Slicer Auditions (open to data types)

[Ashin Varanin]

The call had gone out anonymously, but the kind of anonymous that a dedicated slicer could crack: a private military contractor was looking for a couple of very sharp minds. The offer was presented as a retainer fee, a stipend with generous bonuses, for the top two competitors in a little audition contest.

Any data types interested in competing were invited to contact the anonymous PMC.

 

[Dashal Vance]

UNKNOWN COORDINATES

S.T.Y.L.E


Somewhere beneath the surface, hidden from view and various degrees of detection - a home away from the muss and fuss of the light dwelling masses resided our resident slicer. One of several safe havens he'd acquired since he left Hapes more than five years ago was his current abode. All the creature comforts for a lifestyle of a genius smashing expectations that one would or could hope for. It may look meager to any outside party that he might let grace the confines of this den of the digital age, but it was stockpiled with secrets in both the physical and data stream realms. You shouldn't carry all of your eggs in one basket, and he didn't pile all of his tech goodness into one location - save for the mysterious and ever difficult to get to cross section of the cosmos where DARCI sat in ever present connection with yours truly. The floating orb scuttled around Dash's couch prone vicinity while he surfed the holo-casts picking up news snippets as he flipped through the rotation faster than most would be able to collect any data. Flicking back a few stations, a wide brimming smile swept over his features as the default anchor with a magnificent mustache flipped onto the holoscreen. Jek Floggerty was probably the only news anchor that Dash could watch for more than a few minutes time. While he wasn't the sharpest vibroblade in an Echani's arsenal, he at least made the news entertaining.

"I still do not understand while you indulge this. He's as inaccurate as he is pompous." The synthesized tones ebbed out from the floating SPHERE that shifted back and forth analyzing the frequency of the station and immediately pulling up a host of relevant information on Floggerty for her own uses and quandaries."

"He may be daft, but the mustache makes it a dignified daft. Besides, who else can stare down a taun-taun and win in three seconds flat?" The rebuttle came when he quickly realized it was a re-run, and as much as Dash enjoyed Jek's holocasts, his memory was too intact to not recall the entire scene five times over before it had a chance to cycle once. "I've seen it though, five glasses of scotch, two cigars, and four attempts at slapping him in the face on cam."

"Perhaps if they succeeded, he might of lessened his alcohol content."

"No, that'd be an increase for him."

"Does that mean if I slap you, I can drive you to drinking?"

"Honey, if you slapped me, my jaw would need relocating. Metal hands, remember?"

"It's a good thing you're squishy."

"Anything noteworthy coming through?" An immediate change of subject from bodily harm was in order. The age of DARCI was nearing indeed.

"Standby." DARCI mused as a few seconds went by before the direct up-link with the AI sent a signal that filled the holo-monitors at the tail end of this hide-y hole. "Processed." A litany of images and code appeared on the screen, which drove Dash from the confines of a couch in a state nearing perfect comfy and onto his feet. Knees immediately hit the padded chair, causing it to launch across the tile and spin him into a reclined position to do what he did best. His hands raised in exaggerated concentration and fingers wiggled as if he was about to conduct some great orchestra. An audible sigh escaped the sphere that floated right behind him. Two holo-screens lit up inches from his hands into a dual keyboard display and he went to work. Digits striking the holographic buttons as they lit up in a frenzied pace. Segments of code filtered through passing against several custom algorithms specifically designed to piece apart patterns in raw data and make the connections needed to string together a coherent meaning in even a jumbled mess. "Source is coming up unknown across all databanks."

"Please, nothing is unknown; only undiscovered." The Hapan mused while he moved into the source feed routing matrix and started piecing apart system signatures until an amused chuckle crept forth and his eyes shifted to the black hued orb that floated by. "Someone coded their name into the teleix script. Little clue for those running holo-viral countermeasures." Both feet kicked up from their place on the chair's feet and slipped beneath him into a lotus position. "Contact's encrypted, that's adorable." A few more strokes on the virtual boards and an elliptic curved algorithm was run to find the key, breaking the entire thing down into a readable message. "Cake..ooh, snack break." And the only worthy contender for the title of snack and cake ran in the form of the puff-cake pastry that seemed to be his sole motivation when not of the opposite gender species. Powdered sugar and sweet pastry filled his mouth, while he scanned over the document, and formulated a reply. "Pumsewntsslcrfrcntrj...." Dash managed before he swallowed the first bite.

"Please don't do that again. I may be a disembodied voice, but that's still gross."

"Sorry babe, where are my manners? Seriously, where are they, I keep losing those things." He toothy grin came as he licked up the residue and sucked the sugary goodness of his digits. "PMC wants slicer for contract - military style." His index reached up and pointed to another part of the screen. "Oh contest...competition - I guess I'll have to play hard to get." Dash mused before he started to encrypt his own message in reply. This wasn't just some average reply however. In a few minutes, several dozen false accounts with back-ties into several shell companies that may or may not have indirect ties with several other PMCs began to spout the same message, and yet all of them led to a universal file that was purged and deleted every fifteen seconds. He'd make sure any competition worked for the chance to start the contest. "I love junk data." His right digit hit send, and the reply to this 'anonymous' contact went out, detailing his interest in no uncertain terms.

[member="Ember Rekali"]

 

[Simone]

"Nononononono!" Simone skidded across the floor of her ship, fire extinguisher in her hand. It spat foam over the electrical fire, the stench of melted plastic burning her nose. Danger averted, she ran a hand through her hair.

"Why is this happening!" she yelled at no one in particular. "Why are you doing this to me!?" That was most definately directed at her ship. Grounded for months, with the war ongoing she was having a hard time getting funds together for anything along the lines of repairs. She needed a job. A job that paid well, that would get her off the ground. Dropping the extinguisher with a thump she dragged her feet back to the console she'd been working on when something had over heated.

She gave it a firm kick as it rebooted, two out of the six screens were down. Fine, she could handle that. If she could slice into the Supreme Chancellors office from her handheld, she could handle whatever the slicing world had to throw at her. Time to get back on the market, time to listen to the signal. She peeled through the layers of the holonet, till she found the message, fingers working tirelessly across the keys to try and trace it. Generous bonus, fantastic. Private military? Fine, she could deal with it.

But tracing was proving frustrating, blips along the line pulled her in the wrong direction. False accounts, traps. Competiton. She scowled and changed her tactics. Several dozen was a lot, but it wasn't impossible to handle. Not impossible to track. Everything left a finger print, or part of a print, she just had to piece it back together, eliminate it from her original track and continue. Oh it took time, but she had plenty of that.

Fingerprint found, she sent a little gift, simple, but sometimes the simplest things were the most annoying, like having stri'agra adverts pop up continuously, along with helplines for those dealing with bedroom issues. "You want to play, lets play. I need to practice, fingers getting a little rusty."

Her tracer found a trail for the anonymous employer and she sent her interest along, before scouring the holonet for whatever delights she might be able to find on the anonymous. She kicked her feet up onto the edge of the console, fingers curling round a cup of caff and waited.

[member="Ember Rekali"] [member="Dashal Vance"]

 

[Cryax Bane]

While a small mouse-like repair droid did some routine maintenance on his cybernetic knee, Cryax Bane, clad only in boxer shorts, sat hunched over his DataPad on the floor of his high-rise apartment on Antecdent, the planet of sin. He was using a brand new piece of custom-coded software he'd named "Little Sister," a companion of sorts to his Little Brother software, which he had written to find exploits in protected networks.

What Little Sister was doing was making connections to random nodes throughout the deepest parts of the Holonet, a place he lovingly referred to as the abyss, an underground network you could only reach through decentralized, anonymous nodes via a number of different shady networks. It allowed him to navigate around freely while obscuring the source of the traffic. As if he were a ghost. Cryax was looking for, well, anything and everything. Possible jobs, information to exploit, illegal substances. Although he was usually just looking, a hopeless slave to his own curiosity.

There was something interesting that caught the red glowing eyes of the Chiss slicer. An anonymous PMC was looking for someone with his specialty. Suddenly, another PMC message blipped up on his screen. And then another. And then none. And then the message was back. Then, there was an embarrassing pop up ad for a certain physical enlargement modification and another for singles in his area that were dying to meet him. Cryax shook his head. This looked like the handiwork of someone who liked to kark with people. Some other, flashier slicer.

Cryax smirked and let Little Sister continue to run, knowing that at some point she'd doggedly hit the right node. Once she did he'd be able to send the PMC an encrypted message from 'Bug'.

[member="Ember Rekali"] [member="Dashal Vance"] [member="Simone"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The message that went out in return was pretty fething basic, at least by the standards of [member="Dashal Vance"], [member="Simone"] and [member="Cryax Bane"]; it bespoke a professional small-to-midsize operation that didn't have a genuine slicer on retainer and knew it.

Here's the challenge.

This bounty was posted by an anonymous source. It's in my interests to make sure that that source loses their anonymity -- to me, anyway. Find out who posted it, give me a name, and make sure none of the bounty targets are injured as a result of what you do. I don't care what your methods are; you're the experts. I don't care how long it takes, but I'll reward speed.

 

[Myra Elspeth Arceneau]

Spoiler

OOC: because i just found out Ember is using my bounty as your test! lol

Here are the terms.
1. Requires a tag to me to get more information.
2. This will require you to go into One Sith Territory to slice into a secured network in coruscant.
3. Be prepared for One Sith intervention -- IE i fully intended any counter deal to turn into a skirmish for the One Sith so they can have fun -- so this actually works out in our favor for our more techie inclined folks and those who just like to jump into an RP. So expect opposition for breaking and entering to try and get the info. I'll be posting a thread on the One Sith Forums once folk actually get to coruscant where the origin of the bounty being imputed is flagged.
4. The person you are trying to find the details of who actually posted it is an NPC broker, who well.. you'll have to find and convince to tell you the info on who the origin of the bounty is. This is -not- going to be easy, as the countess is not a woman to cross. Much less in One Sith territory.
5. Have fun!

 

[Simone]

Track a bounty source...

Well that wasn't necessarily a hard task, she could get a location from the bounty board server easily enough. There were a series of problems that followed the acquiring of such information. The first? Sith Territory. She'd no transport, so it'd have to be public, in cognito, not really something that was high on her skills list. That of course, was only the beginning of her problems. Once in the territory, she'd have to get into a secure network to track more intel from there.

Piece of cake? Well, yes and no. If she got away with it, then yes. If she didn't? Well, she wasn't exactly combat ready. She rested her elbows on the console and pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Beneath all the concern for her life and the worry about her success, there was a glimmer of excitement. When was the last time she'd had a job this challenging?

Sitting upright she replied to the message.

Challenge accepted. Source of bounty indicates Coruscant, further infiltration required to get more details. Will be in touch within a standard week, assuming becoming incapacitated is not my fate.

S~

Simone shut down and started to pack, putting a com link in her ear as she contacted a friend. Transport was required.

[member="Ember Rekali"] [member="Countess of Báthory"] [member="Cryax Bane"] [member="Dashal Vance"]

 

[Dashal Vance]

There was admittedly a lot to be said that credits talked - and walked - and pretty much grabbed any and everything you'd need to get by in a Galaxy this large and encompassing. However, not all were alike in the game - and motives differed as wildly as there were species of Gizka to count. Dash didn't need credits, or really strive to pry them loose from the hands of others. He could get what he wanted, when he wanted it. He sliced for himself, he'd do it for a good cause, and he'd also do it for the sheer challenge it sometimes brought. Which category this fit into was more along the latter considering it was against others in his same venue of dedicated focus. He wouldn't be the first one gunning for the prize, which meant that a race was about to start, and he was never one to pass up a good chance to beat feet.

"Bounty boards. The quick and dirty way to deputize the most defacto job in the verse - all to spell doom and gloom for the right price." And what a price it was too. Dash gave a double blink and swallowed the puff-cake. He'd seen a lot of zeros before trailing after numbers, but the bounty boards normally didn't offer rewards that could buy you a starting fleet of star fighters. "If I'm reading this right - you might even clock three quarters of a cool million if she's got enough relatives." Dash surmised, stroking his chin and glancing at the SPHERE which was unnervingly silent for the time being. It wasn't always a good thing when the AI was quiet - especially given her temperament. Casually rotating back in his chair to face the multitude of screens - his fingers set to work again, making pathways through the digital jungle, and separating fact from fiction, meme from material, and rumor from resolution. "You're quiet...a little too quiet."

"I'm processing." Drolled DARCI in apathetic response.

"You process faster than my brain fires synapses."

"Fine, I'm judging...would you like to hear my hypothesis?" The rhetoric even came through the synthesized tones.

"It never stopped you before."

"This is a Mandalorian contract - and given the affirmation of the bounty's reward, it is safe to calculate that it is a Sith based hit."

"Your powers of the obvious continue to astound me my dear....what else has that pretty little brain cooked up?"

"You'll die. Once you reach Coruscant, you'll be flagged, tagged, bagged and then....." DARCI paused as her command of the basic language was stunted in trying to find a rhythmic match. "Killed." Her tones offered a sigh of annoyance at the limitations to this all but average form of communication. She'd searched Hapan's wordbank as well and come up with nothing. Futile wordsmiths, the lot of them.

"There's that. Your concern again is overwhelming, but you're not wrong." Running a hand through spiked locks of black follicles, he hummed for a moment, drumming the other set of digits on the desk in a pondering fashion. The security on this was tight lipped, and it wasn't leading to anything grand other than a source code that was way behind offline at this point. They were doing things the annoyingly sneaky way of word of mouth. What's worse they could of done it by written word - those clever fiends! He'd have to take a jaunt to the once home for the Republic proper, and probably get tangled up in the web of the One Sith, and their compatriots. He needed a better plan than waltzing in and taking what he wanted. Not to mention, if more than one was after the prize, it was bound to draw attention. Someone would do something stupid, likely not him, but still there was that chance. Soon enough though his hand hit the table and he had a eureka moment. Digits accessed his little black holodex, which came up on screen with a laundry list of names and specific titles. Finger swiping down the list, he stopped at the B's and selected 'Ballerina' out of the mix. A big grin spread across his face. The start of his transmission to [member="Matsu Xiangu"] would began shortly. "Also the word you were searching for...defragged."



::Encrypted Transmission Start::

Hey there beautiful. How's my favorite bionic ballerina? Have I got some fun in store for you! Well, it's meeting me again and that's always a hoot and a half. So I'm inbound to ol' Coruscant, and I figured with your space magic ties to the land of red glow-sticks, you might like to be on my arm for a less than social calling. Got another job, and it requires my presence at some of those dreadfully offline server caches. I need something of a bodyguard/escort to be my esoteric eyes and ears for the 'heist'. Nothing to get your friends clipped, I'm certain, but a job's a job. Also - I've got a new fancy toy that I think you'd love to meet. What say you?

::Encrypted Transmission End::



[member="Simone"] | [member="Countess of Báthory"] | [member="Ember Rekali"] | [member="Cryax Bane"]