Whoever it was that had attempted cyber attacks on the Scarlet Alliance, they were at least not foolish enough to do so from their own territory. The origins of various signals were between systems, none of which were in the same part of the Exalted Quadrant’s territory. That didn’t resolve whether it was a widespread effort or if one sect with the ability to roam freely was at fault. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

    The Alliance sent scouts to confirm that the locations were indeed unupied, including potential routes for interster orbits. When no remnants were discovered, it was fairly easy to assume that things had been mobile. Long rangemunications would require more sizable technology, but there was no reason they couldn’t throw something on a decentlyrge ship. Very few structures actually required being attached to aary body- orbital tforms would work just fine. With a bit more effort and expense, bringing them into free space was possible.

    It was merely a matter of confirmation. After triangting the origin points of the various signals, the Scarlet Alliance wasn’t nning to just sit around and do nothing. Having no specific target for retaliation, that was still the case.

    There were two schools of thought, neither of which involved direct aggression against the Exalted Quadrant. That might be their desired oue- when it couldn’t even be empletely/em guaranteed that they were responsible.

    No, the Alliance knew how to respond proportionately. Cyber warfare would be met with the same. They could easily take over or shut down most of their enemiesworks- they were still primitivepared to what the Alliance was working with. They hadwork cultivators that were quite confident in their sess. Alternatively, they could go with a more subtle approach. They didn’t yet know the true goal of their enemies… and they could find it out.

    Juli understood therger principles in y, even if she didn’t understand the specific methods ‘Ace’ and his team would use. Thework cultivator emmight/em have been using a false name. Juli would certainly expect him to use one when they actually infiltrated the Exalted Quadrant.

    “We already have various long term operations within their territory,” Acemented. “Monitoring their rate of technology growth is important. This will be a specific goal, however, so I think we should minimize our visibility. No shutting down their entirework. We could probably set them back a couple decades, but they’de back stronger than ever.”

    “What’s the n, then?” Juli asked. She was responsible for the Little Alliance, those most directly targeted by the attempted attacks. “Take out some of their cutting edge experts?”

    “That shouldn’t be necessary. They’re far enough behind that we can do better.” Ace nodded seriously, “In fact, they won’t even notice anything has happened. Perhaps ever.”

    “Tell me about the n.”

    “It’s simple. We make a rootkit that fits their infrastructure. Something lightweight that lies dormant, passively spreading itself whenwork contact is made.”

    “Surely these devices they’re trying to use against us will be kept secure,” Juli said. “They might not even share the same protocols.”

    “They’ll have to be interoperable to some extent. Otherwise, they won’t be able to update them. It’s a simple process. We first infect public systems. Someone brings a device and connects to publicworks. Later, they connect to private, internal structures. Maybe not directly, but with a storage stick.”

    “Won’t they notice the extra space taken up?” Juli asked.

    “That’s why we make it efficient. We don’t need three dimensional images or energy replication. We just need it to work.”

    “I’m sure they have countermeasures,” Juli said.

    Ace raised an eyebrow. “Are you? I’m not. But even if they do, if we study how their systems operate we can ovee that. We just have to target the right devices.”

    “And how do you actually aplish that?”

    “By their output,” Ace said. “We know what they’re emtrying/em to hit. We know what they’ve sent. So we just have to look for that. A slight modification, and even if they would otherwise sessfully fake handshake protocols we can inject a small stream of data that tips us off. Then we can respond ordingly. If they don’t have the guts to get close, they’re expecting data on a timeg of months. Even if we hold onto the signal and manually create a response, they won’t likely notice.”

    “What are your chances of sess?” Juli asked.

    “That depends what we can get ess to. And whether they ant-proof their datacenters. I hear you have a thriving system of miniaturized tech here.”

    -----

    Circuit Chewer thought Ace was a pretty decent human. She was more of a hardware ant than a software ant, but she was perfectly capable of discerning where she needed to hook up to things to extract or imnt data. The tech major had a whole crew that worked with her, though they didn’t normally do infiltrations. Mostly, they monitored void ant tech that humans couldn’t get to. Sometimes their fingers were too big to get into the necessary devices.

    Besides, void ants needed to be able to maintain their own tech. That was something that Juli had instilled in them. Production was also in their hands a significant portion of the time- though sometimes it was easier to send a schematic to a human factory where they could throw together an entire system all at once. It depended on whether the parts could be printed or needed to be assembled.

    Stolen from its rightful ce, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    To avoid certain risks, the infiltration team would be infiltrating the Western Mirage Sect. There was no particr reason to choose them first, except that they were nearby and had significant contact with their neighbors. That would help spread things, once they got to that point.

    They infiltrated on a local ship design. Circuit Chewer could emfeel/em how much worse it was than what the Alliance had. The tech and the formations were both inferior. Not having to hide their ship was a huge advantage, though. They were just a crew of humans and not even a single void ant.

    If they had been scanned, the void ants would have shown up exactly the same as the ambient energy. Micro-aura replication devices were top of the line tech for void ant infiltration missions. They were also unbelievably inefficient and needed far more energy than they replicated the feel of. However, because they solved one of the biggest problems void ants faced- aside from people happening to look in the right spot- they were worth the expense.

    They werepact, too, fitting in with almost any set of gear that they needed. It wasn’t much good to get to their target if they couldn’t do anything at their destination. The main thing they needed were size-expanding adapters to hook up to various ports. It was pretty impossible to carry around things humans thought werepact.

    The days involved humans finding a target- whether a simple tech shop,work cafe, orpany. Then the void ants would infiltrate under Circuit Chewer’s leadership. After extracting surface level data- system specs and the like, as well as determining basepatibility- the returned to the human team that had a whole setup where they would analyze the data.

    They were actively making modifications to and developing their virus. In some ways, they would have actually been able to do it faster if the Exalted Quadrant were a couple hundred years closer in technology level. There was no guarantee that they would develop down the same path, but what they were using was just so remote from what the Alliance used- even if it was based off of scavenged systems.

    Sometimes they did just have modern systems. They couldn’t necessarily produce them, but Circuit Chewer found one in a huge office. Someone really important in their own mind was there. Circuit Chewer doubted the elder knew how to use aputer- it was used more as a decoration. Still, it was hooked up to thework with all the best permissions. Circuit Chewer and her team crawled right inside the chassis and hooked up to transmission lines. They blocked any readout to the monitor as they activated certain functions ording to what had been programmed ahead of time.

    A secure internalwork was nowpromised. Maybe not in obvious ways- they weren’t going to make all theputers explode or anything. They emcould/em, with the right safety bypasses, but they wouldn''t. Nor would they siphon off money transfers- not that banks worked between great powers- or do anything visibly threatening. They would make an assessment of how close they were to their theoretical targets and pick a next target from there.

    Sometimes they ran into dead ends. Lots of the time, the target they picked didn’t have any ess they couldn’t have gotten out on the streets. However, there was something to be said from infiltrating directly. It was more difficult to trace any tampering back to them. No, they shouldn’t even know anything that happened.

    The viruses they injected were never meant to be discovered- if they didn’t emdo/em anything, nobody would bother looking. They exploited vulnerabilities that hadn’t yet been discovered by the Exalted Quadrant. There were some that required insights to take advantage of- code imbued with energy. Others took advantage of hardware limitations in ways that seemed impossible. And once they had control of a system… they did nothing. Except log and extract small amounts of data.

    Humans would notice if they copied an entire drive- not that the void ants could fit that much. Compact tech was nice, but at some point space limitations were the biggest factor. A device emless/em than the size of an ant simply couldn’t do much- even if some void ants were a little bit bigger, the millimeter scale just wasn’t enough.

    Efficiency was key. All of the processing was done on the systems they were infiltrating, including stripping away unnecessary bulk. Raw text was pretty much sizeless, so unless they were downloading an entire library nobody would notice. Perhaps not even then, unless said library carried with it insight imbuements.

    “We got the stuff,” Circuit Chewer reported to Ace. She plugged into the entry system, along with her crew making parallel connections. Together, their gear could do far more than any individual- but it was still limited.

    “Good,” the manmented. He was thin. Even if his cultivation was Integration, he didn’t have thebat strength to be expected. But that was because he focused all his efforts in a different direction. He made use of just a small bit of energy, adding it to what his desktop system was already doing. “I think we found one. Or rather, something that interfaced with one of our targets.”

    “We did it?” Circuit Chewer signed. She repeated it once he was actually paying attention.

    “Well, the short term mission is aplished here. We still need to make sure they connect to here again. And then we do the same on others in other systems.”

    If everything went well, this war could have no casualties. Except maybe a fewputers, but those weren’t people.

    At least, not most of them. Circuit Chewer emhad/em heard about one in the lower realms that was an exception.

    -----

    Manual investigation was not Aveksen’s strong suit. He hadn’t yet enlisted the aid of void ants, but he might eventually. Before that, however, he wanted to exhaust his leads. Obviously he had looked into the problematic students as he could. Tracking them back through previous residences was difficult… for him, at least. Involving the whole hivemind, it might have taken a few minutes tops.

    That might have revealed too much, though. Or maybe Aveksen was being overly cautious. Either way, he emdid/em eventually find something. A partial technique… with clear instructions that it was to be destroyed once memorization wasplete. Rather than one of thetter attacks that had been fairly sessful, this was the first student he’d noticed. The eager woman. Remembering her name had been difficult because of how she died. Fortunately, records still existed once he figured it out.

    Her apartment had been paid ahead for over a year. A little bit longer, and it would have been cleared out. Aveksen looked at the partial technique. Someone would have to analyze it for traces of energy. It might be unreasonable to expect anything after so long, especially since the production might not tie it to anything specific to begin with. But it was a thread to pull… when he reached the end, he’d determine what sort of help he needed.

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