Out of the Black - Lee Doty [17]
Wys were issued carefully and infrequently, and oversight of the issuing judges was strict. Abuses of the warrant system were rare, and dealt with harshly. When a warrant key was issued, it was tuned to a specific computer. When the key was used, the decrypted data would be copied aside and the key would expire.
That was how it was supposed to work. A few mob accountants might have computers with non-compliant encryption, but usually not history professors. Why would a college professor risk serious jail time just to hide his data? Not usually the kind of thing you do to protect ungraded papers or pre-publication research on the Boston Tea Party.
Ping packaged a copy of Dr. Lutine's decrypt-resistant data in a secure message and sent it to the FBI for cracking. He didn't have much hope of getting the data back in less than a month, if ever. Non-standard encryption was subtle, and often reactive. Even the Feds had a less than fifty percent recovery rate.
He slipped the Doctor's tablet back into its evidence bag and reached for the driver's tablet. As he fished in the plastic evidence bag, his hand closed on the flashlight/glasses case first. He pulled it out, mildly curious. It felt comfortable in his hand, like it had been made just for him... so not a glasses case. On closer inspection, he found an activating stud in a recess near his thumb on the grip.
He pressed it, but heard only a small electronic lock rejection tone. A locked flashlight?
Ping turned it over in his hands. Other than the thumb stud and the comfortable grip, there was no further hint of its purpose. Maybe it was some kind of stun gun, but it didn't look like anything he had seen before. There were no electrodes on the end, nor any visible holes for projectiles. The business end of the assumed gun was smooth and featureless. On the other end, there was some kind of etched glyph.
He accessed the forensic scans on the item. He cut the glyph from the scan and kicked off a global search. While the search ran, he turned his attention to the internal scan of the object. There was a small amount of solid state connected to the activating stud, but no other complexity inside the object. The scanner showed the internals of the object to be solid, with no structures or mechanisms. The solid state, though unmapped as yet, wasn't enough for much more than key recognition. The preliminary forensics tag classified the object as inert-green: useless and harmless. There were no interesting mechanics, electronics, or chemicals. The scan registered the composition of the object as the same ceramic alloy used to make most firearms, with traces of tungsten and platinum.
He rummaged around in the driver's evidence bag and came away with two rings.
Each ring was made of what looked like platinum, an odd choice for a lock ring, but not unheard-of. He checked the window that held the search results for the glyph- nothing.
He opened another window and brought up the forensic team's detailed scan of the rings. He checked the composition: platinum. No surprise there. He checked for any surface marks. None bore any manufacturer's identification marks, but each bore a small replica of the glyph that adorned the bottom of the maybe-gun. The mark was scrawled lightly and less than a millimeter in diameter. They would have been too small for him to notice if he were examining the rings physically, but the scanner saw them clearly.
He slipped one of the rings on his finger, and with the end of the couldn't-be-a-stun-gun carefully pointed away, up at the roof of the car,pushed the stud- nothing but the lock-fail tone. That was expected, since the thing was basically a solid metal bar with a button.
He removed the ring and tried the other, carefully aimed the not-stunner at the roof, and pressed the stud. The results were... well, stunning.
A long blade exploded from the formerly featureless end of the device with the ringing sound of a swiftly drawn sword. The impact of the blade with the roof drove the hilt, along with his unprepared hand, down into his groin.