Embers After Flames, Chapter 8.4

8.4

+++

“Okay, so it turns out that raiding the PCA might be harder than we thought.” Carla spoke, and if I’d had a head, I would have shaken it.

I’ve been watching them for several days now, and I know damned well that the only reason Carla hasn’t already committed to the raiding plan is because she can’t commit to the raiding plan.

Goodness knows she’s tried. They had already raided two other corporate groups for their data in order to get the plans together for this, only for that information to reveal that Carla’s plan wouldn’t have worked in the first place.

“The PCA has moved an increasingly large amount of their data and resources off-world over the years.” One of her subordinates sighed. “Apparently, they keep getting raided?”

Yeah. They did. I did that. The Firekeepers did that. Raven did that. The RLF did that. ALLMIND did that. Hell, independents had done that a couple times too, they just didn’t get away with it like the rest of us.

The speaker was wrong, though. It wasn’t just ‘off-world’ that they had moved their data. Most of it was actually being transmitted to the Enforcement System’s mainframe, if the extra memory banks that had been installed were any indication.

“On the bright side, we did learn a bit more about these RRI-imposters.” Oh, if only they knew.

“We got a couple of extra pictures and a video.” Carla spoke. “Not exactly a whole lot to write home about.”

“There is still something useful.” Came the voice of Walter. The man wasn’t actually here, but he had been contacted and had now subsequently joined in on an audio-only channel. “We now know that this group only ever deploys in a group of five, and utilizes machines filling the same capacity as Armored Cores. It’s entirely possible that these are not actually C-Weapons.”

“And that’s meant to make me feel better?” Carla asked. “Piloted machines, sure, that’s one thing, but the technological sophistication to produce these things in the first place effectively requires that they’re also capable of making C-Weapons. There isn’t that much of a difference, Walter.”

“It implies restraint.” Walter stressed the last word. “Not someone who is rampantly experimenting. Whoever this group is, they are likely descendents of survivors of the Fires of Ibis, or the survivors themselves.” He wasn’t even wrong, there. I was a survivor, and all the Firekeepers were descendents. My own children were also descendents, obviously.

“To possess this knowledge, they would have to have been related to higher level members of the Institute.” One of the others chimed in. “We might be able to open a dialogue?”

Holy shit, a member of RRI with sense? Mad scientist vibes had been practically mandated for these guys, how did this happen?

“They’re still using Coral.” Carla pointed out. “The whole reason we’re here is to stop that, remember? If they’re willing to do it, they’re probably not going to agree with the plan- and after forty five years on this rock, I wouldn’t really blame them for not wanting to go through it a second time.”

Good. Because I didn’t. Nor did anyone on this planet.

“We don’t know their circumstances, chief.” The guy continued. “They might not have had a choice. If we go in there hostile straight from the start, though... We’re going to have problems.”

“We don’t know where they are.” Walter stated, calmly yet directly. “The PCA also doesn’t know where they are, or they would have bombed them flat a long time ago. The RLF might know, but the top of their leadership is a Gen One Augment who built a mystical practice around Coral, so he’s unlikely to tell us. The only thing we can do is keep an eye out, gather information, and plan carefully. Carla. We cannot afford to be hasty this time.”

There was a moment of silence. I saw Carla grimace, before she sighed. “Yeah. You’re right.” She looked upwards, crossing her hands over her chest. “How’s your side of things going, anyway?”

“I finished dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s.” Walter spoke. “All I need to do now is retrieve the stock. The market here is... volatile, but still open enough right now. Arquebus and Balam are looking to be the top customers, but from what I’ve heard, the RLF also makes use of certain mercenaries. I’m still not certain what their selection criteria is, but that’s a potential opening.”

“Glad to hear things are going so well for you, then.” Carla sighed again. “Still, you’re sure about that whole plan? Taking on those wild dogs is a hell of a thing to do, Walter. They could bite back.”

In any other context, that statement might not have been so bad. Knowing that they were talking about Augmented Humans, however... Well, Armored Core was dystopian at the best of times. The fact that a lot of early-gen Augments had since been taken into slavery and were now literally sold as products was only sad, not surprising.

“I have no intentions of being unfair to them.” Walter stated. “You and I know how to deal with the effects of Gen Four. It will be a bigger chance than they ever had.”

The worst part is, he’s right about that.

That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Fine.” Carla said, straightening up in her chair. “We’ll get back to doing our own thing, then. With a bit of rushing, it shouldn’t be much more than a month or two before we can get things up and running. Without a bit of local recruitment, we’ll be on the small side... But hell, that’s what AI is for.”

I’m going to need to get in contact soon, I see.

“You’ve got a location, then?” Walter asked.

“Well, I got a nice little list of locations. We’ll have to go and scout them, obviously.” She stated. “The Grid 80-90 cluster is looking pretty good right now, so we’ll be heading there first.”

Ah, perfect. I’d cleared those places out ages ago. Two of those Grids had been empty, but the rest used to be host to Dosers, and I think that my... spree had caused them to change hands more than they would have, because the clans there weren’t exactly tolerable, not even for the somewhat looser set of morals common in this day and age. If they were going there, it would be fairly easy to talk to them without many problems.

But, how to stage a meeting? I had a few options, but it would be best if they believed that I’d located them when they went there, not that they believed I had been tracking them ever since they arrived.

Mmm. I’m going to have to think about that. Well, I’ve got a few days, at least.

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Walter stated. “Thanks for the heads up, Carla.”

“You’re welcome.” Carla said. “Catch ya on the other side.”

+++

Carla’s group packed up and headed out only a day later. It was probably a good idea, since they’d been there for a week already. If they hadn’t set up shop fully, it was just asking for problems.

They took a fairly straight path towards the 80-90 Grid Cluster, deviating only to avoid any potential problems. Since at least one of those problems was an RLF listening outpost, I didn’t begrudge them for it.

It gave me the time to set things up on my end.

My first step was sending Antigens to each Grid in the cluster, just to make sure that nobody else had slipped into the cracks since the last time the Firekeepers had gone through here.

I didn’t find anybody, though I had uncovered evidence that there had been at least some traffic through the area. Nothing of any real impact, and nothing of any real importance, either, since the movement of cargo was all that the Grids were used for these days.

Anyway, with the place completely uninhabited, I had my chance to do basically whatever I wanted.

The Grids were, for the most part, in reasonably good condition. The only one that couldn’t have been made partially operational with just a bit of maintenance was Grid 089, which, at one point, had suffered a critical physical failure in its generator. A large portion of its internal cabling was burnt out, which would require something a bit more severe than mere maintenance.

I did not have the time to bring them into any degree of activity, unfortunately. To be frank, I didn’t really want to, either.

Still, backup power was active in all the other Grids, and aside from 089, the Cluster could still manage a minor, for a megastructure, supply of energy.

What I did was simply turn them on.

What I was planning did not need a large amount of power. Truth be told, even the trickle that was being produced by the Grids in their current decayed state still completely surpassed what I intended to use them for. Sheer scale alone guaranteed that.

With power flowing, I directed nearly the entirety of it to the Grid’s surveillance, security, and computing systems. A lot of those didn’t work either, but enough of them did that it meant I only had to spend a couple hours routing the systems through the sections that still worked, and employing workarounds on the systems that didn’t.

After that, it was time to fake the shit out of the files in order to indicate that, when they inevitably ended up checking the place over, it would look like I’d set the place up a lot earlier than I actually had. That... wasn’t so easy.

A full three hours of effort later, I cut my losses and in the end, ended up deleting a ton of the data that had been present, instead setting up a system to automatically package everything it gathered in a set amount of time, send that packaged data out across the network, heavily encrypted of course, and then delete the records after it had been sent.

The end result was the same, just less enlightening to anybody who might end up taking the place over.

Once that entire thing was in place, I just had to make some adjustments to the operating system itself, adding in a few new functions and overrides. I created a new, admin level account, set the security so that it would require an incredibly, obscenely long and elaborate cryptographic lock to get access to, and then started hiding things under that account. The system was set not to display it, and nobody would know unless they decided to go digging heavily.

Most people wouldn’t do that. It was a lot of effort, and unless you already expected that a system had been manipulated in such a manner, fairly pointless unless you were operating on a rather extreme level of security. Even then, for my level of skill and knowledge, the number of people who’d actually be able to properly detect what I’d done was a very small number. The number of people who could undo it was lower still, though only slightly since the people who know how to do the former usually also had the specialist knowledge to do the latter.

You’d need either some very specific skills or an AGI to handle it in a reasonable amount of time, in other words.

Carla’s group arrived at the 80-90 Grid Cluster after a couple days. It took them a week to examine the Grids and make sure nobody was there.

The moment they had?

Carla started to rip the system open.

This had, after all, been her line of work, and it was evident she’d already started developing Chatty, or some other AI assistants, because she paced through it at a rate that was absurd even for an Augmented Human.

It took her two minutes to notice the data-burst setup I’d installed. That got her attention real quick, and she was quick to figure out that this set of Grids was still being monitored. Concerning for many, to be certain.

Still, Carla wasn’t the type of person who’d spook so easily. It took her three hours before she started to notice the discrepancies in the file systems, but once she’d been clued in?

She homed in on it in just fifteen minutes. Remarkably quick- too quick, as it happened.

In attaining her proof, she’d also run straight into one of the traps I’d left behind. Nothing too dangerous, just a tripwire alarm. Carla realized it was there the moment the alarm went out, but she hadn’t been ready to stop anything from leaving the Grid.

And like that, I had my opening.