Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1 (78 page)

              “What the hell did you do?” she demanded, managing to keep her voice down.  Lorcan moved over to the customs agent and took his weapon as well as all the ID cards and data crystals he could find on the man.  “What are you doing?”

              “I took care of the immediate problem,” Lorcan said getting to his feet.  He handed over Truelove’s pistol to her, keeping the other for himself.  “We need to beat feet back to the hangar and quick.”  He raised the data pad from where he’d dropped it on the deck, grimacing at the cracked face and the smashed in end where he’d hit the agent.  The main screen immediately powered up, but then it flickered intermittently.  “Damn it.  Oh well, I guess I’ll need to get another tablet.  Or maybe a datapad.”

              “What the hell are you babbling about?” she hissed, grabbing the sleeve of his shipsuit.  “You just killed that man!  And you might have killed him!”

              He glared at her, as though she was some annoying child screaming for a later bedtime.  “And what do you think would have happened if I didn’t?  Did you think that once they checked out my tablet that they would have just sent us on our way?  Or do you think they would have arrested us and tossed
us
in the brig alongside Vosteros and his people?  How could we have helped them then?”

              “I didn’t sign up for that,” she told him, disgust on her face and a stricken look creeping over her features.

              “You signed on to help the crew of the
Emilia Walker
,” he pointed out, his own look just as hard.  “You knew that at some point, someone might get killed.  Don’t whine at me because you’re getting squeamish now that the hard part has just begun.”

              “Just begun?” she whimpered.  Jesma looked very lost and afraid now, a far cry from the cocky wrench holder and pilot demeanor she normally portrayed.

              “Oh, yeah,” he said.  “My little knock-knock is going to be hitting the firewalls in less than two minutes.  Once that happens all hell is going to come crashing down on this station.  And we’re going to have to move quickly if we’re going to rescue Vosteros and his people.”  He took off at a brisk walk down the corridor and after a long moment, another glance at the men lying on the deck, she trotted off after him.

Book Four: The Hammer Falls

Chapter 25

              Goris Hana sat in his control room, staring at his various monitors and displays, when one of the feeds flickered.  It was just a small flicker, but it was enough to catch his attention.  He turned to look at the monitor, which was still showing a status feed of the fuel tank farm, which were at about ninety percent capacity.  The bloated toad tapped on the monitor’s surface and the flicker came through again.  He frowned, tapping it again.  This time, when it flickered, so did the virtual display of the life support feeds.  Growing concerned, he brought up his control pad and activated the control to refresh all the screens.  They all blanked out and five seconds later, they all reset, but now three more were flickering, as though there was some sort of problem in the computer system.  This was no faulty circuit.

              “What is going on?” he demanded to the empty room.  Stabbing a finger on his comm button, he signaled Operations.  “This is Hana.  What is going on up there?”

              “Sorry, sir, we have a bit of a situation,” his exec replied.  “Escalating computer problems.”

              “Yes, I can see that,” Hana rumbled irritably.  “What is happening?”

              “Glitches, sir,” the man reported.  “And they seem to be getting worse.  Long range communications are still up and life support is actually unaffected so far, but the computers are running slower.  It’s as if a lot of programs are running in the background that are eating up all the processing power.”

              “Well fix it!” the toad demanded, slapping a hand on his desk for effect.

              “We’re working on it, sir,” the man said, sounding harried.

              “Work faster,” he growled, ending the call.  “I do
not
have the patience for this today.”

              Things were rapidly falling apart on the station.  Four of the emergency airlocks popped open, venting atmosphere from two different decks before crew were able to seal the inner doors.  No one was sucked out into the void, but sixteen people were brought to the station’s infirmary with exposure.  The lights began to dim and flicker all over the fueling station, much to the annoyance of everyone.  The lifts would stop abruptly and then set off again in the opposite direction, often at breakneck speed.  With the lights going out, the screams of absolute terror could be heard throughout the station.  Three of the massive fueling hoses inexplicably began spewing fuel all over the second hangar, sending workers scrambling in all directions to try and contain the fuel before either too much was lost or it ignited.

              In a short time, the communications array began sending random bits of messages, music, pieces of a variety of conversations and entertainment vids on every channel and frequency, clogging everything up.  No one could get a clear signal to anyone else in the system, even on the emergency ones, as a jumbled mass of communications came through, sounding like coherent static, as the crew’s ears were able to detect the myriad and sunder of transmissions, but they made no sense whatsoever, until finally ear-shattering feedback began to blare over all of those frequencies at random intervals for random amounts of time.

              No one in Operations had any clue what was going on.  The workers at their consoles stabbed impotently at the controls, trying desperately to get some semblance of order back to their stations, but it was all for nothing. 

              One of the workers called to his supervisor.  “Sir!  I think I know what’s going on.”

              “Well spit it out, man!” the supervisor yelled, exasperated.  His once orderly control area had been reduced to all the order and discipline as a rave nightclub, complete with flickering and flashing screens, loud obnoxious noise coming from anything with a speaker, and finally the blue smoke smell of burned electronics as various computers and other systems began to short and finally burn themselves out.

              “Well, sir, we just had Nelson and MacKenzie up here yesterday and they just ran through their scrubbing protocols.  And now suddenly all our systems are going completely crazy.”

              “So you’re saying it’s a virus,” the boss stated.

              “I’m saying it’s some kind of malware, yes, sir,” the man replied.  “But with the system on the fritz like this I don’t know if we have a way of finding where it came from.”

              “Right now, I don’t care where it came from,” the boss told him.  “Start isolating it and getting our systems back.”

              “On it.”  He turned away, to his nearby colleagues.  “Start pulling consoles out of the network.  Then we can flush out any viruses and such and then restore from clean backups.  Won’t be as quick and efficient as running on the network, but it will prevent further contamination of the whole system.”

              “Then do it,” the boss said, flipping open his communicator to update Hana.

              “So I think at this point, they should have gotten the idea to start breaking apart the network,” Lorcan said to the others from the shuttle.  He had warned them all not to connect to the station net by any means while this was going on.  No calls out using the shuttle’s comm system, no updates, don’t even set the clock.  The others were smiling at this, all but Jesma who still had a horrified expression on her face.  She was seated in the cockpit of the shuttle, as far from the heavy worlder as she could get and still be aboard.  Lorcan and Ka’Xarian both believed that she would not want to work with the big man ever again after what had happened in that hallway.

              “And you sound like that’s a bad thing,” Vakkon said suspiciously.

              But Lorcan shook his head.  “No, it
is
a good thing.  But the knock-knock is designed to work individually as well as in a network.  So if they isolate systems, the programs are self-replicating.  If even a small portion of the knock-knock survives, it’ll rebuild itself in the individual systems and crash those.  It’ll take them a while to completely purge the system so they can install clean backups and get their systems back.”

              “Self-replicating software?” Ka’Xarian asked, his antennae wheeling in amusement.  “You didn’t come up with that on your own.  And I know you didn’t do all the coding for that.”

              Lorcan had the grace to look embarrassed.  “Well, Stella and Commander Samair
may
have made a pass or two through the coding and made a few… suggestions.”

              The zheen nodded.  “That makes more sense.  But whatever.  It’s working.”  The smiles faded as everyone realized the hard part had just begun.  “Now we need to get through the station and get those people out.”

              “Cargo loading operations completed, Captain,” Stella reported, her voice coming through the bridge’s overhead speaker.  “The last shuttle is unloaded, and the cargo division is just trimming out the load now.”

              He nodded.  “Good.”

              “Captain?  I’m reading something strange from the fueling station.”  George had resumed his station on the bridge, though Eamonn had had serious doubts about bringing the man back.  But he had returned with his usual efficiency and within no time at all, they were back into normal routine, the incident behind them, but not forgotten by either party.

              “What is it, George?”  The Captain damped down on an involuntary reaction to snap at the man.  He was trying very hard to keep his emotions in check.  He had a feeling George (and probably Kutok) was doing the same.

              “The fueling station is broadcasting all sorts of noise on every channel.”

              Serinda, at communications, nodded.  “I’m getting that too, Captain.  I was just about to report.”  The raven-haired woman looked up at him.  “They started about six minutes ago, but we only just received the first of the communications.  And George is right, it’s just… noise.”  She held up her hands in confusion.

              “In fact,” Stella said, appearing on the captain’s display, “it’s a mishmash of overlapping conversations, and other audio and video files.”

              The Captain stroked his chin.  “Why would they do that?”

              “They wouldn’t,” Serinda replied.  “Not intentionally.  They’re essentially just clogging up the communications frequencies with junk.  I can’t understand what happened though.  No one has transmitted anything to the station that should have caused that.”

              “George?” the Captain asked, turning to the operations officer.

              “They haven’t taken any damage, no one has attacked them,” he replied, studying his readouts.  “Two of the pinnaces have moved into the station for docking since the transmissions started.  Probably going in to try and render assistance.”

              The Captain turned back to his own displays, pursing his lips in thought.  “Anyone have an idea what’s happening?”  Then he noticed the AI covering her mouth as though to stifle giggles.  “What?”

              “I think I know what’s going on, Captain,” she said, before she was overcome with a laughing fit.

              He sighed.  “If I have to say ‘what’ again, you are not going to like it, Stella,” he warned her.

              She straightened, composing herself.  “Sorry, Captain.  But as I said, I think I know what’s going on.  Ka’Xarian’s team have deployed the knock-knock package we’ve been working on.”

              Eamonn stared at her blankly.  “A… knock-knock package?” he asked, his tone dripping with derision. 

              “Yes, Captain.  It’s a software package that Lorcan, Tamara and I have been working on for the last little while, while we were in hyperspace on the way here.  We thought that at some point we might need to drop a bad day in someone’s lap and it seems that Lorcan did so.”

              “How can you be sure?”

              She shrugged.  “The communications scramble is one of the particulars of the program.  It attacks everything in the target’s computer system.  I’m sure the crew of the station are in pure hell right now, if the communications scramble is any indication.”  Her look was smug.

              He thought for a moment.  “What are the other defense ships doing?”

              George consulted his displays.  “One of the pinnaces is holding station at the orbital, Captain.  But the other two are hauling ass over to the fueling station.”  Then he frowned.  “One of the remaining ships around the fueling station has just taken off away from the station.  It’s on a course that will take them straight ‘up’, above the plane of the ecliptic, but I don’t think they’re aiming for anything in particular.  The fueling station is really at the extreme range our sensors, even with all the upgrades.  I can’t really get a good fix on what’s going on.”

              “Well then,” the Captain said, turning to the helm.  “Since we’re done with the cargo loading, I think we’re done here.  Nav, helm, set us a course over to the fueling station and engage engines when ready.  We’ve got fuel, crew and a shuttle to pick up after all.”  Smiles broke out among the bridge crew.  “George, Serinda, keep eyes and ears open.  Sing out as soon as we have something.”

              “Aye, Captain,” they chorused.

              “So what did you do?” Tamara and Stella were in the wardroom with the Captain.  He had brought them both there to discuss this knock-knock package they had designed and not told him about.  “And why wasn’t I informed?”

              Tamara looked to the image of the AI, who had seated herself cross-legged on the table.  “Lorcan was the one who was really working on it, Captain.  Stella and I took a few passes over the coding, made some suggestions.”

              “He
was
really the one who was designing it, Captain,” Stella agreed.

              “Okay, fine, I’ll yell at him later,” he replied.  “Still doesn’t explain why it is neither of you two informed your boss about it.”  He eyed Tamara.  “I’ll bet Quesh wasn’t even aware you were working on it.”

              She shrugged again.  “No, Captain, he wasn’t.  But Lorcan was extremely careful, I made sure of that.  He kept all his work off the ship’s net, and made sure it was quarantined at all times on devices that had no network connectivity or wi-fi.  I don’t want that crap getting into
Grania Estelle
’s systems any more than you do.”

              He glared at her, but then shook his head.  It was over and done with and frankly, he was glad he
hadn’t
known about it at the time.  He knew he wouldn’t have been happy knowing something like that was on his ship that might accidentally get uploaded to the ship’s systems, leaving them a drifting, dead hulk.  Then he started as he made a mental connection.

              “Wait.  If this software package is so dangerous, and
you
,” he gestured to the AI’s image, “are essentially
all
software, how did you possibly look over the coding without corrupting yourself?”

              She grinned at him.  “Oh, Captain.  Who’s to say I’m
not
corrupted?”