A Glitch in the Holo-Net

[Progflaw99]

Location: Sor Yusan, Varada V​

The subtle hum of the environmental control unit kicking into high gear stirred the lone occupant of the small studio. Shifting in the small bunk, a man in his mid to late twenties reached over to the small nightstand, rotating the small clock there. The light from the illuminated digital readout burned his retina's as he squinted, trying to read the time. With a groan, he spun the device back away from the bunk. The man slid his feet over the edge of the bed, coming down onto the cool durasteel floor of the low-cost housing unit he rented - it sent a chill all the way up his spine.

Shrugging off the sharp chill he cracked his knuckles and rose.

"Lights." the man's voice cracked slightly before he raised a closed fist and cleared his throat.

At the man's voice, the lights flickered on revealing the mess that was his abode. His bunk was a mess, wrinkled sheets and heaped blanket evidence of a restless night. Across the floor lay a variety of clothes, shoes carelessly chucked into a corner, an empty bottle of liquor resting near the door. Rubbing his temples the man's wandering footsteps took him towards the small in-unit refresher. After about ten minutes he emerged. The steam from the shower module poured out of the unit and into the main room. Water laden footprints were left on the floor as he stepped towards his small closet, picking up dirty clothes and depositing them in the small laundry receptacle on the way.

Several minutes further, he wore a comfortable hoodie and a pair of dark jeans accentuated by a pair of comfortable slippers. The grogginess of the morning would wear off, but the disappointment was clear as he noted the empty bag of coffee on the small counter of the kitchenette. With a sigh, he walked across the room once more, this time towards his most expensive belonging - his computer. The bright screens came to life as his fingers traced across the keyboard, his eyes locking on to the screens in triplicate. It was a nice setup - and it wasn't even the display that had cost him a near fortune. At least, he'd kind of paid for it, the fact the money was from other people's accounts wasn't exactly something he would admit.

Once Lysander had logged in, he brought up several holo-net tabs. Time to see what the latest on the net was.

Lysander had been tracking remnants of the One Sith for some time - the rumor on the holo-net is that some of the intel community belonging to the One Sith had escaped the purge, with valuable data in tow. It had been a journey of success and failure, commonly finding data that led to more questions than it did answers but he felt he was getting close to unveiling the identity and location of several of the agents. It wasn't a done deal, names were always shifting - and he'd encountered at least a dozen false leads left by those who wished not to be found.

Quickly hammering out a string of commands he began to continue his work, several of the leads he'd been following found to be dead ends within a few minutes, others took several hours - and then he found something interesting. Something that didn't add up. With a sigh, he stood, the ache of his endeavors felt. It was amazing how the time flew when one became as obsessed as Lysander had - it was only now that the man began to feel the pangs of hunger.

After reaching into his small refrigerator, he was able to scrounge up enough for a sandwich, which - he promptly ate before stepping back to his machine. There was a small alert on the screen, a mismatch had indeed been found. That was one of the interesting things about data mining - more often than not you weren't looking for things that seemed to be in place, or particularly out of place, but somewhere in the middle. Just as the screen indicated before him now. The error in question hailed from the Western reaches of First Order space, oddly enough, a planet called Skye.

Lysander didn't know much about the planet, excepting what he could find on the holo-net. Mountainous, green, mostly left in its natural state. As far as S'kytri, they were humanoids with wings. Interesting, though not what he'd personally found interesting. He'd accessed the spaceport records and found a mistake in the registry - of course from there it had only taken him a matter of minutes to slice into the camera feeds to confirm his suspicions. In hangar 314 was supposed to be a freighter, possibly a light freighter as classifications were known to differ slightly from system to system but that was definitely not a simple freighter.

Many of the ships belonging to the One Sith fleets had been either captured and sold or scrapped for refitting but this ship seemed to have come almost from the shipyard itself - sans any obvious tags or identifiers. Quickly pulling up the vessel's published flight plan he saw its origin - or at least what the pilot had logged. Doing a quick bit of math however revealed the origin to be well outside of the vessel's range given what fueling had been charged at each stop. A sly grin crossed the man's narrow features, a twinkle in his eye. This had to be it, one of the former One Sith spooks. Now that he'd found what he thought he was looking for - the next step would be difficult. He wasn't much of a traveller and physically tracking down a spook? No, that was far to dangerous - but he wagered he knew a few folks that might be interested in the information.

Utilizing CryptNet, he would be able to access a few IRC's and from there he could hook up with a few contacts he knew. From there on out, selling the data would be easy - or so he hoped.

[member="Eske"]​

 

[Loxa Visl]

Skye - Planetside
Deep within the wilds. Dusk.

Throughout her many decades of exploration Eske had seen the sunset of more planets than she could easily count. Time and experience told her that not every night was the same, despite the familiar touch of an inky blackness settling across the horizon. Skye was not at all like Byss, no. This planet was alive and lively. Thriving and practically humming with activity - a welcome change to the typical twilight hunt on a planet known for being utterly saturated in the Darkside.

She was faintly reminded of Felucia in the vibrancy of flora and fauna. Surrounded on all sides for several days travel, the Aranchneri had submerged herself into the depths of greenery in a search not for sustenance, but for something else entirely. Her kind were rare in this great wide galaxy and particularly difficult to find, so this meant that the search for a mate often lead one far and wide. Fate had been kind for many years, providing her with a keen and healthy match of the Basilikarch variety, but he had long since failed to show for some time now. Expiration being the likeliest cause - Eske had turned to the expansion of her studies when the One Sith showed up at her door within the Ruins of Erudol.

For a time things had been good. The Sith, as it turned out, were highly accustomed to the stranger sorts of the galaxy and took her in with little question. Eager to put her skills to use, Eske first offered her mind for the Archives on Byss and shortly thereafter played the roll of a Will. In the end, the Archives were her true home and it was there she gave all efforts alongside the Master [member="Hal Terrano"]

When war arrived many things changed. Erudol fell decimated. The archives were locked away. Eske discovered a few relics of the past that aught to have been left uncovered and found herself changed as well. One morning Hal Terrano was no longer there and some time later, as the One Sith Empire dissolved, Eske found herself without purpose nor port.

The time to make life anew had come once again; and so here she was on the planet Skye.

In the deep jungles of Skye very little light penetrated the canopies but this came as no detriment to the ashen Arachneri. These shadows and trails were familiar to her even if she had never seen them before. Somewhere, in this wide world of feathered peoples, there was another of her kind. All the signs were there and her own instincts had rarely lead her astray.

She would find him, but first she would hunt.

[member="ch1m3r4"]

 

[Progflaw99]

It had taken him another two hours to hook into the right networks but finally he'd gotten it - a hit. There was a buyer interested in the data he'd mined from the small port on Skye, the rest of the information hinting at a former OS operative being on planet. Of course he'd taken the time to cross check the identity of his buyer, but h had done so a little easier than normal. It seemed all the information about the buyer was easy to find which had thrown flags at first but Lysander had written off the subtle warning, perhaps he really was just getting that good. His fingers flying across the keys, the slicer quickly confirmed the buyer. Now the fun began - the payment negotiation.

Given the length of time he'd been working on the project Lys had been tempted to inflate the number beyond what the average rate was, but he also knew that buyers of information could often be flighty, not willing to commit the resources which were required to free the information of its owner. Casting a wayward glance back at his humble abode, Lys knew he could use the money, he'd hit a dry spell in the information market and laying low certainly hadn't helped. After the last gig he'd pulled there'd been a lot of heat which had necessitated flying under the radar.

Ch1m3r4: Payment Requested. 300.000 "7​

​

Unknown User: Payment, 100.000 "7 up front, 100.000 "7 upon delivery.​

​

Ch1m3r4: Would you do 250?​

​

Unknown User: The payment is 100.000 "7 up front, 100.000 "7 upon delivery.​

​

Ch1m3r4: ...​

​

Ch1m3r4: Account Number 100587D137FT, where do you want the information sent?​

​

Unknown User: We require confirmation that you have information.​

​

ch1m3r4: File Transfer: Vessel.kpl​

​

ch1m3r4: ...​

​

Unknown User: That will suffice. Initial payment will be routed now.​

​

Tabbing over to his additional screen, Lys paged into the remote account he'd set up - a bank located on Christophsis. As the somewhat recent site of raiding, the likelihood of it getting raided again was slim, the perfect place to funnel money through. Tapping his finger on the desk, he saw the transaction appear, complete with a notification and audible chime. A grin spread across the man's narrow features - here it went. Focusing once more on his primary screen, he quickly began the full file transfer, the data would take a full five minutes to transmit, and he guessed another five for the final transaction to go through. He didn't get that opportunity.

The first thing that caused him pause was the strange rattle he heard just barely over the heavy beats pounding in his ears, secondly the door shattering into pieces as it was forcefully thrown open and a hallway full of heavily armed men and women entered the small flat. Eyes widening at that last moment before the first had crossed the threshold he frantically attempted to input a short string of commands that would render his machine nothing more than a smoking hulk of heavy metals - but he slipped. Whether the fortunes had it out for him, or his number was up, he fell backwards in his chair from the surprise, his arm flailing and pulling loose his headset. The music blasted from his speaker system, filling the air with confusion for a moment - just long enough for his head to hit the floor from his backwards fall, and that was it.

Lights out.​

[member="Eske"]​

 

[Progflaw99]

Location: Skye, Jungle Canopy
Time of Day: Dusk

A gentle breeze disturbed the lush canopy above the jungle, a shadow shifting from one large tree to another. At first it looked like any other of the shadows created by the swaying of the branches but upon closer inspection, this shadow seemed to move with a purpose. Swiftly it moved across the treetops, large hairy legs clinging to the trunks - had anyone been witness to the creature they might have had flashbacks to a horror flick or a particularly disturbing book. An arachnid, or at least a creature that resembled one but many times larger moved its ungainly form far quicker than one might have guessed. There was something different about this creature though, it's upper torso that of a man, humanoid from the waist up but below the body of a spider - an Arachneri.

There weren't many of his kind across the galaxy, at least not in these far reaches of space and even those were seclusive - understandably so. Their kind were deemed strange, odd, and in most societies they were rarely trusted - at least humanoid societies, something about having too many legs. None of that was Onvyr's concern. He'd lived a secluded life, learning how to hunt, how to trap, how to survive out here in the wilderness. The winged creatures of the planet left the jungles alone for the most part, and he was thankful for that. Years ago, before he'd learned the importance of remaining unseen, he'd been driven at spearpoint from the rocky crag he'd claimed as his home - before he'd realized it was within the roam of a hill clan of the S'kytri. He still bore the scars from that encounter, eventually retreating to first the lowland and then further into the jungle where he found himself now.

Memories. They were a strange thing to the Arachneri - sometimes he wondered if he had dwelled too much on them but he suspected not. What he did have though were dreams. Dreams of a hold, a home, a fortress. A place of his own, something more permanent. He continued on, his agile movement halting once he'd found a mid-level tree. High enough to keep him safe from creatures which roamed the ground, low enough to stay out of the sight of aerial predators. Having chosen his roost, the Arachneri began spinning a web, spooling the substance from his abdomen in a looping sling. Practiced at the art, it only took him moments to spin the hammock, attaching it firmly to one of the largest branches, slipping his body within it. After a few subtle movements he was comfortable, settling in. Tomorrow he had plans and he had come a long way from his stomping ground at the opposite side of the jungle, rest was on order.

[member="Eske"]​