[RFC][Fiction] Hi Streamer

[Dartz]

Hopefully this'll finish. A spinoff from the ongoing Lun monster thing.

Mackie and Anika build a ship, then take a trip.

Part 1 on Pastebin due to Yuku now triggering 403 errors for any post that includes an email address in the text. Even a fake one.

Part 2 of 4-ish

It sat waiting, frost forming on the steel skin covering the nitrogen tanks. White ice-fur had begun to grow around the fill-ports while pale fingers of cold fog fell from the hoses joining them to the cryogenic cart. A tangle of other cables rolled across the hanger floor to a power point, bringing the onboard electronics gently up to their operating temperatures. The sterile scent of pure ammonia drifted in the air, mingling with the oily smell of diesel fuel, sharp chemical vapours venting from the drive coolant tanks, hot carbon, electric ozone and raw brushed steel.

Anika stared up at the bare-metal fuselage, resisting the urge to touch it with her hand where it was frosting. It left her feeling cold inside, an apprehensive chill filling her body. It raced along power-hydraulic lines and crawled up her back.

It'd been given a beautiful brushed-steel finish by the paint shop, matched with metalflake-effect Bubblegum Pink accents acriss the top of the wings, on both tails and on the engine intakes. It was a tribute to her original A-wing.

A pair of massive engine intakes threatened to swallow her whole, both of them being large enough for her to stand upright inside. Variable ramps, bypass ducts and vents shaped and formed the supersonic gas-flow, allowing the the monster craft to properly fly at supersonic speeds in an atmosphere.

Riding Hi-Streamer was a steel-built monster, bigger than many passenger shuttles. It loomed over her, pushing her down into the ground while the Little Cool Rider always invited her aboard. It stood aloof, a prima-donna requiring meticulous preparation before every flight. She had to stretch to reach the bottom of the fuselage under the cockpit. Even if she could support herself again on her outstretched hands, she still doubted she'd be able to reach the canopy.

The big Mig was a cool thing - no doubt about it. The sensor arrays alone made her grin reflexively just thinking about the radiated power even if they were a generation or three behind on the power efficiency curve. A pair of chin-like buldges under the cockpit thrummed with electric power, resonating with the power feeds in her body. Phased array sensor built into oversized winglets hummed as they warmed up.

But it just didn't feel like it was *hers*. She was proud to have built it and excited at the positive reaction the underspace gave it - even if some voices criticised it for being inelegant and unsubtle.

It was the one thing spoke of it belonging to her, something she hoped was enough of a foundation to start building a relationship. Anika's skill was in adapting the tools she could get, learning to work with them and making them work. Even if it resulted in something twice as heavy and with four times the power requirement of its nearest competitor. Only the Blackbird was larger, and it was classed as a space-ship because it actually had a proper crew cabin.

Even with two successful tests under her belt, it didn't feel like her. She didn't want to tell Mackie she still regretted selling her beloved A-Wing to build it - not after the work they'd both put in to make it real. She barely wanted to admit it to herself.

"Hey, Anika? You ready to go? Third time lucky."

Mackie stood on top of the engines, holding an empty plastic container that'd once been filled with twenty litres fresh coffee. He tossed it away, not paying attention to where it'd landed. It joined a jumble of other parts. He took a moment to try and adjust the skintight electroactive polymer flightsuit once again, struggling to make it comfortable. Anika felt herself compelled to stretch against the polymer squeezing down on her body.

"We should've used normal seats." The suit started to creak as she strained against it. "These suits are so uncomfortable."

"Tell me about it," the teenaged android grimaced."Just need to unhook the nitrogen feeds and we're finally done."

By his tone, she could tell that even he regretted building something that required so much molly-coddling before it'd fly. It'd taken most of a day to get Riding Hi-Streamer ready to fly - and that was just the normal checklist before flight. Even the flight suits took forever - and more than a little secret purple helper - to get into.

"I don't want to have to do all this anytime I want to go to Serenity to see Nene."

Anika took a tight grip of the grab handles on the Nitrogen feed nozzle. It unlatched with a gaseous hiss and a spray of cryogenic fluid. Flakes of frost fell around her feet, trailing streamers of white fog. She began to think it might've been a good idea to get a proper pair insulated gloves right before a frigid chill shot up through her arms, stabbing straight to the core of her body. The shock of it caused her hands to jam shut, shock-cooled valves all along the hydraulic lines feeding her arms binding up and grinding together. She yelped in surprise, struggling to drop the hose even as she felt it eat into her hands.

She shook her arms for what seemed like forever, cold fingers rising through her body, before it finally dropped to the concrete floor with a clatter, the last few dregs of nitrogen hissing out into a puddle on the concrete.

Her arms spasmed as she worked the jammed valves loose.

Mackie's face appearred from over the lip of the air-intake, looking down at her with a smile. "You Okay?"

"Peachy," she answered sourly, kicking the frigid hose away.

"Time for the blessing then," he grinned at her.

She frowned back at him. "Even I feel silly..."

"Can't help it," said Mackie with a shrug, "You know what happened last time."

Anika's shoulders fell. "I know."

That was the funny thing about wave quirks. Nobody would naturally think that marching three times backwards in a circle around the spacecraft chanting "Gremlins Out" while dousing it in lemon juice cast from an aspergillium made from the bumper of an old AMC Gremlin would save them all from constant annoying glitches, but after the chaos of the second test flight when they'd resisted the urge to do so, neither of them doubted that that was exactly what was necessary to ensure and safe and reliable flight. They just knew it had to be done... no matter how many people in the hangar thought it was funny

Kotono stood on the gantry above with her own maneuver gear strapped to her waist, watching with a well aimed video camera covering half of her face.

Anika gave her the finger

Kotono's teasing grin broadened as she waved down with her free hand. "Don't worry! The interwave will see everything."

Her voice echoed off the hangar walls.

"You're mean!" Anika whined, doing her best impression of a wounded puppy.

"You're own fault," Kotono called back. "It stays up until I get an apology."

Anika stopped, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment rush up through her body. Her cheeks turned rose-pink as hydraulic pressure rose behind synthetic skin. "No!"

She felt a finger tap her gently on the shoulder. She whipped around on her heel, storm-clouds already brewing over her head.

"Hey Anika. You screwed it up. We have to start again," Mackie said.

Golden eyes bored through him. A nervous giggle quivered up his throat as he took a step back.

"Fine!" the gynoid huffed, snatching the chromed aspergillium from his hands, before turning once more and

"We're just lucky Daryl has a follow up appointment," sighed Mackie.

"They're horrible to me..." Anika fished for sympathy.

"Frigga's Dirty Pair," Mackie breathed. "Just don't hack their terminals again...."

Anika's lips pursed into a bitter pout, her face for a moment looking like she'd just taken a bite out of a fresh lemon. She marched around the spacecraft, dragging stormclouds behind her while Mackie did his level best not to burst out laughing at the jeering coming from the peanut gallery. Again, they completed three full orbits, dousing the jet with the sacred lemon juice while chanting the mantra for banishment of gremlins. Finally, they both shared the last of the lemon juice between them, sipping it from the chromed demon-shaped head of the aspergillium before using the aspergillium to shatter a mirror.

"Done," said Anika, drawing a long breath in through her nose. She gazed up at it once more, still looming over her.

"Lets go," said Mackie, wearing a giddy grin.

They had to get someone with a forklift to act as a makeshift lift, a wooden pallet on the forks to act as a stable platform to stand on.

If the Hi-Streamer was huge, the cockpit was tiny. Anika had to twist herself around the star tracker to nestle herself into her chair. Automatic connectors locked her hard into place, saving her the trouble of fumbling with dozens of belts, straps and pressure hoses. The one good thing about the fortified-suit design was that it made getting into and out of the jet easier - even if getting into the suit was a whole lot harder. Her helmet was a carbon-fibre derivative of a Hardsuit helmet, with the same visor, intercomm and display structures. Memory foam kept it snug over her head, once she'd managed to gather her hair.

Instruments and display systems crowded in arround her. By her right hand, the nav-console with star map. Beneath that, the comm's array, Right in front of her, reaching out from the instrument panel, the main sensor display and Interwave master system. A number of indicators and guages flanked it, reporting the status of various elements of the main array. Further multi-function screens offered information from secondary systems and external stores. Her left hand came to a FrogPad keyboard and trackball, then the comms controls Between the various screens and guages were dozens of indicator lamps and switches leaving little of the original duck-egg blue instrument panel visible.

The front cockpit for Mackie was little better, being mostly old-style analogue steam-gauges with a single multi-function display.

Anika struggled to settle herself in the chair, straining against restraints that fixed her body rigidly in place to the seat. Head and neck restraint systems held her rigidly upright. Uncomfortable memories surfaced for a moment, but she mastered them quickly.

"Three Days In here." she sighed. Heavy switches thunked under her fingers as she began powering up the main arrays.

Mackie's voice crackled in her ear. "Lucky you don't get cramps... I'm biomimetic."

"Check your connection," she said, tapping on the side of her helmet

"This better?"

"Yep."

Still a little tinny, but liveable. Another hour of preflight checks and system calibrations beckoned. She thought about automating some of the system checks but it would just add another two or three layers of complexity on top of an already hideously complex system. She reassured herself that going through it all wasn't difficult - it was just numbingly tedious to flip through the checklist booklet strapped to her thigh and hit the right switches in sequence. Still, it was never far from Anika's mind that the main arrays were capable of putting out enough heat to melt themselves in seconds if she powered them up before the coolant compressors.

"This is why I hated being in the Knightwing," said Mackie, through the comm-link.

"Pre-Flight?"

"Some people expect the shipmind to just do it."

Anika's mind fell back to her own origins for a moment. "Your sister wasn't that bad, was she?"

"No...not really. I still had to do it because I was faster but she didn't take it for granted." He paused for a moment. "But some people had problems treating the voice behind the panel as a person and not just a part of the ship. They tended to find it hard to get assigned to flight missions after a while once their reputation got out amongst the 'birds and no-one wanted to fly with them."

She heard the grin in his voice.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. Some of the old Habu's were the worst gossips. And I had to listen to them for weeks at a time."

Anika felt herself giggle, momentarily loosing her place in the checklist before her mind reset itself. Step 247 of 403. She underlined it with a grease-pencil to be certain.

"I mean, there was stuff that was cool, like soaring through the sky with my wings outstretched covering whole planets. And there was so many things going on that I had to be aware of, so it was like my mind was huge, like having a thousand eyes to watch a thousand things at once and the awareness to act on a thousand things at the same time." The pilot paused. Anika glanced forward through a gap between her panel and the cockpit canopy to see him flexing his gloved hand in front of his face. "But then, I was still stuck inside a plane. I could only go where the Knightwing went, when somebody wanted it to go somewhere and I couldn't really do anything else but wait and think. I'm smaller now - I guess - but I can do more stuff and I can do it when I want to."

Anika's thoughts turned inwards once more. "At least I wasn't tied to the DD."

"And I can wear the Born to Penetrate t-shirt and know it's the truth," the teenaged android announced.

"Mackie!" Anika shrieked.

A barking laugh answered her. "Bone-R, Lancer. Penetration Bomber! Slipping it in beneath their defenses then sliding up the valley to strike the critical point!"

Anika kicked at the firewall, sending shocks up her own leg. It wasn't quite his arse, but it was as close as she could get without getting out. "I'll kill you!" she kicked again, "I'll Kill you!" she kicked it harder, rattling the control panels. "I'll Kill you if you say things like that for the whole trip. Three days in here with your sense of humour."

Deep laughter answered her through the speakers in her helmet as she sat there fuming with her arms across her chest. An angry growl rolled up out of her throat. "Grow up, Mackie."

"Never!"

"Can we please go fly now?"

"Still waiting for the engines to preheat. Another ten minutes."

A frustrated sigh rolled up her throat. At least it gave her time to calibrate the star-traking autopilot inertial navigation system to Frigga's current position and radial velocity, relative to the sun before finally booting up the main interwave circuit manually, command by command. Such were the joys of working with prototype systems. Some day soon, she promised herself, this would all be shell-scripted.

Eventually.

That was the trade-off she'd made when she built the system. Nobody on Frigga could build the sort of intelligent software systems that allowed people to just point to a target and click 'analyse' - that took some class-A wizard expertise, a little handwaving with the attendant ethical concerns when the system woke up, months and years of work, or all three. The alternative to an expert system, was an expert operator.

That thought brought a self satisfied smile to her face, right as the main interwave systems came up.

"Okay Anika, let's start this thing,"

At least she didn't have to worry about that. "Go for it," she answered. "Just don't cut out ground power before you switch in the main generators."

"I fixed the checklist."

She flicked her own booklet back to page one, then placed one cautious hand over the primary power switch - just in case. She felt an electric buzz rise up her spine as the right engine began to murmer. It built on itself, spooling up to a gentle moan. She could hear the pilot adjusting something in the forward cockpit, before her clicked the ignition on. It lit with a soft 'pompf' and a hard kick through the back - an injection of coffee liquer into the ion chambers sparking the reaction. Coil blades spun up to a siren's wail, a deep roar building behind her.

Anika could feel the spacecraft start to vibrate with energy, life entering the metal structure. It settled down into a hollow turbine whistle, the scent of scorched coffee filling the air.

"One stable," Mackie announced. "Spark on two."

Anika felt the kick as it punched to life, winding itself up to a steady idle. A single indicator lamp informed her that ground power had been disconnected and the spacecraft was now running off its own generators. Each one had to provide enough power for the entire sensor suite on its own. The scent of ozone began to filter through her helmet mask.

Both engines howled up to full power, the spacecraft straining against its brakes. She felt it push forward, begging to be set free. Both afterburners tore into life, ripping at the air around her and drumming on the side of her head. She could hear the engine turbines screaming to be set free. There was an energy inside the jet. It fizzed through her body, racing along her arms, crackling in her powerfeeds and network links. It carried the bare minimum of armaments but it still crackled with single-minded purpose. This was no mere light personal shuttle. On a very real level, Riding Hi-Streamer was a weapon, one as deadly as a full-on bomb-run in the right hands. In her hands was the sword of information, hammered from raw data in an electronic forge, given its edge by the keeness of mind.

A giddy, gleeful giggle rose out of her throat. A sense of mischief sparked in her body, tingling through her fingertips as she carressed the keys.

Another thing she had in common with the big fighter jet then.

Both engines wound down slowly, easing themselves back into a hollow waiting idle.

"I think we're good to go. Can you get us clearance Anika, and lock your canopy?"

She pulled the latch from underneath it. The cockpit canopy slammed down hard, threatning to bite her fingers off. Immediately the noise from the engines damped down to a distant murmur.

"I'm locked.. give me a moment on the clearance I need to send the flight plan."

First leg to Atalante. Six hours. Second Leg to Ultima, Forty-nine hours. Third Leg to Nostromo/LBBL, Five hours. A little longer than just scooting straight out to the Limit then turning to Nostromo perhaps, but safer for a prototype spacecraft. A single keypress sent it out through the Hi-Streamer's own node, filing it with each destination along with their expected arrival times. It'd be a half hour before the acknowledgement from the catgirls turned up, while Atalante took moments.

"Is anyone up there in the control room?"

Silence answered.

"Anyone?"

"Gimme a minute, I just got here..."

Jet? Strange, Anika thought. She wasn't scheduled to be up there, it was supposed to be one of the newcomers

"I need the main bay door opened."

"Yeah, hang on. I'll set the auto-sequence."

The cyber's voice oozed irritation. Mackie was chuckling away to himself in the front cockpit and Anika couldn't help but feel there was some corrolation.

"I saw your exam results for the last semester..."

Mackie stopped chuckling.

"If you fail the year, you lose your scholarship. If you lose your scholarship, that's it. You know that right?"

Her tone had flattened.

"Yeah sis, I know. It was a bad exam, that's all," he assured her. "I aced half the subjects. And I brought a reader with me with my study material on it...."

"Please Mackie. Don't just focus on the projects and subjects you like."

"Alright, I promise."

Anika could almost hear him rolling his eyes.

"Bay's evacuated and pumped down. Gate's opening. See you in a week."

And like always, his Sister trusted to faith that he'd do it. Anika decided to keep her comments to herself on the matter. It was a family thing, and none of her business. No matter what he did with his life.

"Later sis!"

Anika forgot all about it when she felt the big jet begin to inch forward, Mackie motoring the engines to push it out of it's parking bay. She saw the inky black of space beyond through her canopy porthole for only a few moments before the Mig turned to face and she felt a thrill run through her body. It might not have been perfect, but it was something she'd built herself. Parked along the landing bay walls were a motley array of light shuttlecraft and fencars, most of which she didn't recognise anymore. They were all new to Frigga - belonging to newcomers who came when the Millenium took control of the mine. Parked amongst them was a single old A-wing that resurrected all her feelings of guilt over selling the Little Cool Rider.

She still missed that little shuttle. That thought was left behind when both engines began to howl, accelerating her hard down the bay. An invisible hand tried to crush her down into her seat, the pressure rising as both engines surged to full power. The walls began to rush by, overhead lights strobing through the canopy portholes. She struggled to get a view ahead, pressing her head against the tektite glass. Open space enveloped the craft, the darkness swallowing it whole.

The pressure of acceleration didn't relent. She glanced at the velocity gauge to see it already beginning to crawl past one percent lightspeed. The white needle kept accelerating around the dial. Her sensors showed the asteroid power signature receding rapidly away behind her.

"Riding High Streamer, Clear," she radioed, almost forgetting to do so.

She exhaled a hot breath, satisfied herself that nothing was wrong with the Mig before settling herself back for the rest of the journey.

"Okay, we're on autopilot," said Mackie, exhaling a deep breath. "Target speed is set to five. STAINS is tied in. Everything looks good up front. You've got the flight plan."

"Setting course for Atalante," she answered. "Six hours."

Anika keyed the first course-change in to the navigation computer, the Mig rolling itself slowly around towards 36 Atalante for the first leg of the journey. Only another three days to go.

-------

She switched to navigational RADAR, then back to the IDAR monitor. It wasn't there, then it was. In the background, the music continued to play, tugging at the back of her mind. She switched again, adjusting a few settings before filtering it through her system once more. The system sifted through the raw data, searching for a clear signal amongst all the clutter and noise.

Anika was almost ready to write it off as a glitch in the IDAR array - it was a prototype after all.

The computer finished its work, offering its results to her with an electronic chirrup.

"Bang-Bangin' Hammers in my head..."

The android's voice burst into her ears, singing along with the music that was now front and centre in her awareness.

"Mackie..." she tried.

"Bang-Bangin' Hammers in my head...."

He was drumming on his console in time with the music.

"Mackie!" she yelled.

"In my head... In my head!"

"Hey! Commander Hadfield!" she screamed, kicking the bulkhead in front of her. "I'm trying to concentrate back here!"

The singing stopped. The song continued a few moments on its own before it was cut off too.

"Yeah sorry Anika, it helps me study."

He wasn't sorry. Not at all. She was certain of it. It just made her bristle all the more.

"Study?"

"I've nothing else to do right now..." he said. "Everything's set."

"With music that loud?" she asked, pointedly.

"Well, by tying an emotional link to the words of a song which I can definitely remember, it helps me remember what I'm studying," he answered with an audible smirk.

"You're an android. That only works for humans."

"But I'm am too a real boy!" he pleaded mockingly.

A frustrated growl rose out of Anika's throat as she felt herself begin to grow warm once more. She swallowed a deep breath of cool air, confirming what she'd

"Mackie. I think we're being followed."

"By who?"

"I don't know," she answered quickly. "I thought it was a distortion on the IDAR at first - it's a bit towards the edge of the field of view - but there's a faint EM trace too." She paused, doublechecking the cross section on the navigational array. "It's so small I wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't specifically look."

"A stealth..." he breathed.

"Or very small," she corrected. "But it's been twelve thousand off our right wing for the last half hour." Anika swallowed a lump. "It's watching us, using passive sensors."

"Are we going to go full active?"

The humour had drained from his voice.

"Not yet. I don't think they realise they've been spotted. I don't want to spook them."

"I could slow down a little and force them to fire their thrusters to slow down. Or turn towards them."

He knew the game well enough. Being the KnightWing's pilot for over three years, and being the Knightwing itself for another one had that effect.

"Slow down... just a little."

"Roger"

She felt the tug on her restraints as the Mig slowed ever so slightly. She focused her sensors on the spot, recording with IDAR, RADAR, optical and wavescanners. She saw it pull away ahead for a few moments -just a few thousand kilometres. A small smile crawled across her lips. She bared her teeth in a grin as she saw its output spike, braking thrusters firing to slow it down, sliding it back to its chosen position off the right wing.

"Got it!"

A few keypresses brought up the signature on her monitor, before offering it to the database of signatures held in the computer behind her. It warbled electronically to itself as it compared the signal against a few common drive signatures.

"What is it?"

The system chirped as it completed the search, reaching the end of the database. The result flickered up in green letters on the monitor in front of her.

"Unknown," Anika read aloud, puzzled.

Something new? Not enough information? It could be any number of things but her curiosity was piqued. Her mind raced to life, warming her body to the core. She felt the new dampers take effect, stabilising her output at a level her natural cooling could handle. Turning the cabin air-conditioning up to full let her run a little hotter, a little sharper.

"We can't go active without giving away that we've spotted them, and that we can spot them," she thought out loud. "And they'll activate any defences they have which'll make getting a good identification much harder."

Her mind drifted back to her first few days amongst the underspace, when they were still introducing her to the tools and techniques of the trade, and how it had been explained to her at the time. The trick with electronic warfare was to get your opponent to show all their cards, without revealing too many of yours in the process. It was almost a form of slow poker, with two players hidden behind dividers. She'd had to look up what Poker was at the time, but the metaphor still held. Neither could see each others hand. Neither could see how much the other had in their pot to play with. All they could both see was what was on the tables in front of them. What each player was betting, what cards they'd chosen to show and what was coming down the river.

Every single signal sent out was a bet - a gamble that it'd reveal something about the cards the opponent held, without revealing too much of her own in the process. Any signal sent could be analysed. Any signal analysed could be turned into information - information that could be turned back against an opponent. She could leak information - deliberately show off one of her own cards and watch how her opponent responded, how they changed their betting in response. It might reveal more about them than she'd given up about herself.

Anika could surmise that whatever was parked off her wing didn't know it had been detected yet. Even when passive, it still emitted small drabbles of radiation - the signatures of various pieces of equipment and powered devices. It was nowhere near enough to give her a full picture of what it could see of her, but still hinted at something very carefully designed - the Hi-streamer emitted more noise when parked and shut down.. No active emissions whatsoever - she was as certain as she could be of that. It was content to watch, wait and slurp. Knowing it was there, she could modify the operating profiles of her equipment to hide her true capabilities.

She could bluff and know it wouldn't be called. She liked to keep it that way for as long as possible; things got complicated when both sides knew the other was out there.

Whomever it was, unfortunately, wasn't a moron. They knew what they were doing. They'd parked themselves on the sunward side, with the sun behind them, so any attempt to track them visually or with IR was doomed to failure. Without the right filter it was lost in the glare at best and at worst, it'd damage the equipment. She had to assume they might have other defences ready and waiting.

Pondering on it, she remembered a trick she'd once seen Lebia Maverick use in a thread way back when Anika'd just introduced herself to the underspace. There were dozens of radio sources in the solar system - hundreds even. Some of them were pretty powerful. There were lightspeed and interwave comm's relays all over the main belt. Each one of those signals would reflect off the target as sure as one of her own would, and she could receive both the original as a reference on the left-hand array and the faint reflection on the right. Then she could cross-corrolate both signals using what she already knew to get a proper detection image. It was like using a match compared to a full blown camera flash, but it could work and give some idea of the size of what was out there. Once she had that, she could make careful guesses about its power and drive systems based on what she could see.

She scanned through for nearby sources - the most powerful being Atalante's outer marker navigation beacon - still over half an AU away. Nothing better. And with the target having some sort of RADAR stealth, she guessed that any reflections from it would be orders of magnitudes smaller than they would normally be anyway, edging close to the detection threshold of some of her gear. It'd take far more processing power than she had behind her just to sort it out from the background noise. The multidimensional fast fourier transforms alone would need quantum-level processing to get done in time to be useful. Getting a really good result would require multiple signals, from multiple sources to get a spread of frequencies and returns which could be compared with each other and that was several frustrating orders of magnitude beyond what she was capable of.

She could take it and grab the raw data, then send it somewhere were there was that much power. That was the whole point of building the interwave link into the thing in the first place. But that relied on someone being interested enough by it to take on the puzzle and there were never guarantees of that - she just didn't have the pulling power of the bigger names.

A wave of aggravation rolled through her as she glared at the screen, stymied for a moment. Aware of how warm she was starting to get, she adjusted her air conditioning to feed her the coldest air possible.

She could call Atalante and ask them to transmit a standardised comm's test message under the guise of a system's calibration. It'd be a brighter signal, sure, which'd drop the processing requirements down to something manageable but then the target would also hear her make the request - they'd have a chance to defend themselves somehow or just break off.

An encrypted transmission with an explanation why they needed a signal might work. But the target could detect the transmission and even if they couldn't decrypt it, it wouldn't take a genius to corrolate it with sudden high-power radio illumination. They'd know they'd been detected.

She swallowed her pride and took a minute of raw data using the outer marker as a radio source, packaged it up with everything else she'd taken along with a short description of events what she thought it was, and promised herself she'd post it online when she wasn't so busy. The system chewed away on it, compressing it together into a nice juicy tarball ready to be sent away while Anika drummed her fingers on the keypad, searching for another option.

"Are we going to do anything?" asked Mackie, breaking through her concentration.

"I'm thinking..." Anika snapped back at him.

"I could just outrun 'em," he said, clamly. "We're barely ticking over as it is."

She glared at the monitors in front of her. This was too tantalising a challenge for her to give up that easily. Something was out there. And the idea of that something being new to the Underspace thrilled her to the core.

"I don't know if they can keep up or not, Mackie."

And that was the first excuse she could think of.

"Fine..." he sighed.

Which was exactly as convincing as she expected it to be. Annoying, she thought. Her eyes shot wide open. That was the answer. Right there in front of her. Thank you Mackie! She stiffled a sudden, impish giggle, a mischievous grin spreading across her lips.

"Hey Mackie, could you pass your media player back here?"

There was a pause as he was taken momentarily aback by the surprise request.

"Uh yeah, why?"

"So I hook it up to the main array and use it as a source," she answered, pride rising in her voice. "It'll give us a signal to bounce off the target - then I can filter the music out because I know what it is and it'll look like we're just being rude rather than specifically looking for them."

She struggled not to just rub her hands together in villainous glee. It was perfect. It was a solution that suited her to a tee. If you couldn't beat them technically, try socially.

"So they'll pick it up at Atalante too?"

"That's a problem," she answered. And part of the solution, she didn't say. "But they'll like the data we give them."

Mackie nudged it up through the space between the cockpit canopy and her monitor, struggling to poke it back towards her.

"I think there's some Pavarotti in there, use that."

She blinked. "Pavarotti?"

"Comin' out their asses..." he answered in a sing-song tone.

Ick, Tom clancy references. She reached forward, struggling to get a good grip with her fingers on a device that was little more than a black plastic pebble with a small screen. All she succeeded in doing was to nudge it annoyingly away from herself before she hit upon the idea of pinning it against the canopy and spinning it down towards her.

It dropped. With relief, she caught it between her legs. If it'd gone on the floor, she wasn't picking it up without undoing her restraints. Hooking it in to the system required a few creative hardware and software hacks but nothing too difficult.

If she set it to broadcast omnidirectionally through both arrays it'd look more like someone just being a bit of an arsehole with a new toy than someone looking for a stealth. The angry messages arriving minutes later would seal the deal. With half the array elements set to transmit and the others to receive the reflection, it was perfect. The processing was made so much easier that'd it'd take minutes instead of months,.

She set the mains to go live as soon as she pushed play, then waited a moment, doublechecking to see if everything was set up to record. She drummed her fingers on the keypad impatiently, waiting for some of the more exotic sensors in the wing extensions to warm themselves up. Synthetic aperture imagery was a bit of an ask, but she decided to try for it anyway. She turned a switch to set the main array power, before keying in a flurry of commands to tie everything together.

The last thing she did was switch off the Hi-Streamer's transponder. It'd help it look more like a silly prank, she figured. And might just shield from some of the resulting hate mail due after flooding a major voice channel with a fat tenor singing Nessun Dorma.

She made one last check that everything was set and satisfactory, allowing herself an impish grin. All green across her panel, systems ready and waiting.

"Here we go," she said.

Anika pushed play. The timer on the media player began to tick and she held her breath, waiting to see what the result would be.

Mackie began to laugh.

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