Thorin continued to smoke as he listened, his attention fixed on Mr Johnson as he explained the job. He raised his eyebrows as he watched the holographic image of this ‘Big Dog’ move around, easily dodging incoming fire whilst returning shots of its own. Thorin wasn’t particularly impressed, but then again he wasn’t that much of a fan of drones, having spent a small portion of time fighting against them on previous outings. Glancing over to the rigger he could see that Thovren seemed to be appreciating the hell out of it, a quiet whistle even escaping his lips. If their ‘expert’ thought that the drone was worthwhile, then that was good enough for him to trust in its value.

It seemed their mission was to be broken down into several objectives, the first and most important was obvious – get the drone’s blueprints from the corporation’s servers and wipe any remaining trace of them. Obviously without these blueprints they wouldn’t see a single Nuyen, and so it would be their main focus. Thorin didn’t know exactly how helpful he could be when it came to this part of the job, but he assumed that their new hacker friend Red Five would take the lead here. If she needed protection whilst she worked the server or even just getting out, then that’s where he would come in. 

The second part of the job seemed like it could be more up his alley. Devon McIntosh, the designer of the drone was also an objective for them – and it also seemed like without dealing with him one way or another they wouldn’t be getting paid. He had apparently already refused offers to leave Koch-Huang and had informed them that someone was trying to get to him, and so in Thorin’s mind he was unlikely to accept any other offers of bribery that the team could offer him. That meant that unless their face Lei-Ne was something special, he was sure that only his own brand of intimidation would do the job. If that failed then he was sure that he could end the human’s life with little relative trouble, even if he did turn out to be under heavy guard. That being said Thorin knew that a bonus for bringing him out alive would be something he didn’t want to pass up without at least attempting it, and see using his retinal implants he took a snapshot of the man’s face. 

The last stage of the mission involved the prototype of the drone itself, finding out if it still existed and then making sure that if it did, that Koch-Huang wouldn’t be able to use it to reverse engineer anything. Again Thorin was sure that the information about the prototype drone would be in their servers, so Red Five would be able to tell them if they needed to worry about this. Knowing how missions tend to go, Thorin decided it would be best to treat this one as a primary objective as well, as if they didn’t account for it you could be damn sure that the drone would still exist, and that it’d end up coming back to bite them in the ass.

For the entire mission they would have a month, plus ten thousand nuyen in advance for whatever they needed to get the job done. Six thousand nuyen each would be delivered upon completion of the job, he assumed providing they met the basic requirements of the job. Thorin thought for a few moments, watching as Old Soul began to manipulate his drink and create a tiny scale replica of the prototype drone as he spoke. Thorin nodded thoughtfully as he spoke of not wanting to dispose of the engineer, and after catching a few surprised looks from the others he added “I agree with him. No point in disposing of someone who is basically pure nuyen to us.” Even though he agreed for very different reasons, it made sense to him to rule out killing this Devon McIntosh, just from a financial standpoint. “The way I see it” Thorin began, taking another swig from his drink as he did “Is that this McIntosh guy may not willingly come out of there, let’s face it – we are being offered just shy of ¥50,000 because he wouldn’t play ball. So even if we gotta drag him out kicking and screaming the bonus has to be worth it?” he directed the end of his question at Mr Johnson before he added “That is unless you can get him out legitimately” turning his gaze to Lei-Ne. 

As the others asked their questions he continued to listen and consider what was being said. The only other question he added once the others had spoken was “So these… optional objectives, how much bonus are we talkin for getting this McIntosh out alive, and how much for getting that drone prototype out in one piece? If it aint worth the trouble then a well-placed shot would deal with both problems in just a few moments, and we wouldn’t need to piss around trying to get them out.” As he finished speaking Old Soul’s little aqua-drone had rolled over to his side of the table, and with a smirk he extinguished the end of his cigarette on it before looking up at Mr Johnson, waiting for their answers.