Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  “Captain, the disaster we have faced with the glue bugs may be the only thing that has saved us. We received a new set of control interfaces that we had just started installing when the glue bugs forced us to send all our engineers to clean bugs and corrosion from the ship. We only got about twenty of the controllers installed, and I was becoming concerned that they seemed to be unreliable until all our external communications stopped. Unreliable be damned, they were being controlled by our enemies. This new comm system that MI was working on is unbelievably insecure, and the control interfaces were clearly designed to work with it. What the hell is happening with procurement? Did we contract the whole thing out to this Imperium we keep hearing about?”

  He had by now turned to Raul, directing his growing anger at the first representative of procurement he could find. Raul hardly noticed. “Eng Haliru, I am wearing a spotless, new suit of armour. It has its own comm system built into it, no doubt approved by the same MI office that approved the new comm units you have been installing in the Mao. What interface does it use?”

  Haliru stared at him and I watched his countenance change as he recognized a comrade in arms, and a fellow victim of treachery. “Take it off,” he said, “The diagnostic socket is inside.”

  Raul stripped off his armour and handed it to Haliru, who examined the diagnostic reports carefully. “Two different interfaces, one new, one old. Yes, the new one has the token parser. Reduced set of tokens, and I do not know what they do. Big ones with lots of instructions and gibberish names that all start with P. The old interface… does not have a token parser, but only seems to handle basic monitoring functions and motor control. Been standard since before the Incursion. The new unit handles the entire interface for the user and all the high-level control functions. I do not see an obvious way to block external attacks without simultaneously blocking control by the user.

  “Mmmm, this is also odd. The suit is broadcasting diagnostic signals. In fact, you are as well. It is coming from your head. Do you have a new comm implant?”

  That brought my attention back. I knew that we were broadcasting signals containing our locations, but had not been able to identify their purpose. “Sir, Chief Eng Haliru, I think I found those earlier, being sent to an address outside the Mao. I recognized the location codes, but not what they meant. Do you recognize the destination? Can we turn them off?”

  Molongo now looked concerned. “What destination? Why did you not mention this before? Where are those messages going?”

  Haliru brought up a decoded representation of the message on one of the wall monitors. It was a small packet that mostly reported hardware status, the kind of information I had used to set up my private comm systems on Mars. The location structure was familiar from other applications, but was something I had deliberately removed from my own systems, since I had never wanted the Martian rebels to be able to locate my comm repeaters.

  Molongo looked even more disturbed. “I recognize that address, and I think I know where the messages are going. We need to turn them off and keep them off. Can that be done?”

  Haliru looked at Thieu, then back to Wang and Molongo. “Are you asking us to make direct modifications to your battle armour and personal implants? None of us have authorization to do that. Even the doctors who inserted your implants do not have authorization to modify the base code. I can show you how to turn off the diagnostic messages. In the old comm units, only the owner could turn the messages on or off, but in these broken units there is a token that turns them on and off and anyone can send the token. We can create a filter for your comm units that blocks messages containing that token. However, there is no practical way to lock the filter without making much deeper changes, which could have unpredictable consequences. I, for one, would refuse to make such changes. Nor would I authorize anyone else to try.

  “I truly do not understand how any competent security officer could have approved such a cheap-shit system that looks like it was invented to control children’s toys. Who else has these implants?”

  I ran through the list I knew of. “Us, the Captain and probably his senior officers, the ministers on board the Mao, our doctors. Doctor Marin said the implants were standard medical devices with updated software, so anyone with enough seniority to need the latest medical technology may have the hardware. At a minimum, I would expect all the senior politicians on the Earth and key military personnel, some fraction of the security agents, especially in space, probably the senior officers of the wealthiest corporations...”

  “OK, merry sunshine, we get the drift.” Thieu was starting to understand how my mind worked, how the Ghost thought, at least, although I did not clarify that point. “A permanent solution may have to wait for a later date. Should we start disabling the diagnostic messages and setting the filter?”

  “Yes,” said Molongo, and Wang confirmed the command. “We need to warn the ministers and get them off the Mao as quickly as possible. Somebody knows we are here and can start to track our locations in detail at any moment without our knowing. I need to talk to Pantocrator. He needs our help, and now we need his.”

  “Chief Eng Haliru, I have one further request. As soon as we leave this ship or re-enable external comm, we will need secure communications that do not rely on this office. Can you install a filter for our personal comm units that strips out any nonstandard items like tokens and tunnels the signal using one of the Council’s encryptions? I can supply the encryption. We will need a better solution later, but that should give us simple person-to-person communications that are as secure as any we can hope for. No documents and no code, but at least we could talk to one another.”

  Wang added, “If it is possible, we would also like to use our comm units to remotely operate various pieces of equipment, to undo the damage being done by our enemies. If they have not been sealed shut by the glue bugs, we will need to open airlocks, open the MI office doors, enter the bridge and officer’s quarters, even the engineering sections without using the standard controls, which may be disabled. This technology is being used against us. Until it can be blocked, we will need to use it in our own defence. Can that be done expeditiously?”

  Haliru whistled. “Don’t ask for much, do you? You want to invade TDF warships using telepathy to open all the doors. That sounds like one channel using the Council encryption for actual communications, and a second channel that lets you blast out tokens. If you are going to open doors, I expect you would also like to be able to force demented captains to turn off their comm units? Or would it be sufficient to do that through the local MI office?”

  Wang thought about that, but Molongo beat him to the decision. “We need to be able to rescue victims of emoji attack, whenever and wherever we encounter them. We will surely need to deal with hate-demented people when we try to take control of the local MI offices. Also, blocking only emojis passing through the MI office will not help people receiving infected messages through other streams, such as the ministers who were receiving messages through the Council’s own streams.”

  Raul was still concerned. “Captain Wang, Agents Ashura, Chou, Tipu and myself are to be deployed to the Deng and Excalibur. Should we be wearing our new armour, knowing that an enemy agent can control the armour at will? The marines probably have older armour without this defect, but I might be safer wearing my pajamas, which I know at least will not attack me.”

  The room filled with the silence of mental gears grinding. Wang finally answered, “I have been thinking of this all wrong. I had originally thought you would be basically couriers carrying messages and assisting in coordination. You cannot wear your new armour because of the probability that it will be turned against you. Without armour, you cannot engage in combat nor can you operate in any of the airless parts of the ship to help clean up the glue bugs. But what you can do that none of the rest of us can, is open doors that have been locked by the malicious tokens, and turn off the comm units of people under attack by hate messages. Your comm units have the required
tokens and the capability of sending them; only the newest marines and sailors do, and they have other duties. You can also speak directly on behalf of the Council, overriding even orders coming from the Admiralty. You would be terribly vulnerable, but that role is surely essential if we are to restore the TDF to proper fighting capability.

  “To be explicit, I am suggesting you be dispatched in teams wherever the token and emoji attacks are occurring, to open doors and disable the comm units of any victims of emoji attack. You should probably not go beyond that role until we have better tools. Until we can fix the armour you must not wear it, only your pajamas. The marines would supply the fire power needed to protect you. Would you be willing to undertake such a terrible risk?”

  Molongo breathed deeply a few times. “What a horrifying suggestion, but also how necessary. Let us think this through a bit more. The places we are considering sending you are not officially hostile, but may have some hostile agents, such as MI turncoats. The people we most need to save may be terrified and outraged, but often will be administrators and senior officers who have the new comm units. They will usually not be armed. From them, you can expect clumsy, unfocussed fisticuffs rather than pitched battles, like you faced with us. The real risk is that their armed and competent subordinates might still be obeying their demented orders. So, the risk will be high, but with an armed guard of marines, very few sane people would be foolish enough to attack you.

  “However, if you are going to speak on behalf of the Council, that must be immediately obvious. Your plain white pajamas would not command the respect needed on such a mission. You will need a more distinctive uniform that includes the logo for the Terrestrial Council in a prominent place. The insignia worn on the left breast are nice and interface well with hall monitors, but are hard for human eyes to recognize from a distance. We can very quickly modify the dress uniforms for either the sailors or the marines to add a Council logo.”

  Inside me, the Mission flashed like sunshine glinting on the tip of a sharp spear, but I waited until Raul nodded before I agreed. “This seems like a more appropriate use of our talent than cleaning glue bugs. However, we are neither sailors nor marines, and formally we are not even in the military for this role. Although we need to act like heroes, we also need to protect our identities. I expect we will be back on the Earth soon, and we do not have time for the surgery required to create new personae. Our faces should never be recognizable in public. We are spooks who should blend into the shadows. And we needed these uniforms quickly.”

  I took a breath and said, “May I make an executive decision to use the costumes from the soiree, including the masks, which should be opaque while we are in public. Could we get permission to add the Council’s logo below the banshee on the right breast? Raul, does that make any kind of sense to you? It sounds to me as crazy as what I did last night, but we need disguises in the next two hours.”

  Wang boggled a bit at that. “You want to be banshees? In costume? Not the image I would have chosen to command respect, but OK. Marcus? Agent San Diego?”

  Molongo chuckled, “If I know Mahatma, we will have to forbid him to wear that costume as a uniform in Council meetings. He quite enjoyed the Soiree, as you saw this morning, even if the midnight follies and everything else that followed were unwelcome. I do not anticipate any problem getting the logo on the shirts. Agent San Diego, I know it sounds surreal, but I cannot think of a better solution that we could implement quickly. We will have to ask the rest of the volunteers, but would you agree to this approach?”

  Raul looked like a deer in the headlights. Finally, he replied, “If the rest of the team agrees, I will too. So, we are all going to become banshees? This is definitely not what I signed up for.”

  “Well,” I said, “If it is any consolation, we do not have to be classical Irish banshees. We can bring both warning of the impending disaster as well as healing and practical advice on how to avoid it. If we are going to speak on behalf of the Council, we had better get an official mandate from the ministers before we go. Chief Eng Haliru, we will need to practice using our comm units to lock and unlock doors and to turn on and off other people’s comm units. Could you arrange some lessons as soon as possible?”

  I glanced at Thieu, who was staring at us with eyes round as saucers, sheer disbelief written all over her face. “You are going into combat armed with coloured pajamas and a broken comm unit?”

  Haliru, however, was hard at work and without even lifting his head commented, “And the masks. Do not forget the masks. Plus, their enchanting personalities. Be grateful that when you fight you are wrapped inside a steel ship.

  “But Com Thieu, we have work to do right now. The functionality they need should be quite easy to implement as macros. Could you do that and report to the banshee’s quarters to give them lessons in, say, half an hour?”

  “Yes, sir.” But she still looked like she thought we were all mad. I knew for certain that I was.

  2357-03-05 04:30

  Mandate

  Molongo sent me back to inform the rest of the team of our changed mission. He would supervise the MI office while Haliru and Thieu continued to work. Raul stayed as a guinea pig so they could test their filters and macros in his personal comm unit.

  It was neither easy nor fun telling people that they were to be more than advisors and diplomats. They would have to unlock doors, knowing there would be frightened, hostile, and perhaps crazed people with guns behind them. They would have to confront hate-demented people to turn off their comm units. Some of those people would be true believers in the Martian cause, and might attempt to assassinate them. Their protection would be the Council logo on their pajamas and a squad of marines. Neither of those would stop a stray bullet or dissuade a fanatic from a suicidal attack.

  Things were starting to get angry, and voices were rising, when Thieu and Raul arrived with the gear to write the new codes into our comm units. He and Molongo had already practiced turning their comm units on and off, and opening doors and airlocks. He even looked cheerful as he explained what we had to do. I wondered why Thieu did not.

  “It not hard at all, and the only problem is that to turn off someone’s comm unit you have to query their unit for its interface ID so the macro knows which tokens to send. We cannot do that with the comm unit itself, or at least no one knows how. For now, we must use one of these gadgets,” and he waved a small box surrounded by a mesh antenna, “and for that you need to get quite close. For a personal comm unit, we will need to be close enough to shake hands because the signal is very weak. For the doors, the signal is stronger and we can be a few metres away. Let me show you. I am wearing one of the gadgets under my shirt. Leilani, could you start talking to Katerina?”

  He moved over to Katerina, face to face at arm’s length. She jerked and said, “It worked. Leilani cut out in mid-sentence and I cannot hear anything over the comm now. Turn it back on again.” There was a brief pause. “Well that is nice, but it will not stop a bullet.”

  Raul smiled, perhaps a bit grimly. “I worried a bit too, until I spoke with some of the marines. Those guys are tough and ready to march into hell. They are hugely impressed with courage, and this whole gambit turns them on completely. They will be fully armed with both lethal and non-lethal weapons, with the sole job of protecting us from physical attacks. There is a whole platoon gathering in the hallway, waiting for us to get the mods so we can practice swarming doors and subduing enemies. For us, this is mostly going to be theatre, since our role is to open the door and get out of the way, or to turn off someone’s comm unit and shake their hand. The minor risk we take gives protecting us a nobility that they find much more inspiring than just chasing pirates.”

  Marin and Toyami had been watching. Marin said in a slightly mocking voice, “Starting to get juiced, are you? You do remember the hundred ways you can die in a drunken brawl, don’t you? After this piece of foolishness, I just might refuse to patch you together again. Com Thieu, do you need a hand with
the programming unit?”

  Toyami added, “You agents are all totally mad. And Agent Douglas, you are absolutely, totally forbidden to even consider going with them. We have instructions from Morris, Singh, Wang and Molongo that if you go anywhere near the hallway door, Doctor Marin and I are to take you down and put you in restraints for the duration of the mission.”

  I gave a slightly strained laugh, “What is the fun in being a sharp, pointy weapon if I cannot poke anything? Do I at least get to practice opening the door?”

  Marin thought a moment, then went over to the door. I heard her telling the marines just outside that we would soon practice doorway assaults, but that they were to physically prevent any attempt on my part to enter the hallway. I could not even go to the washroom until the assault teams had left.

  It did not take long for Com Thieu to install the two new channels, for Council-encrypted communications, and for the macros to open doors and turn off enemy comm units. She also explained a useful trick with the new comm units. The comm unit could “speak” messages to us by stimulating our audio cortex. Reversing the process, we could voluntarily connect our audio cortex to the comm unit like a living microphone, allowing everyone else to hear what we heard. Doctors Marin and Toyami nodded slowly, but looked concerned. I was glad she had told us, because without the warning we might have become involuntary spies for our enemies. I had no doubt that this too could be controlled remotely.

  As she worked, Thieu explained that she had been ordered to accompany Raul to the Excalibur, to make any minor additions and adjustments to the code that might prove necessary. She glowered at me and told me not to expect any more help from her in the MI office today – she was already working a double shift and on a hazardous assignment to boot. Fortunately, she got to wear her armour, unlike Raul. Less fortunately, as com on a battleship, she was sufficiently senior that her armour had been upgraded in the last year. It now contained the token parser. It would be Raul’s assignment to unlock the armour and turn off its comm unit if she was attacked.