[Story]Shadowrunning.

[Dartz]

Some more story.

Jet has a basic idea how the hardware works and what's going on.... Daisuke knows it intimately. Which kind of mirrors how this was being written Hrogge is taking care of all the technical stuff, like what's actually been done.... and how Cathy subverted the computer in the original short.

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Jets morning started with breakfast. It was her turn to cook. She wasn’t really the best at it, as The one time Jet’d tried to do something more complex than pancakes, she set the building’s fire suppression off.

Fed and cleaned up, her morning commute involved a quick boost up to orbit, a spin around the planet, followed by a skipping re-entry down to Grunthal. While she had quarters at the base, it was worth the extra effort to spend time with Ford. Even if she didn’t need to sleep, it was still nice to do.

And USB-powered devices with decent bioskin sensory feedback made things fun. Bzzzzt... snigger. There were advantages to plug and play hardware... with a bit of effort, you could really make up for the deficiencies.

Still, skimming through the canyons of Noctis, she knew today was going to be one of those days. The courier was due from the White Tower sometime this morning... she checked her planner to be sure.

Useful thing, having an iPod in her head. It let her fake being smarter than she was. At least it had it’s own wireless and cellular systems, so she could make do without the SCC plugin even if flying in crowded space without radar was just a little bit hairy. The usual morning commute gave her a chance to make a few quick changes to Jana’s training schedule, read some coursework and go through the details of that joint training exercise planned with the Soviets.

The morning mist clung to the valley, Jet skipping above it just to see where she was going, banking right over the training grounds and the motorball track. Grunthal had changed in the last few years, hadn’t it?

There was one new hanger, housing the Destiny Nova, while another was being built for the shuttle they’d ordered. There was more building work in the walls of the canyon, expanding the base, while two yellow digger trucks trundled across the canyon floor with a load of rubble. The construction company was made up of mundanes just up to make money.

Jet landed at the front door, coming into range of the wireless transmitters inside. She pulled her email off the server as she keyed in the entry code. She was already reading them before she reached her office.

A quick text search on the stuff coming in off the SMoF list didn’t pull up her name. Since nobody was specifically trying to contact her, she just ignored the lot. Jet got involved in the politics surrounding a convention exactly once, years before Jet became Jet. That had been once too many times.

She muttered her daily curse at whoever had decided to sign her up to that waste of bytes, leaving the whole lot on the server to archive just in case it was important later on.

Next, she sent a message to Jana, letting her know what her new schedule would be. Jana herself answered a few minutes later with an affirmative. That was good, the more she used her internal systems the better for her getting used to having them.

Jet made sure she was scheduled alongside Francoise Arnoul in the Kammers. Francoise was a dancer too. She might be able to help. Jet let Yoko, the Kammer’s leader, know about it.

Next item on her morning agenda was an email to the Soviet Airforce, suggesting a date for that proposed exercise at Gagarin. Afterwards, she saw to the rest of the Engel Gruppe. She ran through a few gruppe exercises, checked maintenance and downtime requirements, and set meditation and practice schedules for 5 other upcoming trainees.

Jet wasn’t only responsible for Jana.

Finally, she saw to her own practice. Keeping her own edge was just as important.

She was with the trainees in one of the practice halls when the Radi-KS courier arrived on her speed-drive-equipped skateboard, decked out in day-glo re-entry gear with a few sponsored logos from Fencorps to go with the fandom.

“Just thumb on the dotted line,” the courier smiled, helmet underarm while she handed a pad to Jet.

Jet grimaced as she tapped her metallic fingers on the touchscreen, “Got a pen?”

“Ew,” the courier winced “Metal lady likes the old fashioned way. Viki can dig that, Viki got a pen.” She clicked it and offered it to Jet. “Well, electric stylus but it does the same,”

Jet took it and signed on the pad, the glass creaking a little. Behind the dark shades, the courier was obviously some fenkinder, maybe only 14 years old or so. “There y’go,” she handed the pad back,

“Viki says thank you for using Radi-KS. The fastest, the securest, the mostest radical courier service there is out of Serenity Valley,”

“Thanks,” Jet forced a smile, hoping it’d be enough since she had no money on her to offer a tip. Honestly, where was she supposed to carry her wallet?

The girl left with a zoom, leaving Jet holding the package. Just a simple jump drive. She plugged it into on of her USB ports and skimmed through some of the files inside. ID’s on suspects, images of vehicles, a few possible leads, but not much that was immediately useful. Nothing technical at any rate. Disappointing

Still, with a quick thought she fired it off to Daisuke in case he might find something useful, along with the warning against doing anything which might let anyone know they had it. Then finally got back to the 5 trainees who’d been watching the whole time. Jana was there, doing her best.

“Sorry about that,” she apologised. “Now back to where we were. You see me now.” Unarmed, clean face with an earnest smile and bright eyes. “Now watch this.”

She picked her blades up from table where they’d been placed, locking them into place on her forearms. The marbled metal shone in the overhead lights, keen edge appearing like a glowing silver river running up to a bright spark at the tip. Jet dipped her fingers into a small tub of red dye, before drawing two red lines across her cheeks.

The trainees watched as she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, her whole body appearing to relax as she exhaled slowly. When she opened them again.

“You see the difference?” She looked at them all. They nodded. “You can see that I’m a threat. Everything about me screams ‘danger’. Would you want to fight me now?”

“No,” one of the trainees answers. Of course not, his tone adds. They all share the same sentiment.

“Right,” Jet nodded. “Remember, supreme excellence is not winning every battle.... it’s winning without having to fight. If I can intimidate an enemy to surrender, or threaten a mugger into leaving me alone... we both win. We both get out alive. If I get into a fight, I’m almost guaranteed to kill him but.” she held up one finger on her hand, “If I fight him, that gives him a chance to kill me. A small chance, but still a chance. It’s always better not to take that chance.”

A couple to the trainees looked a little dubious.

“When you get in a fight, nothing is guaranteed. You can always lose. If you can intimidate an enemy into giving up without fighting, you always win. If my enemy surrenders, he might have info I need, a lead on an investigation or even a code for a door. Dead men don’t talk, except in your nightmares.”

Jet took a moment to let that sink in.

“It might go against your own nature to threaten and intimidate. But trust me, it’s better than alternative. The threat of force is far more effective than the force itself. People know...” she stopped dead as something interrupted her.

She held up her hand, her attention more focused on the message she’d just received.

“Sorry guys. Duty just called,” she apologised with a smile, “Pair off for sparring. I’ll ask one of the AR’s to come down and help,”

Nobody ordered an AR around, not unless they wanted to be made a fool of. If there was one thing the Alita Replicas wouldn’t tolerate, it was somebody telling them what to do.

Drei agreed to take over. By the time Jet got the message, she was halfway to Daisuke’s workshop and storming through the corridors with a purpose. She damn near pulled the workshop door off getting it open, before slamming it behind her.

Daisuke jumped out of his chair, sending empty cans of energy drink clattering to the floor. The cybertech adjusted his glasses, staring bleary eyed at the armoured figure standing in the glare of the lights.

“Jesus Christ man, you’ve been awake all night,” the cyborg realised.

“Lie, Lie,” Daisuke slurred, “Daijoubu, daijoubu,” he shook his head. “I am okay,”

“You sure?”

“Not first time I pull all-nighter,” Dai smiled, trying to keep a yawn in “Not last. All I need is Red Bull and Sailor Moon image songs to keep my batteries charged.”

Jet sucked on her lower lip for a moment, “So, what was so urgent? Find something interesting?”

“Oh yes,” Daisuke nodded, wearing a cat like smirk. “The entire mailing list was working on it, even Attim was in. The scan data will take some time to analyse, another day at least before everyone has results, so we worked on patching the vulnerability.”

“Damn,” Jet murmured under her breath. She’d been hoping for an answer to give to Jana.

“No. We found something. In the driver.” There was a gleam in Daisuke’s eye. He was clearly having fun being the important one. “We audited the code, going line by line through it to where we thought the problem was.”

“And...”

“Look for yourself,” A quick flurry of keystrokes sent the source file to Jet, with a few lines highlighted. It took the cyborg a few moments to parse through it, then another few seconds wondering what the problem was, some more time to check, then doublecheck before she realised something.

“It looks okay,” she said, looking a little confused.

“Exactly!” Daisuke damn near jumped down her throat. He really was wired like a power station. “There is nothing wrong with it. Step through it in the debugger and it runs fine. It makes all proper bounds checks.”

“But...” Jet began.

“It does not work when compiled into a binary. Running on the actual system. It performs the bounds check, but with certain inputs, does not report the correct answer. It tells the program that the input is correct even thought it is not.”

“Compiler bug?” Jet assumed the obvious.

“What we assumed. But...” Daisuke looked away at his screen. “Read the logs. They knew exactly where to look and exactly what to do..”

Jet sucked a breath through her lips. “Fuck.”

One word which summed up both of their feelings. Somebody on the mailing list had leaked the information.

“It is worse than that,” Daisuke said, his voice flattening. The tech almost seemed to be dissapointed by what he’d found. He clicked his mouse and brought something new up on screen. “We decided to take a look at the compiler itself to see if it was a bug, or not. A few of us, playing our cards close to our chest. What we found...” he clicked and sent it to Jet.

Again, the relevant section was highlighted and commented. It took her more than a few seconds to figure her way through it. Daisuke could see the moment Jet worked it out, that flash of anger followed by an almost pained grimace.

“Who’ve you told?” she asked him.

“Just a few. Nobody from Sirius Cybernetics. Or any of their associates.”

Jet nodded, exhaling a long sigh as she buried her face in her hands for a moment. Her blades glinted menacingly.

“Right,” she said, trying to catch up with her own thoughts. “Right so, this just became a troubleshooter matter.”

Jet didn’t bother flashing her warrant card. Daisuke looked up at her, then at his own screen allowing himself a small smirk of satisfaction. He may not have been cyber-enhanced like many of the others, or a great fighter but he could still make himself invaluable. It’s not the hardware, but how you used it.

“Why didn’t anyone spot this?” Jet asked, after a few moments silence.

“It is a special compiler for a special hardware chip,” Daisuke answered. “Only four people work on it. ”

“And you can tell who committed these changes to the code?”

Like all open-sourced projects, they kept careful logs of who’d committed what changes to what code, and when.

“I did it. Just before I messaged you.”

Jet smiled at him. “Nice one,”

“The least I can do,” He checked his screen, “Roland Foster. Comm’s specialist. Committed the bug April 13th last year. It has been in every build since.”

“Is Roland on the ML?”

“Unh,.” Daisuke nodded, “Yes he is. But once it became obvious that the problem was not accidental, we have been keeping it private,”

Jet nodded “Keep this secret for the time being. If he thinks we’re on to him, he could go to ground, or ‘vanish’.” She thought for a moment, “What does Roland normally work on? What’s his expertise?”

“Communications, like I said.”

“Hardware, software, wetware?”

“Software mostly, some hardware. I do not know about wetware.... probably not. Sirius themself provide hardware plugins only, which only ever interface with existing hardware.”

The conclusion to be drawn there was obvious enough.

“So, he couldn’t have pulled off this hack alone,” Jet leaned down on Daisuke’s desk, thinking.

Daisuke exhaled a long breath, “In Japan, we would call this situation ‘Fukushima’,”

Jet raised an eyebrow.

“Just keeps getting worse and worse,” he explained. “And might shit everywhere if we’re not careful,”

“Send everything you can on him to the terminal in my office,” A pause. “And when can you get a patch for the radio?”

“Now that I know what’s wrong, an hour.”

“Great,” the cyborg smiled. “Don’t make it public. Keep it quiet, to . We can’t let Roland know we’re onto him yet. If he goes to ground, we lose whoever he’s working with,”

Arresting Roland would be the easy part, Jet figured.

“We’re already doing it,” he said, with a proud smirk on his face. “And feeding Roland false information, making him believe we found a different error,”

Jet looked almost ashamed. “I should’ve assumed. If you need me, I’ll be in my office,”

The first thing she needed to do was make sure somebody filled in for her gruppe training duties while she was busy, the next was that she needed to find out where in Fenspace Roland Foster was. Where he normally lived anyway.

It wouldn’t make sense for her to take the mission if he was clear across the solar system. Someone else might be in a better position than her. It also paid to let other troubleshooters know what she was doing... so two people didn’t end up working the same mission. Next, she messaged Erwin, letting him know that she really hadn’t intended to do this when she asked for the info, while trading back what details she had.

The robbery was still a Space Patrol crime. Deliberately adding a back door to software that was used as a physical part of someone, then giving that information away to Zwilniks was a Great Justice matter.

It left a lingering sense of....violation, running through her body. Jet pushed it to the back of her mind.

It didn’t take too long for her to get an answer back on her search. A physical shipping address, just around the planet, in Helium. The temptation was to just grab Roland as soon as possible, and get answers using the Gene Hunt method.

Something about the idea was deeply satisfying.

Nab him off the street, and get the information out of him before somebody realises he was missing. It might even be possible to seat someone else at his email inbox and have them take his place.

Jet pondered it over a cup of black coffee. It could work, but it just wouldn’t be Jet’s style. The other option was to just let Roland deliver his associates himself.

Jet dialled out using her onboard phone. It was night on the other side of the planet, so she didn’t expect a quick answer. She scratched at the “Hunter-Warrior” badge engraved on her shoulder while it rang.

It was plated in gold leaf, varnished in place. It’d been a pig to get done, the handwavium metal-ceramic tearing through tools.

“Hey, uh Jet.” the voice on the other end slurred. “Y’know what time it is?”

“Ford,” she smiled. “We’ve got a job,”

“Great.... now let me sleep. We can’t all recharge from a power socket,”

“I’ll see you in the morning,”

“Yeah... late in the morning.”

Ford yawned as she hung up. Jet finished her coffee with her feet up on the desk. The next matter to worry about was Jana.

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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?