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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 17, 2010 9:01:51 GMT -5
Like I stated, I considered killing him. Any Corp would immediately just to maintain the status quo until they felt they could control the changes. Government would study him but take no obvious actions. They would stick the techniques in their armory for later and forget the whole thing until they needed it. Governments don't like change either.
Intelligence is the hallmark of the magician. With intelligence comes adaptability and the willingness to change and improvise. To be a top flight mage you have to think before you do.
It became immediately obvious to me that killing Gobwit to stop the process would be stupid and futile.
Someone else, sooner or later, would make the obvious connections and take advantage of the concepts, riding the wave of the future of magic. Given the fact that Gobwits luck would be in operation and it did have a tendency to preserve his life and not his dignity or comfort, it would be a dangerous adversary. Better to help it go where it needed to go than to fight it and maybe I could influence and learn to control it along the way. It wasn't intelligent yet.
As in anything like this there would be limitations. What limitations you ask?
First human bodies are inherently capable of only handling an upper limit to magic energy. Top mages would be able to handle much higher levels of this energy, of course, and still would be the most powerful. The pecking order would not change just the levels of usage. More people would be capable of using some form of magic. Magical energies would rise as the Life Force energies of the world increased. Some people would over reach and destroy themselves by trying to use more magic energy than they could safely handle. Overuse of magical energy would still have dire results. More creatures would turn magical and evolve defenses against magic. Intelligence would be a factor in manipulating energy as well. The stupid would make stupid mistakes. Nature always balances things over time.
Another hallmark of the mage?
Patience.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 17, 2010 8:35:34 GMT -5
I think I gave everyone enough time to reply. Not that I'm surprised at the result. I gave a hint of one thing in the latest Bank post. I'll take it to the next logical step here.
One thing no one has ever seemed to consider in SR when they were dealing with all the nice tech improvements was the fact that magical improvements and enhancements would probably have developed as well.
The creation and design of magical focus items, weapons, jewelry, potions, and a large variety of other items has always been a part of magic. The surgical techniques are their for grafting and performing surgery on tech items.
Why not do the same with magical items?
You see back when I was dealing with Quicks change to a mage, I offered the idea that the tech would have to be removed from him. The idea was to purge him of the debilitating items and regenerate. In SR that could work, but it takes a lot of resources and effort.
Braddoc wants to change to a mage. He doesn't have to chose the same method or even follow the same trail as Quick. He has many other options, some which he has stated himself. He just has to flesh the method out a bit over time.
We have discussed previously the idea that SR magic is life magic or life based. The Undead drain life force from their victims and use it to perform the things they can do. Some make better use of the power than others. Vampires are able to perform multiple magical enhancements because they drain the life force using blood. Ghouls are partially alive themselves so need less and eat the recently dead for the small amounts of life force they use. This is all part of magical evolution.
In magic much has been made of items that have been made by taking the souls of other and placing them in magical items. The soul;s are living magic and thus constantly keep the item replenished with life force. This creates an intelligent item that always has magic as long as the life force field worldwide is maintained. Dead worlds would slowly cause such a spirit to starve to death.
Now take your ordinary cyberware. Perform a small sacrifice ceremony and imbue it with intelligence. Set it to perform a certain function that is triggered by the use of the cyberware. It becomes a doubly lethal and potent weapon and it is even compatible with mages and can enhance the life force power in them.
My astonishment is that none of the Corps in SR has stumbled on this concept yet. Neither have the mages. It does not go against any SR rules or the rules of magic to do this and the Corp that perfected this relatively easy process? Mega Nuyen dudes.
Hear that lurkers?
When you hit your GM's up with this concept, then you better give me the credit.
Think of the possibilities. Mage Adepts on par with the technological street warriors. Now as you increase the empathy and life force of those who take some enhancements does that mean they will become more magical sensitive and magically experienced?
Of course, if they survive long enough.
Consider this, the longer such intelligent magical devices exist and operate, the more powerful they become, usually over the period of millenia, but it does happen. They become magically powerful artifacts. Now say artifacts were implanted?
The trick to power is the intelligence level of the initial sacrifice, and the magical orientation of said sacrifice. If you are a snake shaman and use a snake sacrifice to power yourself? Snake is going to like you better. Remember Freddy trying to do all the tech stuff and I told him he was going the wrong way? He was going to the tech alone to do things, not magically enhancing the tech so he could do new things that wouldn't drain him or fight him.
Remember the rules of magic do have limitations, but they are not always the same as the rules of technology, they do have some similarities though that can be used.
SR has this concept of walls, but as I pointed out to Quick so long ago, Walls can be destroyed with the right ideas.
Sooner or later in SR people are going to find the connections between magic and tech and make use of them.
This is only the beginning of the possibilities.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 16, 2010 8:56:33 GMT -5
OOC: Let's throw another magical concept out there.
I watched Gobwit. I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he considered what Fall had told us. He was thinking about how to get a profit from it and increase his power. Already he had forgotten why we were originally in this particular mess. A sound reason for not having him in charge of anything.
Sure he said the right words to put them at ease. Fall actually backed her gun hand down a bit. I wasn't fooled for a moment. He had gotten what he wanted. It was time to distract him again.
"The Phoenix mess will have to wait. I tend to agree that we will have to look into that carefully in the future. As Izzy pointed out though we are definitely not set up to handle that kind of action without setting the stage in equipment and training. If we can't handle the scammers and all that's involved there, and they are bad enough, then it's very certain that diving into the Phoenix is going to get us burned. It's less immediate at the moment anyway."
The others nodded in agreement. Gobwit was obviously struggling with the greed. How do I know? I was reading his aura. It was almost as good as reading his mind. Sure he had a lot of semi-dark spots from the cyber tech but a good mage could read that as well. The trick is he didn't have enough dark spots to mark the tech I knew was in him from the reports.
How and Why? I didn't like where this trail was starting to lead but it was too fragging obvious to ignore and it fit the facts I was seeing too well.
Think about it, chummer. In every magical story or tale you ever read, if a hero or villain uses something enough, every day, then it tends to take on a magical life of it's own. It gets more powerful magically. Experience helps but it still does gain from the emotional life force invested in it. Weapons especially become magical links to the user. In the magical world they can even take on a life of their own, if you use them long enough.
Most of the short lived races don't have that problem, but elves, vampires, undead of various types and dwarves? Yep, it could happen. The cyber tech if used long enough can take on a magical life of it's own. It starts out pretty dumb but the more you use it the more it tends to take on a life of it's own. The user is investing life force in it every day, unknowingly.
Consider the background magical radiation as well. Magic all around you being used. If you have been the focus of magical spells, or have been around a lot of adepts it can accelerate the process. That's all part of the natural laws of magic. Contagion. Lets theorize that during this time Gobwit has become infected or contaminated by magical radiation in his cyber ware. Some more than others because some of it was just replaced, which would obviously slow down the process, then some of the longer term cyberware could be enhanced.
I remember that Mao the Beast was once surprised at how fast Gobwit could actually move. Mao could catch bullets. Gobwit too fast for him? The clues are all there chummer. They were ignored by the resident mages who should have been examining such incidents. Of course I am unsure they had knowledge of the events so I'm not going to be too hard on them. Let's not give them a hard time because I'm working from hindsight.
From what I read on Gobwit? He's been around almost 300 years that he'll cop to. In this world? That makes him one fragging old dwarf. Most dwarves become mercs and die rather early. A lot die in the old home mines or from pollution or disease. Lot's of ways to die in this world. So theoretically, dwarves can live up to a thousand years but I've never seen one make it to that yet. Besides cyber enhancements started less than a hundred years ago.
Gobwit could be at the upper end of the bell curve as far as age for a dwarf. Unusual, but not impossible. If he sprang for cyber enhancements during the Ghost Dance? Well he has lived through some pretty fragging heavy ceremonies. If he was at ground zero near them? Then there is the age factor? What if he was a spike dwarf and born say back in the early 19 hundreds?
You reading my direction.
Gobwit is still evolving and getting magically stronger everyday. With any luck, which he has plenty of, he could still be evolving and messing with the laws of probability for the next thousand years.
No wonder the UCAS has shown such an interest if some smart cookie has picked up on this based on what they uncovered in the logs.
We could all be dancing like puppets on a string with Gobwit's unintelligent luck calling the shots. It's not a good thought. Look what's happened to the other people around him. It hasn't been careful of not mucking with the lives around Gobwit to get what it wants. That's not to say that it kowtows to Gobwits wants either. It has it's own agenda and will put Gobwit in drek just to get what it wants. Although it does seem to preserve his life like a good little symbiote.
That could mean the cyber tech inside him has had a chance to evolve magically in a rudimentary way. I remembered in the Z files Gobwit talking about his luck. I suspect his cyber drek, having evolved into a magical semi-intelligence, was responsible. Sometimes it hosed up and dumped him in the deep drek, but it always seemed to extricate him in the end. His times of good luck were increasing and getting stronger. What would he be like when it became fully intelligent or maybe he learned to control it?
Maybe I should kill him now. It might save the world.
I considered it.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 15, 2010 9:03:38 GMT -5
Jackpot?
Maybe.
These slitches are in the deep brown even more than I am.
IF their story is true.
Phoenix Project. That sounds like some half baked plan the UCAS upper class idiots would come up with. It is also something a lot of Corps would get behind 100%. If the project was that hush/hush, how do they know it was the UCAS that ran it? Any corp could set up a research think tank like that and just tell the people they were working for the UCAS. Cheap, Easy and it works. Why kill off all your scientists, techs, assistants and such when you don't need to?
Unless you are covering up more.
The UCAS could have placed them almost anywhere in a secret base and used them for slave labor on other projects, or to refine what they had been working on to do other things.
So on the face of it? The tale made sense, but when you got into it? It reads more like someone decided to increase their bottom line. Corps will wipe out people to preserve that, not the UCAS. Government don't work the same way as the corp world chummer. Government doesn't waste assets unless they want to cover some sleazy deal that would tarnish reputations. This project didn't;t have that feel.
So say it was a hidden corp. What was the bottom line on that kind of discovery?
I smiled at the girls to put them at ease. "Looks like we're all in this thing together. No offense meant but it's nice to know I'm not the only one in deep drek with the UCAS."
They still didn't trust me, but bless my chip they believed the words it had me spew like honey. Best investment I ever made. Meantime, I was going to do some looking into this.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 14, 2010 9:40:37 GMT -5
Fall looked at me with one eye raised. How the frag did we ever get into this situation? Now we got to spill our past so that Gobwit the Lying Slimeball will trust us? I'd rather give him 20,000 volts.
I consider lying through my teeth. The problem with that is; if later the info comes out anyway? They'll never believe me again. Despite my feelings on the matter, I'm going to have to play it straight.
"Ever heard of the Phoenix Project?" I begin reluctantly. As I suspected none of them did. "I would have been surprised if you had. The project was commissioned by the UCAS president. It's objective was to deal with the changes caused by pollution and the awakened world by re-knitting the broken food chains and missing organisms in the modern ecology."
"They obviously failed." Gobwit said with a smile. "Big deal."
I glared at him. "They didn't fail. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. It took them years and billions of NuYen. They were able to create plants and animals that absorb or drain magical energy and convert it to a form of energy that also completely destroys many types of pollution."
Gobwit looked puzzled, "Then why didn't they use this miracle technology?"
"They didn't use it because by the time they finished it the population had adjusted and mutated to survive in the current magical and pollution filled environment. Consider how devastating it was when the seventh world came into being. They didn't want to go back through that again and wreck their power base now. What's worse is that the pollution evolved over time. If it just all vanished mankind itself might not survive the sudden shock. It's like the discovery of atomic weapons. Once they had it and recognized the inherent destructive power, they didn't want to use them. Nuclear Winter, dude."
"How were you and Fall involved?" Gobwit asked interested.
"Fall was on the Security team. I was responsible for the equipment the scientists were using and the lab maintenance. When the UCAS realized what their scientists had come up with they decided to shut down. They couldn't just let everyone go, not with a secret like that. The Security people got the orders to kill everyone involved. Fall figured after that happened the Security team would be wiped too. She warned me. I took copies of the notes and research and we cut out. The smart thing I did was I also contaminated the datastores with a virus that destroyed the data at random. The UCAS has been hunting us ever since. They don't dare be obvious about it, even within the UCAS itself. They have to keep it a secret still, and they need to know where I hid the real information first. It might be a data bomb as far as they know. "
Gobwit nodded, "You're as much under the hammer as I am, probably even more. I'd NORMALLY say sell the UCAS brass the info but we couldn't trust them to honor their commitment or promise. Anyone that would kill the people working for them won't hesitate killing us. If we just released the information all the nut jobs would have the secret and some terrorist or policlub would use it in a heartbeat. Nuclear Winter."
He looked at Dockery, "The stakes just got bigger. If the UCAS gets word through Janie, we're all candidates for instant death. They aren't going to be worried about keeping us alive if they can locate the info they want so bad. They won't keep us around just to fix some scam."
Well at least that was a gain. The slotter hadn't suggested that they kick us out to take our chances so he could get on with his life. Nor that we should cut a deal with the UCAS.
I waited to see what they would do. I noticed Fall was ready to pull her sidearm, without being too obvious about it.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 13, 2010 7:51:57 GMT -5
Snicker
Miss you? (Is this answer stupid enough?)
Do I know you, in a sexual way?
(If so the checks in the male/mail.)
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 13, 2010 7:29:27 GMT -5
I listened intently as Izzy explained her story. It sounded legit. From everything she said, she's just a standard runner trying to make some NuYen and fighting the forces of corporate evil. The kind of story any Shadow Runner with a brag sheet might put out. Nothing to big, Nothing to small listed. A good resume but not one that says I'm going to attract all kinds of attention if you hire me.
It didn't contradict anything I already knew about her. It was delivered with total honesty, sincerity and thoughtfulness. It couldn't have been better if it had been specifically designed to put any doubts I had to rest.
That's why I didn't believe it for a moment.
Look chummers, some of the greatest liars in history have been woman leading some dupe down the primrose path of deceit to get something they wanted. A pretty face can hide some of the nastiest secrets and although, to me, her Azzie face wasn't that pretty, I wasn't going to be buying no bridge from her just on her protestations of innocence. Did I tell her that? Frag NO! I'd have to be brain dead to do that.
I played along. I mouthed some platitudes about appreciating her honesty and other drek. It's always the people who seem the most innocent that you have to watch the most. I suspected that everything that came out of her mouth was just so much truth mixed with lies.
Think I'm being to hard on her?
Riddle me this.
Everything we know about her says she is a top of the line decker. She's ripped UCAS Depository codes, Hacked Lone Star, gotten into my personal accounts and pretty much drained the old Z file logs. That's nothing that your average run of the mill scam artist, using a Radio Shack deck is going to be able to do. You get me? She had to have learned the trade somewhere and it had to be someone really familiar with UCAS ICE at the upper levels. Now I don't know drek about decking but it looks pretty difficult to me. One thing I do know is that the corps do NOT use all the same kinds of matrix security. The fact that we have seen her deck into three totally different and well protected systems shows me she isn't just a run of the mill street decker that she's claiming to be.
You beginning to smell a rat?
Never trust a dragon.
Never trust an elf.
Never trust a female.
Never trust a Tall One.
In Nuyen, I trust.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 13, 2010 7:08:06 GMT -5
I watched as Dockery went to work on Gobwit. I was kind of bored. They were talking away like two old chummers with knives hidden behind their backs. Not real knives mind you just the figurative kind.
The way I read this was that Dockery wanted Gobwit to make a firm commitment to the cause so he could limit the dumb, greedy things the Gobwit normally did. To me that made sense.
On the other hand, Gobwit had done his part in the hit on the UCAS. He had earned some measure of trust. It seemed to me that he was asking Gobwit to trust him and Gobwit was just asking why? It did make some sense to me. One thing for sure in the Shadow world is chummers can turn on you. They worked together for a while but there wasn't a whole lot of the loyalty. Gobwit was looking for a reason outside of money to trust us. Nothing wrong with protecting yourself until you really got to know the people who had your neck in their hands.
In this case I had nothing to hide. The others didn't look to happy with giving the Gobwit anything. When it appeared that Dockery reluctantly agreed, I decided that I should go first. It would give the others some time to accept the situation.
I looked at Gobwit and nodded. "The UCAS and I are old enemies. Not that they consider me high on their list. It's about equal to the way Lone Star, Knight Errant, Patriot, or any of the other security services would view me."
"I'm sure all of us who've been on the streets for a long enough time have had our run in's with the so-called law. The law that protects the rich and powerful and hoop frags everyone else. Having seen your history already, mine is no where near as involved with the UCAS as yours has been."
"Sure I've ripped off some UCAS accounts from time to time as well as a lot of first, second, and even third tier corps. To hold on to it I've had my share of run ins with the usual street monster cops and the mercs they hire to track me down. It's all been just standard biz till now."
"So I have no deep dark secrets that involved the UCAS that brought me to this point. I'll be honest and say that I do have some secrets, but they aren't linked to any UCAS involvement in the project we are in now. No Nestle's connections. The criminals you've previously met in the logs? I don't know them, at least not under the profiles they use now."
"I came out here because the money looked good, it was step up the ladder, and I wanted a change with a little more Shadow room. After all the places I worked in the Rotten Apple, I was getting to well known. I decided a change to some shadows where I wasn't so well known would be a good thing. Since you offered expenses, it seemed like a good opportunity."
"As for answering any other questions you might have? I have no problem with that as long as they remain within the bounds of decency. You need to know more? I'm willing to talk."
Gobwit had listened intently. He spoke with a smile. "Thank you. I really appreciate your honesty. Maybe you can tell me more about your life later when we get some real down time. I won't hold you up too long for now by grilling you."
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 10, 2010 9:07:45 GMT -5
Here I was jockeying for position and the elf was light footing all around the place. I wasn't fooled for an instant about the sincere smiles and the good old boy attitude he was putting out. He was fragging me and I knew it. Drek all thing to build trust on. I wondered for a small moment what the others were thinking. They were probably on the elf's side. Frag the rich dwarf again, he can afford it, besides he has a wide hoop already.
It seemed like it was a good time to bring out another card.
"It appears I'm on the down side here. You must admit things aren't exactly fair. Before I can ask the questions I really need to ask I have to know something. The fact that you put a limit on this tells me that maybe you ain't being perfectly honest. I have to start somewhere and someone has to take the first step, but with a slight change. I don't want a time limit on this. I'll ask just the one question, for now and I'll give you my WILLING cooperation until we find the scammer that got me into this. Then we will revisit my questions and decide if I need to do more if we decide to continue fighting the UCAS. "
The elf didn't give anything away. He nodded in agreement, for now.
I smiled in satisfaction, "I would like to know what dealings, with an S, chummers, in the past all of you have either individually or collectively had with the UCAS and the outcomes? That's my one question, for now."
I waited to see if I had struck gold, or sand.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 9, 2010 8:05:02 GMT -5
I didn't like it a bit. After Gobwit finished his fancy speech about trust and loyalty it was quiet for a few minutes as everyone thought about it. On the face of it, the whole thing sounded like a legitimate request. On the face of it. You dig a little deeper and it takes a bad turn. Gobwit was looking for an angle. He wasn't looking for a reason to trust us, he was looking for a handle so he could manage us better. Right now we had him pretty much under control because he didn't know much about any of us or our backgrounds.
That would all change if he knew what made each of us make the decisions to get involved. Stall.
"You are absolutely right, Gobwit. Each team member should show their commitment to this cause. The cause to keep you alive and solvent. If we give you exactly what you want, do I have your absolutely unbreakable promise that you will indeed work with this team and that you won't KNOWINGLY compromise anyone? If so? I'll be glad to tell you whatever you ask about in relations to the UCAS and this run, right here, right now."
I smiled my most sincere smile.
Pelch appeared to be in heavy thought. "Why the limitation on just the UCAS?" He asked cannily.
I had hoped he hadn't picked up on that. You see in a case like this we are both dealing with the literal truth, which did not require either of us to be totally honest. I had limited the conversation to UCAS for a reason. It would keep other things, things I didn't want anyone to know hidden. Luckily I was ready for that question.
"I'm not a recorder Gobwit. I don't have time to give you every detail of my life and I probably wouldn't remember it that well anyway. I could just give you the highlights but are you really interested in how many woman I've boffed? I limit it because you don't need to know things in my personal space that don't affect what you need to know now. Beside that you asked specifically about our relationships to the UCAS when you outlined your latest proposal. Since you set that as the parameter, I thought perhaps it would be best if we stuck to that point."
Gobwit didn't look happy about that and I knew why. If my reasons for being here weren't directly related to some deep dark secret with the UCAS? He wouldn't get drek. He just didn't know enough at this point to be able to ask the right questions. Worse in his mind, how would he be sure we were telling the truth? I had also surreptitiously put a time limit on the questioning. It was open ended. I wasn't sure he had picked up on that yet."
Gobwit gave me the big eyed puppy treatment. "Can I ask questions anytime as things become clearer?"
DRAT! He had picked up on that. Unfortunately? I had to appear to give somewhere. Better to let him think he was just being paranoid. I reversed direction. "If you're part of the team? Of course you can ask questions at any time about anything that you think affects the situation. You always have a say. We all have an equal voice and stake in this. After all it's all of our necks on this chopping block."
I could console myself that he still didn't know enough to ask the right questions. The problem is would he take the the bait or would he back away for another day leaving things unresolved? If you went by all the signs from previous Z streeters then he would back away and look for another opening later. Thus he would retain his own freedom of action. A plus for him. If he went for the deal the team would gain and we had a fighting chance. The question was, which way would he jump?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 8, 2010 9:05:12 GMT -5
I hate being maneuvered. As you probably guessed by now, I like to do things my own way and in my own time. Call it that natural dwarf tendency to tell the big ones to go slot themselves. They don't own the fragging world. They make a good case that they do but not while The Gobwit is around.
The elf had a point. The UCAS had made it pretty obvious they weren't not going to back off. Lately, like the Star and old Capt Knuckles, may he rot in cyber hell, they have backed off a mite. It's been years since I ran with the old Z crew and the UCAS goons are still breathing up my fragging hoop. Elf bastiage was right. It was a war. I hate wars they aren't good for business.
Now the old ratbag, drek kicked Gobwit, would have said frag them all. He didn't have anything to lose at all except his life and what was that back then?
Practically nothing.
Now?
The situation has changed, radically. I've started to live the good life. NuYen, food and drink, Power, especially the power. To get all that taken away by the same fraggers that took me several times before? Not without a fight.
I could tell everyone to slot it.
There side, my side, any side. The trick is could I make it stick without some comeback? Doubtful. I might feel good when the words were rolling from my mouth. It would be all down from that point on. It's not like saying the words is going to net me major NuYen so that I can console myself later. In this case, money and survival are on the same game trail. I have to work with the people that are MY fraggers, so the people that are not MY fraggers don't frag me over like the people who are MY fraggers.
That kind of sucks.
The only thing I can say for that is that MY fraggers have a vested interest in keeping me solvent, rich and alive at the present time. You know those tall ones though, if they decide I'm going to be stingy or they just want something I have? Yep, they'll frag me over and justify it later.
They are looking at me like I'm a Christmas turkey.
The chip tells me I should put them at their ease and the longer I wait, the harder that's going to be. Sometimes you have to admit to lesser crimes in order to get away with a bigger one and it gives an illusion that you're being honest. Time to make with the fragging words.
"You think I should trust you? That's a two way street tall one." I tell Dockery as earnestly as I can. "You haven't been exactly honest with all of us and you do have your own goals. Now I haven't pushed any of that with any of you. It seems pretty obvious to me that we all have an ax to grind with the UCAS. We all got in this battle because we had personal reasons for it. I admit I gave you a reason to get in, but you people all made the choice. Now you want me to be totally loyal."
"We all know why I am in this, but until you guys start coming clean yourselves then how can you expect me to just be your fragging stooge. If we are going to be a team then you have to give yourself. We all know why I'm in it up to my ears with the UCAS, so what do you have against them that made you take this job, and why are you still going on. What's your level of commitment to this so-called loyal fragging team? Neh?"
If you want us to be a team, tell me why each of you considers yourself part of a team. Teams are built on trust, not just the Nuyen. Give me reasons to trust you or we go on with each of us and our enlightened self interest."
I could tell no one like that at all. I would have smiled if it wouldn't have given things away. As it was the dwarf in me was saying, GOTCHA!
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 6, 2010 8:53:56 GMT -5
The UCAS reacted a lot faster than any of us expected, or hoped. Fall and I were relaxing eating breakfast with the Trid on when it all came on the air. The UCAS ALREADY had a culprit. They were parading him around like they had Gobwit when he got caught. They also had themselves a hero. The man of the hour? Some wimpy looking drek mage with coke bottle glasses. I wondered for a moment what a coke bottle was then lost that thought. I had bigger things to consider.
It came as no surprise when I heard Izzy over on her deck suddenly unjacked from her deck with a string of curses issuing from her mouth. The UCAS had already cut the money pipeline. Way to early for our tastes. They weren't supposed to have caught on this fast. Luckily? we had gotten enough to pay everyone up to now and to eliminate our expenses, but it was WAY to soon. The main problem became immediately obvious. Maybe they didn't know for sure what had happened, but someone with a brain had made some very uncomfortable and very close predictions. Gobwit and Dockery were up in the Penthouse. I'll bet Gobwit has a fit when he finds out.
At least by shutting the pipeline down the program would have erased itself so they had no way to trace anything. They would be going over the code line by line and find nothing. Izzy assured me of that. She also said that the regular banking transactions were noticeably slower today, they had obviously switched over to secondary stations. What's worse was that now the UCAS would be spending the money to upgrade the security and equipment. That meant we couldn't pull the same whiz job again. Not without a lot of prep time. Things would be totally different. You can bet that any company associated with Gobwit Mining Company would not get that contract for these improvements, this time.
Dockery and Gobwit arrived down on the elevator. They had seen the same newscasts and Dockery looked unconcerned about it. I wondered if he suspected the ramifications. He actually smiled. I looked at him in surprise. "You expected this?"
"Yes. This Janie Andrews is not stupid you know. The trick is did she get the big picture? I certainly hope so or we just wasted a night and may have to do something else to drive the point home."
Gobwit looked surprised as well, "What big picture? You mean you knew she would shut off the money? All that beautiful money after all that work. It's sacrilege!"
"Gobwit? Stop being an ass. We got enough to pay off the debt YOU incurred, enough to pay everyone, and to meet all our expense up to now. We also showed the UCAS that once again we can bite back. They maybe much bigger than we are but they are also more vulnerable to raids like this, everything has a downside. She won't want to temp us to hit them where they are weak again, so the attacks will be less overt now. They won't stop, they just won't be mostly, the type of attacks that are in your face. The value of those blunt force attacks is that they are reactive and easy to set up. Now? The planning time the UCAS needs to set up an operation will take them longer, be more expensive, and not as immediate. Their reaction time is decreased and that helps us. They have to cover their hoops and take a more defensive stance and that lowers the aggression factor on us."
Izzy spoke up, "Dockery? We are still not ready to take the field either. Tight communications is non existent. We have supplies, but the backup tech is still not operational. Training is not bad, but one partially successful run is not a good indicator of how the team will work together down the road. Transport is limited. Information retrieval and analysis is going to be a big problem. Equipment is going to take some time to issue and we have to train our people to use it properly. Let's face it, we aren't exactly ready to go out and kick UCAS tail except for targets of opportunity like this last one or when they make a mistake. Looks to me more like a stalemate. We definitely don't have a better hand yet. The worse part is we may never get the upper hand on them."
Fall smiled, "Considering where we started from, we've done pretty good so far."
I looked at brain-dead Fall. "Sister? Don't be naive. We're just plain lucky. Luck doesn't always last. We got them because they never saw us as a threat. Well now? They do. That means all those fraggers who messed with the last team will mess with us too. Don't make the same mistake the last team made. Sure we don't have Krass and his buddies, or the UCAS, or the Nan to mess internally with us, but that doesn't mean they won't try other things and what of this Nestle's group? They got big fingers inside the UCAS you can bet on that. They will know what happened last night and will try to take advantage of that. Sooner or later they are going to pop up like weasels and either try to use us or cack us. That was another mistake the last team made, they didn't realize how FAST and HOW MANY precipitants this fragging war has. Think you can keep pace with that?"
Dockery nodded in agreement. "We got on this tiger, we better be able to ride it home. Get it through your heads now. This is a war, not a battle. There are going to be casualties. We could, as Winter points out, lose it all including our lives and everything we have. Gobwit this is for you, especially. There's no walking away now, ever. You do? We're all dead meat and you're the main course, savy?"
Everyone looked at Gobwit. He didn't look happy. I guess he hadn't thought that far ahead when he went to tweak the UCAS tail. Dockery sure had pushed his survival button on that one but would it be enough to make the fragger part of the team? The big question is would he take it to heart before some of us got geeked? To me the odds didn't look all that great.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 5, 2010 8:02:58 GMT -5
Addams was talking with Janey.
"Ever had the feeling you've been diddled?"
"That's not something that is new or exciting to me." Janie replied with a slight smile.
Addams didn't look amused. "The mages out at the UCAS depository says that two of their elementals suddenly snuffed it early this morning."
"Gobwit?"
"Not sure. He was at the Villiers party last night. His whole crew. You can't just walk in and question people like that without something solid. His chopper was there all night. Several guest cars left early and throughout the evening but Gobwit's copter never moved until it took off about a half hour after the alarm went out. He went straight back to Z Street. Sat. links show the two dwarf girls were with the chopper. If he did do it, he didn't leave many clues."
"Anything missing?"
"The UCAS budget forensic people are going over all the logs now. There are some suspicious blanks in some of the sec. cameras, detectors, and mics hinting that someone did penetrate up to the vault doors where the elementals were guarding. The doors show no signs of entry. The guards were on the door within five minutes of the elementals destruction. Nothing, except the dead magic guards. It makes no sense."
"Yes, it does." Janie stated grimly. "Assume that it was Gobwit and his full crew. Dockery is good enough to play hanky/panky with the elementals. Gobwit could have easily gotten past the physical security, If the decker was with them, you can bet they got into that vault. Tell those idiots to shut the depository down. Disconnect the outside lines. We can at least stop the money hemorrhage. No telling how much they already got to. Concentrate on the NuYen flows in the master computer. We don't have to know HOW Gobwit did it, yet. We just know he did. It's not something we can ever take to court. I'm betting he didn't cover the secondary depositories at all. Not enough time and he and his people have to maintain an alibi. There enemy on this was a tight timeframe. Have them take up the slack while we get forensic teams on that system."
"You're probably right but it is a long reach. Have you asked the question Why?"
"Gobwit did a lot of spending lately that he will need to payoff. It makes sense he would want us to pay for all the trouble we put him through. It's pretty obvious and knowing Gobwits greed and revenge index, pretty simple."
"Too simple. Dockery is in the game. I wouldn't stop with Gobwit. It smells like a distraction. If Dockery was able to delay the warning on the elementals why not just influence them and leave them in place? He could have taken them over temporarily, kept the links going and just put them back in operation when he wanted. We would have never known there was a break in. It's all a distraction to make us concentrate there and waste time while they are doing something else."
"If we are going to be distracted then his break in will point directly to us, as the culprits, to keep us busy and out of his hair. It does make sense. Gobwit might not see that part. He would have been blinded by the money. I'll change our money pipe immediately. So, what's your next move?"
"Easy, we already shut off the money pipe. We button it all down and don't say a thing. Let them wonder what we are doing for a change. Let someone in the UCAS depository take the blame. Arrest them, put it on all the trids, and put out how the security stopped him. Get the shmoe that noticed the break in first place and make him the hero. He'll cooperate for the rewards and say anything we tell him to say. In the meantime? We let Gobwit run. Let's see where those bungers go."
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 5, 2010 7:34:43 GMT -5
It was easy to breeze right back through the gates. The guards were trained enough to recognize the guest cars. We propped the driver back in his seat and wandered back in by various routes. Fall and Winter went back to the chopper disguised by the water elemental.
Only extensive questioning of the guests would show a hole in the time we were their. Not much we could do about that except drop hints that we were there all along. With some of the people blotto enough it was easy to establish that we might have been with a few of them when they passed out. Or with each other. Suspicious? Yes. A real clue? Not unless you have enough evidence to back it up. About now they would notice that the elemental guards at the UCAS we're dead. We made our good bye's and went out to the chopper and headed back to Z Street. If things worked out right they would be looking for the problems now.
The only mess we couldn't cover was the elementals. WE had relocked all the locks, erased all the logs of our transactions. We had planted back doors, but if we were careful in our withdrawals? It might be years or at worse months before they started to notice that monies were missing. Especially under all the transactions they were doing every day. For most government agencies? We are talking the September/October time frame when they finally balance the budget. They will for a month suddenly try to rectify and look closely at what they actually did for the year. If monies are missing, eventually rather than really look, they will look at their own people especially managers to see if someone is playing fast an loose with the money.
We covered that as well. Janie was going to have to explain her budget. Couldn't happen to a nicer person having to deal with all those whining accountants and pencil pushers trying to cover their own hoops because they only just started to figure it out. Would it be likely that Janie would want to explain her budget outlays to THEM? Not bloody likely, mate. If she was in strong position the higher ups would cover it all up and someone in accounting would take the rap and get drek canned. Same as it always is. The UCAS is very unlikely to make in any way public the fact that their spies used more money than they were supposed to. Not that the accounts could have stopped her from using it, but it's easier to drek can them.
It was one sweet steal. They could suspect all they wanted but we were Teflon on this one. First; you had a clean entry and departure. No deaths and little changed. Second; When things started happening we had excellent, not air tight, alibis. The people they should question would not be inclined to answer questions and had the money and lawyer power to really tell the UCAS investigators to frag off and die. Sure some of the lesser companies could be bribed to talk, or coerced to talk through various nefarious deals the UCAS did know about, but not all. The big dogs, Villiers and such, could make it so bad they wouldn't dare. Without enough people it was pretty solid. The lesser companies also would not want to frag off the big guys by going against them! That means none would ever go public and a trial of this nature would have to be public. Third; we had a backup scapegoat. Feed the right information, and Izzy gutting the fiscal systems had plenty, we could really cause the UCAS a lot of problems by releasing the information anonymously through various newscasters as data bombs.
It was going to be a lucrative year. It was going to be the account that keeps on paying.
To me.
Don't you just love a good con?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 3, 2010 9:26:41 GMT -5
I sat down at the console and jacked in. I had not believed for a minute that the physical security of the building was so pathetic. Mid Tier corps had better. The matrix security was a problem. Why? It was so fragging OLD! I would estimate that it was ten to fifteen years behind current tech! The iconology was even worse. It would be like running Windows NT when the latest was Windows Vista. Some of my utilities were so sophisticated they couldn't run on this system!
The iconology here was like a government office in some drek spot like downtown St Louis. The outside matrix security was fairly robust but it was just as archaic. Masked in the Icon of the Director of this facility I was able to pretty much gut the system at will. I created several back-doors and hid them well. I traced possible accounts for laundering the m9money and moving it around in smaller and smaller amounts without tripping the cutoffs.
That's when I suddenly found something interesting. An account to Janie Andrews. She had drawn heavily lately on expenses. The account was fragging huge. I smiled and placed a leech on the account. By the time they figured out the NuYen was being siphoned it should have taken maybe a third of the account. It was in the billions. Once the leech was discovered and investigated? IT would hide the transaction by suddenly sending amounts of varying kinds all over, wiping previous transactions and self destructing. The best programs destroy themselves when discovered.
In moments it was done. See you back at the party.
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