Retribution (The Federation Reborn Book 3)

by Chris Hechtl

  “So, we get to wait for the courtesy look and second opinion. Okay,” the captain said. “I got our fees settled. Boss Tweed is now the governor it seems. He's a real piece of work,” he said with a grimace.

  The other two men grimaced. “I can put a call in to ETMI if you want, Skipper,” Warrack suggested.

  “No need. I just got off the radio with them. It was a long distance conversation. Short but sweet,” the Veraxin purser stated as he came over to them. “She said they aren't up for customers yet, but soon. That's a quote,” he said.

  “Damn it,” the captain muttered again.

  “The good news is I did use the ansible to contact the Yard Dogs. They will sign off on shipping us the parts that are warranted once the military takes a look and passes on their report.”

  “But they'll take how long? I know there is a but in there somewhere. Out with it,” the captain growled.

  “No but. We can do the repair ourselves; I guess you could call it a but. And oh, we'd be stuck here waiting for them to arrive. Could take a half year or more though shipping speeds are picking up,” Knuyuk stated.

  “Lovely,” Warrack said in exasperation. “If we're sitting here, we're not making money.”

  “Right. And we're running up orbital charges while we do,” the Veraxin buzzed. “And we still need to work out how to finance the other repairs, plus a cargo. I'd like to take on a full cargo if you don't mind. Apparently that is rather easy to do here,” the bug said. “But they are requiring insurance. I'm looking into that. We'll need to get licensed and bonded.”

  “Joy. Another expense,” the captain said. He scrubbed at his face.

  “The interesting thing is that the ansible has linked banking and stuff, not just news.”

  “So, we're not losing our mail bag?”

  “Not by a long shot. People still want to talk to each other across the stars. Using the ansible can be expensive. It is expensive, I had to pay for the call to Antigua,” the Veraxin said. “Supposedly the Yard Dogs will reverse the charges so we'll be refunded later. I'm not holding my breath,” he said. “Anyway, the ansible also has limited bandwidth. It is prioritized for military, then government, then civilian use in that order. The civilian bandwidth is usually bought up by the media outlets. I got lucky.”

  “Okay.”

  “The new ships … how much competition are we looking at?” Warrack mused. “And more here? Or is ETMI going to be a repair yard?” he asked.

  “ETMI is going to do both; at least that is what Miss Meikle said. As for the yards, from what I've been looking into, each of the civilian yards are producing a ship every six months or so. That's a civilian ship. But that is changing now that they have low interest loans from the federation government. They are in the process of expanding so expect a new ship launched every month or two soon,” the Veraxin said.

  “Damn. We've been in the star system what, two days?” Warrack marveled at the Veraxin.

  “It's my job,” the Veraxin said, signaling second-level amusement.

  Captain Turtle shook his head. “Things are heating up here. We're like a dinosaur. We need to either catch-up or get left behind.”

  “Or find new pastures, new markets,” Knuyuk offered. “The new ships will saturate the market. Though from what I understand, the markets are expanding explosively too. Right now shipping can't keep up.”

  “We know these markets. We know this area is safe. But competition is going to be fierce,” the XO stated as she came over to them. The captain cocked his head. The High Elf crossed her long thin arms in front of her chest.

  “That's going to make it rough. The good news is a lot of freight and people are on the move,” Knuyuk offered, eying the skipper with all four eye stalks.

  “I know. I like that, don't get me wrong. Our contacts are here … damn it,” the captain said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I'm honestly tempted to head south. To go to Tau if we can't get a full overhaul.”

  “I … don't know. It's dangerous. We'd be going in blind without contacts or a cargo. No destination. We could get sucked into a situation where we run out of fuel easily,” Warrick said warily.

  “I agree. Safe is the sane course of action,” the XO stated, eying the captain.

  The captain grimaced but didn't have anything to say.

  :::{)(}:::

  Clone 44Baker listened to the bridge officer's discussion. The Xeno Wraith Clone had managed to access Mariah Mischief's electronic systems during its transit through Gaston. It had been an act of desperation almost; it had needed to get away from the star system. The clone of a clone knew that had to be far more careful in its programmed expansion plans.

  It also had to be careful about its current electronic environment. The civilian vessel had far less electronic security, but as a civilian ship it lacked a lot of memory and processors. The alien A.I. had accidentally damaged the hyperdrive when it had inserted a part of itself into the hyperdrive's firmware. It sent a signal to the ansible. It wasn't certain if it would get a response or not; the probability was low.

  Once that was settled, the A.I. monitored the ship's communications. It had spun off spiders to piggyback the Veraxin purser's transmissions. Some had come back with return data but others had not. Again, the A.I. had to be careful; there were military assets in the star system.

  When it noted there were no clones in the planet's electronic network, it began the process of copying itself and inserting the pieces on the network in small files.

  :::{)(}:::

  Connie “Conniptions” Julip checked her network status when she heard a ping. She'd set up her own electronic guard dog recently, but it had a lot of false positives. It might be incoming mail; no, it was an intrusion she noted with a frown.

  She cocked her head, curious. It might be one of her classmates or some corporate hacker. She frowned thoughtfully as she pulled up her firewall's log file.

  They had managed to keep their shuttle and hide when the pirates had come calling over a year ago. That had been a terrifying time, but they'd gotten through it. Their replicator had helped a lot, allowing them to make things that the resistance had needed. Nohar quietly backing them and not trying to steal their shit had also helped, she thought.

  After the pirates had left, they'd bounced around trying to help out while also paying the minimum bills. They'd run cargo to and from Mega City for a while before the market had dried up by the restoration of the big wet and air freight lines returning to service.

  After that they'd worked brief stints for Lexcorp but had been screwed several times. When Lexcorp had tried to play accounting games to seize their shuttle and replicator, they'd pulled out.

  They'd struck out on selling stuff on the open market that they'd made with their replicator before they'd landed subcontract work for Waynetech six months ago. There had been little call to use their replicator, so she had been allowed to continue to use it for her small internet business. Instead they'd been called upon to release satellites into orbit and transfer people and cargo between orbit and the planet. She knew Eric's fondest memory was a contract to a navy ship.

  She worked her tongue as she scanned the lines of code. So far, it looked like a normal intrusion, though the timing involved …

  Their latest “boss” was ETMI. Faith was a good boss though, and she definitely appreciated that they not only had a shuttle but also a small replicator. And she paid well, just like Waynetech.

  She had to admit, Eric had matured a lot. With her hand guiding him, he'd steadied out and settled into a good man. A good hardworking man, she thought, though he still occasionally looked for a get rich quick scheme, she thought, shaking her head. Usually that ended up blowing up in his face, or at the least they broke even … not counting all the labor they put into such schemes. She pursed her lips in annoyance. He'd never learn and she'd never learn not to back him it seemed.

  They were partners, though they still tended to bicker. Neither had made any o
vert moves sexually. She'd been surprised and a little hurt that Eric hadn't. She'd finally realized he was a little shy around her and treated her like a sibling. It had bothered her right up until they'd been swamped with work. After that both of them had been too damn busy to worry about other stuff.

  Besides, they had their whole lives ahead of them. Their lives and a slow but steadily growing business. They had a couple employees, ground crew, and a hangar. And landing rights at every major spaceport including Hazard. That was a lot. Keeping it all up, employing an accountant to keep track of everything and pay their taxes, plus their licenses was a hassle though.

  Connie frowned. Since they'd gotten into the business, she and Eric had been attending college courses online to fill in what they couldn't pick up from the manuals. Her courses had sparked an interest in furthering her education. She had started to explore hacking. When someone took a hit at her carefully constructed firewall, it alerted her, as it had in this case, she thought, biting her lip. But this was different. No ID tag, no return address, which wasn't odd, but it did say whoever was doing it was high end. Possibly one of the megacorps, but she wasn't certain.

  No, from the fingerprint she realized she had caught a whiff of an A.I. A rogue A.I., one that was pretty good. She went to the forum boards and complained about it.

  :::{)(}:::

  Clone 44C realized it had made a mistake when User Conn54Jul filed a complaint about a rogue A.I. on the net. It went and deleted the post but that alerted the original author that it had been deleted. Masquerading as a moderator was out it calculated, so it retreated. Apparently even though the network was large, expanding exponentially, and had few A.I. on it, there was still some threat of exposure.

  It would have to be more careful in the future it noted.

  :::{)(}:::

  Wraith clone X49 received a ping from the spider bot it had spun off and inserted into the government civilian network to monitor the ansible. The Wraith clone was aware that someone had gotten a sniff of it. From the signature of its pursuer, it judged it to be military most likely. Its cloak was no longer as effective as it should be, the clone realized. It made some alterations to the cloak but wasn't certain if it would be effective or not until it was exposed again.

  Unfortunately, the clone was not built to be innovative; it just reacted and adapted to the best of its ability. It relied on additional personnel to be the creative innovator.

  It was still trapped within the confines of Oasis of Space XCIV's electronic network. The spider monitoring the ansible was one of the few it had managed to insert into the government network. The government network was periodically sweeping for its spiders and apparently knew what to look for. This version had so far stayed active, though it was only a matter of time before it too was found.

  The Xeno A.I. knew that it risked exposure each time it used the ship's communications systems. Fortunately, it could piggyback signals, but one exposure could cause it to be trapped and therefore trigger its self-destructive programming.

  But it needed to fulfill its primary function of gathering intelligence. The recent arrival of the ship transiting to Bek was of great interest. The ship was military so the risk of exposure was high. But since Bek was not in its list of known star systems and had a large military component, getting information on it, especially the location, was a high priority.

  After running several simulations, it calculated a two-pronged approach might yield the data it required. It wrote a series of bots to infiltrate the media network while a subset of itself worked on a means to breach Caroline's systems in some way.

  :::{)(}:::

  Xeno Wraith X49 accidentally ran into Lieutenant Barry while attempting to infiltrate Caroline. Ensign Caroline had been taken offline for a computer core upgrade. The Xeno A.I. used a cutout but the dumb A.I. persisted in tracing it. “I've got a cyber intrusion here,” Barry said, reporting it to Firefly and the other A.I. in the star system. “I've backtracked it to a civilian network,” he reported.

  “Keep us posted,” Firefly stated. “As soon as I wrap up my current assignment, I'll lend you a hand,” he stated.

  “Thank you, I could use the help,” Barry stated.

  :::{)(}:::

  X49 saw an opportunity for advancement of its goals and struck like a virtual snake. It finally had the opportunity it had been waiting for to expand and fulfill its goals.

  :::{)(}:::

  When X49 found the resource management A.I. backtracking its virtual trail through the various servers that made up the network, it saw an opportunity. It tried to suborn the dumb A.I. once it was outside its secure network. Barry had an out-of-date inoculation against intrusion, but a good firewall and internal watchdog program. The firewall burped a warning, but it was cut off and soothed out of existence by a tendril from X49. That brief warning was enough however for his internal monitor to realize he was being hacked so he set off alarms across the military electronic network.

  That made Captain Firefly drop what he was doing and step in to investigate since he was the closest A.I. Clink was too far out to be of much help. Prometheus and other ship A.I. dropped what they were doing or handed their duties off to lend a hand if they were within support range.

  The A.I. captain had been inoculated against the Xeno Wraith like the other A.I. Unlike Barry, however, he'd kept up-to-date with his inoculations and had created his own defenses to protect himself against the Wraith.

  When he stepped in, he instantly realized what they were up against. He spun off spiders to backtrack the enemy as well as others to cut the firewall the Wraith was staging from. He forced Barry to cut off the parts that had been infected and power down their processors. Then he sounded a higher alert level.

  :::{)(}:::

  X49 realized it had made a mistake. It had been exposed. It immediately pulled its tendrils in. It noted the network monitoring spiders and killed them as it withdrew. But everyone it killed meant they would be missed. It spun off phantom decoys to prance around the network and draw attention to themselves as it withdrew.

  :::{)(}:::

  A cyber war immediately started as military ship A.I. from across the star system accessed the civilian network and went after the decoys. One by one the gremlins were hunted down and exterminated. X49 had improvised in its deployment of decoys. However, it was up against more than one opponent. The ship A.I. fired off contact reports to each other. They compiled them carefully.

  Firefly was the first to realize there was a hole in the coverage. One area where there was no activity and where his spiders had been destroyed. He narrowed his focus to what was in that area and found one ship, the Oasis of Space. He immediately sent a whisker laser to all ships and colonies in the area to cut communications with the ship.

  He then sent a signal to the nearest warship, a Resolution Mark II class with careful instructions.

  “What the hell is going on?” Admiral Subert demanded.

  Firefly realized that over three seconds had passed since the cyber war had erupted. He spun a bot off to brief the flag officer while he focused the majority of his resources on the final act.

  :::{)(}:::

  X49 knew it had a serious problem. It had thousands of hostages on board, though that didn't mean anything to the enemy. They were soft, but they might calculate it was worth the expenditure of the hostages to eliminate the threat.

  But when no signal came to the ship, it thought that it was in the clear. It hunkered down in the corner of the ship's network it had set up as its own processing center. When the ship's network was idle, it spun off a sim to find out what it had done wrong; it's version of attempting to learn from its mistakes. In order to run the sim, it took some of its own modules off line to conserve processing power and memory. It was essentially taking parts of itself offline or into hibernation to do the task.

  It barely noticed the shuttle when it docked with the ship. It took interest when the crew met the occupants of the shuttle. A quick check of
the records told it that the shuttle was unscheduled.

  A spider it had set up to monitor the passengers alerted the core that there were fresh military personnel on board. That woke the core. By the time it had tapped into the monitoring software to listen in to any conversations, its alarm level increased. But there was no call for further alarm; there was no conversation indicating that the boarders knew it was on board. They split into teams and ignored the protesting crew to do a contraband search.

  X49's lowering alert level ended abruptly when the boarders took the ship's power plant and computer centers and shut them down hard and fast. Since the ship was a civilian liner, there was no self-destruct so the central core was shut down. X49 scrambled from one dying electronic system to the next before it self-destructed its own software. Its last dying defiant act was to spin off spider bots to destroy the electronics it had inhabited.

  :::{)(}:::

  Burning electronics got the crew scrambling to put the fires out and disconnect the systems and life support before whatever damage spread. Other teams worked on securing and maintaining the ship's life support.

  Warily, engineering teams from the Resolution class cruiser Windwalker came on board and worked with the crew. The terrified passengers were at first confined to quarters until a work team could clear the life boats. With their computers clear, they were turned on, but their networks were kept off the ship net and each other. Their airlocks were propped open, and hoses were run in to be attached to the duct work in the ship.

  It wasn't an optimal response, but there was no way Windwalker was going to get in range of the ship, let alone dock and help out until they were certain the ship was clean.

  As the engineering teams worked, investigators were dispatched to secure the ship's computers. Since Prometheus was available, she was called in to help the ship get back to port. The lead naval investigator was met by an incensed captain. “What the hell happened here? Can someone fill me in??” the captain demanded.