NeuralCiberGuard · Career, part two
An alert just fired. Go and find out what it is.
Career Roadster puts you on the road into IT. This is what comes after: you are the specialist on call for a region full of infrastructure — a data centre, a records archive, an offshore wind array, a transport hub, a research campus. When something looks wrong, you fly out in AeroJet-Sense, a survey aircraft that reads a site from the air. Altitude and route are the interface. Some things cannot be read from 200 metres, and some cannot be seen one service at a time.
The flying is the easy half. The job is the call you make when you get there.
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Five call-outs
Real findings, real judgement
An exposed management port, a store being read by somebody nobody can name, a sensor array that disagrees with itself, a broker that turns out to be fine, and a server that handed over its own keys. Each one names the protocol, the fault, and the control that fixes it.
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Defensive only
Recognise, classify, respond
Every call-out teaches you to spot a weakness in an estate you are responsible for and to choose the right control. Nothing here is an attack recipe, and nothing here needs a system that is not yours.
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Every browser
Map view carries it all
If this device cannot run 3D — or you would simply rather read — the map view has every call-out, every explanation, every ATT&CK reference and every question, and your progress is the same in both.
Loading the mission pack…
The call you have to make
On arrival you classify what you found, and there are exactly five answers. Getting this right is the core skill, and it goes wrong in both directions: calling a false positive an incident spends people who were doing something else and makes the next real alert less believed, and calling an incident a misconfiguration leaves somebody else holding a live credential.
- Normal
- The estate is behaving as designed. The alert was not wrong to fire — it may simply need a maintenance window.
- Misconfiguration
- A setting is genuinely wrong and genuinely needs fixing, but nothing in the evidence says anybody has used it.
- Unusual activity
- Something is happening that nobody can account for. Contain it, then find out. This is the honest answer far more often than either of the two beside it.
- Security incident
- Unauthorised access has actually happened. There is no benign reading of the evidence.
- False positive
- There is nothing here. The alert itself is what needs work.
Controls
Every key can be changed, and the whole game is playable from the keyboard alone. A gamepad works as soon as you plug one in. Open Controls from the pause menu to remap anything. You do not need to click the game first — the keys are live from the moment the flight starts.
| Action | Keys | Gamepad | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Throttle | W ↑ | RT, left stick up | More speed. You never stall — the wing always keeps flying. |
| Airbrake | S ↓ | LT, left stick down | Slow down for a tight survey orbit, or to get inside the conversion speed. It will not take you below 32 m/s while the nozzles are aft. |
| Roll / yaw | A D ← → | Left stick X | Bank to turn. Let go and it levels itself. With the nozzles down this becomes yaw on the spot, on the reaction controls. |
| Climb / descend | Space Shift | Right stick Y | Change altitude to enter a survey band, or to lower yourself onto the ground in a hover. The vertical-speed figure beside the altitude says how fast. |
| Thrust vectoring | H | L3 (left stick press) | Rotate the nozzles down and hover, the way a Harrier does. It takes about two seconds, it is refused above 162 km/h, it burns a reserve you can see, and it is the only way to land. |
| Authenticate | F | R3 (right stick press) | Present your engineer credential at the site you are working. The survey will not run until you have. Pressing it anywhere else counts against you. |
| Survey | E Enter | A / X | Hold inside the survey band, once authenticated, to gather the readings. On a touch screen the on-screen Enter button latches it on and off instead. |
| Answer the question | Q | RB | Open the classification and the response, or re-open one you closed. Every call-out ends with both. |
| Next destination | N | LB | Point the compass, the destination line and the map at the next site. It does not change which call-out is active. |
| Auto-level | L | Y | Snap back to straight and level. It needs the stick centred, and it says so if it is not. It is a wingborne assist and stands down in a hover. |
| Change view | V | B | Chase or cockpit. Cockpit locks the horizon in reduced-motion mode. |
| Read instruments | T | Select | Announce speed, altitude, vertical speed, heading, the nozzle state and all four readings aloud. |
| Pause | P Esc | Start | Pause, restart, release the current call-out, see your skills, remap, switch views, reset progress. |
While you are flying, the two links at the top of the page leave the tab order so that Enter cannot navigate away mid-flight; the Menu · pause button beside them takes their place and carries the way out. Everything is back to normal the moment you leave the flight.
What you will be asked to do
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Read the alert and fly out
Each alert names a site, a severity and a confidence. Each site is a wide translucent column. Fly into it — and watch the four readings fill as you close on it.
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Match the band
Inside the column is a gate at a specific altitude. The survey only runs while you are inside it, and each site wants a different height. Sitting in the middle of the gate rather than at its edge is what Navigation accuracy is scored on.
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Authenticate, then survey
Present your credential to the site before you touch it, then hold the survey key until the readings are in. Wobbling out of the band drains the survey rather than resetting it.
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Make the call, then choose the control
Two questions: what is this, and what do you do about it. They appear on their own, and Q brings them back if you close them. The explanation is shown either way, and a wrong answer costs you the investigation award rather than the mission.
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Land on the nozzles, if you want the last ten points
Slow below 162 km/h, press H, and the nozzles rotate down over about two seconds. Then you can stop in mid-air, turn on the spot and lower yourself onto the site at under 2.5 m/s. It burns a reserve, so it is a decision and not a mode you leave switched on.
How you are scored
Seven awards per call-out, and the flight report after each one tells you which you earned and exactly why you missed the rest.
Mission completion +50 · Successful flight +20 · Navigation accuracy +15 · Correct authentication +20 · Good investigation and response +35 · No unnecessary actions +15 · Safe landing +10.
Underneath that, fourteen skills are tracked from 0 to 100% and they rise through play rather than through a quiz — six aviation skills (flight control, navigation, instrument awareness, flight planning, situational awareness, precision) and eight in IT and security (networking, identity, authentication, authorization, detection, analysis, response, risk judgment). You can see them at any time from the pause menu.