"That's a long leap of logic, right there." I nodded at the panel. "And that's an impressive bit of coding skill. I can't tell if this alteration is on that line from here. If they can, I'd like to meet them."
He nodded. "You may get your chance. It's just a theory. It could just as well be our Seeker tails or a Colberran sensor monitoring the files," he said, pointing at the panel. "Get what you need and get some rest. We have a water pipeline to visit."
Chapter 14 - Nomad Secrets
If we'd known then how much trouble those Seeker tails would end up being, Suyef might have reconsidered his original plan to just involve them and be done with it. We first noticed them when we left that control station; Suyef indicated them on our sensors. Over the next week, they remained at a distance, following us. They stayed just far enough away that our sensors couldn't discern how many they were. Someone among them had a healthy understanding of Nomad senses, as well. They never strayed close enough for Suyef to sight them, even with his Altering sixth sense. Still, we knew who they were, and, for the time being, they left us alone.
"You know we can't go to that settlement with them on our tail," I said one night as we rested in yet another control station. The translucent panel filled the room before me, and I pointed at the two marks on the map indicating our nightly watchers, the rest having retreated to another control station farther up this line. "And if that Questioner is as good at coding as rumors say he is, he'll figure out what I've been looking at eventually."
Suyef nodded. "Good, I hope he does."
I stared at him, eyebrows cocked upward, head shaking slightly. "You mind sharing your plan with me?"
He pointed at the screen. "If he figures out all we're doing is looking into water coding programs, he may deduce all we're doing is checking on the levels. Making sure the system's working the way it's supposed to be."
"But it's not," I pointed out. "And we're only checking one station along each line."
"This time," he said, smiling. "And it just has to give him pause. Get him thinking."
"About what?" I asked, nodding at the screen. "That we're just looking for information?"
"We're checking the status of the system." He held up a finger. "As a guise for what we're really doing."
I stared at the Nomad, my head shaking slightly side to side. "Which is?"
"Figuring out why that one line is still functioning," he finally answered.
I frowned. "That's a bit too close to the truth for my comfort."
"The best lie is a one that is made from truth," the Nomad said. "See religion."
I barked a laugh. "On Colberra, that's almost a dead joke."
"There is a state religion, yes?" he asked. "Funded by the Central Dominance?"
I nodded. "Just to keep the citizens happily placated. Preaches government doctrine more than anything else, and attendance isn't required. Oh, they'll give motivational speeches and what not, keep the people looking forward and smiling. But nothing like what you have on your shell."
The Nomad sighed. "As much as we think we know of you Colberrans, there's still much missing."
"That, my friend, is what you get when all information is controlled by one central authority," I quipped, playfully punching him in the shoulder. "You know, like on your shell."
"There's a difference between keeping Offlanders from accessing information and keeping our own people from doing so."
I shrugged. "Probably." My eyes wandered back to the blinking lights on the screen. "You're going to meet them again, aren't you?"
The Nomad nodded. "Seems simpler to just confront them. Let the Questioner know we're noticing his presence. At the very least, it will make him send for word from his superiors."
"If he gets a response, your story is going to fall apart," I pointed out.
Suyef turned to look at me. "And that's where you come in." He reached into his cloak pocket and pulled his padd out. "I've got something to share with you." He held his out for me to hold mine near, swiping a finger across the screen and sending the data to my device. "That's a very particular bit of coding, and attached are instructions on what to do with it."
I perused the lines. The magnitude of what he'd just given me slowly washed over me. I looked up at Suyef to find him staring at me.
"Is this how you Nomads snuck your way into Seeker ranks?" He nodded. "That's some serious coding going on." I read through the lines, finger tracing up and down the columns of symbols. "This isn't a new program. This is just how to access one that already exists?"
The Nomad nodded at the padd. "How else do you think we keep them confused about us? Seekers are nothing if not persistent." He pointed at the coding on my screen. "That little program has allowed us to keep Seekers from ever really getting a good foothold on our shell." He looked meaningfully at me. "And they have tried. Many times. It's part of the reason we kept your Force so isolated. We suspected they might be another Seeker attempt to get onto our shell and into our network."
"But doesn't having this create a window into your network?" I asked.
"No," he answered, pointing at the large screen over my right shoulder. "You have to be at one of these for this to work. Actually on this shell. That program just grants you access to a very specific location on the network. One that lets you insert information to be found."
"Like fake mission files," I whispered, finally putting two and two together.
"Precisely. I've never had to do this, but you should be able to get it working. Once you do, I have the file ready," he said, holding up and shaking his padd. "I just need you to figure out how to make that work."
I frowned at the Nomad. "They didn't teach you that before you left?"
"They didn't think it was important, yet. My information was added to the file by my predecessor. I haven't needed the skill until this mission." He pointed his device at me. "That's not important. What is important is that you need to wrap your brain around it and get it to work. We need to give that Questioner something to find when he goes asking questions."
"If he hasn't already," I muttered, turning to the workstation and setting the padd on the surface before me.
"That's possible. He may still be looking, which is why he's just tailing us." Suyef pointed to the north. "If he knew we had no orders on file, he'd have arrested us already. But he hasn't, so I suspect he either hasn't thought to look or—"
"—he's still looking." I finished his statement.
"Exactly," Suyef said, moving toward the door. "I'm going to make a show of checking on them. You get to work."
I nodded, focusing on the program. It wasn't complicated. The instructions were extremely simple to follow. What proved difficult was coming up with some mission. Creating a reasonable looking facsimile was part of what this program did, but it did not provide content. I had to do that. With Suyef outside, it meant waiting for him, going to get him, or just doing it myself. As I stared at the screen, pondering my options, my eyes saw a file flash once on the local drive displayed before me. I quickly tapped the folder open and looked at the file: water control coding. Someone was accessing this station's data to see what the coding looked like. Who was doing it, though, and why? Maybe someone needed to know what we did, that the coding had been altered. Maybe they were looking for comparison files, examples to hold up to theirs. Or it could just be a censor. Still, a censor would probably check other things. What would the odds be of a censor just happening to check the one file Suyef and I kept checking just after we'd done so? If the file contained a trigger embedded in it, the odds would be pretty high. Still, that was a pretty large leap of logic and no more than wondering if whoever was doing it was simply looking for a matching file to compare to. I couldn't help but be impressed. That coding skill had to have taken years to learn.
My eyes wandered back to the map and came to rest on the one remaining functioning waterline not leading to a raider or Seeker outpost. I glanced at the file Suyef's people had created and made my choice.
It was time to go find some information.
#
"You have a theory on who it was, don't you?" I asked Quentin, interrupting his story.
He nodded. "I know precisely who it was, and you do, too."
We both looked at the sketch in his hand.
"So, while you were stumbling upon one of the problems in the network, she was doing the same thing," I muttered, jotting a note down to make a parenthetical reference later.
"What she was looking for isn't important." He held up the sketch. "What was is that she was doing it. Specifically, how she was doing it. I told you, that's an impressive bit of coding. I could do it now. But not then."
"She says her father was even better."
He shrugged. "Maybe. I've only ever seen her do it."
I arched an eyebrow. "Meaning you've seen him otherwise?"
He grinned and winked at me. "Up to your tricks again?" He waved a finger at me. "You'll not fool me into revealing anything before its time."
I shook my head, bowing it in defeat and motioning for him to continue.
#
When Suyef returned, he found me sitting, legs extended out before me, crossed at the feet, and arms folded over my chest. I wore a smile on my face.
"You succeeded, then?" he asked, coming to stand next to me.
"Not just at that," I said, nodding toward the screen. "Look."
Suyef stepped close and perused a series of files open on the screen, all laid next to each other.
"What is all this?"
"Those, my Nomad friend, are the control files for water flow from every control station still functioning properly in the Outer Dominances," I boasted, a big grin splitting my face.
His head turned to look at me. "I thought you couldn't access these from anywhere except for the stations themselves."
"I couldn't," I admitted, lacing my fingers behind my head, arms jutting out to either side. "Until you gave me that file."
He looked down at the padd, still sitting on the surface below the screen. His eyebrows rose as he looked from the padd to me and, finally, to the screen.
"That is impressive," he stated. "And saves us some time." He held up a finger. "But it doesn't fix our immediate problem."
"Oh, I did that already," I commented, waving a hand at a file open off to the left. "There's our orders. We're to check, in an unobtrusive manner, mind you, on all the water lines to make sure they are 'functioning within acceptable parameters' as a guise to inspect the stations all along that one line and discover why this bit of malicious programming isn't functioning the way it was intended to."
"Malicious programming?"
I nodded. "I didn't say that in the report, of course. It's intentionally vague enough not to give away what we're really doing, while giving us access to the right locations to do so." I nodded at the map. "Those poor people in the settlement will be as convinced as anyone else we're legit and there on official business."
"Giving us access to carry out our secret mission to sabotage their water supply," Suyef stated, nodding and smiling. "That should keep the Questioner off our backs." He indicated the other files. "So, what's all this then?"
"I told you."
"Yes, and what did you find?"
"They're all identical."
Suyef furrowed his brow, shaking his head. "Identical? That doesn't tell me much."
"Me either," I admitted. "At first." I reached over to the side of the screen and pulled another file up. "Until you compare it to this one."
Suyef looked over the new file. "That's this station's control coding, isn't it?" I nodded and he glanced over it and another file. "This file is missing the—how'd you put it?—Malicious programming."
"Yes and no." I highlighted a column of symbols in the local file and on one of the other files. "It's there, just a bit different. It's all in the symbols. Whoever did this wanted the malicious coding to blend in. To an untrained eye, which on this shell means virtually everyone outside of Seeker and Dominance upper circles, this coding would look identical. Even more so when you consider that most people wouldn't have access to the local control files of other stations." I pointed at one symbol, halfway up the column. "Look closely at that one."
Suyef leaned over and peered at the indicated symbol. He moved to look at the corresponding symbol in the other files. Finally, he stood up and nodded.
"It's amazing that one symbol can change so much," he said.
I held up a finger. "One stroke, not just one symbol. Those two symbols are the same one. But that upward tick there versus the downward tick there changes the meaning to the exact opposite."
"And everyone in the Outer Dominances runs out of water because of it," Suyef whispered.
"Everyone except the chosen few allowed to remain," I stated, waving my hand at the functional stations' files. "I checked the water line all the way up from each of these. They're all identical, and here's the kicker." I tapped the changed column, resting my finger on the crucial symbol. "What this little fancy bit of coding did was convince the primary system there are more control stations farther down the line. In each station."
"Wait, so all of the control points along all these lines are convinced there's another along the way? What about the end one?"
I nodded. "Which makes you wonder where all that water is going."
"And why they needed that fix," the Nomad murmured. "That makes it seem like this problem hit the entire line, or even the entire system, all at once."
"That, or when it was implemented it took out the entire line and the only way to prevent it was...." I trailed off. "No, that doesn't even make sense." I tapped a finger on my lips while thinking, eyes locked on the voluminous files spread out before me. "If they planned this, they could have just exempted the lines they didn't want turned off."
"Precisely," Suyef said, putting a hand on my shoulder and waving his other hand at the screen. "But this shows every line was affected, and the only fix we've found was to trick the system into thinking some lines were longer than they really were."
"Why do that?" I asked.
Suyef pointed at the map hidden behind some of the documents. "Bring that to the front." He pointed at each active water line. "All of these end in Seeker-controlled settlements on the edge, save for three, and two of those are near the edge also." I nodded for him to go on when he looked at me. "All the points the Seekers control have one thing in common besides being on the edge. They're ports."
I looked over at him. "Everyone knows that, but they don't get used. We're too far from any other shells to trade currently, besides yours, and you won't trade with Colberra."
"We used to," he said, stepping away and moving behind the screen. "Do you recall what we used to trade with your shell?"
I frowned at Suyef through the panel. "If I remember my history correctly, water. The records aren't very detailed once you get back that far."
He snapped his fingers. "Exactly. To be precise, you sent water to our shell centuries in the past when our shell collided with another and our water system broke."
"What's your point?" I muttered, eyes roaming away from his just-visible face through the panel to the data.
"The point is," he continued, glaring at me, "if the system existed back then for your people to offload water. . . "
He trailed off while I pondered his words. Then, it hit me.
"You're saying they're dumping the water off the shell?"
"Can you think of a better way to create a water shortage?" he asked.
"You slow down the production at the Citadel?"
He shook his head, pointing at the map. "You have to keep the majority of your population in the dark about this, right? You can't have their primary source of water suddenly start malfunctioning."
"You're assuming most of the population doesn't know already," I said, arching my eyebrows at him.
"If they did, we wouldn't have had this hard a time finding information on it, would we?"
/>
"That was satirical," I muttered, waving a hand at him.
"You mean sarcastic."
That warranted a glare from me. "Moving on. Your hypothesis is they're dumping the water off the edge to manufacture a water shortage?" I tapped on another panel, bringing up a search. "The problem is, I don't recall there being any major water shortage in recent years. Not even historically." I scanned through my search, looking for anything that might fit. "Nothing in the media or historical archives. Water supply has never really been an issue on this shell, because we're so close to the water shield. That's probably why it was so easy to convince us to send water to help you."
Suyef looked around for a moment, shaking his head, lips moving as he talked to himself. He looked at me. "Try the opposite."
I focused on him through the panel. "Too much water?"
"Too much water use," he said, his eyebrows going up, one hand raised next to him. "You could spin that to convince your population you need to exercise some controls."
I shrugged and altered my search. It took a few moments, but soon we had a few hits.
"Here we go, a news article from about fifteen cycles ago. And here's another from close to twenty," I said, pointing at the list as it populated. "Another from ten. Seems there was a big kerfuffle about water usage." I tapped open a few of the documents and started skimming them, Suyef moving around to join me. "Look, here's some Central Dominance big wig giving a speech." I tapped the link and another window opened, revealing a man standing at a podium before a large crowd. "Clearly a politician."
I keyed on the audio and his voice filled the room.
"There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits, and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside."
Rise: Paths (Future Worlds Book 2) Page 13
