Agreed on threats + pay, write it off to the expense account.
I'd still pull for Toombs being on the truck team, since he doesn't exactly grasp the concept of stealth yet. Added benefit of splitting the party this way is we can pretty well guarantee at least 1 guard is accounted for and easy to put out of commission. I really wish I could get a decent spirit and still rest off the stun, but that's what hermetics do best.
Far as uniforms go, we've got their work uniform already because of surveillance. Most companies like that run through a uniform rental service (especially ones with high turnover or frequent cleaning), so it shouldn't be too hard for our man Noruas to figure out where we can get some matching uniforms. If he's feeling really ritzy he can get us some temporary ID's in the company that we can forge elsewhere, or Toombs & Velveteen can try and nick some good ones from their offices.

To help streamline RL timing, I'd like to get any decking started early. So, what's the plan for Noruas? You want him to start from the outside? Take him inside and log him in? Or are you going to use disguises and technical skill to get to the server room and just use him to grab the file?

If he can safely get into the waste company's servers enough to give us passable fake ID's, that would be great. Even better if there's a way for us to forge the ID code that the real drivers are using, in case of better-than-we're-expecting security checks. I would count that as priority 1.

If he can set up either false alarms on some sort of remote switch, that would also be useful, but not critical. Is there anything else we needed that we could nick from the outside?

The plan is still mostly to rely on the skill and such to get him physically to the server room for the download.

Given the timeframe, sending him after IDs or creating new system tricks has a very real risk of his not being available for the actual run.

But it sounds like you want to keep him in the meat until you complete the insertion.

My thoughts on plan are as follows:
- We take out the camera with a view of the loading bay well in advance
- We ambush the waste van, using a jammer to keep them from calling out and using my Lonestar drone to get them to stop
- We take them someplace semi secure and bind them with their hands around a small bit of plastic explosive.  We explain that our intention is to do a quiet bit of theft that'll never be detected.  If we're successful, we release them with $1k a piece for their trouble.  If we're not successful, the timer will go off in two hours and release them.  And that if their medical plan is any good, there's at least a 50% chance that their hands will recover most of their function.  Then see what useful information they have to share to improve our odds of success.
- The J. can be present for those discussions and we can take her along for a ride in our van (on the grounds that we need her present for final negotiations when we leave and don't have time to drop her off and pick her up - would like her on ice if things go badly and to ensure we get paid
- We have our couple of joy girls to keep the guards distracted and not looking too closely at sensors
- Once we're in the bay, Toombs summons his spirit with orders to conceal & guard Noruas and I.  Some instructions for it to play look-out to find and keep the janitor busy would be good too.  We keep our heads down in the waste van while Toombs and St. V go in when the guard shows up to let them in.  They stick something in the door so we can get in.
- Once they're in, Noruas uses the camera as an entry point for decking and temporarily disables the door sensors and any cameras that seem safe to loop.
- We then head down and get into the server room.  Noruas does his decking while I plant the boxes.
- When the time is right, St. V. can "accidentally" spill some goop on their guard to get him to leave and go change.  They can then sneak us out in a couple of the waste containers.
- We drive out and go pick up the proper drivers and pay them off, then hang out with the Johnson until sunrise making sure we weren't detected, collect our credsticks and go on our merry way.

That plan sounds good to me!

Problem with said plan.  I haven't fully mapped out the matrix system yet so it might take a little longer than expected.

You don't need to fully map it out.  All we care about are the cameras and sensors.  (Doors would be nice, but I can probably handle those.)  If you go into the network at a camera point, then you'll already be amongst the cameras.  And those will route to a common feed with other sensors fairly quickly - they'd all need to be monitored in the security guy's office and at the front desk.  Whatever you can't get, we'll have to rely on my B&E skills and the spirit's stealth + the distraction to keep us from being picked up.  We might be able to fry another camera or two as well if necessary.  It's not bullet proof, but I'm not sure we have an alternative.

The nice thing about being a decker rather than a mage is if you take a bit of stun, we can throw a stim patch on you and it won't hurt too much.  And because the paydata is on an isolated server, whatever you trigger when doing the cameras won't impact the security level of the isolated server - when you're connected to that, it'll be starting from zero again.

I can agree with that plan. I'm just a little concerned if they decide to check our ID's and they notice that Mr. Tadakashi is not, in fact, a 65 year old Japanese male; instead played by the handsome and talented St. V.
The idea of me trying to play off switching from fem Ork to male Dwarf is... unsettling. But that's what Etiquette is good for. That and fast-talking.

To be honest, watching you and St. V fast-talk, bluff and otherwise navigate your way is the part of this run I'm looking forward to the most . . . :>

If you're agreed, wanna check into finding appropriate sized uniforms and faking the necessary badges.

Just get me an etiquette test, unless you're doing something really sharp looking. They won't stand up to really intense scrutiny (and don't have any value if you try to run them through a reader) but they're quickly available.

Toombs is going to go for decent uniforms, and see about getting both fake ID's, and some decent head shot photos of him & Velveteen. If you remember the sleeves you can get for government ID badges, he's going to use that and some glue to cover up authentic ID's while leaving the other info uncovered. See if we can palm them.
Also, I'm sure I can get someone to alter the photos just enough that if we drop them somewhere, Lonestar isn't going to have mug shots for the evening news. His photo is going to be shaved head & beard, different eye color and missing a few of the most recognizable scars. Maybe even whiten the teeth up a bit. Hell, it's fiction, right?
Etiquette 6 v TN 4; 1,4,3,2,2,3; 1 success.

St. V is confident he can do that without much of a problem.  Now whether or not he actually can is another story.

Is there a way that we can change the waste removal company's schedule so that some people with similar appearances are scheduled to stop at our location?  Or would that raise way to many suspicions at this point so close to the run?

Changing the schedule would mean decking.  That carries a risk of both exposure as well as putting Noruas out of commission.  We already know that there isn't a standard crew that goes, so the guards shouldn't be too surprised to see unfamiliar faces.  If we've got uniforms and semi-official looking ids, plus a bit of fast-talking, we should be ok.  (Says she who won't be standing in front of the armed guard showing id . . .

Toombs does manage to score some uniforms, matching in color and grimey-ness. The IDs he get are... rather sub-par. Maybe appropriate for scoring drinks at a bar. It may warrant some creative craft work (and plastic ID sleeves) to hide any issues.

We'll just have to make sure the IDs are as grimy as the suits so they are harder to read.

Ideally with something that looks really unpleasant to put your hands anywhere near.  An unpleasant odor wouldn't hurt either . . .

Unpleasant odors are my specialty! Stains are really more of a hobby.
Besides, I'm not going to be unarmed, I have a pencil. And a troll. Can't forget the troll.

Anyway, going to scum up the sleeves a little with an old addition I like to call "old pizza sauce, curry leavings, and sweaty socks" because that's what it is. Also going to strap them to my boots for a short walk, scuff them up a little bit. Fortunately, it's not exactly like the sleeves are expensive, so will be running "experiments" in parallel to get that perfect level of scum. Can't hand them a *completely* illegible card, just authentic.

Anyway, by the end we should have 4 "cards". 2 are fake ID's in case we need the proper info, with enough room to jam the actual cards in behind them in case there's just an RFID scanner on the real ones (makes life easy). Then a pair of empty authenticized sleeves with our mugs on the inside to cover the actual ID if they match up well enough to be used as-is.

BTW, I'd like to avoid bomb threats on the hostages/prisoners if we can. Our J should know where they are, so all we need to do is secure them, preferably to something that can knock them out again without killing them, like a Neurostun canister. Bombs & murder are... higher on the PD's priority list than a bunch of thieves.

I don't see an issue with threats.  It's going to take some sort of mixture of threats and bribes to get what we need in a timely fashion.  The intention of my proposed approach is to ensure that their interests become as aligned with our own as possible.  There's no need for real explosives to be involved.  A bit of clay or Plasticine will work just fine.   That said, if things go south, we're already going to be on the hook for trying to plant a bomb in the facility, so I'm not sure that the police will care that much about the fact we threatened to blow the hands off a few glorified garbage collectors.  In the end, the PD cares about what they'll get pressure from from the corps or from the news media.  Anything that neither of those care about won't make them work too hard.  Certainly I'm not comfortable with setting the J. up as a babysitter.  That's not her job.  She wants to be present for negotiations, but the whole purpose of hiring us is to avoid getting her own hands dirty.

Didn't say babysitter, just "can cut them loose (later) if things go south."

If things go south, I expect she'd be busy cutting off loose ends - them included.  However, agree there are alternate mechanisms of letting them go.

Are you going to acquire the "equipment" for our distraction?

Right. Would that be another Etiquette test, or can we just deduct the joygirls' pay from the expense account?

Joy girls have an availability of 2, so rally no test required.

       front
      +-----+
    __|     |__
D          2
      |     |
    O |     |1 V
      |     |
      +-----+

This is what I have pictured in terms of the set-up of the van:
D = Drone
O = Orc (up against van, hands behind head)
1 = 1st employee, held up against van by St. V
V = St. V, being very diplomatic, not terribly concerned about the p-shooter pointed his way
2 = 2nd employee, small handgun pointed at St. V

Why doesn't the drone have line-of-sight on #2 through the driver's side door?