Chapter 72

I drove by the corporate owned building. Microtech had been one of the big NUSA corporations for decades. They were like the Microsoft of the Cyberpunk world.

 

They weren’t quite as powerful now as they had been in their heyday, but they were still going strong.

 

Jackie’s gig was simple on the outside. Wakako wanted the schedule for incoming shipments. She was probably just a go-between in this case, getting the info for someone who wanted it rather than something she would use herself.

 

But Microtech wouldn’t just leave the data laying around, and Jackie wasn’t exactly an infiltrator.

 

He hadn’t gotten the gig done yet, so he either didn’t have the skills to complete it, and was trying to hire someone to do it for him, or he was trying to come up with a plan to do it himself.

 

That was where I came in.

 

I was going to look around, get an idea of what defenses this place had, and hopefully be able to guide Jackie into getting the data.

 

I didn’t want to just do it for him. One that would be insulting, I was very aware that I was still a kid to most people I interacted with and Jackie wanted to be an edgerunner. You don’t jump into a profession like that without having an ego, and second…

 

Jackie needed to do this. If Wakako was ever going to trust him with future gigs, which would let him build a rep.

 

So I was just going to look around, figure out the weak points in the defenses, and pass along some intel. Maybe make him pay for it with a few eddies, just so everything was square.

 

Of course I was thinking that as I pulled into a small strip mall. A few food shops and things right across the street from the building.

 

But that was when I noticed none other than Jackie Welles himself sitting at a noodle bar, slurping down a bowl of ramen and staring at the building across the street.

 

Huh. I guess he was working on getting that intel afterall. I considered walking up to him, but I figured it would be best to let this one go.

 

Besides, I wasn’t wearing my normal gear this time.

 

I didn’t exactly want to mess with a full fledged Corporation in my usual.

 

So I was wearing a mix between the armored suits I had bought for my Chooms, and a set of Techgogs that I had picked up from V3L’s loot. It was an old school piece of netrunning gear, but it covered the top of my face and would give me a little additional ID protection if someone actually saw me.

 

I would already be covered from recording devices, but people could still see my face, and if they could ID me that way, it didn’t matter if the corp doesn’t have a recording.

 

I slipped out of the Quadra in a quiet corner of the parking lot. And made it across the street without any problem. The corporation’s building was set up in a private lot, this wasn’t really an office or anything, it was a shipping hub. A warehouse with a small attached office for the corporation.

 

They had a much larger HQ in City Central.

 

The security here would be pretty good though. Warehouses were hot targets.

 

But that was just details to me.

 

I jumped the fence climbing onto some trash that was building up against the outside walls and I was in.

 

My eyes flashed as I scanned the area for security.

 

Cameras covered the corners of the building. Robotic guards wandered around, and human workers were moving around driving forklifts moving packages around.

 

I sent a quiet ping into the camera system, and as I expected, it slipped through the security without too much problems. This place wasn’t big enough for a netrunner to manually run the security. The grounds were quiet and covered in loose trash and refuse that the warehouse had collected over the years.

 

It was obvious this place wasn’t well taken care of.

 

But that just meant there were plenty of places for me to hide. I slipped into a stack of old pallets hiding within them while giving me a perfect sight of the camera on the corner of a building.

 

After I confirmed the lack of any direct attention in the network I started breaching. The Camera’s security didn’t last more than a few moments, and I was able to slip into the main network as well, as the cameras weren’t properly partitioned.

 

I started looking through all the cameras. Outside the robot guards followed a static path, seemingly uncaring about the large gaps in the security.

 

They were more for intimidation than security I realized. They would definitely keep out the most common street thugs.

 

Then I looked inside and the warehouse was certainly not empty.

 

Unfortunately for me I was only sneaking around and planning to get some data, because I noticed quite a few preem pieces in the warehouse I would love to take home with me. A few of those servers, or computer systems would be really nice to have.

 

Instead I focused on the security. Just like outside there were robot guards, along with a few workers hauling around the large shipments. I noted down numbers, and positions, literally filling a digital map with where everything was for Jackie to use.

 

It wasn’t even difficult, my Breaching skill had reached the point where stealthing into systems, even through a camera was doable with a bit of work.

 

I made a note of all the rooms I could see, and if I could figure out what was inside them.

 

I also noted the room that would have the shipment information. It was an office in the back of the warehouse that had a camera right outside it. Meaning it was one of the most secure locations in the entire warehouse.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

 

Someone didn’t want someone getting in there.

 

I marked it on the map disappointed that there wasn’t a camera inside. Instead I altered my focus accessing the systems the camera was connected to, trying to see what I can find on the security systems.

 

Unfortunately the connection was protected, and unless I wanted to spend a lot of time out here, or make it obvious someone had hacked in, I would have to access the security directly.

 

With everything marked out, and the workers, and robot guards pinged, it was child’s play to rise up out of the mess of pallets and move towards the warehouse.

 

With a bit of a fun trick I would just have the camera pan away from me as I approached a side door that the camera was supposed to be keeping an eye on. Letting me slip inside the door and close it just as the camera panned back around.

Making it seem completely natural despite it being entirely under my control.

 

With that I was inside, and movement through the warehouse was even easier. I stalked up the stairs through the empty break room and then down a catwalk towards the office. The camera there was controlled the same way. Panning away as I walked up under it, and then letting it pan to the way I had just come, giving me access to the office door.

 

It was locked, but that took only a few moments to work through and the door opened. I slipped inside and closed it behind me just as the camera panned back.

 

The office was what you would expect from a warehouse manager.

 

It was nicer than the rest of the building, and it was surprisingly well soundproofed, cutting down the noise of the warehouse. There was a small laptop set up and I slipped over, quickly slipping through the ICE with a few moments of work and I was in.

 

I found the data that Wakako wanted…

 

I made a copy, quietly slipping the data into a shard and putting it away. I wasn’t going to just hand it over to Jackie, but if something bad happened, it was insurance.

 

Then I moved away to the actual security server.

 

Unlike the laptop it was set up in the corner of the room, and didn’t have any monitors, or anything.

 

It was a Mircotech Security Server. Meant to be set up through a different system, Laptop, or direct access through neural cord, and then take care of the security concerns all by itself.

 

It was also shit if you wanted real security.

 

Corpo nonsense at its best.

 

I plugged in, quickly bypassed the password request that if failed would send out a ton of ICE, or even Black ICE to kill the hacker.

 

It took all of five minutes to breach the security and have full access to the Warehouses network. With a little smirk I even set up a backdoor. I rarely got to use the knowledge Wallbreaking gave me, but who knows I might need to access this system again in the future.

 

It was setting up the backdoor that made me realize something was off.

 

There was an intrusion in the system.

 

And it wasn’t me.

 

I wasn’t alone in the system.

 

I considered responding, but I wasn’t supposed to be here either after all, and I doubted the intruder expected to have a netrunner come in from the other direction. So I simply stepped back, let the system’s autonomous security fail at its job and watched mostly from what the system wasn’t seeing, what the netrunner was doing.

 

They were accessing the security records. I watched the Servers memory usage go up a few blips as systems were accessed.

 

Could this be something Jackie set up? I know he doesn’t have the skill himself, but he had known T-Bug. Or maybe he just knew another Netrunner?

 

Either way. It wasn’t my problem…

 

As long as the runner didn’t sound an alarm.

 

After the runner got the security records, they looked around. Poking at connection points, and it took me a while to realize they were trying to see if they could access the foreman’s computer.