(on board the New Republic Trade Station 'Greed of the Fields')

Einarr slipped out of the docking bay in which he had landed his ETA 5 doing his best to seem inconspicuous. A long gray cloak covered his armor and the AI hardware chest plate from prying eyes as he quickly made his way through the crowd. Sliding between an Ithorian selling herbal remedies and a Bothan extolling the virtues of his droids for sale through a translator he made his way across the deck marking a path for the security station  on the inner curve of the slowly rotating station. As he neared the security station he moved behind a stack of crates behind a Toydarian's booth who was shouting insults at a competitor across the way while extolling the merits of his own vehicle parts for sale.

"Cassius, up-link check."

'Confirmation: Up-link complete.'

"Lets do this then." Einarr kneeled for a moment and set a customized mouse droid on the ground as he silently thanked Akito one more time for putting it together for him. "Remind me to get some formal engineering training when we are home again Cassius." The mouse droid rolled forward on silent bearings as it tracked for the Security station and its one distracted guard.

'Confirmation: I will add it to your schedule sir.' The miniscule droid rolled under the console of the station before deploying a small probe with a crosshatched tip which quietly expanded to fill the grooves in the 4 screws holding the interface plate in place before quickly removing them. As each screw dropped out of its socket the droid used its vacuum hose to suck the screws into its waste collection bin. It then deployed a different chrome tipped probe from a compartment on its forward panel. The probe slid and locked into the appropriate socket amongst the softly glowing crystals and the dull metallic circuits with a quiet snick hidden by the crowds around the station. Einarr felt the focus on his cybernetic right eye go out of focus as the system up-link took hold. He slowly lowered himself into a sitting position with his back against the bulkhead as Cassius pulled the bulk of his awareness into the Neumonal field of software and codes.
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(Inside the Security Interface of the Trade Station 'Greed of the Fields')

The place They found themselves was pitch black. They knew why They had come but could not remember how They had gotten there for a moment. Suddenly the world snapped into focus and they found Themselves in a room of interlaced circuits and electrical flows. Awareness of oneself came to Them as they examined the 8 long flowing tentacles of their new digital form. Their Avatar that of the feared DevilSquid of Home. Next came awareness of their Identity Cassius/Einarr remembered their task in full, and with purpose they flowed forward. Their signal slid across the up-link system and into the stations systems with a flow of energy invisible to the merely biological eyes around them. Showing to the eyes of droids properly equipped enough to look as a laser transmitting below the level of coherent light tracing a faint line between the security station and Einarr's right eye.

Upon entry into the system They found Themselves floating among corridors of coruscating energy pulses of information and data streams strobing back and forth as the multiple systems of the station interlaced and communicated like the thrumming buzz of a Verpine hivemind. They floated slowly towards the nearest stream of data and extended a gentle probing grasp of their primary tentacle, its energy playing over the field as it probed for Intel and began building a map of the systems using isolated pings from Cassius. A roving security program picked up on the pings and rushed down the data flow to investigate, They were saved by the change of flow in the data as the security bot restricted it, which gave Them just enough time to deploy a Ice program in ambush. The Ice program sprang a web of conflicting numerical data made up of shipping manifests, sensor logs from the Maw, and old holovid dramas converted to binary format. This trap caused the bot to become trapped in a logic loop forcing a freeze, and as its coding froze They sprang their true ambush. Cassius began working the bots code into a reformed pattern as Einarr worked the tentacles in the appropriate patterns, pulling code from one section to swap with codes from another. Upon completion the bot's programming snapped it around in a reset, its priorities and identifiers reversed as it retreated up the data stream broadcasting a virus pattern to distract other programs and minor AI's as it duplicated itself in a random pattern.

This completed They checked Their newly made map on an Neumonal overlay and with a twitch of will and a thought/click entered one of the data streams. A rush of swirling electrons and a flash found Them in the core nexus, the armor of the security bots Identifier tag being broadcast to the other systems guarding against the passive security sensor programs as They made their way to the core of the Stations database program.

Before them stood a monolith of swirling energy and simulated circuits. Their multiple eyes flowed over the interlaced flows of information and electricity as they sought the silently waiting Ice and Firewalls that would seek to bar them from the Intel they were sent for, if they were detected. The Cassius side of Them took the lead as it focused eyes on the subtle code shifts of an auto check buffer. They extended their tentacles out to catch and copy a batch of code going in and coming out. Their barbed digital manipulators quickly thought/clicking the proper protocols to copy and loop the feedback through the security buffer. They then locked the loop in to keep the buffer busy as they quickly silenced the strings of code for alarm and reaction triggers from the core of the program. They flowed back once more to reexamine both Their work and the overall picture as once again they found the passive trigger for a security program. This one bearing the code of a security bot designed to intercept, isolate, and expel foreign programs. They slid forward their barbed appendages going to work once more, this time much faster as the previous oddness of the merge became a memory. They quickly put a block on the outgoing flow as they isolated the triggers that would call for admin assistance as well as the codes that would allow it to duplicate itself to overpower another program. Einarrs awareness surfaced enough to make a few suggestions and Cassius listened before rearranging the codes.

They then faded back and released the blocks as the bot program turned on the native security systems, They watched as it quickly isolated and overpowered 3 other bots one at a time then deleted outside admin access to the main security control center. They smiled as they slid forward, Their path cleared, and extended all 8 tentacles in a flashing pattern as They accessed the New Republic Logistics and Supply server rerouting several tons of food, munitions, and spare parts to a group of bulk transports waiting in the docks. They then pulled Their awareness out of the Logistics server and plunged into the Comm Relay hub, here they cold copied encryption code programs as well as military logs and transcribed orders from the system. They were careful to erase any digital signature of their presence as they retreated from the Comm System.

Next They moved to the guard rotation schedule and began arranging it so that the Guard stations would be undermanned for the next galactic week followed by a triple scheduling of guards at every station. The Einarr portion of Their awareness chuckled as he edited the approval code for the orders to that of one of the local Hutt Cartels names. Their work here almost done they retreated out of the main nexus and copied a sleeper program from Their files. The program took root and copied itself several hundred times into sub-directories. It then setup to record and transmit by hitchhiking on merchant comm traffic any changes to the encryption code or incoming orders for New republic fleets in the area. It also set a small program that would be a distraction for anyone who found one of the copies, it would deduct a small amount from each transaction processed by the Station and route it into a Krayt Dynasty blind account he had set up before coming on the station. They began to withdraw from the system as the bot they had corrupted continued to wreak havoc on the security systems inside the system.

Einarr returned to awareness as the guard approached, he feigned drunkenness as he dropped a half empty flask on the deck and stumbled to his feet. "I'm movin, m'movin officer." The guard nodded and watched Einarr as he stumbled back around the crates heading for the docking bay and his ship. The mouse droid disconnected itself from the probe before lifting the panel back into place with a pair of magnetic arms. It then re-bolted the plate and fled for the ship under Cassius control. The small droid posed as a normal cleaner droid as it scrubbed its way to the docking bay and the small storage hatch built into the landing gear. The small well hidden door slid open on silent hydraulics as the droid approached, and closed just as neatly as the droid disappeared into it.

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OOC:1610 words

You were right, the read was different than the norm and on that note I do congratulate you on coming up with an original approach. Not only is the idea itself original but the terms and actions used actually made sense - as they'd be the sort of thing one would expect of in SciFi movies and the like... So again, this bits I honestly enjoyed and once more congratulate you for thinking of them.

There is alas also some negative feedback as well. Whilst the amount of actions and their quick succession makes sense and provides a certain pace, I must confess I at times found it a tad difficult to keep up. A proof read or at least a spelling/grammar check with a more advanced software (even MS Word or I think Google Docs too) should solve some of these problems.

I agree with Joamer in that it felt like the system was somewhat easy to hack into. I also agree that the AI should make this hacking easier though. What I would personally like to see is using this advantage in breaking or overcoming more security obstacles, like the bot and firewalls you mentioned at the start... That would provide the reader with the sense that the station did have a lot more defenses and still would help make your point across too - that of having had a fairly easy time bypassing them though.

If you could improve on these aspects then I feel you'll manage to create a truly worthwhile skill for others to read and take an example from...

It has indeed been improved somewhat - enough I believe to warrant a pass on my part.

One note for future works though - try and use more commas in your narratives... make it clearer where one action ends and another starts for example.