Ascendance: 2nd GIG

[Sevoris]

In 2086, humanity discovered something on Mars that would change its history forever.

After 2134, a cataclysmic transformation swept through a growing interstellar civilization, turning those who were once human into transhumans.

In 2197, we made contact with another civilization - And learned how different we were, and yet, all the same.

The year is 2232 A.D. Mind and body are separate. They can be manipulated, changed, stored, repaired, and backed up. The spark of the soul has been quanitified as the Ghost, sitting at the heart of the fortress that is the Ego.

It is a time of change. After transhumanity, other civilizations of the galaxy are embracing the premises of advanced mental augmentation; consciousness digitalization, transmission, transferance and storage; and of safe AGI.

And with that come new threats. New crimes, and new criminals. A new age of cybercrime is sweeping through Citadel space, threatening a thousands-year old stability.

This is the era of galactic Ascension.

And a daring few must face the challenges that come with it. This is the story of Public Security Section 9 and their allies, fighting at the forefront against infocrimes as a new threat rises on the horizon.

This is...



The rewrite of the original Ascendance fanfic

Developed and written by
Sevoris and NickBana

Beta Reader Team:
wyval
Fluoxetine
Deatstroke


INDEX
The Main Story of Ascendance (2nd GIG):
​

PROLOGUE | LEAKAGE
March 21st, March 22nd 2232 A.D.

Part 1 - Preparation
Part 2 - Execution

ARC I – DISCOVERY​

CHAPTER 1 | INTEL

Part 1 - Virtualities
Part 2 - Realities
Part 3 - Insights
Part 4 - Locations

CHAPTER 2 | KNOCK-KNOCK

​

 

[Sevoris]

Change always comes.

The question is: What do we do with it?​

"Director, there is a priority private comm request on your personal server. From CHIM LIA."

The man at the old center of transhuman space took the call.

"Aramaki speaking."

His office's view gazed out over the canyon of reflective diamond glass and genineered green, the terraces filled with small groups of humanoids and other shapes under multi-colored trees, open-air spaces rising up in staged terraces towards the holographics-covered skyrises that climbed an unseen wall until the top, where the endless expanse of a holographic sky hid the ceiling, and the city in a tube curved up to define a horizon.

"Taliem burns, and we watch and wait."

The office's moulded holographic screens replicated Stanford 1's interior perfectly, bypassing the fact that the room itself was embedded 50 meters into the building, almost directly next to the axis of a structural element, and behind enough armor and sacrificial rooms to tank a dozen air cars loaded with NCNE in the area before being damaged.

"Until things change. Hello Kubota, my friend."

It was a paranoia that had been absent from the New Tokyo Seacology and his colonial homesteads both. Instead there had been an openness and freedom he had come to cherish. Still, itt was far more open than most space stations - in those, he felt like part of one giant building whose designers had forgotten "liking open space" was a thing Homo Sapiens Augmentum hadn't engineered our of its neural wiring yet.

At the moment though, the Chief Director's attention was not occupied with the world of glass, silver and green beyond the confines of his office, but the man whose head, upper torso and shoulders hovered in front of Aramaki's desk, projected there by the trigraphics system embedded into the table decorations, various pieces of the ceiling, and sunk into the walls.

"So, what can Section 9 do for Internal Security today?", Chief Director Daisuke Aramaki asked friendly.

Hidden by the mask of his face, his mind was racing in sync with the mind of his personal AI or "muse" Shailin and the dozen LAIs she commanded with him in their shared Exomind.

Maybe AIS had stumbled over some critical and politically nasty intel in the recent banking scandal? Smoked out a few Ego smugglers? No, the EYES had been blank in that regard. Or it was one of tens of thousands of brewing investigations that had developed elsewhere while Section 9 wasn't looking.

"The short story?", the trigraphic avatar of Kubota asked, a spitting image of the man himself: a serious, hard-edged face, mouth framed by a dark beard, a set of decorative specs framing dark grey eyes. He got a court nod.

"We have a serious intelligence leak in progress and less than 24 hours before we lose more than water."

Aramaki suppressed an mused snort at the metaphor, turning it into a twitch of this mouth. Kubota's photon eyes twitched to focus there for just a moment - then both men slowly relaxed.

"Why do you come with that to me?"

"Because we have problems. My own assets are out of position and the compromised person of interest is a high-ranking official in relations with foreign sophonts that enjoy diplomatic immunity."

"You want one of Section 9 teams on the job to sanitize this leak?"

"Yes. I know your people can scramble to Earth within 1 hour, and they can wipe their traces. It's either them or Section 6, and in the later case we are looking at either a diplomatic scandal, or leaked data. Either to the STG or Gods know who. Right now that's the last thing anybody needs." Especially you, Kobatu didn't add.

"I need all of the details. Access codes too, as far as you can provide them. How long do we have?"

"I'm sending you all our files and encrypted uplinks with One-time pads to you can keep your eyes and fingers within the local systems. Transfer will be in a hotel complex at Singapore Groundport the next day in the evening. I take it you can handle this?"

"I can. I'll call you back."

"Thanks. I owe you one." Kubota looked openly relieved, his professional mask cracking.

Aramaki took note. "That you do".

His desk interface made a soft chiming sound as a set of files was transferred through the connection. Aramki reached out with a mental hand and tapped the folder symbol that was hovering at a 60 degrees angle over his desk surface, blinking to draw his attention.

An imagined finger taped it, and it opened into a grey folder window. The individual icons within were greyed out, the file names obscured. A security authentication window superimposed itself, demanding a password. [Is the transfer complete?], Aramaki asked Shailin.

[Yes], she confirmed.

"Have a good afternoon, Mizuho."

"The same to you." The trigraphic avatar disappeared into voxels, replaced by hovering text and infographics.

Aramaki took a deep breath and watched the personal connection terminate. The information packages making up their exchange were quantum-encrypted and bounced through so many proxy servers it was impossible to document them, safe for the single transmission log Aramaki kept on his end. Besides TITAN and his immediate secretary, nobody would know this call had taken place, and only him and Kubota would ever recall the details.

Speculatively, Aramaki looked up at the ceiling and the imagined ASIs observing from there. I wonder how long you will approve of my games. I know it is for the better of transhumanity, but do you? Will you stop me if I step out of line?

They had let him play this game so far, spinning a network of relationships across the large community of the Systems Alliance government and its constituents, giving out, calling and returning favors in tune, positioning himself as an unassuming entity in the background. Nigh-invisible, withdrawn into the background noise of the Alliance's security and law enforcement community, but with power and acting space when required.

Would they let him play that power this time? Or would Governance intervene?

He turned to the desk, and reached out, strong hands waving the communications interface towards him.

The quick-call section held the name he wanted in the fifth slot. He tapped it, and waited for the connection to establish itself.

It opened with an affirmative digital tone: "Sir?" The voice on the other end was a middle-age woman, tone clipped professionalism with a faint undercurrent of warmth.

"Major, come to my office and ready your Mission Team for deployment. We have an urgent CASE BLACKLIGHT DELTA that needs fixing."

The reply was immediate: "On my way Sir."

=[ Prologue | Leakage ]=
[ March 21st - March 22nd | 2232 A.D. ]​

There was a common thought exercise among people like Togusa Authier.

Take yourself a nice big table. Spawn a pinboard on it, and a set of pins. Draw a set of circles on the surface, for every five thousand lightyears from the center, where you place a single pin. Then take hundreds more, and spread them on the board, in all the colors of the rainbow.

And finally, you draw lines. Ranging out like an alien spider web, connecting represented solar system to solar system, until you have the Mass Relay network and the big FTL routes that branch off that instantaneous communication and travel backbone.

Then, you take that two-dimensional map of an actually three-dimensional space, and you create layers of it. For the Extranet, the Virverse, the Cognosphere, the Spimescape, layers upon layers of constructed information realities that made up the Dataverse.

And now you image how over 100 billion sophonts and many more times of sub-sophont agents move within all of this space.

That was transhuman space. Roughly.

Policing all of this took many different organizations. The generalists like the Police Departments, Colonial Marshalls, Interpol and Starpol, where Togusa had started his career chasing criminals across physical interstellar space. And Specialists like the Public Security Sections.

Public Security Section 9 was, on first glance, just another of these specialists within the massive apparatus that was the System Alliance Government. It occupied a single square on the Home Ministry organisation chart, mostly standing out because it wasn't, unlike other Sections, subordinate to the Bureau of Home Security Operations, but stood in a little separate group with a few other of its kind.

What it did exactly was something of a mystery, as outside of a small section on the sleek and polished System Alliance Home Ministry Information Page clarifying that Public Security Section 9 dealt "with cyber terrorism and capital infocrime cases", there wasn't much to be found besides rumor after rumor, and complaints on internal StarPol forums over "jurisdiction crap".

The best Consensus Togusa could ever agree with was that Section 9 was moving somewhere in the seedier underbelly of paramilitary forces and intelligence agencies, a community he had touched in interactions with AIS and MSI agents, but one he had never desired to enter. He had wanted to catch the lawbreakers without breaking the law himself.

Somehow on that path he had gotten sidelines, a detective working his cases and catching his criminals, but never rising upwards.

And then, one day, an old man - Japanese from the looks of it - had sat in Togusa's office at Starpol's Arcturus Headquarters, and made him an offer. He introduced himself as Daisuke Aramaki, leader of Public Security Section 9. His best team leader had requested Togusa for her team. When Togusa had asked why, Aramaki had answered with one word, her words not his, he had stressed: "Diversity."

The group assembling in High Security Meeting Room 03 was certainly diverse, Togusa reflected as he entered the room, a coffee mug in hand.

There was Batou, right next to the door, lounging in Togusa's customary chair with one massive leg easily resting on the table. Light skin, snow-white styled hair, Leupold IVS' for eyes, his favorite bomber jacket zipped open to reveal a muscle shirt flickering with glitching animations of various band insignias. Ex-Ranger, heavy weapons person, flicking between easy guy, serious guy and philosophical depending on the situation and time of day.

"Well look who's finally here", Batou teased him. "Got your cargo manifest fix?".

"Afternoon big guy." Togusa replied with a grin and made a shoo-hing gesture with his free hand.

There was Ishikawa. Visual forties, a grizzled brown beard framing his chin and mouth. Age oozed off his kinematics, and the muscles pulled the face into an eternal half-grown that betrayed the weight of experience more than the little readout of his DisplayID tag. Cyberwarfare and combat control specialist, greyhat hacker and veteran like so many here.

Today, he was visibly burned out, his hair dishshelved from some long session jacked in an interface couch.

"Pulling an all-nighter again?", queried Togusa.

"Yeah, the attack vectors of the Defense Ministry Data Retrieval Hack from a week ago are still largely unidentified. The punks who designed the mainframe architecture ought to be lined up and shot. Their software was a fucking joke. Buggy Defense APIs all around and no AGI support to patch any of it. Only TWO barriers between the Net access and the NetDefSec servers, no single hardware interlock. TITAN/CERBERUS filled a fucking 26 Serious Risk Complaints someone somehow ignored. The attackers could wipe the Black Box data simple, and left us with nothing to track and fix the exploit. Fucking cheapest developer shit."

"That serious." Togusa silently hoped Ishikawa wouldn't launch into one of his exhaustion-fueled, hour-long rants.

"Yeah". Ishikawa immersed himself in his laptop again, burning a hole into the holographic screen with his two tired eyes.

[I think you should stay away from Ishikawa], Togusa's personal "Muse" AI Jean remarked, his voice appearing near Togusa's right ear.

[Uh-hu?] He looked at Ishikawa. [...He's probably pissed about being called off the Defense Ministry case.]

[Quite likely] Jean agreed and disappeared into the background.

With a hiss of the security door opening, the next three of the team entered the room.

Liam Saito, the sniper, overwatch and support specialist; Merc expert. Enclosed face dancing between latino, asian and indeterminate; closely cropped hair, cosmetic scars along the hairline, Hawkeye Sniper augmentation for his left eye and the subdued grey gleam of a biotic amp fitting around his neck. His cotton shirt easily opened, to reveal the upper edges of a blue sunburst tattooed under the skin there, with his left arm visibly covered in the same tattoos.

Paz, social engineering and darkworld intelligence: sharp nose, chin and face in general, running on literal autopilot with his head wrapped in a public-hosted sphere of AR overlays, though the precise conversation he was engaged in was encrypted. As he talked in his head, visible notes filled up a white page hovering next to his ear.

Borma. Ex-Ranger like Batou, EOD and weapons specialist. A broad face with soft contours face stiffened by subdermal reinforcements; thick and smoothly integrated eye replacements and armored interface ports across the bald head. Easily the biggest-build person amongst people all coming in at 1 meters 90 and more.

The last member in the room was lounging in one corner of the room, her body more sitting in its chair than anything else. A fiber-optic cable ran from a dispenser in the tabletop to her right ear, where it sneaked into a port. She had a dark indian-asian inflection, with militarily short-cropped but colorful black, blue, violet and dark red hair that subtly revealed the seams in the skin and the interface slots spread across the skull.

Raven-1061 mind then was somewhere out in the depths of the modern Extranet, likely doing "on-site" research on some aspect of the augmentation scene. How a Close-Quarters Biotic Specialist had come to be an augmentation specialist was beyond Togusa, but it was undoubtedly that Raven was good at her job.

She also had an insight into alien cultures that was even unlike Togusa's own. As a StarPol detective, he hadn't come around getting to know the aliens and their cultures that populated the wider galaxy, and since 2197 also transhuman space. Be it the asari-populated colonies of the european arm and the masses of tourists coming to earth, or the more diverse housing projects that were spread across the trailward colonies following the Verge war, or just the transsophont immigrants that one could find anywhere. But where Togusa's was mostly superficial and externally augmented when required, Raven channeled a whole together different insight especially into asari culture.

Sometimes Togusa couldn't keep himself from discretely wondering whether Raven's insights were purely from military cooperation or if she had pursued other ventures after her military career. He hadn't dug after it.

"What's the scuttlebutt about your daughter again?", a voice asked. Togusa perked up.

"Huh?" He turned his head towards Batou. "Oh, yeah, Kat. Nothing to worry about, just her application to high school."

"Why is that?"

Ishikawa chimed in, still staring at his screen: "Because the school apparently cares about the meritocratic worth of the applicants or the wealth of their parents, so they check into the monetary background. I didn't know that practice even done by a Citadel-based school, nevermind an asari one at that."

Batou shook his head: "The more things change the more they stay the same," he muttered.

"Oh, it's not just that. This isn't just ye olde-fashioned favor-lubricated "meritocracy". Those yokels tried to access Togusa's classified records." Batou's head flipped around, his expression saying Are you kidding me? Ishikawa nodded, looking up from his screen for a moment. "Yes, they actually tried. They only got the 'official' version though. Our boy here", Ishikawa reached over and padded Togusa well-meaning on the back, "is just your run-of-the-mil inter-organisation liaison officer with a good government paycheck." He winked with one eye.

Borma became interested to the conversation: "So what's the school your daughter apply again?"

"Askatis Academy," Togusa sighed. "If it wasn't because that school was the best near my wife's workplace, I'm damn well wouldn't do it. It's just too big a hassle already, but… I think Kat needs the socializing, and they are better of living with Sairo on the Citadel than with me either way. Moreso since it has developed itself into a trend of us running all over transhuman space…"

"Well, perks for being a father I guess." Batou smirked and patted Togusa's shoulder. Togusa sighed again and shot him a glance of Why are you talking like you know anything about that?

"Speak for yourself, Batou," Paz lighted a cigarette, the hint of a smile lit by the flame of the Zippo: "Who's gonna take care of Gabriel this time around again?"

"OH COME ON!!!", the spoken-to thundered through the room.

The rest of the group laughed. In the corner, Raven opened one eye and glanced at the commotion that was developing. With a quirk of the mouth, she pulled the interface cable out of her port. "What do I hear about someone's dog?" she asked amused with her melodious, deep voice.

Togusa laughed openly himself. Gabriel was a sweet thing of a rare and actually expensive Basset hound breed, and a good investment of the ressources Batou earned with his job - but the amount of care the animal took and how somebody could own a dog as an interpersonal being in their life while living a lifestyle that lead to him spending most of his time away from home and out of effective contact was a constant case of amusement in the office.

At least it's still better spend than using it all on weightlifting equipment that actually can't train a body… though to be fair, Batou trained me up and lend me some of his old, still-compiled stuff.

Semi-consciously Togusa flexed the new muscles in his arms his body had build up over the past months. Getting upgraded with milspec biogenics had been one hell of an experience.

"Maybe we should ask the Old Ape if we can get a Mobile Dog Unit with us on OP", Borma suggested, his voice heavy with mirth as he cracked the obligatory joke. His face distorted with laughter around his sealed Sleepless Eyes.

"No Biomorphs permitted in the cargo section, you forget that?", Paz crackled, then switched his voice, trying to immediate Aramaki: "And we will not be retrofitting every one of our Spacecraft with a Dog enclosure." Everyone suppressed a grin, Saito rolling his good eye and Batou crossing his arms before cracking a half-smile.

"So, anyway…" Togusa was thrown out of the smalltalk when an AR Token popped up in his vision. The Briefing Room had posted a standard Information Package into the local Mesh, informing someone was authenticating themselves at the Security Console outside. The wooden door began opening with a Clonk! of unlocking bolts, revealing the armored bulkhead hidden underneath.

Major Kusanagi stepped through first, a small portable Data crystal in one hand; and Director Aramaki entered behind her. Well, I'll be damned. The Director himself is here? Togusa noted the serious expression on both faces: Aramaki looked even more grim and serious than he usually did, Togusa noted with some shock.

The Major had her usual game face on; an indeterministic asian or caucasian face bordering in expressiveness on that of a low-quality Android, framed by short violet hair. Togusa had noted this quirk about the female full-body Cyborg early on - Her body language was very controlled, especially when she was being serious, and the Major lacked many of the "living" quirks transhuman faces had even when their users were carefully controlling what emotions and personality they allowed to surface by means of implants.

He had no idea what caused that quirk;- the Major's body was far too well-constructed to explain away the lack of facial motor control. Nobody build bleeding-edge androidal shells for Special Forces and then skimped out on the facial capabilities.

Kusanagi walked straight to the front of the conference table and hit two keys on the trigraphic interface there; the tessellated OLED panels in the ceiling dimmed down to plunge the room into darkness, and around them the walls seemed to recede into black infinity. With an off-hand motion the data crystal was slotted into a recess, where it was drawn in and covered by a thin hatch. The wrap-around Holographic Wall Screen and the trigraphic space over the conference table came alive with a voluminous dot grid as the briefing package loaded.

[ 1635 Hours 40 Seconds Arcturus Time | March 21st 2232 ]
[ Section 9 Mission Team Alpha-01 | High Security Conference/Briefing Room 03 ]
[ Operations Briefing OPERATION BLIND LILLY - Major Motoko Kusanagi briefing ]

[ SECURING CONFERENCE ROOM ]​

Togusa's network connection cut out abruptly as the briefing room shut down its outside connections and activated its jammers. Besides him, Ishikawa jolted in his chair, apparently so immersed in his work that the cut-off had caught him by surprise; he made a strangled sound under his beard. Really cranky today if he forgets to save and log out.

[ CONFERENCE ROOM SECURE. BRIEFING MAY COMMENCE. ]​

Motoko Kusanagi looked throughout the room, making eye contact with everyone and ensuring she had their attention, then spoke up:

"Alright people, listen up!" She waited a single second for everyone to focus. "We've been made aware of a potential leak from Military Intelligence about fifteen minutes ago. A high ranking official with the Ministry of Defense Office of Military Intelligence Systems will be handing over classified ASI Software code and System Logs to a Salarian Union, Citadel Alliance-affiliated official in about twenty-four hours from now."

"Shit, ASI code?" remarked Batou. "Damn, that OMIS brass sure has balls to hand that over so easily. Gotta be greased with a big payout."

"Or got honey trapped really good", Paz contributed.

She went on without commenting. "The transfer will occur at a hotel megaplex at Singapore Groundport, Penthouse level. This is the target."

Several images of a Hispanic man in his visual fifties appeared on the briefing room screen - one an official file portrait, the other a high-resolution camera image shot in a richly decorated hallway, talking with two other people as they walked towards the Camera. Cold lunar light shone in through a window front to the right of the camera. His bio and general appearance framed the images.

"Born 2178, joined the CAC Space Intelligence Directorate just one year before First Contact in 2197. Permanently transferred transferred to Systems Alliance OSI in 2202. Current height 1.98 meters, custom Weyhada Bioworks Sleeve.

"Juan Carlo Martinez, Commodore, Alliance Spacy. Served with OSI before transferring to OMIS Luna HQ. Due to his rank and connections he is rated a "hot" asset. He's in contact with this sophont."

Martinez image and file zoomed to the side, making space for a second collection: This time it was a salarian, in his visual mid-20s, with green-blue skin. The image was a high-resolution security image shot in the lobby of a building, the violet skies of the Serpent Nebula visible beyond the windows. "Hendal Wim. Citadel Alliance Representative at the Citadel Economic Development Foundation in Malaysia. Believed to have ties with the STG. He and Martinez are assumed to have been acquainted during Martinez' stint as a 'Legal Officer' at the Alliance Embassy on the Citadel."

"Sanitize?" Saito asked, eyeing the images, his remaining eye flickering over the details, taking in identifying cues.

"Yes. We'll be using Emergency Mobilization Loadout 2, departing within the hour aboard In Shadow Waiting for the Singapore Geo-Highport, undercover. No official trace."

Togusa's Exocortex and Jean were busy gathering background data. Togusa knew what Singapore Groundport was in detail: Space Elevator Megaplex. Twelve Passenger, twenty cargo strands. First strand erected in 2042. Last service extension in 2107. Components: Ground Port near Singapore. Major seaborne city and cargo center in the South-East Asia sphere. Sub-synchronous stations anchored to cable; held up by elevator tensions via twelf load-bearing cables. Geosynchronous docking station. Cargo docking above Geosynchronous. Counterweight station made from tugged asteroid. Est. Population: 6 million across all facilities. Cargo flow per day: ~500,000 metric tons.

"This is a full and effective shutdown, correct?" Batou asked.

"With the material as well", she confirmed. "We have to ensure nothing gets out of that meeting intact enough for a useful recovery. Collateral damage is absolutely secondary on this, people", she stressed. "This data is not leaving transhuman space. Martinez is suspected to hold maybe a petabyte worth of OMIS data on his person, most likely in sensitive and classified AI systems. Including possible data on the TITANs"

The Major returned from the wall of the conference room and approached the conference table. With a haptic motion she grabbed a trigraphic blue cube off the Readers trigraphic interface, and "threw" it into the center of the Conference room. The cube stopped in the center of the table, sinking down onto the surface and unfolding its sides, exploding into digital lines in a small digital render effect.

The transparent holographic rendering of a cityscape blossomed on the table, gaining in fidelity and details with every second. At the center of the table rested a large, fat skyscraper, one solid fife-sided lower segment branching into two upper towers, with two surfaces angling towards the center at the base of the upper two towers. A set of "panels" was pierced through by the two top towers like by two pincers, apparently aircar garages among other things. At its base it melded into a larger superstructure from which three other similar towers of varying geometry also stabbed towards the sky.

"The Hilton Singapore Groundport Megaplex Tower 4 - the site of the meeting. Specifically, the west side penthouse facing." On her cue, the volumetric render closed in on the western angled face of the tower, orange holographic lines imposing themselves over the photorealistic render of the facade, highlighting floors and suites. One particular set of rooms at the base of the angled face was highlighted, orange lines and surfaces sketching out an impressive hotel suite with a large meeting room on the lower floor behind the glass facades.

"Penthouse Suite 0632. Two stories, living and meeting room on the lower floor where we presume the meeting will take place. Major Security features: bulletproof glass class IV-A, reinforced doors, building safety kinetic barriers, up-to-date building security systems. No obvious security solutions otherwise - all very likely to evade the attention of the AIS."

"Those aircar terraces above look perfect as an abseiling assault point", Batou remarked, pointing with one finger.

A smile played around the Major's lip for a moment: "It is. There's a maintenance level below the first garage, two stories of support and outside catwalks."

Saito looked at the trigraph intentely. He made a silent request, and the Trigraph of the Megaplex shrunk slightly so surrounding buildings could be rendered. In Saito's own perception, his Augmented Reality Overlay implants rendered the surrounding cityscape, and included additional data on heights, distances as well as law enforcement weather maps of the general area.

Then he looked up. "Major, I know you'll be up close and personal, to ensure their brains are ventilated and the stacks trashed, but overwatch is pretty much a necessity for his guards", he thumbed halfway over his shoulder to the portrait of Hendal Wim, "so I'd still like to set up a sniper position to cover you. Either over there, or over there." He pointed at two buildings he could see.

His own muse shifted the AR content into public hosting, and all of the team members saw another two high rises, big platforms growing spires that shot into the sky adjacent to the Hilton. Green lines connected six points with the Suite windows.

Togusa blended out Saito and the Major discussing overwatch positions, and had Jean google "OMIS." There were a couple search results - Corporations, places, and way too many technical terms - but Jean narrowed it down to one that made contextual sense: The Office of Military Intelligence Systems.

Précis information streamed into Togusa's exocortex, and he Remembered what the OMIS was about: They were part of the organizations within the Systems Alliance Defense Ministry that was responsible for procuring, supporting, maintaining and controlling the thousands of specific types of AIs used within transhuman military service.

AIs ranging from animal-level neural networks running torso-sized recon drones, to the massive strategic super intelligences that were understood as one of the cornerstones of transhuman power on the galactic scene.

He also recalled a document in his Exocortex, an assessment report from the Systems Alliance Intelligence Agency.

In the case of breach of any TITAN codeline, we are at extreme risk. Loss of data priority would not only allow any of the Great Galactic Powers to online TITAN-equivalent ASI networks within far shorter timeframes than currently projected, but also pose risks ranging from peripheral breaches to the development of attack software that can attack the ASIs logic itself.

The breach of TITAN codelines would also reveal inter-TITAN-cluster interfaces and several TITAN clusters that are classified - especially TITAN systems aimed at the other Great Powers and their social dynamics.

As such, the AIS rates the breach of TITAN codelines as a catastrophic event that should be deterred with all covert force available. Political discretion is advised.

Togusa dismissed the memories from immediate recall, but retained them in his local cache. Political discretion is advised. He looked at Saito nodding together with the Major, and a position on an opposite skyscraper, just across a channel gap from the Hilton Megaplex, was marked with a green arrow reading "Sniper Overwatch". Next, two tags for Saito and Borma sprouted from the arrow, their names, portraits and a short equipment list tethered by bright green lines.

With other words… deniable assassinations. Like what we are planning.

He turned his attention back to the real world. "Ishikawa and Borma, I want you two working on infosec and a good dataflague. No traces in any local networks. We're going in total black, and we're going out total black."

She turned to Batou and Togusa. "You two will be on vehicle and Overwatch duty together with Ishikawa. Vehicles will be supplied by our Southeast Asian Division, so only pack our custom stuff and the associated racks. Also, get working on alternative EVAC plans. I'd expect everything to go smooth but we cannot be traced by anyone or pursued by anyone. Got it?"

"Got it", the three responded and got to work on their own corner of the table.

"Borma, I want you to work out how we get a nanobaric warhead into that suite. I don't want anything recoverable in there to survive the OP."

"Got it, Major. Only problem is, any form of deniable explosive we've got won't go through the windows - armor-piercing and burnable composite don't exactly go together."

"Any ammo that can't be traced to us?"

"Only if you're willing to go with normal Thermobaric instead of NTB."

"No", she shook her head. "ScatterBug to open the window for the NTB?"

Borma nodded thoughtfully, calling up the specifications of the hotel windows and looking at some parameters for a moment, watching an AI run the numbers. "Yeah, that should do it."

"Good. Then let's use that."

She gave them twenty minutes to hash things out. Togusa pulled himself the local airway map and studied the heat maps of local traffic for five minutes before he made his recommendation on where they could fly and park their vehicles safely. He treated the entire case like a tussle with one of the big crime syndicates, carefully and with abundant AI assistance laying out the entire maneuver plan in such a way neither the data traffic nor their flight patterns would stand out to anybody seriously looking.

Of course, there were limits. After a point, enough processing power and heuristics would pick them out, starting with the data traffic. But the only one with that kind of analysis power in the area would be TITAN… and somehow Togusa doubted the ASIs would throw a fit over them here.

Batou planned their getaway deftly and professionally. By the end, when he and Togusa were coordinating over a list of local vehicles they could procure, the Ex-Ranger had laid out a good three dozen major plans with variants each, muddying their route across the entire south-east asian and pacific sphere, most converging back at Singapore Geosync but also to other orbital stations.

"Think we can visit the spring comic con in LA if we come by?", Togusa joked.

"You know what, yeah let's do that", Batou grinned. "Oh, and I am holding you to that Iron Man vs Superman rematch. Even if we don't."

Togusa smiled at him. "You can try, Military. You need to think more… airmobile."

Batou's face flickered through a couple expressions - then he reached out to grapple Togusa. "Oh you are getting it now!" he shouted.

Togusa felt his wired knowledge activate by itself, the combat Alter intervening. His hands snapped up with new, augmented speed and blocked Batou's attack.

The Major interrupted their impromptu sparring session with a loud cough. "Any red flags at this point? Final planning can be done on the flight to Earth and in the safehouse we'll have there."

Everybody shock their heads as her eyes flicked from one to the next. "Good. Then let's get moving, load L2 and what we discussed, and plan in for alternatives so we aren't caught flat-footed. That concludes this briefing", Kusanagi touched the trigraphic controls and extracted the Data crystal. The trigraphics over the table and the wall screen graphics collapsed, and the lights dimmed back up. "The In Shadow Waiting is already warming up for departure. We pack up and leave in an hour." With that, she left the room.

"A final word, If I may." Aramaki final stepped forward from his position by the door. "I know this mission seems very hasty and, to the newer of our members, also questionable. Let me assure you that this mission was a request of a close friend of mine whom I trust, and that this mission will not have repercussions for us. Especially if you all do your jobs. Now, good luck and godspeed to you all."

With that, Aramaki left the briefing room as well. Togusa threw a glance at Batou behind him - The reply was a grin: "Don't worry. The Chief knows what he's doing. And this isn't our first shadow rodeo either."

"Thanks for the assurance." I guess, Togusa added silently. He opened a mindcomm connection with Aramaki. His ARO blinked: He had been directly accepted, and wasn't even sending in the inbox. He took a breath: [Chief, I need to speak with you.]

[Of course.] Aramaki sent him a waypoint.

Togusa discreetly waited for most of the team to leave, and stole a glance at them. Batou dropped his conversation for a moment and looked at Togusa: [You commin'?]

He shook his head. [I have some other things to wrap up first.]

Batou's mien cleared up in understanding and he nodded, giving a sloppy two-finger salute as a goodbye gesture.

Togusa walked down the corridor, towards the waypoint. It was another conference room, its physical control panel blinking orange with "Restricted Access" notice. Over it hovered a private, encrypted entoptic tag: "Admittance clearance for you."

Togusa hesitated for a moment, gathering his arguments. Then he hit the door key, and stepped inside.

"Operative Togusa."

"Chief." And merdre, did you have to remind me of my new position? He wanted to shoot Aramaki a dirty glance for that; Jean immediately intervened and clamped down on that instinct. [That is not a good idea], she said.

"I assume this is not about the case you were working." Aramaki had taken his customary seat at the top of the table, and was now crossing his fingers horizontally, framing his chin.

"No Sir." Togusa took a seat of his own, and rested his head and elbow on the table. "I have concerns over what we are doing. These kind of Black Ops is not what Section 9 deals in." He raised his right hand. "I know our work requires a lot of espionage and social skulduggery, nowadays. And I have no sympathy for that the OFIB and ACI and other terrorist groups do. I know why we use force against them as we do. But that is legal. Justified. This… this is instance murder of a citizen, and a foreigner. We shouldn't have to do that."

Aramaki was silent for a moment. "Indeed, we don't. Though I will stress that we are an intelligence agency, our area is to pursue major infocrime and terrorism. Stealing military codelines is illegal, so is espionage. And we can use quite extraordinary powers in pursuit of these cases, as the situation requires. A fact you also have had less of a problem with than now, Togusa."

"Touché, Sir. Still… I feel I have to voice my concerns. And why are we doing this?"

"Because Section 9 is maybe one of the most unique concentrations of talent there are. We have soldiers, spies, engineers, hackers, detectives and policemen", Aramaki tipped his head towards Togusa, "and others. That makes us uniquely disposed to address even the toughest criminal case - but also other situations. Sometimes, we provide that expertise."

"So why?" Togusa gesticulated. "Courtesy, orders from high up, favor for favor? Why are you doing this chief?"

"...This request came from a close friend. One that stood by my side all the way through this grizzly thing that was the Outer Fringe War. I was once where you are now, Togusa. A fresh-faced young man out to change the world, frustrated with the system at hand. So I went to the Military Police, and their Intelligence division… just in time to witness that shitshow of a civil war."

Togusa's mind flashed back to documentary XPs, Interviews, and the video games. The glowing debris smears of stations suicide-rammed at Waylatyi, the rioting in the streets, people with blood from every orifice… the final battles over New London and New Riyad and New Boston, the devastation, the war-burns wrapping globes in flames and ash.

"In war, friendship is a very precious thing." Togusa focused back on Aramaki. "He always had my back; and I had his. But even that would not be enough. Not for this. I am aware of the power we are holding. And what consequences its abuse would have." Aramaki was silent.

"You're doing this because of your other war."

"Yes. 2197, the China crisis... we uphold that place as one of our greatest achievements, fine people standing tall in our darkest hour. And I wear my honors with pride. I did my duty, for all of transhumanity, in those three months. But I don't want a comeback. Neither do Ishikawa, or Bosoun; the two saw their own share of horrors and abuse. And I am not as disillusioned as to think the rematch would come out any better."

"I don't know Chief-"

"I do. We cannot have a real war with the Citadel. I could read between the lines during the Verge Wars well enough. I talked with several veterans, several on your team: Saito, Raven, Borma. I know you talked with Batou over his experiences during the last month." Aramaki's face was dead-serious, and his tone of voice had risen two notes.

Togusa closed his mouth.

Aramaki took a breath. "Apologies. But… we need closer ties. We need a lasting, a guaranteed, peace."

"And for that, we kill people?", Togusa asked, a shrill tone creeping into his inflection.

Aramki considered for the barest of moments: "...Yes. I know you detest the logic, but: this is a few for the good of billions.

"A TITAN breach is catastrophic enough by itself, as you will now as of now. But there is a finer aspect to this. The reason we are here, that Mr. Connors and Miss Kusanagi and the others are here. I am working for closer ties. For that I need… influence. Pull. Favors."

"Also, this is still a capital infocrime case. Our reaction measures have to be appropriate to the situation. Same as the case in Yahamada."

I wish you hadn't brought that up. Batou had let loose like a maniac on the Yakuza that day.

"...I understand. I don't like all of it, but I… I understand." Togusa dropped his head.

"And that is all I can ask."

Togusa nodded. They shared a moment of silence.

Then Togusa looked up. "Well… uhm, I'll be going."

"Indeed so. And, Operative? Good luck."

Togusa bowed formally. "Thank you."

—| 01010011 01110000 01100001 01100011 01100101 |—​

The space around Arcturus Station was always busy with traffic. The Arcturus-Themis L5 was circled by over three dozen space colonies of various makes, each of which had over time attracted a slew of secondary platforms to store propellant and cargo, anchor, repair and construct spacecraft of all types, and to serve as secondary housing.

Amongst the flow of various types of traffic, the departure of a 50-meter space-to-space shuttle from Section 9s docks on the Arcturus Stanford 2 Wheel didn't attract any more than the usual attention from STC, where AIs efficiently assigned it traffic vectors to a requested rendezvous in space, and several sophs who spent their time spacewatching the traffic around Arcturus. It was just a single flight, nothing noteworthy came from that.

The rendevouz with a 180-meter starship flying the IFF of ABUV Makherada under a a small commercial transport company out of the Belt wasn't commented upon either. 5 minutes passed while shuttle and starship flew together, a brick pressed against the ventral side of an elegant flowing dagger with cherry-red radiator wings sprouting around the tail.

The shuttle detached, leaving the starship free to maneuver. It re-entered the stream of traffic behind a set of asteroid ice freighters, "dropping" out of the spheres of traffic orbitals that were wrapped around the greater Arcturus Station sphere like three-dimensional highways.

Eventually the transport pushed away from the traffic spheres and out to one of the designated fly-out volumes, accelerating to percentages of the speed of light and leaving the Arcturus-Themis L5 behind. With a bright, star-like flare of its main 150 Terawatt fusion drives it accelerated away into FTL towards the Relay leading into the coreward arms.

Nothing saw how in the middle of the interplanetary FTL transit, SSV In Shadow Waiting broke out of the FTL flight corridor and rose away onto a carefully cleared trajectory reserved on the military STC channels, climbing more above the ecliptic and turning to a new vector.

ABIS Shamin appeared from FTL at the Arcturus-Sol Web secondary Relay and rowed itself in for transit alongside other vehicles, under the watchful eyes of the 1st Fleet Guard squadrons. It was carrying a group of business entrepreneurs to Singapore Highport from New Earth, discussing business for an upcoming deal aboard.

It was a common event that unfolded all the time, the re-iteration of old physical ceremony and a demonstration of available time. It was a minor group, not one of the Mega- or Hypercorps and their fissioning web of subsidiary cell organizations, and as such beneath the notice of the watchdog groups.

Uncommented, the Shamin arrived in Sol and flung itself sunward, passing trailward of the outer gas giants, spinward of Mars, appearing light minutes away from the Earth-Luna system. Earth SysCon took over, guided the little vehicle in amids swarms of other vehicles. Small as it was, it attained direct clearance at Singapore Geosync - the plattform 36,000 kilometers above the Earth along the tethers - and docked at 0342 Hours Local time.

Its passengers and cargo descended groundside over the next 2 hours, vanishing in the intense activities of Singapore Groundports arcologies and megaplexes.

And that was how it all began.

-- | 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000011 01000101 | ---

GALACTIC CODEX
Transhumanity / Political Organisations: Systems Alliance
​

The so-called Systems Alliance, sometimes abreviated to TSA (for Transhuman Systems Alliance) and in transhuman common-day speach just "The Alliance", is the de-facto leader of the transhuman polities on the galactic stage.

Starting as an interstellar colonisation managment and security authority created by the largest Nationstates and Polities following the human Interplanetary War and the discovery of Mass Effect FTL propulsion and the Mass Relay network, the Systems precoursor organisation grew steadily into a form of interstellar forum and government over the ensuring decades. Initially backed mostly by the big transhuman powers, the Alliance grew through the steady support of independent colonies and Spacer polities, up to a point where the Systems Alliance became a de-facto economic-military umbrella for powers to establish a kind of Pax Stellaris, a garuantee of peacetimes and economic cooperation. The Alliance attracted further support through its early and widespread use of AI-mediated governance (giving birth to the complex, AI agent-mediated, assisted and cross-checked electronic democratic political system that drives the Systems Alliance today and is known in its greater envelope as "Governance") and providing safe havens and neutral systems during the Interstellar War between transhuman core space superpowers.

The second burst of Systems Alliance growth before First Contact with the Citadel was the outbreak of the Outer Fringe War, an extended period of resurgent violent insurections and civil wars that engulfed the greater transhuman sphere. The Systems Alliance managed to become an expert leader of united peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts through armed and unarmed force, and mediated the subsequent reorganization of transhuman galactic politics at the time. During this time the Systems Alliance leveraged its increased independent military power and massive diplomatic and civic corps heavily, and was reformed under the Third Treaty of Arcturus, which established greater responsibilites for the Systems Alliance. Governance was also expanded at this time in order to ensure a fair, multilateral and unaffiliated enforcement of a new Pax Stellaris.

Ever since its handling of First Contact affairs with the Citadel and its leading role in the resolvment of the Transhuman Crisis of 2197, the Systems Alliance has formalized its previous leadership role by absorbing transhuman polities: creating a full legislative, executive and judicative system that speaks for all polities, planets and people in transhuman space, developing a unified military organisation that combines the previously diverse individual organisations to a large percentage and resolves many equipment and technology issues, and dispatching ambassedors to other polities across the galaxy as well as the Citadel Alliance. As of the writing of this Codex, the Systems Alliance is generally considered the government of all transhumans who hold its universal citizenship.

Relations between the Systems Alliance and the galaxy at large are complex and diverse. Relationships with The Big Three are generally neutral as of 2692 A.C.E, though they have been charged to hostile in the past and undercurrents linger. The Systems Alliance also has an adverse to hostile relation with Spinward Terminus border polities, the Batarian Hegemony and the Velandrus Confederacy, and has prosecuted two hot wars with the former, the biggest of which is known as the Verge War of 2686 A.C.E.

-- | 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000011 01000101 | ---

Glossary:​

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence, sapient AI with transhuman interlect, and full heuristic purview, able to perform any transhuman neurological and heuristical task.

ASI: Artificial Superintelligence. A (sapient) AI with greater-than-transhuman interlect and heuristical capability.

Groundport: In the transorbital/interface logistics chain, the Groundport is the terrestrial counterpart to the orbital Highport - Handling interface shipping by transatmospheric vehicle, mass driver, or space elevator. In the case of the Singapor Groundport, the base anchor of an equatorial "Skyline" space elevator complex.

LAI: Limited Artificial Intelligence, Sub-AGI limited-purview AIs with transhuman baseline-like, or even greater-than-transhuman baseline capabilities in their area of expertise. Low-sentient. Cognitive workhorse of heuristical software and transhuman society.

MIS: Military Intelligence Service

OSI: Office of Space Intelligence

ScatterBug: An eezonic device, used to destroy modern diamonoid or other windows that cannot be shattered by convenrtional sonic resonance.

TITAN/CERBERUS: Systems Alliance Cyberdefense ASI; Cluster of the TITAN system.

Trigraphics: Three-dimensional volumetric projection technology, creating so-called Trigraphs. Unlike, holograms, which create the illusion of depth on a projection medium, Trigraphics are perfectly volumetric - As long as sufficient clear raypaths remain from the projectors to the projector volume, a problem side-stepped by sorounding the projection space with hundreds of individual projectors, making image disruption impossible.

--- | 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000011 01000101 | ---

A/N: So here it is. 4 months after the last Ascendance story post, here is the first chapter of the rewrite, titled Ascendance: 2nd GIG for clarity.

A lot of things have changed. The Canon of old Ascendance doesn't apply in entirety anymore; characters have been minorly rewritten, or more flashed out. Scenes have been rewritten with new details or improved narration, the character focus of the chapters has been refined, with less perspective jumping. This was in part to fix the mistakes made back then and improve the writing style of the earlier chapters (implementing what I have learned since then), but also to keep things fresh for the old people who know the first chapters already. For you, there's new things.

Overall, I want to go for a more coherent, orderly presentation and storyline that will carry over better into the later parts of the story. Things will really change from Chapter 4 onwards, when the Citadel Characters enter the story. The old Bekenstein operation will not make a re-apperance. In hindsight, it wasn't Section 9 surgical, and too bombastical (and thus multi-threaded and drawn out) than it was good for the pacing of the story and the enjoyment of the readers.

For the old readers from Ascendance - welcome back. For everybody new to this story: Welcome! I hope you enjoy what you have read, and will read! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them! A lot of the universe may feel unfamiliar to begin with, but it will clear up with time.

As always feel free to like, comment and give feedback. That motivates and lets us know what to improve or focus on in the future.

Until next time, Sevoris. It' damn good to be back. ​

 

[MaHaL]

Neat, we've got a v2. That logo is also looking real snazzy.

 

[Sevoris]

[SAIN\\MIN\\IV/OUN\\s9\\opfeed\connecting...]

[ March 22nd, 2232 | 18:56:41 Local Time Zone ]
[ Singapore Groundport | Core Drift Outer Pontons | Earth | Sol | Core Systems (human) ]
[ Operation BLIND LILLY ]
[ Mission Objective: Asset Denial, permanent neutralization of HVT-1 and HVT-2 ]
[ Operation Status: Live ]

[ 18:56:42 ]...

[ 18:56:43 ]...


South-east of Greater Singapore, the space elevator cables plunged down out of the darkened sky from Geosync - two dozen baleful grey, textured strands each sized at least to take up three maglev trains side-by-side, bundled inside a hexagonal perimeter of load-bearing cables.

Like an alien mysozylium, the elevator tether vanished into the kilometer-high anchorage tower and sprawled outward across the southeast asian sea, extending into a myriad platforms above and below the glittering waves. Structure tied to structure through above-water bridges and below-water tunnels - cargo shipping, living, industry, airports - a wholesale city on the waves.

That was Singapore Groundport, South-East Asia's old gateway to the stars.

The ocean glittered in the evening light, low sun reflecting off the stream of airborne traffic.

Ahead, Hilton Megaplex Tower 4 was a contrast-heavy shadow stabbing out of a white-yellow reflecting mass. Against the yellow-blue sky and orange clouds and tinting into the blue at the outer edges the only illumination visible was from small trigraphic projections and the blinking of vehicle warning lights.

Below them, the sea was sloshing through the gap between sea-city platforms, breaking itself on the connecting pylons between the underwater superstructure and the above-surface platforms. The buzz of electro-jet engines was omnipresent, a robotic insect swarm of various cargo drones, aircars, airtrucks, and more classic VTOLs buzzing about, flying to and from hundreds of air garages and robot hives through the various airlanes.

[Eagle, Falcon. Status?]

Saito shifted behind the scope of his sniper rifle, adjusting the position of his helmet on the cheek-rest of the stock ever so slightly. "Falcon, Eagle-One, all good on our end."

His vision was a hybrid of perspectives - a hyper-resolution wide-angle view saturated with environmental data on his left, the view of his scope out across the "river" and through the glass of the Megaplex on the right.

"Hawkeye has integrated spotter assets data. Got a good composite view of the suite internals - HVT-One is present and waiting on the lower meeting floor. Seven meters away from the window. Nervously pacing."

[Copy Eagle-1. Eagle-2?]

Next to Saito, Borma had unpacked his own gear on the maintenance walkway they were using as a sniper position.

They were alone, save for a few now-hacked maintenance robots mostly concerning themselves with cleaning the glass and maintaining the outside infrastructure against the corrosive seawater spray; the machines were utterly ignorant to the two armed and armored men that had taken position near the edge of the building. Their position overlooked the Hilton Mexaplex platform, and provided a clear view of the oceanfront beyond and the perimeter drifts of other platforms which dotted the horizon.

[All set, Major. Missile flight path is programmed to avoid the airlanes,] Borma reported as he worked his shoulders underneath the pad of the missile launcher.

[Good. Stand-by... Section 6 Net just reported HVT-Two has entered the building. All callsigns, stand-by for assault.]

Four hundred meters away and another seventy-five meters up, Motoko Kusanagi's visor was locked on the streams of streaking aircar lights. She had taken an easy knee next to the safety railing of the maintenance catwalk, a lightweight "Spider" Attachment & Descend System clamped to the railing and connected via a thin but strong carbon nanotube weave rope with the ascension rig of the Stalker-M6.

Her mind, however, was not occupied with registering the visual input from her artificial eyes as anything but real-world background noise.

Her focus was on the internal cyberverse that permeated realspace and went beyond, virtual camera eyes gazing upon HVT-Two, Hendal Wim, as he and three salarian bodyguards entered an elevator. Other virtual eyes watched Section 6 Covert Agents in the lobby, and other digital feelers in the network fed her knowledge of Section 6s cybernetic surveillance measures.

Calls went out over the internal network, discretely intercepted and then relayed to her by Ishikawa using the backdoors Arakami's contact had provided; the Section 6 Assault teams were moving in now. They wouldn't have long for the strike; two minutes at most.

More than enough time for her.

[HVT-Two is approaching the meeting site. Stand-by to execute.]

She stood up and vaulted over the railing with a CouMass-assisted flex of her legs, using a hand to steady the jump. The ascension rig pulled the descend line taut, and she rested in abseiling position, feet on the catwalk floor, hands free.

[HVT-Two is on the floor. ETA to suite, thirty seconds,] Togusa reported from the back of an air-car just 500 meters away.

[Copy] the Major's voice hummed in his head.

Next to him, Ishikawa made a grimace. [Major, HVT-Two has increased data traffic in the spimes and relay nodes around him, and I'm seeing encrypted traffic in the network running through backbones it shouldn't. He's getting cybercover and spimescape overwatch] he concluded.

Inside his own implant's vision, Ishikawa was feeding renders of the hotel network traffic activity, as localized by end nodes and users, into his visual interface, allowing him to see what caused the most traffic and where. Assisted by a special Body-Image-Interface that located and described network activity through bodily feelings Ishikawa could feel the network traffic.

He saw the network activity as white, blue, violet and green renders over an orange-yellow semi-transparent wireframe render of the Hilton Megaplex Tower Four and its interior; the network hardlines veins and nerves, the mesh a complex weave of lines, end devices a variety of simple symbols and geometric shapes.

His cerebral Direct Neural Interfaces then took over the detailed mental work, piping him the network data for deeper analysis by his own augmented mind and the dozens of subroutines and a cluster of infowarfare AIs that busily talked among themselves and with him from their racks on the other side of the aircar's cargo space.

Ishikawa frowned as he processed the information and meta-data analysis. With practiced efficiency he directed several routines under his command to grab various executive files of the unknown traffic off a traffic backbone via a government backdoor covered by various anonymizer and stealth programs.

A quick trawl by one of two dedicated Enemy Software Analysis AIs revealed known STG code in several segments, mixed with a wild mish-mash of other code sources from all over Citadel space. Ishikawa recognized some of the scripts as lifted from popular transhuman hacks.

He turned to the traffic analysis: one part was a heavily end-to-end encrypted connection he couldn't attack without drawing attention to himself; the various subversion softwares were apparently trying to get in as early as possible, directly attacking and subverting spimes to splice their traffic off to the unknown source.

Further discreet snooping revealed that the Limited Artificial Intelligence systems of the hotel security had apparently been subverted days ago; Ishikawa found several active backdoors that were introducing logic subversion worms into the system.

That explained why the LAIs weren't reacting much to Ishikawa's discrete introduction of the Dataflague shunts - their threat detection logic had been subverted by the second party.

[ Here's hoping they haven't seen to much of our traffic yet. These guys are good. You're seeing this Major?] he send on the team network, sending her a package with the most important activity flagged.

[I see it,] the Major confirmed. [Crash the local network around the suite on execute.]

[Ten seconds to contact,] Togusa called out, tensing up. He threw a glance over to Ishikawa, who was rapidly hacking away on the physical inputs.

His eyes returned to his own screens, watching the sensor fusion render of Wim and his guards, stopping before the door of Suite 0632. His eyes flickered to the biometric readouts on the four. The guards were attentive, but not overtly alarmed; Wim was calm, the "jump rate" of his eyes per minute a calm, assured number for a salarian, his posture collected and controlled. Good.

They hadn't spooked their targets overtly by any chance. The heavy digital shadowing however was discomforting. The STG was good, that much Togusa had come to understand quickly, but Ishikawa acted like the other party had near absolute control - and that was not supposed to be happening, not on Earth, not in a Hilton, and certainly not against Section 9.

One of the guards raised a physical keycard to the lock of the suite, holding it into a trigraphic reader space; Togusa returned his attention to his own screen: "HVT is at the door."

One of the guards shifted, for a second seemed to gaze straight into the camera. [All Callsigns, Eagle-One. HVT-One is approaching the door…]

[-and the door is open,] Togusa cut in.

Trigraphic wood panels vanished into the doorframe in a complicated pattern, than the actual door slided into the side frames, splitting open in the middle. Togusa gazed upon the face of Commodore Juan Carlo Martinez, wearing a simple blue System Alliance uniform. Martinez's biometric readout was a near-polar opposite of the salarians and especially Wim's; he was nervous, fidgeting at the mere sight of the salarians.

So, probably honey-trapped. Sorry buddy.

Togusa took a deep breath, tried to calm fingers which were suddenly trembling. His lips located the straw, and he gulped down some liquid against his dry throat. The liquid was soothingly cool. "HVTs have contact. Moving for the meeting room."

"Section 6 squads are moving. ETA to suite 30 seconds. Our window is closing", Ishikawa cautioned.

The Major's voice was cool, suddenly edging into the robotic: [Copy. All Callsigns, Falcon is going in.]

--- | 00110001 | ---​

[> Combat Systems on. <]

[< Activating >]
[< Neural Awareness Acceleration: 8x. >]

Neurocircuitry woke from sleep mode, weaves of complex fibres, microscopic nodes and swarms of micro- and nanometer-sized robotic agents beginning their manipulation of neurons, axons and synaptic knobs. Fibre lasers discharged precise frequencies, triggering genetically engineered receptor nodes on neuronal bodies; the first steps of an internal biochemical and bioelectric cascade.

In other places, where artificial elements penetrated through cell membranes, artificial secretors and electrodes discharged; microcurrent event surging into neurons.

Within two seconds, artificial activity in Kusanagi's heavily augmented brain spiked. Data arrived from external sources, running the translation of the DNI software, before being distributed by internal network switches to the manifold input interfaces of neural augmentations; traffic arrived in return, was translated for machine convenience, trawled for orders, knowledge, intention and awareness.

Within milliseconds, the Major vanished under an exploding tide of combat subroutines.

[< Augmentations online. No faults during Boot. >]

She sent a single Mindcom. Speech is too inefficient, too slow at this point. [ Copy. All Callsigns, Falcon is going in. ]

Two targets. Engagement position calculated. Abseiling time T-minus 6 seconds. Commencing physical positioning.

She flexed her legs, then catapulted herself away from the catwalk in a powerful jump. The ascension rig began spooling off the wire, and gravity asserted its pull, accelerating her downwards. She fell, slightly spreading her arms and legs to adjust her air resistance, arms swinging to apply momentum that fliped her feet over head in 1 second, the first half of a backflip that would end with head upwards, feet on the glass, ready to fire on targets HVT-1 and HVT-2.

Somewhere in the back of her awareness, a flare of joy surfaced; a microcurrent thumb pressed down on the dopamine discharge but it kindled deep down, inside her Ghost. Then it vanished obediently under the combat implants.

Time to engagement position: T-minus 3 seconds.

--- | 00110010 | ---​

Saito watched the shape of the Major falling down the facade of the Hilton with a third eye - implants sitting in the visual cortex and its artificial biological extensions feeding him the image from one of the SpotterBots ball-mounted tracking photosensors. Under the effects of 8x cognition acceleration, the black shape of her shell suit performed a seemingly slow, diver-like roll.

At the same time, he moved his arms, shifting his scope ever so slightly. The Hawkeye threw ballistic calculations and the fire mission for Wim's first guard as both direct knowledge into his mind and AR overlays into his field of vision, and he shifted the crosshair into the firing vector.

Between the environmental sensors on the three bionic seagull drones, the SpotterBot next to him and inside the electronic scope of his own rifle, the Hawkeyes mathematical processors could crunch the fire mission with enormous reliability.

They knew projectile mass, barrel parameters, possessed a high-fidelity wind, humidity and heat map derived from the arrays of mapping lasers and multi-frequency holographic scanners mounted on the drones and SpotterBot; any remaining accuracy issues could be easily corrected between Saito's own augmentations designed to limit weapon sway through breath, cardiovascular, and muscle control, the actuators of the combat suit he was wearing, the integrated mechanical aim assist of the rifle, and the smart guidance system of the 12mm railgun sabot that now rested in the breach, ready to be rammed down the accelerator.

Inside the scope, the target indicator came to rest on the head of the first guard, standing still, and Saito took a deep breath, inhaled.

3…

2..

He exhaled, and laid his finger on the trigger.

Held the breath.

1.

Fired.

--- | 00110011 | ---​

Kusanagi completed the flip, and brought her feet upwards. The ascension rig arrested the line, and with a tug her fall stopped, turning into an arc that led straight towards the lower window face of Penthouse Suite 0632. Her left hand held the ScatterBug device steadily, attachment side away from her hand, while the right came down to rest on the back of the grip of her expanded Seburo ETLAH-4 inside its holster.

In her ARO, the five targets were glowing yellow figures visible through the sight-blocking facade and floors, two of them with red outlines and target squares over their heads. A blue line connected with another; the ballistic aim indicator of Saito's sniper rifle.

Her optics adjusted to penetrate the suites' glass, and she saw Martinez and Wim, with the guards arrayed to watch the suites entrance hall; the two were apparently engaged in small talk. Wim's eyes suddenly changed direction, focused over Martinez shoulder. The man had just noticed and his body began shifting in preparation to turn when her feet slammed into the glass, and she slapped the ScatterBug against the glass.

The device expanded a series of mass effect field geometries, and began exerting forces on the glass with specific frequencies, tugging from the inner side, switching to tug from the outer side. The glass began to audibly vibrate, strained - then the ScatterBug activated its warp charge, introducing the final stress that pushed the glass beyond its durability.

The thick pane of silicone and diamonoid that could have stopped the impact of an aircar or an airborne drone broke into a thousand tiny slivers - Exposing Martinez and Wim to the outside elements. A sharp wind blew flecks of glass into the room.

Obstacle removed. Target HVT-1 - Distance 6 meters. X-Angle 11.6°. Y-Angle 21.2°. Target: Head and Neck. Goal: Destruction of cranial case, brain matter, and Stack. Engaging.

She pulled the trigger on her pistol, still one-handed.

Within the core of the pistol, magnetic coils of thin superconductive film began shaking exotic semiconductor crystals. The quantum dots shone their orange-red light into fibers of rare-earth ceramics, where the power built to destructive power and was released as a single, nanosecond-long pulse of coherent light flashed out of the fiber bundles and into a synthetic crystal.

Here, photons and new structures interacted in second harmonic generation, and the wavelength of the laser pulse halved; then the pulse it entered a metamaterial lense and raced out into the air at the speed of light through the 25mm phased array that was the pistols "muzzle".

The first 300 nanometer impulse only explosively vaporized part of the skin layer at Martinez' neck into plasma. But it was followed by hundreds of more impulses, and so they drilled.

Martinez' neck exploded in a flash of harsh blue-white, flinging tissue, metal droplets, shattered nanoceramics and burning c-allotropes everywhere as cubic centimeters of matter were vaporized under photonic hammer blows.

Dispassionately, well before the power of the explosions had time to move Martinez head, she planted two more discharges into his braincase proper.

Then she switched to Wim, who was jumping to take cover behind a couch - exposing the full lateral profile of his head to her.

She drilled three shots into the head, walking down from the horns. The pulses dug through cells and skin nurturing, hard carbon allotrope armor and shock gel and exploded augmentation-rich brain tissue.

Wim toppled over his back to the ground, and a fourth shot dug into his neck and through the cortical stack. Diamond shards wreathed in blood went flying.

The first salarian guard was unfolding a handgun from a prosthetic arm holster when Saito's round flashed into the suite on the Majors left and caught him straight in the head. The other two guards had just taken cover, one behind a chair and another behind a wall, when the other two rounds arrived.

Both were thrown across the room, their heads spilling salarian flesh, blood, white ECS fluid and grey-pallet colored cybernetic components.

[HVTs are down!], Togusa confirmed on the Net.

"Moving to Phase two." Ishikawa chimed in. "Section 6 approaching floor. Building alarms are suppressed and Dataflague is holding. Engaging enemy digital cover for maximum effect."

He triggered the carefully placed attack software he had prepared all throughout the network, and watched as they all went into action in the same instant, cutting network connections, attacking the enemy bandwidth and shredding software into digital junk while forcing reboots on subverted spimes and network nodes. Then he moved onto the offensive and began chipping away at the remote connection, funneling trojans disguised as normal data packets down the channels.

The response was quicker than he liked, the opposition's own hacking attempts throwing themselves against his defensive barriers, but so far the digital battle was in Ishikawa's favor, and he prepared his withdrawal from the cybernetic battlefield.

On the overwatch position, Borma flipped the safety of the launcher. The ARO window of the missile confirmed his orientation and the target, and the trajectory in between the two.

The targeting computer bleeped bloodlusting.

[ SHOOT ]

"NTB is locked!", he shouted.

"Backblast clear!", Saito confirmed, already getting up from his shooting position.

"Major, get out of there. Firing!" Borma depressed the trigger.

She threw a last look into the room. Martinez head was complete and utter mulch - Not a chance of recovering either neural matter, his implants or the stack. Wim's head was a similar mess of flesh, shellskin, and cyberbrain components. Perfect.

Her Shell Suit made her acutely aware of the white contrail of the NTB round racing towards her and the suite. With a neural command she disengaged the Cable Spider above her, and gave herself over the pull of gravity as she send another neural command.

[< Engaging Thermoptic Camouflage >]

With a Flicker, the thermoptic camouflage began engaging, muddying her outlines as the sensor and display elements began replicating the environment on the skin of the Shell suit, microcopic elements cooling and heating the skin. The glass facade, a silvery image of herself and the cityscape over her head, blurred as she picked up speed. From her perspective, the NTB missile drew a white contrail from above downwards, and through the facade into the suite.

A moment of silence.

Then the flames of the thermobaric explosion burst outwards, sending the remaining glass with them in a ocean of orange and red. The shockwave hit her, let the thermoptic camouflage flicker for just a second-

-and then she vanished into the cityscape, a final ripple on the foaming waves on a sunlit sea, arms spreading out to unfold transparent wings.

A second later, she was gone.

--- | 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000011 01000101 | ---​

//.Data of Interest Recovery Operation 21204 failed.

//.This could be expected. We will acquire desired data or equivalent through other means for us.

//.A momentary setback. The Plan is still in motion. Acquisition and Aggregation is moving within nominal timeframe. The Plan is not threatened.

//.We will have our ascension.

--- | 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000011 01000101 | ---

A/N: Not much changed here but some prunning and minor rewriting of weapons - I was pretty satisfied with this scene from the beginning.

That's the Prologue over with, once again. Onward to the main story! ​

 

[MaHaL]

//.We will have our ascension.

Click to shrink...

Well that's not ominous at all. Not quite sure who the actual enemy is but it'll be interesting, I would've assumed either Geth or Reapers from the fact that their bit looks formatted to seem robotic but with how heavily aug'd everyone is that's no guarantee of anything.

 

[Sevoris]

Galactic Codex
Cortical Stack
​

Implanted Mindstate Blackbox Recorders, commonly known as a "Cortical Stack" or just "Stack", are special security implants that enable functional inmortality for the subject they are installed into so long as the core data storage unit remains intact. The entire infrastructure of a Cortical Stack consists of the core Stack, a grape-sized diamond-encased high-density spintronic data storage unit able to hold the complete, uncompressed recordings of a sophots minds (average file size is several petabytes, most of this being neuronal configuration data and vector mapping); a Stack Craddle with a hyper-bandwith interface dataport that uses optronic coupling to stream data into (and with some models, also retrieve from) the Stack; a hyperbandwith fiber-optic link connection; and the in-head recording infrastructure in the form of a completely separate nano-neurotronic weave that permeates the entire brain.

The neuronal weave uses functional electromagnetic and dark field imaging in combination with special bioneuroal modifications mapped by motile nanobots to map the brains configurations and current activity, and then use the high-bandwith port to stream this data to the cortical stack through the Craddle's hyper-bandwith laser-optical port into the Stack itself, where series of progressive mindstate back-ups are stored securely. The Stack updates in a continous manner - vectors are streamed live, while connectdomes and neuron configurations are completely mirrored onto the stack every second. Stacks are purposefully built entirely isolated from any other in-brain infrastructure, and only back up data directly at interface point; other implant data is not recorded per standard configuration. In the same manner, the Blackbox Recorder's connection link lack data shunts - neuronal data can only be read at the Craddle, from the Stack, over separate ports. Given that quantum-optical systems are used extensively to enable a Cortical Stack to stream the massive amounts of data generated in an active brain, integrating any separate access ports would have (and has, in the past) open them to attack.

Stacks are intelligent enough to diagnose brain damages and symptoms of brain death. This switches them into Abnormal Recovery Modes, recording only partial subsets of neuronal data for later recovery and avoiding overwriting sound with damaged data. It is generally recommended to not draw out states of such abnormal brain activity if a recovery is not in sight; eventually the Stack will run out of storage space for data and be forced to overwrite previous data, making a functional recovery partially or totally impossible. Generally however, medical responses will be on-site before such events happen. Personel who expect to potentialy encounter such cases out of easy medical response range have secondary measures such as larger Stacks with a secondary recovery storage space, other secondary brainstate blackboxes, or have medical systems that may initiate brain euthanasia at the edge of unrecoverability in such events. Many also choose to deal with these unlikely scenarios and know that they may have to be re-instantiated partially or totally from off-Stack back-up.

Recovering a Stack physically is pretty simple. Civilian Stacks are implanted in the neck region, either at the base of the modified skull or between the shoulder blades (for larger implants.) Military Stacks may be implanted in the torso or pelvic area (due to their size and the increased risk of headshots in the face of hardened, augmented combatats and the criticality of disabling the brain of a combatant, with several doctrines focusing on it) or have multiple separate stack sites spread out across the body. In civilian cases or enviroments, these sites are commonly marked on the sophonts emergency medical implant and have their own short-range RFID locator. Usually a special stack recovery tool is used to cut into the skin, access and open the craddle and extract the Stack through the incission, but in emergency cases fingers and a simple surgical scalpel may also be used to "pop the stack".

The core Stack, the storage device, is designed as a power-safe system. The data inside a Stack can stay intact for recovery for years inside an average-radiation enviroment, and stacks are able to use the surface optical interface of quantum dots to charge themselves through solar energy or charged radiation. Larger military or wild area models are equipped with longer-endurance power sources and recovery beacons, the later of which generally trigger on reception of an interogation code.

Implanted Mindstate Blackbox Recorders are most commonly implanted in sophonts. The vast majority of transhumans with physical sleeves (99%) have a Stack, and they have been proliferating at various rates amongst other Council races, as the technology has been adapted. The salarians have the highest proliferation rate after transhumans. However, in transhuman space and also elsewhere, Cortical Stacks have also been developed and implanted in pets and animals, especially smart or enhanced animals that were partially uplifted and are thus deemed preferential to recover with their experiences intact in case of bodyloss.