Rogues Resurgence Ch 18 end section.

[SteveMill]

Ch 18 completed (a post limit cut off the update of full chapter), slight repetition here.



She triggered the lock, disconnected from it and slipped out into the corridor. The vault entrance rolled shut behind her. The way was clear, up towards the complex entrance and down towards the nearby Data-Core and she hurried towards the covering sensor node.

It took her just a short time work back past the security sub-routines into the main system but one very long, gruelling hour, to wade through data-streams, from sub system to sub system, stealing access codes, encoding sensor loops and noting encryption keys as she crept from level to level.

Finally, with the floater and security records now adjusted to record her deployment and the floater uploaded with it’s active service security file she approached the Data-Core entrance.

Xela worked quickly at the seal, activating an alert condition to validate her floater access protocols and looping status-green readings through the security sub-routines.

An access hatch built into the heavy main door dilated and Xela flitted nimbly through into the warm darkness of the Core.


“If you ask me that again lover, you’ll be sleeping on your own! We’ve heard nothing since that last E-card from Xela. ‘The weather is changeable’, some small trouble, plan proceeding.” The warmth in Kaitrin’s voice survived the cockpit acoustics and Corrin’s heart surged in response, making him smile at the melodrama irony.

Love and war, it would make a good sub-plot if someone ever made a drama out of the story, with someone a few years younger playing him he hoped. Damn, he might even try writing the screenplay himself once this thing was over. That publicist, Anje, what was her surname, Delenari? Perhaps she could arrange things?

Something like, he groped for a title, ‘The Marteene Testament, a Mirv Corrin Production. It sounded good, but not snappy, attention-grabbing good. ‘Mad Max.’ Now, that was promising!

Corrin switched his concentration back to flying, arcing wide around the western jump-gate onto the final leg of his patrol around the Fabrication Plant. It looked complete, just a few zero-G workers and droids completing the installation of the external comm. dishes.

“Control, Estimated time to power-up?”

“Latest call is eight hours.” Kaitrin replied. “Fusion reactors damn well cannot be hurried, to quote the chief engineer the last time I asked, give or take the odd expletive. You’d think for triple hazard pay they’d throw in a civil tongue, let’s not ask him again.”

“Eight hours. You can bet Law knows that too, if he’s going to make a move it will have to be soon. If he waits any longer we’ll be able to support more LT’s than your baby can manage. What’s the status of the Black Heart?”

Kaitrin took a moment to check the All-Seeing-Eye scanners.

“The TL is still in low orbit, once every 90 minutes and it will be behind the planet in another 20. We still have no firm information on what it’s doing. We’ve got 6 LT’s out, fighters on patrol and reinforcements close to hand and every time we’ve gone head to head he’s lost, I don’t think he’ll attack.”

“If I were him I’d be calling in every favour and scraping every barrel and stuffing that TL to the gills.” Corrin responded. “Then throw it all at us, including my stock of illegal hornets. I’d be a lot happier if we had those new Mambas.”


It was warm now, crouched in the cramped confines of the resequencer, and humid. Another bead of sweat slid down his side, with a slow, deliberate trickle that seemed to stretch time.

And Max was beginning to worry about oxygen levels in the sealed vault. Carbon dioxide narcosis, it would explain some of the six defeats he thought, turning back to the game frozen on the high definition screen. He rotated the views again, studying the three-level board from every angle. His position looked good, but, Max grimaced to himself, it always did, before, bam, bam, bam, the program announced checkmate, in a smug, Xela tinged tone he was beginning to hate.

“Concentrate Max.” he muttered, swinging the perspective back to the third level. This game he was White and he’d pushed the opening move advantage to the limit after Black timed out the Queens Knight on the second level, using an aggressive variant of the Kapel Opening with his King as cover for an advancing pawn wedge.

It was working well, and after a forced exchange of pieces that ended with a bishop in his favour, the Black King was pinned behind a crumbling defensive screen in the Level 3 upper quadrant. And for the first time he could use the new time-out function effectively. Time travel was something of a grandiose term and Max was not sure the ability to remove a piece from play and bring it back within a specified move window did much more for the game but throw off all his book-learned gambits but he felt he was now getting a feel for it. Black was in the box, all he had to do was close the lid.

His bishop materialised on the second level and he immediately moved it to force an upper diagonal check, covered by left-most pawn of the Kings screen.

“Mate in two.” He announced with a satisfaction that drained away as the Black Queens Knight shimmered back onto it’s second level time-out square and hopped to a level three position that both cut the check and threatened the bishop.

“Mate in three.” The program countered. Max worked through the options and managed to not smash the padd, realising the entire flow of the game had been one long deceit, each small victory a lure, drawing his King into the exposed centre of the board.

A trap snapped shut by a precisely re-timed knight.

“How do you do that? How do you do that?” Max exclaimed in gritted teeth frustration. He was beginning to suspect cheating.

Xela meanwhile, was beginning to suspect she was screwed.

“Really screwed.” She emphasised to herself as she abandoned another attempt to access the Inner Core service locks to connect a tap directly to an unshielded data conduit. This was something new, part of the revamped security measures the Assistant Security Director had boasted about to Max.

With, it seemed, good cause. The lock had her stymied and no amount of her considerable electronic wizardry was likely to change matters for the simple reason it was mechanical, a puzzle of heavy tumblers and cylinders which her sensor extension lacked the facility to manipulate.

Damn, damn, damn, she muttered to herself, who used mechanical locks in this day and age? Explosives or a bloody good skeleton key, that’s what it would take, and neither she nor Max had those to hand. Jackson could no doubt conjure either in a few hours but that would mean leaving her integrated with the security floater and the risk of discovery was too great.

Again she linked up to the security system and explored alternative access routes but none of the sub-systems open to her offered a back-up ingress.

Unless? The flash of intuition surprised her, appearing full borne in her neural net rather than filtering up through structured analytical sub-routines. She quickly rifled through the maintenance sub-system, noting the procedures and protocols governing the maintenance floaters activities.

It could work and the thought gave her a bigger thrill than the thought of beating Max at 4D chess.

The environmental sub-system was an open book for her and she soon found what she needed, the real-time internal environmental sensor logs. That was something she could alter. Xela identified the code for the inner core sensor and began feeding false data, raising the reported ambient internal temperature by fractions of a degree at a time. She didn’t want to trigger a fire alert, that was bound to bring some form of sentient back-up, just a suggestion of a little over-heating electronics.

At plus 1.7 degrees a floater was put on stand-by. At plus 1.9 it was dispatched. In two minutes it was unlocking the hatch with a custom extension to one of it’s three arms. Xela quickly returned the temperature to normal, placed a self-erasing sleeper program and slipped in behind it.

The floater lingered for a couple of minutes in the small inner chamber, running sensors over the waist of backlit panels circling the room before leaving and sealing the heavy door behind it.

Xela scanned the chamber and attached herself by her sensor arm to the panel with the strongest signal leakage. For the next two hours she let torrents of information flow through her in an intoxicating flood as she recorded encryption keys and transaction markers.

Finally, confident in her understanding of the audit protocols, she passed Jackson’s millions from one of his anonymous accounts in the resolutely unquestioning Teladi Gain Investment Trust through a series of confected false accounts, finally bringing it all together in an inactive Cabal account, Speculative Investments, controlled by Artur, using the permissions programmed into her net.

She’d thought twice about using a Cabal front, particularly given Artur’s reservations concerning clan penetration of the conspiracy, but it had patina after patina of security cut-outs and was swathed in a deeper accountancy fog than she could generate in the time available. Given the size of the transaction it could not remain hidden forever but she was confident it would take investigators months to unravel after suspicions were aroused.

The whole operation would be over by then, one way or another, and the fifty million credits long spent.

Satisfied, she waited for the sleeper program to trigger another temperature rise.

An hour later Max was dismantling the floater sensor extension. In another hour, with the floater back under the control of the internal security system and her reinstalled into the data-padd, he and Jackson were congratulating each other on their daring cleverness with more of the local brew.

Her offer of a game of 4D chess was met only with a sullen silence.

[SteveMill]

Bump to raise it above the rest of the chapter.

[Al]

Good stuff

Jsut noticed one thing right at the end:

"and her reinstalled her into the data-padd, " should this be "and he reinstalled ...." or something along those lines.

Al

[SteveMill]

Good stuff

Jsut noticed one thing right at the end:

"and her reinstalled her into the data-padd, " should this be "and he reinstalled ...." or something along those lines.

Al

Indeed it should. thanks.

[Adamskini]

saaaaaaweeeeeeet \o/

[KiwiNZ]

Excellent read, Steve!

Poor Max, had his hopes so high in the chess game

Good to see they got it sussed with the monkey, now we'll see what Law's last (?) move will be


Hey, you'll be pleased to notice that I did not really find anything. The only one that I think may require a comma is the following. It would make it easier to read if it had one between 'acoustics' and 'Corrin'.

"the cockpit acoustics Corrin’s heart surged"

Taps fingers on table in eager anticipation for more

[SteveMill]

Excellent read, Steve!

Poor Max, had his hopes so high in the chess game

Good to see they got it sussed with the monkey, now we'll see what Law's last (?) move will be


Hey, you'll be pleased to notice that I did not really find anything. The only one that I think may require a comma is the following. It would make it easier to read if it had one between 'acoustics' and 'Corrin'.

"the cockpit acoustics Corrin’s heart surged"

Taps fingers on table in eager anticipation for more

An "and" was missing, thanks.

Planning the next chapter now, it just looks like i'm watching early morining re-run of Deep space Nine. Expect wormholes, shape-shifting aliens and hot chicks tight uniforms.

[Oldman]

An Oasis in the Desert

Good Read again

Oldman

[Gandalf The White]

Good read again Steve.

Looking forward to next chapter.

[KiwiNZ]

[quote="SteveMill"

Expect wormholes, shape-shifting aliens and hot chicks tight uniforms. [/quote]

I'd be the last to complain

[Adamskini]

bump