"Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books."
--Walt Whitman
Shortly after the Chief's briefing, Motoko Kusanagi strode into the computer room and leaned casually on a chair near the console where Ishikawa and Borma were working.
"Report," she said simply. Ishikawa was in the middle of a dive, so Borma answered.
"We've found some leads that point to a high-ranking SDF official as the driving force behind the Department of Internal Affair's funding of this project. We found his name in the bill that passed the funding. Ishikawa's trying to take a look at his files and memos and see what he can find, but most of the references point to a sneaker net inside the SDF base." She nodded.
"A standalone network, huh. What's this guy's name?"
"Akimoto Hiroshi -- looks like his office is on the base near here." Borma pulled up the official's profile for her to look at. An older man, balding on top, with set-back eyes and no smile, his appearance was fairly unremarkable.
"I see . . . let me know if you find anything new." With that, she left the room with as much fanfare as she had entered it.
An hour and a half later, she turned on her thermoptic camouflage just outside the SDF base and hopped on the rear bumper of a supply truck heading in. The driver and passenger both showed their badges to the guard at the gate, and the ID scanner approved the holographic sticker on the windshield. With her weight the truck was a little heavier than normal, but nobody noticed, so the truck rumbled on through. She guessed that the supply truck was on its way to the base cafeteria, and from the map she had downloaded, it should pass right by the bureaucratic office building.
It was a little risky doing an operation like this during the day, when the thermoptic camo had to do so many more calculations based on lights and shadows and reflections, but she had patched it in to her own cyberbrain so it could use her excess CPU power, and it seemed to be working fine. The main concern for this operation was to leave no trace of the investigation -- anything suspicious, and it could be Section 9 that got in trouble instead of Akimoto Hiroshi. Once they had some hard evidence, then Section 9 wouldn't need to be quite as circumspect.
The truck approached the office building and she hopped off onto some grass shaded by a tree. It was a quiet landing, but she made small depressions in the grass that someone might notice sooner or later, so she quickly slid onto the sidewalk. Noiselessly creeping, she hid behind a shed and then turned off her camo. It was too tricky trying to open doors and windows while invisible, and with her military dress uniform, she could pass as one of the workers on base.
Scoping out the building, she noticed the badge slot next to the front door. I don't really want to leave a record of my visit, even if it is with my fake military ID . . . She scanned the exterior for other entrances, but all were too risky to try in the daylight. Trying the shed handle, she found it open. A few boxes full of spare sprinkler parts littered the floor, along with a shelf of tools and gardening implements. She closed the boxes, stacked them up, and lifted them up effortlessly.
Closing the shed door behind her, she walked slowly on the sidewalk around towards the front of the building. When a young soldier crossed the street and also headed towards the front, she made her way towards the front door. He hurried up the steps to swipe his badge and open the door for her. She smiled gratefully, trying to make the boxes seem heavy, and entered the building. Fortunately, the young soldier hurried off down the hallway and didn't try to help her further. With the entryway of the building empty, she set the boxes down in a corner and headed to the elevator.
"Major," interrupted Batou on the com, as he told her about the missing doctor. She pushed the "up" button and listened as she waited for the elevator to arrive.
"Going for another joyride, huh? You'll be just in time for the bullfights in Uwajima," she said innocently as she scanned the area for cameras and other security measures.
"Yeah . . I'll send you a postcard . . . Batou out." She let out an amused sigh just as the elevator chimed its arrival, and she entered.
The profile Borma brought up had Akimoto's office on the eighth floor. But the elevator buttons only went up to five. There must be a separate elevator for the higher floors, she thought, as she punched the button for the fifth floor. Motoko noted the tiny camera in the corner of the elevator and casually stood under it, where it could see as little of her as possible.
The door opened at the third floor to let on a dark-complexioned woman carrying a data card, with a badge reading "Ohara Sumeko". She went to press the button for floor five, but stopped when she saw it was already lit. From the office listing Motoko remembered seeing in the lobby, she determined that Sumeko worked in the same office number as Akimoto. Perhaps she's his personal assistant.
"This summer heat is really draining, isn't it," the woman asked pleasantly. Motoko smiled and answered,
"Yes, though I heard it's supposed to rain later this week." Motoko located the woman's cyberbrain on the net and examined her firewalls. They hadn't been updated recently, so she was able to use a known bug to easily bypass them without detection. A good thing personal assistants don't get firewalls as good as those they assist, she thought wryly.
"Oh, really? I thought the rainy season was over already." Sumeko sighed, and the conversation ended.
The elevator doors opened to the fifth floor. Hiding quietly in the back of the other woman's mind, Motoko walked slowly down the hallway in the opposite direction of the assistant. She watched through the other woman's eyes as she approached a blank keypad next to a second elevator. A security guard passed Motoko in the hallway, but didn't do more than glance at her.
Sumeko pushed a green button near the keypad, and the blank spaces lit up in yellow to display all ten digits in random positions. Motoko noted the numbers she pressed for the access code and walked into the women's restroom. Sitting inside one of the stalls and closing the door, she continued watching Sumeko to see what other security measures were in place to reach Akimoto's office.
"Major? This is Togusa." Sumeko was exiting the elevator at the eighth floor.
"Go ahead, Togusa." Motoko watched as Sumeko walked halfway down the hall and entered an open door.
"No one seems to know much about why the Professor is missing, but I did find the Historical Immersion System that the Chief was talking about in a lab here on campus -- it looks active, but that whole wing of the building is pretty deserted." Sumeko sat down at her desk just outside an office with a plaque reading "Akimoto Hiroshi."
"I see. Stay there and keep an eye on things. See if you can find out anything else." Motoko flushed the toilet and washed her hands quickly at the sink for the benefit of the intruder detection algorithms inside yet another camera her infrared sensors detected on the other side of the mirror.
"Roger that. Togusa out." When Sumeko glanced around, Motoko noticed a triple-combination security device outside Akimoto's door -- a retinal scanner, thumbprint verifier, and voice-print analyzer. Nonplussed, Motoko headed down the hallway to the second elevator. She listened as Sumeko answered the phone.
"No, I'm sorry, Akimoto is in a meeting right now. May I take a message?" As she spoke, the assistant glanced towards the door again, and Motoko could see that it was slightly ajar. She almost laughed. The most stringent security system in the world won't do them any good if they leave the door wide open. I guess I can't complain, though, since it makes my job easier. She entered the stolen code in at the second elevator, and it took her up to the eighth floor.
Disconnecting from Akimoto's assistant as the elevator doors opened, she analyzed the camera layout until she found a blind spot where none of the cameras covered. When she walked over to it, she bent down as if to check her shoe, waiting until another assistant had passed, and then she turned on her thermoptic camouflage once again and crept towards Akimoto's office.
With both doors open, and Sumeko busy on her terminal, she was in his office and hooked in to his computer via a dummy barrier in less than fifteen seconds. Diving in, she found several layers of firewalls and encryption, much stronger than the simple ones she had overcome on the secretary. Glancing out the window at the bright summer sun, in her head she began generating hundreds of millions of decryption keys each second, and the layers of protection fell away like a cicada's old skin.
Motoko then ran several hundred searches with different combinations of phrases related to the Historical Immersion System and its funding. She quickly scanned through the results, sorting by relevancy, and downloaded them to Section 9's main computer. About halfway through the transfer, she detected a delayed-action virus coming through. She went to disconnect, but was several milliseconds too late, and with a small spark and the acrid smell of fried electronics, her dummy barrier was shot. She blinked once, a hint of a worry creeping closer. So much for going undetected. But with an offensive firewall like that, there's bound to be something good in here. She started reading the content of the files that did transfer, and the worry fled. Opening an encrypted comlink, she opened the window and jumped out eight stories to land with a muffled thud on the grass below.
"Chief, I've got something here you'll want to see."