The next morning, Mike half-dragged himself the few feet to his chair in the core, muttering a gutteral greeting to his companion who was already at his station. The later replied to the utterance with a cheerful "Good morning" which did nothing but grate on the nerves of the former. "Damn, you're cheerful. What, did you get some last night?"

McLaren paused in his keying and turned his chair to face the back of Christenson's. "Answer the first, if I did it'd be none of yer bloody buisness. Answer the second, no."

Christenson swivled his chair to look out over Omoikane. "You know, I've no reason to believe you. Hari headed back to his quarters pretty soon after dinner, and after Seiya joined us it was a couple of hours before he dragged me off to check out the new Aesti's that had arrived yesterday morning. But after that, nobody but you and the Kanchou know what you did.

"Well, Saburouta-san could colaborate at least some of it," the Scotsman defended. "He dropped by shortly after you left. Jury's still out on whether or not you're a bigger ecchi than he is."

"Oh, I'll sway the jury, if I have to download half the pr0n on the net to do it!"

"You do that. Anyways. We talked for a while after Saburouta-san left, then I walked the Kanchou back to her quarters. End of evening."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Damn. Hey, we gonna do Friday Frag?"

"Like we did the summer of that conference?" Tobias responded. "Don't see why not. There'll certainly be enough crew around here to pull it off."

"Aaaw yeah, fresh meat for the killin'."

"Is it being from Texas or being from MIT that makes you that way?" Tobias asked as he stood.

"Where're you going?"

The younger stretched out his arms, showing off the fact he was wearing a turtleneck and jeans under the black leather jacket. "To put on a uniform before heading up to the bridge. Seiya said the Kanchou wants the IFS in her chair fine-tuned," he said, heading off the question.



// \\



A few mintues later the doors to the bridge parted and the engineer stepped onto the deck. Hari looked up from his station and smiled slightly at the visitor, but his face took on a puzzled look when he noticed what the elder was carrying. "Ano... why do you have a harness with you?"

"I figured it was this or turn off gravity on the bridge," Tobias replied, shrugging into the climbing gear. The confused look didn't leave Hari's face so Tobias continued the explanation as he nodded his greeting to the captain. "Apparnetly, the ship wasn't designed by Scotsmen. From the notes I found in the engineering logs, to adjust the IFS, Kanchou has to put her station into 'R.R.' mode, whatever that is, so I can swing under her chair to make the adjustments," he concluded, settling himself on the edge of Ruri's pit and swinging his legs down. The captain turned in her chair and looked about to say something but held her tounge as a slight blush crept up on her cheeks. "Did I say something wrong, Kanchou?"

Ruri shook her head. "Dame. It's just that the 'R.R.' they noted means 'Ruri-Ruri mode.'"

"Ah, I see," the engineer responded as he attached the safety lines to his harness. He waited as the front of Ruri's station seperated and her chair started moving forward. McLaren cautiously stepped onto the moving beam and secured his lines to it. Once everything stopped moving he swung underneath the captain's chair and hung suspended above the deck below. As he opened the access panel he saw the window sphere materialize to life around the Kanchou. As he began making the adjustments he saw his own IFS implants glowing subtly in response to the strength of Ruri's.

Tobias was most of the way trough the optimization phase when Uribatake's visage appeared beside him. "TJ-kun! Did you ask her?"

"Who her sir?" McLaren countered.

"Kanchou, her, of course! Mike-kun told me aobut your Friday Frag and as your supervisor I order you to invite her! It's too perfect!"

Had blood not already been flooding into his face from being suspended upside down, it certainly would have done so now. "Um, Uribatake-san, I'm kind of in the middle of something right... wait a second, just what do you mean by 'too perfect?'"

"A perfect opportunity for the two of you to develop a relationship! She likes games, you like games! As a man, I must help those under my care!"

"Uribatake-san, ah, now's not a very good time..."

"It's a perfect time! You must seize the day! Carpe Diem!"

Tobias wasn't sure if it was salvation or damnation coming when his captain's visasge appeared beside him as well. "TJ-san, how are the adjustments coming?"

"Very well, Kanchou! Just a few more minutes then I think-"

"That's where you are?!" Uribatake shrieked as if cornered.

"Ah, yes, sir."

"So Ruri-Ruri heard-"

"Our entire conversation, sir."

"Ah... um... Hey! You! Be careful with that Aestivalis!" Uribatake yelled off-screen as his image disappeared from existence.

Tobias turned to the screen holding the captain's visage, his face fully red now in multiple ways, but was in time to catch her small smile. "Didn't it appear that Uribatake-san was in the cafeteria?"

"Actually, it did, now that you mention it," he replied, making the last adjustment and slamming the panel closed. "That's all folks."

"Arigato" Ruri replied as she began returning her station to its normal mode. "So, Friday Frag?"

"Hai. Mike & I based it off of the old concept of a LAN Party," Tobias explained as Ruri's station finished closing around her. He propped on the edge of her pit once again as he continued. "In the 'old days,' to get a lot of people in a game you almost had to have everyone in the same room so that there was enough bandwidth to play. Now the reason for everyone being in the same room is simply social."

Hari left his station to join the two at Ruri's pit. "Which games?"

"No clue. Something involving Capture the Flag, at least."

"Kanchou, what do you think?" Hari asked.

Ruri nodded her head in agreement. "Hari-kun, speak to Saburouta-san as well."

"Hai. McLaren-san, what needs to be done?"

"Eh, not much. Mike & I will probably draft yourself and Saburouta-san to help set up Friday evening, but that's about it."

"Ch-chotomate..." Hari stammered. "Set up in the evening? How late will this thing go?"

McLaren shrugged as he rose to leave. "Normally about 2 in the morning. Once it lasted 'til 5:30-"

"5:30 Saturday morning?" Hari gasped in shock.

"Actually, it was 5:30 Monday morning," Tobias replied as he neared the door.

"T-tobias-san!" Hari called to the closing door.



// \\



Tobias slumped into his workstation's chair and loosened his uniform's collar. "Dude, you're going to have to work on your timing when it comes to telling Seiya things."

"Oh?" Mike returned absently, barely looking up from his screens. Tobias proceeded to give his senior the details of the embarrassment he suffered under the Captain's chair.

"Just goes to show, always be the one to make the first move with a lady," Mike said, flicking through screens.

Tobias turned and stared icily at the back of Mike's chair. "By Friday, Lieutenant Makibi will be the only person on this ship that hasn't tried to get us together."

"Maa-maa," Mike replied, impersonating the Prospector. "We'll have him on the conspiracy by Thursday at the latest."

"May God have mercy on your immortal soul."

"Amen. Check this out." Mike keyed a display for both of them to see.

McLaren scanned the information presented him. "Access logs for Omoikane's external ports. So?"

"So I didn't have anythign better to do, so I started drilling through the data," Mike said, grabbing his IFS and resorting the data. Tobias followed the sort easy enough, one by accessing address.

"So? Doesn't suprise me that Nergals ranges would be regularly scanned. Hell, I knew their ranges in elementary school. It's public record. Just means some schoolkid's pushing his luck with trying to get into Omoikane."

"Maybe," Christenson replied. "But are the secure ports a part of that public record?"

"The ones for maintenance and emergency control? The defaults tend to be known, but you set those to rotate off of an algorithm, right?"

"And those algo's are better guarded than the CEO's Porche," Mike replied. "Now, let me show you this data filtered for Omoikane's secure ports algo." he paused momentarily as Omoikane applied the filter then flashed the results. "Here you go. The record of the number of port sniffs of Omoikane's secure ports."

"Oh, Miiiiikey.." JT chanted, "don't use 'of' three times in a sentence. Second, your filter's backwards. You only removed five entries."

Michael smiled. "Alright, you build the data filter this time."

Tobias grabbed a keyboard and quickly hammered the keys. "There. Omoikane's algorithm overlayed with- What the f-"

"Yeeeeeees, Neo. Welcome, to the Valley, of the Real."

"Next steps?"

"Probably a honeypot. That'll need Seiya's permission and Kanchou's blessing. There's been no maintenance window so those ports have stayed closed..."

"But next week a lot of systems are due to receive firmware updates. If they caught one of those ports while it was open..."

"they could add any virus they wanted to it. And since they have the algorithm..."

"...then whatever they've got written may not be designed to execute for weeks or even months."

"And they probably could fake the signatures to appear normal to Omoikane's viral software."

"Meaning we'd only find out after it brought us down or if we accidently tripped on it."

"Exactly," Mike said gravely. "Some Monday, huh?"

"Shit."



// \\

author's notes...

Well, we now have the beginnings of a plot formed. I aplogize for all the technobabble about ports. I figure there are two camps - those that don't give a flying flip about how Omoikane works and those who would crucify me for what I'm going to be doing soon to Omoikane & the ship if I didn't provide some kind of explanation as to how what's happening's happening.

For those who read through the technobabble but aren't nerd-types like me, yeah, all this stuff is pretty much how I understand things to work now, just projected forward a bit (such as the "little" patch coming up here in a bit).

And, yeah, "May God have mercy on your immortal soul" is quoting Hellsing & the Valley of the Real stuff is indeed Matrix.

Ja.