids that I barely knew? With crates of chrome each worth tons of eddies?

I would be surprised if even half the crates showed up at the end.

Could I trust them? I dont know. I was leaning towards no though. Maybe I can hire them out to help Hiromi while she is selling or something, but for something this big

So who else could I trust?

The Mox?

I had to shake my head there too. While I was close to Rita, and I liked Judy and Nox. That wasnt the Mox.

The Mox were more than just three people, especially three people that werent all that high up in the gang.

Suzie Q. I had met her before, but I was well aware that Suzie was very much a Mox first kind of woman.

Could I trust that I would have any of the crates left over at the end?

Ugh.

The one negative about not being part of a gang I guess. Sure I didnt have to deal with mob boss assholes willing to throw me away at the drop of a hat for a few eddies. But I also didnt have enough people I trusted to get some gigs done.

I was even starting to consider going to Wakako. She would know people, but I was sure if I did that my payday would start dwindling real fast.

I shook it away. I would talk to Jun. He was great at giving me advice, and being a sounding board.

I ended up getting stuck in my head despite my goal to wait for Jun, so when he finally got home a few hours later, I hadnt done anything but consider what I was going to do.

Jun! I need life counseling! I demand from the couch sitting and pinning him with a firm look.

What?

I need advice. Come sit when you are ready. I told him firmly with a nod of my head, and Jun must have realized something because he snorted and nodded, first heading to the kitchen and then coming back to settle onto the couch with a drink in hand.

Whats up Motoko?

So here is the deal.

--

You should totally steal it all. Flatline the gonk too. Jun offered with a sage nod.

Which did nothing to actually help me.

Your life counseling sucks. I informed him which didnt seem to bother him as he shrugged.

Motoko. Youve been thinking about all these groups that could help you out, but you forgot one of them in your list. He says and I have to turn my head away.

I hadnt forgotten one of them.

It just wasnt even an option.

Fujimura-Sama would definitely mobilize the Kamikaze for a payday this big.

Im not working with the TC on this Jun.

You are worried about the heat a gig like this will bring right? If the TC helps, suddenly the heat moves away from you and your chooms, and is put squarely on the TC. It solves all of your problems. He argued.

Except I would have to work with the Tyger Claws! Putting myself even closer to

Becoming one of us? He said with a smirk.

Fuck it. This is what we are doing.

--

The BD started with a blink of my eyes.

I had purposefully set myself in a good position. I was crouching over the glass railing on the office building looking over the Marina.

The preparation for this moment took a few days. Checking to make sure I knew how to get the yacht moving. Making sure it could move. Getting all the little pieces in place.

Tonight I was going to leave a real mark on Night City.

I intended it to be a good one.

Looming like a gargoyle as I looked over the marina I made sure to focus my eyes on the men wandering around.

Security, high rollers, everyone. Mentally marking them and making sure they wouldnt be in the way. Dawn was an hour or so out. So it was still dark and it was at the moment where there was the least amount of people left hanging around.

The yacht had even had a party tonight. I would likely have to deal with at least a few passed out people before I got the yacht moving.

But that had all been prepared for.

So I moved. Leaping off the edge of the railing, enjoying the feeling of being in the air, even flipping forward once just to add a bit of flair, as I landed in a crouch on top of the open structure atop one of the bars. The wood under my fingers firm.

There was no one below me.

I had already checked, but I acted like I hadnt. I moved. Running atop the wooden slats and then leaping.

There were cameras all around. But as I flipped again in the air I sent a command, and all of them shut down.

I landed and moved. Sliding along the bar and security room, rushing right for the open window I had leapt through before. This time I didnt wait for the guard inside to get away.

I leapt through the window going full speed. Slamming into the guard and instantly wrapping myself around him, legs and chrome arms strangling him down and shushing his struggles as he did his best to resist before I secured his carotid artery and he went limp.

Go time.

I punched a shard into the security computer. Where it ran the program I had dropped inside. It was probably the single hardest part I had contributed while we prepped over the last few days. A virus.

It was the first act to building a rep. To making myself into something more than just a merc, or an edgerunner.

But a phenomena.

Sure it wouldnt mean much now. Might even just be ignored in the grand scheme of things. But if I was going to be more blatant, I was going to do something cool with it.

I jumped right back out the window and raced down the docks. The path was clear. No guards were around so I had free access to the ship. With a casual move I cut the chords holding the ship secured and leapt on. I raced over the top of the boat, avoiding the inner party area.

If there was anyone still inside, they were going to have an adventure.

I hit the back of the boat and the bridge door opened. My previous escapades having already given me full access.

Thankfully it was empty and so I rushed to the control console.

Now unfortunately driving did not actually tell me how to work a yacht.

No that had taken a trade with Yoko to get a user manual for this fucking thing. Thankfully the yacht were made for rich people that didnt know how to actually sail. I pulled it out and followed the steps to get the engine to boot up and slowly a faint rumble started through the boat.

It was really quiet. Made sense, a pleasure yacht wouldnt want to have a loud engine.

I pulled back on the throttle, and slowly I watched as it began backing out of the dock.

Of course no matter how quiet, the marina was a high end million eddie sort of place. Some alert went through no matter how silent and I already noticed guards all along the Marina start rushing around.

That was when my eyes flashed as I reached out to the security system.

My vision shifted looking out through the camera systems at the Marina.

[Reboot Optics]

I hit them all. Guards, clients, workers.

Suddenly, like a plague, everyone's vision cut out. The fact I was already infiltrated into the guards security system meant even if a particular guard had some ICE it wouldnt matter.

The hack spread among them causing chaos as guests and guards all started screaming as they lost their sight.

I had actually modified the Quick Hack while preparing for this. Reboot Optics when it started back up meant their vision would still be blank. Too dark to see anything, but they would be able to see their agent screen if they had one installed, or their eyes settings overlay.

It had come to me while planning this, a way to make the hack even more effective. A way to gain myself more time.

So when all of their optics rebooted, a virus had infested their system. Covering their vision as it took over the overlay of their optics.

They wouldnt be able to get access to their settings to reset their brightness unless they were truly tech savvy because they would have to do it without actually being able to see their system behind the symbol I had implanted.

Instead their eyes were locked onto a certain symbol.

The only thing they could see.

I thought what Id do was Id pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes Or should I? I muttered to myself. The blue symbol of the laughing man from Ghost in the Shell, the symbol of the Laughing man. A super wizard class hacker, able to completely bypass someones vision.

I wasnt quite at that point yet, but it was a reminder to myself about what I wanted to become.

Then I continued, spinning a wheel to spin the yacht around. It was a slow lumbering thing.

But I had some time

Probably.

I did have an air canister and mask sealed into the small of my back just in case everything went wrong and I needed to leap overboard if the NCPD attacked.

But I was sure this would work out.

Mostly.

Maneuvering the yacht out of the marina I got it going forward out towards the sea, and slowly slowly out to sea.

I would need to head south, the the Biotechnica flats, south of the city would be the meetup point.

Ichi and Malcolm had done a good job finding a place we could unload the ship from.

Once I had the ship moving and a straight line would do for a few moments, I stepped away and headed out of the bridge. Time to see if I had captured some hostag-important people.