A standard commercial flight from Europe to California took around ten hours on planes that traveled around six-hundred miles per hour. Ten hours was an unacceptable amount of time to respond to a category four breach, much less a category five breach as the situation updated to be. Then again, category four breaches almost always escalate to category five within the first hour. If this event had occurred somewhere in Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, or the eastern coast of America, then they could have possibly arrived before it reached that point.
Of course, they were not so lucky. All the way in Night City, almost the opposite end of the planet. It was downright irritating at times.
At least ten category four breaches per year, and this one just has to happen so far away that it is almost guaranteed to escalate to a category five. It's not quite as bad as it used to be during the sixties, but it certainly wasn't convenient.
Fifty years later, and he was still having to deal with Bartmoss' messes, it was a frustration he had long gotten used to.
Ten hours was an unacceptable amount of time to respond to such disasters, thankfully he had managed to wrangle near-universal backing in the years since he was sworn in as Director-in-chief, and thus they had access to some much-needed equipment.
Namely, a transport jet that traveled at mach 3.3. It could carry fifteen agents and all their equipment, one armored transport, one supercooled mobile server, and a handful of support staff. It was a custom model, too big to be used for black-ops deep strikes, and too small to be used for full scale transport. It was only useful for moving a very small force across the planet without concerns for stealth.
He was glad he managed to snag the prototype for Netwatch during the Troubled Years. 'Betty Boop' has been immensely useful since.
Footsteps behind him alerted him to an oncomer rounding the corner. He was already turned around and staring at the doorway before it opened.
Agent Smith was at the door, having knocked twice before opening. A young man, a member of the Wolves division, currently a part of breachgroup Gamma. Wearing the form-fitting and smart-cooled Netwatch armored bodysuit, their standard armored smart-helmet, and a nice pair of steel-toed boots. He was utterly unexceptional among the Netwatch Veterans, if a nice enough lad.
"Director Curtis? ETA is less than ten minutes." The smooth British accent came from his visored helm. It was frustrating to parse the spoken word, but it was yet another thing he had long gotten used to.
"Thank you Icewolf, I'll be out in a moment." He replied, slowing his words down to match his pace. Smith nodded and closed the door.
Once upon a time such labels were derogatory, but resolving that was as simple as adopting the names as official terminology. ICE-Wolves. Weasels. ICE-Men. The three main divisions of Netwatch, each with a different specialization and slightly different skill-set.
The Icewolves patrolled a territory, much like a realspace police officer, looking out for any potential virtual crime and either reporting it or handling it on their own. They only ever moved in groups of five or more, to help offset any potential risk of bribery. Peer-pressure was a powerful and useful tool when used properly, in this case it helped to counteract corruption among his ranks. It was important to their mission to make sure his agents weren't just as bad as the cybercriminals they chased.
The Weasels were the investigative branch. They infiltrated, scouted out hostile data-fortresses, and reported back on what they found. Much of the dirty work of Netwatch was handled by them, and they had the unfortunate habit of going rogue if left alone long enough. It didn't seem to matter what policies he enacted to help offset that, so he simply went with the best ones yet found and dedicated a significant portion of his free time to clean up after them. It was always a headache to see what new nonsense one of them had gotten up to.
The Icemen, if you gave them an equivalent in realspace, were the riot-officers. The military-police. The hammer of Netwatch. They were the best of the best among his men, and he didn't tolerate any corruption among them. They were those entrusted to the highest levels of duty.
Containing and Destroying hostile AI.
He finished strapping on his Battledeck, only slowed slightly by the aches and pains in his joints. They weren't major, but there wasn't anything he could do for them at this point.
'Magnificent' Curtis, Director-In-Chief of Netwatch, was an old man. His body was just as capable as it was in his youth, but there was wear and tear building up regardless. His black hair and long beard was splashed with grays and whites, his dark skin getting creased along his eyes, his bones protesting a bit more every time he got out of bed. Modern medicine and bioware could only do so much, and it was less and less each year.
But he couldn't rest yet, not while he still had work to do, not while he still had other people's messes to clean up. He owed that much to the world, at least.
Because if he didn't, who would?
Grabbing his cane, he walked out from the small private room on the Betty Boop, one of two rooms normally reserved for emergency repair components, and entered the cargo bay, the largest room of the slightly jostling plane. There were only four rooms on the plane, and two of those were closer to storage closets. Still, he preferred the brief period of quiet and respite.
In the cargo, there was the armored transport.
It was an armored, four-door, flatbed truck with a modified camper on the back. The truck carried up to five people in the front, ten in the camper unit, and one very expensive and very large supercooled mobile server in the back.
It was a very nice truck. Not anything fancy, but it did the job well enough and they didn't hurt the budget too much per unit. Besides, every man could appreciate a good truck.
And there on the floor in front of the truck were his agents, quickly putting their decks of cards and empty smash cans away to strap on their gear and start piling into the transport. Physical cards, because when you work in this line of business you learn to appreciate not having to worry about viruses or spyware in your hobbies.
They were relatively relaxed as they moved, joking with each other and making light of the situation that they were soon to enter. It was the first category five for around a third of them, but the veterans would pull the rest through with minimal casualties. There wasn't any point in worrying about it going in, that would just distract them from their mission.
All of this, their joking and banter, he saw in slow motion. A kerenzikov was, in many ways, one of the best ways to simulate hell. A slow, quiet, lonely world. When heard at the accelerated pace of a kerenzikov, even sound became muted. Separated from all but a handful of others moving at your speed, it truly was a tortuous experience.
There was a common saying, however. My kingdom for a moment of time.
There were many ways of dealing with solitude, a lack of time was a significantly larger problem. Without the kerenzikov, he wouldn't be able to handle his workload, and although he had successors lined up and secretaries abound, not one of them could truly replace him yet. Not one of them was quite capable enough to hold everything together.
The last time he tried to delegate more, the sixties happened. The world couldn't afford him slacking off anymore.
He walked through the bustle of his agents, opened the door to the truck, and stepped up into the passenger side. Lounging back and stretching for a moment, he sent a non-verbal message to the designated driver. Agent Williams was keeping in communication with whatever local force he had been able to reach and was compiling the data-packet to send to each of the agents once they arrived.
[Icewolf Williams. The situation?] He preferred the messaging system, as although it took a small time to compose messages, it was much faster than having to sit through another's slow words.
[Director. It's a bit strange down there right now.]
Oh? [Elaborate.]
[Well, only about a third of the expected casualties for one, and the list of participants might interest our Weasels.]
A third of the expected casualties was excellent news, he was very glad to hear that. [Notable participants?]
[Well ol' Wallace jumped right on the breach just as it started and deployed a Whitewall. Guess that explains where he went off to for his retirement. The local agents got there about thirty minutes later and started helping, that would be AWC Icewolves Stevenson and Hawks, and Weasel Mosley.]
He made a note of those names to look into later. Thirty minutes to respond wasn't unheard of, but he had some pointed questions for the three of them. He also made a note to check up on Wally if he found the time to.
[Around one-hour after the breach started, it escalated into a category five. Around ten minutes later Vatican Wiseman Caspar carried a Metatron Iteration up to join in holding off the RABID. Willing to bet that's why the casualty count is so low.]
[Where is the local Temple server?] he asked, bringing up a map of the city in his vision.
[Down in Pacifica, about the exact opposite side of the city from the breach.]
So their response was just as quick as it always was. He hadn't met Caspar yet, but if he was anything like Melchior or Balthasar, then he would have to speak with him later. The three Wisemen of the Vatican were all students of Davis, which meant they had their individual quirks buried under their professionalism.
[Who else?] He asked.
[Recluse joined almost immediately, and is apparently still there.]
He narrowed his eyes. Best to not antagonize, his dislike of the woman was mostly from the company she used to keep after all. It would have been nice to bring her in, but it just wasn't worth the manpower. If she had left her web for this, then he'd have to keep watch for any of her traps.
[Most interesting of all, Adam Smasher got flown over from Japan after the RABID came through. His Conjoin joined in and… well… it's certainly something. Sending the file now.]
He opened it to see a twenty-five minute clip taken by one of the local monitor programs they had access to. In the distance he saw…
The Butcher's Conjoin brawling the RABID with what looked like persistent weapon programs. Unsurprisingly, the high grade Arasaka equipment was enough for him to keep up for a brief time. He narrowed his optics and paused the recording, zooming and looking closer at the programs.
…They were hollow. Shells of icon-fire wrapped around nothing. There was no underlying code.
His curiosity stirred. Now just how are you doing that? It was clearly having an effect on the RABID and on himself, evidenced by those wing-booster program-shells. It was having an effect on the server, without having code itself.
That meant… it had to be a server-side effect then? The shell was only for the visual convenience of those who saw the net through virtuality, the actual code was on a deeper layer.
How fascinating, this meant it had to be…
[Director?] There was a message that interrupted his thoughts. Ah, this was no time to lose himself in discovery. His age was getting to him. He let the video continue. The Conjoin held up about as well as could be expected, and then just as suddenly it was smeared across the sky. A sub-screen opened up to show a few seconds of Adam Smasher's rampage in realspace, before he suddenly crashed to the asphate and ceased to move.
…It wasn't a Conjoin, at least, not the way that they would define them. An engram linked to the neuralware of the original would still include at least one degree of separation. Its termination wouldn't result in the original undergoing brain death like this. That meant that this was an entity directly linked to his mind, which meant…
…It was him. The Conjoin wasn't a linked entity at all, it was him directly. He was capable of his standard level of combat prowess and a moderate level of full-immersion netrunning simultaneously. That meant the highest level of high-functioning schizophrenia ever recorded, a level of multi-tasking that was essentially godlike, or some implant that allows him to partition his mind. Knowing his capacity for cybernetics, and Arasaka's affinity for innovation in esoteric fields, he was betting on the third option.
But discounting the other two while not having sufficient evidence to disprove them would be foolish. He couldn't confirm or deny them yet.
He probably wasn't dead, the video had twenty-four minutes left to go, and he trusted his gut.
His gut was proven correct when, at the end of the video (he fast-forwarded until something on the screen changed significantly) the smear that used to be Adam Smasher's mind started to shift.
All at once, it rushed back to itself, and reformed the ICON in a suitably dramatic manner. After a moment, it (pointlessly) kicked off the air to speed down and rejoin the fight below.
The video ended, and he repeated the last few moments over and over as the jet landed, Jenkins assumed field command, and Williams started driving them from the landing strip to the Gatehouse Server.
Now, how did you manage that, Adam Smasher?
—
The truck drove up the bridge leading to the gatehouse server, already cleared by the local police and allowed to pass to link up with the local agents.
There, next to a Model-GH Pickup, were four agents, three police netrunners, and an unknown girl. His Internal Agent cycled through databases until he got a match. Lucyna Kushinada, lover of the apprentice of Adam Smasher, noted for being a critical element in the battle against Grandmaster Blackbeard. Her file was marked 'potential recruit'. Which means she was mostly clear.
He exited from the truck, using his cane as more of a false fashion statement than a walking aid. Hopefully, he didn't need to use it for its proper use ever again. His agents, still in a joking mood, greeted retired agent Wally as they booted up and started to enter Virtuality.
"Well if it ain't ol' 'Mack the Knife', you enjoying your retirement old man?" Agent Johnson greeted with a grin, his words followed quickly by other greetings from his agents.
"Well it was going great until the great clay jackass showed up. What took you brats so long?" Wally, never one to take banter lying down, shot back quickly, even as focused as he was on the sky before him.
He let his cane tap against the asphate as he walked forwards, slowly, deliberately. Presentation was important for maintaining the image of Netwatch. These slow taps served as a subtle way to tell his agents to put on their 'war faces', so to speak.
He walked up to Wally, and the three potential slackers, and braced himself on his cane. He locked his joints in a specific manner, a technique he had figured out to increase the public appeal of Netwatch by doing 'cool things'. That public appeal meant more merchandise sales, which meant more funding, which meant they could get better equipment.
That, and he always loved it when the occasional child sent him a message saying they wanted to be Netwatch Wizards like him when they grew up. Those were always nice to read. The first time it happened he grew out his beard and started wearing his cloak.
Then, focusing on his link to his Battledeck, he stepped out of his body and into the NET.
The clash of ICONs in the distance was just as intense as all RABID breaches were, programs being rezzed and scattered, data-assaults being flung about and redirected in scant moments. He perceived it all at a sedate pace.
Behind him, the ICONs of fifteen Netwatch Elites rose from the material world.
[Alpha team, prepare the Kiln. Beta, Gamma, rez programs and bind the RABID.] He commanded, already rezzing his own program to aid them.
Five veterans moved back to the mobile server to begin the bootup of the 'server fryer', named such because of the intense overclock required to run the program. That supercooled server was required to run it.
That server was cooled with liquid nitrogen.
The Kiln ran very hot indeed. A bigger server was simply too hard to transport.
The other two teams each rezzed a full array of Winter Wolves. Five of them per agent, fifty w-wolves in total that joined the existing twenty w-wolves already on the field. That was already a substantial force to be reckoned with.
He then rezzed the program that made the Icemen so unstoppable in the NET.
A virtual snow began to fall, light fog rolled in along the ground, and an icy tint took over the virtual buildings.
Ice Age. A simple program in truth. It ID'd all Winter Wolf daemons currently in the area and linked them together. Each Winter Wolf program was designed to become more and more efficient and thus, deadly, with each additional unit added. Wolves hunted in packs after all.
There were seventy Winter Wolves currently rezzed.
All of them swelled substantially in size, their fangs sharpened, their teeth gleamed, their eyes burned blue.
They started howling, and descended upon the RABID as a swarm of white death.
It didn't matter that the RABID could destroy a dozen in one sweeping glare, there were enough W-Wolves all around it that it couldn't get all of them at once before the Netwatch veterans summoned replacements.
It was swarming tactics in the purest sense, a single RABID didn't stand a chance.
It took one minute before the RABID was sufficiently destabilized for part two to begin. One wolf from each agent was replaced with a Viral sub-program. The viral sub-program inflicted upon the RABID with each virtual attack the wolves made, their claws and fangs now dripping with venom.
It was a much more developed form of a program they had back before the Datakrash. Back then they had the Deck Freeze, a program that could link a cyberdeck on itself, causing it to freeze up and crash.
A RABID was quite a bit harder to freeze up with something like that, but it couldn't stop each copy of the program from getting through, and its writhing muddy body started to slow and twitch ineffectually.
Soon enough, the muddy giant was motionless, being gnawed upon by fifty-six car-sized wolves.
It took around two minutes for them to completely subdue the RABID. They were lucky there was only one this time, and that there were mostly competent netrunners here to manage it.
The ICONs of the netrunners looked on in a combination of relief and slight awe as the RABID was quickly dragged over by the W-Wolves to the waiting Kiln program. A behemoth of mud sliding into a virtual funnel and trapped inside.
From there, it would be subject to Viral transformation programs that removed its ability to shift and randomize its code, completely disabling it as a threat as its ICE was permanently melted. After that, they would feed it to the Blackwall, and direct the patch over this region. At least a day-long process, but mostly handled by the computers at this point. At least, for several hours.
Now their job was holding off the rest of the breach, and confirming the participation of the netrunners here for adequate compensation.
He waved a hand, a virtual desk appeared in the Gatehouse Server, and his ICON sat down upon it.
Time for the least interesting part of his job. Bureaucracy.