WARNING, I will be using the events of 09/11/01 as a part of this story. If this could possibly offend you, don't read this story. This story will contain little sex. Some may be necessary for the plot of the story.

Relic is an avenger. A crime fighter.This story approaches 9/11 in that context.

Leslie Josette Gill

RELIC

Started 9/22/01 By LJG

Chapter 4
The Relic Irregulars

I knew that the FBI and the government agencies watching me, would gain nothing.  I knew that they would be dissecting all my email and phone traffic, as little of it as there was.  Let me real here, I was a boring person.  I had my work, my computer stuff and my computer friends.  I didn't have much else. 

I knew there would be no requests of help from the feds.  So, it was time to do something.  I came up with a very old idea.  The irregulars.  Sherlock Holmes had done it.  I could do it too.  The people I had in mind, would be the eyes and ears of Relic.  Maybe I could stop some trouble before it started.

In the meantime, the damn FBI were becoming nuisances.  They came in and slapped a subpoena on me and tried to take my computer equipment.  I caught the lead guy and gave him a big set of Heebie-Jeebies by looking into his eyes.  The cops got the hell out of my apartment really quick.  The lead guy didn't explain to any of them why, just to get the hell out of my apartment.  I had a friend at a local ISP and I quietly ftp'd my critical stuff to the server.  I also got myself a bunch of 4mm dat tapes and did a massive dump.  I changed to Relic and put the tapes somewhere safe.  I knew the FBI would be back.

I was looking for a new home, real quick.  It looked like Relic was going to be an outcast, a criminal.  (I think it was shades of Spiderman.)  I was wanting to cooperate.  But they just didn't want my help.  None of the federal agencies did.  I was competition. 

So, I decided to find a new place to live.  I needed communication and power.  I needed a way to come and go without being watched.  And I didn't need any searches and seizures without me being there.  I had no idea what to do. 

While I was pondering what I needed to do about relocating, I was working on the irregulars.  I needed to set up a place where my eyes and ears would tell me things by passing them on anonymously.  To that end, I set up a couple of anonymous remailers hooked to multiple email addresses.  I had it set up so if the feds did find one email address, it would set them around in another circle.  It would take an uber-elete hacker to figure it out, but it could take several months to track down just one address.  I could change the addresses at will and let the irregulars know.  My computer skills would be of great assistance.  I also had a cell phone for emergencies with an email address which would tell me if anything really big was up.  I had to figure out how to tell the really hot calls from just the nuisance stuff. 

But sometimes the nuisance stuff was valuable for information.  This was about making friends and building a network of help.  I was in this alone and I needed help.  Then it hit me.  I had a pipeline into the trangendered community.  Talking about irregulars!

What a lot of people don't realize, is that your typical TV is a techie.  Don't ask me why or how, but most TV's are smart.  And these people are used to being secret.  I think I had a great idea.  But how to rally them?  That would be the trick. 

I had some addresses of groups around the country.  I quietly mailed a request for help to the group.  What I did was offer for Relic to pay a visit to the group meetings around the country.  There, I would give them the email addresses and ask them to just report what they see and hear.  I would also give them the emergency email and pager number so that if something was going down, I could be notified immediately.  I didn't know if I could hide from the feds, but, I was going to try.

I decided to change to Relic and do some scouting.  It didn't take long to find several warehouses that offered good location and security.  My data lines were going to be a problem.  So, I needed to tap into someone else’s LAN and use their recourses quietly.  I had to be careful as I didn't want to be detected. I decided that a wireless connection was the best.  I needed to find a network and plant multiple transmitters.  The only problem was conflicting IP's.  Most corporate networks were administered by IT departments who had limited resources.  If I could get a login on a network, I was gold.  I needed help.

I had done some consulting in the past and had a few connections.  I made a few phone calls and found one or two IT guys who were cooperating.  But at a cost.  I was going to have to provide some services.  Stuff like fixing programs and configuring servers.  It had to be remotely done.  I wasn't coming in to work at someone else’s site.  So what ever I did, it had to be remote.  But I got the help.  The building I was looking at was a good line of site to my transmitter.  I got an ID and IP assignment and I was set. 

The warehouse I found was easy to get space in.  I told them that I would build my own room and that I would be very quiet.  All they wanted was a written agreement that I wasn't doing anything illegal there.  I laughed and said that I was crime fighting.  That got a good belly laugh.  The space was cheap too.

I went out and spent fifty thousand dollars and moved a small motor home

into the warehouse. 

Now, I had a place to live, data lines, and privacy.  My old apartment was going to be missed. 

It took a couple of weeks to make the move.  I had to shift forms several times to make the arrangements.  I used several faces to make the necessary power and phone arrangements.  My cover story was that I needed to put in a server farm and this location was close by way of line of site with the customers I was working for.  The dummies bought it.  Most folk don't know about computers. 

I purchased a couple of rack mount servers, a couple of good workstations, and some backup equipment and was transferring the data when the Feds came back.  This time, they had multiple agents and deputies with the same subpoena.  I couldn't refuse them this time.  But, I had wiped the drives to the point that no data recovery tool would get the drive.  I had written all 1's to the drive then erased it and re-wrote it several times again.  IF they did manage to get any data off any of the sidebands, they would be lucky.

They took my old beat up monster and everything that was computer related.  I contacted my attorney and informed him to work to get my stuff back.  I knew that this was harassment, so I didn't expect to get anything back in one piece.  I just moved to the new location.  Hell, they even seized my old beat up Pickup truck.  They really wanted to be mean. 

I filled a harassment complaint with the Feds and got ignored.  OK, they were playing rough.  I ignored them and went back to my normal life.  I had most of my clothes at the other location and my TV and Radio.  I was quietly moving bits and pieces to the new location over the couple of weeks I had.  I thought that was a miracle in itself. 

I called the attorney and informed him that I was moving and gave him the cell phone number and all the necessary contact info.  I was now living a new life.

I started visiting several TV groups all over the country.  I came as Relic.  Relic always wore either black or white lingerie in public.  My plan was simple.  The TV's out there were government employees and law enforcement  personnel.  They were all through the service sector.  They were diverse.  They were connected.  They all were fascinated by Relic and my abilities.  Most of the groups were cooperative.  They agreed to help me with my mission.  I informed them that I would never hurt or burn any of the groups.  I only needed information.  IF the information was too sensitive, I would try to find a diversion.  I asked them to spread the word and pass the contact info around.  The feds would have no idea what they were up against.  I did have one concern.  What if one of the TV groups had a Fed agent in it?  Well, that was fixed with the possibility of them being outed.  Not a good move career wise.  I felt safe.

My network was growing.  Then the strange phone call came. 

"I am looking for Joe."

"Who is this?"

"I am a mutual friend who needs to meet Relic."

Well, this was out of the blue.  I felt safe meeting anyone. 

"I can make the contact if you wish, but first, who are you?"

"I will meet with Relic and tell her everything.  I don't want to use the public airways for this."

I got the location from this mysterious person and quickly found him at the phone where he was calling from.

I observed him from above and quickly figured out who he was.  Military Intelligence.  I was suspicious, but began to think, if I was going to be help to anyone, the military was good enough.  I just had to be real careful.  They would have been briefed as to my abilities.

I changed into proper street attire, a nice red dress and heels, and quietly landed behind the guy.

"So you want my help?"

He snapped around quickly and looked at me. 

"You're Relic?" 

"Yes, now what does the military want with me?"

He was shocked by this, but recovered.  "We want to talk to you.  We want to ask for your help, but, quietly.  The feds want your skin.  We would like to make an arrangement."

The man basically outlined a plan where I would give the US military, CIA, and NSA some badly needed help with the damn terrorist.  They needed to know what was going on.  Right off the bat, they had one bad guy who wasn't talking and wanted me to pick his brain of information.  In exchange, I would get my equipment back, (or rather Joe's) and a promise to be left alone.  I would give them the extra help they needed when the time came.  I had no problem with this part.  I didn't want to be a soldier and take orders or anything, but I did need the connections and this was a good arrangement.  I would just have to be careful to keep them honest.  I didn't trust them.

I took a ride to a ware house frightfully close to my site and there, in a dark room, was an Arab, tied to a chair, with a bunch of goons around him.  They had tried drugs, pain, and intimidation but, they didn't have any luck.  I was clearly out of place.

I came in, and at first, the group of goons wolf whistled me.  "Fred, who is the fabulous chick?"

Fred quietly gave them a stern look and the guys got very silent.  I walked up to the Arab and took his head in my hands.  I looked him in the eyes.  I quickly saw what the NSA wanted.   I looked at Fred.  HE was a good intentioned, all American.  He didn't have a bad bone in his body.  I decided to look around the room.  I saw some murders and some general ill deeds, but well intentioned patriotism.  I gave them what they wanted.

"Fellows, this guy is only the messenger.  You need to find a guy using an alias of Richard Fellows.  He had the bomb material.  They plan to build a small device and put it where it will do the most damage.  They haven't figured out that part yet, but they are close to having a working 10K tactical device.  Small, but deadly to thousands.  Especially if they find the right spot.  They are operating in a mini-warehouse on the edge of town.  I wrote the address down."

Fred looked grateful.  "Where will you be, if we need you?"

"on the other end of the phone."

"right"

He immediately got on his cell phone and started calling in the troops.

One of the goons yelled back at me as I was leaving, "hey babe, you got some free time?"

He needed a lesson, "Sure, I like big strong guys.  What you got in mind?"

"Oh just a quickie.  How about a BJ?" 

I smiled.  "drop'em."

He looked at his buddies, and dropped his pants.  I quietly dropped to my knees and just before making any kind of body contact, I changed form into the worst looking demon I could muster from his fears.  My fangs were 2 inches long.  I looked up at him and asked in the most fearsome low voice, fangs glistening in the light, "You still want that BJ?" 

He turned white as a ghost and fell back on his butt.  He back-peddled away from me so fast that I think he pissed himself.

I changed back into the nice girl form and smiled.  "Spoil sport!"

I don't think he was going to get it up for quite a while.  Fred just smiled.  I think I had made a friend.  There was now, no doubt to any of the agents who I was.

I quietly left and went back to my new location.  I got a cell phone call from Fred.  "We found the bomb and the other person.  He was just installing the detonation device when we found him.  A couple of minutes more, and he could have set off the device."

"I am glad to be of service.  Let me know via Joe if you need anything else.  By the way, when will Joe get his equipment back?"

"The feds are grumbling, but they are going to deliver it back to your apartment tomorrow.  I warned them not to have damaged anything, or the government will have to pay for it."

"Well, we will see what kind of condition it's in.  Joe gets real picky about his computers.  IF you piss him off, you may not get a good a communications with me."

"I will make sure."

I needed to be clean.  I was lucky that this motor home had a full bathtub.  It was smaller than a normal tub, but would do.  I soaked in it for at least an hour.  I got up and set about setting up the new place with what I needed.  I didn't need much room.  I had enough power, and now, space to maneuver.  The motor home had an expanding room on the outside, and I used it for the server farm.  All I needed was a desk for the terminal.  I brought up 4 racks of equipment with 1000 gig, all on hard drives.

I made sure the network connection was live and tested the equipment.  I was getting my same basic T1 connection on two nodes.  I was happy.  I also asked the guys to not firewall me.  I needed to be direct connected.  That cost me a few extra favors, but IF they only knew what I was doing with the bandwidth, they would have approved. 

I was mostly a night owl.  I didn't do much during the day.  I was careful about bandwidth and accessing things while the corporate eyes were watching.  After hours, things were different.  Mostly, these guys were doing their backups and testing things.  I checked and I had a direct connection before the firewall.  I was hot.

My first email messages to my anonymous box were coming in.  I was noticing introductions and little messages of thanks.  I did get the first real message about work.  It was from Fred.  They liked my setup and agreed to continue to use it to communicate.  Fred wanted to know where Joe's base of operation was.  I wasn't about to tell him.  I think Joe had impressed him on how well he had set up the anon servers.

The next day, I went to my old apartment and there, my old beat up truck and my equipment was parked in the drive way.  They had decided to just load everything back up in the truck and park it in the driveway.  Security wise, bad move, but I was happy as I got my stuff back.  I needed the extra hard drives, even though they had been erased. I was going to be careful though.  I suspected bugs, and tracers all over the place.  I used some Relic power and found the suspicions were right.  They had swapped a lan card with one specially used for tracing Packet traffic.  It had a way to trace back to momma where the traffic originated.  It used arp and located the originating IP address.  Not me, I wasn't falling for it......

I also checked my old truck for tracers.  Yup, there were a couple.  One obvious and one not.  I got both and quietly left them running long enough to put them on a garbage truck on the way bye.  I also gave the suspicious lan card to a college teacher for use in their classroom.  I carefully took each piece of equipment to the motor home and set it outside until I had time to check it out.  I was real fortunate as I had a garage door opener and could drive right up to where the home was parked in the warehouse.  I think I had it pretty well worked out.

I had managed to fix most of the problems.  Now, I had work to do. 

I was getting traffic on rumors about the terrorist.  The big rumor was that the terrorist were preparing to go about another group of airplane hijackings.  That they wanted to let the US get comfortable then, wham, hit us again.  The trick was to really demoralize us.  To induce fear.  To shut down the financial centers of the country.  If they were successful, they would indeed shut down the country.

Fred had another email in the box.  This was a request to meet at the Pentagon.  Fred was saying that I need to fit in while there, so nothing flamboyant.  Damn, I wanted to make an impression.  But, I couldn't have everything my way.  I stepped out the motor home, and slipped out the roof access of the warehouse.  (I had bypassed the alarm and could come and go at will.)

I flew to Washington and landed in a parking garage on the other side of the pentagon.  There, I walked across the bridge and entered on the Clinic side of the building.  I noticed the name of the new clinic, De Larinzo Tri Care Health clinic.  I knew several folk who worked there and what they did.  I met Fred, who was wearing his official okie-dokie badge, and he had mine.  It said VIP and "Escort" on it.  That meant that I couldn't go anywhere unless I had him with me.  The damage to the building had caused much increased security to everyone. 

Fred was very cautious.  "please don't do anything in the open.  The security folk will be all over you very quickly."

That meant, be a nice girl.

The meeting I was going to, had several agencies represented.  Fred entered and then I entered.  When I came in the room, everyone stood.  I was introduced as "our special guest."

To cut through all the politics, they wanted me to do some very high profile acts of defiance to the terrorist groups.  They wanted me to deliberately throw the groups off balance by going over to their countries and picking fights with the leaders.  They wanted me to kill Hussain and his subordinate.  They wanted me to be blamed for the actions, instead of the US.  I ducked behind a couple of guys and came back as a Hussain look a like.  The room erupted.

Fred quieted everyone down.  "This is just one of many abilities our friend has.  Don't be alarmed.  I think you can see what we may have planned."

I ducked back behind the group and came out as Relic in all her glory.

"Now I am a bit more comfortable."

Several of the generals finally got it.  "YOUR RELIC!"

"Of course, who did you expect?"

"You are the vigilante!"

"No, I am a concerned US citizen who has the abilities to help, but up until now, no one wanted my help.  Not even the President."

Fred spoke up, "That has been rectified."

"Good."

Fred basically laid out a mission profile and I was to go in alone and create much havoc.  I would kill several key opposition targets, as an Arab woman and do so in front of many witnesses.  Including a TV crew.  That would be difficult as I would have to disappear quickly.  Then come back as an Arab man and walk around until safe to disappear.  Then, do exactly the same thing to the rest of the groups. 

I didn't want to become the government assassin, but this time, I could see the necessity. 

I left the room as normally dressed.  But as soon as I was airborne, I changed back to my normal Relic form.  I flew at great speed (I was once clocked at mach 4) to Iran and Syria.  I did exactly as planned.  I drew Relic and took the head of several key figures as an Arab woman.  I quickly changed as a guard and took their defensive positions.  I normally didn't speak any Arabic, but Relic deciphered it for me so I could communicate.  I even spoke back with Relic's help.

I walked into the harem and saw the brutality of what some sects of Islam does to women.  I was outraged, but kept on my mission.  I would see to this later.

I quickly caused much confusion.  The terrorist network was hearing about the assignations, and Chicken Noodle News was reporting an assignation within the terrorist own group.

I left the area and went back airborne.  I just hovered at about 20,000 feet while deciding if I had made enough of a stir.  The terrorist groups fell silent.  They didn't know where the attacks had come from.  Only that the woman with the very old sword had killed their leaders.  The woman was Arabic so they couldn't blame the US.  It was just as planned.  We had thrown confusion into the groups.  It would destabilize them and the feds and US government could sort them out now. 

It had only taken me a day to do what the feds had wanted to do for years.  It  was so easy.  I wondered how long it would take for everyone to know the sword.  Right now, no one made the connection. 

My information group had started to warm up.  I had a couple of very good sources in the pentagon.  (little did security know.)  My source had told me that I had somehow impressed the brass at the pentagon and they were going to give me the necessary help to work in the US.  I didn't like leaving the country.  This was bad in my mind.  I wanted to fight the bad guys here, not abroad.  I had to somehow fix this.

Continued in Part 5 "Dark Clouds" of Relic