by James Wisher
***
“So that’s the plan,” Marcus said. Dra’Kor’s battle cruiser had arrived an hour ago and he’d crossed over to Vlad’s shuttle. Marcus had filled his boss in on the situation. The first councilor listened without comment before looking at Oliver and shaking his head.
“The Vencar cannot become involved in what is essentially an internal Earth matter, however I can offer some help. Voidwalker is a wanted criminal and if we have permission to extradite him for trial I can lead a team to capture him. If in the course of the hunt we can help you deal with some Void soldiers that’s a happy coincidence. We will need a way to sneak on planet. Voidwalker will certainly have tapped into the early warning sensors.”
“I’ve got that covered,” Vlad said. “The dragons will attack the San Angles early warning facility at a time we set. That will create a gap you can slip through.”
“You persuaded the Black Dragons to help us?” Marcus couldn’t believe it. He’d helped Vlad make contact, but had no idea negotiations between the two gangs had gone so far.
“Shou was eager to help. His people say the Void ships are making a mess of the American Midwest and a second landed in North Africa. He says those things can churn out a hundred Void soldiers an hour.”
“I finished scanning the system,” Solomon said. “There’s a single patrol cruiser isolated near Saturn. If we can get on board I can test my theory about the virus. If I can clear that ship’s computer I’ll know how to clear the whole system.”
Marcus clapped him on the shoulder. “Good job. We’ll take the star and see about getting on board.”
“I’ll go with you,” Adam said.
“Oh, no, I’m not letting you on my ship.”
“I’m an Earth Force Captain. I can actually contact the crew without getting shot and order them to let you work on the computer. You need me.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, my boy,” Vlad said.
“Fine, but if you try anything I swear I’ll kill you.”
Adam held up his still cuffed hands. “I want the Void off Earth as much as any of you. I won’t do anything to risk our chances of success.”
Vlad unlocked Adam’s cuffs and whispered in his ear. Adam’s face went ghost white and he nodded. Marcus grinned. Whatever Vlad said he suspected he’d have no trouble with Captain Adam Wright on this trip.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They emerged from hyperspace a safe distance from the Earth Force patrol ship. Marcus flew over and circled the ship. It looked dead, no lights, no comm, nothing. At least it didn’t have any gaping holes in the hull.
“Solomon?”
“Scanners show minimal life support and fifty life forms scattered throughout the ship.”
“That’s the full crew complement for a patrol vessel that size,” Adam said.
“All right, Captain, what now?” Marcus asked.
“We need to dock with them. Once we have a secure boarding tube attached I’ll go over and tap the emergency code on the airlock door. S. O. P. says they should have a crew member stationed at the door at all times in an emergency.”
“This certainly qualifies as an emergency. All right, where’s the airlock on that thing?”
“On your right side near the engines. There’s an indent and a glass viewport.”
Marcus maneuvered around the ship until he spotted the airlock. He frowned. It looked tight, he’d have to be careful not to bump the patrol ship. Sweat beaded on Marcus’s brow as he made the micro adjustments necessary to align the ships. On his view-screen a readout guided him a foot at a time. Five breathless minutes later Solomon activated their tractor beam to lock the ships together. Marcus sighed and extended the tube. When the scanners read a tight seal and breathable atmosphere they all got up.
He put a hand on Iaka’s shoulder. “I need you to stay and watch the scanners. We’re basically helpless here if someone unpleasant shows up.”
She hugged him and whispered in his ear, “Be careful. I don’t trust him.”
Marcus stepped back and grinned. “Me neither, but I expect the eventual double cross will come after we deal with the real enemy. Hopefully we won’t be too long.”
He joined Adam and Solomon in the hold and keyed in the airlock access code. When they reached the patrol ship’s airlock door Adam tapped an intricate code on the door. They waited, floating between the ships, nothing between them and the darkness of space but a thin tube of steel. A minute passed, then another. Maybe Adam tapped the wrong code. He was about to say something when the airlock handle spun and the door opened.
A young man in a blue and gray uniform floated in the prep room, a blaster clenched in his shaking hands.
“Identify yourself,” the kid said.
“Captain Adam Wright, Earth Force Mars, Division Commander. Put that blaster away ensign, we’ve got a serious situation and I don’t have time to waste. I need to see the captain.”
Adam’s tone allowed for no disobedience and the boy holstered his weapon. If Earth Force did one thing well it was train its soldiers to obey anyone that sounded like they were in charge. It took nothing more than a stern tone of voice to gain them access to the ship.
“This way, sir.” The ensign pushed off the wall and led them deeper into the ship.
Red emergency lighting stained everything. How long would their life support last if they couldn’t fire up the power core? Every door along every corridor stood open. An occasional curious glance followed them until they floated out of sight. Their guide grabbed a railing and swung down a short hall to the bridge. The full command crew sat at their inactive stations staring at the blank view-screen. Marcus couldn’t remember seeing a more pathetic sight.
The woman in the captain’s chair got out of her chair and drifted over to them. After an assessing glare she said, “Ensign, report.”
“Ma’am, this is Captain Adam Wright, Mars command. He’s here…” The ensign hesitated. “I’m not sure why he’s here.”
Adam brushed passed the kid. “I’m here to attempt to cleanse the virus from your system and get you up and running. We’ve been attacked, captain. Every ship in the fleet is down along with all planetary defenses.”
The captain’s granite face turned to mud and her eyes went wide. Despite her gruff demeanor Marcus guessed she hadn’t held her command for long. “What can we do to help?”
Adam nodded toward Solomon and Marcus. “Give my technicians whatever they need. If we can get your ship up and running we can repeat the procedure with the others.”
“Of course, my people are at your disposal.”
“Good. Also, we need to contact as many of the other ships as we can.”
“All communications are down,” The man at the comm station reported.
“Not through the network, we have to use personal comms. Anyone who knows anyone on another vessel contact them and tell them we need to reach their commanders.”
Adam seemed to have things under control so Marcus left him to it. He went over to Solomon. “Where do we start?”
“We need to disconnect the hypernet relay before I do anything else. As long as we’re connected they can reload the virus.”
“Okay.” Marcus waved over the nervous ensign. “Where does the hypernet relay enter the ship?”
“Engineering, sir.”
“Great, show us the way.”
Marcus and Solomon floated behind the kid along halls and down a ladder before finally reaching the engineering compartment. In the center of the room a steel pillar encased the power core. A circle of computer stations surrounded the pillar. Aside from the equipment the room was empty. With the core shut down the ship’s engineers had nothing to monitor.
“Which one’s the comm station?” Marcus asked.
The ensign pointed at a console on the far side of the room. Marcus glided over and frowned. The cables ran through the wall. He grabbed the console and pulled himself down to the floor. On the wall under the console he found the access panel.
Like all access panels the galaxy over, the ship’s designers had put it in the most inconvenient spot possible.
Now that he’d gotten into position Marcus had no intention of moving. “Okay kid, I need an electric screwdriver, bits, a pair of pliers, and wire cutters.”
“Yes, sir.” A moment later the rattle of metal reached him. The tools he requested floated into view. “Anything else, sir?”
Marcus grabbed the screwdriver and bit set. “Not at the moment.”
***
“Hurry up, Marcus,” Solomon said. “I can’t do anything until you get the relay disconnected.”
Marcus had his head buried in wires as he searched for the one that led to the hyperspace relay. “I know that, but I can only do this so fast.”
Ten minutes later he traced a heavy purple cable to a thirty-two prong connection. He reached in with his pliers and yanked it free. Marcus sighed, worked himself free of the access panel, and glided out from under the console. “Done. You’re up.”
“Finally,” Solomon muttered. Marcus resisted the urge to slap him upside the head as he floated past. Solomon sat down at one of the computer stations and hit the power switch. Nothing happened. “Damn it!”
“What?”
“I don’t have enough power to access the ship’s central programming systems. The emergency power conservation protocols won’t allow it. Damn clever. Whoever set this up knew their business. They sent the virus then ordered it to shut everything down so no one could access the programs to remove it.”
“So what’s the workaround?” If Marcus had learned one thing it was that there was always a workaround.
“We need full power to engineering, so we need to bypass the power core and route power from a secondary source directly to the computer.”
“There’s nothing on this ship with enough power to run the computer outside the power core,” the ensign said.
Marcus grinned. “Not on this ship, but we can run a power cable from the star’s core. That would provide enough juice to get it fired up. Gather all the power cable you can find and meet me at the airlock.”
Marcus propelled himself out of engineering and back through the corridors to the airlock. He crossed back to his ship and sighed at the return to gravity. He only had the cable for his heavy laser. He punched in the code for the weapon’s locker. collected the cable, and resealed the locker.
“How’s it going?” Iaka stood in the entry to the hold. She must have heard him rummaging around.
“No one’s shot at us yet, but we’re having some technical issues. When you leave seal that door behind you. I need to override the airlock safety system. If anything goes wrong the hold could be open to vacuum.”
“Be careful,” Iaka said.
Marcus smiled and shook his head. “Too late for that now. I just hope this works.”
Iaka closed the door and Marcus heard the thunk of the airtight seal engaging. She’d be safe at least. He punched the override into the airlock keypad so the door wouldn’t shut behind him then drifted across the tube, playing the cable out as he went. Marcus reached the patrol ship’s airlock and ran out of cable. He’d have to hope the kid found enough.
The ensign opened the airlock on his side. He had a coil of heavy cable slung over his shoulder. Marcus took the end of the cable from him. “Son of a bitch!” His cable had a standard six prong plug, but the ensign’s had Earth Force’s proprietary eight prong receiver.
The young man grinned, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an adapter. Marcus clapped him on the shoulder. Between the two of them they had the cables connected and run down to engineering in about five minutes. Marcus found a plug, crossed his toes, and plugged the cable in. Nothing exploded so they threw the remaining breakers.
When the computer station Solomon wanted powered up he said, “That’s good.”
Solomon buckled himself into the chair and typed a command. Lines of code streamed down the screen like a waterfall. How Solomon made sense of that jumble of code Marcus had no clue, but if anyone could he could. Marcus pushed away from Solomon’s station, he doubted his friend would even blink until he found what he was looking for.
“Do you need anything else, sir?” The ensign asked.
“Nope, it’s out of our hands now. You did a good job, kid. How’d you know we’d need that adapter?”
The young man smiled at the complement. “I’ve been in the navy long enough to know none of our equipment is compatible with civilian gear. I was cleaning down here a while back and saw where the chief engineer kept his adapters so I grabbed one of each on my way.”
***
“I found it!” Solomon tried to stand up, forgetting he’d belted himself in place. “I found the code.”
Marcus patted him on the back. Solomon hadn’t flinched during two hours of nonstop study. Marcus had been about to suggest he take a break when Solomon finally spoke up. “Good, how long to strip it out?”
Solomon winced. “A while. The virus is fully integrated into the operating system. Ideally I’d like to reformat the system and reinstall the OS, but I don’t have a copy of it. In fact, I suspect the virus corrupted the original copy back on Earth then uploaded itself into the ship’s computer like a system update. The original program my not even exist anymore.”
Marcus felt his eyes glaze. “You can fix it, right?”
“Of course I can fix it. It’s just not going to be as easy as I first thought.”
“How long?”
Solomon shook his head. “Any time frame I gave you would be a guess. The plain truth is I don’t know.”
That statement brought the reality into focus for Marcus. For Solomon to admit he didn’t know meant it would be a monumental job. “Want some coffee?”
Solomon shook his head and bent to his task.
Twelve hours later Solomon looked away from the screen. His eyes looked like someone had thrown sand in them and rubbed. “All done.”
“Great job. What do we do now?”
“Turn on the power core and reboot. Even you can handle that. I’m going to bed.” Solomon unbuckled and glided toward the door.
Marcus grabbed his ankle. “Sorry, pal, but you still need to explain the process so the other ships can cleanse their systems.”
Solomon groaned. Marcus disconnected the power cable and coiled it as they floated back toward the bridge. They went in and found the bridge crew at their stations.
“Is it done?” Adam asked.
Marcus nodded.
“Took long enough.” Adam raised his voice. “Alert all stations. We’re powering up, artificial gravity well be restored shortly.”
Marcus refrained from punching Adam in the face. “No doubt if we’d had your superior computer skills to help we could have managed it quicker.”
Adam had the good grace to look embarrassed. “It’s just that we need to hurry.”
“Why didn’t you say so? We would have skipped that last coffee break.”
“I’m sorry, okay. Are you happy now?”
A vibration ran through the ship as the power core fired up. Everyone brought their feet to the floor. Marcus’s legs wobbled when gravity reasserted itself.
“Marcus, I’m beat. Who do I need to talk to before I can go to bed?”
“Gather your engineers so my friend can explain how he fixed your ship.”
Solomon finished explaining and yawned. Marcus understood about a tenth of what he said, but the engineers looked like they got it so that would have to do. “One last thing,” Solomon said. “As soon as the ships disconnect from the hypernet the central computer will detect it. This little patrol ship out on the edge of the system won’t worry them, but when the whole fleet disconnects that’ll get their attention.”
“Wait,” Adam said. “If they figure out what we’re doing, what’s to stop them from attacking our ships?”
Solomon cocked his head. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“So it worked?” Oli
ver asked.
They’d returned to the others after restoring the patrol cruiser to full service. Solomon had explained the process, but Marcus felt certain the only person in the room that understood what he said was Dra’Kor.
“Yes, sir,” Adam said. “Unfortunately we can’t repair the ships without the enemy realizing what we’re doing. We’ve discussed the matter and the best plan we can come up with is to cleanse the central computer then upload an uncorrupted file to the fleet.”
“I said it might work.” Solomon crossed his arms over his stomach. “It’s equally possible the virus in the ships’ computers will corrupt the incoming file. The only guaranteed way to remove the virus is one ship at a time.”
“Objection noted.” Adam ignored Solomon and continued on. “The point is we can’t count on having our ships free to act.”
“Isn’t there some faster way to remove the virus?” Oliver asked. “Does it have to be done by hand?”
“There might be a faster way,” Dra’Kor said. “If we work together, perhaps Solomon and I could write a program to automate his manual procedure.”
Solomon’s smile almost split his face. “I’d love to work with you.”
Marcus frowned. “Even if you two automate the process, how will we get the program to the ships?”
“We’ll have to upload it to the central computer,” Solomon said. “We clean that first then upload it to the fleet.”
“Everything comes back to regaining control of the central computer.” Oliver paced the lounge. “We can’t do anything else until we regain control.”
***
It took Solomon and Dra’Kor half a day to write the antivirus program. Marcus and Iaka sat in the galley of Vlad’s shuttle playing cards when Solomon came in carrying a data ship. He wore a look of wide eyed joy that Marcus had never seen on his face. No doubt the fact that Dra’Kor had let him cross over to his ship had a big part in it.
