Maris Fero
Riff-raff, Street Rat.
Espanier, A Moon.
Unknown Regions.
The rain on Espanier never fell from above; gale winds and harsh atmospherics meant that precipitation often seemed to come from head-on or from behind, threatening to push pedestrians off course or impeding their vision.
Where a storage building offered temporary shelter from the worst of such torrential assault, a thin chemical mist seemed to settle at ankle height, as the puddles of hydrocarbon rain released a pale, iridescent vapour that stained cloth and seemed to cling to any bare skin like a lubricating film. A sizzling flash of lightning struck the rod atop a distant tower. Blindingly bright forks of energy seemed tinted in purple or violet for an instant. For the seconds that followed, the crack and rumble of thunder overwhelmed the drumming rain.
From her high vantage atop a cooling tower, the Shrike crouched like a gargoyle upon a narrow supporting band, the mirror-polished visor of her mask gazing down through the smog and smoke billowing below. Heat emissions from the bewildered guards reflected as hazy orange returns through the cool mist, whereas the nearby temperature exchangers appeared almost white against the static-washed deep blue of the neutral spaces below. Here and there, fires raged throughout the facility. Scientists and clerks evacuated into the poisonous rain, more concerned about short-term survival over any long-term effects of the exposure.
Not for the first time, Maris was thankful for the warm internal seal of her infiltration glove that spared her the worst of the cold; The material was thin enough that she felt the sensation of the streaming water through the tight fibres as if she wore no protection at all. She watched the chaos, head cocked like a bird, as she admired the art in entropy once more.
Patience was a virtue, her master had told her that. Suffering was a lesson.
Before.
It had been challenging to identify the facility’s weaknesses. The cloning forges utilised technologies long since outlawed by most civilised galactic societies; secrets and practices that were fabled to have been developed by the long-ruined Kaminoan technocracy, Imperial remnants and even the practices of the Sith. Hence, the level of secrecy, security and the isolated nature of the moon itself had all been necessary to keep knowledge of this place from all but a few private customers.
Only a sizeable bribe and an elaborate cover story had garnered the Shrike a location and a visit to the facility; even then, she had been practically blinded and baffled for the extent of the journey to her “appointment”. Princess Aolia Torveth of Uticaro had been an alter ego for Maris Fero for almost as long as she had known of her own powers. A world with a preposterously overbred and extensive minor royals, she had assumed the title long before and had built a legend around the name that was capable of surviving most background checks.
Whilst within the facility, discrete data scrapers had taken readings and recorded unsecured information for later examination, and the Shrike had played the minor noble skillfully, making contact with brokers who dutifully quoted a price for a trio of perfected clones. Maris, in turn, had memorised each name and face of the employees she had observed on her route to and from the blacksite.
It had taken eleven days and almost fifty seeker droids released into starports across the region to locate the ship that had been used to take her to the hidden facility, and then a little over a month to unearth the blackmail material to gain influence over the captain of that vessel, Berin Voss. With a single thread traced, she uncovered the location of the blacksite and surveilled the passengers too and from that system.
Another sixty days had been enough to map a network of doctors, technicians and suppliers who made regular runs to and from the site. Armed with this knowledge, the Shrike had found the assets she would require to complete her act of espionage.
Derilia Xioss had one too many creditors and a gambling problem that Maris recognised all too well from her upbringing on Vorzyd V. Through violence, guile and bribery, Maris arranged for a majority of these debts to become owed to her - and with such leverage, she gained a controlling influence in Xioss’s loyalty.
It was with Xioss's clearance that an unscheduled supply shipment had come to Espanier; Her pirate captain, Voss, dutifully delivered a trio of urgent packages to the surface through expedited security measures. The packages were scarcely large enough to contain any interloper. But the Shrike had long perfected her talent for surviving in tight spaces.
When Xioss opened the second package, they almost cried out in panic as the contorted, black bodysuit-clad contents of the delivery untangled themselves from their confinement. A single finger raised to her reflective black visor was the Shrike's only wordless warning as she had stretched and tested stiff limbs.
The last of the three packages had contained the slicer droid, a specially programmed infiltration unit, almost undetectable in its actions, which had begun its prepared program immediately upon its release. Xioss had asked tense questions concerning the unexpected new arrival, an aspect of the infiltration that Maris had not revealed, but the silent figure had shaken their head and ushered the asset to continue her own part of the plan.
Free of her presence, Maris had begun her own infiltration, following in the path of the droid as it disabled the sensor grid and trip switches. Where biometrics threatened to expose her passage, she spoofed the devices with replicated patterns copied from a handful of facility staff who had used Voss’s ship in the last month. Like a phantom haunting the installation, the Shrike moved unseen between security patrols, pausing behind scant cover to deploy her packages, as unaware guards passed so close by that the interloper could hear the sound of them breathing.
This phase of her infiltration required Maris to navigate a chilling ventilation duct, winding through the tight turns of the air system until she came to a junction directly about the computer core access pit, a refrigerated chamber that housed the cloner's mainframe.
Elsewhere in the site, Xioss fumbled with her own burden, a covert data spike that she had been instructed to deploy in a dataport just beyond the first security grid. She was having second thoughts about agreeing to the stranger's deal. Freedom from her gambling debts wouldn't mean much if she were killed by her employers for this betrayal, but then the stranger had made it clear that she was more than capable of reaching Xioss, and even members of her family.
A sound from beyond the corridor turned the nervous logistician, and she turned to see a security patrol approaching across the external door checkpoint. It was then, or never. She stabbed the data spike into the port and turned to run.
The mission was forty-two seconds off schedule. The asset had been delayed, or perhaps had been waylaid. Either way, the power across the whole sector of the facility shorted in a series of hissing feedback burns. Lights were extinguished. Back-up generators rumbled to life, and the Shrike heard the locking mechanism on the main core access thud into a deadbolt as a countermeasure to power loss, but she had never planned on using the vault door.
Below, a pair of technicians fumbled in the ruby glow of the emergency lighting, trying to call out through static, muted comms panels.
The sudden echoing clang of the vent cover brought both to a sudden, silent halt as their attention turned to the unexpected distraction, and as one, the pair looked up, just in time to watch the jet black silhouette fall between them.
A short crimson blade ignited, and in a pair of deft killing strokes, both witnesses were no more.
In the moments that followed, the Shrike approached the mainframe terminal and extracted a slender, chrome-black data spike and examined the console for a moment before dropping low to find the maintenance port beneath the main housing, slotting the device home and engaging the data injection into the facility's master mainframe. A series of crimson lights blinked to life on the spikes' smooth surface, indicating the data-harvesting worm program had begun its task of stripping all key information and relaying it to her compressed storage. Meanwhile, a second program ran riot through the ongoing cloning programs in progress in the gene-forges. Corrupting further work, rendering future projects unreadable, and even forcing late-stage projects to purge their vats themselves.
It wasn’t long before the facility alarm system had finally triggered, as distant lab techs realised the gravity of the situation unleashed around them.
Leaving the spike in place to burn out, the Shrike set a final package beneath the mainframe and retreated the way she had come.
The data spike Xioss had deployed erupted in flame moments after injecting its catastrophic program into the main data grid. Elsewhere in the facility, key systems were overloaded, Xioss pushed past previously impassable security doors to reach her goal. The client lists would be held in the showroom database, and the second data spike would procure the information. After she had the information, she had only to return to her quarters and flush the device; her contact would collect it later. The security team had to prioritise key infrastructure, the executives, and the gene forges; they would be anywhere but the showroom.
Everything had proceeded as the architect of this scheme had said it would, and as she reached the dimmed lights of the showroom, Xioss paused for breath and reflected on just how simple this had all been. Industrial espionage might prove more profitable than she had ever imagined.
And then she heard the general alarm system bark into life, threat-level crimson. The facility would only reach crimson under a full assault. What the frack had that black clad freak done? If the guards caught the interloper, they might talk. She had to hope the skinny monster got fatally wounded in the fracas. Maybe Xioss would never be suspected at all?
She drew the second spike and levelled it above the data port, priming the connector with her thumb. She pushed the connector into contact with the port and completed the circuit. High voltage current ended Derillia Xioss in a matter of seconds.
….Not for the first time, Maris was thankful for the warm internal seal of her infiltration glove that spared her the worst of the cold; The material was thin enough that she felt the sensation of the streaming water through the tight fibres as if she wore no protection at all. She watched the chaos, head cocked like a bird, as she admired the art in entropy once more.
Patience was a virtue, her master had told her that. Suffering was a lesson.