Senshi Sabers
Chapter 43
'GOD, Hotaru is good looking,' Kaori thought dreamilly.
Kaori Knight was Hotaru's executive assistant and, functionally, the third most powerful person at Infinity. More or less anyway. In addition to secretarial duties she signed off on a lot of routine matters, as well as making executive decisions. And sometimes firing folks.
All that work, and she still had time to moon over her boss.
"And what are YOU daydreaming about?" Hazuki Shinai teased as she sat down across from her friend in the cafeteria.
"Nothing, nothing," Kaori lied.
Hazuki looked amused, "Imagining Miss Tomoe in a swimsuit again?"
"HAZUKI!" Kaori hissed.
Hazuki just smirked.
Both met for lunch when they could, though Kaori usually ate at her desk. Hazuki, being a computer geek, also did that, while working on updating security protocols and such. But at least once a week, they managed to get together.
"I FINALLY traced back the hack we had a few weeks ago," Hazuki noted, "but it turned out to be a public library computer, of all things."
"Not unexpected," Kaori noted. "Did you get a picture of who was using it?"
"The internal security systems were down," Hazuki groaned.
"Probably why they picked the location," Kaori agreed.
"Yup. Worse, security teams actually spotted the hack and responded... but I only heard about them acting days ago!" Hazuki sighed.
"Ouch," Kaori winced. "If you think there was a real screw up, let me know," Kaori told her, "I'll pass it on to Hotaru."
"I'll look into it and let you know," Hazuki promised.
A ringing phone interrupted them. "Thatr's yours, I think...," Kaori noted.
"Shit," Hazuki cursed. Her work cellphone going off was almost certainly not a good thing... "Yes. What. WHAT?"
Kaori got a sinking feeling.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Infinity had multiple facilities across Japan, for various purposes. What the public was unaware of were various covert bases where projects went on, and in some cases data was stored.
Beryl directed her bioboomer troops like a surgeon. The outer fence was breached, the inner doors broken, then they swept inside. Interestingly the women were all dressed in regular street clothes, unlike other attacks.
"Don't hurt us! We surrender!" a tech bleated.
A bioboomer casually slammed the man into a wall, pulping his head.
Beryl just ignored that as she strode by. They used a downloaded map of the facility to access the subbasement, where the target was.
(They had found out about the target during questioning of Dr Yuri. But the Madigan operation was ongoing, and there was a limited amount of resources. So they had decided to delay this, while also not letting on that they knew.)
"There..." Beryl purred as they breached the data center.
Prof. Tomoe had been paranoid in his later years. He was constantly concerned someone would steal his work, or possibly destroy it. So he had covertly set up a data archive for his work. THIS data archive, in fact.
"Data carriers, plug into the units," Beryl ordered.
Several bioboomers moved up, plugging into the huge mainframes. They had been rebuilt with enormous data capacity, and the group began to raid the stored files, scooping up all the research and development files.
"Commander, the latest updates were months before Tomoe died," one reported.
Beryl scowled. The old man had MANUALLY downloaded updates into here. Old fashioned fool. Still, they would likely have some of the data they wanted.
"Download complete," the leading drone reported.
Just in time, too. They could hear sirens off in the distance.
"Should we kill the responding police?" one combat drone asked.
Beryl thought about it a second then ordered, "No. Concentrate on protecting the data carriers as we leave."
The group emerged from the building, then scattered before the cops even had the chance to see them...
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"WHY have I not heard about this facility until now?" Hotaru asked flatly as they were dropped off via armored car.
"I didn't know about this until today," Hazuki admitted, "my office was notified due to an totally automated alert. Otherwise, this was kept completely outside the company."
"Seriously?" Kaori blinked.
"Yes, ma'am," Hazuki sighed, addressing them both.
Hotaru swore softly as they went in. The police were swarming over the facility, along with the AD Police. There were a LOT of bodies scattered about, too.
"Miss Tomoe, so glad you could join us," the officer smiled dryly.
"Miss Emerald, nice to see you again," Hotaru nodded. "Do the police have a casualty report?"
Emi flatly said, "The coroner service is still on site. We won't have numbers until they're done."
Hotaru saw no one being kept aside to be questioned, which implied the losses were total. "My people need to get into the facility to assess the damage," she said grimly.
"CSI teams will be in there for hours trying to gather evidence," Emi shook her head.
"Why do you need to gather evidence?" Hazuki had to ask. "It's a rogue bioboomer attack..."
Emi cut her off as she said, "We don't KNOW that. It could be they were sent by a corporate rival, for instance."
"You know that's unlikely," Hotaru argued, but Emi looked stubborn.
They back and fourthed a bit longer, then Hazuki pulled the other women aside. "There's no point in us all just waiting here," she said bluntly, "why don't I wait them out, and you two go back to the tower?"
"I have just giving in," Hotaru admitted.
"No one likes giving into petty paper pushers, but sometimes you just have to let it go," Hazuki shrugged slightly.
"Thank you," Kaori sighed, "call if something comes up."
"Will do," Hazuki waved.
With that, Hotaru and Kaori reluctantly headed off...
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Wait, WHAT?" Ami Muzuno demanded after she was woken from a sound sleep.
Minako repeated, "Apparently that nutjob Tomoe had an entire backup of his secret files, stored in a remote location."
"And Nine's raided it," Ami noted.
"Yeah," Minako agreed, "my bosses are arguing it might be a corporate raid, but I got a scan of the security footage. The attack was led by the same bioboomer that commanded the team that tried to kill Madigan."
Ami was tempted to point out it could be some new, mass produced line they just didn't know about... but she had to admit that was unlikely. "Al right, thank you for keeping me informed," Ami said. "Can you update me as more comes up?"
"I'll try," Minako cautioned as she explained, "there's officers from all over sticking their noses in to this case. The confusion helps me, but it also increases the odds of someone randomly spotting something I'm doing."
Ami hung up, then lay back with a sigh.
"I'm up," Rei sighed too, laying in the bed beside her.
"Sorry," Ami apologized for waking her.
Conversationally Rei asked, "So how badly are we hosed?"
Ami snickered. "I generally was planning based on Nine having Tomoe's data," she admitted, "so it won't change much for us."
"Ah," Rei blinked.
"Mind you, the police are in trouble," Ami admitted, "especially if Nine can continue to upgrade her troops."
Rei's eyes widened slightly, "That's why you want Haruka and Michiru in armor too. To counter Nine's forces."
"Exactly," Ami agreed. She lay there a bit, then got up with a sigh, "Can't sleep. I'm going to work... you're welcome to try to rest though."
Rei got up too, "I'll put the coffee on..."
To be continued...
Notes: I need to do a Makoto bit, and more Setsuna stuff...