Private Luxury, Lies, and Other Technical Failures

[Ana Rix]

Ana listened as the two men spoke, the familiarity between them immediately apparent. It wasn't just that they knew each other's names. It was the ease with which they slipped into old conversations, references to ships and assignments carrying the weight of shared history. She found herself wondering how many worlds, campaigns, and political disasters existed behind a greeting that casual.

"Enduring seems underrated," she observed, her gaze shifting toward Ambassador Roan. "Most people spend so much time talking about growth, influence, and expansion that they forget survival is an accomplishment in its own right." There was no false encouragement in her tone. If anything, she sounded sincere. Worlds that managed to persist despite every disadvantage tended to interest her more than the ones constantly announcing their greatness.

The mention of commanding warships drew a brief glance toward Jack. That was another detail she was steadily adding to the growing pile of things he had somehow neglected to mention earlier. Chancellor. Soldier. Fleet officer. Diplomat. She was beginning to suspect that asking him a simple question was like opening a storage locker and discovering three more rooms behind it.

"Well," she said, adjusting the datapad beneath her arm, "if we're hunting a thief, I suppose we'd better continue before they decide to make our jobs more difficult." A faint smile touched her lips as she looked between the two men. "It was nice meeting someone willing to advertise their world's flaws instead of disguising them as strategic advantages. That's becoming surprisingly rare around here."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

He moved and laughed a little with it. "There is a strength and skill in using the truth and information. By underplaying Brendok he is going to attract investment, the materials might not be up to standards for manufacturing but they can be shipped out and used to reinforce, as fuel and scrap. Clear out the mines of the world, over mine them until they run dry and you have a lot of storage space you can turn into facilities or vaults and storage areas. The infrastructure of it would already be in palce and minimal investment to add doors and updaate the alarms." He was moving as he said it and looked out going for the next group that might have her thief.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana followed alongside him as they moved through the summit, listening to the explanation while trying very hard to focus on the actual content of what he was saying. Unfortunately, that task was becoming increasingly difficult. There was something deeply unfair about a man being simultaneously intelligent, experienced, genuinely helpful, politically savvy, and attractive. Most people had the decency to specialize in one or two areas. Jack seemed determined to collect them.

Still, the analysis itself made sense. Her gaze dropped briefly to the datapad in her hands as she followed the logic in her mind. Understate value. Attract investment. Leverage existing infrastructure. Turn weaknesses into opportunities. It was the sort of long-term thinking she normally associated with good systems architecture, only applied to worlds instead of networks. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "it's mildly concerning that you can hear someone describe a world's problems and immediately turn them into a business plan."

A faint smile appeared as she glanced up at him again before quickly redirecting her attention to the crowd. That was becoming a necessary survival mechanism. "I keep expecting you to run out of useful insights eventually." The observation was half joke, half genuine suspicion. So far, every conversation seemed to reveal another layer she hadn't anticipated.

Her gaze returned to the datapad as they approached the next cluster of delegates. The suspicious traffic patterns were still there. The transmission timings. The overlapping schedules. Somewhere among the people gathered here was the person she was looking for, and despite herself, she found her attention shifting between the investigation and the man walking beside her.

"Well," she said, adjusting her grip on the datapad, "either we're getting closer to our thief, or you're about to accidentally solve another economic development problem before dinner." Looking toward the next group ahead of them, she found herself wondering which outcome was more likely. More surprisingly, she found herself wondering whether Jack would somehow lead her to the right person without even realizing he was doing it.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

":It is only useful because I have an accent. Makes everything I say sound reasonable and better." He offered that with a smile though while going towards the next group where she said they would be able to find them and he wasn't certain who they were but he offered a bow of his head to them. Allowing for a moment but he motioned with his hands as the three were standing there. "Ambassadors." Jack spoke with a moment for it as a few of them turned. His eyes scanning at the ready until he spoke. "I am pleased to Introduce the Lady Ana, guest of the royal family of Zeltros Hal'a and Ma'vel. Here to hear any proposals." He looked at them and a good way, proposals meant notes so a datapad being used to scan while she made it look like she was typing their proposals.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana shot Jack a look the moment he introduced her. Not because she objected. Because he had somehow promoted her from investigator to visiting dignitary with enough confidence that nobody questioned it. The irritating part was that it worked.

Recovering quickly, she offered the ambassadors a polite nod and tucked the datapad beneath one arm with practiced ease. If Jack wanted to present her as someone interested in proposals, then she could work with that. Listening to people explain why their ideas deserved funding or attention was not all that different from listening to people explain why their networks deserved access privileges.

"Please," she said, activating the datapad and bringing up what appeared to be a note-taking interface. In reality, several background processes continued quietly monitoring nearby signals and traffic patterns. "I would be interested in hearing what opportunities you believe deserve additional consideration."

As the first ambassador began speaking, Ana started taking notes at just the right pace to appear engaged. Most of what she typed had little to do with the proposal itself. Device identifiers. Signal strengths. Network handshakes. Movement patterns. She listened while she worked, her attention divided between the conversation in front of her and the digital ecosystem hidden beneath it.

"Zeltros values innovation," she added smoothly, following Jack's lead without missing a beat. "Particularly when someone can explain not only what they're building, but who benefits from it and why."

The statement sounded diplomatic enough. More importantly, it encouraged people to talk. And in Ana's experience, the longer people talked, the more likely they were to reveal something they hadn't intended to share. Whether Jack had led them to the right group or not, she found herself wondering if one of the datapads in front of her would blink at exactly the wrong moment.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

Jack was glad she had gone with it as the two were speaking. "Well we are working on innovation, we gave up trying to make hologram and hardlight better. We focused more on improving out refinement for mining processes. It allows us to make the circuits for technologies across the galaxy. We have been working on microsheathing and tubes. To make all of our circuits smaller so they can be used for redundancies and to make the systems themselves more focused. " He was speaking and Jack gave a nod of his head. "How small are we talking? The smallest ones usually they have not been able to get all of the crystals forr more advanced systems." The man gave a moment and nod of his head. "We had to sacrifice a little in terms of memory and capacity which is why we are doubling and tripling them. It shares the load but also allows for a back up to be there."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana's attention sharpened immediately. Unlike many of the political proposals she had listened to throughout the evening, this one was at least adjacent to a language she spoke fluently. Manufacturing constraints, redundancies, miniaturization, and processing tradeoffs were familiar problems. Her fingers moved across the datapad as though taking notes on the proposal while she listened carefully. "So you're deliberately sacrificing individual unit performance in exchange for system resilience," she said thoughtfully. "Instead of building one highly capable circuit, you're building several smaller ones that can share processing loads and absorb failures."

The idea wasn't revolutionary, but it was practical, and practical solutions often mattered more than elegant ones. Ana glanced down at the datapad briefly before looking back up at the ambassador. "That actually makes a lot of sense for critical infrastructure," she continued. "Most systems don't fail because their primary components stop working. They fail because there isn't a backup when something inevitably goes wrong." It was the sort of lesson engineers, programmers, and architects all learned eventually, usually after something expensive caught fire.

She considered the implications for a moment, mentally running through the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. "What kind of efficiency loss are you seeing from the additional redundancy?" she asked. "Because if you're shrinking the circuits while multiplying their numbers, at some point the overhead starts eating into the benefits. Especially if you're trying to support more advanced crystal architectures." The question came naturally, less a challenge and more a genuine curiosity.

For a brief moment, she almost forgot she was supposed to be investigating a data leak. Almost. Her eyes flicked toward the datapad as another background scan completed, then returned to the conversation. "Though if you've solved that balance problem," she added, "I can think of quite a few industries that would be interested." Including, she suspected, several people attending this summit. And that made the information valuable enough that someone might steal it.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"So far we have managed to balance it to a point. Structurally it is six to handle the load evenly. Four can function fine but the strain lessens with six and from there we are able to sell it for at the moment a moderate price. We brought it to propose to get increased production capabilities. For the moment it is too order on demand as opposed to something we have in a warehouse built and collecting dust." He said it and Jack gave a small nod. "Investment to expand is better and if it preforms how you have said then there can be plenty of benefits." THe man gave a bow of his head. "Our work and research is going towards it and other projects to improve the quality of our equipment. Selling to others will be a dream for awhile."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana nodded slowly as she listened, mentally mapping the design in her head. Six circuits to distribute the load evenly, four as the minimum functional threshold, and production constrained not by engineering but by manufacturing capacity. It was a familiar problem. Plenty of good ideas never reached widespread adoption because scaling them proved more difficult than inventing them in the first place.

"That actually seems like the smarter approach," she said, making a few notes on the datapad that looked every bit like comments on the proposal. "There's no point filling warehouses with expensive hardware if the demand hasn't materialized yet. Producing to order gives you room to refine the design while avoiding the cost of inventory that might become obsolete before it's ever installed."

Her eyes lifted from the screen to the ambassador once more.

"And if your redundancy performs the way you're projecting, expansion becomes much easier to justify." She glanced briefly toward Jack before continuing. "People are generally willing to pay more for reliability than raw performance, especially when downtime costs more than the hardware itself. A system that keeps operating after a component fails is often worth far more than one that's marginally faster."

Another background scan quietly completed on the datapad, drawing her attention for only a fraction of a second before she looked back up.

"I hope your proposal finds the investment it's looking for," she said sincerely. "Incremental improvements rarely make headlines, but they're usually the innovations that end up changing industries." As she finished the sentence, her eyes flicked across the crowd again, wondering if someone else was listening to the same conversation for reasons that had nothing to do with engineering.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"That is the goal to have. We know headlines attract attention and better to not have attention when we are trying to improve and get it out there. If we mess up or miss something it will not be a national or galactic headline." He was speaking and Jack gave a nod. He knew the power of headlines and there was a lot that could happen with it. "Headlines can serve a purpose but it is good to be careful about it and I can admit that all proposals get equal time. It is just a matter of what can be offered. I wish you luck." He said it with a bow as he was starting to walk away and go towards the bar again but giving a chance for Ana. "So how goes your scans."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana waited until they were a comfortable distance from the ambassadors before lowering her gaze to the datapad. What had appeared to everyone else as diligent note-taking was, in reality, a steady stream of passive network monitoring running beneath the surface. She reviewed the latest results as they walked, filtering out routine traffic, authorized devices, and the predictable chatter generated by hundreds of delegates carrying encrypted datapads. "Nothing definitive yet," she admitted, her thumb scrolling through another set of logs. "But the list is getting smaller. Most of the activity is exactly what I'd expect at a summit. Delegates exchanging contact information, staff synchronizing schedules, and security devices checking in with one another. Boring is actually useful. It makes the unusual stand out."

She slowed for a moment, studying a cluster of timestamps that refused to fit neatly with the others. "Whoever I'm looking for is disciplined," she said, the observation carrying more admiration than frustration. "They're not transmitting constantly. They communicate in short bursts, then disappear back into the noise before anyone has a reason to notice. That means they're either experienced..." She paused briefly. "...or they're getting very lucky."

Her eyes drifted across the room again, watching conversations unfold with new appreciation before the datapad dimmed slightly as another scan completed. "I don't think it's luck," she said quietly. "I just need them to make one mistake." She looked up at Jack with a faint smile. "Fortunately, everyone does eventually."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

Jack's stride slowed to match Ana's as she reviewed her datapad, a subtle shift that kept them at a steady, unhurried pace. The ambient noise of the summit clinking glassware, the low hum of overlapping conversations, the occasional burst of laughter became the backdrop to her observations. He listened without interrupting, his gaze tracking a server weaving through the crowd rather than the data she analyzed. The corner of his mouth lifted at her remark about boring being useful. He'd learned that lesson himself more than once the quiet moments often held the most information, if you knew how to read them.

When she paused over the timestamps, Jack's focus sharpened without any visible change in his demeanor. He didn't lean in or glance at the screen; he simply waited, letting her work through the pattern at her own pace. Her assessment of discipline and luck struck a chord, and he considered it with the same patient attention he gave to any piece of intelligence that crossed his path. "Discipline is harder to fake than luck," he said finally, his tone carrying the weight of someone who had seen both in action. "Luck runs out. Discipline tends to hold steady until it's forced to break." He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that acknowledged her determination to find the crack in the armor. "That means you've already got an advantage. You're looking for something that doesn't want to be found and you know it's there."

As they neared the bar, Jack allowed a brief pause, letting the ambient sounds of the summit fill the space between them. "If you need a second set of eyes on anything specific patterns, timing, gaps in the noise I've got a few tricks that don't show up on standard scans. No need to light up the network for it either." He wasn't offering to take over, only to provide a quieter angle if she wanted it. His gaze drifted across the room once more, settling on nothing in particular, as if the offer itself was secondary to the flow of the evening. "Either way, you're right. Everyone makes a mistake eventually. It's just a matter of being patient enough to catch it."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana appreciated that he didn't look over her shoulder.

It was a small thing, but it spoke volumes. Most people, when they heard the word investigation, instinctively wanted to see the evidence for themselves. Jack simply trusted that if there was something worth sharing, she would share it. The respect wasn't loud or performative. It was simply there, woven naturally into the conversation.

"Discipline is predictable," she agreed, locking the datapad and letting it rest comfortably at her side. "That's the irony. People think disciplined opponents are harder to catch because they make fewer mistakes. They usually are. But they also become creatures of habit." Her eyes wandered over the summit floor, watching the ebb and flow of conversations rather than any individual delegate. "Eventually routines become patterns, and patterns become assumptions. That's usually where the first crack appears."

His offer drew a thoughtful look from her. She didn't answer immediately, weighing it the same way she weighed everything else. "I may take you up on that," she admitted. "Computers are excellent at telling me what happened. They're much less reliable at explaining why. That's usually where people like you have the advantage." A faint smile touched her lips. "You've spent your life reading rooms. I've spent mine reading systems. Somewhere in the overlap is probably the person we're looking for."

As they reached the bar, Ana let her gaze drift over the delegates rather than return to the datapad. For the first time that evening, she wasn't searching for devices or signal strength. She was watching people. Who lingered too long. Who seemed relaxed. Who looked like they were waiting rather than participating. "Patience," she said quietly, almost to herself. "That's the difficult part. Not finding the mistake... resisting the urge to force one." She glanced sideways at Jack, the faint smile returning. "Fortunately, I appear to have found someone who's very good at waiting."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

He gave a nod of his head of her as she was explaining it and he had an idea what she was talking about. With a look around the room though he was checking on parts of it.. On the people but he took the moment to move. With a small look on interest in what some of them were trying to do. He was looking at the chamber hummed with the low, stale vibration of murmured negotiations a shifting sea of dark wool, polished shoes, and practiced diplomatic smiles. You let your gaze drift across the senators and ambassadors, scanning the faces of the powerful, until it snagged on a singular point of stillness. A fracture in the tapestry of the room.

She stood like a stark cipher against the ochre-tinted walls, utterly removed from the sycophantic swirl around her. Long, micro-braided ropes of obsidian cascaded heavily over one shoulder, framing a face sculpted from polished mahogany. Two simple gold hoops bracketed that sharp jawline, gleaming like twin warnings in the low light. Her suit was an exercise in precision a pitch-black void that swallowed the ambient lighting, broken only by the deliberate, plunging V of her neckline. One hand was buried deeply in her trouser pocket, a casual gravitational center for the silence she commanded.

But it was her current action that tethered your attention. Amidst the frantic, buzzing network of delegates, she remained perfectly immobile, chin slightly elevated, eyes fixed downward at the dim, ghost-lit glow of a datapad held with a master's grip. She never looked up. She didn't have to. The suspicion curled tightly in your gut like a snake in warm grass. In a room full of predators frantically looking for an angle, she was the one not hunting and that made her infinitely more dangerous. Who looked down at a screen while surrounded by the most powerful people in the world, yet betrayed not a single tell of nervousness? The cold light of the tablet painted unreadable shadows across her cheekbones, hiding her eyes.

She didn't type, she didn't scroll. She just watched the silent screen, her imperious posture untouched by the chaos. She wasn't looking at the crowd, yet her very stillness made you feel like you were the one being dissected. She wasn't reading the room; she was owning it, one quiet breath at a time. Jack was looking as he moved around the room and motioned with his hand towards the woman who was there and she wasn't talking with them as much. She was observing just as much but he was able to check on some parts of it. To navigate and get around closer.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana noticed the change in Jack before she noticed its cause. His stride slowed almost imperceptibly, his attention settling somewhere ahead without becoming obvious about it. She followed his line of sight naturally, allowing her eyes to drift through the crowd instead of snapping directly toward the same point. Years spent around networks had taught her that the quickest way to attract attention was to appear interested in something.

Eventually, she found the woman. She was...unusual.

Not because of the clothing or the datapad. Half the room carried one. It was everything else. The absence of movement. The complete lack of social obligation. While everyone else spent the summit exchanging pleasantries, building alliances, or pretending to enjoy one another's company, this woman simply... existed. She neither sought conversation nor appeared concerned by its absence. There was a confidence in that which Ana immediately recognized. People who are comfortable in silence rarely feel the need to prove themselves.

"She doesn't fit," Ana murmured quietly enough that only Jack could hear. Her expression remained neutral as she continued walking, resisting every instinct to look back a second time. "Everyone else here is performing diplomacy. She's observing it." Her thumb brushed lightly against the edge of her datapad without activating it. "Either she's exceptionally disciplined..." A small pause followed. "...or she already knows something everyone else is still trying to learn."

She allowed another few steps to pass before finally speaking again, keeping her gaze on the delegates ahead rather than the woman herself. "I don't know if she's our thief," she admitted, "but she's the first person tonight who has made me curious instead of suspicious." A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she glanced sideways at Jack. "Those are usually the ones worth talking to."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

He listened to her and was moving as circling around he was able to have a moment. "So how do you want to approach it?" As a potential fight he was worried for a moment but they would be able to do a lot more if she ran. At least in terms of their own movement, to try and get out of the crowds. He was moving though to go around and cut her off if she started to run or move. Then they could enclose themselves on her before the man only motioned with his fingers while getting some finger foods and a drink to partake on for a moment. "This will work out better in some cases." He was relying on Ana's confirmation of who it was so that they could move on them.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana didn't answer immediately. Her eyes remained on the woman across the room while her thumb idly brushed the edge of the datapad. The latest scan results sat open beneath an innocuous note-taking interface, and although nothing directly incriminated the woman, the absence of normal activity was becoming increasingly interesting. Everyone else at the summit generated digital noise. Messages, calendar updates, introductions, and networking exchanges. She generated almost none. Either she was exceptionally disciplined... or she had no reason to use the local network at all.

"Slowly," Ana replied at last, lowering the datapad to her side. "If she's who I think she is, the quickest way to lose her is to let her know we've noticed her." She watched as the woman remained perfectly composed amid the movement surrounding her. "People like that are constantly evaluating exits, reactions, and changes in behavior. If we become the change, she'll disappear before I can learn anything useful."

Her gaze flicked briefly toward Jack before returning to the woman. "Let's give her an opportunity to make the first move." There was a quiet confidence in the suggestion, the sort born from long hours watching malicious programs reveal themselves only after believing no one was looking. "You keep doing exactly what you've been doing. You're naturally approachable; people expect you to wander through conversations. I'll keep watching the network and her behavior." A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "If she decides to leave, then we follow. If she decides to approach someone..." She glanced down at the datapad as another passive scan completed. "...I want to know why."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

That sounded like a plan as he was listening to her and the pair would be able to move as the crowd went in different directions to talk with a number of different guests. Jack was looking at more of it while he followed the woman's movements out of the corner of his eye but was walking around and mingling.. Allowing him to have a moment before breathing in and then outwards as she was moving towards a corner alcove. Her hands going over her datapad and avoiding the others for the moment so that she would be able to do things away from them and he was listening to the people with him as trade proposals were flirted with but it was more fishing then commitment.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana resisted the urge to follow the woman's gaze directly. Instead, she let her own attention drift back to the datapad, allowing Jack to continue doing exactly what he was already doing. He moved through the summit with an ease she was beginning to admire, slipping from conversation to conversation without ever seeming to hurry. It made him the perfect distraction. Nobody would think twice about the former Chancellor making his rounds, and certainly not while everyone else was eager to speak with him.

Her passive scans continued in the background as she monitored the room through reflections and brief glances rather than prolonged observation. The woman had peeled away from the crowd, settling into one of the alcoves with her datapad. That alone wasn't suspicious. Plenty of delegates stepped away to answer messages or escape another round of diplomatic small talk. What interested Ana was the timing. "There you are..." she murmured quietly to herself as another packet of telemetry appeared on her screen. "You waited until everyone else was busy."

She made no move toward the alcove. If the woman was careful enough to isolate herself before using the datapad, she would almost certainly notice anyone approaching. Instead, Ana remained where she was, occasionally making notes on the screen to maintain appearances while keeping the scans running beneath the surface. "Go on," she thought, more to the datapad than the woman herself. "Just one transmission. One handshake. One mistake." If it came, she'd have something tangible. If it didn't, Jack's quiet circulation through the room would keep the pressure off until the opportunity presented itself.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

He moved with it and was able to see some more, the woman was there and she brought her datapad up for a moment before adjusting to look at the lights in the room. At the people around when she turned making it look like she was checking her dress but then she was gauging the footpaths and exits. Making a note before Jack didn't stop talking he just brrought a small datapad out and held it for a moment. THe screen flaring to life aas the lights went out and dark. The screen casting a small glow on the woman when she looked up and was moving quickly to get between them before he was adjusting and moving with the others to jeep her dress illuminated.