[SAIN\\MIN\\IV/OUN\\s9\\opfeed\connecting...]
[ March 22nd, 2232 | 18:56:41 Local ]
[ Operation BLIND LILLY ]
[ Mission Objective: Asset Denial, permanent neutralization of HVT-1 and HVT-2 ]
[ Operation Status: Live ]
[ 18:56:42 ]...
[ 18:56:43 ]...
The ocean glittered in the evening light, low sun reflecting off the stream of airborne traffic. Ahead, Hilton Megaplex Tower 4 was a contrast-heavy shadow stabbing out of a white-yellow reflecting mass. Against the yellow-blue sky and orange clouds and tinting into the blue at the outer edges the only illumination visible was from small trigraphic projections and the blinking of vehicle warning lights.
Below them, the sea was sloshing through the gap between sea-city platforms, breaking itself on the connecting pylons between the underwater superstructure and the above-surface platforms. The buzz of electro-jet engines was omnipresent, a robotic insect swarm of various cargo drones, aircars, airtrucks, and more classic VTOLs buzzing about, flying to and from hundreds of air garages and robot hives through the various airlanes.
"Eagle, this is Falcon. Status?"
Saito shifted behind the scope of his sniper rifle, adjusting the position of his helmet on the cheek-rest of the stock ever so slightly. "Falcon, Eagle-One, all good on our end."
He accessed the Hawkeye ballistic computer and checked both settings and diagnostics. "Hawkeye has integrated spotter assets data. Got a good composite view of the suite internals -HVT-One is present and waiting on the lower meeting floor. Seven meters away from the window. Nervously pacing."
"Copy Eagle-1. Eagle-2?".
Next to Saito, Borma had unpacked his own gear on the maintenance walkway they were using as a sniper position. They were alone, save for a few now-hacked maintenance robots mostly concerning themselves with cleaning the glass and maintaining the outside infrastructure against the corrosive seawater spray; the machines were utterly ignorant to the two armed and armored men that had taken position near the edge of the building. Their position overlooked the Hilton Mexaplex platform, and provided a clear view of the oceanfront beyond and the perimeter drifts of other platforms which dotted the horizon.
"All set, Major. Missile flight path is programmed to avoid the airlanes," Borma reported working his shoulders underneath the shouldered missile launcher.
"Good. Stand-by, Section 6 Net just reported HVT-Two has entered the building. All callsigns, prepare for assault."
Four hundred meters away and another seventy-five meters up, Motoko Kusanagi's visor was locked on the streams of streaking aircar lights. She had taken an easy knee next to the safety railing of the maintenance catwalk, a lightweight "Spider" Attachment & Descend System clamped to the railing and connected via a thin but strong carbon nanotube weave rope with the ascension rig of the Stalker-M6.
Her mind, however, was not occupied with registering the visual input from her artificial eyes as anything but real-world background noise. Rather, her focus was on the internal cyberverse that permeated realspace and went beyond, virtual camera eyes gazing upon HVT-Two, Hendal Wim, as he and three salarian bodyguards entered an elevator. Other virtual eyes watched Section 6 Covert Agents in the lobby, and other digital "feelers" in the network fed her knowledge of Section 6s cybernetic surveillance measures. Calls went out over the internal network, discretely intercepted and then relayed to her by Ishikawa using the backdoors Arakami's contact had provided; the Section 6 Assault teams were moving in now. They wouldn't have long for the strike; two minutes at most.
More than enough time for her.
"HVT-Two is approaching the meeting site. Stand-by to execute." She stood up and vaulted over the railing with a CouMass-assisted flex of her legs, using a hand to steady the jump. The ascension rig pulled the descend line taut, and she rested in abseiling position, feet on the catwalk floor, hands free.
"HVT-Two is on the floor. ETA to suite, thirty seconds," Togusa reported over the Net.
"Copy", the Major replied.
Next to him, Ishikawa made a grimace. "Major, HVT-Two has increased data traffic in the spimes and relay nodes around him, and I'm seeing encrypted traffic in the network running through backbones it shouldn't. He's getting digital cover shadowing," he concluded.
Inside his own implant's vision, Ishikawa was feeding renders of the hotel network traffic activity, as localized by end nodes and users, into his visual interface, allowing him to see what caused the most traffic and where. Assisted by a special Body-Image-Interface that located and described network activity through bodily feelings Ishikawa could feel the network traffic. He saw the network activity as white, blue, violet and green renders over an orange-yellow semi-transparent wireframe render of the Hilton Megaplex Tower Four and its interior; the network hardlines veins and nerves, the mesh a complex weave of lines, end devices a variety of simple symbols and geometric shapes.
His cerebral Direct Neural Interfaces then took over the detailed mental work, pipping him the network data for deeper analysis by his own augmented mind and the dozens of subroutines and a cluster of infowarfare AIs that busily talked among themselves and with him from their racks on the other side of the aircar's cargo space.
Ishikawa frowned as he processed the information and meta-data analysis. With practiced efficiency he directed several routines under his command to grab various executive files of the unknown traffic off a traffic backbone via a government backdoor covered by various anonymizer and stealth programs. A quick trawl by one of two dedicated Enemy Software Analysis AIs revealed known STG code in several segments, mixed with a wide array of Citadel and human space-sourced code. Part of the traffic was a heavily end-to-end encrypted connection he couldn't attack without drawing attention to himself; the various subversion softwares were apparently trying to get in as early as possible, directly attacking and subverting spimes to splice their traffic off to the unknown source. Further discreet snooping revealed that the Limited Artificial Intelligence systems of the hotel security had apparently been subverted days ago; Ishikawa found several active backdoors that were introducing logic subversion worms into the system.
That explained why the LAIs weren't reacting much to Ishikawa's discrete introduction of the Dataflague shunts - their threat detection logic had been subverted by the second party. Here's hoping they haven't seen to much of our traffic yet. These guys are good. "You're seeing this Major?" he asked, sending her a package with the most important activity flagged.
"I see it," the Major confirmed. "ETA on the HVT?"
"Ten seconds," Togusa replied, tensing up. He threw a glance over to Ishikawa, who was rapidly hacking away on the physical inputs. His eyes returned to his own screens, watching the sensor fusion render of Wim and his guards, stopping before the door of Suite 0632. His eyes flickered to the biometric readouts on the four. The guards were attentive, but not overtly alarmed;Wim was calm, the "jump rate" of his eyes per minute - a calm, assured number for a salarian, his posture collected and controlled. Good. They hadn't spooked their targets overtly by any chance. The heavy digital shadowing however was… discomforting. The STG was good, that much Togusa had come to understand quickly, but Ishikawa acted like the other party had near absolute control - and that was not supposed to be happening, not on Earth, not in a Hilton, and certainly not against Section 9.
One of the guards raised a physical keycard to the lock of the suite, holding it into a trigraphic reader space; Togusa returned his attention to his own screen "HVT is at the door." One of the guards shifted, for a second seemed to gaze straight into the camera. "All Callsigns, Eagle-One. HVT-One is approaching the door...and the door is open." Trigraphic wood panels vanished into the doorframe in a complicated pattern, than the actual door slided into the side frames, splitting open in the middle. Togusa gazed upoon the face of Commodore Juan Carlo Martinez, wearing a simple blue System Alliance uniform. Martinez's biometric readout was a near-polar opposite of the salarians and especially Wim's; he was nervous, fidgeting at the mere sight of the salarians..
So, probably honey-trapped. Sorry buddy.
Togusa took a deep breath, tried to calm fingers which were suddenly trembling. His lips located the straw, and he gulped down some liquid against his dry throat. The liquid was soothingly cool. "HVTs have contact. Moving for the meeting room."
"Section 6 squads are arriving. Our window is closing", Ishikawa cautioned.
The Major's voice was cool, suddenly edging into the robotic: "Copy. All Callsigns, Falcon is going in."
[ Combat Systems on. }
[/sys/ Activating ]
[/sys/ Neural Awareness Acceleration: 2x. ]
Neurocircuitry woke from sleep mode, weaves of complex fibres, microscopic nodes and swarms of micro- and nanometer-sized robotic agents beginning their manipulation of neurons, axons and synaptic knobs. Fibre lasers discharged precise frequencies, triggering genetically engineered receptor nodes on neuronal bodies; the first steps of an internal biochemical and bioelectric cascade. In other places, where artificial elements penetrated through cell membranes, artificial secretors and electrodes discharged; ions and micro currents surging into neurons. Within two seconds, artificial activity in Kusanagi's heavily augmented brain spikes; carefully grafted xenotissue with modified properties being awoken from sleep and spliced into active neural activity. Electrode array chips surged with activity, sending signals down spliced neural pathways deeper into the brain.
The neuroprosthetic augmentations that had replaced or added to existing neural structures reacted differently; as soon as configuration packets arrived from regular CPU sets sitting on the brain's surface, nanoscopic neural elements shifted and reconfigured their onboard processing units.
More data arrived from external sources, running the translation of the DNI software, before being distributed by internal network switches to the manifold input interfaces of neural augmentations; traffic arrived in return, was translated for machine convenience, trawled for orders, knowledge, intention and awareness.
Within milliseconds, the Major vanished under an exploding tide of combat subroutines.
[/sys/ Augmentations online. No faults during Boot. ]
She sent a single Mindcom. Speech is too inefficient, too slow at this point. [ Copy. All Callsigns, Falcon is going in. ]
Two targets. Engagement position calculated. Abseiling time - 6 seconds. Commencing physical positioning.
She flexed her legs, then catapulted herself away from the catwalk in a powerful jump. The ascension rig began spooling off the wire, and gravity asserted its pull, accelerating her downwards. She fell, slightly spreading her arms and legs to adjust her air resistance, arms swinging to apply momentum that wpi;d flip her feet over head downwards in 1 second, the first half of a backflip that would end with head upwards, feet on the glass, ready to fire on targets HVT-1 and HVT-2.
Somewhere in the back of her awareness, a flare of joy surfaced; a microcurrent thumb pressed down on the dopamine discharge but it kindled deep down, inside her Ghost. Then it vanished obediently under the combat implants.
Time to engagement position - 3 seconds.
Saito watched the shape of the Major falling down the facade of the Hilton with a third eye - implants sitting in the visual cortex and its artificial biological extensions feeding him the image from one of the SpotterBots ball-mounted tracking photosensors. Under the effects of a 4x awareness acceleration, the black shape of her shell suit performed a seemingly slow, diver-like roll.
At the same time, he moved his arms, shifting his scope ever so slightly. The Hawkeye threw ballistic calculations and the fire mission for Wim's first guard as both direct knowledge into his mind and ARO visuals into his field of vision, and he shifted the crosshair onto the indicated position. Between the environmental sensors on the three bionic seagull drones, the SpotterBot next to him and inside the electronic scope of his own rifle, the Hawkeyes mathematical processors could crunch the fire mission with enormous reliability .They knew projectile mass, barrel parameters, possessed a high-fidelity wind, humidity and heat map derived from the arrays of mapping lasers and multi-frequency holographic scanners mounted on the drones and SpotterBot; any remaining accuracy issues could be easily corrected between Saito's own augmentations designed to limit weapon sway through breath, cardiovascular, and muscle control, the actuators of the combat suit he was wearing, the integrated mechanical aim assist of the rifle, and the smart guidance system of the 12mm railgun sabot that now rested in the breach, ready to be rammed down the accelerator.
Inside the scope, the target indicator came to rest on the head of the first guard, standing still, and Saito took a deep breath, inhaled.
3… 2..
He exhaled, and laid his finger on the trigger.
Held the breath.
1.
He fired.
In the center of the bolt, electromagnetic coils energized, and a tiny linear motor embedded into the bolt slammed a ramming rod forward in the span of milliseconds. The projectile was driven forward, and made contact with the two superconductive rails of the accelerator. Dozens of kilowatts of power surged through the superconductive armature of the projectile, and it began its journey down the accelerator.
By the time the sabot erupted from the muzzle and the central flechette came clear of the disintegrating sabot, it had reached a velocity of Mach 7 and had achieved a kinetic energy of 25 kilojoules - Splitting the air and causing water to condense into a white hazy trail in its wake.
Kusanagi completed the flip, and brought her feet upwards. The ascension rig arrested the line, and with a tug her fall stopped, turning into an arc that led straight towards the lower window face of Penthouse Suite 0632. Her left hand held the ScatterBug device steadily, attachment side away from her hand, while the right came down to rest on the back of the grip of her expanded Seburo ETH-2 inside its holster.
In her ARO, the five targets were glowing yellow figures visible through the sight-blocking facade and floors, two of them with red outlines and target squares over their heads. A blue line connected with another; the ballistic aim indicator of Saito's sniper rifle.
Her optics adjusted to penetrate the suites glass, and she saw Martinez and Wim, with the guards arrayed to watch the suites entrance hall; the two were apparently engaged in small talk. Wim's eyes suddenly changed direction, focused over Martinez shoulder. The man had just noticed and his body began shifting in preparation to turn when her feet slammed into the glass, and she slapped the ScatterBug against the glass.
The device expanded a series of mass effect field geometries, and began exerting forces on the glass with specific frequencies, tugging from the inner side, switching to tug from the outer side. The glass began to audibly vibrate, strained - then the ScatterBug activated its Warp charge, introducing the final stress that pushed the glass beyond its durability. The thick pane of silicone and diamonoid that could have stopped the impact of an aircar or an airborne drone broke into a thousand tiny slivers - Exposing Martinez and Wim to the outside elements.
Obstacle removed. Target HVT-1 - Distance 6 meters. X-Angle 11.6°. Y-Angle 21.2°. Target: Head and Neck. Goal: Destruction of cranial case, brain matter, and Stack. Ballistic Lock achieved. Engaging.
She pulled the trigger on her pistol, still one-handed. The weapon slammed the 5mm explosive sabot in the breach forward, and into the accelerator. Nanoscopic eezo cores arrayed along the gauss accelerator in a triangular pattern fluxed with current, emitting dark energy that was captured and directed by waveguides towards the accelerator proper. Solid-state emitter components modulated the field, and the air and projectile within the accelerator barrel suddenly seemed to lose mass as the Mass Effect metric manifested itself; the gramm-heavy flechette turning into a tenth-gram object. Thus lightened, the gauss accelerator fired the projectile out of the muzzle at Mach 10, and straight into Martinez's head.
The projectile slammed into Martinez's neck, where head and spine met, burrowing itself into the flesh in a bright flash as parts of the projectile evaporated away, a compression shockwave expanding across the skin, the flesh caving in around the wound before exploding outwards in a slow spray of skin parts, blood, and covering flesh.
She fired a second, then a third time into his braincase proper, then shifted her aim towards Wim, second hand coming up to steady the pistol. The salarian had got as far as turning to dive behind a couch, presenting his head's right side to her: a perfect target.
She fired three shots into him as well, all three hitting their computer-guided marks in a triangular spread all over the head, penetrating through the outer skin, synthetic anchoring and nurturing surface before hitting the braincase and drilling through the alloy-composite shell and shock gel that protected the augmented brain within. Only then the smart fuzes embedded within the projectiles detonated the explosive payload, sending buckminsterfullerene nanocomposite shrapnel into the neuronal tissue .
The first salarian guard was unfolding a handgun from a prosthetic arm holster when Saito's round flashed into the suite on the Majors left and caught him straight in the head, detonating an instant later; the bodyguards barrier flashing and failing in an instant. The other two guards had just taken cover, one behind a chair and another behind a wall, when the other two rounds arrived in quick succession; both were thrown across the room, their heads spilling salarian flesh, blood, white ECF fluid and grey-pallet colored cybernetic components.
"HVTs are down!", Togusa confirmed on the Net.
"Moving to Phase two." Ishikawa chimed in. "Section 6 is in the elevator. Building alarms are suppressed and Dataflague is holding. Engaging enemy digital cover for maximum effect." Ishikawa triggered the carefully placed attack software he had prepared all throughout the network, and watched as they all went into action in the same instant, cutting network connections, attacking the enemy bandwidth and shredding software into digital junk while forcing reboots on subverted spimes and network nodes. Then he moved onto the offensive and began chipping away at the remote connection, funneling trojans disguised as normal data packets down the channels.
The response was quicker than he liked, the opposition's own hacking attempts throwing themselves against his defensive barriers, but so far the digital battle was in Ishikawa's favor, and he prepared his withdrawal from the cybernetic battlefield.
On the overwatch position, Borma flipped the safety of the launcher. The ARO window of the missile confirmed his orientation and the target, and the trajectory in between the two.
[ SHOOT ]
"NTB is locked!", he shouted.
"Backblast clear!", Saito confirmed, already getting up from his shooting position.
"Major, get out of there. Firing!" Borma depressed the trigger.
She threw a last look into the room. Martinez head was complete and utter mulch - Not a chance of recovering either neural matter, his implants or the stack. Wim's head was a similar mess of flesh, shellskin, and cyberbrain components. Perfect.
Her Shell Suit made her acutely aware of the white contrail of the NTB round racing towards her and the suite. With a neural command she disengaged the Cable Spider above her, and gave herself over the pull of gravity as she send another neural command.
[ /i\ ENGAGING THERMOPTIC CAMOUFLAGE /i\ ]
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| [ 20% ] _]
With a Flicker, the thermoptic camouflage began engaging, muddying her outlines as the sensor and display elements began replicating the environment on the skin of the Shell suit, peltier elements cooling and heating the skin. The glass facade, a silvery image of herself and the cityscape over her head, blurred as she picked up speed. From her perspective, the NTB missile drew a white contrail from above downwards, and through the facade into the suite.
A moment of silence.
Then the flames of the thermobaric explosion burst outwards, sending the remaining glass with them in a ocean of orange and red. The shockwave hit her, let the thermoptic camouflage flicker for just a second-
-and then she vanished into the cityscape, a final ripple on the foaming waves on a sunlit sea, arms spreading out to unfold transparent wings.
/. Data of Interest Recovery Operation 21204 failed
/. This could be expected. We will acquire desired data or equivalent through other means for us
/. A momentary setback. The Plan is still in motion. Acquisition and Aggregation is moving within nominal timeframe. The Plan is not threatened.
/. We will have our ascension
Transhuman technology has changed our society in many ways. The ability to throw off our inborn weaknesses and augment our strengths, to breathe in a dozen atmospheres, to live free of the chains of our natural bodies, and to open our minds to the wider dataverse of our own creation.
But this is not just a positive change. With DNIs, Cyberbrains, Cyborg Shells and AGI came more crime, new crime. Infocrime threatens the very foundations, thoughts and Ghosts of people; Cyberterrorists are harder to kill, kill better, and evade detection easier.
And now these threats are not only undermining human society, but Citadel Space as well. And as human criminals, terrorists and groups of interests have exploited new technologies in the past, so are Citadel actors moving to do so now. We are all threatened equally.
A special response is needed to address these new threats. A unit with the firepower, equipment, wits and skills to face any Cyberterrorist, and contain the worst and most clever of Infocrimes.
That response is Public Security Section 9.
My name is Motoko Kusanagi. Welcome to the Galaxy of 2232.
A/N: Enjoy!
