[Citadel] Clients (closed)

Mekan checked his omnitool's clock again, and glanced about him. The Palaven Gardens were an unusual place for a job offer and meeting, but the batarian wasn't getting edgy because of the meeting place, or even the time. He was getting edgy because Juhani, turiboo defector extraordinaire, wanted to meet in person at all for this.

He's gonna ask me for black-hat work. I know it. Only reason he of all people would ask for a face-to-face deal.

The batarian looked for a nearby bench, and took a seat, turning on an OT side-scrolling shooter game in his browser to waste time until the human showed. There was no guarantee he'd would get there anytime soon.

Fucker'll probably be late.

That turiboo defector didn't take long to sit down on the same bench, appearing from behind a bush.

"You must be Mekan. There's no other batarian in this park with rickety legs like that."

Mekan visibly twitched the instant he heard movement behind him.

By the time Juhani was sitting down, it was clear Mekan was going for something tucked into the waistline of his pants, hidden under his shirt. The batarian stopped himself at the last second as he realized the unexpected visitor was none other than the client he was waiting on. The four-eyed cybercriminal bared his teeth as he stumbled to his feet.

His bionics looked a bit cleaner than they had in his last vlog broadcast - almost certainly replacements (and they were, courtesy of the OHO). They still acted up a bit, but nowhere near as often as they used to. More importantly, they worked as Mekan leaped to his feet and backed away from Juhani, his four eyes all locked onto the human, blazing with rage. The batarian's arm lowered back to his side as he eased up, however slightly. He had the haggard look of one who didn't sleep well, if ever, and the rest of his body tensed despite the lack of danger.

"Motherfucker, give me a heart attack, why don't you?! Never do that!"

"And you can keep your pants on. I saw you going for the fly. I didn't call you for that." he replied with a slight hint of not giving a shit about the batarian's woes. Juhani gestured him to take the seat.

"I'm in a hurry. Well, not in a terrible hurry but my money's at stake, and if it goes, I can't compensate you for your services. Now, how well can you code?"

Mekan just stared at the human for a second.

Holy shit, he didn't even notice you were going for the Carnifex.

It was just as well. The thing didn't work at the moment anyway. Fucking Harrad.

The batarian breathed out, relaxed and tried to focus on the job at hand. "I've taken on an info-broker with the best C-Space cybersecurity available using a disposable omnitool and some spambots. Let me tell you that this is already sounding illegal. I said no black-hat work. What am I getting into, here?"

Please say 'nothing illegal.' I'd like to not get arrested today. The batarian thought to himself bitterly. He had other arrangements made; most of the work he'd picked up in the CDN thread was slated to be handled all at once today, and he wanted to avoid any snags along the way.

"Last I checked setting up proxies isn't illegal, because that's what's it about. I need you to make me a VI that'll query up all the posts from sites of my choosing, like CDN's front page and lets me post back replies, without a direct connection to the site itself. Some manner of encryption would be nice too." as he explained, Juhani began to rifle through his pockets for an unused cred-stick to give for Mekan.

"Deal here is, I'm looking at some correctional time in my immediate future and I expect to have everything I do scrutinized, and associating with Cerberus run by STG is most likely on the shitlist. As far as I know, this should be pretty legal stuff. I'll need a server for the VI too though. What's your fee?"

Mekan stopped to think this over, activating his OT interface and began going over his encryption protocols for options. His upper set of eyes glanced around, keeping an eye out for...well, anything odd, really. The lower set was fixated on the OT. "Server's no problem. Depends on the encryption. If you want top-quality stuff, that's gonna cost you nothin' short of a couple grand. If you're not concerned about the encryption too badly, I'll take a few hundred and call it good. But, uh, usually, encrypted stuff like this tends to come under scrutiny. If you get caught with anything running, I don't know ya."

"I'm not going to share details on who murdered who, I just don't want plaintext going in and out. However, I'll expect whatever stuff I get to be bugged from the go if I get even tools or a terminal to use. Do you have a solution for making it harder for snoopers to read my things?"

Juhani called up his own tool and set a line to the bank to authorize the stick he had. "Does 3000 credits sound reasonable to you for this?"

"Man, that's what everybody wants these days - a bit of privacy. I'll throw it in for free. Package deal. 3,000, done and done." The batarian finished fooling around with his OT interface and waved it in front of Juhani. The human's OT promptly began beeping lightly. "There. I'll set up the server and it should link with your 'tool in no time flat. I'm not promising 100% success, here, but I doubt it's what your typical snooper would bother to look for. You're getting what ya paid for, at least. Just run the installers I loaded into your OT and you'll be good to go. Now, I have other clients to meet. We done here?" The batarian looked at Juhani and his omnitool expectantly.

"Uhh, no. That program isn't going to work on my OT at all, because I'm not going to have it by the time I'll use the program you prepared for me. I'm going to do time in prison, they won't let me keep shit but the stuff they'll supply me." Juhani grumbled back. He said right at the start he'd be going there and Mekan just forgot it just like that. Not very convincing to be honest.

"Then I'll find a way to make it accessible from whatever you're using. Here's a password to the server I'm going to be setting up." He pushed a few more buttons, and Juhani's OT flashed again. "You can use that password I just emailed you to access an extranet dropbox with the encryption stuff, along with the rest of the set-up. The proxy itself will be straightforward. The extra encryption packages would have to be installed on whatever you get your hands on, but you should be able to pull that off, no problem. If you're able to communicate with the outside world at all, you're able to get some files. It's all just comms technology."

He checked his tool. Yup, password right there where it was. Now he'd just need to memorize it. "Alright, thanks. I'll hold onto these, see what they'll give me at the clink. I'm not expecting a high-security outfit given my charges."

Juhani stood up and straightened himself before offering a hand for Mekan to shake. "You've possibly made my sentence a lot easier to cope Mekan."

"Hey, don't mention it." Mekan put on a smile and held out a hand to shake Juhani's. "I do this kind of shit all the time. Don't see why I should leave someone hanging out to dry just because they're about to go into lock-up." The batarian looked over his shoulder, and put on a show of looking around the Gardens for a second.

"I like not being under suspicion, so, y'know. If the topic comes up, we never spoke." As the two broke the handshake, Mekan turned and headed down the path through the Gardens, leaving Juhani to his own devices as he headed for the aircar he'd rented for the afternoon.

As he walked, he activated his OT and searched his contacts list for a specific client. He had a few other jobs to do today, and he was just happy this one didn't turn out to be black-hat work.

Alina's head banged against the headboard as she lurched up to the sound of her holophone.

"Shiiiit."

Nursing the bruise on her forehead, she reached for the device that was currently occupied with ringing incessantly, fumbling as he bought it up to her ear. She groaned as she took a second to tap the "Accept call" button before resuming.

"Hello." From uttering that single word, it became clear that her accent was thick. Translators weren't doing her any justice. "Who is this?"

Mekan kept moving as he spoke, sighting his rented aircar after a few more seconds of walking. "It's Mekan. Just got done with another client. Forward me your address and we'll get your security system back in working order before the day's out." Opening the driver's side door, the hacker slid into the driver's seat and started the car, lifting off and pulling into a nearby skylane in short order. Please don't be a five-hour commute to the other end of the station. He silently thought to himself.

"GODDAMNIT."

"EMILY, CALL A CAB."

...

"Wow. I didn't know hanar taxi drivers were a thing."

The commute was a short one, less than an hour. Mekan's aircar touched down in the parking lot of Alina's apartment complex. Several minutes of walking and Mekan was at Alina's door. Please don't be a massive bitch. This was supposed to be a straightforward job. Get in, fix the damn security system, make small-talk, and leave. No 'I need you to ACTUALLY do this thing instead' bullshit. Juhani paid well, but Mekan wasn't going to settle for more surprise crap today.

He rang the doorbell.

With a click and a whir, the door opened up. Being one of the lower-end apartments in Tayseri, there was no need for fancy holographic displays on everything, replaced by a reliance on keypads and monitors.

Alina stood in the doorway, but that wasn't the first thing the batarian would notice - rather, it was the wave of heat that blew through right into his face. There was no air conditioning in Alina's place. There was no air conditioning in the complex, period.

Behind the human was an array of fans, blades spinning frantically. Alina seemed apathetic of the temperature.

"Hey." She smiled wryly. "You're the cyber guy, right?"

Mekan lifted one of his legs, the metallic shell of the cybernetics glinting in the lighting ever so slightly, an unreadable expression crossing his features. "Yeah, you could say that." The batarian looked past Alina into her apartment. Kind of hot in here. His upper set of eyes glanced at the keypads and monitors outside her front door. "Landlord's not exactly skimping on security, is he?" Mekan promptly brought up his OT's user-interface. "Alright, so what exactly is your security system doing since the break-in? You mentioned it before, but I'm assuming there was more than that. Gimme details."

"He does what he can." With a wave of her hand she let the batarian in, door sliding shut. "Most of us got the short end of the stick with the faculties here. If you can understand that saying." She shrugged. "Working class, that sort of thing."

Alina's apartment was a simple three room plan, featuring a bedroom, bathroom and open kitchen-living space. Clutter dotted the place, mostly standard human fare, nothing too important.

On the wall in the entry hall was a device coated in a fine sheet of cracking plastic, placed in an indent. A screen touting LETTERMAN SECURITY SYSTEMS took up most of the surface space, the rest occupied by a small, minimal holopad and a backup keypad.

"Sometimes it has these... hiccups. I can't think of a better word for it." She tapped the casing. "At first it was just simple issues like a delayed, um, refresh cycle, or it just froze up. But lately it's just been failing outright. I've had way too many nights where my front door slides open because the damn thing decided to unlock it."

She took a step back to give the batarian some working space. "I'm clueless with this tech stuff. You're pretty much a godsend for me."