[RFC][Fiction] Hi Streamer

[Dartz]

Angry Birds. Always good. Pay five euro to kill your opponent.

Next one might ruffle feathers for two reasons.
First: I've checked Mackie's justifications and they hold water. From a physics and fictional standpoint.
Second: His initial material source is the ash-waste from Cool Cuke engines.
Third: I deliberately avoided naming names, or saying exactly what Mackie discovered. It was a peculiarity I came across while researching the original justification. I'm cagey about outright saying what this is because it definitely wasn't anyone's intent to do it and I don't want to break the setting on people. The method is so obscure, because it's specifically listed as a failure. So, it's probably or the best to leave everything a little obscure for the time being. I just wanted to do the Serizawa thing about disclosure...

Either way, this is definitely something provisional. Especially the second half.

Fifteen hours in. Not even halfway to Ultima.

Anika lowered the brightness of her instruments to the minimum, before switching off both reading lights to allow the darkness in from outside. The glare from the navigation lights on the wings drowned out the stars, throwing sharp shadows across the cockpit, leaving her to wonder what was out there cloaked in the light. Like all good hackers, she knew the best way to hide something wasn't in the darkness, but behind blinding light.

Her scanners were running at a low power level, but with the amount of processing power she was throwing at return signal, she was certain the Stealth would show up.

Superconducting graphene core processors, with ANN-augmented branch prediction, heterogenous system memory and dozens of auto-reconfigureable FPGA modules could do that. As could a pair of quantum chips dedicated to doing the fast fourier transforms and hard multidimensional mathematics needed to make the IDAR array work.

Anika was aware that she was probably sitting on top of one of the most powerful self-propelled computer system in Fenspace. On second thoughts, the most powerful 'dumb' self-propelled mobile computer she knew of, there were some AI's she knew that made her wonder. It was definitely the fastest, considering it was built into a fighter's fuselage.

A yellow warning light flagged up, informing her that it was all beginning to warm up a little too much. A slight course change had angled one of the active radiators towards the sun. She adjusted the refrigerant compressors, before switching in a different set of radiators, watching the system temperature gauges climb back down to the deep green. She could feel the pumps buzzing up to speed behind her while valves powered open.

With kiloamps going through the main powerfeeds, the only thing keeping everything from dying in an expensive cloud of blue smoke was an intricate refrigeration system keeping the cores below the critical temperature for superconductivity. The meissner effect provided defense against crosstalk and interference, ensuring data purity. The clock speed of the main cores was measured in terahertz, munching through data like she munched cupcakes.

All of it was hers, and it was her. It did nothing more than exactly what she told it to do. It was an extension of her mind, her will, commanded through her fingertips alone. In a breathless moment, she wondered what'd happen if she dared try and hook up to it using her synchronisation hardware. Her bandwidth was a little limited, but as a sapiency driver?

There was a giddy thrill in the possibility.

She placed her hand on the keypad, enjoying the sense of power underneath her fingers. And she used it to check on the mailling lists, refreshing her inboxes to see what else had been posted about the Stealth. She hoovered up every single bit, gaining another thrill as another famous name took interest in her data. She'd sent her detection signatures to the 'verse at large and watched them get chewed over in depth. Refinements to her signature were offered and disseminated, giving anyone a better chance of finding other Stealths out there.

There were questions asked by some wondering why the Stealth hadn't been spotted by anyone until Anika came along, especially with better eyes out there. The implication was plain as it was insulting.

The answer of course, was obvious. Hi-Streamer had been an unknown quantity, and anyone capable of building something like the Stealth was certainly capable of knowing what ships and stations to avoid. Even with the Hi-streamer's sensors, there was no forgetting the fact that she wouldn't have spotted it without the benefit of IDAR.

An IDAR signature update had been offered to her from the main list.

Which meant that someone had taken her original IDAR scans, reverse engineered them to determine both the physical principals that underlied the system and how the system actually worked, used that knowledge to update the original filters she'd applied to clean up the detection signature, then offered an upgrade that let her estimate it's power output, which let her make an estimate of the target mass if she knew the velocity. She glanced at the name attached to the headers, and wasn't surprised by what she found.

Some things just made her feel...inadequate.

Anika sucked it up with a sigh, and applied the updates to her sensors, leaving them to search on automatic.

Disappointingly, it seemed that after being threatened with a radar spike and revealed to the 'verse at large the Stealth was staying at home.

"Hey Anika, what're they saying about our friend?" Mackie's voice broke her concentration.

Anika pulled up a summary on her monitor

"It's made of advanced dielectric radar absorbing materials, with a high-efficiency speed-drive with a passive sensor array," she summarised. "It's someone professional, with a lot of money and a lot of backing to build something like it. Which really limits who can do it to either law enforcement, one or two wealthy fen who have no reason or inclination to spy on friends, or one of the big Earthside nations."

The big one flashing in red white and blue.

"Law enforcement?" Mackie asked.

"Unh...And I can't think of any reason they'd be interested in us so that narrows it down..."

Silence answered her from the front seat. Cold fingers started to run up her spine as something he'd said hours earlier came back to haunt her.

"....there is no reason why they'd be interested in us, is there Mackie?"

Silence.

"Mackie?"

"Yeah?"

He didn't really want to be asked. She knew she didn't want to ask him.

"What did you put in the engine core?"

"Well.... I'd rather not say right now."

He took the second in such an unsubtle way, that had to be it. He'd done something. He'd done something illegal and big and he'd dragged her right into the middle of it without telling her. He'd done it to her jet...

"What'd you do? What'd you do to my new jet?"

She hadn't realised she'd been shouting until she heard her voice echo back at her over the comm's.

"Well, with all the sensors and stuff you wanted to fit, I needed to make the engine cores smaller to fit in the space." She heard him swallow, waiting for his own mind to catch up with his mouth. "And since most of the standard fuel rod is wasted mass anyway, and it needs a big core to keep it all in. I found a way to get rid of all that excess inert mass so I could shrink the core, but it needs to be all-fuel to work..."

All fuel. It took her a moment to fully comprehend what exactly he'd done and it nearly stopped her cold.

"Do you know what happens if Great Justice finds out? Do you know what they'll do? That's like.... that's like...."

She was beyond anger. She couldn't even finish what she said. If she was right, they didn't even risk a trial, they did what they had to to shut it down before anyone even got close to something workable.

"It's not illegal," Mackie answered fast. "I checked. Only weapons development is and it's a drive, not a weapon."

"That's not the point. They'll think you're making a weapon..."

"But I amn't... why would I?"

His voice seemed to shrink back away from her, retreating away.

"I don't know. And they won't care. Even the hint of it brings out Great Justice' top Troubleshooter's to make sure." Another cold realisation fell over her. "Maybe that's who was following us?

"That's why I wanted to bring it to the point of having a functional drive. At least I'd have proof I wasn't doing anything wrong. I just wanted to build a faster engine, not a weapon of mass destruction."

"That's stupid! You're stupid! Do you realise how stupid that sounds?"

She could feel herself getting warm inside, despite taking deep breaths too cool herself down.

"We needed an engine for the Kulbit that could beat the VF-9 and these cores are about half the weight of the standard design and when you have two of them in a lightweight hull, it really makes a big difference. It was the only way to stay ahead."

"By making something that's two steps away from a weapon? What if somebody makes a weapon out of them?"

It didn't even matter what he wanted to do with them. All that mattered what what someone else could've done with it.

"That's not it. I mean...." He swallowed again, taking time to collect himself and get his mind on steady ground. "I made sure it can't be weaponised. It's almost impossible to weaponise - harder than the original cores even; the isotope ratios are all wrong and they're a bitch to separate. If you tried to make a bomb out of these engine cores it'll just self-destruct before it does any damage to anyone but the person making the weapon. The cores are then sealed up solid and welded shut. They're designed to be replaced as a unit, not just the fuel, so there's no reason for anyone to open them except to get at the fuel. So I fitted an automatic interwave screamer powered by decay heat and batteries that'll sound a warning if - if - someone tries to open one, and the weapons control background checks for fighter-craft weed out most of the bomb lunatics anyway. The Hi-Streamer's PEPPER classification is already high enough."

Anika sat there, processing through it all, comparing it to what she knew of armaments security - which wasn't all that much anyway. On one level, it seemed to check out. On another, she wanted to just turn for home and burn at full throttle, dismantle the whole jet and pretend like it and its drives had never existed.

If the right person found out? If the wrong person found out, and had no qualms about blasting someone out of the sky for quick access to bomb materials?

"Mackie..." she said uneasily.

"I really checked everything, Anika. It's definitely legal. It's definitely safe because it has all the same failsafes as the standard cores. I'm not being stupid again." And he really meant it. He really believed it at least. "It's just, people panic when they hear the word Plutonium. But I made sure it was safe. Nobody even knows it's there."

There was one obvious flaw in that.

"You know, security through obscurity is no security at all."

"Only three people know," he answered her. "And you're one of them. Everyone else, and every document on our servers, calls it Deltalloy. The processing details are islanded so they can't be stolen or hacked. So as far as the 'verse is concerned, it's a proprietary black box - which isn't unusual for a racing team with an edge. It's all copacetic."

"I'm still not comfortable with this..." she said after a moment, staring at the generator gauges. A little more kick than gasoline, she recalled.

"I know," Mackie sighed "But when you see something so technically sweet, you go ahead and do it, then worry about it afterwards. You know what it's like....."

The Mad's Mantra.

She hated it so much.

Silence closed in, broken by the whistling of the ventilation, the distant humm of the main generators and the hollow roar of the engines. Outside, there was only darkness all way to Ultima. Anika soothed herself with a mouthful full of cheesecake-in-a-tube, followed by another, then a third. Curiosity began to nag at her as she sat in silence, begging for an answer. She swallowed her unease.

"Mackie? How long would it take you to build a bomb?"

"A week," Mackie answered in a flat tone. "Maybe. It's seventy year old technology, predating computers - it's not as hard as people think"

"A week," Anika breathed.

"Yeah. But not with plutonium, it'd take too long to get enough that's pure enough."

The certainty of his voice was what really frightened her.

"Do I want to ask how?"

No she didn't, but Mackie told her anyway, his voice sombre as one that'd gazed upon sin. The answer left Anika sitting dumb in her seat, speechless for long seconds as she processed the implications of what she'd just heard. If Mackie was right, anyone could do it...

"And nobody knows?"

"Not many people know about it because the scientists at the time called it a failure. But it was a failure because it only gave a two-hundred ton explosion, instead of the thousand they were expecting," he laughed nervously. "I only found it, because I was looking up ways to make sure an atomic bomb failed."

He offered a single hollow laugh at the irony of it.

"And you're not going to tell anyone," Anika realised.

"It'd cause a panic," he answered. "And if someone did actually try it, and made something that worked, and hurt people with it, then I'd be responsible."

"You have to tell someone Mackie!"

"I can't," he answered, struggling to keep his voice even.

"If somebody else learns to exploit that method, and uses it, and is able to use it because you didn't warn anyone of the risk, then you'd be just as responsible." She punctuated it with a slap to the panel in front of her before folding her arms across her chest."That's full disclosure. That's the hacker ethic."

"That's Serizawa's dilemma," Mackie said quietly. Looking forward, she could see his head hung low, eyes down at his instruments rather than out the window. "I need to talk to someone first to make sure I'm right, before I figure out what I do."

"Who?"

"Someone who might've done it before."

"Done it..." Anika started, before her mind caught up."...oh"

"And this isn't exactly the sort of thing you can ask about over open channels. Or closed ones."

Anika slumped forward in her harness, gazing down at her monitors. A few more posts had come in over the interwave and she buried herself in it, hoping to take her mind off other things. She applied another offered patch to her detection algorithms, refining the signature further. That the big minds had taken interest proved it wasn't Great Justice following her. Or they were, and were subtly trying to manipulate her sensors to make sure she couldn't detect it.

The easiest way to crack a system, was to crack the user behind it, to trick them into letting you in.

Anika decided to trust the people she knew, and loaded the module. Her sensors began scanning once more, sweeping the space around the craft. Analysis was performed in real-time according to her block-diagram programmed model, before shunting it through the updated filter.

She held her breath for a few cycles, feeling herself begin to warm. The orange 'contact' light began to flash out a steady, pulsing beat. A giddy spark shot thro

Trailing two hundred thousand kilometres behind, right on the edge of detection at her power levels, and well out of the IDAR's field of view.

But it was there onscreen.

"Mackie" she said, her voice shaking with nervous glee "Our friend is back."

The mailing list found out moments later.

"Why would I build a bomb? What good does a bomb do? There's no benefit to it. There's no enjoyment to it. There's no challenge to it. It's just implimenting a solution discovered 80 years ago. I can't even test it and demonstrate it because... well, the problem with doing that is obvious. But Speed? Speed has signalled more advances in the history of mankind than anything else. To go faster is always a challenge. To go faster is always good. It's always rewarding. To go faster is fun and exciting and thrilling. Because the faster you go, the closer the rest of the universe is...."
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?