Maze Bright Part II

Wed Apr 20 06:47:03 3005

Mazzonnoz is in that netcafe. First he performs his tricks to get himself unpaid access and to make it look like he's doing something entirely innocent.

Mazzonnoz next restores his connection to the hospital, using the back-door he had previously installed.

Moving from the hospital to the military will be tricky. The hospital's network is, Noz assumes, somewhat trusted by Waldheim's local military networks; just the same, he attempts to gain the access rights necessary to look at the hospital's open sessions from outside hosts, and then use those rights to find a connection from the military.

There aren't actually a lot of points of contact between the military and an outside hospital. The only exception to that is when a patient is referred out to a specialist, and then insurance information goes back and forth, along with some chart records. All it takes is one open session, one military user logged on the hospital network - placing a videophone call to a family member, checking up on a record, a pregnant wife, a sick child. Noz can find it.

And when he /does/ find it, Noz knows the username on the military account, and can see the flow of data going to and from the military network. Rather than break through the military firewall, he writes a piece of code to crash the user's terminal. On rebooting, the code inserts malicious commands that gives Noz's terminal access to the user's session. The caveat, of course, is that he must pretend to be the hospital network to insert the code.

And both are successful. Noz now has access to that user's session.

Mazzonnoz has privileges inside the military network, now - which he quickly attempts to raise, quickly and quietly, conveying top secret access upon his unsuspecting victim. All the prerequisites to looking for what he wants.

Quickly and quietly, Noz gains access to a high security clearance. But there's a higher clearance that remains tantalizingly out of reach. Still, the access he has will clear him for just about everything.

Mazzonnoz is in a netcafe in downtown New Berlin, doing bad things. Noz's first move as Waldheim's newest Major-General is to skim through the penal records for Jordan's name.

Search though he might, there is no record of Jordan in the military penal system.

Mazzonnoz frowns, then accesses the military research database. He pauses a moment, blinking, and then tries Jordan's name again in the research records, followed by a search for "datajack."

Again there is no reference to Jordan in the records-- but a search on datajack is more productive. There are scattered references to it scattered here and there. In particular, as is ever the way, following the money trail is useful. There's funding for the research on the books, that seems to begin sometime in '03.

Mazzonnoz clarifies his search, corresponding the entries for "Datajack" with Jordan's entry and exit times in the hospital.

There's a bit of money that gets transferred from the research funding over to the hospital at around the same time, but nothing else is showing.

Mazzonnoz scratches his chin. "So the datajack project was a military one, and Jordan was a candidate ..." Rather than accessing old penal records, Noz accesses transport ones instead - looking for who was moved where, from where, at times corresponding to Jordan's movement to and from the hospital.

Routine transfers, mostly from the military hospital to rehab or vice versa are what Noz finds. There's nothing that seems to correspond directly to Jordan-- the movements all appear to be legitimate patients, nothing mysterious to them.

Mazzonnoz frowns, going back to the initial funding proposals, grant requests, and their responses. Money has to come from somewhere; Noz attempts to ascertain the department of the military funding the project which Jordan was apparently involved in.

It takes time, and a fair amount of effort for Maz to find where the money is coming from. It's buried deep, someone doesn't want this to get around, not even to be tenuously tied to an innocuous research grant. But it's there, at the end of the yellowbrick road it leads back to RNS Intelligence.

Mazzonnoz raises both eyebrows. "Well. Isn't -that- interesting." Noz checks transport records of a different kind - the kind the military leaves when it needs to document that it took someone off the planet, but doesn't really want to indicate who.

Over the last 14 days no one's documented as leaving the planet on anything but routine business. Of course, if someone leaves, they frequently also need to return...

Mazzonnoz matches the departure tickets with flights scheduled to arrive again soon, looking for discrepancies.

Well, there doesn't really seem to be anything out of the ordinary there. But in looking at arrivals, there are two who arrived right at the edge of that two week time period who aren't identified as anything other than Agent #003 and Agent #004. There's no information given on what their assignment was, and there's nothing showing them leaving-- but then that would have to be earlier than where Noz is looking.

Mazzonnoz tries another tack. Incident reports for installations near New Berlin in the last 14 days, particularly those noting surveillance being taken of the installations.

There is a report of an unidentified subject, probably female, from about a week ago. The interesting thing about that is the order that came back in response to it: Do Nothing, and cease any observation of the subject.

Mazzonnoz attempts to worm his way through the beaureucracy to find the source of that order.

Well, that's where that security clearance meets its limit. The source of the order come from higher up the foodchain than what Noz has access to.

Mazzonnoz /is/ Mr. Mendelheim, Information Security Technician, and he identifies the net address for the Ivory Tower from which the classified orders came. He takes a moment to clean up Mr. Mendelheim, obfuscating his origins and, if not making it seem that he has always been there, then preventing anyone from finding out where he came from. Armed with this knowledge, and coming from a network somewhat trusted by the Ivory Tower, he attempts to break through its firewall and start the process anew in the uppermost echelon.

The esteemed Mr. Mendelheim is a pretty sturdy construct by the time Noz is done with him. Secure in the knowledge that at the least he's not going to be traced from it, he starts looking for an address the order came from. Which is kind of painful after all that work, because it appears the order was given in person, by a Ms. Kathleen Roberson to a Lieutenant Martin Hall, who then transmitted it from the same network address Noz already has access to.

Mazzonnoz frowns, accessing personnel records to identify who the Lieutenant and the good Miss Roberson actually are.