The next few days were surprisingly uneventful. Drs. DeSoto and Gayakvad did indeed not disturb our small community. A couple of days after I finished setting up the nanobots for Vince and Mr. Kraykowsky Mark asked me to meet him in the gun range VR.

There he presented me with 2 pistols to test.

They were not perfect, as the trigger heated up uncomfortably after a few dozen shots and for some reason, Mark tried to make them out of steel including the weight penalty, but generally, they both would work better for me than my old PDP.

After I convinced him to make the guns out of carbon the next iteration worked perfectly in my limited opinion. He was talking about upscaling them for his own, and the other's use, and asked if I was okay with it. It took me only moments to get the production costs and in all honesty, these things were essentially throw-away.

Without the industrial fabber it would be uneconomical, but carbon was cheap, the extruder was there, and we had the molecular foundry to recycle anything broken.

In the end, it would be somewhat like $50 in material and energy costs to build one. After a bit of back and forth, I told him that it was his design, and he could do with it what he wanted, and that production would cost 50 bucks in-house and 100 for outsiders.

Another bit of haggling, and I made him accept $5k for the work. It was seriously hard work for me to get it that high, but he simply would not accept more.

Of course I had managed to slow down my studying, and if you believe that I have an open-air estate on Ceres for you.

No, in reality, I breezed through the coursework and had all the knowledge of a bioengineer.

I had started a preliminary study on how to upscale the biosheathing process but I quickly realized that I lacked one key ingredient. I had no bio lab. And during the current unpleasantness I would not get one in place very fast. Or at all. So I was stumped on that front.

Mr. Berardino seemed to be satisfied with the results that Spectre delivered too. And I found myself with nothing to do again.

I broke down and finally decided to start a production run on the NADA. My calculations told me that even with all 6 rail guns firing at the same time the NADA would be unaffected. And so I had it build my Chimaera processor.

And my nano-assembler-dis-assembler, my masterwork, my magnum opus, the technological holy grail, the dream of every single engineer since the first nanobots were created, it was running, it was working, it was… underwhelming.

It worked, it was putting the processor together on an atomic level. As far as I could tell it had a resolution in the 50 pm range. It was a breakthrough of epic proportions. But it was slow. Oh so slow.

The progress told me that it would have finished the processor in a bit less than 2 weeks.

A careful analysis of the situation revealed that it was not really the production that was the bottleneck.

No, it was the transport. The building nanites were idle around 98% of the time, waiting for new raw materials to place.

The first thing I did was to change the transport into a bucket brigade, and that helped. Before I did that the estimated time was measured in months. But it clearly was not enough.

At that time I lacked any idea how to resolve the issue, and decided to have it run in the back of my mind. Maybe I would get an idea later. For now, I decided to return to gravitics where I managed, by the skin of my teeth, to refrain from deep diving during the study.

And then, 4 days after I removed the implants from Ms. Uesogi, I got a call from Mr. Walker.

“Hello, Kitten. I have a problem. Something wonky goes on with our com network, and we fear it’s been hacked. Could you look into that for me?”

It took a few seconds for me to switch to the problem, as I had been thinking about the NADA problem, but then it registered with me.

“Oh, yes, I can look into it. What carrier do you use? Or, it is unlikely you all use the same carrier, and to hack you there, can Kursalin get that much cyber power?”

“I don’t know if he can get the power, but we are using different carriers.”

Thought so. There was no advantage for an organization like the mob to get a group tariff. Yes, the law enforcement in New York City in general, was in one word lax, and even more so in Queens, where cops only moved in squad sizes, but sometimes one politician or another, or their corporate masters, got the glorious idea to fight organized crime.

There was no need to make it easier for them by using a group tariff. Smaller organizations usually used a server-client solution for coordination.

“So somebody hacked your com server. I will look into it.”

Off to see the cyberspace then.

I told Justin, who was on bodyguard duty at that time that I would make a combat dive and receiving his dumbfounded expression I explained that I would do a matrix run, followed by an even longer explanation of what that entailed.

The important part was though that he knew that if a certain LED on Precious began blinking red he had to rip out the OPB-cable from the board or my jack, preferably the board.

It was a hopefully unnecessary precaution as I seriously doubted that Kursalin could get a hacker that could actually threaten me, but I preferred to be safe rather than sorry.

The matrix address of Walker’s HQ was quickly reached even without going full speed and my first impression was what I already suspected. No environ here either. I would have to seriously upgrade the systems here in time.

Now I had to root out whatever the other side had done and repair it to my best abilities. For that, I first increased my compression to 30:1.

Not enough to betray my capabilities, but enough to show that I was a Jack of slightly above-average ability.

Yes, I know that most tend to go to full compression the moment they enter the target environ, but I had more than once a situation where a Jack thought he was my superior and became cocky. I personally like to have some aces hidden in my sleeve.

The damage was rather simplistic. The hacker had crossed the user-ids in the database, and I was able to resolve the issue by comparing it with the last backup. I had the impression that this was just a diversion, so I let my ghosts swarm. Not fast enough though.

A sudden alert notified me that one of my buffer banks had been scrambled.

I have to confess I was somewhat embarrassed. Not enough to hamper me but for another Jack to get the drop on me, that was mortifying.

It was naturally not dangerous, as I had my outer shell linked through the cluster and it would take more than a basic scramble to make it even hiccup, much more.

Still, I dropped into stealth and at the same time spun up a decoy, low-powered as if in suboptimal stealth. That should keep my opponent busy while I investigated the situation.

The analysis of the scrambler showed that it was literally the basic utility that one gets open source on the web. Nothing to call home about. I was impressed by his stealth though. It was hard to find him. Being so well hidden was hard to do in such a threadbare environ.

It took me nearly 12 seconds to find him, and that was because he attacked the decoy. After that, one of my ghosts took a good sniff at his stealth and sampled the pattern masking.

I have to say, it was an interesting approach. Not as good as what I was using, but pretty good for somebody who used an open-source attack utility.

He managed to overwhelm the decoy after a couple of attacks, but he never used anything else than the basic scramble.

A sneak thief in temperament it seemed.

After I got him pinned down, I could determine his compression, and at 33:1 it was not too bad, and I decided to avoid further surprises by going to full compression.

Then I readied Excalibur, followed by promptly shutting it down again.

Sure, he had ambushed me, but he was just doing his job. No need to go nuclear. Instead, I used Babel and blasted him into next week. Babel was nice insofar that it overloaded the nervous system and knocked the other one out, without damaging the hardware or, and that is the important point here, closing the connection.

I followed the link, and after a few bridges, I found the board of my playmate. I was mildly surprised it was not a he, but a she. Among Jacks, the ratio of men to women was somewhere around 30:1. Not because girls are less suited for the job.

No, females tend to be much more aware of the risks of CRS.

And that somebody like Kursalin worked with a female was even more surprising. Nevertheless, I found her operational security lacking.

I found her name, Melody Richards almost immediately. I found her age almost as fast, and at 19 she was a bit over a year older than me.

From the age of her board, she seemed to be pretty new in the business. Half a year at most. I also found out quickly what she had really done in the com server.

She had created a map of where clusters of Mr. Walker's men were, and already delivered said map.

She remained on the com server to update the map in real-time. That of course offered possibilities. I seized her connection to Kursalin and began to shift the clusters around.

At the same time, I surfaced a bit to call Mr. Walker.

“Yes? Did you get the problem sorted out?”

Even at 20:1 where I was now the conversation would have been impossible, had I not a utility that sped up his end of the connection and slowed mine down.

“Yes, I have the hacker he hired out cold. But that gave us an opportunity.

He had her give him a map of your men. Don’t worry, I already have shifted them around but we can assume he knows about the fortress.

Not that it will do him much good. More important we can create an ambush for him, by giving him false data if you want to.”

The disadvantage of that utility was of course the wait. It took the utility around 20 seconds in real-time, or 400 seconds of compressed time to get through to him. He contemplated for another 15 seconds or so, or 300 seconds compressed. Then his answer took 5 seconds or 100 compressed.

All in all, I waited 800 seconds or a bit over 13 minutes for his answer.

I used that time to study Melody’s board a bit more, dissecting her utilities and her OS.

It was not quite off the shelf, but not much better than that. The board was a clone of a Kawamoto Eminence KE CR 45.

A pretty basic board, cheap and mostly reliable.

The utilities were mostly open-source with a handful of exceptions. She had written her stealth utility herself it seemed and had a scanner utility from another source. Her stealth approach was not bad but would frazzle out against better ICE, or in a complicated viron.

It was actually way better suited for a threadbare system like Mr. Walker’s.

Then I received the answer.

“Can you do the same to his men? And if possible, without being detected?”

Oh yes, something to do. I was underway before I had finished answering him, leaving behind a message to contact me on Melody’s board.

“Yes, of course I can do that. Give me a moment please.”

I examined the matrix compound.

A pretty basic environ, displaying some preindustrial military base. A design of some two-headed bird was everywhere and I had the distinct impression that the viron had some meaning to Kursalin, not that anybody not breaking in would ever see it.

The firewall was… yes it was an outdated Ralcon firewall. Around 5 years old at that. Naturally, that made me suspicious.

Ralcon did not have a particularly good reputation in the security software world. They made their money on the lower end of the tech market, and a couple of quasi-monopolies like the nanobots.

The firewall was adequate for personal use or a mom-and-pop shop, but nothing that had a realistic probability of being targeted by hackers. Again, I let my ghosts swarm. While I waited, I got Walker's reply.

“All right, Kitten, do so, please. But be careful. We don’t want to warn Kursalin about it.”

I had to smile inwardly. As if I would botch this job in a way that would warn Kursalin. Keep it real.

“Yes, of course. The first thing he will know is when you use the data to take him out. I have sent you a link to the mapping tool that lets you tell him where to look for your men. You can decide by yourself where you want him to believe your men are. I think you have a much better grasp of your strategy than I have. Talk to you later. Bye.”

I was courteous enough to wait for his answer. Over an hour in subjective time. Meanwhile, my ghosts had finished the first rounds of scans and found a handful of barrier ICE around what seemed to be the more important PUs, a couple of roving hunter ICE, and even a hunter-killer ICE. Naughty naughty Mr. Kursalin.

The HK was a 23-year-old Dalgon Tech Barracuda. 8.3 if I was not mistaken.

While it was top of the line when it came out, that was no longer the case. This specific model has been disseminated, decompiled, and negated before I was born.

It would be trivial to crash it, but that would create issues that could trigger an alarm. That was not very likely, but while the chance was low, it was not zero.

So I decided instead to spoof it. A short inspection of the profile told me that it used an old procedure to generate security tokens.

Still better than the firewall, but it was simply outdated. I sampled the security tokens of the firewall and activated my chameleon.

I morphed into a grizzled old man with a bushy beard in some kind of uniform. Just seeing this uniform I was glad that it was just a representation as I could live without feeling the scratchy wool all over my body.

The thought alone made me itchy. I had, honestly no idea what the markings on the uniform represented but I knew that the system would interpret them as authorization and security tokens.

I encountered the first barrier ICE, which was represented as a guard post, and markhed through unimpeded. The bureau behind it was the logistic center of Kursalin’s organization. I was sure that Mr. Walker would be interested, so I spun off a bot to slowly copy the data onto the cluster, but it was not what I searched for.

It took me 5 tries to find the right PU, and on the way, I met one of the hunter ICE and the HK. The hunter was the obligatory watchdog, not a breed that I could identify, while the HK was a giant animal that I recognized after some thought as a bear.

It sniffed at me for a few moments, and I was already thinking that my chameleon had failed and prepared an attack utility, but then it moved on to the nearest bot and sniffed it. I was sure that I could have shut it down before it could trigger the alarm, but it was better not to have to do it.

The com server itself was pretty straightforward. It looked like an old office with several birds, a couple of desks, and an assortment of chests. I carefully used my decryptor on the chests, manifesting itself as a set of lockpicks, and opened one chest after the other, until I found the location database.

Unlike Melody, I knew how to directly link it to another computer, in this case, my cluster, so that I did not have to manually update the map. I also activated the passive surveillance on the coms of Kursalin and what I thought were his two top lieutenants.

Yes, of course, they had that feature deactivated on their coms, but the client portion of the com server had as so often very deep authorizations on the coms. Another thing I would have to talk with Mr. Walker about it seemed.

After that, I left as silent as I had come.

During the surfacing, I looked at the map, and what I saw was a bit concerning. Around 20 of Kursalin’s men plus Kursalin himself were moving through Mr. Walker's territory. I could only guess their goal, but as they moved more or less directly towards the fortress if I had an inkling about it.

As soon as I completely surfaced I called Mr. Walker.

“Hello again, Kitten. What can I do for you?”

“Hello, Mr. Walker. I wanted to tell you that I have belled the cat.”

“Already? We have only talked about it not even 5 minutes ago.”

“I have sent you the link to the map. I also have programmed Kursalin’s, Golovin’s, and McDaniels’ coms to transfer all they hear to us. The links are also there. But the interesting thing is that Kursalin is coming here to the fortress with 20 of his men.

Judging by the speed they are in cars. I can program the railguns to target Kursalin’s car as soon as he comes into range. That should end this part of the gang war quickly. Or do you want to shoot it out with his men?”

He took a few moments to answer, clearly thinking through the options.

“Yes, that sounds pretty good. I will still want to listen to him and the other two. Good thinking by the way. But yes, putting a railgun round into his car would be a good idea I think.”

I walked towards a window on the south wing, while I programmed the railguns.

“As good as done. As long as he drives into the field of fire he is toast. I won’t use the railguns if he parks around the corner though. These things are overkill against any single person. If he drives up, do you want me to take out the other cars as well, or do you want to take care of his men yourself?”

The pause lasted for several seconds before he replied.

“I fear we will have to take them out either way, and the rail guns would make it quick at least. So if you can, eliminate them all.”

That made it suddenly all too real for me. I was on the verge of consciously killing for the very first time. I had managed to avoid that during my career in the underworld, and I was not looking forward to breaking that streak.

I felt my mouth dry out and my pulse quicken. I closed my eyes and tried to calm down, with little success. It seemed that Walker could interpret my silence clearly, as he spoke rather softly to me.

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, you know that Kitten? We have placed our soldiers at your fortress to protect you for that exact reason.”

I took a last deep breath before I answered him.

“You are wrong, sir. I have to do that. If I don’t some of your soldiers will die as well, and I might as well have killed them myself. Kursalin is on the way to kill me. Not your soldiers, not the others here in the fortress. Me! It is my responsibility, and I won’t shy away from it. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

The silence lasted for a few seconds.

“I understand. And I respect your decision. But please don’t hurt yourself by doing that. Good luck, and I will see you later.” With that, he ended the call.

I was wavering between burying myself in my studies, and simply going into the cafeteria, but I knew deep inside that I needed to see this being done. That if I could kill people, I needed to be there and watch it, and not just press a button. I would not let myself get so distanced that I would launch a nuke at a city that one inhabitant of had annoyed me. And so I stood at the window and looked at the street while keeping an eye on the location of Kursalin.

Then the moment came. Three big SUVs came around the corner and sped towards the fortress. Three thunderous booms in quick succession, that rattled even the reinforced windows of the fortress, and three trails of burning air reached out to the cars. The explosions were not audible but I could see them fine. All three cars simply disintegrated, and the road a bit behind them fountained up, one a bit further behind the cars.

I forced myself to watch the 20 people I just killed die, and then my vision blurred, while I whispered to myself:

“Why did it have to be this way? Why did you make it you or me? Why you goddamn assholes did you force me to kill you?”

I hated that feeling, the guilt, the literal pain deep inside me. I had felt something break, and I knew I would have nightmares about this moment for a long time to come. The view grew more and more blurred, and I could barely see anymore, so I tried to return to the mess room, but I stumbled into some furniture and fell down. I don’t know how long I sat there and simply could not muster the strength to stand up, but after some time I calmed down a bit and a feeling of emptiness encompassed me. After that, I could not say what happened.