by Peter Tylee
Then he launched a second thread. He needed to closely monitor the Raven’s progress and feed from whatever morsels of information he might discover. To do that, he’d have to hack the cyborg’s brain. It was dangerous, though others had succeeded in the past and thoroughly documented the process. Anonymous pioneers had printed a groundbreaking article about cyborg hacking and all the popular computer magazines had followed the case. An entire ‘net community had dedicated itself to the art of forcing entry into hybrid computer-human brains. Some cyborgs were privacy paranoid and had erected insurmountable defences – nobody could get through without the appropriate key. Others were lax, either through ignorance, incompetence, or naivety. Some thought it would never happen to them despite the growing cult of cyborg hackers who shared the necessarytools.Hardcore cyborg hackers believed themselves to be intrepid psychologists and anthropologists, ruthlessly examining the human minds that a cocktail of doctors and engineers had generously placed online.
The Raven was easy to find. His connection to the UniForce database perpetually drew information about an array of targets. He didn’t have the space to store all the data locally,and even if he did,he would still require constant contactto benefit from the frequent data updates. What was the point in chasing a false lead?
“What’re you doing?” Esteban demanded at the worst possible moment.
James had forgotten to switch off his monitor to conceal his activities from prying eyes. He would have preferred to work in private but it was a bit late for that now. He slowed his pace to free enough mental resources to formulate an answer. “I’m isolating, or tryingto isolate the hacker’s data stream. If I can do that, I can tell you where they are.”
“Yeah, but what are you doing there?” Esteban pointed to the second application.
James snorted like an angry pig and said, “Hacking the Raven’s mind.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure. It’s just the same as any ‘net connected computer, it’s vulnerable to attack.” James massaged the bruise around his implant and refocussed on his work.
Esteban sensibly left him in peace and returned to drafting his first contract. It didn’t take long; he just opened the appropriate form and filled in the blanks. The difficult part was deciding to whom he should send it. Assassination contracts usually tendered for millions of Credits. One million was the smallest fee any quality assassin would demand. Two million was common, but five was exceptional.
He reviewed the list of assassins that weren’t presently on assignment and selected the top performer. He had an immaculate record – nobody had ever traced him and he had a 100 percent success rate. And he’s quick.Most assassins wouldn’t make the hit for at least two weeks, and frequently demanded more money if told the matter was urgent. Shadow, as this particular assassin called himself, had an average kill time of five days.
Esteban put the contract in Shadow’s pigeonhole, as standard procedure dictated. Good assassins always demanded total anonymity. The system would send Shadow a notification and he would thereby know he had mail waiting for him. He alone could access the message, using an unreproducible electronic key. For security, reasons he used each pigeonhole no more than once. The system generated a new lock and key combination at the successful completion of each assignment.
Shadow would have 24 hours to accept or reject the offer. But Esteban rarely had to deal with rejections. Most assassins understood that UniForce didn’t tolerate such impudence. One rejection would substantially reduce the frequency of future offers. Rejecting UniForce twice was tantamount to retirement.
Michele was busy reading bounty hunter records, one by one. She was yet to discover the search feature built into the database engine. Esteban watched her, pitying her in his own way. Should I show her how to search? He watched as she opened and closed another two files. Nah, she looks happy.He made a pact with himself: if she were still going at midnight, he’d show her how to isolate the cyborgs from the enormous list.
“How long until you know where they are?” Esteban asked, keen to get moving. He was tired of sitting at a desk. He was a man of action; it was in his blood. If I can’t have poker then, come hell or high water, I’ll have my own fun.
James snorted in annoyance. “It depends.” He couldn’t say which method would be faster, finding them on his own merit or poaching their whereabouts from the Raven. There were too many variables to give an accurate answer.
Esteban frowned.
The trickle of data feeding into the Raven’s computerised brain suddenly surged into a torrent and James seized the opportunity to launch his trojan. It was similar to the method David Coucke had used to penetrate UniForce’s network: hollow out a legitimate file and insert a tiny program inside the empty shell. Upon reaching the destination, the virus-like file would activate and reconstruct its host so that any subsequent file scans would report normal. But by then it would be too late, the program would already be inside. It would poke several inconspicuous holes in the target’s firewall, allowing the hacker to delve into the bowels of the target’s network. It was simple, in theory. Practical execution was a different matter, especially on a cyborg. Cyborgs tended to be more aware of their computer’s activities. It wasn’t just a machine – it was an extension of a human mind. That’s why it was so important for James to wait for a surge in the data stream. He needed the Raven to be crunching through so much data that he wouldn’t notice the loss of a few clock cycles to the trojan.
He held his breath as the Raven swept the modified file up with his data stream. A few seconds later a port sweep revealed the trojan had opened ports 5,000 to 5,005. It worked.“I’m in.”
“You’ve found them?” Esteban leapt from his chair and slapped a hand roughly on James’s shoulder.
“No.” He winced, his shoulder smarting. “I’m inside the Raven’s computer.”
“Oh.” Esteban wasn’t impressed. Nobody had ever explained to him the significance of hacking a cyborg. “Is that all.”
“Maybe he knows where they are.”
Esteban rolled his eyes. “Yes, but if he gets his grotty little mittens on them first it’ll be too late, won’t it?”
“Too late for what?” James didn’t follow.
“For me, stupid.”
Michele spun from her arduous task and interjected, “You’regoing to kill them?”
He puffed out his chest. “And why not? Jackie said to use our top assassin.”
“You?” James asked incredulously. “I thought you’d retired. Been retired – involuntarily.”
Esteban’s gaze narrowed. His expression darkened as though a thundercloud passed beneath his skin and his eyes went icy. “That wasn’t permanent. Now it’s time for my second debut into the professional circuit.”
Second debut? How can you have a second first-appearance, moron?James wished he had someone intelligent in the room to converse with. “Okay, whatever floats your boat.”
“I’m sharing the workload,” Esteban admitted. “Our secondbest assassin will deal with the Raven. That cyborg might be a freak, but he won’t be expecting it. Second best will be good enough for him. But Iwill deal with Sutherland and the others.”
“And collect the reward.” James understood, or thought he did. Esteban’s ulterior motive would have sickened him to the core, so perhaps it was better that he didn’t know.
Esteban shrugged and said, “Honest pay for honest work.”
James snorted and entwined his mind around the Raven’s crystal-core. He downloaded a snippet of data, not enough to make the bounty hunter suspicious, just enough to sample the data structure. The hardest part about cyborg hacking wasn’t gaining access; it was decoding the bizarre storage structures. The difficulty varied depending on the intelligence of the specimen. Dopy cyborgs stored data and memories in arrays that resembled old hard disk platters. Intellectually superior cyborgs used fascinating crystalline structures that rivalled the Stanley Encryption Algorithm for complexity. One t
hing was certain, every cyborg had a unique way of arranging their data and it was going to take time to decode.
He gently probed the sample and turned it over in his mind, trying to find a pattern or anything he could define as a starting point. Hmm…James rubbed a hand across his tired eyes. This is going to take longer than I thought. He copied more data during the next deluge. The Raven was busy examining video feeds from around the world, testing millions of faces for a match. It was a daunting task even for the latest generation supercomputer running the most advanced face recognition software.It generated copious overhead processing and taxed the Raven’s link to the nano-net. It was therefore the perfect cover for James to stealthily download analysis material. If I could just find a pattern…James wondered what the Raven might have modelled his structures on. Psychologists who’d entered the cyborg-hacking debate usually pointed out that cyborgs preferred personally meaningful structures. Once, a cyborg had joined the discussion and said she used a stellar map of her star sign to plot data locations in her crystal-core. What could possibly be meaningful to a man who calls himself ‘the Raven’? Sheep? Decaying flesh? An eyeball ripe for plunging a beak into?
It was eerie to delve so intimately into another man’s mind. James knew he would find things he didn’t wish to see. But business was business and he shoved those concerns aside for the sake of seeing his daughter before her next birthday.
He wove a decoding application around the problem and fed it with as much processing power as he could safely divert from network servers. How did civilisation survive without multithreading?He set an alarm to alert him the second it discovered a pattern in the data-spaghetti and then returned his focus to the trace. A sour expression twisted his lips and he popped another two stimulants into his mouth, squirted in some water, and swallowed. Five minutes later the drugs had taken the edge off his throbbing headache and cleared his thinking. It’s only a matter of time arsehole.He dug deeper, rummaging through code that might yield answers to the two most important questions: Where is the hacker? What is he up to?
Esteban watched, frustrated that he couldn’t do more than wait. He whittled away the time by stripping his Peacemaker nine-millimetre semiautomatic and lightly oiling every surface – not too much or it would attract grit and jam at an inconvenient moment. When he was finished, he reassembled it and checked the slide mechanism before easing a cartridge into the chamber and loading a full clip. Thirteen rounds.Twelve in the clip and one ready to go. Nowhere near enough.Esteban’s days of stealth were over. Brute force suited him now and for what he had in mind he needed to invite some friends.
*
Friday, September 17, 2066
12:59 Andamooka, South Australia
Cookie smiled ruefully and thought, If only I hadn’t goneback. He’d done the digital equivalent of tripping a snare wire that the UniForce administrators had laid for him. He’d twisted and turned and broken free of the trap, but he’d come perilously close to being pinned down. And if that happened, they’d trace his location. He’d been careful. He’d relayed his signal through seven anonymisers and strung it around the globe five times, but still he was vulnerable. It could take them a minute, but once they’d locked onto the heartbeat of his signal, they’d trace it to Andamooka. Cookie was glad his custom applications were monitoring for a trace and would alert him if one began. Depending on the skills of his opponents, he’d have somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds to terminate the connection.
He gingerly sensed his way along Echelon’s central nervous system, mesmerised by the flood of data from which it fed. Echelon intercepted and scanned every data transaction in the world and Cookie could only think of one word to describe the sheer scale of the endeavour – Astonishing. Every wire, every segment of nano-net, every videophone conversation, every telephone call… Echelon listened to everything. It scanned every skerrick of data for illegal activity, known criminals, and potential ‘terrorist’ threats. Cookie had a momentary pang of doubt. If we burn it all, what might erupt from the ashes? He wondered whether the seedier side of humanity would morph the world into a smouldering cesspool. But then he remembered Echelon was firmly stomping on freedom of speech and his determination flared again.
He probed deeper, digitally fingering Echelon’s nervous tissue and wondering how to disable it. The UniForce administrators weren’t dumb; they’d protected Echelon from conventional attack. What about a virus?He frowned and shook his head. He’d have to think of something for the virus to do and that would require in-depth knowledge of Echelon’s construction. There was precious little information about Echelon on the ‘net, Cookie had already checked. The governments that had started the project hadn’t published how-to manuals for anarchists.
Samantha startled him by gently brushing the nape of his neck.
“Oh, hi. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“A little.” She yawned. “More of a snooze. What’re you doin’?”
“Aside from avoiding the myriad of traps they’ve set, I’m trying to slay a digital monster.”
Samantha nodded approvingly. “Great,” she said, yawning again. “Where’s Jen?”
Cookie shrugged and lovingly squeezed her hand. “With Sutherland I think. Haven’t seen them for a while.” His pulse fluttered when he narrowly avoided another snare. They must have planted them thick around their prize.At least it gave him somewhere to start his analysis – the densest patch of snares would lead him to Echelon’s greatest vulnerability. And that’s where he would begin his attack.
*
Friday, September 17, 2066
07:45 Leningrad, Russia
Natasha Glinski padded barefoot to the ground floor of her Leningrad mansion. She hesitated at the junction between the kitchen and the study, an inner conflict raging between hunger and curiosity. Breakfast was tempting, especially for someone with no fat to shed. If she skipped a meal she’d weaken her muscles and she’d worked hard to get them the way they were. She wasn’t tall, only five foot six inches – or one 168 centimetres as she preferred to think about it. Her thick, unruly brown hair cascadedaround her shoulders and she was clad only in a white bathrobe. She preferred to sleep nude. Her brown eyes darted between computer and kitchen, a girlish grin mischievously playing on her lips.
Breakfast.The hunger won.
She collected her slippers from where she’d abandoned them at midnight. Without them, the kitchen tiles would numb her toes, especially in mid-September. She half expected to see frost on the ground but when she peered from the kitchen window she saw only a swirl of colourful leaves.
Natasha fixed a nourishing breakfast, reheating the soup she’d enjoyed so much the night before. It was thick, hearty, and dark red thanks to the beetroot she’d added – perfect for a cold autumn morning. She’d been experimenting with food recently. It soothed her, reminding her of when she was a girl and she’d helped her mother in the kitchen. Now 31, she didn’t look a day older than 22 and people still occasionally mistook her for 18. She used to curse her girlish looks but had come to realise that they were an asset. She owed her magnificent dwelling to those looks, at least in part, so she guarded them with a ferocity that most women her age had given up on. She put the steaming bowl of soup on a tray, carried it into her study, and bumped her mouse to jolt the computer to life.
She’d invested in a small counter that always displayed how many messages she had waiting. There were two colours: green and red. Green designated normal mail, which arrived at her local message box. Usually it was her friends and family inviting her to a function or party. Sometimes she got spam but it’d been a while since a ‘$$$$ YOUR INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY AWAITS’ e-mail had slipped through her filters.
Red designated business and today the counter rested on one. She ignored her local mailbox and hurried to the Shadow’s pigeonhole on the UniForce network. She used her disposable key and opened the box to find an assassination contract. Finally.Natasha Glinski switched to business mode, erasing every trace of girl
ishness from her face. She carefully read the contract while slurping her stew-like soup. Nothing appeared amiss. Five million N.A. Credits,her mind whispered as if just thinking it would bring the tax-squad tapping on her windows and probing her financial affairs. She had cover businesses to explain her financial success but the neighbours were still suspicious. She often lavished her family and friends with a shower of gifts to remove the excess from her accounts but it still left an electronic trail that led to her. Thank God UniForce payments are untraceable,she thought. But five million Credits would push her beyond the brink of safety and firmly into the realm of taxation peril.
Maybe it’s time?She wondered about that at the beginning of every assignment but this time it rang with a truth she couldn’t deny. If she accepted the contract, she’d have to leave Russia for a country that wasn’t so nosy when it came to one’s fiscal success. The world had changed since her grandmother’s day when everyone had been corrupt and she could’ve purchased some leeway and made the tax beavers look aside.
She eagerly followed the link to the target’s file. The Raven, huh? Known only by call sign. She read the thicket of information. A bounty hunter?That intrigued her; she’d never had a contract for eliminating a professional. She specialised in irritating government officials and business feuds. She skimmed the remainder of the Raven’s file. If she accepted the contract she’d make herself intimately familiar with every word, but for now, a quick sweep was enough to paint a mental picture. Hmm, sounds charming.She wondered whether her set of skills was in tune with the requirements for assassinating a cyborg. Sometimes she lamented that she’d chosen ‘Shadow’ as her persona because upon careful consideration she thought ‘Spider’ seemed more appropriate. Or perhaps Venus.She felt like a cross between a venomous spider, lacing her web for the victim to blunder into, and a Dionaea muscipula, a Venus flytrap. She presented beautiful petals that lured the victim close. He or she, but usually he, would be searching for nectar while unwittingly touching the trigger hairs. That’s when the gaping jaws of her trap would spring shut, entombing him forever. But Natasha didn’t savour the image of slowly digesting the men she’d assassinated – that was where the analogy fell apart.
