A rogue AI? Countersurveillance? Sadaet mulled the proposition while we sipped his drink. Messing around with Alliance equipment was messy at best: they usually hardened their equipment with all sorts of capabilities. Sadaet didn't even know what he didn't know: he never worked for the Alliance, he never held a security clearance. He'd have to figure out all this out before he ever started to tamper with a system. But the money Stryker was offering was good and he figured that this would be the best opportunity he had. Otherwise it's back to running electronic warfare ops with various mercenary groups, some of whom may or may not want to let him go after his services are complete. That's usually how it went in the rogue mercenary market, especially among the more criminal elements.

He sighed: "Okay, well that sounds like a good plan. Ballsy, but at least it's reasonably thought about. The technical aspects of it are going to need some working on. I'm sure if the surveillance goes out they're going to ask questions, and that will just unravel the whole thing. So we can't go around smashing cameras and shit. So we've got to do it carefully, holding it off until you finally can break free and run for it."

He whipped a pen out of the pen pocket on his jacket sleeve and scribbled a quick diagram on a nearby napkin. "Don't worry, I'll destroy this," he said. He scratched out a ship and drew a few arrows to different components. As he wrote, he talked: "We have a hardware problem, which is obviously the systems consisting of sensors and shit. And the software problem, which, I don't know because I haven't seen it, but I can assume everything's all layered together into some sort of intermeshed fuck fuck game. So we're dealing with coordinate systems, because we're going to want to spoof our location and our routes. Communications, making sure those are set up to match our coordinates. Other stuff too like checking us into ports when we 'say' we land there. Making sure the AI gets 'fixed.' All this stuff."

He leaned back and scratched at his beard. "I'm down though," he said with a nod. "I can go back, check out of my hotel, and bring my shit over to your vessel. Which is where, by the way?"

[@Crossfire]