Chapitre I: Drinking Buddies

Heron snorts, "Not funny, Styx," he does start walking toward the van though. "This should be interesting."

Cut to Homemade, splayed out on clean couch in a dirty room, mind elsewhere.

In cyberspace, synapses connect to access points. First things first, what's the deal with that mark. And who is this guy anyway?

Homemade bookmarks the video, future link fodder the next time someone tells him that Renton's Humanis-backed districts foster a more diverse community than the barrens. That done, he tried his best to reach out to the Detroit-based decker who ran afoul of this green mark.

Ink takes the silver credstick from Styx and stashes it in the concealed compartment of her obvious cyber arm, the mustard yellow streetlight glow glinting off the metal armor plates. She sarcastically salutes with the robotic arm, "You got it. Give a beep if anyone needs it. I think I’ll do some in person scouting. Not too close, so don’t worry too much about me." With a wink she saunters off to her motorbike.

She leaves her "Maya Thorsen" SIN broadcasting that she’s comfortably lounging at home before taking off for Carlsberg. With the scarce information from the Johnson in mind, Ink attempts to sneak around the vicinity of the warehouse locale – not too close so the hell hounds don’t pick up her scent, but just to get some fine tuned eyes and ears on the place. Silently creeping around edges of buildings and crouching on rooftops, she scans the grounds, magnifying her vision from time to time and fine tunes her hearing. Her audio enhancement helps block out the mundane street noise of cars, sirens, and yelling. She sets her select sound filter to trigger if a nearby hellhound’s breathing pattern changes and another trigger for footsteps approaching her within several yards as she focuses in on and records the speech of the few men patrolling the area and anyone coming in and out of the warehouse, noting any talk of "beer" or "delivery."

Back in the van, Heron starts charging the Fly-Spys, and drives anyone where they need to. Meanwhile he finds what he can about the drop location.

Ink, if you've got the warehouse covered I'll send the twins to the drop site

Montage of Styx, in various disguises, beginning a word-of-mouth advertising campaign. She visits various bars around the stadium, and speaks briefly to people asking if they've heard anything about this party going on tomorrow night in Lincoln plaza where they're giving out free beer. She approaches it as someone who has heard a rumor, and wants to learn more, rather than someone directly advertising.

Yep, I’ve got the warehouse covered, best to keep numbers small, including tiny flying robots.

Ink scouts out the warehouse as previously described.

Warehouse doesn’t look so bad. There’s only way in and out, a security post. There’s a maglock on the door. Perimeter is surrounded by barbed wire. Only 2 guards outside – one at the post and one patrolling around who checks the vehicles coming in. The patrolling guard has a hellhound, but the most of the dogs are in a kennel opposite of the entrance. I saw two flying drones patrolling as well. Lots of drones and machines inside too to do the heavy work. I’ve been listening in for a while and it really seems like it’s a just a big booze factory here – tons and tons of beer. A lot of deliveries seem to be made by drone, especially the smaller ones. I think we can work with this.

Ink slinks down from her hidden perch, through the alleyways and back to her bike parked several blocks away to head back.

Maybe she should get some buzz going virtually on the grid too – get some rumors about a crazy party flying in the hockey fan clubs on the matrix.

Ink, can you grab a capture of the delivery vans? Should be able to get the van to look like them if we want.

I don't have any delivery drones, but with enough Matrix magic, we could forge ID or take a couple deliveries over. Options are good.

A couple of Fly-Spys fly over the Lincoln Plaza, streaming video and pictures back to Heron's systems.

When the bars shut down I'm going to head home and get some sleep.

Adverts taken care of, chummers. What time do you want to meet to start planning? Heron, your place?

All good
Rest of you want to check in?

Heron sits in his shop with Handi, his worker drone, removing gear from the back of the van to make room for a pallet of beer. "Looks like we won't be taking the Lynx."