On the High Frontier

2. Just One More Thing (part 4/5)

A little favour, will she never learn. If breaking into one of the most secure evidence storage systems in L4 is a little favour, she never wanted to have to do him really big one. Well this is going to take a bit of work. "James, do we know where our friends are being taken?"

"Am I supposed to do everything for you?"

"Tell you what, I'll scan the general security activity feeds and you can prepare to break into the Void-Enforcement."

"No need to get ratty. Just a minute, the feed shows detention in VE Central 2. Case number 2095-00587732."

"Okay, we have a chance. That's an old facility. VEC 1 was upgraded last year so VEC 2 went to the bottom of the list." She tries to remember the details. The original systems are run on isolated cores to avoid shared resources that might allow compromise of the mesh spaces. However that means that it runs on old hardware as any bureaucracy generally has an if it ain't broke don't fix it attitude. VECs 1 and 2 were built at the same time and they had taken Generation 7 Turing units out when they upgraded VEC1.

The Turing units often had experimental features, what did the gen7 notes say, ahhh. "James you know everyone, don't you."

"Why do you ask?"

"I need someone who did maintenance on TI gen7 units. Or at least someone with access to the toolsets."

"I'll see what I can do. Anything in particular?"

"The match-key for the externally triggerable test port."

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Finding the escape tunnel is even harder the other way. Eventually she is back in James' workshop, and as she comes in he is waving a code tab "Do you have any idea how much this cost?"

"Presumably less than you're losing from the exchange being down. Look I'm happy to stop whenever you want. Breaking into the VE secure storage is not on my bucket list."

"I thought you liked a challenge."

"The challenge I was looking forward to today was seeing how relaxed I could get without slipping into a coma." She really needs to unwind, she can feel the start of an ominous shaking in her arms. "Give that here." She snatches the tab from his hand.

He looks non-plused. "Are you okay? That was rough back there." Oh no, she isn't sure she can take a concerned James right now. "Do you need anything?"

She realises she is feeling a little light-headed. "Yeah actually, you got any energy drinks or something. I haven't eaten since breakfast." It is even true, though by no means the only reason for her funk.

This seems to satisfy James. "Here." He reaches into a small fridge on one of the work surfaces and throws her a pouch of something with enough caffeine and other stimulants to raise the recently deceased. She pops the pouch and takes a chug. She shudders as she remembers why she doesn't normally drink this. One of her colleagues reckons you can physically feel it re-balancing your electrolytes, and the taste ... people do not drink it for the flavour, or the after taste. It does however help a bit, and she can feel the shivering subside.

She can't stop. "I have to go home now to setup my rig. I'm going to need every resource I can get. Can you run the remote routing?" She should have enabled the remote access at home before leaving, but she had been in a hurry. If Saki catches her goodness how long this will take.

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