Bank Job

Posted by GM (Paul) on 7-24-2001

SERILEE - AXISE-VARGECORP DISTRICT
Komp Dun - One Day after PeeGee...

Competitive at the best of times, the twelve slicers treated Koyle's mark like the starting pistol for the ultimate race. Before long the room was resounding to mumbled geek half-talk. Interspersed with the murmurs were the occasional loud curse, and sporadic bursts of delight. As Koyle knew first hand, slicing could be a spiritual experience; it was the closest this lot would come to playing Devil or God.

And for the moment their aspects were decidedly devilish. Having cloaked the viral offspring in the camouflaging datapockets, the hackers slipped into their carrier businesses to secrete the package among the daily accounts. Insertion, delivery and extraction: They went off almost without a hitch. Each completed extraction was accompanied by a shout or display of exuberance. Brackish was first, surprisingly, the ugly man outpacing Sear and her partner by most of a minute. Cryo was the only one to fumble the clean-up, precipitating some quick disaster recovery from his Verpine overseer. An irritation to "Ringmaster Koyle", yes. But "Slicer Koyle" and "Koyle the Loud and Wrathful" enjoyed the creative interlude, and the pleasure of leaving the Devaronian miserably contrite.

The whole operation took less than twenty minutes, leaving the best part of an hour's wait before the virus struck six of Serilee's main banks. That left plenty of time for midday nourishment; Gabble followed her own advice and took Koyle's request before heading out for supplies.

It was a nerve-wracking period. Putting all thought of profit aside, failure would forfeit all of their lives. Shaggy and Kamo were in the corner, already discussing contingency plans for the twelve-hour window that would be left to them. A few options left a chance for survival, but none were really satisfactory: They all involved leaving the Komp Dun. For all the young slicers, their fears were less for loss of life than the loss of a dream.

Then the hour was struck--the virus was activated. The six minutes of limbo were observed in nearly breathless silence. All across the world, Taxation-Without-Representation was entering bank systems and spearing into random account. At Serilee First, TWR1 penetrated smoothly and cleanly, suckling on bloated bank balances for the full minute before falling dormant.

Accepting the transferred funds as its activator, TWR2 spiked into Ralltiir Central, but was flagged for a minor alert. Same scenario for Galactic Traders Fund, Bank of the Core and Outer-Rim Exchange. The scans from droid brain security penetrated the camouflaging layer for the first three, causing the virus to fall dormant early to prevent a trace. TWR3's hit on ORE remained uncompromised, however. The camo layer baffled the remote scan, and continued to siphon away funds for the full minute.

"And Imperial Finance & Funds... Clean in and out," Sear reported after analysing the activity record generated in their isolated account along with the accumulated funds. "They even wrote off the activity as a permanent read-error!"

Shaggy sighed with relief. "We still have three clean feeds, then."

"Can that, how much did we make?!" Cryo demanded excitedly.

Sear checked. Then she paled. "841... thousand, 670 cred-"

The rest of her words were drowned out by the first ecstatic throes of celebration...

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- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Episode 54: "The Prom"