L
Leodiensian
Guest
Original poster
OOC here.
[Three days ago]
[Remembrance Station. Earth Orbit]
They're coming from the south! The Tacnet buzzed and fed Seldom the sensory inputs of his sentinels. The team of Firewall operatives had been scattered across the Hamilton Cylinder, united by the red alert. Seldom turned just in time to see what Garrison was warning him about. Infomorphs sleeved into aerial reconnaissance bots, screaming up the cylinder's orbital axis. Seldom shouldered his rail-rifle and squeezed off a burst at the drones, yelling for a fallback action towards the docks. But with one arm essentially useless after a gunshot wound, he wasn't his usual crackshot self.
Whatever had burned them had been good. The last infosec specialist Seldom trusted had her mesh implants melted inside her head from trying to peek in at the damage. LLA shock troopers had crashed down on half his assets before any of them had known something was wrong. Now the tattered remnants of the group were fighting a bloody retreat towards the docks with what they'd been able to grab and get out with before they were next on the list.
The Eye, Firewall's covert social network, was flashing up with reports of requests for rep favors, flooding his field of view with entoptic cries for help. He had to shut down the feed to keep his head clear, before barreling past a synthmorph worker. His AR view told him the positions of his agents relative to him and it wasn't looking good. He was getting near the docks but he couldn't afford to wait. In a mesh satchel hugging tight to the small of his back, a handful of ectos containing all the data that hadn't been put on the compromised servers yet. The last items of value he had.
Sniper on Memorial Tower! came a scream down the Tacnet, just before it went down. That meant Garrison was dead, or his mesh access severed. Memorial Tower had a great view of the dock access. A sniper would put a hole in him before he could get aboard. Panting, Seldom kept his long, Fury legs pumping, trying to figure a work-around.
He saw a pink triangle getting near to his location, one of his sentinels. Recent recruit, Tanaka something. Brought on for information control, filtering news stories for anything of Firewall interest. Not a field agent. Low value asset. Expendable. "Tanaka. Loop around the tower, come at the docks from the east. I'll cover you."
He waited for the pink triangle to change trajectory when he made a break for it. His muse was already launching exploits into the dock security systems as he got closer and he tried not to think about the retort of the rifle as the dock doors opened for him. The nearest ship he could jack was a simple LOTV, blocky, never designed for atmosphere. Low-grade but all he could do. Otherwise this was all for nothing. He checked his AR again. No triangles in range, fewer than before. By the time they got to him, the system AI would have worked around his exploits and locked him down, or shot the LOTV to dust with the kill-sat network. It was now or never.
"If you can hear me, this is Proxy Seldom." One last broadcast across frequencies he hoped were still secure. "Trigger any killswitches you have. Delete any files you have. We're dead - the best we can do is keep them from dragging down all of Firewall with us." With that, he pushed the ignition and rocketed out into space..
[Now.]
[Scum Barge designate: With Sharp Flames, high Lunar orbit]
Just outside of LLA orbit, Seldom hung off one of the wall-hooks in the Scum barge - no gravity, the only way to get around was freefall. He looked down at the Earth through one of the thick diamond viewing windows - oceans black and boiling to this day, the Big Shiny just visible where Chicago used to be before someone detonated an antimatter warhead. It was easy to forget the Fall was ten years ago when you were looking out at the corpse of humanity's homeworld everyday. He remembered weeks of prolonged, futile combat, getting uploaded... he knew he died down there, but had no memories of it. That was another Adam with another face, another body. He had been pale, average height, lighter hair. Now he was tall, powerfully built, genetically sculpted physique but hirsute - coated with coarse dark hair, a consequence of the heightened combat hormones.
I-Rep cleared. Proxy status retained. His muse pinged back from the Eye. Consensus had shown no evidence that he'd been responsible for the leak, but the last three days had been basically nothing but imprisonment and interrogation to make sure. Now that he was clear, he could get things going again. He'd already put out the call for new Sentinels to rebuild operations on Luna and in Earth orbit.
He clenched the fingers on his wounded hand. The medichines dulled the pain, but he could feel stiffness still and the helpful AR interface showed how much healing was still left to go. He floated shirtless, his torso wrapped in nanobandages and speckled with small scabs and scars from the firefight to get off of Remembrance station. But his body would heal. Even death was temporary. But reputation was forever...
[Three days ago]
[Remembrance Station. Earth Orbit]
They're coming from the south! The Tacnet buzzed and fed Seldom the sensory inputs of his sentinels. The team of Firewall operatives had been scattered across the Hamilton Cylinder, united by the red alert. Seldom turned just in time to see what Garrison was warning him about. Infomorphs sleeved into aerial reconnaissance bots, screaming up the cylinder's orbital axis. Seldom shouldered his rail-rifle and squeezed off a burst at the drones, yelling for a fallback action towards the docks. But with one arm essentially useless after a gunshot wound, he wasn't his usual crackshot self.
Whatever had burned them had been good. The last infosec specialist Seldom trusted had her mesh implants melted inside her head from trying to peek in at the damage. LLA shock troopers had crashed down on half his assets before any of them had known something was wrong. Now the tattered remnants of the group were fighting a bloody retreat towards the docks with what they'd been able to grab and get out with before they were next on the list.
The Eye, Firewall's covert social network, was flashing up with reports of requests for rep favors, flooding his field of view with entoptic cries for help. He had to shut down the feed to keep his head clear, before barreling past a synthmorph worker. His AR view told him the positions of his agents relative to him and it wasn't looking good. He was getting near the docks but he couldn't afford to wait. In a mesh satchel hugging tight to the small of his back, a handful of ectos containing all the data that hadn't been put on the compromised servers yet. The last items of value he had.
Sniper on Memorial Tower! came a scream down the Tacnet, just before it went down. That meant Garrison was dead, or his mesh access severed. Memorial Tower had a great view of the dock access. A sniper would put a hole in him before he could get aboard. Panting, Seldom kept his long, Fury legs pumping, trying to figure a work-around.
He saw a pink triangle getting near to his location, one of his sentinels. Recent recruit, Tanaka something. Brought on for information control, filtering news stories for anything of Firewall interest. Not a field agent. Low value asset. Expendable. "Tanaka. Loop around the tower, come at the docks from the east. I'll cover you."
He waited for the pink triangle to change trajectory when he made a break for it. His muse was already launching exploits into the dock security systems as he got closer and he tried not to think about the retort of the rifle as the dock doors opened for him. The nearest ship he could jack was a simple LOTV, blocky, never designed for atmosphere. Low-grade but all he could do. Otherwise this was all for nothing. He checked his AR again. No triangles in range, fewer than before. By the time they got to him, the system AI would have worked around his exploits and locked him down, or shot the LOTV to dust with the kill-sat network. It was now or never.
"If you can hear me, this is Proxy Seldom." One last broadcast across frequencies he hoped were still secure. "Trigger any killswitches you have. Delete any files you have. We're dead - the best we can do is keep them from dragging down all of Firewall with us." With that, he pushed the ignition and rocketed out into space..
[Now.]
[Scum Barge designate: With Sharp Flames, high Lunar orbit]
Just outside of LLA orbit, Seldom hung off one of the wall-hooks in the Scum barge - no gravity, the only way to get around was freefall. He looked down at the Earth through one of the thick diamond viewing windows - oceans black and boiling to this day, the Big Shiny just visible where Chicago used to be before someone detonated an antimatter warhead. It was easy to forget the Fall was ten years ago when you were looking out at the corpse of humanity's homeworld everyday. He remembered weeks of prolonged, futile combat, getting uploaded... he knew he died down there, but had no memories of it. That was another Adam with another face, another body. He had been pale, average height, lighter hair. Now he was tall, powerfully built, genetically sculpted physique but hirsute - coated with coarse dark hair, a consequence of the heightened combat hormones.
I-Rep cleared. Proxy status retained. His muse pinged back from the Eye. Consensus had shown no evidence that he'd been responsible for the leak, but the last three days had been basically nothing but imprisonment and interrogation to make sure. Now that he was clear, he could get things going again. He'd already put out the call for new Sentinels to rebuild operations on Luna and in Earth orbit.
He clenched the fingers on his wounded hand. The medichines dulled the pain, but he could feel stiffness still and the helpful AR interface showed how much healing was still left to go. He floated shirtless, his torso wrapped in nanobandages and speckled with small scabs and scars from the firefight to get off of Remembrance station. But his body would heal. Even death was temporary. But reputation was forever...
