| From: | "Brian E. Angliss" <ANGLISS@******.BITNET> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Maxim Raid, Matrix download |
| Date: | Sun, 5 Feb 1995 15:59:33 -0500 |
This time, not only has the area changed, but so has the entire
setting. That's not too surprising, since you've entered the
world of Maxim Arms' Matrix. Many of you have seen the insides
of computer systems before, both from the outside as you look
inward at the hardware, and from the pseudo-reality of the
Matrix, so you recognize some things.
Specifically, unlike most megacorps, Maxim has not spent any of
it's rather extensive processing capability to generate a
sculpted system, prefering instead to use the standard UMS
iconography, with only minor modifications, such as the color of
the nodes. The major changes you notice, however, are in the IC
programs, most of which are thankfully inactive. They are all
based on military weapons and arms that Maxim builds and sells
worldwide. APCs, aircraft, chopper, sentry guns, but nothing
really large and menacing as of yet, like their MBTs.
The next thing you see is a view of Buzz, his electronic bee
persona buzzing from slave node to i/o port to slave node,
working at a frenzied pace as he tries to find AJ and keep
security off Ripley and Sabre. Until you notice something,
something that looks like a worm, literally eating away at him,
and he appears to turn a little green, and then you hear him
scream a horrible electronic wail of pain as some form of viral
programming eats away at his persona faster and faster, finally
dumping him out of the system totally.
Spirit: Buzz! Dumped.... we have a problem....
CB: Ah can't stop them all....
Alarm klaxons begin to sound all around the physical building as
well as within the Matrix, followed by a sudden increase in the
iconography's resolution as massive amounts of additional
processing power is devoted to the Matrix defenses activating for
the express purpose of finding and removing, by any means
necessary, the intruders called Spirit, CB, and Chris Tarleton.
Chris: Split up. The teams will need us all over the place to
help them get out, and we're doing no good here.
CB: Ah'll...look out!
And in another node, somewhere deep within the security systems,
something nearly surprises and kills Spirit, who, taking her
partner's advice, dives to the side and narrowly avoids a blast
from an MBT that has just roared into the node.
Chris: I'm reading it as a construct, Black and something I've
never seen before....
All conversation ends as the three deckers face the threat,
designed as a Maxim Mantichor MBT, with a main cannon and
multiple missile launchers. If it's a construct, then those
weapons are different aspects of the IC, and you see a launcher
spew 6 missiles, two for each persona, one of which tags CB and
blows a good sized hole in her armor program, punching through
cleandly.
CB: Armor peircing! New ta me....Response Increase failing too.
And you see her persona literally flowing with electrical
currents, pulsing over and over, slowing her down as, in her
cyborged persona, the program manifests as electrical
interference with her joints. But Spirit and Chris escape
unscathed, until a second blast from the cannon brushes Chris's
persona and just the power of the round passing through his black
cloak literally throws him up against the node's wall. Spirit,
getting her first chance yet, pulls a vial from her belt pouch
and throws it at the MBT, and the damage manifests as a one-shot
Molotov cocktail, slowing the IC down. CB sends a blast of
energy from her undamage side into the sensors on the top of the
MBT, followed by a gesture by Chris that clogs up the engine
intakes. The MBT, fairly wounded, wanders around the node, blind
and failing, finally running into a wall and exploding as a knife
turned missile in the military aspect of the IC construct, blows
the turret off the program.
Spirit: Don't bother suppressing it. They know we're here
already.... Didn't see that ice last time I was here....
Chris: Split up.
You see perspectives change as the three deckers split up to
create as many distractions and help the physical teams as much
as they can, and for the time-being, the matrix log seems to be
following Christopher Tarleton, aka Dark Angel. From what you
can tell, the matrix is on full alert, and you see, off in the
distance, the movement of icons that can only be other deckers,
searching for the team. Other, darker, more sinister shapes have
finished the process of fully taking shape in the nodes. Shadows
of military devices have appeared, and whole new nodes, dataline
junctions, have appeared where none were before. Chris appears
to be wastig no time as he speed from node to node, sleazing most
of the barriers and Access/Probe IC. From what you can see while
traveling from one node to another, it appears that he is coming
up on a part of the system that has a LOT of processing power
devoted to it, but you can't tell, beyond some 20+ I/O ports and
more slave nodes than can be reliably counted, what it is.
However, before Chris reaches the section he's headed to, he
stops and looks at what appears to be dark storm drain with water
rushing into it. It appears to be a uni-directional dataline,
flowing into the destination system, but Chris doesn't appear to
be taking any chances with it as he scans the area and then
manifests a small boat and pole, riding down the current much as
Charon down the river Styx. Excellent imagry, until the flow
stops in a node and Chris's hooded face suddenly expresses some
worry. Before him is a wall of laser light, and it doesn't
appear to be just your standard Barrier IC either. However, as
the line he just floated down, he can't return up it, so he's
stuck here, and he must either stop and jack out or go forward.
Chris: Drek.... Black Barrier construct.... Spirit, I may not
make the drones....
You see him wrap his cloak around him further as if wrapping the
darkness of the tunnel behind him around him in a Sleaze program,
and then something happens. He doesn't move forward, but the
tunnel behind him disappears, as if cut. His icon freezes and
then discorporates into individual, fading pixels as a physical
connection is literally cut, separating his icon and node from
the system his programs were running through. Dumped, and in a
manner that can be very dangerous. But before you can think too
much on this, the download switches over to another scene.
You see a cyborg, with layered detail, armor, energy sheilding,
implanted weaponry, and other features too numerous to mention
advancing on another aspect of the security system. This is
Circuit Breaker, and she's nearing another large section of the
system, possibly even larger than the drone control section Chris
was attempting to access. Certainly many more slave nodes,
grouped in at least 20 different SPU constructs and 7 different
CPUs as well. Not too far away you notice more persona's moving
among the datalines and the nodes, hunting for her and Spirit.
But CB pays them little mind as she advances and encounters her
first regular IC. It looks as a set of landmines laid across the
floor of the node.
CB: Spirit, watch the Tar Pits....
Spirit: Right.
CB, activating some program in her deck, touches her belt and
then hovers over the mines, setting down softly on the other side
and moving through to the next node. This one is a little
different, however, as it is a CPU, and from the panels CB is
accessing, it apparently controls the security automation for one
of the levels of the facility. A quick node map identifies it as
responsible for Blue level gun, gas, and tracking processing. So
CB heads off in the direction of what she thinks is the Red,
Orange, Yellow, and White levels that control both security
levels, the garage, and the grounds and building security.
Nearing the Red level, that you hear from her communications with
the physical teams they are still on, she slows and scans the SPU
ahead, and with good reason. Within it is some form of Probe IC,
easily fooled, but it is Security, afterall. Paranoia,
especially when things are going this easily in this difficult of
a system, will save your hoop more often than not, and CB makes
the right move here.
Something else is in the node, and unfortunately her scan tripped
it. From above her comes the readily recognized beat of a
helicoptor, in this case a Maxim Hornet Security chopper. She
analyzes it as well, and whistles at what she has found.
CB: Another Black construct... Spirit, watch the choppers--
they're Black/Binder and something else constructs....
And just as she warns her friend, the chopper attacks, as does a
second recently activated standard Blaster IC program, a Maxim
soldier weilding a simple minigun. The node suddenly fills with
noise as the whir and roar of the minigun combines with the beat
of the chopper and a second roar of a missile being launched at
CB. CB, diving out of the way of the minigun fire, fires a blast
of energy in the soldier's direction, hitting it square in the
head and immediately removing it from the node and combat. The
chopper's missile, however, impacts near her on the ground,
spreading something that appears to be white phosphorus across
the surface of the node and her icon as well. But her armor
holds, and whatever damage the IC does is ignored, although her
icon appears more pitted and easier to see and less radar
absorptive. She fires another blast of energy, this time from a
weapon that appeared on her shoulder, an energy cannon of some
kind, and it hits the IC square on the tail, sending it into a
spin for an instant. Just before it crashes, it sprays across
CB's body with cannon fire and sends her sprawling into the wall,
leaking lubricant and obviously wounded. She stands up, shakes
off her wounds as well as she can, and then rushes into another
node, the CPU for this level.
CB: I'm hit, Spirit. Black wound... I'm shutting Red guns down
totally in case I have to jack out fast....
And it appears that something else has found her as well. Behind
her, as she works, appears an icon of a Maxim SRDF soldier,
clothed in CVR-3 military powerarmor and packing a large variety
of weaponry. An enemy decker.
Decker: Infiltrator located.
CB spins and fires a blast that catches the persona full in the
chest, throwin it back and to the floor. However, the only
damage appears to be a scorch mark on the chest, and the persona
rolls, springs up to its feet, and fires an assult rifle burst at
CB, with a sound that is distinctively a very different kind of
ammunition. Indeed, if you saw the Berlin raid on the BIS, you
recognize the sound as the funny rifle that chewed up armor like
it wasn't even there, and CB not only knows this, but is avoiding
the bursts totally... Until something else appears.
A demon frame. An exact demon frame from the Lucifer construct.
CB, as part of the team that destroyed Lucifer before it could
damage more than just Boston, is stunned as it barrels toward
her, saliva and gore dripping from its gaping mouth and fangs.
CB: NOOOOO!!!!!
Somehow, she avoids not only the next burst from the decker, but
spins to the side and manifests what appears to be an energy
blade out of her left arm and slices the head clean off the
demon. It also pixelizes, and just as it fades, CB gets hit with
an assult rifle burst. As it's counterpart in the real world,
the blasts seem to not only chew her armor up as if she wasn't
wearing any, but causes damage as well. It must be one of those
new programs that does Black IC damage, but is under persona
control.... CB, absorbing more and more bullets, screams in pain
as she grasps for her head, obviously duplicating the same
gesture she's trying to do in real life, and then, without even
touching her icon, she too freezes and then pixelates. Someone
just jacked her out, probably saving her life in the process.
Decker: Target was jacked out. Resuming search for the final
infiltrator....
And again, the Matrix shifts, this time to wherever Spirit is
attempting to access. You see her icon, a figure dressed all in
black leather, a rogue, with bulging beltpouches, knives, and a
short sword strapped across her back, perhaps the only non-
roguish weapon she carries. And she is moving exactly as a rogue
would, creaping along the walls of the datalines and nodes,
heading in a direction all her own, another area much like the
one CB was in. And again, she accesses a CPU and you see that
she's in the section of the Security Matrix devoted to door and
camera security. However, you know full well that she knows
EXACTLY where she is, as she couldn't have been doing what she
had been without having at least a few frames located in the
system.
On full alert, Maxim's system is powered up as if nothing could
possibly defeat it, and this is partially true. If Spirit was
trying to barge through the nodes, she'd be dead or at least
jacked out by now, but she's not any more than CB or Chris were.
She's passing by IC that you suspect she's Sleazed by already
once, and re-written backdoors into them to ease her movements
exactly as she is now. But she is still cautious, avoiding newly
activated Killer IC sentry guns, TarPit landmines, until she runs
afoul of something that catches her from behind without her even
knowing it was there.
Just after she makes a few alterations to a slave node, she
suddenly gets caught in something, and a massive figure appears
out of Masking mode before her. This must be the Hyperdeck that
Slash had mentioned, and you begin to understand why he warned
that to run into it meant to run away....fast. It is a large
icon, perhaps the largest you have ever seen, and it's complexity
is amazing. Unfortunately, the current operator hasn't changed
the iconography, and it appears exactly as Solitaire's old icon:
a gypsy girl carrying a deck of tarot cards, and the one that
just got dealt was The Tower.
Spirit, perhaps for the first time ever, appears to be caught in
come form of Cascade IC program, flooding her deck and mind with
images that she can't help but see and that are so intense and
demanding that she literally cannot do anything else, and she is
realizing this as you see her quivering, trying to jack out,
attack, anything.... And yet, with Spirit totally under control,
the persona is doing very little except shuffeling the cards, and
then it draws another one: The Devil. As it settles over her
like a cloak, her entire icon changes, twisting and distorting as
if Picasso had painted her rather than the photons of an optical
processor, or perhaps as if a disease, a virus, had begun the
process of scrambling her utitities and her persona programs as
she was still jacked in.
The gypsy begins to shuffle, and she has a somewhat sadistic look
on her face, as she pulls one last card, looks at it, and throws
it at Spirit as well..... Death, flipping over and over in the
psuedo-air of the Matrix.
Only to be hit by something silver, as if made by liquid metal,
that slices it in half, splitting the peices to either side of
the inactive Spirit. A second figure appears in the node,
surprising the gypsy girl and probably Spirit as well. It is
more like a humanoid shaped blob of featureless silver than a
true persona, but it nevertheless has all the features of a
decker, and an excellent one at that. Before your eyes, the
persona converts his arm into a set of scissors that cuts through
the Cascade program and then the persona appears to split in
half, one half flowing around the other and enclosing Spirit in a
protective bubble as the second is freeing her from her bound
state.
Silver Man: Spirit, I'll jack you out shortly. You have Viral
code in your deck that you'll have to purge from your MPCP and
headware deck. I'll be leaving immediately after you, as my
second deck will absorb the Black programming instead of
transferring the damage to me directly, but only for a time. Go,
my dear, and I shall attempt to return myself and acquire the
logs to tell of the raid and it's success or lack thereof.
And Spirit, the viral code now resident in her deck inhibiting
her, only manages to mouth a weak "Thank you..." before the
person smiles, says "You're very welcome. It's the least I could
do for someone who helped rid the world of Lucifer. Till we meet
again, my dear." And he jacks her out, then fades from view
himself.
+++++End Download+++++ ]<<<<<
-- Mercury <**:**:**/**-**-**>
