by Doug Farren
“You never know who might be listening though,” Chyr said.
The two Peacekeepers ate in silence for several minutes, engaged in their own private thoughts. Setting her fork down, Chyr said, “Why do you think the AOH needed to risk discovery by stealing Alliance weapons?”
Tom was confused. To him, the answer was simple. “Because they don’t have the manufacturing ability to build their own.”
“I disagree,” she said, putting her elbows on the table and settling her chin into her folded hands. “Their ships are unique, meaning the Purists have their own shipyard. If they can build advanced warships, then they have the infrastructure to build the weapons to arm them. The AOH has maintained a shadowy existence for decades. Why run the risk of discovery by stealing Alliance weapons when you should be able to build your own? It doesn’t make any sense.”
No matter how hard he tried, Tom couldn’t find a single flaw in her argument. He began to wonder why he hadn’t come to the same conclusion. Chyr had a very logical mind and it was apparent she was better than he at solving complex riddles. “Do you know how to play chess?” he asked.
The sudden change in subject seemed to bother Chyr. Her eyes narrowed as she sat back and crossed her arms. “I have heard of it but I am unfamiliar with the rules. Why?”
Tom couldn’t help but smile at the way she had slightly cocked her head to the right. “Because I think you would make an excellent player.”
“My ship tells me you hold the title of Grandmaster. Are you suggesting you teach me how to play this game?”
“Your ship can teach you the rules,” Tom said. “But it takes a long time to actually master the game. I like how your mind works. I think teaching you how to play chess would be fun for the both of us.”
Chyr stared at him, her face devoid of expression, long enough to make him nervous. Picking up her fork, she said, “I’ll let you know when I’ve mastered the rules.”
Chapter 22
As before, John was waiting at the Tanami landing field. They went directly to Dennis Kendal’s office. As soon as the door was shut, John said, “This room is secure. We can talk freely here.”
Dennis sat behind his desk looking like he’d been there all night. He had large dark rings under his red eyes. Tom and John took a seat.
“I didn’t expect to hear back from you so soon,” Tom said. “What have you found?”
“Thanks to one of my top programmers,” Dennis said in a tired voice, “we got incredibly lucky. You were right, our systems have been compromised.”
“So what did you find?”
“Some of the most sophisticated and tightly knit code any of us has ever seen,” Dennis smiled. It was clear that he was impressed with what had been found. “We’ve only begun to scratch the surface but we thought you should know about it right away.”
Tom was becoming frustrated. He wanted answers, not vague descriptions. “All right, so explain to me what you found.”
Dennis took a swallow from a cup of steaming coffee before saying, “We started with the basic assumption that whoever infiltrated the system already has access to the encryption algorithm and is somehow able to receive new encryption keys. Having access to the hubs would give them the ability to route whatever traffic they want to their own system. There are only a few places in the code structure where this can be done. Franklin Wallace was the programmer who found it. He should be the one to explain what he found but I sent him home early this morning before I knew you were coming.”
Dennis stood up and started sketching a block diagram on the white board, explaining as he drew. “New messages are stored in the receive buffer in a modified first-in first-out stack. Higher priority messages are automatically pushed to the top. The routing software then looks at the message header to determine its destination. The message is then moved into the appropriate outgoing buffer for eventual transmission. We keep a local copy until we receive confirmation that the message has been received.”
Dennis changed to a different colored pen and drew a large circle around one of the blocks in his diagram. “We found some rogue code in the routing software that also examines the header of every message. Although we haven’t figured out how it does its filtering, I can tell you that if it meets the filter criteria one of two things happens; the message is either redirected by wrapping it in a second header or it’s duplicated.”
“That doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to do,” Tom said. “I thought you said this was some very sophisticated code.”
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Dennis said. “What’s important is that some of your messages are not being sent to where they’re supposed to be going.”
“So where are they going?” Tom asked.
“We don’t know,” Dennis admitted. “But it must be local, somewhere on Earth.”
“If you don’t know where they’re going then how can you say the destination is local?” Tom was beginning to have a hard time controlling his temper. He preferred to have a direct answer to a direct question but the explanations he was receiving seemed to be piling up more questions instead of providing answers.
“Because if someone is manipulating your message traffic, they can’t be doing it with much of a time delay otherwise someone would notice.”
“Do you think you can find out where the messages are being delivered?”
“Absolutely!” John boomed, his face breaking into a huge smile. “We specialize in communications. We’ll find out where those messages are being sent no matter how convoluted a trail they follow." Looking at Dennis, he added, “You have our word on it.”
Dennis rubbed his chin and nodded his head. “It’s not going to be easy though. I think we’re dealing with AI software that actively defends itself. That’s the sophisticated part of the puzzle.”
The smile on John’s face evaporated. “This is the first I’ve heard of this,” he said. “When did you find this out?”
“Late last night,” Dennis admitted, returning to his seat. “We started our investigations by looking at the frozen code found in the T&D system. It’s a core dump that captures the exact state of memory at the time of the dump. After we found the intrusive logic on the T&D system, we looked for it on one of the live computers. Last night I received word that nothing was found. The source code is clean too. I had the technicians freeze one of the live systems and dump the core. The code is there.”
Tom watched John’s jaw flop open as his eyes grew wide. “I’m not quite sure I follow,” Tom said. “Are you saying the computer is lying to you about what code it’s running?”
Dennis had to wait until an enormous yawn that threatened to disengage his lower jaw from the rest of his face had passed. He took another sip of his coffee and said, “Essentially, yes. Whoever infiltrated the system appears to be using AI software programmed to actively defend itself. If we try to examine live memory, it will hide its presence. This is incredibly sophisticated code we’re talking about. We were very lucky to find it in the first place.”
“That would explain why the security routines don’t detect anything either,” John said.
“It also explains how it got into the new system,” Dennis added. Seeing that Tom was about to question this last bit of information, Dennis said, “From all indications, the system was infected before the change-over to the new computers. The conversion program used the source code, which we know to be clean, to recompile the software. That means the new computers were infected after their initial load. The only way for that to happen is if the malicious code is capable of learning the instruction set of a new system and then rewriting its own code. That implies it has AI abilities.”
“Oh my god,” John exclaimed.
“Well, now that we know about it, will we be able to get rid of it when the time comes?” Tom asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Dennis replied, looking tired enough to fall asleep. “If we’re dealing with a rogue AI—I doubt it. We need to know the extent of the penetratio
n and whether or not it extends to other systems in the network. If it’s network-wide, we might never be able to eradicate it because it can reinfect systems as fast as we can clean them.”
Tom had heard enough. This information needed to get back to Sorbith as soon as possible. Standing up, he said, “You’ve done some excellent work so far. But I can also see you’ve pretty much worked yourself to death. As much as I want quick answers, I can’t have you making mistakes because you’re too tired. Make sure you and your staff get adequate sleep and make finding the destination of those messages your top priority. Once we know that, you can concentrate on finding a way to rid the system of this.”
“We’ll get your answers Mr. Wilks,” John said.
Tom remained sitting in the command chair after returning to the Sydney spaceport. His mind was swirling with information and questions. “Who the hell penetrated the hub’s central router? How the hell did they do it? What were they planning?”
“Any word from Sorbith?” Tom asked his ship.
“No,” was the terse reply.
Frustrated, Tom got out of the command chair. He had made a major discovery but until Sorbith returned, he couldn’t do anything with the information he now had.
“There is a visitor requesting permission to board,” the ship said.
“A visitor? Who is it?”
“Your sister, Cassandra.”
Chapter 23
Tom suddenly felt like someone had poured liquid nitrogen over him. For a moment, time seemed to stop as his brain locked up.
“Would you like me to tell her you are not available?” the Orion asked, jolting him back to awareness.
“What?…No!…I…Tell her I’ll be out in a moment.” Tom stammered. What the hell was his sister doing here? How did she even know he was on Earth? Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he headed for the ramp.
She was standing just outside the shadow of the ship, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, almost as if she was saluting. Pausing at the edge of the ramp, he used the zoom feature of his cybernetic eyes to get a closer look at her. Her long, light brown, perfectly straight hair was blowing around her face in the gentle breeze. Although he hadn’t seen her in over 12 years, he thought she might have put on a little weight. One major change jumped out at him; the petite breasts she had inherited from their mother had been enhanced giving her a very nice figure.
“Tom?” she called out. “Tom? Is that really you?”
Stepping out of the shadow, he said, “It’s me sis.” Feeling awkward and unsure of what to do next, he stopped about a meter from her and remained silent.
She took a hesitant half-step toward him then burst into tears. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” she said, through trembling lips. “I know you blame me for the fire and I accept full responsibility for what happened but I’m not the same person anymore. I haven’t had a drink since…since…then. I’m married now with two kids. Your friend told me you were here and I just had to see you again. I am so, so sorry for what happened.”
The rapid-fire torrent of words came to a sudden halt as she stopped and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. He stood there, not knowing what to say or do. Part of him saw her as the drunken party-girl whose careless actions had started the fire that killed his mom and dad. Another part of him saw his sister reaching out accepting responsibility for her past and asking for forgiveness.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Cassandra looked him in the eye and said, “I miss my brother!”
The tone of her voice and the pleading look in her eyes pushed Tom over the edge. Opening his arms, he took a step forward and said, “Cassandra.”
She fell into his arms and buried her face on his shoulder. He didn’t say a word as she held him tightly and cried. Tom found himself crying as well, the tears flowing freely down his face. A full minute passed before Cassandra’s grip loosened. Breaking their embrace, Tom motioned with his head to the Orion’s entrance ramp and said, “Come on.”
On the way up the ramp, Tom asked, “Who told you I was here?”
Cassandra sniffed then replied, “She said she was a very close friend of yours. She called me a couple days ago—audio only, which I thought was kind of strange. She had a real odd name, Lash…Lasha…”
Tom stopped dead in his tracks. “Lashpa? Lashpa called you?!”
“Yeah, that’s her name.”
Tom spun around and looked down the ramp as if expecting to see Lashpa standing at the bottom. “That means she’s in the system!” he exclaimed.
“Who is she?” Cassandra asked, following his gaze in an effort to see what he was looking at.
Tom barely heard her. Using his biolink, he asked his ship to report on Lashpa’s current location. “Her ship is grounded at the other end of the spaceport,” the Orion replied through Tom’s ears.
“What!” Tom said aloud. Cassandra’s eyes went wide and she took a step back. “Sorry,” Tom quickly said, putting his hand on her arm. “I was talking to my ship.”
“Your…” Cassandra didn’t finish the sentence because Tom had spun back around and was rapidly ascending the ramp. Running after him, she said, “I didn’t hear you say anything. What do you mean you’re talking to your ship?”
Tom stopped at the top of the ramp and said, “Orion, why didn’t you tell me Lashpa was here?”
The ship routed its reply to a nearby speaker allowing Cassandra to listen. “She asked me not to tell you and lacking any instructions to the contrary from yourself, I was obliged to honor her request.”
“You and I are going to have a talk about that,” Tom said.
“Who are you talking to?” Cassandra asked, louder than necessary.
“The artificial intelligence that runs my ship,” Tom replied. “Come on, I have a call to make.”
Trailing behind her brother as he moved deeper into the ship, Cassandra said, “This is all yours?”
As soon as they reached the command center, Tom said, “Orion, get Lashpa on the line. I’m sure she’s expecting it.”
A few seconds passed then Laspha’s face appeared on the main monitor. “Hello Tom, I see your sister has found you,” she said, before he had a chance to say anything.
“That’s Lashpa?!” Cassandra exclaimed.
Tom shot his sister a quick warning glance then turned his attention to Lashpa. “You have a lot of gall coming here and not telling me.”
“I wanted you and your sister to reconnect first.”
“Why did you call her? You had no right—”
“I have every right!” Lashpa interrupted, raising her voice. “We are gragrakch. That makes me responsible for your well-being. Cassandra is your sister, she is family, and family is vitally important. Your estranged relationship with her has been and will continue to be a detriment to your mental well-being until you forgive her. I was forced to intervene.”
“But, you could—”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“She just got here! We’ve hardly had time—”
“Talk to her. Listen to her. Then call me back and we will talk.” Lashpa’s image vanished.
Tom sat in stunned silence staring at the blank monitor. “What did she say?” Cassandra asked, after a moment.
It was only then that he realized Lashpa had been speaking in her native language and the ship had not provided a translation. Looking at Cassandra, he said, “I’ll tell you later.” He paused, trying to figure out where to begin. It was going to take some time before he could truly forgive his sister. How do you forgive someone you’ve hated for over 12 years?
”So,” he finally said, “tell me about these kids of yours—my nephews or nieces.”
The two siblings talked for over an hour, bringing each other up-to-date on their lives. They carefully avoided the subject they needed most to talk about, until during a lull in the conversation, Cassandra asked, “Did you ever read any of my mail—the ones I sent about a year after…after the fire?”
Reaching out across the table where they had been sitting, Cassandra took his hand and said, “If you had, you would have known how terribly hurt I was. I tried to kill myself Tom. I spent two months in a psych ward afterward. I wasn’t right for nearly a year.”
“Did you and Judith ever make amends?” Tom asked.
Nodding her head, Cassandra replied, “She never told you because she knew how you felt about me. She came to visit a few weeks before joining the space force. I was living with Paul then and she stuck around long enough to be the bridesmaid at my wedding.” She squeezed his hand as tears began to roll down her cheek. “I miss her.”
“I miss her too,” Tom quietly replied. “I know you didn’t mean to start the fire and I know you’re a changed person because of it. But I’m still—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “Let’s leave it at that for now—okay?”
“Okay.”
“This friend of yours—Lashpa—is she a Rouldian?”
“She is. Would you like to meet her?”
“Really?” Cassandra’s eyes seemed to light up. “I’ve never met an alien before.”
“Come on,” Tom said, standing up. “Orion, deploy the cycle and inform Lashpa we are coming over.”
A few minutes later, several starport personnel were witness to an unusual event. Cassandra was riding in Tom’s tricycle as it was being remotely driven by the Orion. Tom ran alongside, maintaining a speed of just over 35 kilometers an hour. A few minutes later, they arrived at Lashpa’s ship. She was waiting for them outside. Tom had become such an expert at reading Rouldian emotions that he could easily tell she was glad to see him.
Lashpa and Tom embraced each other as best as two dissimilar species could. Cassandra climbed out of the tricycle and looked up in time to see Lashpa’s tongue dart out of her mouth and quickly touch the nap of Tom’s neck. She stood staring, wide-eyed, while Tom made the introductions.
