Runners in Space

At least part of the team should be encouraged to go up to the orbital AE and nose around. Knowledge and experience can be faked with false credstiks and chips. For a temp service to take an applicant seriously will require some other preparation.

First, the runner should be reasonably healthy and fit, as take off still puts five to eight gravities of pressure on people.

There should be no obvious illegal cyberware or bioware. Smartgun links can be disguised with a flesh-colored patch over the palm ports. However, no projectile weapons of any kind are allowed aboard a space ship. The reason for this should be obvious—they're high risks of letting vacuum into a vessel. Applicants will be required to take a physical with drug screen, so should quit their bad habits early enough to avoid showing traces. Applicants should have necessary licensing (again, a fake credstik will cover this), and/or education qualifying them for a shuttle job.

They definitely need to be able to do a job while being paid to! Whether it's purser (records and taking care of passenger needs), engineer, communications or whatever, they have to be able to at least fake competence adequately to fool the rest of the crew. Just being a passenger will NOT get a PC into GSM's facility. Passengers are restricted to certain facilities and locations set up for non-working visitors to space. They will not be allowed off a shuttle at the GSM warehouse and shops. One has to be crew, even if employed by a temp service like Startemps or CAL-temps. This will allow access to the AE, which maintains quarters for crew between missions.

It won't matter which temp service is used. Either can get runners onto a GSM shuttle, which all have long serial numbers and short names like Pleasant Piper, Vacuum Biter and Rhysling's Revenge. All shuttles are similar in shape and facilities—cramped crew quarters, passenger cabins holding up to eight passengers, two to a room, and a large cargo hold. There are emergency space suits at various locations, and life pods for emergency rides back to the planet or to nearby orbital facilities. All jobs have strict regulations and rules, which are made available at each working location on a vessel. All crew are required to follow procedures exactly.

GSM's Artificial Environment

All AEs are spherical, that being the shape that holds the most volume within the smallest amount of surface. They are inflated, hardened and carved into shape, or filled with structures built inside. The balloon used to start building one can be blown to quite immense sizes, and it's typical for an AE to be about one to four miles in diameter. Radiation and meter shielding is added to the original bubble; airlocks are built into the skin which can be of any size from one man to large ship.

GSM, a big player in cargo and passenger traffic, has a three mile diameter AE, with almost all of it used as a warehouse and dry-dock for ship repair. Living quarters aboard it are more spacious than on a ship but still cramped by groundside standards. There are sleeping rooms with full telecomlinks, a cafeteria open 24 hours, and recreation facilities of many kinds. No illegal recreational drugs are allowed, nor BTL chips (chipping is frowned upon in general, but still fairly popular), but alcohol is allowed and recreational sex is allowed between consenting adults. You have to document the consent first. It's expected that greenies (vacuum biters) will want to wander around and see the facility, so that won't draw any special consideration.

Trying to pry company secrets loose will arouse the curiosity of the company security staff, though, so discretion is advised. Runners wanting to look at the Wunlon Hero who go through channels making the request will be allowed a supervised visit. It is a famous disaster, after all, and they expect crew to want to look. An unsupervised visit should be made very carefully, lest security find out.

Getting on the bad side of company security forces will result in a quick deportation, possibly in custody on a ship to earth, possibly to a tourist facility where the clumsy runner can find his own ticket back, or for severe hose jobs a boot out an airlock without a suit. But if the runner is careful not to arouse suspicion, she may have a fairly free hand looking around.

The wreck of the Wunlon Hero is quite a sight. The cargo bay doors were blown wide open; the frame work holding them twisted badly, and interior structural beams bent and warped. Oddly, while much of the cargo was damaged, only the one packet was missing, a box about a third of a meter by a half meter by one and a half meters. The damaged cargo, structural parts for the lunar orbital resort, is still aboard, but the intact pieces have been sent on their way already.

Freight for the lunar resort is going outbound on a regular basis, enabling a runner already on the GSM orbital AE an excellent opportunity for going farther out. It will be easier for a runner to examine the cargo heading to the lunar orbital than the Wunlon Hero's wreck, and if this is done, a simple roll of gunnery skill at target 4 will reveal that some of the materials being shipped are weapon components. (Fallbacks: Demolitions target is 5 and armed combat 6.) These are both energy and projectile weapons of ship-mounted size. The frame members are also strong enough to be withstanding thrust, not the fragile beams an AE would require.

More Shadowrun ™ in Space

Shadowrun ™ in Space: Introduction
Shadowrun ™ in Space: One Lone Hero (fiction)
Shadowrun ™ in Space: GM Notes and Set Up
Shadowrun ™ in Space: Tying the PCs into the Adventure
Shadowrun ™ in Space: PCs in Space
Shadowrun ™ in Space: PCs on the Ground
Shadowrun ™ in Space: PCs in Lunar Orbit
Shadowrun ™ in Space: Payoff