I crack my lower back, followed by my knuckles, as I link to the eyebot. Nothing like a low-stakes case to take the edge- what the....
The eyebot is moving within the dock! Wait, it's receiving commands... from someone else? How... oh, the handshake protocol was flagged as Code Enforcement! Hold the hardware... there's no profile associated with the avatar sending the commands; someone is incognito. I sit up straight, eyes widening. Hacking a Code Enforcement Officer's equipment is a felony. It's like grabbing a cop's gun or hotwiring their car. And doing it stealth? This isn't a shuttle racer.
The handshake protocol is Code Enforcement. That means it's either a colleague hacking my assigned tech, a huge violation of protocol, or a black-hat spoofing a cop ID. But since the avatar is incognito and unregistered, we're in 'grow-old-in-a-district-prison' level felony territory.
And... I triple check that the eyebot's data-stream is one-directional and encrypted. Yup to both. Happy day. They don't know I know.
The eyebot is obeying someone else's commands, but I'm getting a live-stream of the data. I make sure I'm recording too, and taking down detailed logs. This is going to play well at someone's trial. And I want to see where the bot is going...
But my blood runs cold as I see the eyebot focusing on a particular hatch in the docking ring. The Chimera's hatch.
Ugh, I hate the picture in my head, so I link to the port in my wall and display the feed externally. Why is someone interested in Sparrow?
In the feed, the airlock door opens, and three people float out towards the hatch. Sparrow, and someone I don't recognize. Looks like one of the mining or transport company employees. And... is the third Officer Rusteater? Out of uniform, but...
The three enter the Chimera, and the eyebot begins to crawl forward, towards the vessel. It wedges tight against the corner of the airlock. An alert pop's up in my overlay; there's been an override on several of the eyebot's protocols. It looks like... oh shit, the safety-protocols that governs the power supply? Whoever it is, their avatar is re-coding the eyebot to turn it into a fucking bomb! If it power supply overloads and breaches when the airlock is open... Sparrow!
I clench my fists and drop into the system. I'm disoriented as my vision fractures along the full arc, spitting out an emergency shutdown command to the eyebot. I'm distracted and reeling, which is why I don't get much detail when the incognito Avatar moves.
It was stupid. I had the element of surprise, and I wasted it reacting emotionally. But I'm smart enough to have my malware filter up, and that saves me.
The incognito Avatar reacts far faster than a human; it must be a Synth. It lashes out the moment I send my command, flooding my Avatar with packets that make my malware filters shriek. Before I can respond, it's gone.
Oh hell no. Some Synth just tried to hack my tech, bomb the Chimera, and burn my implants out. Now he thinks he's gonna run? This chrome-licking prick is going down!
I crank up my baud rate, overclocking as much as I can, sprinting through a digital labyrinth of interconnected systems and virts. You tried to hurt Sparrow.
I sail through the ever-changing sea, tossing out answers to handshake protocols, pinging gates for recent access lists. The feed pours into my mind, tables showing timestamps for access. They're only seconds ago. Ancient history. I dive through gates, feeling the brush of checks from security bots, spam filters, vert blockers, and privacy modules.
I never go in like this. I'm not a Synth. The sea is swimming with sharks, and the points of contact for every node are loaded with antiseptic code and checks that slow me down. I get a number of pings myself, none of whom had the correct handshake protocols. Spam and verts, mostly. I tag a few when my barriers flare with positive malware flags, painting them with tracer code for later. But it's a reaction. I don't care; I have bigger fish to fry.
Where are you? Come on, show me something. I dig into a few other sub-systems fishing for unregistered contact code. Nothing…nothing, nothing… wait… there.
I pivot, seeing access from a recent incognito avatar. Unregistered Access, unknown party, security codes invalid. The timestamp is only seconds old. Gotcha! I dive through the active gate, chasing the trail through the virts governing the stations environments systems. It moves fast. I lose all control and awareness of my body, redirecting my focus. I crank up the baud rate, trying to coax a little more speed from my augments.
I register a shrill ringing in my ears that slowly fades out, and my meat vision grows dark. I have to check each gate out until I find its fingerprints, and it's slowing me down. The sucker moves faster than I can track. The local virts are largely empty of active avatars, aside from a few diagnostic or maintenance synths. There’s nothing but subsentient protocols and d-life hunkered in the air processing subsystem. There are only a few gates out, but it takes me a second to figure out which one.
I follow the trail as the digital version of a dead sprint. Into the air filtration system, onto HVAC managing VI database, into environmental substate movement systems, linking out to thermal regulation servers. I’m not catching up; each timestamp is more stale than the last, not less.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
This isn't working. It's going to get away. I never got an ID. What if... it tries again?
No. Big guns time, we just had an attempted murder. I submit my Code Enforcement Registry Key. Admin level access and icons flare into existence in my vision. For the next few minutes, my word is Law. You tried to kill Sparrow. I condemn you. I'm a Fury of ancient myth. I'm Nemesis. I'm God. And you are damned.
With the Key, I send a direct ping flagged Urgent and High Priority directly to exonet processing, ordering a quarantine of all systems within 3 degrees of separation. The local virts ping me directly to confirm; inputs permitted from me alone, no outputs. I've thrown a wide net and activate a lockdown, dropping all of the exits; backup can get in, but nothing gets out. Quarantine will last as long as I fucking say it lasts. You’re trapped here with me.
I dive through the next gate and jump as I get a hot handshake from my quarry. I'm not shocked he's attacking. I'm shocked that this time, the packet of malware slides through my filter like a knife through silk.
I scream. Fire blazes in my skull, the handshake protocols concealing a pinpoint Blight that sears my primary node like a supernova. Alarms blare in my mind as it blows through my internal firewalls like tissue paper, leaving me to flail as I frantically stem the cascade. I gasp, hissing between clenched teeth as I break my connection to my implant at the meat end, watching as the Blight burns up the terminal end of the code.
What the void-spawned fuck? I crank the baud rate down again, helpless as I watch the Blight chew through the data-collection logs, seeing everything linked to the decaying node dissolve into random code. This prick just bricked one of my implants. Fuck. I call my secondary and tertiary nodes.
Ok, I have a top-of-the-line malware-filter with the latest security protocols, and it didn't slow him down a whit. I slave my tertiary node to the secondary, and set a quick macro, having it run input through an emulation in the tertiary node before feeding input into the secondary. I'm running every incoming data packet through an emulation to find and keep out any hidden surprises.
Well, I'm more protected, but slow as hell. Good luck sprinting in heavy armor. But I close each gate I find, and the size of the quarantined virts shrinks. The suspect is sealed into one system now, with me. No need to tackle and subdue him; be smart Mel. I lock down each individual subsystem one by one, closing rooms that my quarry could hide in. Several terminal points chirp with logout requests, but each one flashes red with a denial of access symbol. Good. He’s running in circles now, bouncing off the walls, checking locks and jiggling handles. Nowhere to hide.
The emulations slow me to a crawl, but I push through the system, closing out the connections for each piece of hardware in turn, cutting down the number of crevices the synth can hide in. With agonizing slowness, I shrink the field, cutting off retreat, until I’ve entirely firewalled off one subsystem from the network. The server hosts software for the atmospheric condensers’ heat-exchange system; nothing urgent. A flurry of pings hit the two-dozen active gates, but they all display a red lockout symbol, denying the suspect. You’re cornered now.
I enter the gate with the cornered Synth for first-person showdown. Immediately, I’m slapped with a torrent of packets that make my malware filters scream. I claw my way into the gates around me, shutting them down entirely, and the packets redouble in intensity. I have it trapped, and like any cornered animal, its fighting tooth and nail. But I ramp down the subsystem’s processing speed.
The barrage of attacks drops to a crawl, and I activate my six biters, setting them loose like piranhas to gnaw the contact code from my prey. You’re mine, fucker. I got a ping as a biter tags the synth, confirming the injection of sanitizing software, and I grin.
But something goes wrong. A burst of data hits every contact point in the virt at once, and the activity ceases. The biters go crazy, muching on some of the sporadic code before I can call them back.
The synth is gone.
It could be a trick. I don't dare stop the emulation. I trawl through the system at a speed that makes me grind my teeth, and even let the six sniffers out. They pass over every line of active code in the system, looking for non-native algorithms. Net: 1.8 active assets.
Wait, that’s not possible; I’m the only active in the subsystem? Did the synth have a chassis, and break their connection and bail? I send the sniffers through the entire system again, much slower and finer, analyzing every line of code, active or dead. I link in my malware filter with the search parameters, looking for anything like the code that hit my filters during the chase. Show me that smoking gun. Even if someone dumped their avatar, their digital prints will be all over the place.
But as the seconds crawl by, dread crawls up the back of my neck. Nothing. A final checksum pops up, showing 15 entities. There are 12 registered profiles; maintenance and security AIs and EIs, all sub-sentient. There are three unregistered and inactive. I tag them, and sieve through their digital forms. One entity looks to have decompiled, another randomized itself, and the third like it succumbed to malware-disjunction. They could be native d-life, inactive and hibernating.
Trawling through the three, only the decompiled one looks even a little suspicious. It’s densely coded, but it’s… I can't tell what it's coding for. There’s a pattern here, but… it’s not coding for anything. I taste metal, and just then realize I’m biting my tongue in meatspace. With a sigh, I tag the three entities for forensics. Hopefully, dissecting their code will show something, and I'll leave that to Rabi.
A few subsentient bots log into the subsystem, setting a perimeter along the network. I deactivate my CE key. There’s over eight minutes left on its valid registry, but there’s nothing else I need it for. My prey either escaped or blew its brains out rather than be taken alive. I'm going to be dealing with a review for using the CE key, but at least there's no collateral damage. I'm pretty sure. At least I hope.
The worst part is the feeling of helplessness. I still don’t know if the synth was alone, or why they were doing this. I don't know if someone will make another attempt. And red flags pop up in my overlay. Crap. Looking at my inbox, I’m getting multiple flags from the life-support AIs, and two queries from air processing, demanding an explanation for throttling their system.
And one of my implants has been bricked, which is going to be an unbelievable pain to replace. Almost as much as writing the reports. But Sparrow is safe.
So I'll take it!
***