On the High Frontier

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

Kimiko is temporarily unable to think of anything else but "How?" She almost misses a query from the authorisation train, but her tracking meshes slow it enough that she just manages to clear and confirm the routing in time.

Meanwhile her mother's image continues. "When I mentioned to Administrator Krevin that I needed to contact you, he gave me access to the department emergency channel."

"But, that's not for ... He shouldn't have done." There is something wrong with this conversation and she can't put her finger on it.

"You're the one who keeps telling me the rules are there to be bent." This is a hell of a time for her mother to start agreeing with her. Kimiko aligns a set of clearance rules to pass the shipping order unqueried. "And I am a control council member."

"At L5!" That's it. "How are you answering me?" L4 and L5 are on opposite sides of the moon almost a third of the orbit apart. There should be almost a six second round trip between questions and responses. "Where are you?" Damn the package is almost routed back to internal transfer, she escalated the priority tags just in time. Now it will fall out into the general system where she can strip the priority tags off and reassign it with a local delivery coding.

"There's an inter-council convention. Don't you keep up with the facs?"

"At L4?" She has to stop auto blocking council news on her fac feed. Where has that package got to now? There, she sets a final destination of a locker in Central. The 257 block, with the conveniently compromised monitoring systems that she knows absolutely nothing about, honest. There is still almost 10% left on her boundary processes, though there are some nasty thin bits.

"I know, wretched, but what can you do?" Always the diplomat where her daughter's choice of home is concerned. "Anyway, how could I come here without looking up my favourite daughter." What can Yuuko possibly have done now? Kimiko is not sure she can take her mother trying to be maternal. It is right up there with James being considerate, she shivers at the memory. She starts to wind in all the probes and meshes. At least she can now concentrate on her mother. "What do you actually want?"

"I realise you are probably out having a good time with your crowd." Yeah, right. "I would like to see you, we could have a meal together. I can come over to your ... flat." Her mother almost chokes on the word. Oh god no! Just the thought of Saki and her mother ganging up on her was horrifying.

"No! I mean there's no need to do that. I'll call you later, but I do need to get back to my debauchery now."

"Really, anyone would think you were trying to offend me."

"Goodbye Mother." Kimiko releases the line. The infiltration systems are now clear so she disengages the links and stands up to leave. By the time she can get to the locker the package should be there.

                                                             *     *     *

So this was the memory blade that everyone was after. Looking closely at it she notes the thick blue band at one end and the three thin red lines at the other overlain with a purple circular outline. An outline? The blade is definitely inserted, the balance is correct for a full blade. But if a secured blade is inserted the circle should be solid purple to indicate the security protocols are active and uncompromised, or displaying error information. This is behaving like an empty sleeve ... or one with an unsecured blade in it. She examines the edge of the blade and looks up the part number.

"James, this isn't a secured MRM blade. It looks like a promiscuous testing blade."

"So? Why would that be important?"