According to Marchand’s documents breaking into something complicated like this was more of an art than a science because you never knew how much the designer knew and how much of that they were willing to put into the project. Then you had to content with security patches and updates that could make the actual security profile of the thing you were trying to break into just a mess of simple and complicated security bypasses and breaks.
I walked up to the door and started touching parts of the door to try and pull some metadata from the different connections of the door. A couple of addresses for secure ports to other grids, all of them hashed and protected. Pointless to bother with those. I looked over the more obvious password entry and it was a simple protected entry linked to a verification server on another grid, likely to prevent a simple workaround like I had used to break into this grid.
This was more annoying than I thought this job would be. There had to be a weak point though, no program was perfect, especially corpo mass produced stuff like this. There were obvious signs of upgrades in the past, little bits of avatar poking through each other around the door where smaller parts used to be before getting swapped out with other parts.
I got down close to one of these parts and poked at the seam between the avatars. Two scripts were running in sequence but there was a third script named “compatabilityPatchv4” running between the load of these two scripts. It was only small, about forty lines that renamed some variables and changed some libraries so the two scripts could run sequentially without error. Interestingly the script had a note attached that was only visible during the single frame of time that it was loaded, leaving a small flickering note in the seam between the two larger scripts.
I timed my action carefully and as soon as the script loaded I poked the note to open it up on my interface.
[This compatibility issue needs to be addressed system wide before we expand security any more. We’re running six year old code at this point. It’s practically wet ICE. This compatibility patch is the worst example, Jeff could you please just sit down with the scripts and merge them properly already? As soon as the node slows down the whole security system gets exposed while these little stop gap measures get stuck waiting for their libraries to ping back as changed!- Lionel”
Thank you Lionel. So the node just needed to be slowed down by something and the patches would be frozen, a perfect time to crash them then. As soon as the security tried to cycle through it’s scripts it would just crash the whole thing, even the crash report function was tied into the master script for the door so it wouldn’t send out a signal. Someone with clearance would actually have to be in this node or connected to this node at least to notice the security program not responding.
Lagging a node wasn’t simple. You needed a way to exponentially generate data in a constantly changing way to avoid getting flagged as repetitive actions and ignored by the node. Scripts that caused slow downs were usually quite high level when they were designed to slow down secure servers.
Fortunately I had Sanctum. I activated AA beta for the second time and watched as the pulsing of the lights from the security door construct and it’s connections froze in time. Then I took out my chain and used it like a whip to smash all the little gaps in the avatar that I could see. Swing, clang, swing clang, swing, clang. Each little spot needed a few hits and time started slipping back to normal quickly but I had taken out about four spots on the door when time reach normal speed.
The door finished it’s pulsing pattern and tried to restart but instead just stopped after a few lights flashed. It had hit one of the patches and found it gone. The script was throwing a big error and was frozen. With that done I stepped forward and pulled out my pickaxe, a single swing into the door was all I needed. With the head of the bony pick buried into the construct I saw the “Password Accepted” prompt pop up.
Without access to the verification server then it could only use it’s locally stored passwords, at that point it was functionally no different than the password program I had used the pickaxe on before.
“You’re clear. Gate’s open.” I said before pausing. I considered telling the guy to act more professionally, if not for his sake then the other operators. But he’d likely go off on one and it wasn’t my job to wrangle other operators.
“Finally. We’ve been here in the open for minutes!” He said impatiently.
“You’re in a secure location with eyes down and overwatch. What more do you need? A stuffed toy to keep you company?” I asked, kind of regretting letting the guy get to me but it did feel cathartic to snipe at him.
The other operators must at least be on the receiving comms even if they couldn’t transmit because my comment got a few smiles from the others.
“Go stuff a rat. Drek.” He responded.
On the feed I saw him turn to the others and announce the movement forwards, he led the way through the door as it opened to his touch. His face was a full on snarl but at least he was getting on with the job. I watched him pull out another cig cartridge and start puffing. I really should try to get Noe to stop smoking those.
With the rest of the team moving in behind him he led the way down the next set of tunnels with me watching ahead the whole time. This was the boring part of most operations, careful traveling.
Yeah, nothing was likely to happen but it could happen, so you had to take the whole thing carefully.
I walked along to keep up with the nodes nearest the team until I reached the edge of the grid I was on, luckily I had my outside daemon already set up. I connected to the daemon and watched my current node melt around me into a very similar node apart from the weird looking sticky daemon in the corner. Why was the daemon so gross looking?
With my grid swapped over I was technically quite far away from my connection location now, real distant effect stuff going on. This was what the net was supposed to be like back before the Dark War and the whole AI thing. When you could just connect to anything from anywhere because everything was the net and the net was everything.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I walked along again through the new grid as I kept up with the team as close as I could get, luckily the subnet the cameras for this area didn’t care that they had passed into a different grid zone, they stayed connected to their source grid through wiring. My manipulation and connection were still active so I could still see the team and my looping footage was still active. Just a quirk of real space not caring about cyberspace boundaries.
After another hour of moving through tunnels the angry guide had reverted to his dumb behavior and started just walking forward with his hands in his pockets without care again, making the team move quickly to keep up. They had to stop clearing corners properly and move forwards in formation as they tried to keep enough angles covered as they moved.
I could practically sense the annoyance from the operators as they shuffled along behind the guide. The team was still ahead of schedule, they didn’t need to rush. The guide was putting them at risk for no reason or gain.
Not my job to tangle with him though. They were nearly at the exit they needed now anyway.
Another half hour of watching and waiting and they arrived at a heavy rolling shutter than needed to be unlocked with a physical key. Likely to prevent netrunners from messing with it. The operators lined up near the shutter and the taller one pulled out a welding unit and started burning a hole through the shutter, just large enough to get through with a crouch.
It wasn’t a quick process though, the other operators were either resting or taking their turn to keep watch at the two exits to the little off-shoot room they were in. Soon enough the first shutter slumped to the side, then the next, then the next, then the next. The shutter was starting to break down but it was taking upwards of an hour to burn through the armored shutter.
The guide had long since gotten bored and was sitting on the ground nearby smoking his way through a pack of cartridges. I took a closer look at him and he looked relatively well dressed apart from the ratty long coat. A shimmering gray scale shirt under the coat and a simple rig and black slacks with knee pads. Simple and showy but functional. Was he new? Usually faces dressed nice on jobs, but this guy wasn’t dressed nice enough for that, you didn’t dress halfway nice.
This guy was just confusing. Maybe a corpo on hard times? Turned operator after a huge fall from grace? No idea. I’d have to ask Marchand after this.
The hole in the shutter was finally finished with a final molten snap.
With the operators stacked up on the hole and the guide off to the side the first operator stepped into the dark hole and out of my sight. I didn’t have a camera on the other side. Then the operator came back out of the hole and spoke with the guide.
“Two bot guns on the other side. Get to work.” He said with audible venom.
“Status pending.” I said, partly to annoy him.
I walked over to the neighboring node and looked around for the security system in charge of the turrets and found another sub-grid in the floor to drop into. I stepped in and fell down.
In the sub-node there was a pair of hard hat wearing workers holding vaguely assault rifle weapons pointed at the floor. Likely to show they were inactive. So these were the turrets in cyberspace.
This corp really sucked at visual design but they at least knew what theming was.
I walked up to the right side turret program and checked for connections, it was connected to a security grid somewhere else by wire, with an activation trigger and a motion detection system. Simple motion activated turrets that started alarms then. They likely had a white list of IDs but that would be stored at the security grid wherever that was.
Time to smash some damned programs, they’d likely use their guns for defense but I was the user here and they weren’t even daemons. As long as I didn’t let either program sit still for long enough to let a security alert out then they would crash here and now without any alarms.
I launched my truncheon and my chain, keeping it loose.
A wide swing at the one program with the chain as I used the chain as a counter weight to back swing into the other program. Clang, whack. Both programs stumbled back and pulled up their rifles just in time to receive another attack each. I managed to loop my chain around the on of them and tugged it off balance towards me as I clobbered the other over the head as it tried to get me into it’s sights.
Using ICE offensively wasn’t very effective as simple ICE like I had wasn’t having any internal effects on the code of the program, it was slowing it down though and that was all I needed to stop it from launching an alarm.
Whack, clang. I unhooked the chain just in time to catch a downward sing with my truncheon on the gunner stumbling towards me, I rolled the chain enough around my fist to cover my hand and clocked the other flailing program with a good punch to it’s torso.
The program that took a hit to the head managed to raise itself up quickly and pull it’s rifle into alignment enough to fire off a spray of bullets at me. Time slowed as KD beta kicked in but the bullets were still flying at me from close range, I didn’t have enough time so I just stopped it entirely with AA beta.
Stepping aside from the hail of bullets, I let them pepper it’s companion with the gunfire as I stepped into it’s reach and punched it’s helmet clean off. The program still hung in the air from the force of the punch in the stopped time. I turned around to clobber it’s friend but as I stepped closer time started to shift to normal and the bullets flew out and basically destroyed it. The gunner who had shot the bullets before getting punched flying off and to the ground as time sped up.
Reaching out to the programs and clipping their data entries from the node I watched as they glitched and faded away but failed to relaunch in their spots.
“You’re clear.” I said. My job was now done.
I pulled up the camera feed to see one of the operators enter the hole again and then after a short period come back out and thumbs up the apparent leader of the operation. A tallish guy wearing too many grenades wearing a balaclava and tactical goggles.
The leader said something to a few of them and three of them went into the hole. Then I had a comm request from who I assumed was the leader. I accepted.
“Confirmed guns are down, we’re breaking off here. Thanks for the help.” He said in a Russian accent.
“No problem. Clean operation.” I said.
“So far it is. Yes. Goodbye.” He said before disconnecting.
I then got to see the leader guy shouting at the guide with his finger pointed at him for a few seconds while the guide looked sullen and upset. No audio but it was nice to see some small karma for the guy’s behavior.
It was time for me to hit the road then. I sent a ping to my outsider daemon to shut down and got a confirmation. Then I sent a kill signal to my hardware in the field, my little line of IR tripods. The node I was stood in melting away as I lost connection and watched as it tried to find a stable connection from my last know addresses eventually placing my at the node where I crossed over grids.
From there I quickly walked over to the jack point in the middle of the room and jacked out.
Waking up in the real world I braced myself for pain after being very still for a very long time but actually it wasn’t so bad. My eyelids were a little dry feeling and I felt like I needed a good stretch but otherwise I was okay.
Preem work Sanctum. I love when we can do these little team projects where I get something done and you can make sure my body doesn’t implode while I do it.
[Maintenance of User’s body is one of Sanctum’s primary functions.]
Damn right it is.