Fic: Altered Trajectory (cont)

[jeriendhal]

“Certainly, milord.” Machiavelli stood up as his cell door slid back and Softpaw’s husband stepped inside to loom over him menacingly. It would have been more effective if Machiavelli hadn’t been so short to start with. He’d long since gotten used to staring up at everybody’s chin fur.

“Do we have your word of honour that you won’t try to escape or compromise our ship’s internal system or communications network?” Softpaw’s hench-husband rumbled.

“I’m a commoner. Legally speaking, I can’t give my word of honour for anything.”

“We aren’t talking about legal contracts here,” Lady Softpaw said. “I just would rather not have to drag you through the ship in chains. Again.”

“My word,” Machiavelli said, mentally crossing his fingers. Because yes, giving one’s word to a pirate is such a bloody noble thing to do.

“And you, Lord Rufus?” she asked. “Are you going to be punching fellow prisoners anymore?”

“My Word, I shall not,” Ru Ofanius said, shamefaced. At a gesture from Softpaw her husband pressed the magnetic keys to his bonds and they fell away. Then they were escorted back to the much cozier suite/cell. ”Yes, welcome to the Bound Arms. Where you’ll sleep soundly, even if we have to stun you.” Machiavelli thought sardonically.

The Swiftfoot vixen was waiting inside, looking up from a computer game as they entered. “Rufus, are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

“Why yes, I’m fine thank you,” Machiavelli answered.

“I wasn’t talking to you, you little terinu.”

“Enough of that,” Softpaw said in warning. From a pouch at her belt she drew out a memory chip encased in black plastic. “Do you need a cyber glider deck to examine this, Lt. Flashpaw?”

“No, I can slot it right in directly,” he told her. She dropped the chip into his open paw and he peeled back the skin and fur covering his glider port, enjoying the discomfited looks they all gave him. It had taken a lot of work for the surgeons to leave skin behind when they had installed the port, bless ‘em. He pressed it into his i/o port and lay back on his bunk, letting his consciousness flow inward toward his Center and then dive into the chip’s memory.

He found himself in his preferred space. It was a blank room, white walls, ceiling and floor. His avatar was himself, in a simplified form, glowing slightly as if reflecting the energy of computation. Some cyber gliders preferred more elaborate creations, dragons flying through a void of data clouds or some such nonsense, but he couldn’t stand that sort of pretension. The unvarnished Truth, however difficult, was always preferred. The rest of it was just layers of tradition and obfuscation.

You see, we piddle, twiddle, and resolve
Not one damn thing do we solve.

The representation of the data chip sat floating in the center of the room, a simple gray box sealed with a coded series of numbers running like a stock ticker around the seam of the lid. Machiavelli scanned it with a brief, careful probe. There wasn’t any black ICE to be found, just standard issue security coding, albeit of an incredibly complex structure. The numbers of the code were changing continuously in a seemingly random pattern. No, a definitely random pattern, which defied analysis by the programs he was running on his internal system. Which, in theory, shouldn’t be possible. Every so called random number generator was built around specific codes, which meant true randomness should be impossible and truly wasn’t, at least not when it was up against a cyber glider’s toolkit.

Piddle, twiddle, and resolve
Nothing's ever solved in

Instead of trying to brute force his way through into the data file, and potentially set off whatever was inside the virtual box designed to protect it, he decided to take the indirect route. He started to examine the code seal, trying to find the subprogram that was generating the numbers. That particular section proved to be hidden within… wait, what was that supposed to be? There seemed to be a separate stream of data, completely isolated from the programming codes surrounding the box. His virtual body leaned forward, a paw reaching out to send a probe.

Foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy
Philadephia!

Oh, clever! There was an entirely separate system in there to generate a random number sequence, and some anal retentive programmer with a fetish for safety had left a little message in front of it noting that the chip contained minute amounts of radioactive material in it and could you please take proper safety measures when disposing of it? In other words, he quickly surmised, the numbers were being generated by the pattern of particle decay observed from a miniscule piece of radioactive material embedded in the chip itself. And that means I’ve got a piece of uranium or something similar sitting right next to my brainpan. The realization was immediately followed by the logical thought that the amount of radiation being emitted was probably less than what his own cyber glider implant was generating. It would have to be, or else it would risk corrupting the data on the chip. Still, it would be best to resolve this quickly.

Someone oughta open up a window!

“What was that?” a voice asked somewhere in the real universe, Rolas it sounded like. Whoops, he’d said that last line out loud. He really needed to be more careful, even if the likelihood of an upper-class tw--, sorry, Farmer Noble vulpine knowing 20th C. English song lyrics were pretty low.

“Nothing,” he made his meat body respond, then went back to the tricky business of getting around the number generator. No, a better strategy would be to use it for his advantage. He uploaded another tool. In the meat world it would be the equivalent of splice in a hard communication line. He slipped in into the data flow running from the number generator to the code seal, blocking the generator’s data and replacing it with a series of numbers generated from his cyber glider processor. From there opening the code seal was simplicity. All he had to do was transmit the numbers as if from an outside source to the original security program. From there a script-cub could unlock the code seal.

The ribbon of numbers disappeared from the seam of the box. Machiavelli reached out with his virtual paw and grasped the lid, sending in another probe for safety’s sake as he opened it. But the only thing there was a series of coordinates and transmission channels for the rendezvous point. He quickly copied and stored it on his internal system, and his meat hand reached up to pull the chip from his cyber glider port.

The movement of paw to port took a minor eternity from his accelerated point of view, so in between he took the time to close the lid of the box. Neatness had its place even when you were being a thieving bastard. To his surprise, the code seal snapped back into place. He saw it peel off a probe towards the random number generator. Of course it would check the integrity of the generator first thing when it booted up. Too late, he started to pull off his splice, undetectable going from generator to seal, but quite visible going the other way.

His fingers were just brushing against the edge of the chip when the black ICE hidden in the box reached out with tendrils of electric steel to wrap around his brain.

In his accelerated consciousness, the scream that was ripped out of his throat seemed to go on forever…

Comments

[badasher.livejournal.com]

Serves the arrogant little prat right! Nicely done. :-)

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

outch...

too full of himself...

...especially in front of a superior alien technology...

...I just hope he will survive enough that he can tell the coordinates and meeting point...

*here hopes he is disconnected form the ships systems*

mjkj


PS: Rufus answer to the scream: "it wasn't me this time..."