Some Time Ago pt.4: White Settlement
18 Oct 2019Maul Montresor
The nearby star begins to bathe the planet of Kim 2-17 E1 in light. It slowly creeps upon and illuminates White Settlement. Nearby is a single stationary SRV. Sitting. Waiting. The bright light amplifies as it shines through the scratched canopy. A light snore bounces around the cockpit of the SRV."Incoming Message!" Verity's voice comes through the internal speakers.
Maul jumps awake and reacts to the blinding light by covering his eyes.
"Fuckin hell, man! What the..."
He stops short as he remembers what he was doing here before he fell asleep. After rubbing his eyes, he opens the message. It was Terra.
"Any luck? You didn't fall asleep on the job again did you?"
Maul yawns as he reaches to his left and swings the metal arm that the keyboard was attached to, placing the keyboard in front of him.
"Nah, I was just waiting for a little daylight. I want to be able to see what the hell I'm doing here."
Maul stretches his arms above his head and grunts as he looks around wondering how the hell he fell asleep in such a cramped spot.
Terra responds.
"I was just making sure. We all remember that time you fell asleep while deciphering the passcode to our test server. Al Capwned was talking about it for weeks. That's when we knew that you'd be a perfect fit with us."
He smirks.
"Yeah, that was a rough night but luckily my cipher cracker did most of the work for me. Anyway, I'll contact you after I finish up here."
He swings the keyboard to the side and starts to move the SRV towards the settlement. As he approaches, a passenger ship begins to land at the settlement. He slows the SRV and watches as it's lowered into a hanger. The settlement was open to the public but landing here while he went about his work would have been suicide. The Enigma was sitting out of sight of the settlement for a quick get away but if everything goes right a quick getaway shouldn't be necessary.
The SRV rolls by the outside of the windows of a nearby structure. A few people inside seem to be going about their business but the ones that do happen to glance outside just see the giant "MAINTENANCE" sticker that Maul had haphazardly applied to the side of the SRV and pay him no mind.
"And there it is." Maul says to himself with a goofy grin as the shadow being cast by the tower in front of him began to cover his face. This tower housed the node that the traffic was passing through. A few turrets were mounted outside for the towers protection. This isn't something he was prepared for.
"I should have known, shady folk are always going to protect their shady shit. So much for Plan A, guess it's time for Plan B."
He whips the SRV around and heads back to the power grid controls that he had passed on the way in. He stops the SRV outside of the entrance to the platform that the grid controls were on.
"Damn security gates." He mumbles as he looks around for another option. If he passes through the gate it will set off the alarms, cutting his time before security responds short. Meaning he will have even less time to initiate the hack before a full lock down. Luckily this platform has a ramp leading up to the entrance. Maul backs the SRV up and lines it up with the gate. He takes a deep breath, puts full power to the boosters and hammers the acceleration. As the SRV begins the incline he propels it over the security gate, he losses control in the air and lands upside down with a huge thud.
"Fuck..fuck...fuck..." He says as he fumbles with the controls to roll the SRV right side up. The security cameras had surely seen his terrible landing and are probably wondering why a maintenance vehicle was flipped up side down in a restricted area in the first place. He was running out of time.
After a few moments of random boosting and guess work, the SRV finally rolls back to it's wheels. He aims the SRV's turret at the power grid controls and opens fire. All the power to the settlement shuts off briefly before the backup power kicks on. The back up power grid had just enough juice to keep the lights on and keep the people inside the settlement calm and unaware of what had just happened. But most security systems had shut down and would need a manual reboot. This was his chance.
The SRV quickly jumps down the entrance ramp and stops in front of the tower housing the node. The lights that once lit up the turrets were now off, indicating that they have no power. He aims the SRV turret at the tower and intercepts the signal. He swings the keyboard back around and begins to run his cipher cracker program to gain admin access. He had hacked the SRV's core computer and uploaded his hacking tools for quick access on jobs like these. Unfortunately, the more complicated the passcode the longer the program takes.
Maul stares at the holo monitor in anticipation.
PASSCODE RESET......
......
........
NEW PASSCODE: F4RT$M3LL3R
Maul normally got a kick out of the randomly generated passcodes that his program would make but there was no time to waste. The alarms system had just went off and red lights began lighting up the settlement. He quickly enters the new passcode and installs a backdoor to gain access to the traffic passing through. All traffic was now being mirrored to his computer back home. No one should even know the backdoor was there and if found, it would freeze all traffic to the node and encrypt it, leaving the node useless.
He jumps slightly as a stray laser bounces off the SRV's shields.
"Fuck, the skimmers."
He pushes the keyboard out of the way and accelerates behind a structure in an attempt to gather himself and avoid taking more damage.
"Bounty Incurred!" Verity alerts.
"Oh, shut up!" Maul shouts as he nervously adjusts his scanner range trying to locate his ship.
The Enigma finally appears on the scanner and he begins the long trek back. There wasn't any cover out in the open on this mostly barren planet and considering he was doing a such terrible job of avoiding the two skimmers firing at him, he decides to swing the SRV around and fire back.
"Bounty Incurred!" Verity states as on of the skimmers explodes.
"Bounty Incurred!" She states again as he takes another down.
"Okay, Verity! I get it! Now please fuck off!" He yells has he mutes the internal speakers.
Three more skimmers begin approaching from the distance, giving him a window to escape. Putting full power to engines again, he turns around and accelerates to top speed, launching off of a nearby mound while using his boosters sparingly to keep him afloat for a while before having to touch down and let them charge again. Each landing chipping away at the hull.
Once the skimmers were out of sight and off of his scanners he casually approaches his ship and boards it. The SRV is pulled up into the bottom of the Krait, allowing the hatch below to close. A glass pane on the SRV canopy slides open allowing him to crawl out.
He hurries up to the bridge and starts the engines, looking down at the scanner he sees two red blips appear. He stretches to look out of the canopy at the two security ships that were rapidly approaching.
"Seriously? You've got to be fucking kidding me!" He shouts while throwing his head back against his seat.
The engines roar to life, the landing gear is quickly retracted and the ship turns at a 90 degree angle. The ships thrusters now pointing directly at the planets surface.
A comms request comes through from one the opposing ships. Maul answers.
"Sir, we demand you power down your engines and land your ship! You've violated the---"
Maul interrupts the man.
"Sorry...connection....bad...can't...shhhkkk"
He cuts the comms and puts full power to engines and boosts the ship upwards while aligning with the escape vector. The other ships fire at The Enigma causing it to lose some of it's shields.
"C'mon...c'mon!" He yells as he rapidly starts pressing the button to charge the FSD as he glances down at the mass lock indicator.
A soothing beep comes through the speakers, indicating that he was no longer mass locked.
"Frame Shift Drive Charging"
He glances down at his quickly depleting shields at the same time the FSD timer begins to count down.
He relaxes into his seat and sighs with relief as the planet seemingly shrinks behind him now that he was in supercriuse.
"Phew....Verity, plot a route to North Dock in Amaunet. Gotta see if Darius can take care of these bounties."
"Yes sir. Plotting route."
Maul lines the ship up for the next jump in the route and charges the FSD.