Fate of Terra - Rise of Empires

Chapter 1.2 - Continuation

Tika was irritated. No, irritated wasn't strong enough. Every 'single' thing that she had done to investigate the mysterious race that had swept in like a storm, was either gone, missing or 'un-forthcoming' from those that had seen them.

Slamming her helmet onto the desk, she stomped off to undress. The suite she called a temporary home was decrepit. The standard set aboard this piss stain of a station was poor. Tika had been on many stations, both large and small, ranging from the Alliance to the free states and even, in the rare case, B'Amuf. Each had their own quirks and faults. This place was quick to lose its charm upon her. With little in the way of décor past the gaudy white plastics and the suffocating bare metal.

Tossing her jacket aside, she powered up the only good thing about this station. Water. It was a rare resource in space, each system and star node had its methods of recycling the resource, this place combined a number of those methods to stipend their meagre production, but they had them. Each suite was given a standard quantity allocated per day, if you didn't use it all, you could store it up for later uses. It was a moment like this Tika revelled in having that simple luxury.

Drawing water from the nozzles embedded into the wall, she began to fill the spacious basin. The entire thing would only take a minute to fill, while heating came courtesy of Margmin stones. Their chemical construction leaving them perpetually warm. The water's soft fragrance was a happy side-effect.

Stripping the final pieces from her outfit, the tall Harpeian sank into the frothing concoction of relaxation. Even with this boon, it was a while before the heat took effect and relaxed the aching muscles in her wings and back. Tika would much have preferred to use her own appendages to achieve her goals, but with her distinctive plumage and the simulated gravity being 57% greater on the station than on her home world, she wondered if flight was feasible.

Stretching out the muscles was both painful and pleasurable; when they were cooped up inside her suit they had little room for movement, and the freedom to stretch was a godsend. She did bless her good fortune on the suit being responsive to her muscle movements, compared to other, computer-aided designs. It was obvious to any that had encountered this new mystery race, they had the control when it came to technology.

As the water ran over her shoulders, and the light layer of feathers adorning her upper body absorbed the oils, her mind drifted back over this confusing rotation.

* * * * 

Almost fully undressed, an alert popped up on her holo-pad. Looking at it Tika saw someone was using an advanced code to infiltrate the station's systems. She frowned. Anyone good enough to develop this wouldn't attempt to use it on a public terminal that wasn't designed to transfer such quantities of currency. She shrugged and began suiting up again.

Leaving the room, she flew off the overviewing balcony and went towards what her HUD indicated was the source of the infiltration. Luckily the station had high enough ceilings to allow her to fly over the populated areas smoothly. The HUD was telling her the terminal being hacked was in one of the mercantile areas, frustratingly an area with low ceilings. As she neared and was forced to continue on foot, she spared a glance at the computer screen relaying information about the terminal.

Terminals were the standard term for any interface linking with the overall structure on the station. It had minimal access to core functions on the station but was useful enough to gain access into the overall Sub-Net of the Alliance. She figured the moron had interfaced under the guise of a business doing a transaction, or perhaps a technician trying to retrieve credits. It wasn't a stupid idea, just an outdated one.

Aurein credits were the staple diet of Alliance currency. Everything could be exchanged into it, and all known currencies accepted the general trade off with their own to the Alliance dominant currency. While it had taken hundreds of cycles for the system to finally come into effect, when it did, the swarm of people hacking and attempting to gain from exchanging credits in and out of service was perhaps the first scandal to be stopped. This poor sap hadn't been given the update. Her HUD informed her that whomever the hacker was, had already exchanged between thirteen different currencies, amassing a considerable asset for themselves.