Hacks was immersed in netspace, hardwired directly into her computer. The cryptnet from this point of view was impossibly vast, an alternative communication network coded by a slicer in the Red Raven Syndicate decades ago. Unlike the holonet, cryptnet offered increased security and anonymity to its users, who were almost always underworld figures. The Darkwire Shadowrunner had tapped into local CorpSec networks and monitored security chatter and local traffic in her subsector of the
Twilight Belt on Denon. Data scrolled across her screens, longitude and latitude estimations of CorpSec cruisers patrolling the vertical neighbourhood. Hacks attention was suddenly ripped away by the ringing of her commlink. She pulled her headset off and unplugged herself from netspace, frustrated.
"
What the hell is it now," she said to herself in the lonely apartment. A cheap motel with flaky walls from peeling paint. The carpet stained from thousands of previous tenants. The orange glow of her display screens was the only illumination in the room, bar the occasional red and blue flashing of CorpSec speeders as they gave chase to nameless criminals past her window. Then Hacks saw just who was calling.
This will be interesting, she thought to herself. She turned her eyes back to the display screens and checked the time, calculated in her mind the date and time difference between Coruscant and Denon. The senate should be in session, she mused, knowing just well what that meant. She wasn't out of the loop on what Koda had planned, but if he was calling then something had gone south.
"
Hello Fett," Hacks answered coldly, twisting in her chair to take back her headset and place it over her head, then re-attaching the wires that would facilitate a connection to her cranial implants, mentally immersing her back into netspace. "
Hacks," Fett answered, sounding rushed, "
I'm in a bind. Senate chamber. I need a distraction and an out." For a moment she didn't respond, her four arms hovered above her keypad, cybernetic fingers rapidly began to type at an inhuman speed.
"
How odd," she started with a smile, "
I remember putting my hand up for this job and you thinking you didn't need me for this?" she left the insinuation in the air that even the legendary Koda Fett could be wrong. Then, to her surprise, Koda admitted it, "
I thought wrong." Damn, he needed a slicer
bad. She could trace his signal, drain his accounts and cut the connection. Let him rot in a cell for the rest of his life. But that wasn't fun, and as much as Hacks hated to admit it, she too needed help. Instead she would twist his arm. She piggybacked Koda's signal and sent a rudimentary trojan script she typed out in seconds, easy to do with twenty fingers and a lifetime of cybernetic enhancements. She laid out the price for her help, "
I'll need a favour from you then.. times ticking." The trojan infected Koda's armour, internal systems invaded by her malware before he could even respond.
Koda replied, "
Consider it done."
One hell of a gatecrasher was about to hit this party. The conversation had only been seconds, but had felt a lifetime in netspace as matrixes of complex code began to formulate under the careful attention of the slicer and then followed along the path of the trojan. "
Don't shut this channel," Hacks warned Koda without further explanation, "
And get ready to hold onto something." Now in shared control of Koda's own armour, she forced his infected helmet to open a separate channel on his commlink and began to emit trace electromagnetic radiation. Wavelengths. Hacks was prodding the area, scouting a device for which to send a virus and gain control of the local subnet.