Where There's a Will... by Smurf Eater (edited by Rob)

Just like every day, I was sittin' out on the edge of the sense net, drinking my own blend of coffee and tweaking up some breakers of my own. The sky was clear as ever, the water just as blue as the day the sensenet came up... One thing us runners just don't do is litter; think we learned that lesson back in real life. Those that do defile Pacifica waters find out what the cute Dolfin(tm) programs are really meant for! The screaming that shot overhead was almost unbearable. Pure data in the form of a pile driver flew across the sky. Now I've seen big pile drivers, but this seemed to have no end. It moving with the speed of a bullet train and I thought I would might derez, it was so loud. As soon as it passed I loaded a simple lattice surfer and tried tailing it. I followed directly behind, barely catching a view of the runner trying to hold control of the monstrous pile driver. Sand flew out of the water, formed from the air, and came down from the sky as if it were rain. Within less then a minute the pile driver had screamed it's way into a sandwall that seemed to have no end. I'd never seen a sandstorm so furious in my entire thieving career. The pile driver slowed, slowed, and then stopped. The runner opened the back of the monster and climbed into it. I caught up and climbed in behind her, following her avatar through the breech. She knew I was there, but was loving every minute of it and seemed proud to share the glory of her conquest. She moved rapidly to the end of the pile driver's thick hull and opened up the other end. Spitting out sand as I climbed out, I finally realized where we were. Data streaming down over a million view screens, techs on the other side of most of them. I had no idea what corporation this was but it looked prosperous. They sure didn't want anyone in their R&D department! The runner floated up to a shape representing some kind of hardwired circuity and attached something that looked like a socket? She jumped back into the pile driver and slid down the barrel for about a mile until she reached the end, the datawalls of the piledriver disappearing behind her. That was fine, I had my pathway out. For now, I had to look at what she had attached to the corporate mainstream. What could be so important? The story above was inspired by an actual Netrunner game. A Sandstorm with 40 "End the Run"'s installed on it. The runner had barely enough bits to piledrive through it. All that to put a Viral Pipeline socket counter on R&D. For those who have not seen this nasty runner deck in action, let me explain. If the runner can hit R&D, HQ, and Archives, the corp gets a Pipe virus counter, which takes away one of their actions. Now drain their bit pool and install the Code Viral Cache and pretty much guarantee that the Corporation will only have two actions each turn. Additional Pipe counters can usually lock in a win. The runner in this game eventually won but that Sandstorm attracted the attention of the entire place! SMURF EATER

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