Shutting down the Troupe's systems was delicate work.  Even the minor systems, for instance, the little telephone switches, had a million or more lines of antique corporate freeware.  The software had been created by vast teams of twentieth-century software engineers, hired labor for extinct telephone empires like AT&T and SPRINT.  It was freeware because it was old, and because everybody who'd ever made it was either dead now or in other work.  Those armies of telephone engineers were now as scattered and extinct at the Soviet Red Army.

Jane opened her favorite laptop, dragged the system monitor onto it off Mickey's sysadmin machine, and checked to see that all the instrumentation was safely down.  Peter, Greg, and Martha had been on the job; all the towers were off-line and down now, except for the telecom tower.  They always left the telecom for last.  It made more sense, really, to take down the security system last, but the perimeter posts were pig stupid and paranoid little entities that reacted to any sudden loss of packets as prima facie evidence of enemy sabotage.  Unless they were petted to sleep first, the posts would whoop like crazy.