[Insomniac]

One of my players has a decker character, who has several runs under his belt and has been collecting some nuyen along the way.  Now that he has a few ten thousands of nuyen stored up, rather than waiting to save his pennies for a better deck, he wants to pay the other players to help break into Fairlight so he can get his hands on an Excalibur or Paladin.

Are there any sourcebooks that give any kind of information on the cyberdeck corporation and what kind of opposition they would face should they legitimately attempt this stunt?

Thanks for any information.

[Senko]

As someone said to me in regards to this subject you don't hit fairlight you hit the shipping facilities/shops/storage facilities. For example find a postal node where they get sorted through and hit that or create a fake busines to ship to a warehouse till payment is made then hit the warehouse.

Here's a thread I made awhile back on how I view the various facilities if it helps any http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23948.msg444850#msg444850

[Reaver]

I'm willing to bet that Fairlight is a subsidiary of a Megacorp. And if I had to guess (I have no idea) I would say either Neo-net or MCT... with MCT being the favored one just because of their specialty of matrix technology. And if it IS MCT, that means Zero-zones

Much easier to take out the shipping department of the local courier service they use as Senko suggested

[Sphinx]

Don't make it too easy. Fairlight cyberdecks are expensive, specialty items; they probably don't ship by FedEx. Components are probably sourced from different locations for security reasons, and final assembly would happen at a highly secure facility. Delivery would be handled by an elite courier, probably with a security escort. The schedule and mode of travel would be a closely kept secret, possibly including random changes en route. Some key component might be withheld and sent separately to discourage hijacking, to be installed only at the final location. The deck itself would probably be locked with some sort of self-deleting security routine equivalent to Black IC ... all you need is the legitimate buyer's biometrics and a lengthy pass phrase, or defeat it in cybercombat.

[Checkmate]

Given that Excaliburs and Paladins are the tippety top of the cyberdeck spectrum, I'd be disinclined to let him steal them. He's essentially paying out 'A few ten thousands' (I'm going to asume ~40k) for something that costs 800K+. Paladins in particular since there are reportedly only twelve boughtever in universe. A run to steal an upgrade deck is fine, but that's one hell of an upgrade. If yours is a fairly cynical table, it's worth noting his team would have a much bigger payday (at least 2-4 times bigger) if they just shot him and fenced the deck.

All that said, if you still wanna go ahead with it I would recommend all of @Sphinx's security measure, and then some. Odds are the shipment would be guarded by tier one guards with an HTR team (or three) on standby. Which means this probably isn't so much a single run as a mini campaign (which your decker probably can't afford.) That's assuming it's even moved by ground instead of just VTOLed from place to place...

Edit: Fairlight is owned by NEONet, BTW.

[Insomniac]

My line of thinking was something along what Sphinx said (and there were a few things, even I hadn't considered in his list).  Including the fact that given the crazy price tag on these things, they probably don't have them sitting around in a warehouse, but rather assemble on demand once an order has been placed, meaning that they'd have to know when an order is placed to even time the op.

Perhaps, as they invest resources into seeing what kind of fool's errand this could be, they'll reconsider.

Thanks Checkmate... I was combing through my various books to find out who might have controlled the company, but couldn't find reference...

[Checkmate]

It was actually in the description of one of the links. 

[Nath]

Matrix, page 156
Of the other megas, Shiawase and Yamatetsu lead the mediocre pack with the most revenue in the hardware inustry, followed by Wuxing, Ares and Aztechnology (all of whom devote relatively litle money to the hardware field). Other mninor players include Transys Neuronet, which produces the Highlander cyberdeck but primarily focuses on software, and Fairlight Incorporated, whose famous Excalibur deck and other quality Matrixware is far too expensive for most consumers.

System Failure, page 34
Villiers “gifted” TLE with some assets from one of his pre-Novatech purchases, formerly known as Fairlight Industries. A name which no doubt resonates with many of you using high-end cyberdecks, but this was long after they sold their product line and naming rights to Renraku.

Market Panic, page 105
MITSUHAMA COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES
[...] MAJOR SUBSIDIARIES:
Computers: Aekei Heuristic Technologies, Black Lotus Software, Brainwave Inc., Dolmen Data Systems, Drakensys, Fairlight, Mitsuhama Computers