Cats Cradle Chapter 5

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Jet had a problem.

“Top down, strange charmed,” she thought out loud. Her thoughts ran straight into a mental wall. Try again.

“Top down strange charmed.”

She knew they came in pairs like that.

Tiegel was smirking at her. “There is no wifi out here, JJ. We're on radio silence.”

“Ah, I fucking know this!” she grunted, holding on finger on one hand up as if it’d serve as proof. Her frustration was obvious. It was palpable. It stained the air.

Tiegel read from the card again. “There are six kinds of quarks. Name all six.” His German accent almost seemed to mock. His eyes gleamed. He knew he had her. “And Ferengi don't count.”

“Top, down, strange, charmed.” A pause. “Ah feck!”

Everyone at the table was staring at her. Engels and Senshi, joined together in Trivial Pursuits. Anything to pass the time

“Give up?” Tiegel enquired smoothly. “You still have a minute,”

“No!” Jet snapped at him. “I know this,”

Mari started to laugh. “Yeah, and I’m Queen Serenity”

“Alright your Majesty,” Jet curtsied. “Top, down, strange charmed and...”

Mental block. The comm panel on the wall crackled to life. “Jet Jaguar, Jet... this is Cortana.”

Saved by the bell, thought the cyborg. She reached over and flicked a switch. “This is Jet.”

“Lucky,” Tiegel mumbled.

Jet shot him a dark glare while Lenneth whispered something in his ear.

“Jet. I have contact with the computer on Nehalennia using the second QED. I have a basic map from Cathy’s collar and a message for you.”

“I’ll take it down in the bay,” Jet responded.

The others at the table were staring at her. At times, she was as subtle as a brick to the face.

“Up, Down, Strange Charmed,” she began. She quirked her head a little. “Top Bottom?”

Silence.

“Correct, but two seconds too late,” Tiegel answered. His accent gave it an almost bureaucratic finality. “And that puts you out of the game Jet, I’m afraid.” He rapped his fingers against the table. Hard ceramics meeting light chipboard made a hollow sound.

“Fine,” she exhaled a breath. The penalty for failure was ten solar credits, taken from a wallet in a pouch strapped to her hip. “Bloodsucker.”

Jet left them to their game. It was frustrating running under radio silence. Without wireless or interwave access, her apparent IQ dropped by about 20 points. She reminded herself that it was also possible to rely too much on her hardware, at the expense of her own skill. It was all about balance.

Max wouldn’t have been pleased.

Jet dropped down the ladder, hitting the deck with a heavy thunk. Luka woke up and looked at her for a moment, before dropping back behind his console. Jet silently apologised with a raised hand and a soft smile, before heading forward into the shuttlebay.

Cortana was still waiting in the Stargazer

“Hi Jet... you didn’t need to come down instantly,” a holographic avatar greeted, smiling. Truthfully, she was glad for the company. Playing Desmond at TF2 was getting boring.

“Got news?” Jet questioned, leaning in to the car through an open window.

“Ja,” the Avatar nodded. “Our two agents managed to connect me to the local network... I am currently browsing through the directories and attached services.” Cortana explained. “They have a lot of security attached to the network, but not enough to prevent a direct intrusion. Their system is set up more to prevent outside access and fly-by attacks. They did not expect an AI to be attacking from inside network.”

There was an air of self-satisfied smugness to her voice.

“But I think Cathy was right,” the avatar continued. “Some parts of the station are not connected to this network.”

“And that’s exactly where what we’re looking for is,” Jet added. It was a fair assumption.

“The system was not designed by a moron,” Cortana told her. “It appears they decided that the added complexity and inconvenience of securing against an AI intrusion from within the station’s intranet just wasn’t worth it. What I have is sensitive enough...”

“So what can you get access to?” the cyborg asked. interrupting.

“Everything almost,” Cortana said. “I was able to achieve root access to the main server using a flaw in how their internal mail application handles message attachments. I can get anyone’s documents, some station schematics and a great amount of administrative files. I have some references to what we might be looking for, but there is nothing concrete.”

“Such as?” Jet questioned. She stared at Cortana’s display.

“i have verified that Sato was in contact with Roland. She sent the emails to him personally. ”

Jet smirked. That strengthened the link. That was good evidence.

“And,” Cortana continued, sounding like she was boasting. “This particular email from Naoko Sato’s account referring to the VSW project. It gives it’s real name as Virtual Slaver Wasp.”

Jet drew back.

“You’ve heard of it?” Cortana enquired.

Jet rested her chin on her metal hands. She was staring at something that seemed to be on the other side of the bulkhead wall. She was running a quick text search on some files she hadn’t bothered deleting.

“Slaver Wasp rings a bell.” From a mail someone had sent her about a Girl Genius collection they had for sale. Jet felt her blood chill just a little bit at what that implied. “Can you search for any references to Agatha Clay in the data?”

Jet tried to sound casual and unbothered.

“There is a message from Ford along with the first batch of data. She is mentioned there.”

Jet unplugged a memory stick for her ear. “Can you give me a copy of it? The map, and any relevant mails or docs.”

She purposely waited for Cortana’s permission before plugging it into her dataport. It was generally considered the polite thing to do, rather than just sticking it in.

“Go ahead,” said the AI. “I have scanned the email archives I have for the names mentioned in Ford's message, and documents I can perform a plaintext search on. I will include those too.”

Jet plugged the drive in. “There should be about a Gig or two free on that.”

Cortana grinned. “And I have uploaded you a copy of the relevant pages of the webcomic the slaver wasp is coming from,” she said and finished the file transfer. “The whole comic is a little bit too much, but I think you will get the reference.”

“I do.”

“Ah okay, sorry... thought you did not know. What I think is fascinating about the name is that the slaver wasps in the comic were much more than a memory wiping attack,” Cortana said thoughtfully. “Do you think the attack on your friends was just a test for something more ?”

“Definitely,” Jet responded. “It’s what that something might be that bothers me.” Jet pondered for a few moments, waiting for the transfer to be finished. “Can you access their defence systems?”

“No,” Cortana answered. The avatar shook its head.“They are on a separate system. I cannot get access. Like I said, their network was not designed by a moron.”

“Damn,” Jet breathed.

“What where you thinking?”

“Can you install a backdoor on the system?” the cyborg enquired. “We mightn’t be able to take out their defense grids with it, but it’ll still irritate the shit out of them if we can bring down their comm’s or something remotely.“

“I can try... it is still difficult, but at least we will not care about alarms from cyberspace at this point.” Cortana admitted. “It might be possible - maybe I can connect it to the alarm level in the asteroid. When they raise alert, it will bring down their computers and communication.”

“Any little edge.”

“I will try what I can... I will try to backup most systems, they might be damaged when the worm will go online.” Cortana turned her attention back towards the data. “I will work on the data I am acquiring from their computer system... I think in a few hours I might tell you more about the station. I will call you again.”

“Right so. Be about it.”

Jet left the AI happily munching away on the data, making her way through the ship. She was looking for somewhere she could go through what she had with a little privacy. Jet was sorely tempted to switch over into raw mode, but this was just too trivial to be worth risking damage to her psyche.

The thought served to remind her of the Lehrling back at Grunthal. How well where they doing with Gant training them. How was Jana doing?

She climbed up to the top of the ship, hoping to find the bridge to be empty. The Captains cabin was off-limits. Jet wasn’t the Captain. the gun-room was too small, so that left the bridge. She dismissed the Sammie Knight on watch, agreeing to take over the rest of his watch for him.

Bridge watch on an asteroid was little more than having someone awake who could notice there was an alarm going off warning of an impending Boskonian attack.

She found herself a comfortable position in the pilot’s chair and set about reading, beginning with Ford’s message.

“Didn’t think we’d have this chance. Day 2. Vidkun appears to trust me. She offered me a permanent job and all. Began repairs on the truck, but it’s a mess. Do me a favour, kick the Nova’s gunner for me. If I’m lucky I’ll have it flying day after tomorrow. You have access to main station network now through the black box. What we’re looking for isn’t on it, but on a separate system. We’ll try and find it tomorrow. Teela thinks she knows where it is.

Our Bob Rife’s name is Quattro. She’s the only madgirl on the station right now and she’s a hell of a bitch. She’s about medium height, a build that really suggests she was modded. Golden brown hair, bunched into a pair of pigtails. Golden eyes behind a pair of spectacles. When we saw her, she wore a blue body suit with ‘IV’ engraved on a nameplate, and some sort of heavy white overcoat.

She’s also a hell of a cutesy bitch. She tried to buy Teela off me.

Discovered from Vidkun that Agatha Clay was here recently. She left some time ago and I don’t think it was a pleasant parting. I get the feeling that she saw what the other two were planning and decided to get the hell out of dodge before it all blew up. Quattro may have been her apprentice or understudy. That’s just a hunch.

She’s obviously based herself off some source fandom, but beyond the Audi 4-wheel drive system I’ve no idea who or what Quattro is trying to be.

Most Dark Senshi here are just a bunch of Gliesbies. They’re idiots playing with fire, trying to be edgy or some dipshit thing like that by running drugs. We have a few real Zwilniks in among them, coming in on freight runs, but most are just morons.

With a bit of luck. I’ll see you in two days. It depends on how truck repairs go. ”

Agatha Clay.

Virtual Slaver wasp.

“Chikushō,” Jet grunted under her breath.

She reached over to the comm panel, flicking a switch.

“Cortana, this is Jet,”

“Yes?” the AI responded with inhuman speed “Back so soon?”

“Yeah. I need you to look for a few things. Get any data you can on Agatha Clay from their servers and collate it. Anything that might hint where she was gone, why she left and how much she was involved in this project. Second,” she stopped to let her mind catch up. “Can you run an interwave search for characters named Quattro, or for shows where characters take their names from Italian numbers. If you have Ford’s message, compare any matches to the given description.” Jet paused “It’s definitely not Quattro Bajeena, that’s for sure, and that’s the only Quattro I can think of.”

“Is there anything else?”

Jet was about to say no, but a thought occurred to her. “Forward the data to Butterscotch. Include Quattro’s description, somebody in the task force might recognise it or what fandom she’s in. Uh...Classify it Gamma 2 and above, high priority.”

“Done.”

“Thanks.”

Jet closed the line, and stared out the windows at the rock walls of the crater. These jobs never did get simpler as they went along, did they?


"Air ducts. I hate air ducts," Teela muttured sourly while crawling through a small pipe connecting two parts of the asteroid station.

Most Fen space stations had air ducts, or maintenance tunnels, or Jefferies tubes. It didn't matter what they called them, everyone had them. Often, they’d even forget they were there.

Normally it’d be considered impossible for the average human to fit through them, not without making noise like Thor having a fit with a steel drum anyway. Teela was not an average human being. If there was one thing thick tabby fur was good for, it was for deadening sound. She shuffled along almost silently.

Teela still recalled her training. She'd shuffled through twenty meters of tight curving pipes just to learn that she couldn’t open the other side. Nehalennia's had been designed to allow maintenance Roomba's to rove around cleaning freely.

Catgirls could squeeze themselves into places normal people could only dream of.

She shuffled herself around a corner, supressing a curse as her tail caught under the QED box as he weight came down on it. A single red light pulsed out of the gloom ahead, attached to a ventilation grate. It was the only one she'd seen with an electronic lock.

She grinned. Jackpot!

Teela carefully opened her a pouch on her belt, extracting a waved multitool. Getting high end toys from OGJ’s toolbox was a satisfying perk of the job. Carefuly, she bored a pinhole through the casing then slipped a microfibre scope through it.

On her contact-lens, she could make out two anti-tampering switches, a fibre-optic connection that lead to somewhere and what appearred to be the circuit board from a waved mobile phone.

Teela meticulously bored another hole, closer to the phone. She slipped hair-thin insulated cables through it. A Third hole directly over what looked like an ethernet chip allowed her access. She had to lick the barrel of her minitweezers to get it to fit through. Controlled by a small pressure switch at one end, it had a tiny set of jaws on the other.

She held her breath as she joined each individual wire end to the chip with a burst of heat from the tweezers. Her eyes ached long before she was finished. The easy end of the cable she hooked up to an standard ethernet plug. Rather than bother trying to hack it herself, she merely hooked it up to her QED and closed her eyes. Moments later, the lock on the hatch clicked open.

She opened her eyes again, just in time to see the LEDs on the QED's casing die again.

“Damn quirk,” she mouthed as she unplugged the box, taking it with her.. The shaft beyond was just as dark as all the others.It opened out a little more the further in she got . Perversely, that only made it harder for her to keep quiet. Chilled air blew through the ducts, sparkling frost lining the walls. Teela could see her breath turn to ice in the air. Another good thing about fur; it kept the cold out. It also picked up the dust. Clearly the cleaning bots couldn't get down here.

Her nose started to tingle. She smothered the sneeze by pinched her nose a lips shut.

About six meters ahead, there was another grate guarded by another glowing red light.

Lets see why you need all this cool air.

Getting it open was a meticulous repeat of the first. The hatch finally opened, allowing her access to a dimly lit room beyond.

On her left, she could make out the glassy outlines of some human-sized tubes. Directly in front of her on the other side was the only light source of the room, a rack of servers and their merrily blinking lights. Other shapes loomed as shadows out of the darkness - the outlines of cabinets, tools, machinery. A desktop computer sat on top of what looked to be a sleeping dinosaur, trailing a thick conduit tail.

She spotted a single red laser spot on the far wall, the beam highlighted by the few stray dust particles in the air flickering red as they crossed it. she traced the beam back to a shaded football standing atop a tripod.

The only thing missing was the portal gun.

She edged over towards the rack with the QED under her arm, her furred feet damping the sound of her footsteps. She slipped around behind the turret, being careful not to jostle it.

It began to sing.

“Ca~ra bella, cara mia bella,”

Teela stifled a yelp, clasping her hands over her mouth

“Mia bambina, o ciel”

It kept singing as she kept moving over to the computer rack, moving carefully to make sure she didn’t tip anything over.

This had to be the lab. It couldn't be anything else.

She examined the rack. It was packed with waved computer hardware, all hooked up to a watercooling system which seemed to route back into the ventilation. It smelled of hot, dry electronics and hummed with power.

Teela methodically unscrewed a maintenance panel on the back of the rack, finding exactly what she was looking for. It was a space large enough to fit the QED, originally intended to mount a second UPS that'd never been installed. Splicing it into the extant hardware was almost anti-climacticly easy.

Satisfied that the job was done, she sealed the rack back up. With any look

She gave turret guarding the door one a final look - it was still singing away to itself - then slipped back out of through the still-open ventilation hatch. She sealed it behind her.

Getting back out was easier. She knew where she was going and didn't have to drag the QED behind her. It took less than ten minute to find her way back out, leaving by the same hatchway she entered. She locked it behind her, leaving no trace that she'd ever been inside.

And now back to Cally. She knew the way back to their quarters. She knew she hadn't been spotted. Job done and done well. The hard part was over.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite catgirl,” a sweet voice sneered behind her. “Going out for a walk?”

Teela spun on her tip-toes, every single hair on her body standing on end. “I just got a little lost,” she replied quickly.

Quattro’s expression darkened into a fiendish sneer. Keen gold eyes regarded her like a fox would regard a rabbit. Her teeth were bared in a hungry smirk.

“Well, finder’s keepers then,” she giggled.

With inhuman speed, she snapped something from her pocket. Teela had barely started to move before she felt something bite into her skin. She had just enough time to notice the two barbs before she felt the shock burning through her body.

Teela yelped, dropping to the floor, spasming and convulsing as the current took hold. She gasped for air, scratching and pawing at the floor despite herself. A few moments later, she blacked out.

Quattro regarded her for a moment and started to laugh. Just another puny catgirl. Completely incapable of defending itself. A pathetic little creature.

“It's the rabbit's fault it got caught by the fox,“ she remarked, picking the body up before slinging it effortlessly over her shoulder. And thus it was the fox's right to do what she wills with the rabbit.