Its job done, the Hedgehog crawled back. I shut it down and told the Artemises to fire their payload in ten seconds, then sent them soaring toward the fence. And braced myself against the hillside so I wouldn't fall over, because I knew I'd get it when the Jabberwockies hit. A Jabberwocky is a jammer missile, which disperses transponders instead of a warhead. The transponder signals frag up sensors, remote-control transmissions, you name it, for a fifty-yard or wider radius around the point of impact. So whatever disruption they caused, the Artemises they rode on would get nailed by it too. And since I was talking to the Artemises via remote deck, I knew I'd feel the backlash until I broke the link. But in the meantime, all those sensors and perimeter drones and even the seeing-eyes on the Sentry guns'd be blind and deaf and dumb. Which meant no security rigger was going to spot my team getting through the fence and inside.
›
› Jeez. Why not just walk up to the front gate and shout hello? You take out such a huge chunk of a rigged building's security systems, the rigger's gonna know the place is under attack. No way can you pass that off as a malfunction, or a hair-trigger sensor tripped by a high wind.
› Silent Running
› You missed a paragraph somewhere, didn't you? My team knew fragging well we were tipping corpsec off-but as long as they didn't know how big the threat was or exactly where it was coming from, all they could do was chase their tails. We figured to be in and gone before they twigged enough to matter. And we were right.
I counted down in my head, then watched the world turn black and go dizzy for a few seconds until I closed off the link with the Artemises. I felt the rest of the team run by me, over the hill and down. While the mage tended to the magical barriers and the sams chopped through the wire, I crawled backward just enough to be completely out of range of Jabberwocky spillover, then called up the rest of my drone network. Wandjinas with Vanquishers mounted on them, these were; fast and deadly, just the thing for taking out perimeter drones. And I had to do that, both to keep myself safe once I started monkeying with the sensor port's datalines and also to keep the drones from bothering my buds on their way back out. The Jabberwocky jamming'd only keep the drones blind and deaf for so long; once it started to wear off, all those Ferrets and Dobermans and Guardians with their little turret guns would pose quite the nasty problem. Unless my Wandjinas took care of them first.
It's a weird, weird feeling, seeing through the eyes of half a dozen drones at once. Kind of like what I imagine bug eyes must be like-all those facets showing you overlapping pictures. Except that in my case, the pictures were different instead of the same image from different angles. To run a network like that through a cranial remote deck-or any kind of wiring, for that matter-you've got to be good at multi-tasking. If you can't concentrate on a dozen things at one time before breakfast, then don't even try this stuff. You'll just make yourself sick trying to track everything, and somebody else'll have to risk her hoop bailing you out of trouble. I don't have a problem with it; but then, I was the kind of kid who liked looking at those crazy optical-illusion prints with the upside-down staircases and stuff. I sent my Wandjinas around the edges of the Jabberwockies' area of effect-couldn't send them through it, or they'd be as blind as the sec-drones they were hunting-and waited for a clear target.
Then came the first sign of trouble. A pair of Condors appeared, floating high and distant over the top of the compound. Nuyen to noodles they were outside Jabberwocky range. They weren't mine, so I knew they could only have come from one source. The sec-rigger'd figured out that Something Big was up, and had sent a couple of spies to find out what the frag was going on.
Well, I'd expected that. Not quite so soon, though; when I finally got to tangling mano a mano with this guy, he was going to be good. The enemy Condors weren't armed, so I ignored them and got on with the primary task: nailing the daylights out of the blinded perimeter drones, some of which were still spinning around in crazed circles. At first my Wandjinas made short work of them. After awhile, though, I saw some of the ones that'd stopped dead starting to move-sluggishly, but with purpose. They were getting out of the Wandjinas' line of fire, and a couple of Guardians were even starting to swing their turrets back and forth. Bad news for me-either the Jabberwocky effect was wearing off or the sec-rigger was using a little ECCM to overcome the Jabberwocky interference. Either way, it meant I didn't have much time. I had to take over the building system before the perimeter drones recovered, or I'd be their sitting duck.
I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and ran up to the nearest sensor post. The access panel was easy to spot; I blew the lock on it with a short strip of acid solder, then pulled a decryption module out of the duffel. Tech-heads like me use this little hand-held meter doohickey to analyze and decrypt CCSS protocols. My Hedgehog had already told me the system was encrypted, which let me bypass the usual step of plugging in a protocol emulation module and using it to figure out what was there. Took lots less time this way, which was vital on this particular run.
I found the junction box and carefully opened the cover plate, exposing the optic cables and electrical wires inside. Then I took out my microtronics kit and delicately spliced my own leads into the system. As I started to connect the free ends of the splice into the decrypt module, I felt a bullet punch me in the side and flatten itself against my armor. The sec-rigger had managed to get at least some of his toys working again. I had to take care of them before jacking into the building system, or they'd take care of me. Lucky thing I'd brought along a signal amplifier.
The output from the signal booster let me call the Wandjinas in closer, within the range of the fading Jabberwocky interference. Thank the Ghost in the Machine for those boosters, and for the Battletac IVIS system some bright tech so recently came up with. Makes a combat-drone network sooo much easier to deal with… and leaves part of a rigger's mind free to take on another job, like connecting illicit wiretaps and turning on a decrypt module. The 'jinas took out a Ferret and a Guardian that were far too close for comfort. Now, I thought, and jacked in.
Overriding a security rig is a tough job. Unlike decking, you can't rely on a clever bag of tricks to outwit any IC or other deckers you happen across. Instead, it's a pure battle of wills between you and the sec-rigger. The toughest mind wins; the loser usually ends up brain-fried or dead.
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› Just for the record, decking into a system is NOT easy. And I resent any implication to the contrary.
› E-slipper
› Didn't mean to rile you, E. I didn't say decking was easy. But it is different than the way a rigger taps into a system. I just wanted to get that point across.
And now back to our feature presentation…
A flood of images and voices surrounded me, as if I'd invaded someone else's brain (which, in a way, I had). I built a mental wall around myself as fast as I could, then formed a fist of pure willpower and struck out hard at the source of the flood. I felt an echo of dizzy pain as the blow connected-then a wallop, much more immediate and powerful enough to send my virtual self sprawling on my hoop. The sec-rigger was fighting back-and as I'd guessed, he was no slouch in the battle-of-wills department. I could feel the shape and weight of his virtual body, saw the two of us locked together in a wrestling hold. One or the other would have to give, and I was determined it wouldn't be me.
Distantly, as if my meat body belonged to someone else, I felt the impact of more bullets against my heavy armor. I ordered my Wandjinas to redouble their assault. A few seconds later I felt the sec-rigger reel away from me, and I knew that one of my drones had blown up one of his. Impressive that he'd managed to hang in; half the time, a direct hit on a drone you're controlling will dump you right out of the system. It isn't only deckers who have to worry about dump shock.