[RFC][Fiction] Hi Streamer

[Dartz]

Hoarding is a bitch. As is the author's effort to give a sense of things actually happening in their lives. Plans not working out, people changing cars, things breaking or getting old. Normal stuff that happens to normal people.

Anyway. More story. And hopefully retaining a different tech-style that justifies their existance.

The hardest part, Anika found, was not to start babbling about it.

Gina Langley was watching over her shoulder, kneeling on the engine nacelle while she entered the commands for her next analysis into the Hi-Streamer's system. She'd assigned each hardware or software command or function a single hotkey combination on the frogpad. Entering a combination, added that command to the current analysis, bringing its icon block onto her monitor. Datastreams fed in and out of the block, representing signal parameters or data that needed to be passed to the command, followed by its output. Each block was represented within the filesystem, using standardised communication interfaces and system calls rather than anything hardware-specific. She'd saved dozens of her most commonly used techniques already for recall with a single keypress. Even editing the parameters was simplified, each individual block having its own nodal identifier code on the program to allow her to jump to it with a single key combination, select a parameter with one more keypress, then change the values as needed.

All of it drawn in green, yellow and red wireframe graphics, flashing across a monitor barely larger than her hand.

"Wow, that's old school," said Gina, leaning in over her shoulder, poking at a few keys beside the monitor."I think some of that might be aliasing. Your sample rate's a little low. A high pass filter might bring the detail out a little more."

"I needed it done fast," Anika defended, wearing a sour frown. "In case it was something dangerous out there."

"Not criticising, just saying," answered Gina, nudging her on the shoulder.

Anika shrank back a little from her, before switching block settings with a flurry of keypresses. The system answered with three sharp chirps, raw data scrolling past onscreen before being "It'll take a few minutes to render again."

Gina cast a critical eye over the brushed steel fuselage. "This old thing's what you've been posting about for the last six months?"

Anika grinned pridefully back at her. "Yup!"

"Not bad," said Gina, appreciatively. "But you know you can get intelligent systems from Orion that'll do all that work for you."

Anika exhaled an annoyed sigh, pursing her lips into a pout."PEPPER restrictions, and minimum security requirements."

And she didn't want to admit that she doubted she could afford it all anyway. To get the same results from the cheaper, older-generation equipment she'd used took three times the wattage, and four times the structural volume, even before she added the interwave node and IDAR array, and all the cooling the starship-designed systems needed to keep the processors from quenching. It all meant bigger engines to hit the performance requirements, and an even bigger spaceframe to accomodate them. Which needed even more steel and more engine to move at .11, generating even more heat. It was a thermal tyranny that made the Big Mig twice the size of any of the other spacecraft in the competition, save for the BA-71 which came with a proper crew cabin.

"We're probably not going to win it," she sighed."But if we make the shortlist we still get paid a chunk of our dev-costs. Which means GJ pays me to have fun hacking Plan 9." A mischievous grin split her lips.

"Plan 9?" enquired Gina, blinking owlishly. "From Bell Labs Plan Nine?"

Anika nodded,her grin broadening."It works for what I wanted to do without doing my own operating system from scratch."

Gina took a few moments to consider, mulling the options over in her mind, coming up with her own solutions before offering "Well, there's three places on the shortlist. Against that. there's our BA-71, there's whatever Lebia and Eddie are cooking up on the Forge, Bellecombe's FAST-Recon Valkyrie, the EAC TSR-2 and this. I can tell you that the first two places on the shortlist are pretty much a given, so that leaves three choices for the final spot."

Anika turned to her best imitation of a wounded puppy. "No need to be cruel."

"I'm just saying, don't rely on winning competitions to pay bills"

Anika sighed again, shrinking down into her seat. Gina seemed to expand to fill all available volume she vacated, leaning in almost in front of her. She glanced at her monitors, noting there were only a few seconds to run. Time enough to look busy preparing the outboot. and avoid admitting she'd lost almost all hope of winning.

"It's coming through now," she said in hushed anticipation. She became aware of Gina's arm resting on her shoulder once more as the redheaded hacker leaned in for a closer look.

"There it is..." said Anika, allowing a note of pride to slip back into her voice.

Clearer than it had been a few hours before, the same hazy diamond shape slipped across her monitor, bright sparks flashing across it's fuselage before it accelerated away into the background noise of the solar system.

Gina's eyes stared at it. "It looks like an old Nighthawk..." She paused, her brow furrowing slightly as she stufied the image."But the tail is wrong. Both rudders meet at the top to hide the engine exhaust, and it's much too small, barely enough for a pilot. It might be a drone..."

"No EM emissions or control signals," said Anika. "I checked."

Gina stood back upright on the engine nacelle, her mind effectively leaving her body as she dived into recent reports of stealther spacecraft, scanning for anything that corrolated with the image on Anika's monitor.

"Self-contained mind, then. Hmmm..... or quantum link?" she mused to herself.

"I don't know,"

"Lockheed Have Blue," Gina concluded. For a moment, her eyes seemed to go as cold and hard as the oldest ice at the bottom of a glacier. It lingered just long enough to chill Anika's spine before melting away. "...It's almost an exact copy."

"Lockheed?" Anika mouthed, uneasily.

Gina gave her a curt nod. "A replica definitely since both were destroyed forty years ago. But even so, you know what that means?"

Anika's mind took a few moments to catch up, her eyes focused on her control panel as she mulled over the possibilities.

"Americans?" she offered. "Or someone with American influence?" Another pause as her mind cranked over once more. "Or someone just copying an old 'stealth' design in the hope that the meme would take."

"Bingo!" Gina grinned at her, rewarding her with another playful knuckle to the shoulder. Ouch. "You've got some good stuff here Ani'. Send me a copy wehen you get a chance and I'll throw some quantum iron at it and see what else can be pulled out of it."

"Right!" Anika beamed. "I've an interwave node aboard so I can do it on the way to Ultima."

"Anyway, it's..." Gina began before cutting herself off. She blinked, her blue eyes taking a moment to focus. The palm of her hand met her face with a crack as she began to slowly shake her head from side to side. Anika took a moment to realise that she'd stopped speaking for a moment, before turning to look for a reason.

A frustrated groan rose out of her throat. "Ugh, Mackie."

Mackie was busy striking poses in his skintight flight suit, grinning at the pair of them.

Gina place a heavy hand on Anika's shoulder. "Send me a wave later, when we're not being bothered by a bubbling hormone."

"No problem," answered Anika in a flat tone. Already, she was promising Mackie a slow, cold revenge. Gina had been listening to her, had been impressed by her and what she'd built and done and detected all on her own. And he'd blown it up on her posturing like an idiot.

Gina climbed down, waving at her as she crossed the hangar to her own veritech. Anika gave a polite wave in return, while waiting for Mackie to finish up loading a pair of missiles onto the underwing pylons.

How would he feel if she's butted in between him and Ben?

He clambered to the top of the ladder, stuffing a bundle of receipts into his personal bag behind the headrest before turning towards Anika with a grin on his face.

"Let's get out of here before you do something else stupid, okay?" she answered, glaring.

Mackie just shrugged.

"I re-soldered the generator cable an hour ago, and I needed to break you two up somehow or we'd be here all day," he said cheerfully, before slipping down into the pilot's seat with a squeak from the polymer.

"Arsehole," she pouted.

"Arsehole who really doesn't want them having the time to take a hard look at the engine cores incase they see what I put in there."

She heard his flightsuit connectors dock with his seat before he pulled his cockpit canopy down. Anika grabbed her helmet from the engine cowling beside her, nestling it onto her head and doublechecking the connections before pulling her own canopy down to seal herself in. The bustle of the hanger beyond shut off, leaving her alone in the rear cockpit with only the humm of her instruments and a question that had begun to gnaw.

"What did you put in there?"

"Something with a little more kick than the regular gas..." Mackie's voice answered through her helmet earpice.

"Now why does that make me worried?" she said to herself. It made her feel cold all over in a way that was just unnatural for her. She took a deep breath, swallowing the unease. Maybe it was just her natural reaction to Mad's kicking in.

"Anyway," Mackie continued. "I bought a pair of RedBird missiles. The Stealth won't be so easy to fool next time and I wanted something in case it had fast friends."

There was no forgetting that they'd be over a day from help at their furthest out. It was a long way down to Ultima - two full days at cruise. She thought for a second that it'd be worth hiring a squadron to escort - especially for a brand new type with such unique technologies. It'd be worth a lot of cash to the wrong person. But, the Stealth was unnarmed and they were more than capable of outrunning most things in Fenspace.

She busied herself forwarding their updated flight plan to Ultima, along with a link marked for the specific attention of the Security Officer, before programming the jet's systems with the RedBird's profile. Behind her, the engines began to wind themselves up once more, a red light on her panel followed by an electric chime reminding her that she could switch her systems over to the main generators again rather than drain the batteries.

Anika stabbed the switch with her finger.

Secretly, she hoped to see the Stealth again.

If only for the chance to get some real good data. Now that Gina was involved, it was all going to go viral on the underspace and she wanted to be right at the heart of it.

-----

Yes, Mackie is referring to exactly that. And I do have a proper tech chain for it, and a reason why it's not either stupid or dangerous.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?