“But at the most convenient time for the people who want the ships to engage,” Paige finished. “I think we’d be hard pressed to find a time in recent Estarian politics when things were more fraught.”
“Yeah,” Maya agreed. “Spooky, eh?”
Paige shook her head. “Or exactly as they planned it to be. Something tells me that the Northern Clan is behind all of this, and they were timing it perfectly. That’s why we couldn’t figure out what it was that Jennifer Etang had uploaded onto the system. I know that had certain members of the task force flummoxed. In the end Bates had to command them to get on with other assignments.” Paige became more animated as she pieced it together.
Maya pursed her lips briefly. “Well it looks like they were on the right track. Bourne? Any way you can track down which of the agents were continuing their investigation… Even if it was off-book, unofficial.”
Bourne’s voice crackled over the conference room intercom again. “Normally I would say yes, but we do have a slight data problem.”
Maya hit her forehead. “Ah, shit. We’re still on that system.”
She paused, thinking for a moment. “Bourne? What would be the solution to this data issue, now that we don’t have Molly to go to the surface so that Oz can connect up? I mean, how do we fix it so that you can have access to all the data that you need when you need it?”
Bourne thought for a moment. “I wonder if maybe a nodal box adapter could possibly give me an ongoing data stream. The problem is it will be traceable…”
“Which is the exact point of the initial design,” Paige added, realizing that she was the only one of the three who had been there at the time.
“That’s true,” agreed Bourne. “But if we can stop this blackout, then I think that’s one of the compromises we’ll have to make.”
Paige hid her head in her hands for a few minutes.
Maya waited patiently, watching.
When she eventually sat up again, she sighed quietly and then looked off into space as if talking to Bourne. “Well then that’s exactly what we’ll have to do.”
Maya breathed a sigh of relief, as if she’d been holding her breath. As if she’d had an opinion on what they might do, but was perhaps too anxious to share it.
“So what exactly does this fix entail?” Paige asked Bourne. “You mentioned a… nodal box adapter? Is this something that might be lying around in Brock’s workshop?”
“Possibly,” Bourne told them. “Let me find an image or two for you while you make your way down there.”
Paige and Maya exchanged a knowing look between them and closed up the screens they had been working on. Once they were clear of the conference room, and likely the majority of listening devices, they spoke in hushed whispers.
“Did he just tell us what to do?” Maya hissed in astonishment.
“I think maybe he did,” Paige agreed dryly, “but in his defense, he was only working to try and make us more efficient. We are up against it…”
Maya narrowed her eyes and exhaled heavily. “Well… If it carries on…”
Paige chuckled, linking her friend’s arm as they hurried down the side of the hangar deck. “Don’t worry. When the others return, I’m pretty certain he’ll be put in his place!”
Maya smiled at the situation. “End of the frikkin’ world and I’m worried about an AI bossing us around.”
“I know, right? Maybe we do deserve to have them in charge!”
They clipped and clopped up the stairs and eventually arrived at Brock’s workshop via the Daemon corridor.
“So, you got something for us, Bourne? So we know what we’re looking for?” Paige waited, looking up at the ceiling as if she might be able to see Bourne. It was a funny organic habit, and she’d noticed herself and others doing it to talk to Oz. But now, up against the clock with the higher stakes of the situation weighing on her, she noticed how her mind tangled with silly details that were not even relevant to the task in hand.
Bourne took his time to respond, pulling up a set of images over at the main holoconsole on one of the workbenches.
“Yes, here are a few that might help,” he told them. The two girls, dressed in atmos suits and high heels, ambled over to the console unit.
Paige flicked through the images. “I have no idea where these might be,” she mumbled, dismayed.
Maya zoomed in on one and squinted at the image. “Bourne, does Brock have anything like this in inventory?”
“I’ve no idea. There’s nothing labeled as a nodal box adaptor.”
“Well what about anything labeled ‘network adaptor’? Or anything that’s to do with networks. Can you pull up a list?”
Maya waited as a list populated on a new holoscreen. She stuck her finger into the holoprojection and scrolled down. Paige watched over her shoulder. “I forget you’re a techie nerd sometimes.”
Maya smiled as she worked. “So do I. That’s why I make a point of helping Brock out every few weeks on a weekend. Keeps my hand in.”
Paige grinned. “Yeah. I never understood how you could manage that on a Sunday morning after we’d been out. But I’m grateful for it now!”
Maya selected a few of the components in the inventory and continued scrolling through the list. “Okay, Bourne—let’s start with these ones. Can you send their locations to my wrist holo? I’ll go look at them. I’ll know more once I have them in my hands.”
“Sure,” Bourne agreed.
Maya headed over to the far wall where normally visitors to the workshop didn’t venture.
She waved her hand in front of a motion sensor that Paige hadn’t even realized was there. The surface slid up and back, revealing a bank of labeled cabinets that were presumably full of parts. The cover seemed to be made of some kind of carbon polymer, which looked flat and rigid when it was in place but disappeared at the top of the array of boxes into the wall, suggesting it was more flexible than it appeared.
Paige gasped, watching as section by section more and more boxes were revealed.
As if it were old hat, Maya set about checking the section numbers and locating the boxes she wanted to access. Then, she started pulling them out and checking the components that she’d already selected on her wrist holo.
“How long has this been here?” Paige asked in amazement.
Maya muttered to herself as she read off the part numbers, tutting and returning the parts she checked that weren’t what she was looking for. “I dunno,” she said, in between mumblings. “Brock already had it installed and organized when I got here. Guess he must have done it when you guys first moved in.”
Paige looked the units over. They ran from one side of the workshop to the Daemon door. “Well, they certainly weren’t here in the beginning. I would have noticed. There was just a load of old junk down here.” She glanced upwards, checking the shape of the ceiling. “That bit around there must be where the stage is from the old theater,” she mused.
Maya continued to flick through the boxes, seemingly only half listening as Paige continued to talk.
“That toe-rag I used to date said that he’d seen pictures from when the place upstairs was actually a real theater.” She sighed, shaking the thought of the painful relationship from her head as quickly as the thought had occurred to her. “Can’t have been operating for long though. Not if the Federation installed all this afterwards.”
Maya scratched her nose as she inspected another component. “Unless they had it operating as a cover before they moved in?”
Paige sighed. “Yeah. Who knows… I’ll be sure to ask someone if we ever get to spend time with them.”
She was about to say something like, if they survive this, but stopped herself. The implication hung in the air. Even Maya slowed down, pulling one of the drawers out, as if she was resisting finishing the thought out loud.
“OHHHHH!” Maya exclaimed.
Paige hurried over to the drawer Maya was peering into. “You found it?”
Maya beamed and fis
hed out the component. It was the size of Rubik’s Cube. “I think so!” she said brightly, carefully turning it over to check the spec. “Yep. This is it. I hope. Bourne?” She lifted her head to call up to the workshop intercom. “Does the RTX-6767 have a programable CPU?”
“Yes. It does. Want to plug it in to the Z-port and I’ll lay down the architecture.”
Maya closed the drawer and carried the component over to the console on the main workbench. She found some connecting wires and plugged one into the other.
“Okay, Bourne, do your thing!”
Paige followed Maya back to the console. “Are you sure he’s up to this?” she asked as quietly as she could.
Maya pulled her lips to one side. “Guess we’ll find out… I mean, he’s been on the network when Oz has done this kind of thing for Brock.”
Paige took a deep breath. “That fills me with confidence,” she said dryly. “Mind, it kinda feels like the Estaria problem has pulled the short straw and elected the B-team all around.”
Maya slapped her gently on the arm. “Speak for yourself, lady!” she chided her. “I think this is where we step up and shine. Come on, we’ve got this!”
Paige bobbed her head in agreement. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Either way, we’re on it.”
A moment later the console beeped.
“Okay, that’s done,” Maya confirmed, unhooking the device from the console. “Now to find the other bits we might need.” She headed back to the drawers, gathering tools and cables and tiny reels of wire, and various devices that Paige had never seen before in her life.
“No wonder you don’t bother with the nail color,” she jested as she watched Maya work. “Although Brock’s range of ultra-durable colors might stay on amongst all this.”
Finally Maya was done packing everything into an over-the-shoulder toolkit bag. “All right, looks like we’re ready to rock.”
Paige looked at her with a blank expression. “So? What’s next?”
Maya smiled at her enigmatically. “Next we get down there and find a node to start making the adaptation so that Bourne can establish a continuous connection.”
Paige’s face looked concerned. “We’ve no idea what’s going on down there. It could be chaos.”
Maya nodded. “There’s no other way though. It’s our only chance to restore holoconnections planet-wide.”
“But what if Molly needs us while we’re gone?”
Maya thought for a moment. “Well I could go on my own and you can stay here? If you want?”
Paige shook her head firmly. “No way. I’m not letting you do it on your own. Like I said, we’ve no idea what’s going on down there.”
Maya’s eyes flickered with a touch of relief. “Okay then, let’s get to the pods.” She started moving off towards the Daemon door.
“Okay,” Paige agreed. “Then I’ll just go get some supplies and water from the kitchen and I’ll meet you down there.”
Maya nodded. “I should probably grab some gear from my room too. And change my shoes into something more… practical. Five minutes?”
“Yeah, five minutes.”
***
Ten minutes later, a pod lifted up from the deserted hangar deck.
Paige fiddled with her holo. It seemed that she couldn’t get a call to connect.
“What are you doing?” Maya asked.
“Trying to contact Bates to let her know that we’re on the case. I’m sure she’s probably aware of the situation…”
“And her team will be working to figure out what’s going on.”
“Yeah exactly. But if we can share what we know, then maybe we can have this cracked quicker. Except the calls aren’t connecting.”
“Shit,” Maya said, exhaling and sitting back in her seat while the pod whipped out of the hangar door.
“Yeah,” Paige agreed grimly. “And it looks like there are lots of patches on Spire that are dark.” She tilted her wrist holo so that Maya could see the heat map that Bourne had been keeping up to date for them. “At this rate it will only be a couple of hours before the whole of Spire is on holo darkness.”
Maya’s gaze moved to the window as she seemed to become lost in the vastness of space ahead of them. “Well we’ll just have to get a move on and get this sorted out,” she said almost absently.
Erring Memorial Hospital, Estaria
A third year resident loped through the hospital, only coming to a halt once she found the attending on the clock at that point. “Dr. Beck!” she called, waving her hand over her head to get his attention. He paused and turned to face her, though he only walked over once the look on her face made it apparent that it was urgent.
“Jerso,” he greeted her cautiously. “What’s the problem?”
She launched immediately into an explanation. “The first years keep forgetting to record patient data in a datapad,” she explained. “The second years and third years are trying to keep them on the ball, but there are only so many of us. We’re going to have a lawsuit on our hands at this rate.”
Beck heaved a sigh and dragged a hand down his face. “Right,” he muttered. “Draft a few of the nurses to shadow the first years. I’ll make a few calls to see if I can get the transcriptionists to come in and act like scribes for the time being.”
Jerso opened her mouth to reply, only to close it again with a click when an alarm went off. She and Beck whipped around as a team ran past with a crash cart.
“What’s going on?” Beck demanded, jogging after the team with Jerso just a few paces behind him.
A nurse with the team didn’t slow down at all as she started speaking. “Another nurse gave a patient painkillers for a headache. His chart didn’t list any other medications. And then the patient coded. She’s in there doing CPR. My guess is that the patient was given a new medication before the blackout hit, and before the hardcopies were updated, so it wasn’t recorded on his chart in his room.”
Beck ground to a halt, reaching out to catch Jerso’s arm and jerk her to a stop. The crash team hurried on ahead.
“Jerso. Collect the residents. And anyone else you can find who isn’t doing something urgent. This means we need to quiz every patient for any sort of information that doesn’t match their charts,” Beck instructed.
Jerso paled slightly as the implications caught up with her, and then she turned on her heel and took off at a dead sprint down the hall, making a beeline for the nearest break room.
As much as Beck wanted to help with that, he needed to keep a level head. He turned to head in the opposite direction. He needed to collect workers dedicated to keeping the files updated, or the problem was just going to keep happening.
Senate House, Spire, Estaria
Zenne scowled as his wrist holo refused to activate, before he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Figured we would only be safe here for so long before the blackout hit,” he groused to himself before he stalked off to find a hardline connection. The blackout didn’t mean the Senate could just fall out of contact with the authorities and the news outlets. Rather the opposite, in fact.
As he stalked past like an angry cat, a pair of interns watched him pass. They shared an anxious look over the stacks of datapads they were ferrying through the halls.
“He’s usually the calm one, right?” Sheryl asked, leaning her chin on top of her stack to keep it from wobbling. “If he’s losing his temper, then that means it has to be bad, right?”
“We already knew it was bad,” Jeremy replied flippantly.
“Well, yeah, but—I mean…bad bad,” Sheryl replied. “Like…approaching war,” she clarified. “Isn’t it common to try to disrupt communication before attacking? So then no one can plan anything effectively.”
Jeremy scoffed and started moving again, forcing Sheryl to jog the first few steps to keep pace with him.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped. “It’s just a blackout. Are you going to freak out and say we’re all going to war whenever your power goes out, too?”
“This is a global network blackout!” Sheryl insisted sharply. “That’s not the sort of thing that just happens. Something had to have caused it.”
Jeremy groaned and moved as if to drag his hand down his face. He then had to practically juggle his stack so that it wouldn’t all go crashing down to the floor. “You’re being such a senseless worrywart. It’s ridiculous. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer.”
Sheryl slowed to a halt outside the Speaker of the House’s office. “Whatever, Jeremy,” she sighed as he kept walking. Hands full, she resorted to tapping her foot against the door to knock on it. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”
Jeremy sniffed dismissively and kept walking. Sheryl pushed the conversation out of her thoughts as the Speaker’s secretary opened the door to start sorting through the files she needed. She had her own job to worry about, after all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Uptarlung. Irk’n Quarter Estaria
It seemed as if every news report sounded the same, Mercy reflected to herself as she offered her usual sign-off to the camera. “This has been Mercy Hazrad of—hey!” She didn’t make it to the end of her sign-off as she abruptly took off at as brisk of a run as she could manage in her heels, charging towards the car.
“You get away from there!” she snapped, her cameraman turning to let the camera follow her. If nothing else, it was the perfect way to underscore the report about how desperate some people were getting.
The man trying to wrench the car door open abruptly whirled towards Mercy, fumbling a gun out of his belt. His hands shook as he pointed it at her, and Mercy ground to a halt.
“I need it,” he insisted, voice wobbling. “If we’re going to have invaders breaking our doors in any day now, I need it.”
The camera clattered to the ground as the cameraman dropped it. Lying on its side on the ground, it only just managed to catch the action as the cameraman charged and tackled the carjacker. Mercy shrieked and ducked as the gun went off. It took out one of the car’s mirrors.
There was the sound of shuffling from just out of the camera’s sight as the cameraman scuffled with the attempted looter and eventually managed to sit on him.
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