Rules of Redemption (The Firebird Chronicles #1) - T.A. White Page 0,22
This time was going to be different. Even if she had to trample a few obstacles in the shape of people to do it.
She checked her watch. Had enough time passed for Jin to have ordered the part they needed? If she finished her business too early, they risked being stuck on the ship while station security made it impossible to leave.
She waited five more minutes before heading to the lift and taking it two levels down.
She chose one of the cafes with an outdoor space, wanting to sit at a table with a view of the terrace and atrium. The cafe was small, a charming cross between the little eateries of old Europe and the internet cafes of the late twentieth century. A bit of old-world flare mixed with the efficiency and comfort of the modern era.
This time of day in the station, the cafe was mostly empty. A blessing after the chaos of the terraces. A few people dotted the space, their heads bent as they sent or received messages from those off station.
A common fixture on any station, the cafes were civilian owned but government sanctioned. They were necessary so the masses could keep in touch with family and friends when traveling.
Most ships weren't equipped to communicate over the distances needed to reach any of the colonies or stations dotted throughout human space. Their reach was limited, a solar system or two in most cases.
It was possible to upload your files to the broadband satellites from the ship when you stopped at any station, but transmission was slow and laborious. It could take a week or more, depending on the data load and whether a bigger fish paid for priority transmission.
That's where the cafes came in. For a fee, you could piggyback off the station's network, one usually kept in much better repair than the civilian side.
Normally, Kira would never pay the exorbitant rates, but the data package she needed to upload was large and it would take forever using the equipment on her ship. The content was also a bit sensitive and she didn't want to chance it being traced to the Wanderer. At least here, she had some anonymity.
Kira paused along the edge of the tables where they spilled out onto the terrace. The cafe was nice. Much nicer than some of the dives in the stations she frequented. Each table had a console and the waitstaff were all dressed in freshly pressed uniforms.
Kira took a seat and swiped the microchip embedded in her wrist over the payment scanner. Fifteen minutes ought to work.
The waiter was there as soon as she finished the transaction. "Can I interest you in any beverages or food today?"
"A chai tea would be great," Kira said.
The man gave her a friendly smile and walked away.
Alone again, Kira wasted no time logging into her account. When she first began this little endeavor, she'd learned quickly she was in over her head. Deciphering the Tsavitee's starmaps and ship logs were outside her skill base. She was decent at some hacking, but parsing information as complex as this and breaking the code they wrapped everything in? No. Not even Jin's considerable skills would have been up to the task.
That's where her friend came in—a hacker without equal, a genius among geniuses, someone the human government would kill to get their hands on if they knew of his existence.
Her friend had recognized how dangerous this task was and how committed Kira was to following it to its end. The need for secrecy was high. The starmaps and data logs from a Tsavitee ship were capable of shifting the power dynamic in the Consortium. More so, if they could decipher the Tsavitee's way of coding their information.
Their partnership consisted of each having a set of skills just as important as the other's. Kira salvaged what she could from the Tsavitee ships and when she saw something interesting, she'd find a way to drop the data package into a hidden cache on the galactic web. There, Odin would sift through the information, trying to break the code.
Until now, they'd been getting nowhere fast. Everything she found was fragmented, nearly useless, except as a reference point. The data logs from this last ship had been in near pristine condition. For the first time in a long time, she had hope Odin might actually be able to decipher it and she'd be one step closer to her goal.