Kol Orbital Drift

The life of a post fall journalist

[kol-od]

My Body is not my own

I type this now with strange fingers, it is not as if I have never resleeved before.  Far from it, when I was a younger man swap parties where the big thing.  Find a player and trade your body with theirs for a while.  But it has always been a choice that I have made where my stream of consciousness remained uninterrupted.  You have feeds from whatever new sites you follow on the mesh, there will be a story about someone suffering from the Lack.  They are usually never more then a blurb unless it is a media icon claiming Lack as to what they did the previous night.  You might read it, your muse might flag it and you, as I did, dismiss it.  That person is clearly not as tough as you, you're the top dog here.  A little time loss isn't a big deal to you.  Hell turn off you medichines for a night and you can drink yourself into a black out, the night gone to you and it doesn't seem to be that bad.  

But then you wake up on that cold slab and find out a day, a week, an hour, a month, a second is gone.  It isn't a whole in your memories like the more chemically induced kind of black out, that with some effort and a perhaps viewing some inebriated vid streams can shock back into place.  No, this is something that no matter how much you think, fork, muse playback it is gone.  That time is gone forever.  Even as I write these words I have the vid of the me that is not me acting out what will be his final moments.  I watch the not me fall and not get up.  I have all of not me's memories up til the final morning.  Then not me goes out and does things that I would do but I did not do, I was an imprint back in some computer just waiting for not me to fail at living.  Then I get to come back but the thought never leaves your mind, what am I?  You can no longer be certain that you are really going forward or just a memory being played back for another not me to catch up to the present.  I type these words with strange fingers, and hope that they are my own.

[kol-od]

The Search for Marshall Richards

LGE called us in, seems the Rand has picked up a small side job.  This girl Sara Richards works for the ComEx corp, seems her father has gone missing.  Marshall, his name, set out my little mesh spiders to see what I could find out about the guy.  Didn't turn up anything Earth shattering (hmm maybe need to think of a new turn of phrase since poor old Earth is about as shattered as a planet can get barring cosmic accidents...) Worked for Go-Nin since pretty much the Fall but did find out that he had been staying at a Go-Nin dorm.

Hoofing it to the dorms get by the guard no problem, a bit of fancy talk and these guys fold like it is there business.  The place was pretty clean and obviously not been lived in for some time.  Cymon lets his swarm scrounge around and get some data pads.  A little them but last entry was 3 weeks prior, but the other had some pretty high level encryption on it so swipe the pad to crack at our leisure.  Doesn't look good for Marshall.  Drop off some cleaners on our way out just in case.

LGE provided their latest and greatest cracks on the pad and there was some juicy data inside.  Seems Marshall was not just a good employee but quite high on the totem pole as the name Hitome Tanaka kept coming up.  For those that are living outside the airlocks, she is about as high as you can get in the Go-Nin on accounts of her being the daughter of one of the leaders and heads up the cybernetics research.

Digging a bit deeper into Hitome find out surprise surprise someone at that level is kind of a bitch and greasing a few wheels my hyper corp connections might be able to point me to and unlisted facility, the best kind of facility.  Hopefully this tip pays off.

Now that we have a place we need an in, and unlike some corp dorms, this won't be guarded by no rep mouth breathing flats.  But all one needs to do is ask and the Gunanxi shall deliver, provided there is something in it for them.  An Ego that wishes to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons, could get us in and contact an inside man there, we will just call him Mr Johnson and man looking up his mesh habits...he needs to get a proxy ID or something didn't think you could uplift that.  Once we are in we get what our mysterious Ego wants and we will have free reign to do what we need to do.

Getting in was a breeze, our friend in the Gunanxi made us some top tier credentials and met the inside man and took Cymon over to a terminal to do his computer black magic.  Left Trigger and I free to wander around like stupid contractors, it is amazing how no one seems to notice you if you are an outside contractor and thus someone else problem.

Met quite the character, won't divulge the source but safe to say I would not be surprised if he has had some work done to his ego.  Seems he has bugged nearly all of the facility, not because he is Go-Nin security but he believes that Go-Nin is making a robot army to take over Luna (and he might be more correct then he realizes) But chatting with the crazies can often lead to getting some of the best info, who worries about what the crazy dude across the cubical over hears right?  Seems one of his little buggies had seen plenty of Hitome and Marshall working with or around each other about 2 weeks ago.  Not sure if that makes Marshall's prospects better or worse.

Cymon's black magic manages to find a second unlisted facility near the sky hook.  I thought mr crazy pants was going to need to use my cleaners when we told him about it.  He somehow got a hold of the floor plan for a Go-Nin facility but did not know which one, seems luck is on our side today.

Or that is what I would be saying if we did not run face 1st into a trap triggering an alarm as we poked around another lab where Marshall had been last seen.  We got taken back to the check in and our inside man was brought in to clear the mess up.  He folded faster French colony that was out of wine selling us out on the spot.  Good thing his creepy mesh habits bleed into his real life and made him a suspicious target.  With a little silver tongued goodness managed to counter sell him back to his own people and get a meeting with a shipping manager.

She was quite the darling and just smart enough on the uptake to get my meaning but not quite smart enough to realize we were not the right people.  It is amazing what people will think if you start to emphasize a few words and then cast glances at the guards.  Immediately makes them think that you know what you are talking about and are trying to avoid saying it in front of someone that you doesn't have the clearance to hear it.  Fortunately for us there really was a problem and she thought we could fix it making a nice official document to get us in and make sure everything goes smoothly.

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THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS UPLOADED REMOTELY FROM TERMINAL ******************.145.0.0.1

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[kol-od]

Mystery at Vulcanoid Gate station

Our first real mission.  Seems my hunch was correct, with data that secure the only real possibilities of the leak was either an intentional one to test us or a mole inside La'Grange.  Seems it was a mole.  Caine deemed us worthy enough to know that the information was recovered through the Vulcanoid Gate, so likely something from TerraGenesis, but that is just speculation.  Since it went straight from the station to Luna there was a very narrow range of people that handled it.  On the station that numbered 3. Drake, a life time member of La Grange Exports and master of cybernetics and robotics; dude also likes to roll around in a remade creepy fuck.  Kieth, seems there wasn't a piece of data that this man could not encrypt and has been tapped by LGE for a few year.  Final member of the team, Felicia a resent hire and can implant with the best of them.

My money was on Drake, in my line of work it was usually the lifers that finally get sick of the shit and jump ship.  Though Felicia might have the implants as well, though LGE would hopefully see a hypercorp spy trying to worm their way in.  And to implant her and blow her cover so quickly, seems like a waste.  Either way couldn't do much here but LGE didn't want to foot the bill shipping us out there gear in tow so get to have our brains scrambled and poured into spare splicers that are kept on the station for the day to day workers.

Ah ego casting a pre fall author once described a drink that was like getting your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped 'round a large gold brick, he must of had ego casting in mind.  It is not the smashing that is so bad, but trying to fit your square brain shape into the round hole on the other side.  All in all this ego cast went pretty well, better then some of the team whom left the gates stumbling.  Seems we had been set up as the replacement maintenance crew as the last crew was "accidentally" sucked out of an air lock and their morphs where too far out to be worth recovering, hope LGE has good hazard pay...

Receiving our instructions we split up to comb the ship and try to blend in.  Poor Lilik, she had it pretty bad with the Ego cast and could barely put two feet in front of each other.  Learned later that she sliced her hand open changing a light bulb and was feeling so off she just went to sleep it off.  Maybe not the worst choice given what happened...  Trigger's task was to track down some environmental hiccups that where happening in pod 1, and Cymon went to help grow a better tomato or something, he never did explain what all he was doing.  As for myself, seems the eta value of the power core had dropped and in space no power is no good.  Found something very interesting, someone (or something) had tried to couple the main and backup cores together in what I assumed was an attempt to boost the power.  Too bad they set the couple up incorrectly and created a positive feed back loop each core pouring more and more power into each other before finally the station AI noticed the power spike and shut it off.  Whatever did that is lucky they didn't fry both cores leaving them drifting in space, means they where quite desperate to try something so risky.

Going over the ship schematics with Trigger and Cymon, seems that the power boost would have gone to the lab module, which was not too terribly surprising.  What was surprising was what Cymon had overheard, there was a team that had been locked inside the main lab for some time not leaving to eat or sleep.  It did not seem like those two facts where unrelated.  Marching up to Mitch the guard posted in the main lab module entrance we explained that our repairs turned up a few facts that had us worried about what might be going on in the main lab.  He was hesitant at first but when we explained that it might trigger a cascading power failure, he perked up and got us the security clearance we needed to get in the lab.

Inside the lab not only did we find Drake (right on the money) but also Keith and Felicia.  Seems whomever was pulling the strings could afford to get 3 people to turn coat on LGE (or they had a terrible retirement package).  In the middle of the room was a large device, looked like a quantum far caster, so whatever it was it had a lot of data and needed to send it very far, very fast.  Drake was quite nonplussed to see us all marching in and quickly tried to chide Mitch and shoo us out.  A little talking up of Mitch reminding him that it was his duty to ensure the safe operation of the station had him back in the verbal ring with Drake.  Too bad most men don't have the guts to the man that cuts their cheques and once more backed down.  Finally embellishing the truth of the matter, that the station was in immediate danger, did Mitch finally get the implants to stand up to Drake and order him to let us poke around.

Too bad that was not the best idea, Drake quickly pulled a rail pistol from the underside of a table and started shooting.  His shot went wide but did manage to set off the klaxons.  Then the lab erupted as Cymon took a round, nearly staggering him but somehow he found the inner strength to tough if out.  I took a charge at Felicia, can't let people try and gun down your team, with the intent of tackling her to the ground.  Too bad I was never very good in the micrograv and ended up landing under the table in front of her.  Cymon followed my lead brandishing the plasma torch we had been issued but still in shock from the injury could not get the thing started.  Using the distraction I managed to pull Felicia under the table and wrestle her to the ground, some other time I might have enjoyed giving her a wrestle but with the blood pounding in my ears and adrenaline thundering through my veins I could only think of not getting my own hypersonic lead injection.  Cymon took the opportunity to strip the gun from Felicia's hands and shoot her until she was dead.  Out of the corner of my eye I managed to catch Trigger showing off some spectacular micro-grav acrobatics but unfortunately his blade work was not on par and ends up getting gutted by Drake.  

In what felt like an eternity back up finally arrived making short work of Keith and Drake and stabilizing the gravely injured Trigger.  With all the pieces in place we contacted Caine with an update.  Not only was there three moles in one station, we don't know who they where working for or where that data stream was going to go.  And with the power spike several weeks back, it is possible they had sent a large data dump prior.  Though with the three cortical stacks, I had no doubts that LGE had a very persuasive member, almost makes me shudder for them.  While we wait for LGE to crack them, I suggest that perhaps giving the data a bit of a red herring might be best way to flush out who has LGE in their sites.

[kol-od]

Working for La Grange Exports

After being recruited for La Grange Exports and passing the Kepler training program we received training.  It was a hard few months but it paid off, never been more fit in my life.  

Finally got the call for our first field operation.  Seems that a piece of sensitive information had been stolen.  Not some hacker getting in and downloading it off the server but the actual drive had been pinched in transit.  The strike was too well organized to have been the bandits and thugs that normally prowl the streets.  The word from our handler suggests that a potential rival calling themselves Star Trail.  Though it makes me wonder if such a sensitive piece of intel was hit like that there isn't a mole in La Grange...

Hal-po and Cymon hit the mesh doing some research into the corp while Lilik and I hit the compressed regolith and talking to some of our underground contacts.  Learned quite a bit, for only being 5 years old Star Trail has amassed quite a number of breakout public deals.  Plenty of rumors about their products being stolen knockoffs but nothing stuck.  It also seemed that they have a small but strong black market presence.  Not enough for larger organizations to take notice, but given their sordid history so far it would be wise to keep an eye on them.

We started the mission off heading to the nearest storage place of Star Trail.  It went fairly well.  Cymon was able to create a false pick up order and with some fast talking on my part we made it in.  Things where going smooth until Lilik nearly blew our cover trying to sneak in the front door.  In the end it did not matter since it wasn't the warehouse we here looking for.

Got a suggestion that perhaps the information would be better got at the main office.  Talked up the receptionist Lisa into getting an interview with one of the senior execs while Cymon hacked in and poked around.  While he did that and I chatted up Mr. Neil, Lilik slipped away and found the information stored on their servers.  Cymon was able to make quick work of that and tripping the fire alarm allowed me to get into the lab and find out where the physical drive was being stored.

The 2nd warehouse, used the order we fabricated before to get in.  Lilik again tried to go in through the front door, not quite the best at that.  But it did serve as a good distraction for myself to travel around the back door.  Inside it was clear that security was quite a bit higher with armed guards patrolling on catwalks.  Lilik my have distracted most of the guards but there was one that noticed me.  Tried to talk my way out but seems protocol was number one on this guys mind.  Over the tac-net seems things where rapidly going bio-mods up and the call for a bit of backup had been made.  Seems La Grange struck with extreme prejudice since it threw the guards into disarray.  Didn't keep them busy enough to not take a shot at me, but seems spent all his time learning protocols and not aiming the gun.  A dash and dive, grabbed the drive and took my own shot.  Didn't get a chance to look back but sounded it hurt.

Fleeing from the scene got chased down by the cycle squad that hit the previous transport, that or Star Trail has more then one group of trained motorcycle strike crews.  Seems that they where not expecting a pitched gun fight as they where dispatched with relative ease.  Finding a good place to ditch the vehicle, aka a place were an abandoned vehicle would disappear before a single cycle, we contacted Cain to receive final instructions and where to deliver the drive.