16 White Knight
Ashton looked away from his monitors. His scroll chimed again. The third account. Ronin.
"Is that your scroll? Aren't you gonna check it?", came the voice from his wireless earpiece.
"Nah. Whoever that is, they can wait.", he replied.
Ronin's messages were exempt from silent mode for a reason. They absolutely couldn't wait. Ash pulled up the encrypted chat app in one monitor, continuing to go through the warehouse security server on two others.
"Hey! Fingerprints as GateKeep 2.7.96-3. If this is right-"
"The underflow is in play. Told you.", Ash smirked.
"Who doesn't keep their security software updated?"
Ashton scoffed.
"You don't want me to answer that. It's hilarious how much some people pay for zero-days when this is the crap you're actually up against."
He casually closed the encrypted vault that contained his notes on not-yet-public zero-days. This was proving to be much easier than that. He executed the tampered-with connection software from one of the virtual machines.
"Like taking candy from a baby.", Elena commented over voice chat.
Ashton scoffed.
"Not even close. We just broke into a jail. Literally. I've got nothing if they've hot-patched the host kernel."
Nothing he'd be willing to waste on a low-impact contract like this, at least.
"Come on. We got this. They haven't bothered to update the server component. No way the OS is up to date."
"I'll agree with you when we're in and see that we're not all over their security logs. I need more coffee. Keep an eye on the output parser."
Ash slid his chair back a few feet and turned to the side table, tapping a button to freeze his chat camera once he was out of view. He poured himself a fresh cup from the coffee maker on a small side table by the window. He got back to his desk and typed his password for the secure chat. A new message from Ronin.
URGENT: Ètoile compromised. On the run. Needs RV, E04B, time TBD. Less than 24h.
What the hell?!
He knew he was breaking protocol, but fresh intel seemed worth it. He knew what Indigo was up to. No way this was a coincidence Ètoile was going to suddenly be in Mistral in less than a day. It was a long shot, but calling Indigo was worth a try. He tapped his scroll a few times and set it on the table, speaker on.
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
"Shit. Not good."
He typed a message on the chat.
I'll make it there in 8-12h. Was she involved in this?
Ronin's reply was, to Ash's surprise, immediate.
Negative. Ètoile's own move was what gave her a way in. She's escorting Ètoile now. Just heard they're off the grounds. Need access to a neutral location and then exfil immediately.
Of course. Ronin wouldn't call me just to get me to Mistral. Time to pull off another miracle in five minutes. Explains why Hikari didn't answer, too.
With respect, could've just told me they need need support now. So eyes and acess? Location?
Had to assume you wouldn't see my message in time. Site E19.
Ashton laughed.
I need to get back to my day job to avoid raising suspicion but Site E19 is just as well under our control as E09… for obvious reasons.
The reply was again immediate.
If you take too long, they will die.
Ash choked on his coffee. For having assumed Ash wouldn't be there to help, Ronin sure seemed desperate now. He could only hope she was exaggerating,but if Ètoile was involved… This was real. He hastily typed a message to his 'real' work chat, making up a story about having spilled hot coffee on himself. Not like Elena would tell the boss. The software had parsed the password hash but wasn't even close to breaking it. He ignored Elena's reply and opened an encrypted voice chat. Surprisingly, Ronin answered.
"Safe to talk?", Ash asked.
"Get them in, now. Every second counts."
Yet another virtual machine with another chain of secured, supposedly untraceable proxies popped up. He smirked when he realized the machine automatically brought up the taps he'd installed on the camera feeds months ago. Another business with no one actually auditing network security.
"I have the feeds. Access control inside is mostly disabled during the day it looks like. Nothing on the fences. There's blind spots on all sides but I'm gonna assume they're coming from the east?"
"Correct."
"Okay. Pulling up the area map. There's two possible openings, south looks better. Gives them more cover when inside. They'll need to climb the fence, though. I don't have access to the locks, and the outer gates are too conspicuous anyway."
Ash then sighed, frustrated.
"Now… Boss. Ronin. What happened in there?"
The line went silent.
"Get them a way in. I suspect their scrolls are being traced so we don't have luxury of real-time communication. She's capable, and you know how she thinks. Clear them a path. Make absolutely certain there's no evidence of this.
The line went completely dead. Ash cursed. With Atlas Cargo Terminal 5:s cameras now covering one entire screen, Ash turned to another one, his 'real' work.
Gods, Jason, I hope you're okay! :o I can take it from here if you need to. We're just babysitting the hash crack anyway.
True, they were, but…
If their monitoring flags the weird login attempt, those creds could be history in hours. I want that password, I want to prove this is real.
You just want the bounty. :p
I mean, obviously, but it's the rush of winning I'm really after. :D
Get a change of clothes, treat the burn, take a shower… whatever you need. You already got us the hash. I'll take it from here.
Ash started typing a reply to protest.
I see you're typing. Don't. Stop arguing. I'll handle the passphrase. You handle your legs.
He had to wonder if she'd been so accommodating if his legs worked properly to begin with. He buried the thought, and the chat window, under a map of Cargo Terminal Five.
Ashton had had to improvise a five-second buffer into the surveillance network. He saw the life feed, but for everyone else, there was a five-second delay between the camera and the recorder. He also put together a quick script to have any camera link replay the oldest two seconds on a loop, not the live view. He started with the west-facing outside cameras, knowing those were the first cameras needing blinding. Thankfully, it took fifteen minutes for Indigo and Ètoile to show up, exactly where he'd assumed. At least they were both physically in one piece. Ashton quickly compared an area map with the camera feeds.
"Please see those crates to the southeast…"
Indigo, as professional as always, quickly lead Ètoile to a boulder near the east wall. To her credit, indigo was actually invisible to Ash most of the time. He un-froze the cam feed whenever he could, just to make sure someone watching wouldn't notice anything weird. A few other cameras inside were just as easy.
If he'd had to justify it to someone, he'd have told them he was assessing the mansion security's movements. In reality, he knew mansion security had stood down. There was no one in the woods. They had no idea where Hikari and Weiss were. He just wanted to see how Jacques was reacting.
Holy sh-
There was a massive fire burning in the mansion's yard. One of the garden sheds was in flames. Guards were carrying their wounded teammates to the staff annex of the mansion.
What in the gods' name happened here?
The courtyard was like a war zone. This wasn't Hikari's style. She struck with surgical precision. Ash was starting to understand why Ronin had sounded so urgent. If things had gone to shit, Hikari and Weiss were lucky to be alive.
Ash went through the interior cameras. Aside from predictably panicked staff and security sweeping the mansion, there was nothing unusual. Nothing had happened inside. Ash opened a specific feed from the basement.
Typical. Damn coward.
The heavy metal door next to the security room in the subbasement was closed and latched shut. Jacques Schnee was cowering in his panic room. The room had an intercom and a video conference system. The control freak could never let go. Problem was, they were used to rarely Ash had never gotten a chance to break the datalink encryption. It would take days, or weeks, of pattern analysis on a continuous stream to even get started.
Something caught Ash's eye in another security stream. Tired blue eyes and a constant frown, pacing in a second floor study. His private study. Ash wasn't actually sure if these few cameras, on a different net from the rest and with directional mics, were even installed my Jacques. People as paranoid as his security team wouldn't allow non-encrypted streams, even on a supposedly air-gapped net. They covered his study, a couple of lounges, and in general, areas people didn't want recorded. Either he wanted his business meetings recorded privately for blackmail material, or it was all her.
Willow Schnee stopped pacing and sat down as someone entered the office. Ash picked up his headphones and started a decode the audio stream.
"The refreshments you requested, ma'am."
"Thank you, Evelyn."
"Of course, ma'am. Is there anything else you require?"
"How… are things out there?"
"As far as we can see, security is coming back. Cleaning staff were instructed to clean up the lounge so your husband is likely considering returning upstairs. It will take them a while to ensure the glass shards are all gone from the carpet, of course. Your and your husband's safety comes first."
"Are they coming back with-?"
The staff member walked to the camera view. She seemed to be smirking.
"Your daughter is far too skilled for that, ma'am. Mr. Schnee's 'punishment' for your daughter's alleged defiance didn't break her. Neither will this. The monsters in the training room never stood a chance."
"Oh, thank the gods!", Willow exclaimed, pouring herself a drink. "But I have to wonder which monsters you're referring to.",
Ashton smiled. There were people loyal to the real Schnee family in the mansion still.
"Don't worry, ma'am. What your husband did… quite frankly, ma'am, I can't imagine a person doing it to anyone, let alone family. I'd imagine he was incredibly unhappy but-"
"But that doesn't excuse he way he treated our daughter. Or my inaction in the matter."
"She got out in time. You didn't know."
"She's my daughter.", Willow protested, pouring herself another drink.
"You didn't know."
Something caught Ashton's attention in another feed. Something moved in the library. A shelf was moving, being swung back toward the wall. Concordia knew there was secret escape routes in the mansion, they just hadn't expected to see them used. When the secret door closed, Ash caught a few frames of the person doing it.
Klein Sieben?!
The Schnee children's butler was sneaking around in the dark library. Ice cold dread filled Ashton as he realized something.
If I caught him exiting the tunnel…
If Klein had helped Weiss escape through this tunnel, they'd been caught on camera. Ash still had no clear idea what sort of atrocity Jacques had committed against Weiss, but if the disaster zone outside was any indication, anyone involved in Weiss' escape was in mortal danger.
Half an hour had gone by, Hikari mostly avoiding the cameras by herself, only needing Ash to speed things up a handful of times. She was approaching the hangar with Ètoile.
"Oh sh-. Not good."
A staff break room sat in the corner of the office building… right by the hangar Indigo was trying to reach. Hikari and Weiss had stopped. They were looking for a way that didn't take them past the break room windows. Quickly looking through the nearby cameras, Ash spotted Hikari looking toward the front of the hangar. One of the cameras revealed a small door to the hangar, right by the main doors at the front. A scan of the security network, meanwhile… revealed a lot of cameras labeled 'Hangar6'. And a problem.
Sh- why are they covering one single hangar with different type cams?
The cameras were in the network but their signal was unreadable. The feeds were encrypted. Covert tampering was going to be impossible.
Okay, okay… Stealth is out. She's going to move eventually and those cameras need to be gone.
Ash went back to looking at all the devices in the network, not just security itself. Something familiar popped up.
"Well, if I can't sneak in the shadows they have… Just need to make more shadows.", he smirked to himself.
Strike one: Allied Power PB44532 was a backup power source with a lot of capacity and reliable fail-over. It also had a ridiculous weakness. Its networked control panel was secured fine, but the diagnostics mode was not. Its password was different from normal administration, and the manual didn't even let the user know it was there. He'd spotted the vulnerability in a PD 4267 years ago, but Allied refused to do anything about it, and kept using the same software.
Told you it'd be a liability nightmare one day.
To the surprise of exactly no one, the diagnostic interface was up on the default port, with the factory password. There were a few particularly nasty commands it allowed the user to run.
"DC bus maintenance mode… on."
Strike two: It was possible to disconnect the battery banks, all of them at once, for maintenance. It was terrible design for something that was supposed to act as a backup if power went out.
Ash waited for a few moments until Hikari was angrily glaring at a status light on a camera.
Strike three: breakers for the power input could be cycled at any time, remotely. Done from the diagnostics menu, there were no fail-safes.
One last command. Encrypted network traffic in the security network disappeared. To Ash's surprise, the older security server he was connected to also disappeared.
"Idiots. Sharing a backup power source between multiple security servers.", he scoffed to himself. Hikari and Weiss were on their own, but security was definitely in chaos.
Ash sipped coffee and looked over to the passphrase crack he was officially working on. Still nothing. He started to wonder if he'd been wrong. The base pay for the job was a joke. He needed the bonuses for actually uncovering exposure. He looked over to another monitor and started a secure voice chat. He was almost surprised when the call was actually picked up.
"They're heading in now. Lost my eyes when I blinded the place, but honestly, Indigo didn't need my help to begin with."
"Every minute you saved them could make all the difference. I refuse to believe their pursuers gave up after losing them the first time.", Ronin replied.
Ash cursed under his breath.
"I'll be honest with you. I'm on the E09 network. The place is a war zone. Security has their hands full there. With respect, ma'am, what the hell happened? I can't do my best work blind."
"Do you know about Indigo's mission?"
"Obviously. Had nothing to with Ètoile, last I heard. And nothing with torching buildings."
"Watch your tone."
"Don't forget I'm not military. Ma'am. You need my skills. And you need my family's help. You came to me."
There was heavy silence for a quite a few moments.
"As a favor to you, I'll pretend you didn't say that. Regardless, you're not going to let Indigo down. Or Ètoile."
Ash had another sip of coffee. Ronin knew how to push his buttons. All thanks to 'Indigo', no doubt.
"Obviously. I need just need more information to do my job."
Ronin cleared her throat.
"You asked what happened. A coincidence, essentially. Indigo was getting ready to execute her mission when… Ètoile apparently escaped. Apparently… apparently he attacked Ètoile. I was warned by… someone inside. I don't know more that that."
"I might. Happened to hear her over the cameras that aren't supposed to exist.", Ash commented dryly. "Also, Klein Sieben's life is likely in danger if someone doesn't wipe the security feeds this instant. Can't be done remotely."
"What?!"
Of course Ronin didn't know.
"I heard staff talk. He somehow set up Ètoile to be attacked. Punishment for her escape plan. Impossible training exercise, on the surface at least. It looks like Klein may have helped Ètoile escape. Cameras caught Klein coming back to the mansion, and probably him leaving with Ètoile, too."
"He what?!", Ronin practically screamed.
"Makes no sense to me either."
"How do we get Klein out? He's our best hope for understanding what happened. And… we owe him. We owe him everything."
"You sure do, boss."
Ash regretted his snark as soon as he'd said it. Ronin was having enough trouble with everything. The Schnee situation was turning into something totally insane.
"Boss… I'll make a call, try to see if I still have friends in just the right places."
"We don't have time for your vagueness. What are you planning?"
"Mansion tech staff. Mr. Thirty-Two helped me jump the gap to the isolated surveillance net two months ago. He has to be pissed with the old man after today. That camera will have been conveniently offline today."
"Green light. Just save Sieben, and get those two out of E19."
"I'll do everything I can, ma'am."