The Stratosphere

[Nail Strafer]

Nail unbuckled his seatbelt as the gravity fell away. He took a look out the window to see the sun rising brilliantly over the earth far below. It was still very impressive to see. However, since he'd already seen it on the way to the hideout it wasn't quite as impressive as before. Plus he knew there was work to be done this time, so he quickly handed over SOLIS to Rog. For a little while, he watched the raptors as they put the transmitter together.

"If I may ask..." he said, as he hovered near the raptors. "Do you have a way to look at what's going on in Robotropolis right now, before we get there? Like a satellite feed? It might help us decide how we want to approach the city. For all I know this version of Robotropolis could be very different from the one I'm familiar with in my old timeline."

[Giichi Twinkieland]

"You know..." Giichi said, piping up on the idea of putting it on a tower. "If you wanted to put it on the tallest tower, that would be Robotnik's central HQ tower in the middle of the city. It's pretty hard to miss, since he shaped it like a giant narrow egg."

"Plus his security on the central elevator's a joke. The last time I was there I just used my little notebook PC and hacked the password for the top floor in no time. All I had to do was use a brute force attack, since he was too lazy to lock the terminal after such and such amount of attempts. Of course, he might have changed something since then so we'd need to be careful. I ended up having to save this deer named Chadin and--"

"Hold it, did you say Chadin?" Nail suddenly hovered closer to the cat, as he took an immediate interest in what Giichi had to say.

Surprised by the maneuver, Giichi couldn't help but move backwards reflexively. Nail was getting awful too close for comfort.

"Y-yes...do you know him?"

"Yeah, of course I do. Like ten years ago in my old timeline, I worked with him and some others to infiltrate an F4 base. We were looking for my kids. That was back when my wife was still the leader of F4 and I figured she was going to stay that way forever. I didn't want them to get indoctrinated into F4's dogma."

Giichi raised his eyebrow at that.

"You have a complicated past, don't you?"

"You don't know but half of it." Nail hovered off to the side, as he gazed out the window. "It's just amazing how much stuff from my past is coming up today. My wife, my dad, and now good old Chadin. I wonder what he looks like now. Wonder if he'd even recognize me...like if he's from a totally different timeline from the one I remember."

[Oh, and you guys got the movie right. Here's a brownie.... *tries to push it through the computer screen* ....well, that didn't work.]

[SOLIS]

[It's okay, I brought my own. *Presses the skip button while she snarfs it down.*]

[Echo]

Quote: "If you wanted to put it on the tallest tower, that would be Robotnik's central HQ tower in the middle of the city. It's pretty hard to miss, since he shaped it like a giant narrow egg."

"Plus his security on the central elevator's a joke. The last time I was there I just used my little notebook PC and hacked the password for the top floor in no time. All I had to do was use a brute force attack, since he was too lazy to lock the terminal after such and such amount of attempts. Of course, he might have changed something since then so we'd need to be careful. I ended up having to save this deer named Chadin and--"

"Really? Hmmm, I don't know about that. What stops captain cholesterol from simply shutting down the turbo lifts should we use them?" Rog asked.

"Middle of the city, ugh" Tybe said scratching the side of his head, "this is going to be one of those days, I can already tell."

"Gichii, do you think with SOLIS' help you could get us back up there?" Amiroo asked in serious tone.

"How do we get back down once we're done? That towers probably what? 120-130 stories tall? How do we know we'll have a way out?" Amero stated.

"If it goes south once you're up there, I'll swoop in and pull you guys out. I should have enough time to pull you out. But lets keep that as a last resort, I don't want to have to risk the ship if we don't have to." Era said

"Joy, we get to watch you get shot down, and then we get the privileged honor of getting captured and experimented on slash eaten by a wannabe Sarlacc who apparently thinks wearing a pool liner for clothing is the 'in thing' this season." Amero retorted.

"Ya know what Amero, your attitude isn't helping things. You've been smarting off at the mouth all day, it's time to cool it." Amiroo snapped.

Amero simply huffed and looked away.

Quote:"If I may ask..."...."Do you have a way to look at what's going on in Robotropolis right now, before we get there? Like a satellite feed? It might help us decide how we want to approach the city. For all I know this version of Robotropolis could be very different from the one I'm familiar with in my old timeline."

"No, it's over the horizon at the moment, the ship's equipment can't see the city yet. We have some probes that orbit your world, but we only have access to those back at the base. This is probably something we should have thought of before we left." Era said.

"Yeah, dropped the ball on that one I guess." Amiroo said rubbing the top of his head resisting the impulse to do the very thing he just reprimanded one of his crew mates for. This day was getting better and better.

"There might be a way to do that, if SOLIS could help us that is."Rog said bringing the transmitter online. "This parabolic antenna is a multirole transceiver. We could temporarily use it as a means for regular radio transmission. Maybe SOLIS could hack into the Mobian sat grid and give us a feed on our ship's computers?"

"I thought super luminal transponders could only transmit super luminal signals." Rye stated

"No, technically anything that can transmit and receive superluminal signals can also transmit regular radio signals. It's all in the physics of the matter." Amiroo stated, earning himself a round of bewildered looks.

"Oh don't look at me like that! I was a port gate technician before I joined up with the military police. Anyways, SOLIS do you think you could do that for us bud?"

[Nail Strafer]

Nail gave the raptors a blank stare as they started talking about transmitters, transceivers, and super luminal transponders. He also felt mildly irritated. All he wanted was a simple "yes" or "no" answer on whether or not they could get a satellite feed. However, since they were asking for SOLIS's help, he figured they meant "maybe".

Quickly he handed over the device, deciding he would simply sit off to the side and let the experts do their work.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Quote:"Gichii, do you think with SOLIS' help you could get us back up there?"

"I don't know. Robotnik may have changed his security system since I was last there. It was easy to get past the lift's password the first time, but I doubt a brute force attack will work now. He may have put a limit on how many attempts you are allowed to enter it. Or maybe now there's a camera that verifies who is in the lift when the password is being put in."

Giichi rubbed his chin as he mused over that elevator ride up in the HQ tower so long ago.

"I think me and Chadin got detected the last time because the lift keeps an activity log in a server somewhere. Robotnik noticed the anomalous use of the lift, put two and two together, and figured out there were intruders in his building. If we want to use the lift we would have to do something about the security system this time. Looking back, I think it was pretty reckless to just use the lift even if the password worked. For all we knew, it could have just been a trap."

He looked at SOLIS as Nail handed it over.

"So SOLIS...what can you do about a security system for us?"

[SOLIS]

"You say it keeps a log of of activity?" the device chimed before pausing a few moments to consider. "Assuming his electronics are fairly standard, I could monitor communications and scan the local file system for writes. If it's local, a simple log edit would be all that's necessary, and I could install a driver on the network stack if remote, simply have it not send messages for a few minutes before removing and deleting itself. There would be no sign we were ever there."

"As far as keeping track of activity, that may be more difficult. I can only keep an eye on a few things at once. However, if I can gain access to his system, I could possibly install some sort of proximity system that lets me filter inputs down to local, nearby sources."

[Echo]

[sorry for the delay, work got crazy for a bit]

Amiroo frowned a bit,

"so is that a yes or a no on whether you could break into the Mobian satellite grid?"

"you guys need to hurry this up, we're approaching our intersect here shortly" Era said from the cockpit.

[Nail Strafer]

Nail sat off to the side, as he tried to keep up with what SOLIS was talking about. Alas, he was not well-versed in computers or electronics, so most of it flew over his head. He wished these guys would just say "yes, I can do it" or "no I can't" instead of the technobabble.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Quote:"Assuming his electronics are fairly standard, I could monitor communications and scan the local file system for writes. If it's local, a simple log edit would be all that's necessary, and I could install a driver on the network stack if remote, simply have it not send messages for a few minutes before removing and deleting itself. There would be no sign we were ever there."

"Hmm..how would you get into his system?" Giichi asked. "Wireless? Do you need us to find a port for you?"

The cat didn't remember seeing anything like that the last time he was there though.

[Sorry I don't have much to add this round. We really need to get onto Robotropolis soon.]