Veldron 32

Veldron's Saga 32: Veldron with an "i"

I raised my hands very slightly, just making it clear that they were empty and I wasn't reaching for my belt. "It's not me. Look, could you lower that thing? I don't want to get shot by accident and you're not much of a gunman, no offense."

He didn't lower it. "You can just heal any damage anyway. This is just to slow you down."

"No, I can't heal damage! Why does everyone assume that? I don't heal, I regenerate! It doesn't kick in until I'm practically dead so unless you want to end up in an abandoned building with a corpse could you lower that damn gun!"

He hesitated and, finally, lowered it. But not completely. I knew that Devnull didn't like guns; he was famous for it. His crimes were committed electronically, and preferably from another country. "Then perhaps you could explain to me exactly what is going on."

"I hope to. I have some important evidence. In fact I need your help to find more evidence. But first I need complete, one hundred per cent secrecy. Can you guarantee that?"

"Without knowing what I'm looking at first? I'm not sure if I can guarantee that."

"Then I guess we have nothing to discuss." I turned to leave.

"Wait." I could see him thinking. If what I had to show him wasn't important, it didn't matter if he was sworn to secrecy. If it was, it was probably worth the secrecy. After awhile, he nodded. "I'll have a look."

Once we were safely inside the base, I explained the situation and showed him the relevant logs. He accepted the explanation without comment and got to work.

Devnull worked mostly silently, only speaking up every now and then to ask for information or comment that my operating system looked like it was designed by a concussed monkey. He dug up a few things that I hadn't noticed; the system was designed to ignore me moving through my own base, but there were shadows. Records of genelocked doors opening and so forth. "Whoever was in here was really good at pretending to be you," he commented. "There was definite activity while you were in prison, but he's fooled the system into thinking that it was you. On a side note, don't you have scan-proof skin?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you bother with genelocks and so forth?"

"Because being resistant to such things is rare, but not unique." My own scan-proof skin had been based on a natural version sported by a hero who had died years ago. "Besides, the skin doesn't work if it's breached. I'd hate to be locked out of my own base just because I was badly wounded."

He nodded. "Well your intruder doesn't have it. There's no barriers or blank spots where he's passed scanners."

"Couldn't they have just erased that stuff from the system?"

"He has. But he wouldn't have bothered if he was scan-proof, would he? Who can access your security?"

"Just me, as far as I'm aware, but unless they covered their tracks really well, nobody used my account. I tried to find other accounts with that high a clearance, but..."

"But the way your system's set up that's a lot harder than it should be."


"That's... that's to stop intruders from getting information easily."

"Sure it is. Give me half an hour."

It took closer to an hour, but he eventually found the problem. "Yeah, no matter how you do it you get a lot of duplicate accounts showing up. I've got the account called CYBR showing up twice and Veldron four times, it seems at first glance."

I'd received similar results. "What do you mean, 'at first glance'?"

"It's your font."

"I... what?"

"Did you check anything beyond just the list of names?"

"Did I need to? You can only have one account under each name."

"Yeah, that's true. But 'Veldron' only shows up three times on this list. Your fourth is 'Veidron', with a capital 'I'." He stood up and cracked his knuckles. "Apparently your hijacker has made an accurate assessment of your skills with software. Need anything else?"

"Can you get me into the account?"

"Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it. There's the chance that he'd notice the activity. I assume you don't want him to know you're onto him?"

"Yeah, you're right."

"I could remove it completely, but this guy got into your system without leaving much of a trace once. He could probably do it again."

"True. Thanks for your help."

I left Devnull on the shore, ignoring his parting jibes about my poorly organised system, then took the island out far away from any land and sunk it. I didn't trust the random drift any more.

I paced through the secret layers of my lair as I pondered the situation. The whole thing made no sense. I was a genius roboticist, I should hardly have to leave the island at all! All this putting my life in danger was ridiculous. A sensible roboticist would conduct any particularly dangerous deals through...

Through...

Well, I felt stupid.