Going in Circles

[Mr.Ling]

...hack.initiated...connecting.to.Newport.Station.Security...decryption.in.progress...
...Deceiver.Mr.Ling.recognized...beginning.playback...
...uploading.data...

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Two hours before he was to meet this informant, Mr. Ling touched down on Newport Station. He knew his reservation was later, but Ling was a cautious man, in as much as he could be when striding out to the depths of the Sigmas to meet a codenamed Kusarian who wanted to talk about the Jump Drive leaks. Doing foolishness as wisely as he could. Maybe he was more Inner-Circley than he had thought.

Nonetheless, as he casually strode the halls, he began mapping the interior of the station, planning escape and evasion routes, and, most importantly, breaching the security system. It took about thirty minutes for him to patch into every single camera, motion detector, and keypad in the station. In a way, he was being as non-invasive as possible, simply adding another user with read and write privileges. Normally, he'd also lockout all other users until he was done, but it wouldn't be this rag-tag group of freelancers' fault if Kusari used them to stage a hit, so Ling decided to keep the heartaches for them to a minimum.

Once he had the access he needed, Ling made his way to the standard bar. Normally, a man in a suit and tie wouldn't blend in well with the regular denizens of a neutral station, but Ling had mastered the art of body language and social manipulation decades ago, and with those tools in hand he was able to hide in plain sight fairly regularly, no matter how he dressed. There was no reason to make himself widely available until after it was time to meet this "Tamamo no Mae", which of course would be after he had Wolfe to play bodyguard.

Until it was time to meet, he sat at a table by himself, watching every security feed and motion trigger.

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...encryption.in.progress...disconnecting.from.network...hack.terminated...