Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

That means respect! That means more space between me and dronetown, and less time until I can pull mom out of that shithole!" He paused, looked her dead in the eyes, and said, "I couldn't have done it without you."
"Aw shucks." She stated, with mock-humility. "I've only got the combined knowledge of the entire net at my disposal. How much help could I have been?"
"Oh, shut up and take a thank-you."
"You're welcome." She replied. She leaned forward and whispered, conspiratorially, "And Grant-" She paused, head tilted to the side. Something had broken her concentration.
The red phone rang, its crescent-moon handle rattling against the cradle. Three letters hung over it: KDX. Kendrix. Lauren glared at it, furious enough to melt the dial.
Firenze pulled away and excused, "I've got to take this."
"I know this part." She said. "This is when you go from 'couldn't do this without you' straight to 'go hide in the registry'."
"That's not-"
She was gone.
Firenze sighed and picked up the phone. This time, there was no visual connection nor datalink. Kendrix was too paranoid for that, holed up in his ledhead shelter with holos of giant robots, jackbooted espos, and vaults of shitty read-only files.
On the phone, a robotic voice asked, "Is it raining?"
There was always a ridiculous passcode. Firenze sighed and replied, "Both cats and dogs have taken shelter."
The phone squelched, and a dialog request appeared. Firenze tapped the cradle, and Kendrix stood in the room. Kendrix always stood. He had a fear of chairs. The ratlike man shifted from foot to foot, eyes flicking around the study walls, and he had to tear his left hand from his mouth to send a command. White lights and silver scaffold bloomed from behind him and swept over the walls. Traces, scans, and scramblers rushed into every nook or cranny.
Firenze had work to not show his annoyance. "It's clean, Kendrix. No need to scan my node."
"Shh. No names. Not yet. Haven't swept."
"I swept it. I built it! It's clean, K." Firenze insisted.
"Gotta be sure." Kendrix's scaffolding collapsed back into the box in his hands, lights, sirens, and caution tape wrapping as they fell into the void. He tucked the container into his coat and asked, "You seen it?"
"Yeah." Firenze sighed. "I cracked-"
"Shhh! Don't say it out loud!" Kendrix insisted. He dropped to a whisper and asked, "Did you open it?"
"No. I wanted to ask you-"
"Good. I brought some things." Kendrix fished out a briefcase, spun it open on the coffee table to reveal the gleaming silver implements within. "Plasma Torch version seven-five, plus seven-six beta. Jaca's Thermonuclear Cracker. ICEBREAKER. Fuzzyconch. Jaws of Strife. Thanks to a few friends, I've even tossed in a couple of the ISA's pet h.k. autocrackers."
Firenze's eyes glued to those last toys, government code represented by antique mason-jars, seething with spiders. Despite himself, he let out a low whistle, and asked, "Why not throw the whole nine layers at it?"
"Tried. Old spec. Not up for this." Kendrix closed the case, severed the shimmering light within, and slid the box towards Firenze. "It's a gift. Copy freely. I just want to know what's in the lockbox."
Firenze plucked the case from the table, ran a scan across it. Clean. Even the spiders had their traces purged. This had cost some pretty credit or nasty favors. Kendrix was good, but these tools were better. Something between apprehension and anticipation fluttered in Firenze's gut.
Kendrix had stumbled onto this lockbox on a deep run, tried for weeks to pry it open. That's how he was: equal parts paranoid and curious. He couldn't leave this alone, but he couldn't crack it, so he'd brought it to Firenze.
At first, Firenze had wanted nothing to do with it. This wasn't his problem. Worse, the lockbox probably held a bunch of data only useful to specific people he'd never met. Worst, it might contain something truly nasty. Those were all great reasons to walk away.
The longer he stared at that box, though, the more he'd started to wonder. The lock was a slick piece of work, constructed from adaptive code, stacked full of ICE, with a full suite of scanners and sharks designed to trace intrusions and sever the net, all so tightly wound he couldn't attack one without exposing himself to others. The encryption alone was so dense that if he'd gone at it with the university's block-frame, it would have taken seven lifetimes of the universe to crack. No one sealed something that tight unless its contents were juicy. He couldn't help it. He found himself lying awake, wondering just what could be that valuable.
He started with what he knew it couldn't be and worked in. The ICE wasn't government. State ICE wasn't designed to be impregnable. It was built to dissuade amateurs and bog down the rest in a digital mire, to waste your time until seekers pinpointed your location and the police kicked in your door. This was a different philosophy of data protection, vicious and confident. It would have taken the best crackers years to pry open.
It took Firenze a week.
"Whatever's inside? It's going to be ugly." Firenze stated. He'd peeled up the outer shell, but the internal data vault was untouched.
"Secrets are rarely pretty." Kendrix agreed. "That's why they're secrets."
"Data wants to be free." Firenze countered.
"Information abhors a vacuum." Kendrix echoed. That was part of the runner's mantra, 'Nothing belongs to no one. Information abhors a vacuum. You can't hold the wind.' They were beautiful phrases, and Firenze agreed with the sentiment, but Neland had just opened a door for him, and his personal policy had always been, 'don't be stupid'. He couldn't afford to dig into this. He'd only skim the data. Just a peek and nothing more.
"Thanks for the kit." He said. "Give me a couple hours, and I'll see if I can tunnel it open for you."
"You're the man." Kendrix agreed. "I couldn't get shit out of this thing. Not even a peel."
"Yeah, well, I've got the rig for it."
Kendrix shuddered. "My man, you need to