[RFC][Fiction] Hi Streamer

[HRogge]

"Mizuki, whats the fastest the POD has ever done?"

"19% lightspeed Cortana..."

"Damned, nothing faster with a mass effect drive?"

"No, nothing."

"Could we attach an acceleration drive to a Jenga Module and get it to 20% lightspeed?"

"No, you would run out of reaction mass long before you reach this kind of speed. Or the wave drag resistance would slow you down!"

"That is unfair, you are no fun today!"

[robkelk]

"Remember when we had to strip a ship down to essentially a spacesuit with a thruster on it to get up to 0.18c?"

"You're starting to sound like Dad, Kohran. We're too young to be that old."

"Sorry, Sora."
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

"There're two ways to go fast. You can spend months lightening each component, trimming the ship down to the bare minimum and installing a high-efficiency drive computer that does that ion-efflux field capture thing and building a razor that slices through the sky. Or you can stick a honking great reactor onto an even bigger thruster assembly and batter space out of the way with brute force."

"And then the whole drive explodes out the tailpipe after an AU, Mackie"

It's like using nitrous oxide on a car. Go fast, or go boom.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

Anyway, more story.

Another hour went by.

The newbs on the list had started spamming in their excitement, threatening to give the game away begging her for the latest data now!. The old hands sat back and waited for her to do her best, whatever that may be. The sense of expectation hung over her like a shadow. This was her chance, and hers alone to do something. Data streamed back fromher sensors and she slurped it all, giggling to herself as a clear image emerged from the static mist on her screen. She could see the tail's touching at their tips, forming a delta that shielded the exhaust. She could see the hazy outline of the cockpit windows, almost eye-to-eye with the pilot himself sitting behind them. Engine intake grills shone up as a pale haze of grey flanking. Sparks shone up on the nose and along the leading edge of both wings. That wasn't even the start.

It sat there, teasing her, staring at her quietly. She could feel it out there, it's silent gaze hovering over her proverbial shoulder. Anika pushed her unease down to her feet, aware that loosing her cool could cost her dearly. Especially when she recalled what she was sitting on top of. Her skin began to crawl in a way that was disturbingly alien for an android. Anika played out a digital symphony on her keyboard, her fingers working as fast as any orchestral maestro as she teased more and more from the datastream, filtering more and more of the noise

It was just sitting, tantalisingly at the edge of her reach.

In a flash of inspiration, she proposed the codename 'Raven' for the Stealth on the list, before promising to have an update soon. Replies came back in acknowledgement, accepting that as the craft's name.

This was someone, here to see her. It wasn't Atalante they'd been interested in, but her and her new prototype. They were baiting her into revealing it's capabilities. Perhaps they reasoned that the reveal of their Stealth program was a small price to pay, to find what was a new technology, inside what might become an adversary's newest reconnaissance craft

It was nice to know that somebody took her seriously, even it was the erstwhile enemy.

A lucious lick of her lips split into a cat like smile as her disk-drives filled.

"Any luck, Anika?"

Mackie's voice dragged her out of hack mode.

"It's still just sitting there," she sighed, tapping at the image onscreen."I've got the hull, but nothing inside."

"Crazy Ivan?" Mackie suggested, sounded hopeful. It'd give him something to do beyond waiting

"Too obvious..."

"Ugh. I hate this!"

Something clattered as he took his frustration out on the cockpit.

"It's a battle of patience," Anika answered, keeping her voice calm.

"Well, mine ran out."

His fingers rapped against the panels in front of him. The sound was painflly loud in the confined space of the cockpit.

Anika's first warning that he was about to do something stupid was the sound of an open radio channel hissing in her earbuds.

"Hey! Gobshite following us. Yeah. You in the Stealth." There was a pause as the transmission propagated across open space. Stunned into silence, Anika watched its energy wave wash over the Stealth, reflecting right back at her."Your momma's so fat, Luke Skywalker mistook her for a moon."

"Mackie!" Anika shrieked, the connection between mind and brain finally being made.

"She's so hairy, Han Solo hired her as a Co-Pilot!"

"Stop it!" she yelled.

"Your mamma's so ugly, she cosplayed as a Slave Leia and won best Hutt instead."

"You're ruining everything you moron!"

"Your momma's so easy, even Biggs could stuff his torpedo in her thermal exhaust port."

And worse of all, he was loving every moment of it. He just didn't care.

"Your mammy's so scummy, the Sarlacc spat her out."

Mackie just ruined everything! Blowing the fact that they knew about the Raven following them with one big puerile joke. If she could've, Anika would've strangled him. Oh, but he was on a roll. With Star Wars now exhausted, he switched to the next thing on his mind.

"Your ma's so ugly, the AMP mistook her for a Lucifer Hawk."

The more momentum he built, the more he began to sound like his sister. Anika slumped over in her seat.

"Your ma's so stupid. When she picked up a Death Note, she wrote her own name on it first to try it out."

A frustrated growl rose out of her throat as she buried her face in her hands. Mackie was cackling merrily at his own jokes, too pleased with himself to care.

"Your ma's so fat, the Chinese guide assumed she'd fallen into the spring of drowned Hippopotamus."

Idiot.She kicked the back of his seat hard enough to send a shock up her own leg.

"She's so huge, NERV classified her as the eighteenth Angel."

Anika exhaled her irritation in one long breath, before glancing at her monitors.

"They're leaving, Mackie!" she snapped at him.

And that only encouraged him to keep going.

"Your ma's so desperate, she had to rape the tentacle monster to get some action."

It echoed out into the void, his mad laughter chasing after the receding signature until it'd vanished entirely from her scope.

"You can stop now," said Anika, her voice dripping with disappointment. "They're gone. Idiot."

He was proud of it. Like a puppy that'd just taken a shit all over her carpet. He'd ruined everything, and didn't feel one iota of guilt. He was still laughing to himself, even as he tried to smother it with his hands. There was nothing for Anika to do but sit and fume while she plotted revenge....

Lebia was already making a dash out to try and meet it. Chances were, she'd pick it up and reveal all the glorious details that Mackie had stolen from her. Nobody would know what she'd done, and he'd ruined it for her.

Anika sighed again, taking a moment to squashed the last dregs of her anger. "Thanks Mackie. You ruined it all on me,"

"Yeah well. If all you wanted was an autopilot, you should've bought one from Orion instead of asking me to fly."

That hung in the air for a moment, Anika's thoughts stopping dead. Her lips pursed into a sour pout as she set the last of her data to transfer. And Mackie's selfishness had ruined it for her, just because he was bored. Madboys were all the same - once they got caught in the zone or got bored, they just couldn't think of others.

Well, she thought, Another 32 hours to Ultima. Then 5 on to LBB. Still over a day and a half to go. This was going to be a long journey for the both of them.

----------

Yes. I did make them up. I know... it shows.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Rajvik]

I loved it. Mackie on a roll!
 

[robkelk]

Possible flash-forward to Ultima, assuming they actually stop and say hello:

"He did what?" Miyuri frowned. "If he was working for me, he wouldn't be working for me. You know what I mean."

Anika nodded as she took another bite of her banana split. "I know, but - he's family."

"And family trumps everything else. There's a saying that the Foglios have for this sort of occasion: 'Relatives are a gift from God, because you sure wouldn't pay for them.'"

--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Heh. That's added to the document for later.

Anyway. The Hi-Streamer was an entry to a competition which it specifically didn't win - only two were bought by GJ for evaluation purposes, which sort of became like the YF-23 to the F-22 - but ended up being kept around because of one so-far unduplicable feature. What else was there in the competition and who built it?

Anyway, the final rating is supposed to be as follows.... Hi Streamer does exactly three things well and nothing else. Min-maxing is a local talent, it seems.

SPEED:10 .............One of the fastest in it's class. Bottomless power on boost. Middling off-boost.

STRUCTURE: 8....... Battlesteel and Inconel tanks collisions with debris, other craft, and probably skyscrapers and asteroids. Visible surface corrosion defies cleaning. Question mark over cooling systems robustness.
ECM/ECCM: 9.........Powerful onboard computers and comprehensive sensor suite. Novel IDAR array makes any active drive in range visible.
MANEUVER:2..........Turning radius measured in AU at full speed. Forgiving handling. Superb control feel aids familiarising, hence bonus point awarded.
INTELLIGENCE: 2...Minimal automation. Autoland capable Autopilot. Some careful interface design helps. But still requires a lot of crew work. No Shipmind. Proportional control resistance modulation the only pilot flight assist.

ARMAMENT: 2.........Two underwing hardpoints only. Specifically HARM compatible.

STEALTH: -1...........Anti-Stealth - it's visible from fifteen light minutes out under some circumstances. Undeniable in any circumstance.

Final notes: Exceeds published requirements, but cripplingly overspecialised towards them. It'll go in, wasp-up a target and get out without a scratch, slurping great data on the way. Requires a high crew workload, and a higher overall crew skill level, to achieve equivelant operational results as the other designs offered. But there's no way in hell it will snoop undetected. An expert system or three would be no end of improvement. Would be good at barnstorming Wild Weasel missions with more hardpoints since it can outrun most missiles. IDAR array gives unique hunter-killer abilities versus Stealthed craft, as proven in experience.

Conclusion: IDAR array benefits too hard to ignore, inspite of other design weaknesses. Type is therefore accepted as serviceable and fit for purpose, but recommend no further purchases, except in case of attrition. Both Units to be retained until IDAR technology can be manufacturer-adapted to a more suitable craft. Individual unit Commanders may request funding for purchase on their own initiative, in light of changing specific operational requirements.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[HRogge]

"Mass production of IDAR devices? Hey, there are two of them at the moment... the one here at the Labs is a stationary one that doesn't work and the one in the original Hi-Streamer that works... we are looking through all the data we got from the Hi-Streamer to see what went wrong with the stationary IDAR. Don't hold your breath while waiting for more."

[LynnInDenver]

I'm expecting that the Hacker Underspace, in general, wouldn't be very happy with Mackie, in the same way a party of adventurers aren't happy with the dwarf when she causes them to blow their attempt at stealthily sneaking into the stronghold...

After all, he at least added to the amount of time it took to get more data. If not outright made it the last time they'd get to see the Raven in the wild.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[LilFluff]

"Sorry Mackie, even though everyone now agrees the system was hacked to add four semesters of meditation classes and two as a remedial math tutor as graduation requirements, for some reason no one is willing to remove them."

Has Mackie made himself the new favorite test target of the Hacker Underspace?
-----

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.

[Dartz]

Mackie: "I'm a fighter pilot, not an autopilot."

That's his story, and he's sticking to it.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

.....I think I've fucked this up. Especially the previous scene.

"Anika," Mackie tried.

She ignored him, switching the intercom off with an angry huff. Her mind was buried deep in the underspace, finishing a few final uploads. In all likelyhood, Mackie had delayed understanding the Raven, and probably scared it off for good. Any chance of ever catching it in the wild vanished in a burst of childish insults. Lebia was out there with something special, but even 'something special' versus the vastness of space was a long shot.

All she had left was the data, and the echoes of what might've been. And reasonably quick instant messaging thanks to the interwave node built into the spin of the Hi-Streamer. Miyuri was on the other end of it. Along with sympathy

Aki-chan: "Mackie did what?"
Aki-chan: "If he was working for me, he wouldn't be working for me. You know what I mean."

Anika sucked on the tube of her pureed banana split, finding comfort in her anger.

Strawberry Cupcakes: "I know, but - he's family."

Aki-chan:"And family trumps everything else."
Aki-chan: "There's a saying that the Foglios have for this sort of occasion:"
Aki-chan: "Relatives are a gift from God, because you sure wouldn't pay for them."

Strawberry_Cupcakes: "The worst part. He's not my family..."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "It's Jet that really lets him get away with things like this."

Aki-chan:"Owww...."

Aki-chan:"You going to stop by for sympathy desert?"
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "Sorry, but we're already delayed."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "On the way home ?."
Strawberry_Cupcakes: "I'll send the flight plan!"

Aki-chan: "Ooh, we'll keep a docking bay free"

She left her food-tube hanging in space while she confirmed her expected departure times from LBB. They'd planned for a two-night stay while the catgirls gathered performed their tests. The surprise came when the hanging tube tapped against her visor. She glanced around, looking for an explanation. It came moments later as a deepening whine from the engines pressed her back into her seat.

The navigation computer showed the Hi Streamer accelerating through 12%. She re-activated her intercom.

"Hey Mackie! What are you doing now?"

"You're not using the main arrays, so I thought I'd use the spare cooling capacity to make up the time we lost at Atalante," he answered, calmly.

"You could've warned me," she huffed, wiping a smear of banana-split-paste from her visor with the back of her glove.

"You didn't answer..."

"It's your own fault for blowing my big chance."

Definitely his fault for making her mad.

"That Stealth will be back," he assured her with a sick, smug certainty to his tone.

"What, you know who owns it?" she snarled caustically.

"It came back after we chased it and spiked it, so it's definitely interested in us enough to come back inspite of the threat," he answered again. She heard the smile on his lips and it incensed her. "We learned so much when he panicked, didn't we? And I'll bet the pilot in there will be hating every minute of his mission because that Stealth's going to be cold, cramped and utterly boring to fly all the way out and then he has to concentrate on not getting spotted the whole time. So if I keep pissing him off, he's going to get frustrated - the more frustrated he gets, the more likely he'll fuck up."

Simple. Smug.

"You could've told me!" She snapped at him.

"I tried three times. You were too deep in the madness place to care."

"I don't go to the madness place."

It was called Hack Mode.

"Takes a beetle to know a beetle.... You were deep in there."

"I am not a Mad." She stated.

"With the things I've seen you make computers do, that sounds like AC claiming she doesn't have big tits..."

He laughed. He actually laughed at her.

"I'm not Mad!" Anika snapped.

There was a big difference between the Madness Place and being deep in Hack Mode. Madness was obsession, it was pathological. Hack Mode was the opposite - a willing State of Zen where there was Nothing but the Problem, and the understanding of data and information merged with instictive wielding of Deep Magic to find the Solution. It was peaceful and creative, rather than blinkered and destructive.

Mads werre people who got lost in their mind. They get so deep into their projects that they forget everything, except for the goal at the end of the tunnel. Mads were always one step away from an atrocity, justified in the blind name of discovery and for the glory of the Project. Mad's flirted with Armageddon and Destruction. They blindly toyed with lives seeing only the promise of the thrill of discovery.

Hackers escaped and broke free, while Mads imprisoned and violated.

That had been the very first lesson of her life.

And she was riding in something a step away from a nuclear weapon, built by a larval Mad's obsession with speed. It made her skin prickle just to think about it. Her awesome technical work had been tainted by The Spark, sublty defiled by Madness.

"Fine," the voice on the other end of her intercom sighed. "If that's what you want to believe..."

Anika stewed. The topic on her mind, open to all for suggestion, was revenge. Some of the lurid suggestions coming from the Underspace brough a savage smirk to her lips.

"Aw man," Mackie's voice interrupted her again.

"What is it now?"

"This flightsuit is so uncomfortable...why couldn't we use a normal one?"

She could hear him shifting in his seat, even through the intercom.

"I don't have a problem," she declared, proudly. A little embarrasing maybe when walking around, but far more comfortable than the usual flightsuit and strap-down harness. And a lot less messing around when getting in and out since all the proper connectors just locked naturally into place, then unlocked with a single lever.

"There's one obvious difference between you and me..." the boy answered, confirming her suspicions.

"You can shift your core to another body if it bothers you that much."

He was an AI, after all - it wouldn't be too hard considering he'd already been moved from the KnightWing.

"Once was enough...." Mackie answered, with an uncomfortable shudder in his voice.

And that begged a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. Instead, she nestled herself into the comfort of the Underspace, supporters already offering to 'adjust' Mackie's course assignments, or even his grades. A few Skids hanging on to the fringes of the list vied for her attention, offering even more devious options that whispered to the darker parts of her heart, even if she knew it'd be going too far.

She relayed what he'd said to the list, waiting for the response. And now, what really made her boil - he'd accused her of being the thing she hated most of all - as if it didn't mean a single thing. The first message came through with a chirp from the panel in front of her.

Visionaire: "Although he had a purile way of doing it, he might not be wrong - Logically, at least."
Visionaire: "The Raven is interested in you. Enough to follow you halfway to Ultima, after a mock attack."
Visionaire: "You flight plan is public and published."
Visionaire: "There's a high probability it will try to track you again on the way back in."

It stunned her. In green text on a black monitor screen was betrayal. Lebia's usual cool tones were clear even in text form. Abandoned, Anika slumped forward in her seat with a quiet whine from her throat.

Visionaire: "It's not just you on your own out there. Both of you are a team."
Visionaire: "Part of being on a team is being able to utilise all the skills of your team members. Use them to compliment your own."

And the the worst part of it? Divorced from all the emotion of the moment, Lebia was probably right too.

Okay so maybe, just maybe, she had gotten too hung up on what she could do herself with her cool new toy. Maybe she was enjoying being the real centre of attention for a change. But he didn't need to be such an insensitive, oblivious jerk about it either, did he? There was nothing left to do but count down the hours.

It was supposed to be a total teamwork fail, rather than Mackie just randomly being a jerk.

Anika's big and excited about being the centre of attention with a real discovery, and sees it as her real chance to show what she can do and what she's learned, so she's more focused on what she can do alone. It's her chance, so she has to do it. Mackie, somewhat understandably gets frustrated and bored at being just a little bit ignored, so decides to act anyway - even though he can't see what Anika's actually doing. As far as he's aware, she's just staring at a screen waiting for it do something, so he decides to make it do something.

And Mackie just doesn't have the complete negative opinion of Madness that Anika has.... he sees it as a normal thing that happens to everyone - just getting so engrossed in a project that you're blind to whatever's beyond the project - and that sometimes when someone's in the madness place they need to be jolted out of it. He either doesn't understand the difference - or couldn't see the difference for where he was sitting. Anika, OTOH, has a very specific negative connotation and idea of what Madness is, born from her original creator being so blind from his technical success that he thought she was defective when she started fighting against him.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

........... Arise from thy grave. (I'm amazed at the ability of gainful employment to kill my ability to form a story. I get all my ideas at my desk, and they're gone by the time I get home)

----------------------------------

Hi-streamer steamed in the hangar, metal creaking and groaning as it contracted. The air was heavy with the cold scent of boiling refrigerants, mingling with sulphurous jet-fuel and sweet oils. Parked up and waiting, it seemed positively alive, towering over a dozen catgirls busily attaching power supplies and network cables to various pieces of hardware. Excomps swarmed around, supplying tools or generally annoying their partners and being shooed away.

One, painted a garish Bubblegum Pink, seemed especially interested in her, sensors tasting the air around her as it circled.

It made her skin crawl.

She passed in front of the nose, a crackle of energy shooting through the wires in her body reminding her that most of the main systems hadn't been shut down. The catgirls were interested solely in testing the IDAR they'd developed for it, burying themselves in their tests. Anika watched from outside the frenetic furball for a few minutes, peculiarly aware that she was one of two people on the station that didn't have fur or a tail.

Not including the computer systems, of course.

There was something vaguely creepy about the way they worked that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Most of them had their own headsets and communicators, each one colourfully decorated. All of them seemed to exist in their own parallel dimension, aware of a different world than what she could see herself.

None of them appearred to be talking to each other, just babbling to their headsets, while grasping at thin air images of things only they could see. It certainly didn't help that being products of the catgirling gave the whole group a certain level of uniformity.

A hive of catgirls was what came to mind, directed by an unseen queen.

She paced around, watching more and more panels get pulled open across the back of the big fighter, hooking up various instruments and monitors. Shhe felt it in her wires when the IDAR array hummed to life, the crackling scent of ozone and boiling ammonia filling the air. Arm-thick power-feeds shrouded themselves in mist, feeding the array with hundreds of amps of electricity. One of stood stood upright in the engine exhaust, getting her picture taken.

There were plenty of full-blown cruisers that came in smaller on the size and weight scale.

An electric spark of pride shot through her veins. It was, in many way the brutal and inelegant opposite of the Simurghs and Blackbirds - elegant machines designed to be the precise peak of technology. Hi-Streamer did what it did through being a oversized sledgehammer of a thing.

"Oh, here you go sweetling," A voice from over her shoulder grabbed for her attention.An innocently smiling catgirl stood beside her, offering a headset to her. "It's set up with a guest account so you can help if needed. And find your way around"

Anika suppressed the involuntary shudder that crawled up her spine at the utterance of that word. "Thanks."

For a moment she thought the headband would snap in her hands as she slipped the set over her hair

Projected for her was the hivemind plan the catgirls were working to. A dozen wireframe graphics drifted around the Hi-Streamer, overlaying cutaways on top of the bare metal. Catgirls followed work directions mapped out across the fuselage. The earpiece carried the humm of information from the station's mind, directing the whole felinoid hive. It was the hidden order behind the chaos of catgirls.

"Wow..." she breathed

"Pretty cool, huh?" grinned the tabby catgirl. "Just ask and it'll show you to your guest quarters."

The path to guest quarters was overlayed upon what was otherwise a maze of featureless, unlabelled uniform corridors. It occurred to her that, without the benefit of a headset it'd be very easy for someone to get lost. She wasn't sure that wasn't the intention either....

Guest quarters was just another unlabelled door, in another corridor, not far from something that smelled suspiciously like tobacco smoke. It opened with a faint whirr, greeting her with the sight of Mackie sitting cross-legged on the floor, with his case-computer flipped open in front of him.

On the screen, a very naked image of a very familiar raven-haired woman. Anika blinked.

"Is that?"

"It's a software project," he answered, quickly.

A very naked software project, at first glance.

"If these are real..."

The obvious question being first, how? Then, how the hell he got away with it? And for how long?

"Of course they aren't. The project was to build a 3-D model based on a series of 2-D images - I just added a few features."

A sly smile crawled across his lips.

"So, you used A.C. Peters as a test?"

"It's as good a test as any," he shrugged his shoulder shamelessly. "And I can dress the model in anything.... Maid outfit...." A click on the touchpad dressed the model in the traditional black and white French outfit, with lovingly modelled riffles. Another click brought up the next outfit - a brilliant white leotard with a blood-red skirt and neckerchief "Mars uniform..." he grinned, before adding a few keyboard commands to the prompt. "...or I can pipe it to the sis's Basic Hardsuit Layout Program which gives me either the Kulbit Flight Suit, or even a hardsuit joint-motor template."

Both of them following the same red and white colourscheme... the hardsuit especially seeming like it had been lavished far more than the cursory attention a computer program would've given it. There'd been some manual corrections made, especially around the chest and hips. Saber Mars even struck an animated pose, verifying the join's mobility and freedom.

"And since the old version's in the Stingray project package already and used for the Kulbit flightsuit, I can demonstrate a practical use of the project for extra credit." Mackie beamed at his accomplishment.

"There's no way the resolution will be as good as our laser-scanner."

That was the only thing that came to her mind.

"It gets much better with a larger sample size. And it's very easy to get a big sample-size for A.C. since she's been popular for so long," he explained. "So it's really not what you think. It's a helpful tool for prototyping, layout and mockup, rather than the detail work."

Anika glared dubiously at it, pursing her lips into a tight pout.

"The fun part is, it works in reverse too because it has to estimate and strip clothing." A click brought up an image of his Sister in her armour. Another stripped the armour away. "That's what Sis'd look like under her hardsuit, if she were human."

"Freaky."Anika cringed away from the distorted humanoid onscreen. She blinked, a chilling idea entering her mind."Wait, you can use this to undress any woman?"

"Ah...." Mackie's mouth hung open for a moment "I plead the second."

All Anika could do was glower at him. "If she finds out," she sighed. "It's on your head."

"It's less explicit than most of what's on Deviantart," he said with a carefree shrug. "The limits are obvious."

Anika slid a chair for herself across, the open-back design allowing her to comfortably swing her legs in under the seat-back, letting her rest her chin on her folded arms

"You know, Maico used software like this to guess who was inside the Knight Saber's hardsuits."

"Where do you think I got the idea?"

Something about tat made her feel just that little uncomfortable inside, though she couldn't quite put a numerical value of the feeling, only that it was occurring somewhere in her mind and that it really wasn't pleasant, like all the hydraulic pressure in her body had suddenly drained away. Time to change the subject.

"I have to build two more for evaluation.... to the production plans," she said. "I can't afford the five we'd need to order from Hepheastus."

"Best option is to post the basic specs to a builder's forum and get some quotes," he answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

"Well excuse me for not having done this before," she sat upright, pouting sourly at him with her arms folded. Seeing Mackie wouldn't take no, she slumped back down into the chair. "Could've bought a Simurgh for the cost of going through this."

"That's just part of the fun of being a builder!" Mackie grinned at her. "Spending more for an inferior product, but at least you have the pride of it being unique in any hanger."

Anika glared.

"Heh..." Mackie managed a nervous smile.

"I still need to get someone to build them. It's got to be secret..."She paused."And your engines are a problem."

One which made building the thing his problem because if he hadn't put a drive that ran on Plutonium in the thing they could've had it made anywhere with the right security rating but now they had to find someone they could genuinely trust. Either with the whole truth, or to just take it on faith to not look to hard.

"That leaves two options..." Mackie trailed off into sigh, sitting back into his chair. "And one of them involves a conversation I don't really want to have." His finger began rapidly tapping on the computer case.

Anika thought for a moment. "It'd be nice to hand responsibility for this thing over to people who might know better..."

Mackie started. "Doing that without telling Ben first? I don't want to betray him like that."

He began to stare out the window, slumping under the weight of it all. All the energy had drained from his face, leaving only drawn fatigued eyes that'd come to know sin in a truly scientific way. Anika breathed lead trying to get her mind around it.

"Serizawa's dilemma,"Anika breathed, wondering just who Serizawa was. "I still think you need to tell someone."

"This isn't a software bug that'll install adware," Mackie said, the energy and life leaving his voice. "This is a method to make a weapon that'll shatter Genaros, or smash Kandor's dome, or poison everyone in Marduck, make a crater out of Newport, or turn Ultima station into glowing ashes. Or wake the Sleeping Giants and really piss them off. All it takes is one person." He raised a single finger on his right hand. "Just one with motivation, materials and machine tools to do it." Brown eyes stared through her. "And if I tell anyone about this, and that person finds out how because I tell someone about it, then I'm responsible. It's my fault. I don't want to be responsible for that."

Anika drew down a deep cooling breath, clearing the heat that fogged her mind. "You know how I feel. The Hacker Ethic demands full disclosure."

"This is evil knowledge."

"Evil..."

She shrunk back a moment, blinking owlishly.

"Yes," Mackie nodded. "Nuclear weapons are evil. Nothing good can ever come from them. Only terror and destruction." Mackie squirmed in his seat, but the burden of knowledge refused to shift it's weight. It just pushed him down all the harder. He pushed himself to his feet, stretching with a hollow yawn, shrugging it off as best as he could.

Anika embraced the chair in front of her like it was her lifeline in a stormy sea. She looked up at him, a thought forming in the back of her mind. It refused to go away, even as a part of herself laughed at the idea.

She look up at him, the faintest smile reaching her lips. "You've changed."

"Huh?" He looked down at her, one eyebrow slightly raise.

"You look older."

Just that little step beyond the Madboy... but not quite a madman. Anika smirked inwardly at her own joke, a perplexed expression crossing Mackie's face for a moment before his eyes turned down towards his feet.

"Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, gaunt soldier,
With weapons beyond any reach of my mind,
With weapons so deadly the world must grow older
And die in its tracks, if it does not turn kind?"

Anika sat upright, her mouth slowly hinging open.

"Yeah. I know a poem. Don't act so shocked," Mackie boyish grin returned with full force. He shrugged his shoulders lightly. "Everyone knows the Space Shuttles have a secret story they don't tell anyone. Young Lancers get a different story when they first spread their wings."

Anika didn't want to admit that she'd forgotten where he really came from. She played with a lock of her hair, musing at something that vanished from her conscioussness like a whisp of smoke when she tried to grab at it with her fingers.

Mackie slowly sat himself back down, the back of the chair creaking as he sat himself back into it, his arms dropping to his side. He closed his eyes, slowly breathing out while Anika leant forward, resting against the back of her chair again, softly drumming her fingers.

"Since you don't want Ben to find out yet, that leaves me with just one choice. That's going to be a fun email." She closed her eyes, composing it at the speed of thought in the back of her mind. "At least we know they can handle the electronics anyway."

"This time next year, we'll be rich enough to have our own yards." Mackie breathed. "Sis's been saying that for three years."

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

[robkelk]

"Freaky."Anika cringed away from the distorted humanoid onscreen. She blinked, a chilling idea entering her mind."Wait, you can use this to undress any woman?"

"Ah...." Mackie's mouth hung open for a moment "I plead the second."

The right to bare arms?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[LilFluff]

robkelk wrote:

---

The right to bare arms?

Rejected! The one known as Mackie is to wear long sleeved shirts at all times! :}
(Seriously though, enjoying this.)
-----

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.

[Dartz]

Gah! I get those two mixed up all the time. Even if bears with guns would be awesome.

Couple of things I would need for the story, if anyone would care to offer suggestions...

*Somewhere that will build both prototypes for Anika. Has to be either discrete, or trustworthy enough to not get annoyed by Plutonium.
*What actually wins the competition, and who builds it?
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

Oh God. Actually producing story

-----
-------------------------------------------

7735-Z1Z "Rise and Fall"
7736-Z1Z "Rage and Grace"

On electronic paper, they now existed. The message on her monitor screen confirmed it. Mackie gave them their names, winning the toss. Great Justice accepted their existance as prototypes, giving them the Z1Z designation of an electronic warfare spacecraft. Apparently that originated amongst the Supers. After a few clarifications to the CAD files, they'd been accepted for manufacture. Machines were already cutting and forming battlesteel to make the base spaceframe. Primary computer systems were on order. Delivery in a month's time, scheduled to the hour, with three days set aside for acceptance trials.

If those went well - and they probably would - both were then sent to GJ for evalutation. If they came back as meeting specification, Anika got paid. If not, things got expensive. Musing at it in her cockpit, she longed for that to be her biggest worry again.

"Switch to scan mode B please, Anika."

Ustinyavna's voice tickled in her ear, the same abrupt Russian accent as Lun, twinged with the fangy lisp shared by all catgirls.

"Done," she answered

The electronic humm coming from behind her deepened. Warning lights on her console advised that the hanger power supply was getting close to overload. Hangar lights dimmed as auto-systems switched priority to compensate for the load. Life-support systems struggled to cope with the heat being radiated up from the wings. Cooling pumps whined, pumping refrigerant throughout the Hi Streamer's systems. Any human in the hangar would've been sweating. Anika was beginning to feel the effects of the heat, slowing her mind. Most of the catgirls had stripped to bare fur and shorts.

Only Nina Ustinyavna kept her labcoat on.

"Recording now,"

Anika mindlessly tapped through the test sequence, following the test proceedure specification on her thigh. She'd used the torn cover from the spec as a plate for a lunch of cheesecake and brownies, crumbs covering the comm panel. At least she was back in her normal clothes, that kept things from getting too uncomfortable.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" One barefoot catgirl found the radiator panels on the wings the hard way, tap-dancing across the wings before vaulting herself onto the floor and continuing her dance across the steel floor.

"Anika?" It took Anika a moment to recognise the synthetic voice as Cortana's "I'm detecting unusual radiation emissions coming from your engine cores."

"Oh...."

Every single autonerve in her body sparked in unison. If she'd been human, she might've described the sensation as feeling eery little hair on her body stand on end.

"They don't match my records for an idle engine of the Roughriders type?"

"Um...." The difference between lying, and hacking were like night and day.

"Mackie made some modifications to the cores. They're use a fusion reaction to boost the output."

"That still wouldn't explain this signature. The Gamma signature's all wrong."The AI's tone remained mild. Curious, not accusing. "Much higher emissivity and activity."

"Um, Mackie knows more about that than I do...."

I was the first thing to come to mind, the first answer. Pass it off to someone else and let them worry

"I'll ask him."

Now she had to rely on Mackie not dropping the ball. "Oh Gods" she thought.

"Problem, Anika?" Nina Called up

"Ah... No." A nervous giggle rose up her throat.

"Long range Scan Mode A, then we'll switch to single-cell diagnostic mode."

Hardware in the Loop testing could bore a hole through a rock. It kept her mind from falling back into the shadow of the mushroom cloud, for a short whole at least.

------

The map on her headset guided her back through exocomp-filled corridors. The walls hummed with Science, her skin prickling with discomfort at the idea. It struck her that, sometime between her leaving for the lab, and coming back, the whole facility had been re-arranged.

The door hummed open. Mackie looked like he hadn't moved from where he'd been left.

"So," she said.

"What?," he answered.

"Did she talk to you?"

"Relax, Anika." he swatted it away with a sweep of his hand. "I told her that it was just Plutonium created by the fusion process." He smiled at her, stretching himself. "I told her they were old cores that'd been run on testbenches for a bit so they'd built up a lot of it and the shielding was acting as a filter for any of the normal Uranium emissions."

Anika blinked. "And she believed that?"

Mackie Shrugged. "We weren't asked to leave and nobody seems to be screaming for Great Justice, so I'd say it was a win." He grinned

"Big AI's aren't that easily fooled."

"And if she isn't, we've got a legitimate reason and explanation for having it there. And for lying. Relax."

She breathed, taking a moment to compose her thoughts.

"Mackie. The basic hacker ethic is that, information wants to be free. And it doesn't mean like it's okay to steal secrets and stuff. It means that, once somebody knows something, it's almost impossible to destroy it. You can't un-discover something." She waited a moment, watching for his reaction. He seemed to be listening, to be thinking about it. "I mean, what's the joke? Three men keep a secret when two are dead? But only up until someone asks why those two died and starts digging. Everything you do to cover it up makes people curious."

He looked away for a moment, at whatever he'd drawn in wireframe on his computer screen. She thought she'd gotten to him.

"Anika, please, I don't want my name and Nuclear Weapons to appear in the same sentence. I don't think I could live my life with that sort of scrutiny. You know how fucked up all those checks are?"

"You know something that can harm people. Think about telling them."

"And someone makes a bomb and I'm responsible," he said, his expression almost pained."But if I do nothing and they discover it on their own, it's not my fault."

"It is, for not warning people." They'd been over this, hadn't they?

"That's a Catch 22. I'm not responsible for what other people do. Peter Parker is an idiot." He snorted. "And if I do tell all, then I hurt a friend's business and cause a massive scandal. I mean, there're hundreds of engine cores out there that'd have to be recalled. Even if we tried to keep it quiet, such a big recall would probably tip someone off."

"But if you tell someone, they can work out a plan!"

"That's why I want to tell Kohran."

Anika Glared. "I think that's the easy way out."

"How?" He demanded.

"Because you know she'll tell you to keep it quiet. Because that's what she did."

"Because maybe that's not the wrong thing!"

His voice rang off the walls.

"And if somebody else works it out then? The laws of physics are the same for everyone." She stepped towards him.

"I'd be surprised if somebody hasn't. But since nobody's talkin, that's probably working." He stood is ground, glaring at her.

Anika could feel herself vibrating, her body starting to burn with anger

"This isn't going anywhere."

They both said it in unison. Mackie slumped down into his chair. Anika dropped down onto her bed, sighing as she stared up at the ceiling.

"Anika. Are you going to tell someone?" Mackie asked, his voice soft.

She honestly didn't know.

------------

"Anika?"

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the night-light. Cortana Again, on the monitor beside her.

"What is it?"

"I've checked the radiation signatures of the drive. Mackie claims they are old engines. It still doesn't match."

"It's not illegal. It's just a prototype." A nervous quiver shook her voice.

"So why the deception?"

"It's a new prototype. A secret design."

"We would not steal such a thing." The AI sounded almost offended.

"You can't be too paranoid." Anika found herself forcing a smile.

There was a pause.

"I see."

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

[HRogge]

I was only a matter of time someone did it...