PRECIOUS CARGO @Copyright Maureen Lycaon, August 2001. All rights reserved under the Berne Convention, but permission granted to keep copies for personal use. This series contains themes of voluntary slavery, BDSM, furries and science fiction. The furries involved have signed themselves into slavery of their own free will. (Actually, this chapter doesn't have any sex at all, just cyberpunk.) If you shouldn't or don't want to be reading this, please don't. Thanks to the Unholy Black Metal Songtitle-o-matic at http://www.uq.net.au/~zzrwaldi/bm-o-matic/ for helping me at the end. >;-) Thanks also to Simon Barber, a fellow Velan Archive author, for the concept of an anarchist hacker virtual state, and to Ron for more critiquing. Feedback is welcomed; send it to maureen_lcn@yahoo.com. More of my stories, including other chapters of Precious Cargo, may be found at my Website at: http://vcl.ctrl- c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Maureen/Stories/Web/index2.html Part 31 The databases of Perion Spaceport are not large, at least not when compared to those of the spaceport authorities of most Federation worlds. When you look at an entire database field there, you can set your mindmeld headset to a resolution of only a few terabytes per pixel with no danger of overload. Thus, once Operative 67881 of the Jegarlik Hacker Anti-State had penetrated the security database for the first time thirteen days ago, it had then taken him only half an hour of searching to find what he'd sought. Now he journeyed there again, traveling through cyberspace with the speed of tachyons. No one who knew what he did for a living knew his real name, except for those who had checked him out when he had joined the Anti-State seven years ago. Jegarlik "citizens" concealed their true identities even from each other. Each one normally knew other citizens of that hidden virtual nation only by a number or a nickname. Superhackers invariably make powerful enemies by the score, not all of them in Federation governments. On underground forums, Operative 67881 sometimes went by the name of Afterdark Cyberjack, an old joke. Besides being a superhacker, he was an avid student of cyberspace history. As Cyberjack hurtled through the Perion Port Authority database, the metallic towers of data structures flashed by him. They vaguely resembled hybrids between skyscrapers and geometric shapes, but they had no true interior, appearing only as huge complex latticeworks of silver metal with darker button-like nodes at each intersection. Each shape represented a collection of data records of one type: the vast rectangular towers of routine operations and maintenance records, the smaller spheres and cubes of personnel files and medical records . . . He was heading now toward the records of recent arrests, and toward one arrest in particular -- the capture of a ship saboteur and the killing of his companion at the Spaceport two weeks ago. The criminal had been found in possession of a blackflag, a sophisticated device for sabotaging a space vessel's computer systems. A Jegarlik client had requested that she be kept up to date on anything related to that arrest. He knew who the client was, of course; Captain Fodessa Ruggae was very good at concealing her identity, but he had cracked it a while back. Like any wise hacker for hire, he liked to know whom he was dealing with. He also knew that the Federation datahound programs and operatives who tapped all tachyon communications, even those on the Underwave Network, had been unable to discover her identity. The familiar data structure appeared in the far distance: another silvery latticework, this one diamond-shaped, hanging motionless in black "space". He did something with his mind which sent him shooting up to the latticework diamond, easily evading the prowling dark-metal spheres of security software. Another, smaller adjustment brought him to the node he sought. The node represented a classification of files -- records of arrests made by Port Authority for serious crimes over the past month. He plunged into the node, and cyberspace instantly changed around him. It stopped resembling the familiar Euclidean geometry of three dimensions. Instead, it had as many extra dimensions as were needed to match the number of different data fields; as a result, the topography of the database was as complex as that of a hundred-dimensional hypercube. This was normal for all but the smallest and most primitive databases in cyberspace. On that first visit to the Port Authority database almost two weeks ago, Cyberjack had done what any experienced hacker would do: he'd turned control over to his special navigational software, giving it the date of the Port Authority record he was looking for and letting the program help him search along the shifting "edges" of the hyperdimensional polygon until he found the section where the records for arrests made that day were stored. Once he'd had the precise location, he'd written a script that would take him there right away without a fuss. On this visit, he simply used that script. Edges and flat faces of hyperdimensional shapes rose up and hurtled past him in a brain-bendingly complicated pattern as he veered through them. Suddenly he was back in three-dimensional cyberspace, in a "room" that looked like the interior of a pastel-green sphere. He floated in the "air", and the files appeared before him in the forms of banks of shiny, plastic-looking holographic cards stored in black racks. There were in fact no cards. What he was seeing was how his interface interpreted the data entries, a form his mind could easily understand and work with. Cyberjack floated up to the proper file and accessed it. He "smelled" the card to see who else had accessed that file, and how recently. He perceived the access traces as "scent" trails, the cyber-scents of Port Authority personnel who had "handled" the file. When humans had devised cyberspace all those thousands of years ago, they had created it using their own two most important senses -- vision and hearing. Later they had added touch. The countless furry programmers and hackers who had inherited that primitive framework had long since enhanced it by creating operating systems, shells and software adapted to their own senses. Now, Cyberjack's exceptionally keen cybernose picked up a new "scent" on the card, a scent that was slightly different. If he had had to put a word to it, he would have called it "faked". Something about it seemed false, like a cheap synthetic perfume. It seemed to be only a few hours old. Curiosity piqued, he gave it a more careful sniff. Under the mindmeld headset, his ears perked up. Who else had been here besides him and Port personnel? And why had they faked their identity? As he examined it more closely, his concentration dissolved the illusion of scent for a moment, so that he actually glimpsed alphanumerics flashing by. In the physical world, his whiskers twitched with the movements of his nostrils. He needed a closer view. Cyberjack stopped sniffing and instead brought other software programs into play. The illusion of a spherical room with plastic cards vanished, to be replaced by a bluish field with less sophisticated 3-D graphs and other displays. The server that Perion Port Authority was using to store its security databases was a Chan-Mu 8.1. Very few hackers had experience with the Chan-Mu server, because only government organizations could purchase it, which kept it rare (and risky to hack). Cyberjack *did* know the Chan-Mu. He was one of the galaxy's elite hackers who penetrated government computers as part of their work. Not even many government system administrators understood some of the Chan-Mu server's more arcane capabilities; usually they simply installed it "out of the box" with few or no customizations. Perion Port Authority's sysadmins were unusually skilled. They had made tweaks on their server that most hackers would never think to look for. Cyberjack had examined those customizations during his first visit thirteen days ago. Like any server, the Chan-Mu kept logs of all accesses, recording and storing the visitor's cyberspace address and the precise time of his visit. In fact, it kept three different logs, by default, all in different locations, so that a hacker would have great difficulty finding and altering them all to cover his tracks. The address of the strange-smelling access of the arrest record looked legitimate. The three regular logs backed it up. However, one of the Chan-Mu's most arcane options was to activate a *fourth* log besides the regular access logs -- an extremely well-hidden log. In fact, the Port Security sysadmins had cleverly tweaked it to make it still better-hidden. Cyberjack knew about that hidden log; he'd looked for and found it during his first visit. That secret log showed *no* access to the arrest database on that date -- from that address. Instead, it showed the visit had come from an entirely different location. To Cyberjack's sensitive cybernose software, the "scent" of the four logs for that visit hadn't quite matched. Smiling coldly, Cyberjack returned to the three regular logs. Using a powerful undelete program to look for traces of anything that had been erased, he found what he sought. The mystery hacker had changed the access records in the first three logs and written in that faked address -- but that hadn't destroyed the lingering electronic traces of the original address. Examining the logs through the undelete program, Cyberjack could still faintly see the *original* entries. Each one showed the same address that the secret log had captured. He made a careful note of that hidden address, as well as the faked address (just in case) and copied it to a folder on his own computer. A few more minutes of sniffing around in the database revealed no further traces of the mystery hacker. Cyberjack closed his programs, and then he was back in the spherical room, the gleaming card still in his "paw". He examined the arrest data he had come for. The would-be ship saboteur, a leopard of unknown planetary origin, was still being held in a cell in a high-security prison in Telper. Drug interrogation had begun within three days of his capture, but that was a slow process -- particularly when a planet's legal system forbade using physical duress and potentially fatal mechanical probes as well. It also appeared that the prisoner had some sort of hypnotically implanted protection against it, which was slowing the process even more. That in itself was remarkable; only a few organizations had the technology and know-how to give their employees such protection -- the Federation, a handful of planetary governments, and (it was rumored) one or two of the biggest, most sophisticated crime syndicates in the galaxy. Clearly, this leopard was no ordinary hired thug. His dead mink companion also hadn't yet been traced to a planet or even a sector. An examination of the body two days after the incident had revealed a few surgically concealed scars, of the sort often found in former street criminals who turned to respectable employment and had to have their gang scars and piercings removed. That in itself was not unusual, but as the magnitude of the case had become apparent, Perion Port Authority had decided to give the mink's corpse a more thorough examination. Unfortunately, the sophisticated equipment they needed for a molecular-level scan was in great demand. The scan had at last been done four days ago, but the results were not yet in. Cyberjack had his own suspicions about the reasons for the delay. If Perion suspected Federation involvement in this affair was even possible, no doubt all kinds of unofficial diplomatic fur was flying behind the scenes. Port Authority might well have been forced to go slowly until there was some kind of resolution. He smiled to himself, wishing he could see some of those diplomatic communications. A pity Jegarlik's citizens had an agreement to refrain from hacking into such things -- unless the fate of the virtual nation was at stake. Could that unknown intruder be connected to the attack, even a Federation agent? If so, this was going to get *really* interesting. When Cyberjack was finished, he copied the information to his own computer, carefully erased all his own tracks, and then withdrew entirely from Perion Port Authority's database and server. Now he used another powerful program to break down the addresses he'd retrieved and determine their places of origin. In ancient times, Internet addresses took the form of DNS numbers, four hexadecimal numbers assigned by a central authority. In the modern day, with far lengthier series of numbers being used, it was more practical for a furry hacker to use special software to perceive them as scents rather than as numbers. However, there were times when the searching hacker had to examine the data more directly, which was what Cyberjack did now. The faked address belonged to a Port Authority administrator. He set that aside for now. The mystery hacker's real address led to a server owned by a small logging company based on the Open Planet of New Willamette, Broson Forest Products, several sectors away. Cracking Broson's server proved much easier than penetrating Perion Port Authority's security. As he had suspected, the hacker hadn't come from there, either. Instead, data traces of that access pointed back to yet another address on another server several sectors away. Like any truly skilled hacker, the mystery hacker had daisy- chained his access through several servers on different planets to conceal his real location, his signals bouncing off the great communications transmitters floating in deep space that routed the Net's massive data traffic throughout the galaxy. He had been very careful -- even if he hadn't known enough to look for the secret log on the Chan-Mu server. This guy was good -- not nearly as good as Cyberjack, but skilled enough to make the hunt interesting. Between the demands of Cyberjack's "real-life" job and the need to crack half a dozen networks in succession, it took him two more sessions of hacking over another day to track the intruder down to his point of origin, but he succeeded. The last stop in the chain of access points was a small commercial network, Magay Communications. When he traced Magay Communications' ownership through two dummy corporations to its true owner, he found that it was owned by an import-export company based on the planet Djebi in Dijjang Sector, a company named Jalang Imports. Beyond that, he was unable to determine the identity of the mystery hacker. He was probably Magay company personnel, since he had access to one of their workstations. Cyberjack noticed that the Magay Communications server had better security than would seem to be warranted by a front company owned by a minor import-export corporation on a planet settled less than fifty years ago. There was also software on it that was better suited for amateur hacking than for running an import-export business. He copied all the data he had uncovered to the job folder, and then sent off another copy in an encrypted and disguised data file through a highly secure Jegarlik channel. The Jegarlik Hacker Anti-State Ministry of Foreign Affairs would pursue the matter further, assigning other hackers to the different aspects of the case. He left it to them to find out why another hacker was interested in that prisoner on Halcyon, or why an obscure import-export company would be set up to do hacking. *Gonna set off a lot more speculation*, he mused. It might even be connected to the current attacks on the Darksex Underground. After he had finished, he logged out of the Net entirely. Time for some recreation . . . He inserted a datacube into his computer and sat back in his chair to enjoy the latest bizarre and grisly multimedia piece by the group Impaled Sambeth Maxim, "Dwelling In The Freezing Coffin Surrounded By Eternal Winter". Like many youths in the hive worlds of Kalkutt Sector, he was quite devoted to the studied blasphemy and rabid nihilism of the Black Voidalist movement. Direct comments and criticism to: maureen_lcn@yahoo.com . The URL for my archive of stories is in the Author's Notes at the top.