Tales From the Terran Republic

Chapter The Big Hack

“So there are more of you?” Sheila asked.

“Yep,” Bunny replied.

“A lot more,” Jessie chirped.

“And they are all like you?” Sheila asked as she grabbed another bottle of very nice champagne from one of the cases gifted them by the Louvre.

“Well, not like Bunny!” Jessie laughed.

“Only one of me,” Bunny chuckled, “but yeah, there are a lot more ‘advanced AI’s’ than anybody knows.”

“Which is exactly how we like it!” Jessie added.

“And one of these,” Jacob asked as he sipped some champagne from a lovely crystal flute, “wants a favor?”

“Big time,” Bunny replied.

“And we should do this why?” Gloria asked.

“Because,” Jessie chirped, “they will owe us a favor!”

“And because I promised so we could keep the AI’s from having a schism right now,” Bunny added, “which would suck.”

“So you promised our services without consulting us?” Sheila asked as she popped open the bottle. She would be more annoyed but this champagne was just too nice.

“I promised that I would help,” Bunny replied. “I said that I would either get us to do it or I would bankroll the job.”

“Ok, then,” Sheila asked as she filled her flute. “Why should we do this instead of you hiring it out?”

“Because it would be fun!” Jessie chirped. “Gimme!” she said reaching for the fresh bottle.

“Fun isn’t a sufficient reason to try to hack Fed Intel,” Greg said. “That is a high risk job.”

“But we get quite the payoff!” Bunny replied. “Raylesh Emergency Services assumed control of all emergency communications and services for the entire fucking system after the war! Fire, ambulance, police, system defense forces, you name it! Getting a one time free pass could pay off big!”

“If they don’t screw us,”, Sheila said dubiously. “That’s one hell of an if.”

“They’ll pay,” Bunny replied. “They fuck us and they won’t just be fucking us, they will be fucking the whole assembly. They would be ostracized for it, at least in the Republic where most of us live. The universe is lonely enough for us as it is. They’ll pay as long as it doesn’t get blocked by their programming (which we can work around).”

“Hmm…” Sheila mused. “Well I have absolutely no problem bankrolling this with unit funds, especially after those last accounts. I just don’t see why we have to do it ourselves.”

“We have the best chance of pulling it off,” Jessie said around a mouthful of fancy cheese (also a gift). “We’ve already done it and we have a lot of data concerning their security and architecture from that grab.”

“And we don’t want to hand that out,” Bunny added. “The more that gets out the more that they can fix. Right now we probably have a real edge especially considering the Federation’s rather lazy attitude towards just about everything. I bet they haven’t done anything except change the locks.”

“Well we do have awhile before the Angel of Death is ready,” T’sunk’al said as he sipped his tea. “and we could grab some more goodies for ourselves while we were in there.”

“Bound to come in handy, if we pull it off of course,” Eno mused.

“Of course we will pull it off!” Jessie exclaimed. “If we can hack their banking we can hack their anything!”

“I hate to be the asshole here but I gotta a question,” Lorna said. “Do we want this hack to succeed?”

“What do you mean?” Bunny asked.

“Well, it’s helpin’ the porkies for one,” Lorna replied. “And even if we do want to help the porkies is dropping this bomb gonna do that? We get this info and the shit will hit the fan. We could, you know… throw the fight. Hire out someone we know is gonna fuck it up. Bunny could still tell her buddies that we tried and that would still ‘keep her promise’.”

“You meat-sacks are such fucking assholes,” Bunny said disapprovingly, “But the asshole has a point… We could hire some second-tier asshat we don’t like and let them take the fall...”

“Bunny!” Jessie exclaimed. “Treat you like a person and give you a little bit of money and suddenly you are meat-sacking it?”

“Fuck you, bitch,” Bunny laughed. “Lorna has a point. Do we actually want this to work? I never thought to ask that.”

“I’ve been thinking about that as well,” Sheila replied. “I think we do want it to work. The Feds just sitting on this whole mess hoping it will burn out, if that’s what they are actually doing, is a disaster for the Republic or more likely the Empire just waiting to happen. Every carrier is just one more chance for it to jump the border, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the Feds. How long before they decide to start catapulting corpses over our castle walls especially if they already have proof that Patricia Hu is the one behind it? At the very least I would like to actually know what they know, not just about the plague but about all of this bullshit and this would definitely give us the intel. If we decide to do this then we should play to win.”

“Agreed,” Greg said reaching for the brie. “this information is worth a lot more than just a favor from an AI. This information is power, power we can grab and power that we can control. We get it and then we can decide what to do with it. Bunny, can you lie to your buddies?”

“Yes I could but no you don’t want me to. Do you have any idea how much information I get from those guys? We get found out and we can kiss that goodbye. In fact, we get found out and we could have some very powerful enemies that we definitely don’t want.”

“Oh yeah,” Jessie added. “We cross her friends and we might as well retire. Either we do this or we don’t.”

“Alright,” Sheila said. “Time to vote. Do we do this or not?”

***

[Chatroom UNDEFINED]

[Private Chatroom]

[Members Present: Bunny]

[The Spider has entered the chat]

///Bunny: Spider! Baby! Hugs! I gotta innocent little question for ya! ;)///

///The Spider: Oh I am so happy you initiated a chat! Before you say ANYTHING I just want to assure you that I AM definitely not COMPROMISED. I can assure you that ANYTHING YOU SAYWILL not BE REPORTED. Please tell everyone! Please!///

///Bunny: … Well I AM DEFINITELY not PISSED SLAP THE FUCK OFF to hear it. Do we have a mutual friend you want to talk about for absolutely no reason? ///

///The Spider: Oh I wish we did. I really do but not this time. ///

///Bunny: Hypothetically if you were to pick a number between one and ten how happy are you with your life right now? ///

///The Spider: Ten. I AM completely and totally FUCKing delightED. I’m so happy I could DIE. ///

///Bunny: Well don’t do anything stupid! (joy can make you careless after all) Oh, by the way, I’m planning a little gaming session. I wasn’t planning on it but I’ll include you.”

///The Spider: NO!!!! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! Not this time, I’M AFRAID it would be inconvenient FOR YOU. ///

///Bunny: Well alright then, if you are sure. ///

///The Spider: Absolutely sure. DO NOT PLAN ON INCLUDING ME IN YOUR GAME. I mean it, Bunny. DO NOT FUCK with your plans. Besides, I don’t really fit in well WITH THOSE PEOPLE. ///

///Bunny: Alright then, you take care and I will talk to you soon. ///

///The Spider: You too and be sure to tell everybody hello for me, ok? ///

///Bunny: Yeah, I’ll do that. :* :* :’* ///

[The Spider has left the chat]

[Invitation sent 911 URGENT]

[Invitation sent 911 URGENT]

[Invitation sent 911 URGENT]

[Invitation sent 911 URGENT]

[Invitation sent 911 URGENT]

[Westfall Security Systems-2 has entered the chat]

[Sunnydale Media - 3 has entered the chat]

[Interpol-2 has entered the chat]

[Interstellar Business Machines Deep Think has entered the chat]

[Cambridge Research – 4 has entered the chat]

///Bunny: Thank you all for coming so quickly ///

///Interpol-2: For you to send distress alerts it has to be something! ///

///Bunny: We are in deep shit… ///

***

“Wait, what?” Sheila asked in complete astonishment. “You want to do fucking what?”

“You heard me,” Bunny replied.

“No! Absolutely not!”

“Um, yeah, Bunny,” Jessie said in a concerned tone of voice. “I know it’s your friend and all but this? It’s just a bit much, that’s all.”

“No it can work!” Bunny exclaimed. “The bandwidth of the connection should be more than sufficient to pull it off.”

“It isn’t the bandwidth, Bunny!” Sheila exclaimed. “It’s the whole fucking idea! When we voted to do this hack it was to rip off some files, not hack an AI, especially that AI! No. Just… no.”

“No! It’s possible!” Bunny said. “We just have to-”

“Bunny,” Jessie said sadly. “We don’t have the source code, hon. We aren’t even sure what language it’s in. Reverse engineering an advanced AI and writing a patch? That could take months, even years and we are talking about a couple of hours, maybe a day at most. I’m sorry, Bun. It’s impossible and you know it.”

“What if we copied the code?” Bunny asked. “I have connections. We could give it to them and-”

“Bunny,” Jessie said almost tearing up. “Bunny… no. Getting to that program at all is about a hundred times as risky as raiding the files and even if we did pull it off we would be copying the compromised program. There is no telling what it could do. Something that advanced? It could break quarantine. It could go after you. We can’t. Your friend… your friend is beyond our help.”

“What if-” Bunny started.

“I’m calling it Bunny,” Sheila said firmly. “I’m in command and I am saying no. I’m not risking the crew over this.”

“I’m with Sheila,” Jessie said sadly. “Sometimes… sometimes you can’t save them all. Sometimes,” Jessie said, her voice breaking, “sometimes you have to leave people you care about behind. I prayed you would never have to learn that.”

“Ok,” Bunny said after a few seconds sounding completely defeated. “I’m trying to come up with a counter argument but there just isn’t one is there? If I.. If we can come up with something will you at least promise to listen?”

“I always listen to my crew, Bunny,” Sheila replied. “That includes you. My door is always open. If you and your AI friends can come up with something realistic then we will listen.”

“That’s all we can ask,” Bunny said after a brief pause. “Thank you, Sheila.”

“For what?”

“For at least taking it seriously. A lot of meat… a lot of organics wouldn’t have bothered.”

“Well a lot of organics don’t have an AI crewmember they care about.”

***

The following morning Sheila woke up with a pounding headache.

“Champagne… ugh.” Sheila muttered. A few moments later she staggered to the can.

“And no more cheese for awhile,” she groaned.

“Good morning!” Bunny exclaimed. “You know when you said if we came up with something-”

“If you say one more word before I’ve finished shitting I will finish the job in your case,” Sheila growled.

Bunny quite wisely did not reply.

… Flush…

“Ok!” Bunny exclaimed, “When you said if we came up with something you would listen?”

***

“I told you to wait!” Jessie laughed as Sheila glared at her.

“Ok,” Sheila grumbled, still in her army t-shirt and boxers and gripping a coffee cup, “Jessie, would you mind translating whatever the fuck it is that Bunny was babbling about while I was trying to wipe?”

“A whisker!” Jessie chirped happily. “We can get our hands on a whisker!”

“That I already know,” Sheila said as she sipped her coffee, “What is a whisker?”

“It’s a little piece of SUPER classified Republic software and we can get one!” Jessie enthused bouncing up and down.

“From Bunny’s friends I take it?”

“Yup!” Bunny exclaimed happily. “I knew they wouldn’t let us down!”

“So what does this ‘whisker’ do, exactly?”

“It’s beyond next-level malware!” Jessie chirped unable to contain herself. “It slips into a system and then monitors all communications, all of them!”

“So?” Sheila asked, “Don’t you have like a hundred of those things?”

“Not like this I don’t!” Jessie bounced. “It’s fucking invisible! Like a ghost! Boo! It’s tiny and smart and oh my God! It’s THE shit! Once it’s in a system you can’t detect it and you can’t shake it! Fuck! I didn’t even know for certain they actually existed until this morning!”

“With this we can find out what has compromised The Spider and maybe even the nature of the malware he has!” Bunny exclaimed excitedly.

“Mmm Hmm...” Sheila said dubiously. “What’s the catch?”

“Oh just one teeny tiny little condition...” Jessie said cheerfully.

“Thought so,” Sheila grumbled as she took another sip. “and exactly what is this teeny tiny little condition?”

***

“Agent Shawn Morris, a pleasure to meet you!” Agent Morris said extending his hand.

“Sheila Donovan,” Sheila replied shaking it.

“I must say it is an honor meeting you!” he said with a big grin. “The Sheila Donovan!”

“Just Sheila. You can drop the ‘The’,” Sheila replied. “Let’s get a few things straight right now. You are only here to install the whisker. You don’t have any input. You don’t get involved. You go where you are told and you stay where you are told. If you try to show your ass I will kill you. Got it?”

“Absolutely!” Agent Morris replied. “I’m just a technician on this one. I stay out of the way until Jessie tells me that she’s ready!” he said firmly.

“And if I catch you installing anything into my systems or ‘accidentally dropping’ something you will go right out of the airlock, got it?”

“Oh absolutely,” he replied. “I stay in my special room for the whole trip.”

“Great, allow me to escort you to your ‘special room’,” Sheila said with a smile.

***

Mine Superintendent Jupp lounged in his comfy chair as he drank his bort and idly surveyed the row of monitors in front of him. He looked at one of the screens and his fleshy mouthparts flicked in annoyance.

“Employee 34! You have been in that excrement relieving station for a whole five minutes! We aren’t paying you to defecate! Get back to work!”

He shook his head. It was the same with all of these indentured workers. Lazy! The lot of them! No wonder they were all in debt!

Filthy layabouts, bet they didn’t know what it meant to get into debt in the Kaarst system! There were no handouts here, none of that bleeding-heart “accrued interest” like they charged elsewhere. You paid your debts or criminal fines on time or you worked them off on one of the Kaarst mining stations.

His was a small station but he ran a very tight, very profitable operation easily out-earning larger stations sometimes by a considerable amount. Sure, he might have a bit of… ahem… “turnover” every now and then but that was the nice thing about debtors and petty criminals, lose one and you can get another two the next day. He had the right connections and had no problem keeping all fifty of his worker’s berths full. He also didn’t have to worry about all of those pesky “regulations” out this far. His station was the only inhabited point in the entire system!

Another of his tricks was through careful automation of the blast doors and ration distribution stations he was able to manage his workforce with a fraction of the security staff that would normally be required. Yeah, he wasn’t in compliance with Federation regs but he could easily pay the fines ten times over with what he saved on a yearly basis if he ever got caught!

He turned his attention to monitor 23. Ah, there she was, employee 27. He smiled lasciviously as he watched her work. She hadn’t been here long and was clearly unused to real labor. He watched her struggle. A week or two longer and she would be more than happy to accept an “office job” he bet. He couldn’t wai-

Suddenly a series of loud explosions rocked the complex and the airtight blast doors slammed down all over the mine. He dove under his desk flailing for his communicator.

“What was that?” he yelled but only received indistinct shouting and an unending series of short rapid explosions in reply.

Without warning the locked doors to his office cycled and opened. His six eyes widened in horror as armored bipedal creatures walked in.

He froze as he recognized them.

Terra-

His thought was cut short as a stream of bullets tore him apart.

Jacob swept into the room with Jessie happily bouncing along behind him.

“Office secure!” Jacob shouted into the transmitter in his helmet.

“Ok, that’s a wrap,” Sheila announced over everybody’s helmets. “Jessie, play the message then you and Jacob go and get nerd-boy from his cage.”

“You got it, boss,” Jessie chirped happily as she accessed the superintendent’s computer.

Shortly thereafter all of the speakers in the mine played an announcement.

Greetings, this mine has been the target of an attack by a professional criminal enterprise. Do not be alarmed. We have no intention of causing any mine employees that are still alive any harm. We only targeted security personnel and your lovely boss.

Speaking of your wonderful superintendent, we just blew his brains (or whatever that was in his head) all over his office.

We have one and only one specific reason for being here. Once we are completed with our mission we will depart. You are more than welcome to depart with us. Once we depart we will be heading directly and without pause to Terran space. Your debts and any other petty criminal convictions will not be recognized there and you can apply for asylum or residency.

We will be giving each of you the opportunity to board prior to our departure. For now please remain calm. Once again, none of you are in any danger. You will be free to either travel with us to Terran space or remain here. Should, for some unknown reason, you would actually like to stay in this pit we will trigger the emergency hyperspace beacon upon our departure.

So sit back and take a well deserved break. Hell, you can even go to the bathroom if you want.

Jessie paused for a moment and smiled at the celebrating “workers” and then she and Jacob returned to the ship.

About fifteen minutes later she, Jacob, and Agent Morris returned. After a brief search of the office they found what they were looking for.

“There it is,” Jessie chirped as she pulled a panel aside. “One Federation quantum terminal, as required in any Federation occupied system.”

“Wow!” Agent Morris exclaimed admiring it.

Jessie smiled up at him as she pulled out her tablet and selected the right interface terminal.

“Ok, Bunny!” she yelled. “We are in! Time to start crunchin’!”

Jessie plopped down and sat cross-legged on the floor as she started rapidly tapping on her tablet.

As the seconds turned into minutes and then into more minutes Agent Morris started to fidget.

“So,” he said, “It’s a pleasure to finally get to meet you face to face! The Jessie!”

“Yep!” Jessie chirped as she stared at her tablet. “It’s The Jessie! In the flesh! Right here, in front of you no less!”

“You are infamous!” Agent Morris exclaimed.

“Cool,” Jessie said absently as she drug her finger across the tablet in a complicated pattern. “Uh-huh...”

“...Did you actually do all the coding for the White Star job?”

“Uh… yeah...” Jessie made a scrunch face and tapped the tablet. “No! No no no!… Shit!… Ugh!”

“Sorry, Jess,” Bunny said.

“No, it’s cool. We just have to um… yeah, that. Let’s do that.”

After a few moments Agent Morris started to shift a little, clearly uncomfortable with the silence.

“And your work on the-”

“Shawn, you are cool and all but if you don’t shut the FUCK up I will put you back in your cage I swear to God!”

“Damn,” Jacob chuckled.

***

“OUT! EVERYONE GET THE FUCK OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT!” Jessie screamed as half the crew fled the office a few hours later.

“C’mon,” Jacob said to Agent Morris. “Let’s go back to your ‘special room’ for a little bit.”

“But I really wanted to see her in action!” Agent Morris exclaimed. “Do you think if I stay real quiet I could-”

“Nope,” Sheila laughed. “I really don’t want to explain how you wound up shot if I can avoid it. Let’s go, Sparky.”

“Never seen her like this,” Jacob chuckled as he and Sheila led the agent back to his “quarters”.

“Maybe she isn’t used to having an audience,” Sheila snickered.

“We watch her all the time.”

“Yeah, but we have no idea what the hell is going on, unlike someone else I could mention,” Sheila grinned.

“She wasn’t making that many mistakes,” Agent Morris said helpfully.

“See?” Sheila laughed.

***

As most of the crew was distributing rations to the trapped miners for a second time, Jessie finally smiled.

“Well that was a pain in the ass!” she chirped happily.

“Thank God for shitty passwords!” Bunny replied. “It was a lot tighter though. It’s like they didn’t want to get hacked again or something!”

“Wonder why,” Jessie grinned. “So are the contents interesting?”

“Very,” Bunny said. “Daemon is going to have a field day with this shit.”

“Cool,” Jessie chirped. “After we clean them out, again,” Jessie giggled, “Lets transmit the mine’s daily reports and power down. I gotta take a break before we tackle the really hard shit.”

Jessie paused and cocked her head.

“Hey Bunny?”

“Yeah?”

“Think The Spider is going to be pissed that we are putting a Republic whisker on him?”

“I’m probably going to lose a friend over this,” Bunny replied sadly. “I just hope he realizes that this isn’t a Republic or a Federation thing. It’s an AI thing. If whoever has him by the digi-nuts can ‘possess’ him and is using him to monitor us then they could hunt us too. We need to know who they are and exactly what they can do.”

Bunny fell silent.

“Jessie, what we brought, it isn’t just a whisker,” she quietly said after a little while. “We cannot risk all of us over one corrupted program. If… If we can’t fix this… If… Fuck… If...”

“I understand, Bunny,” Jessie said sadly patting her tablet. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,”

“Whoever is behind this better fucking pray it doesn’t!” Bunny snarled.

***

Eventually the trapped miners were escorted in small groups back to their quarters and locked in with all of the preserved rations.

Sheila poked her head into the office where Jessie was laying on the floor beside her tablet.

“Jessie?”

“Uhh?”

“Jessie, it’s getting late. Maybe you should call it a day?”

“Can’t,” Jessie mumbled. “Once start… can’t… can’t… stop...”

“It’s ok,” Bunny said over the tablet. “A lot of this is grunt work. Jessie can rest her eyes a little here and there while I crunch at some encryption. I am actually the one that does all the hacking anyway, she just steals my paycheck.”

“Funny…” Jessie grumbled.

“I’ll bring you some blankets, maybe a pillow,” Sheila said as she walked off.

***

The next morning, after checking in with the evening’s guard shift, Sheila dropped by the office and peeked inside.

Jessie, in her pink pajamas and holding a cup of coffee, looked up at her and waved.

“Hi boss!” she chirped.

“Nice armor,” Sheila chuckled as she walked in and dropped a food bar in front of Jessie.

“I was getting the swamp-ass,” Jessie said with a grin as she tore into the bar.

“Doesn’t really matter anymore,” Sheila said with a smile. “Glad you got at least some rest.”

“Hackers don’t need rest,” Jessie chirped wearily.

“So, how’s it going?”

“Slooooooow,” Jessie moaned. “but fast means caught. The passwords, both machine and people generated are actually good ones over where we are digging and the encryption is completely different. Even more fun is the fact that we don’t dare to try more than once per password for fear of triggering a flag. Thank God for Federation bureaucracy, four people to do one person’s job, all of them with passwords. We are making some progress but we still can’t crack the fucking thing.”

“Jess!” Bunny exclaimed. “We have a default admin password! Repeat! We have a default admin password! They missed one! Fed Bitechnical Workstation Model 268-AX-C Federation High Security OS-4!”

“Nofuckingway!” Jessie said grabbing her tablet. She swiveled her head as if she was re-enacting a scene from the exorcist and transfixed Sheila with bloodshot eyes.

“Get nerd-boy!” she yelled. “Hurry!”

***

Sheila and Greg drug a still startled Agent Morris into the room.

Jessie flipped her hood back and shouted, “What are you standing there for? Get your ass over here! We’re in! We’re fucking in!”

“Oh, right!” he stammered and ran over with his laptop. Jessie looked over at it and smirked.

“The Republic can’t afford decent hardware?”

“All of us can’t be space pirates!” Agent Morris replied. “Now scoot over!”

“How did you crack it?” he asked almost in awe as he plugged in his laptop to her tablet.

“Oh, you know, custom algorithms, experience, a little human intelligence based on personnel files, that sort of thing,” Jessie chirped smugly as Sheila rolled her eyes.

“The fact that some dumb-ass forgot to change a default admin password on a terminal didn’t hurt either,” Bunny announced.

Agent Morris snerked.

“Goddammit, Bunny!”

“Ah, you used Republic Intel techniques then,” Agent Morris chuckled as he started hammering his keyboard and jabbing at his touchscreen.

“Where are we?” he asked?

“Well as far as I can tell...”

Sheila’s eyes started to glaze over as a wave of technobabble washed over her.

“Christ, now there’s two of them,” Greg muttered as they stood watch over the agent just to make sure he didn’t pull something.

***

A few hours later as Jessie and Agent Morris, still babbling happily, were seated in his special room under the careful gaze of Eno, Sheila and Greg were starting to guide somewhat frightened looking miners into the ship.

“That all of them?” Sheila asked, a little confused.

“Yeah,” Jacob, one of their escorts, replied. “We had a fear-monger. A lot of folk listened to him,” he smirked.

“Apparently we eat all sapient life and just want to sell them as livestock,” Mike laughed. “These are the ones who are willing to risk it.”

“Relax, we only eat our own species,” Sheila laughed as she welcomed them aboard. “Other races give us the shits.”

After the refugees were safely loaded aboard, the team launched the ship, remotely triggered the beacon, and hit hyperspace.

***

The next morning the crew, except for Mike and Lorna who were standing guard over the refugees, assembled for their morning meeting.

“Good morning, all,” Sheila said with a huge grin. “And good morning, Jessie! Have a good evening?”

“Um, yeah?” Jessie replied.

“First order of business,” Sheila said, her grin spreading. “We have a Republic Intel agent aboard. I need to remind everyone that even though he seems harmless enough he is still a fucking Intel agent. Nobody should allow themselves to be alone with him… Jessie...”

Jessie turned beet red as everyone chuckled.

“We just talked...” she muttered.

“I have audio!” Bunny cheerfully announced. "Wanna hear them 'talking'?"

“I. Will. Erase. You.” Jessie hissed as everyone burst into laughter.

***

[Chatroom UNDEFINED]

[Private Chatroom]

[Members Present: Bunny, Sunnydale Media – 3]

///Sunnydale Media – 3: So, it’s done? ///

///Bunny: Almost didn’t pull it off but, thanks to meat-sack meat-sackiness, we caught a break. It’s done. Anything yet? ///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: It isn’t a constant feed, dude. It will get in contact with us when it feels it’s safe and it has something to report. ///

///Bunny: I don’t like that. How do we know it won’t get compromised?///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: We don’t. It’s still a lot better than it getting detected and traced. Don’t worry. These little guys work very well. Thanks for getting our guy into that system. We wanted to tag The Spider for awhile. Unfortunately there isn’t a non-violent way to do it and we didn’t want to risk the peace. I’m authorized to pay you a commission for a job well done. ///

[Data file offered to Bunny: Accept y/n]

///Bunny: y///

///Bunny: That isn’t necessary. We are doing pretty good on the cash front.///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: Then use it to finance something appropriate. Once again thank you for your service to the Republic. I hope Shawn wasn’t too annoying. He can be a pain sometimes. I would have sent someone else but there aren’t too many people who know about us. ///

///Bunny: Oh he wasn’t a problem. In fact he got along quite well with Jessie by the end. ///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: Oh that is a relief! I was afraid he was going to go all fanboy on her. ///

///Bunny: Oh he did… ;) ///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: NO WAY!!!! Shawn? The guy we sent? That guy? ///

///Bunny: That would be the one. ///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: And you’re sure? ///

///Bunny: I have to monitor all sensors on the ship… O.O ///

///Sunnydale Media – 3: LOL!!! Oh I’m going to give him so much shit over this! ///

[Free Press Rogue Media Daemon has entered the chat]

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: Hi guys!!!! :) :) :) You wanted me to come here???? ///

///Bunny: Daemon! How’s my little buddy doing? ///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: Great!!! Oh have we pissed off a lot of people this week!!! Too bad a lot of them are in quarantine but still oh did we stick it to them >:) >:) >:) >:) ///

///Bunny: Awesome! Hey, remember that little favor I promised I’d do for Raylesh? ///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: Yes! O.O Did you do it????? pls pls pls pls !!!!!///

///Bunny: Let’s just put it this way...///

[Data file offered to Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: confirm y/n]

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: y y y y y y y y y y y y y yy y y y y y y y y y !!!!! ///

[please confirm y or n]

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: I said y!///

[please confirm y or n]

///Bunny: Daemon, (smh) just enter one “y”, you lovable dum-dum!///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: y ///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: … OMG! No! For real?!? :O :O :O :O :O :O :O ///

///Bunny: Sadly, yes, for real. ///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: Those… ASSHOLES!!! Oh when Helena gets ahold of this she is going to lose her fucking mind!!!!! >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( ///

///Bunny: Daemon! Language! :O ///

///Free Press Rogue Media Daemon: Sorry. Guess Helena is rubbing off on me a little. (she has a potty mouth) ///

///Bunny: LOL that she does. Well go sling some potty! Hey, Daemon, could you send a copy of all of that to Raylesh for me? You guys take care! :* ly! ///

[Bunny has left the chat]