Slicing Time

[Valik]

There was a very public auction going on, some man was selling quite a bit of holocrons, or holocron copies. This meant a Jedi Master, or SIth Lord as the case might have been, had to be copying the data as holocrons could only be accessed by Force Users, and could only be accessed in full by very powerful Force Users.

Sadly, Valik was not holding this auction. And Valik actually wanted some of the things being sold. Reasoning that most Jedi Masters and Sith Lords were not technical experts he reasoned that he could slice his way to finding their location. After all, he was one of the best slicers in the galaxy already by sheer volume of intelligence. He wasn't he the best however, and he knew it, so he decided to hire a little outside help to track the woman at the end of the line, [member="Matsu Ike"] as it were(unbeknownst to him of course).

[member="Olidiv Kenu"]

I have heard you're one of the better slicers in the galaxy. I have use of your talents and more than adequate credits to fund it. It shouldn't be a long job, but time is of the essence. I need you to assist me in locating the source of the Cashen Auction. I've disabled one of the droids running the auction and am making progress slicing into it now. Open the attached file to steam in and begin assist.

 

[Olidiv Kenu]

Olidiv Kenu looked up at a holo-display. Caishen Auction? huh. Remtoe acces droid deliveries.

Olidiv hopped in on the channel through the applied patch, two of his arms tackling this on one console while the other two began looking into the accessible item registry for this anonymous auction.

Whole lotta force-realted items on the associated manifest, bucko. While I'm all for showing force-users the occasional bit of humilty, this don't come back to me, dig? I don't need a bunch of saber-jockers at my door.

The Morseerian mastermind sipped his drink. God, he had to make this little function quick. The drive was encrypted, but no defenses were being run by people in real-time, so counter-hacks weren't terribly likely, as long as he hid behind enough proxies. Oh, hey, let's use the Republic national library as the priamry proxy. It'll run through a dozen comps and slow down the network, but who's missing.

You're no rookie to have gotten this far in without me. The fire-wall probably has a dead -switch to indicate to its owner what's gone down. Keep sending false "all systems normal" messages through the Droid's periphery while I do my best to discretely hunt down the navigation system's internal delivery protocols. We hit with two prongs, I should be able to push this around, and get you your info.

Olly grinned. He hadn't gotten to breakfast yet, and he was already shattering a system. A system with gobs of money.

One more question, Mr. anonymous but up to something amusing. How much scratch are we talking here? i think 30,000 suits me for this level of industrial espionage. And after I've secured what you've asked for, I'll try to dig deeper for visual confirmation--for some extra creds, of course.

[member="Valik"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[just for help and to keep in line with continuity]

A track of the items would show it being shipped via droid from Korman Loa's temple destroyed but rebuilt during the aftermath of the Gulag like so many other places. Matsu had convinced the albeit with bribery and information the Kanzer to be her representation while she explored section of the unknown regions

 

[Valik]

I don't know you, but you'll be paid 50K in whatever account(s) you wish to be paid in for every scrap of data we can find from this droid. You'll get paid a bonus of 1K for each minute under the hour we complete it. Valik responded, assuring his security and compensation. He wasn't paying a man to give him direction or advice, neither was he paying him for expert work by the looks of these firewalls. What he was paying the man for was unparralled efficiency, the ability to get done in half an hour what most on the market did in half a dozen hours.

At the slicers behest he continued to send "All Clear" signals to the initial droid, preventing them from having to waste any time disabling alarms or bypassing failsafes. Truth be told it wasn't an extremely difficult job, so Valik broke out a second datapad, and began going through the system once again. One to send all clears, one to dig deeper into the system.

Engaging another system to dig while the first continues to send all-clears. He sent a message to the slicer, ensuring he wouldn't think they were being counterhacked or someone else was inching into their job.

 

[Olidiv Kenu]

Deal.

Speed was key. Awesome. He coudl burte force the routing data, then. He blinked as he saw it. A dummy barrier? Nice.

Ignore the files marked 'CI-b-17-Omega.' It's fake routing data with an alghorthm set to over heat your system's processor. Republic naval intelligence in design, that tells us something about our anonymous donors, doesn't it?

He liked high-speed multi-tasking. Olidiv sliced like he raced--fast, reckless, and a little overboard.

Ohh, shiny. I can actually pull and Eye-hack on this model. gonna sift thorugh the video for any non-droids, see if we can't get some images of our dear donor. I'll automate it so I can keep pounding at this priamry encryption though--location's the prioirity, but I'll see if we can get some bonus material.

Honestly, who didn't encrypt their cameras. Whoever they were dealing with wasn't a pro. He shouldn't have been able to automate the eye-hack remotely like this, even with Valik already breaking the primary security encryption before he even jumped in. No redundancy of processors, either. Ehh, that's what happened when you use bargain-bin droids as secret couriers.

He smirked as the video feed paused on both his and Valiks' screen on a face. A short, obese devaronian was on the screen, handing a different droid a package. Well, looks like I earned a little bonus cash. I've got some databases, I'll automate a reverse image search, see if he's got a price on his head.

He grinned as he broke through another firewall, queueing the revers image search on a third console as he left the playback out loud.

"Deliver this to the indicate address at the close of the auction,"
Olidiv smirked. No indicating what the package was, or why. Using a person who didn't know crap to hand material off to the droids--clever. But not clever enough. The droids were programmed by reps, but being used by this guy...

Ding!

Olidiv sent a file to Valik. "This isn't our force-using, artifact hoarding wacko. His name is Ogga "Blitzer" Hayes. Two-bit smuggler, has bounties in black sun space for an attempt on some senator's life. Listed as an informant in Corsec databases, though. Our mastermind has some seriously Republic ties--I'm sure you can find out more if you find him. He usually hangs out in the Olum sector, but he probably relocated..."

He grinned as he found out some more details. Antoher picture form the photreceptors. Ogga was kneeling. In front of...the Kanzer of Korman Loa. Well crap.
In case you haven't read the news, that's Korman Loa's Kanzer-recently elected in what is specualted as rigged election. Crooked as they come, and easily bribed into doing favors. We know know Loa's a part of the shipping route.

He smirked as he added that to his calculations, peicing more parts of the algorhythm toegeter, watching a map complete itself.

How nice. we should have the droid's travel manifest if ten minutes. I hope I'm living up to my reputation and your expectations, mystery man. He was enjoying this. A good work-out for the brain pre-lunch.

A knonck on his door. "Olidiv, sir, the reports on Coruscant's invasion and it's implicit for this quarter are up."
"Understood, Mikara," he said with a smile. "I'll look at them later, I'm having a consultation right now," he said with a nod.

He continued typing in. The current map should lead from point of origin, right to when you caught the thing and disabled it. It does imply your location, being nearby, but hey, I'm not all that worried about finding you, I've got a lunch date in an hour, regardless. You know have full video feed, a profile on one of the criminals handing off these relics to the droids, and a known conspirator with a whole planet's electoral support to lose if you set this up right. So, jackpot for you, buddy. That totals to four good bits data, under thirty minutes (I'll round up to the nearest minute, I' don't need to pinch pennies) once that algorithm completes.

He smiled playfully as he sent the last message.

As a freebie, I'll give you some meta-data I'm running in the background. A large amoutn of bank information showed up in a file on Valik's screen.
The Kanzer's been embezzling from the treasury, and replacing it weeks later with credits. The replacement credits are earmarked with Republic serial numbers frequently used for paying war veterans who've been hurt in actions. Not a lot of people have access to the Veteran's accounts--unless theyv'e been cooking books for the Jedi or the Senate. Curious, yeah? Anyhow, I've a Togorian Playhutt Model to do lunch with, so, I'll clsoe this connection with a smile after you forward me that cash, friendo. It's been a blast.

 

[Valik]

80,000 credits have been transferred to your account. It's been a pleasure doing business with you. Valik said and transferred the specified funding, before compiling the data on a datacron. He had some trades to make.