The PC’s are hired by unknown parties (probably a Devaraja operative) to steal a set of seeds from Kestrel Agsys for some new food crop, some high-yield, disease-resistant grain strain. They are stored in a guarded facility in the Rio Vista Corridor 5D(a). The job pays $5,000 up front and $5000 on delivery for one night’s work and requires the goods to be dropped off at an arranged location. The patron offers little assistance besides “the lab is on the 5th floor of Building 8", remains anonymous, and provides a burner number to call when the job is done. That, and a chiller backpack (with a 6-hour duration), a 4kg demolition charge, and a timer/remote.
Target Item: KX-9 “Ironleaf” Wheat (Internal designation: Triticum ferrum-9)
KX-9 Ironleaf is a genetically reinforced hard wheat strain engineered to survive post-WW3 soil pathologies: persistent fungal blights, heavy-metal contamination, saline irrigation, and sporadic radiation exposure. It is not faster-growing or higher-yielding than legacy prewar wheat; its value lies in reliability. Ironleaf can be planted in land written off by older agcorps, including zones affected by fallout, industrial runoff, or bio-weaponized crop diseases introduced during the war.
Key characteristics:
- Broad-spectrum blight immunity to modern fungal and bacterial crop killers, including engineered rusts used in economic warfare.
- Chelation-tolerant roots that bind and sequester heavy metals without rendering the grain unsafe for consumption.
- Low-input profile: tolerates poor soil, irregular water access, and reduced fertilizer—ideal for frontier or contested regions.
- High seed fidelity: unlike many corporate crops, Ironleaf can reproduce for several generations before genetic drift degrades yields, making it politically explosive.
Site: The district’s most prominent feature is the KESTREL AGSYS COMPLEX (A), a significant research and logistics complex operated by Kestrel AgriSynth, one of the largest homegrown corporations in the NorCal Republic. Headquartered in Redding, where its proximity to federal research facilities ensures a steady flow of defense and infrastructure contracts, Kestrel represents the Republic’s last serious domestic rival to the global Megacorps. Its focus on agritech, bioengineering, and autonomous systems has kept it profitable but perpetually embattled, too large to fail, too small to dominate. The Rio Vista complex houses Kestrel’s production and development arms, including test domes for climate-regulated crop systems and prototype harvest drones. Security is strict, and accidents are quietly contained, but employment is steady, making Kestrel one of the corridor’s few stable institutions.
The Rio Vista labs are running long-term stress trials, deliberately infecting Ironleaf with live blight cultures and exposing test plots to simulated industrial contamination. The labs house fungal clouds, UV cycles, and drone-driven micro-harvests that monitor mutation resistance in real time. Kestrel is close to proving Ironleaf viable for open release, which would break megacorp dependence in several food-insecure regions.
Mission: What the PCs are after is not crates of grain, but:
- A sealed cryo-vault of seed stock containing the latest stable genotype. This is located in a refrigerated storage room along with hundreds of other samples and strains. It must be located and indexed before it can be found. This is a task for the netrunner to identify and for the team to extract all possible samples and physically transport them.
- Genomic key package: encrypted growth matrices and epigenetic triggers required to replicate the strain successfully. This is a series of computer files that the netrunner must locate physically. These files are accessible only within the building on the local network. Once the goodies are in their possession, the PC’s are to bomb the lab to disguise what was stolen and to derail the project on Kestrel’s end. Casualties are to be avoided if possible.
Opposition: The Kestrel campus in Rio Vista relies more on human defenses than on automated defenses found in the Southowilson industrial complexes. It is surrounded by a 10’ fence (shock and sensors) along the outside perimeter, with a 40-50 yard-wide greenbelt between the fenceline and the outer road around the campus. You can assume there are probably motion and camera sensors on the perimeter. Electronic defenses within the complex likely focus on buildings, leaving the treelines for human guards. Lots of traffic through all of the gates, most through the northern one that opens onto a major boulevard. You know the campus has a tramline underground, directly to the farmlands to the east.
There are guard booths at each of the four main gates (usually two guards each), roving patrols on campus (two guards on carts), guards in building lobbies for secure buildings with roving foot patrols after hours, and a four-man QRT available 24/7 for serious incidents. If the campus is on alert, the numbers will be double the usual. Security forces are in-house Kestrel personnel; guards are armed with medium armor and SMGs, and are trained to typical security guard levels. The QRT troops are armed with NorCal Army gear (heavy armor and rifles) and are probably trained to the same standard as infantry - in fact, many are probably former NCDF troopers. Drones are probably limited and used in response to an incident rather than in general patrols.
Internal Details: The lab is on the 5th floor of Building 8. Building 8 is a conventional layout, 6 stories high with two atriums (skylight roofs), and hallways that open to the atriums. Elevators, meeting rooms, and restrooms are in the center, offices along the sides, labs, and storage on the ends. Security station in the center. The files are only accessible from within the network and are likely only authorized to be accessed from one specific computer on the campus network. No intel is available at this point on which one, though the client says it is probably on the same floor based on how Kestrel likes to organize.
RIO VISTA CAMPUS
BUILDING 8 INTERIOR GENERAL PLANS
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