Shadowrunning Part 3
A green F-250 superduty was approaching the runway at Burroughs Spaceport. Ford Sierra downshifted as she lined the truck up with the centre line, approaching at a speed somewhere north of 250 kph. The old powerstroke rumbled and grumbled, coughing black smoke.
Jet sat beside her, with her feet stretched through the space where the original passenger seat would’ve been. She watched the ground approach with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Dragon Wagon, final approach,” Sierra radioed. “Crossing runway threshold,”
Landing a vehicle which was never intended to fly wasn’t the easiest trick to pull off. There were plenty of divots and trenches dug out either side of the runway which testified to that. A big Peacemaker thundered off into the sky from the OGJ base at the other end of the port, trailing a dark cloud of smoke as it climbed.
Controls that’d originally been intended solely to alter the pitch of the steering wheel where now being used to guide the pickup truck down to something of a landing. Up a little... down a little. Sierra fought against aerodynamics not well suited to flight and a vicious headwind which kept trying to lift the front up.
The rear wheels hit first with a screech of burning rubber, pressed down into the dirt by the weight of the towing gear in the back. With a jolt, the front came down, the truck lurching to the side a little. Sierra swore as she tried to correct it, stepping hard on the brakes.
Quickly, she reached down to the gearstick and flicked a switch, locking the truck back into land mode. The engine backfired, belching smoke and flame as it pushed against the brakes and transmission for a few moments before it finally started to come under control.
The speedometer needle flicked around with a mind of its own before finally figuring out that it was supposed to read groundspeed. It then promptly decided it should read off-scale high, pointing to a non-existent number somewhere between the odometer and zero.
It quickly dropped, Jet bracing herself with her leg to keep from flying forward against the dashboard. There was a dent in the floorpan where she’d managed to nearly put her foot through the sheet steel.
“Phew!” Sierra wiped her brow with the back of her driving glove. “No problemo,”
The radio crackled “Dragon Wagon. Welcome to Burroughs. Taxi Route 3 Left onto main.”
“Wilco,” Ford broadcast.
The truck was still hammering down the runway at a speed north of 160. Sierra kept her foot in, brakes starting to overheat a little. It took another few seconds for the speed to drop to a value sensible enough to try make a sharp turn.
Tyres squealed and Jet clung on as the truck pitched around, threatening to roll over. At the far end of the runway behind them, a white twin-engined fighter jet was beginning it’s take-off roll.
Jeddaks tower glistened in the evening sun, throwing a long black shadow in the direction of Hellas Basin. Lights were starting to come on in Jeddara tower, while the newer, smaller triplets Gathol, Thark and Zor were still mostly lit by sunlight.
The white jet took off behind them with a roar, powering into the sky. Behind it, a Blackbird was already angling in to land.
Unlike the aircraft-based fencraft which had to be parked up at the hangers, Ford could just drive her truck straight out the main gate, joining the track heading towards the main city. The pair filled the cabin with idle conversation, mostly about the proper way to shoot a gun.
Jet itched to get out the door and onto the red soil beyond. It was so different to Noctis. Sierra made sure she had her own personal breather to hand, just in case Jet couldn’t resist the urge..
“So, where is the mark again?”
“Thark Tower, Llana building,” Jet said.
“Usual deal?”
“Yea, surveillance first.”
There was a whole crate full of gear hidden under the tonneau cover beside the usual towing harness and mechanic’s tools.
The sun had gone down by the time they’d driven through the airlock into the tower proper. The city’s lights were ablaze, crystal windows shining like diamonds set in glistening steel frames. Riveted steel ribs supported arching bridges between local spires and towers, forming a network of roads which ran through, over and around the individual structures. The main routes climbed through the core of the tower before fanning out radially to local street levels.
Sierra eased the truck up the roadway, low buildings on the outside allowing most of the inner apartments a better view of Hellas Basin while hiding the main support beams for the dome. Cranes danced between buildings in the upper levels, bearing names of contractors Jet had once recognised from her hometown.
The city was going up like a rocket. People were flooding in from both Fenspace, and from that little blue dot sitting in the sky lost among the lights reflecting from inside. Helium was a genuine boomtown. Even if half the newcomers didn’t even want to know what a Barsoom was.
A bar they passed was playing that Cosmonaut’s rock song...Jet couldn’t recall the name, and didn’t care to look it up again.
Jet wasn’t quite sure how, but Helium always seemed far more light and airy than the Crystal Cities on Venus. Even the breeze coming through the truck’s open window seemed cooler, helping assuage the claustrophobia of the cabin a little. There were green areas, small playing fields or picnic areas built on the rooves of buildings which filled the air with the scent of cut grass.
Ford just grumbled about traffic and some moron on a Vespa using his own biomod bioluminescence as a brakelight.
“Turn right at the next intersection ya’ll”the too-cheerful navigator advised.
It could navigate you anywhere in Fenspace. It would do so in an irritating cornball accident. The truck swung round the bend, passing a shop offering the latest in skintight pressure suits. It’s name was yet another variation on the “Have Spacesuit....” theme.
“Con-grat-ulataions,” The navigator beamed, making each syllable its own separate word. “You have arrived safely at your destination.”
Jet looked up. “That’s the place,”
“They got a carpark?” Sierra wondered aloud, glancing around.
A sign on the wall pointed towards an under-street hangar bay instead.
“Will that do?”
“Sure... Hanger bay? I wonder if it’s got direct access to the outside?”
Ford steered the truck down. For a spacecraft, it was small. For a fencar, it was pretty big and unwieldy. Still, it seemed to be happy to at least be running in an oxygen atmosphere once more.
She crawled through the carpark, parking up close to the airlock at the far end. It was a big space... running right under the street above. Centimetre’s thick windows in the floor gave spectacular views of the streets and buildings below.... to those who had a head for heights anyway.
Three other vehicles were parked down there, one a rather nice DeLorean with flight mods that made Jet jealous. If you absolutely had to travel in a car.... might as well be something with a little style after all.
Jet was the first out of the truck, practically jumping out as soon as it had stopped. The cyborg stretched and spread her wings. She was easily recognised as Jet Jaguar... there was little chance of her hiding who she was outside of wearing an oversized trench-coat which would just draw even more attention
It didn’t matter, however. The only people who knew Jet Jaguar as a troubleshooter were other troubleshooters. It also helped that people often assumed that the five publicly acknowledged troubleshooters were the only troubleshooters. There were at least three times as many quietly plugging away doing their jobs, and able to do so without stirring the pot because nobody knew they were a full troubleshooter until they flashed their warrant card.
Nobody even blinked as herself and Ford pulled their crate of gear from the back of the truck. Jet was taking structural notes, counting columns and comparing them to blueprints she’d accessed from the Helium City planning office.
One ran straight up through the target’s apartment. Good.
Jet strapped some gear to her back, and launched clean up through the entrance with a turbine howl. Ford strapped her tools and gear to her belt and set off up through the building with The Seatbelts on her headphones.
Not one person gave her a second glance.
She rode the lift to the tenth floor, timing it as she went. 45 seconds, she noted. She timed her walk to Roland’s door. That took about 15 seconds at an easy pace.
Her toolbelt rattled as she walked and she couldn’t help but note how opulent everything was when compared when her garage home. The carpet was soft underneath her booted feet. There was wallpaper on the walls. Lights and fittings were milled from brass.
It was a high class place.
She took note of the type of lock on the doors before breaking out her toolkit and setting to work on the light exactly opposite. A woman walked past with her kids not even noticing her prying the light off.
She was in mechanics overalls, was working with clean tools, looked like she knew exactly what she was doing and was acting like she had every right to be doing what she was doing. People just went and made the natural conclusion that someone had been called in to fix the light. Even though it wasn’t broken.
Mounting the camera was simple enough. She just had to wire it into the light’s own power supply, connect the antennae to the metal casing and make a small modification to the light cover. Try not to dance to the music. Try not to touch the live metal. Getting zapped unconscious halfway through installing a spy camera just outside his door might just make the target suspicious.
She smirked to herself.
Dhe heard the door open behind her. A cold draft came out, running down her spine. She forced herself not to look around, instead burying her thoughts in the job. A lump rose up the back of her throat as she made sure she still had her pistol inside her jacket.
Its familiar weight pressing on her chest reassured her.
“Goddamit.” the man behind her spat. She winced. “I report that broken light three times and when someone finally does show up, they fix the wrong light,”
He even threw in the exasperated sigh, raising his arms to the heavens as if he expected the Gods themselves to give him strength to deal with such incompetence.
Ford slowly turned her head around. Roland Foster was glaring up at her through his glasses as if he was the Great Dalmuti himself and she was just a greater Peon. He had these weird broad cheeks and eyes which hinted at a face that was designed to be cheerful, but hadn’t been for a very long time.
Something about him made her think of a sour jellybaby.
“That one, down there.” Roland pointed, “That’s the one,”
She looked at it, flickering away happily to itself and then looked at him while trying her damnedest not to smile.
“Not my job,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “I was told to fix this light. I fix this light,” Ford rapped on the case with her knuckles.
“Goddamn mundanes,” Roland spat.
“Take it up with the union,” she drawled, layering her Chicago accent on as thick as she could. “I got my work order, I can’t go against that,”
Foster sneered at her muttering something under his breath about socialism, huffed, turned on his heel and marched towards the elevator.
Sierra got back to work, trying her damnedest not to start laughing. Finishing up was easy enough, just refit the cover and check it was transmitting a good signal. A good picture came up on the monitor of her datapad.
She packed up and left, not really feeling very hurried, strolling to the elevator. Coming up, she met some electrician carrying a toolbox.
The hardest thing was to keep a straight face as she watched him through the closing doors. She took a few private moments in the elevator to cool off. For just one instant, she’d been certain Roland was going to figure out what she’d been doing.
But he didn’t.
Amen, Hallelujah, Big Mac.
Far above her, lost in the shadows among the trusses supporting the outer dome, Jet was busy adjusting an infra-red laser so it would point directly at Roland’s window in such a way that it wouldn’t bake his eyeballs out of their sockets, but still get a decent return signal.
It was a small device out of the standard troubleshooter toolkit, about the size of a Pringles tin and covered in a chameleon material which matched the colour of whatever it was mounted to. A waved power supply gave it the output needed for a useful resolution. With that set, Jet moved to another truss and set up a camera facing straight at the window, getting a full view of the apartment in visible and infra-red spectra.
Now for the fun part. She routed the infra-red signal through her own hardware to check the laser’s alignment. It came up as a bright spot on the reflective glass. She switched it over to a specialised signal processor and listened in.
She heard the door slam, followed by a man’s voice grumbling about incompetent electricians and how the city was getting worse the more people ‘danes moved in. She heard his footsteps cross the floor, and something hitting the bed before he sat down to work at his computer.
Hmm, she thought with mild surprise, this laser eavesdropper thing really works. It wasn’t crystal clear, sounding a little like an AM radio that wasn’t tuned in exactly right, but it was clear enough despite a nasty crunching on the signal.
A quick glance at the visual output showed Roland sitting at his computer... munching on cheetos.
She hooked it into the local cellular network and from there on to the main satellite systems, where it was relayed simultaneously to Jet’s own workstation, and Ford’s garage shop. A quick check to see if things where being received -all was well - then jump off and rocket away into the night.
There was a bar nearby they’d both been meaning to try out.
Roland booted his workstation. He was wringing his hands together waiting for it to boot up. Instinct made him glance out the window to his left...
Nothing but lights twinkling on the outer dome.
The computer came up and he swallowed his fears, chasing them down with a mouthful of cheetos. There was something soothing in the crunch. It was just paranoia. He reassured himself by pulling the latest messages from the cybers list.
They’d patched the driver sure but nobody seemed to be looking at the compiler. A wave of almost euphoric giddiness was running through his body.
They hadn’t spotted it!
Nobody would think to look in the compiler. They’d spent most of the last two weeks pouring over the driver code trying to find the problem a single random bit on a fuzzing test had thrown up.
They’d failed. And sure enough, even though they rushed through a patch with the simple expedient of disabling that particular feature, there were still at least three other little glitches in there hidden and waiting to be revealed.
He thought about just who he was beating, some of the greatest minds in Fenspace. It helped that only four people knew how that compiler was supposed to work. With so few eyes, all bugs could be hidden deep.
That was how it had started. He’d intended just to leave everyone stumped then come riding in with the solution a few weeks later. It had been about being skilled, about being useful, about showing how good he really was, about being noticed as something more than ‘that radio guy’.
A message dropped into his encrypted inbox.
It had been....
He clicked the message open. No bullshit inside, it was all business. Job well done was a job well rewarded. The test was a success. The money was in a numbered account. Everything was just tickety-boo.
A few more little glitches like that and he’d be set for, the messenger assured him.
A roar of a jet engine dragged his attention outside, something flashing away into the distance. He wondered what it was for a moment, a sudden glimmer of fear rising deep inside him.
Was someone watching?
He stared outside, shivering just a little. Nothing seemed amiss. He stared. Lights flickered on the glass dome.
Just a few more ‘glitches’ and he could stop. Nobody need ever know. Just to reassure himself, he browsed through the server logs, checking to see who’d been downloading what.
Nothing. Server logs were gone for the last 3 weeks.
“Sorry Man, I accidentally zapped ‘em,” read the message in his inbox. “Meant to clear the old ones, Nailed ‘em all. opps :(“
If it had been the first time it happened, it might’ve been suspicious. He set a few things compiling, submitted a genuine patch for a bug in a control module, and amused himself for a few hours trawling through the Roughriders ship catalogue.
Pull this off right, and he’d have enough for his own Blackbird. Enough to actually do something. Everyone else seemed to be having fun out there... it was time for him to get his story.
The next few days were dull.
Roland Foster was a dull subject.
He worked mostly from home, spending time browsing through the Roughrider’s sales site or occasionally the Soviets. The pair took it in shifts to watch the apartment... over video feed of course... split up by their own daily routines. Ford still had to see to customers downstairs, Jet still had to keep both an eye on the Engel’s training, and keep her own edge in.
Three hours a day.
Adjust for operational concerns.
It was time to think. Time not to think. Time to focus on reaction and form. Time to allow herself to fill out into her body, to merge with the hardware and fuse it to herself. Time to wonder if.... had things been only a little different.... she wouldn’t be sitting in Roland’s place?
A matter of picking a different bottle, and the interventions of fate.
Jet could understand. Jet could sympathise. There was a big difference between understanding and forgiveness, however. Jet promised herself she’d make him pay for what he did to Jana. She threw a punch so hard, it nearly spun her around...
She stopped for a few moments to regain her centre. It’d been over a year since the war ended and that was still giving her trouble.
Jet didn’t laugh at all that Warsie talk about the Dark Side any more. Those months after SerenityCon had proven it was a very real danger. She’d seen others fall to it. She felt it inside herself, gnawing away. It fuelled nightmares at night.
Looking at the video feed of Roland, fixing a lightbulb, she knew what she could do. She knew a hundred visceral ways to make sure he paid, he was nothing but a squishy.
And knew she could still put the brakes on it hard when needed.
Jet finished her routine, and spent the next few hours idly doodling her thoughts, before handing over to Ford.
Ford Sierra took the time to balance her books, and take care of all that paperwork that always caught up on her. O2 use, gas releases into Sara’s atmosphere, import, export, biomass use and re-use, waste extraction and parts expected to come up from the ‘danelaw. Sure Jet’d suggested she use an Irish-registered shell corporation for it - after the Dublin agreement the taxes were a great deal less than Oz - but all the extra paperwork the Irish authorities demanded was a pain.
Add on top of that leafing through the reports she’d managed to get from the HPD. Did he make contact with any of the bounties believed to be in the city?
She glanced up every now and then... watching Foster go about his routine. She noted a few things down in the logbook, before noticing that she might as well have been gundecking them. It was frustrating. It was weirdly fascinating.
How could someone have a daily routine, set down to the minute? How could someone stick to that.
She really just wanted to see him break it, or do something crazy at least, not be an apparently mild mannered computer geek. He didn’t do anything weird... he just worked from home a lot, popping out for a morning run around the city, or to get something to eat.
She didn’t blame him for it. As condos in Fenspace went, his was a palace. It was better than her cluster of shipping containers and petrol tanker at any rate.
She noted down a video Foster was watching, flipping over the page because the last one had finished. What she found, were some pen doodles.
Motorcycles, transforming into a flying robot, with Jet in the middle. Something that looked like a linear electric motor, a sketch of Jet’s own armour and something she couldn’t quite recognise.
No wonder Jet had seemed bothered.
She made a mental note of it, and got back to watching Roland while sketching up ideas for an avatar for Jet. Something suitably embarrassing, but not excessively painful. Her aunt’s old friend...perhaps. Who barely came up to Jet’s chest...
After a few days of watching and gathering....along with a few quick probes at Roland’s computer using some simple scripted tools and some discussion over breakfast, they had their answer.
“The computer,” Jet said. “What we want is on there.”
Sierra mumbled her assent through a mouthful of ersatz-bacon... made from flavoured tofu. “How we getting’ it?”
“Usual way, probably,” the cyborg said.
Jets usual way was a good bit different from most troubleshooters.
“He’s not out of his apartment for long enough,” Sierra pointed out the flaw. “Maybe we could trick him into downloading something. I got a virus on my laptop that way once, which stole my mail accounts. He spends a lot of time on the Roughriders site... And you know they’d help bait him.”
“Maybe...” she started to tap her finger table.
“Hire a real hacker to write the virus,” Because that was way beyond Jet’s skill level. “Should be a total no problemo.”
“Still a lot of chance in that.”
“Chance in everything,” she smirked. “But it works enough that I know about it.... and I know as much about computers as you’d know about guns,”
Jet nodded, still thinking it over. Jet knew enough to know what was reasonably possible to do, if not how to do it. Most of Jet’s hacking tools were just that.... tools designed for inexpert use, designed by someone with far more skill. Plug them in and they most of the heavy lifting.
Still, spear phishing might a good idea, especially if they could get the Roughriders to help.
“It’d also take a while,” she said. “But...” she stopped for a second. A light went on behind her eyes as Jet found a way to get back to her original plan. “If we could get someone who’s got field experience.... then we can have the virus idea as a fallback if they can’t do it fast enough.”
Sierra shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes, I think you just like B and E’”
Jet chuckled with a savage grin, It was fun, it was usually faster than hacking a computer through the network. And she’d already planned her way in.
“But it seems fine. And if that don’t work...” Use more gun. They nab Roland and bring him in and have a friendly little chat. But that came with its own troubles.
Jet put the request in through Arisia, asking for a hacker who was able to get inside a building without getting noticed, and who could be out at Marsbase Sara within a day. Jet was almost certain that’d leave out who she really wanted, but they’d probably be busy anyway.
Jet also needed to keep this as quiet as possible. Any hint that Great Justice were investigating the link between Roland and the robbery and the link would break. That meant going around Haruhi, while making sure Haruhi didn’t know you were going around her.
Like most troubleshooters, Jet had long since learned how the secret. The secret was known by those who knew it as ‘Haruhi Snacks’.
It meant sending just enough information to make her bite and go along with it, but not enough for her to want to get involved and blow the op. She’d pass it over to someone who could really do the work and who’d understand that the issued request was far more complex than just a quick surveillance mission.
Now it was just a matter of waiting and seeing who they sent back.
The red phone rang. Noah hated when the red phone rang - four times out of five, someone he didn't want to talk to was on the other end. "Scott here."
"Noah, it's Mikuru."
It was Noah's lucky day - this was the other one time out of five - although he suspected his luck wouldn't last. "Hello, Mikuru. I assume this isn't a social call?"
"You assume correctly, unfortunately. A few days ago, a convoy that was being escorted by the Panzer Kunst Gruppe was robbed."
"I already know about that," interrupted Noah.
"You do??"
"Takami brought it to my attention, along with some emails she received because she's on the Cybernet.tech mailing list."
"This is that big?" Both of them knew just how good Takami was at spotting patterns, and at ignoring false matches. They also knew that she didn't like bothering her employer with matters that didn't directly affect his business... unless the matters were very important. "That helps explain why the Panzer Kunst Gruppe wanted a top troubleshooter. They didn't want to provide their reasons over an unsecured channel." Mikuru sighed - everyone knew that anything that made its way to Haruhi counted as "unsecured".
Noah echoed the sigh. "If Takami is right, then this is very big, and not something to discuss over a secure channel, either. Whichever troubleshooters get assigned to this will have to see them face-to-face. And before you ask, Katz and I aren't the right troubleshooters to solve it. A.C., maybe, if she's not busy ..."
"She is."
"... but none of the free OF-8s have the necessary skills. You want to put an OF-6 or OF-7 on this one. Have whoever you pick contact Takami; I'll have her send the files she thinks are relevant."
"Thanks, Noah. When are you going to stop by Arisia Station and say hello to everyone?"
Noah grimaced. He didn't want to tell Mikuru "when Hell freezes over", but he didn't want to lie to her, either... "I'm very busy here, sorry. In fact, I'm going to have to let you go now; my assistant just came in with more paperwork."
"All right. I'll talk to you later." And the connection went silent.
Great, he thought. I've pissed her off. And she's the only one in that group that I can tolerate enough to work with. It's never a good day when that damned phone rings.
Cathy was lounging on the driver seat of the Stargazer, happily soaking up the sunlight flooding in through the transparent ceiling of the spacecraft.
Some strange ringing tone was disrupting her cat nap.
“Cathy, you have got a phone call...” Cortana said, sounding amused.“I think you should take it...”
Cathy yawned and rolled onto her other side. “Just a few more minutes. It is most likely not important... we never get important calls anymore.”
Now that the victory parties of the end of the war were long over, everything was getting very normal again.... as normal as Fenspace got. Technically she was still on the active roster, in the same way that the HMS Victory was still perpetually commissioned. She still wasn’t expected to actually do anything.
Cortana sighed mentally, Cats were always difficult to rouse... especially when they were just taking a short nap. She cut power to Cathys ‘comfort blanket’ and chuckled. There were always ways to get her cat’s attention.
She changed to a nice and innocent sounding voice. “Shall I take the call and tell someone at the Headquarter of Operation Great Justice that you were just taking a nap and will call back later ?”
“Wait, what?” Cathy suddenly jumped up and had her eyes wide open... “No, wait, I....” She took a deep breath to calm down. Damn, that much adrenalin was nasty when you just were on the edge of sleeping in.
“Activate the call... Here is Cathy, who is calling ?”
An unknown voice came out of the speaker of the radio.
“Good morning Cathy, this is Mr Johnson.” The voice was obviously artificial. “Identity is Imaginos.” Her blood chilled cold. She checked the digital signatures. She checked the encryption. All matched.
The voice continued. “We have a mission that requires your skills. You are proceed to the coordinates transmitted as an attachment and meet there with a Miss Stingray. Do not talk with anyone else about the mission before you meet.”
Cathy looked suspiciously at the radio system, checking the digital signature and encryption of the incoming call a second time. Nothing had changed since the first time. No one would use a signature like this for a joke...
“Understood... we are currently near L5 of Earth, we should get there within an hour. Cathy out...”
Cortana deactivated the radio and Cathy shook her head.
“Without the signature I would bet its a joke from some of the Senshi back on Venus. “ she said, leaning back onto into the driver’s seat.
“I have received a databurst of mission details.” Cortana told her. Cortana had read it through in the half second it’d taken her to announce, “It looks like fun,”
Cathy sighed. “Anything is better than staying bored. Lets fire up the engine and get out of here... the next adventure is waiting... or at least some action of any kind, I don’t care.”
The engine field of the Stargazer peaked, the waved Skoda accelerating hard out into open space.
Despite the progress of the last year, Mars’ average population still hovered somewhere around zero per square kilometre. Maybe in the future you’d have to call a tower and request landing coordinates, but the sky over Mars was still empty enough that you could just dive straight in, so long as you kept an eye on where you were going. Outside very few controlled areas, VFR was the rule.
The Stargazer had passed by Phobos and was now entering the upper atmosphere of the planet, it speed low enough to keeping from stressing the shield . After a few rough minutes they dropped subsonic, their vision clearing as the flames of re-entry died back. The digitized map on the display already showed the icon of Marsbase Sara directly in front of them, only a few hundred kilometres away.
Cathy carefully merged her spacecraft into the traffic streams towards the base, still thinking about the mysterious call. She would have never thought that Operation Great Justice HQ would call people with such a ‘cloak and dagger’ style... or should she say ‘Runner and Johnson’? Someone had a lot of fun with the Cyberpunk references.
They touched down at a public landing strip, before pulling into a pressurised hanger, alongside a bipedal mecha whith a big autocannon and a big V engine on its back.
Cathy stepped out of her car into an atmosphere laced with engine fumes and oil vapours.
She stretched, exhaling a long breath. “Marsbase Sara, here we are.... Cortana, do you have already tracked down the place with the coordinates?”
“I am still looking for details Cathy.” the AI answered through the remote on her sleeve. “I have three slightly conflicting maps from different servers and I am not sure which the right one is.” The monitor highlighted the conflicts, pointing them out in a mix of red, yellow and green. “But its definitely somewhere down in the Bunker levels, not in the new surface level dome. We can get a parking slot at the entrance, but you will have to go down yourself, looking for the exact place. The inertial tracking system in you suits phone should do fine.”
She thought about keeping her normal shirt and trousers, but this was maybe the start of an official mission, so it always paid to be prepared for trouble. She fetched her skinsuit from the boot, put the thing on the back seat, then slipped a shirt and trousers above the suit. Then she grabbed her gyrojet pistol from the glove compartment and slotted it into the holster on her hip.
That was a lesson she’d learned long ago.
“Okay, make sure that no one borrows the Stargazer Cortana” she said with a big grin, “I will see what Mrs. Stingray wants from us. If someone else from OGJ calls us, take the call and send me a text message if it’s important.”
She left the hanger and headed for the long ramp downwards into the bunker area. The coordinates appeared be on the second or third floor underground. A cyborg on the entrance looked over to her and nodded. Poor guy.... cool tail, though.
“First time here in Marsbase Sara?” he asked, eyeing Cathy carefully.
“Yes, first visit here... I will most likely stay a few hours, nothing more” Cathy replied with a smile.
The cyborg glanced down at the pistol in the holster. “Expecting trouble ?”
“No...It’s just a six shot Gyrojet pistol,” Cathy explained.” Enough for self defence.”
The cyborg seemed to be amused. “Armour piercing shots for self defence? Don’t you think..:”
Cathy shook her head. “Be reasonable, if I used a normal gun I could just take a few stones and throw them for the same effect, most likely your cleaner would be too heavily armoured to even notice the normal bullets!”
The cyborg laughed and nodded again. “Yeah, good point... and welcome to Marsbase Sara.”
Cathy left the small checkpoint at the entrance behind and began to descent into the depths of the base, looking onto the coordinate display of the suits computer every few minutes.
The first thing that struck her about the base was the heat. The deeper she went, the hotter it got. The air was humid with ozone and the myriad smells of mechanics. Electric ozone mingled with oilsmoke and the unique scents of hundreds of individuals... a number of anthromorphs, and some huge guy riding in the back of a six-legged construction vehicle, which held girders in its manipulator arms.
It trundled forward, skirting around her. The driver flipped her the bird. One of those Avatar walkers stomped past, waving a friendly hi. She smiled back at the pilot.
Finally she was standing in front of a small bar three levels below the surface, bathing the catwalk outside in the glow of a neon sign.
“Okay, here should it be... The Heavy Gear... strange name for a bar...lets see Mrs Stingray, what you have to offer” she murmured and entered the bar.
Inside, there were several round tables and a bar, well populated by a mixture of pilots in flight gear, one or two crude cybers and a few mechanics clustered in the corning bragging about who had the best colour electoos.
The bar was sparsely lighted and some invisible speakers were playing some techno music mix from a neon jukebox. A roaring laugh rose up from the midst of the mechanics.... it didn’t seem to concern her, so she ignored it.
Cathy sauntered over to the counter to order herself a drink, then headed towards one of the corners of the bar, sitting down at an empty table. She checked her navigator. ‘Okay, that’s it... down to the meter if these coordinates are exact’ Cathy thought and leaned back, slowly looking through the bar.
‘I am already looking forward to be out of here again’ she whispered to herself.
She was on her second drink when she saw another obvious mechanic walk in. If the overalls under her jacket hadn’t given it away, she could smell the engine oil and gunsmoke. She could see the tell-tale bulge of a handgun holster under her coat, just to the side of her bust. Biomod? Cathy wondered.
She had dusky skin, and darker hair with bright brown eyes that scanned the room, specifically noting her presence before deliberately not paying her any attention. A flash of light glinted off metal fingers on her right hand... a cyber too?
Cathy watched her order a drink - a bottle of Half Acre ale -and nurse it for a few moments before inconspicuously making her way over to her table.
“Seat’s free?” the mechanic asked, in a strong American accident.
“Yes” Cathy replied and nodded. The woman sat down, placing the bottle on the table. Some suds crawled over the bottle’s mouth. “Miss Stingray?” Cathy presumed
“She’s outside waiting,” the woman told her. “Call me Misty,” she said pleasantly. “I’m Stingrays partner. In both senses of the word.” she winked.
This really was getting Cyberpunk 2020.
“Can we go now?”
“After we have a beer,” Misty assured her, leaning forward onto the table. “So, tell me about yourself Cathy,”
Cathy shrank back a little. This was strange. Were they just being careful? “I run a tour business out of my fencraft with Cortana, my AI friend,” she said. “I spent the war with the Senshi Armed Militia.”
“Specialising in...?”
“Communications, computers.” Cathy was being careful. No need to go into details. Loose lips destroyed ships.
“Great. That’s perfect.” she beamed, taking a large slug from her bottle.
The catgirl narrowed her eyes, starting to get annoyed.
“Is there a point to this?”
“It’s a sin to waste expensive beer, especially when you pay to import it specially.”
Cathy sighed. She would get one of those PC’s.
It took only a few minutes for them to finish up, filled by small-talk mostly. Misty was from Chicago, was one of the early Fen, and had lost her arm in an accident. And her leg. And her hearing.
Misty seemed especially interested in autobahns; she claimed to have accrued enough speeding tickets to have a State warrant for her arrest active and that was one thing the Kandor treaty didn’t pardon.
“So, let’s go,” Misty finally said, standing up.
Cathy bit back on her annoyance, following her out of the front door then around into the darkness of the side alley. She double checked her Gyrojet, feeling just that little bit uneasy. She glanced back to the light of the main concourse.... wondering if she could make a run for it and get away. It wouldn’t be unheard of for someone to bait a troubleshooter like this.
She smelled lilac and car wax, and became aware of something very heavy lurking in the shadows. Somebody tall and bulky was standing beside her.
She ducked and sprang back, one hand on her pistol holster as soon as she was standing firmly again. The armour took one heavy step forward, coming half into the light. Blue and white sparks reflected off the edges, paint slightly pearlescent and glinting in the light. Liquid reflections ran across the surface.
“I’m Stingray,” it said in a woman’s voice, slightly husky but nowhere near as threatening as the faceless helmet staring at her was.
“Cathy,” she managed to get out.
“Told you we should have done this in the ladies room,” Misty whispered.
Stingray seemed to glare at her for a second... at least, if Cathy had judged her body language right she was glaring. But, it was strangely playful...
“I need you for a job.” Stingray said, still sounding calm.
Cathy drew herself up to her full height, tail curling defensively up behind her. “I’m from Operation Great Justice. Someone from the Panzer Kunst Gruppe called for assistance, and I was told to meet you here.”
“That was me,” Stingray nodded. “I need to know how good you are. Assuming you had physical access to an average personal computer, how long would it take you to crack it and set it up so that it would be possible to read any information on the harddisk from a remote source”
Cathy thought, “Average PC? If the owner is an idiot, a few seconds.” She smirked. “If they actually know something about security, with a connection to Cortana, an AI, it would be….“ She did some quick maths in her head, drawing on her experience. “…Maybe Five to ten minutes, depending on the hardware. It’s not Cortanas speciality, but we can do it.”
Misty smiled at her.
“Right so,” Stingray continued in a strange accent Cathy knew wasn’t American, nor Australian, or even British but somehow a little of all three. It was weird. “How good are you in the field, at getting in and out a places without being seen or drawing any attention to yourself?
“’I have done it before,” Cathy said, now a little suspicious. “A few times. That was what I trained for.”
“Sounds perfect,” The cyber concluded. “I want you,”
“Yepperoni,” Misty concluded.
The cyber pulled something from a pouch on her hip with one armoured hand, while fumbling with what appeared to be a helmet. With a hiss of escaping gas, the visor lifted up, revealing a smiling woman’s face with cheery blue eyes framed by unnaturally red hair. It matched the picture on the Great Justice warrant card offered to her, along with an offer of a handshake.
“Jet Jaguar. Panzer Kunst Gruppe troubleshooter. This is my partner, Ford Sierra,”
“In all meanings of the word,” Ford added, nudging up beside the cyber. “I do things Jet can’t. Jet does things I can’t.”
Cathy went wide-eyed for a moment, both at the warrant card, how big Jet was in her armour, and how cold the armour actually was. It sucked the heat out of her hand.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Back to the garage to plan,” Ford told her.
The first thing that struck Cathy was the smell.
“Is something burning?” the catgirl asked.
“Jet’s cooking,” Ford answered, completely unbothered. “Don’t worry, I’ve knocked off the fire suppression,”
“That bad?”
She took a calm sip from her coffee. “Normally we just order from Ninjaburger, or Samurai Pizza Catgirls... whichever’s closer,”
“It’s because this yoke’s in bloody Fahrenheit,” Jet yelled in.
“I wonder if the US guys will first liberalize Handwavium or go to Metric system” Cathy commented. She sat sideways in the chair, feeling uncomfortably bemused. She was sitting in what might’ve been part of an old ship, converted into a living room with space for a couch, a decent television and a selection of movies. Someone liked Bubblegum Crisis, and it wasn’t hard to guess who... There was a collection of old westerns, with A Fistful of Dollars orphaned from its case on a table made from an old engine block, beside a pizza box.
The kitchen was through an airtight door propped open with what seemed to be some random piece of mechanical detritus, maybe a suspension arm. A life support monitor was bolted to a wall, giving readouts of atmospheric contents. Beside it, a well-used dustmask and some pressure gear that seemed to be stained eternally red by Martian dust. Above that, a bookshelf.
Of all things, it reminded her most of the Botany Bay, of Start Trek II fame. When was Khan going to appear?
Jet emerged from the kitchen with three steaming plates balanced on her arms. It actually smelled okay. Jet slipped all three into place on top of the table. There was one for each of them.
“Spag-bol,” the cyber smiled, “Even if the mince is just flavoured protein replacements and the sauce came from a jar, it should be okay.”
Cathy looked dubiously at it, poking at it with a worn spork. How did she burn the ends of the spaghetti? Ford seemed to be tucking right into it, it’d be rude not to. She took a bite.
How Jet had managed to make the pasta simultaneously al-dente and al-carbonised she didn’t know. But.... it wasn’t bad. She chewed a little, assuring herself that she’d been fed worse.
“So,” Jet started, in between mouthfuls, “I supposed it’s time to tell you what the job is.”
Cathy nodded, eating half out of politeness, and half because she was just that damned hungry. Jet started from the top, with a warning that this was classified above her grade, letting her know just how dangerous it would be if this got out. Then, she started with the robbery.
Cathy was listening silently to the whole explanation, absorbing the information Jet had just released. “Even if this gets cleaned up it could become a mayor social explosion for Fenspace... hacking a mind... hacking it remotely? This might become a mayor backlash against the whole Cyber Confederation... and maybe more.”
Jet held up her hand. “I think then, you know why this has to be kept quiet. Why we have to find who’s responsible, and why we have to keep them from spreading it.”
Cathy nodded. “We need time... time to find a countermeasure before someone else reinvent it.”
Ford looked up at Jet, “We’ve got a plan for handling Roland. What we want to do is get you into his apartment and get you access to his computer. If we get you in there, can you get us the stuff on it? We’ve got a window of about ten minutes, give or take.”
She thought for s second. “Should be possible to penetrate in this time... unless he is a real desktop hardware expert and really paranoid or there is an AI in it.”
“Without dropping hints that we were there?”
“There are machines you just cannot interface without leaving marks... not without more time... but itshould be possible” Cathy answered.
“One last thing,” said Jet. “We’re doing this tonight, Helium time. That gives us about 8 hours.”
Cathy looked at him for a few seconds, then she took a deep breath. “Give me everything you know about his computer... we have no time to waste.”
Jet and Ford shared a grin.
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