Double Share: Solar Clipper Trader Tales

by Nathan Lowell

  I dug into the intercom controls and started looking for a way to remotely control a particular microphone. I flipped through several sub programs looking for the specific coding structures and data identification fields for the bridge microphone. I thought that if I could figure out how the bridge microphone worked, and if I could figure out how to control it, I could just copy that to any other intercom on the ship. As I zeroed in on the bridge controls, I spotted exactly where I would need to modify the control code to use it as a bug.

  The modification had already been made.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-AUGUST-11

  Once I knew what I was looking for, locating the network of intercom connections became easy. There were the typical redundancies built into any ship’s system, but over and above that, it was a clean machine. The industrial strength code looked like production grade. There were signatures and sign-offs noted in the appropriate places on the system maintenance logs.

  People call the device I looked at a microphone, but technically it was a digital audio transducer. It grabbed the sound waves from the air using a standard mechanical diaphragm, but instead of turning those vibrations into variations in electrical energy like a classic microphone, it used a small sensor in the intercom unit to measure and encode those variations digitally. The system then routed the signals to several data hubs around the ship. Those hubs existed in key places like nerve ganglia around the body. Each had a redundant connection path and could be reached in at least two ways. Even the main data paths between the fore and aft nacelles had a parallel redundancy built into the keel of the cargo container. When the can locked in, it closed the loop on a secondary path, which permitted data to flow from bow to stern even if the main data backbone was cut.

  Each intercom had a button for the bridge and a button for engineering central. In case of emergency, which was really all the devices were intended for, pressing the button would cause a buzzer on the bridge or engineering to go off. The bridge unit and the engineering units were more complicated and had the ability to buzz any intercom on the ship using a number pad. The main issue was that you needed to know the number. Tablets provided much faster and more reliable communications from individual to individual, but the CPJCT safety regulations required these intercom systems, and so they were on every ship.

  I turned my head from the console and looked at the bridge intercom on the aft bulkhead. I wondered if anybody else were listening. Turning back to the system’s display, I began teasing out the codes that linked the speakers with the system. These were supposed to be very simple systems and reliable even during significant shipboard failures. Press to talk, release to listen, digital routing independent of other data sensor streams. I’d actually been in a situation where they had failed but only once. Of course, on that occasion practically everything else had failed as well and we almost died, but almost doesn’t count.

  Just before the change of watch, I found what I had been looking for. The sound system spooled into a data array. Any or all of the intercoms could be triggered to record. When turned on, they’d record into a time stamped storage device which would identify the location of the audio transducer and the time the recording was made.

  Somebody had already wired the entire ship for sound.

  There was a lot I didn’t know, and I didn’t really know who to ask. From the records in the system, the function had been installed when the ship had been built, or at least during one of the authorized maintenance periods. The file names, dates, and provenance traces were all correct. They certainly were a lot better looking than what I was planning to do, and appeared to be a planned function in the ship’s infrastructure.

  I wondered if it was just the Billy or whether every ship had built-in bugs and only the captain knew about them or something.

  The chrono display on the bottom of my terminal clicked over to 05:30 and I realized I’d been sitting there focused on the systems display for almost five solid stans. I noticed Juliett and Charlotte behind me, and they were being much quieter than normal. I cleared the display, kicked my daily backups, and then stood up as nonchalantly as I could.

  “Anything wrong, sar?” Juliett asked.

  Charlotte sat at the spare console looking at her tablet, but apparently not actually reading anything. They both held themselves very still.

  “Not that I know of, Ms. D’Heng. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sar,” she said with a drawl that meant I was about to get zinged. “You’ve been sitting at that console without really looking up since about double-naught thirty. When Charlotte brought up fresh cups of coffee after her rounds at 03:00, she handed one to you, and your reply was—and I quote—‘Thanks, hon.’ You then put the coffee on the desk and haven’t touched it since. I suspect it’s quite cold now.” She paused deliberately before adding, “Sar.”

  While Juliett rattled off her little speech, Charlotte looked up as if to see what I would say.

  “I must have been really distracted. My apologies, Ms. D’Heng, I meant no disrespect.”

  “Disrespect, sar?” she seemed confused.

  “For calling you ‘hon,’” I clarified.

  “Oh, not to worry, sar. It’s much better than what I get called by some others,” she said with a grin. “You were distracted,” she added with emphasis on “were.”

  They both just sat at their stations, staring at me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “That’s all, sar?” Juliett asked. “Just ‘I mean no disrespect’? Nothing is wrong with the ship? You’re okay, aren’t you?”

  “As nearly as I can tell, the ship is fine,” I said. “I am too. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”

  The two of them shared that long-suffering look that I was getting used to seeing between them.

  Juliett said, “Well, pardon my saying so, sar, but in the thirty odd standard days we’ve been underway and we’ve been standing watch, I’ve never seen you not finish a cup of coffee. You’ve also never zoned out so completely that you would have failed to notice Ms. D’Heng strip out of her ship suit, turn it wrong side out, and put it back on.”

  Startled, I looked back at Charlotte’s suit. “Her suit isn’t wrong side out,” I said, confused.

  Juliett grinned. “No, but you had to look to make sure, didn’t you, sar?”

  “Ms. Jaxton, I think he’s busted.”

  “I think so too, Ms. D’Heng.”

  I couldn’t help it. I snorted in laughter.

  “Okay, you got me. I was playing in the ship’s systems and got sucked in. Nothing’s wrong with the ship. It’s for a little project I’m working on for Mel—er—Ms. Menas.”

  They shared that look again, but Mallory clomped up over the ladder followed closely by Mr. Burnside and they didn’t pursue it. We got the watch changed over without casualty. Burnside made no reference to the incident with the Bumble Brothers and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. In typical Burnside fashion he flopped into the console chair, looking like he’d had about three stans sleep and smelling of sex.

  “Ship is on course and on target,” I told him, standing well back in case he was just trying to lure me into reach. “No incidents or actions. Standing orders are unchanged. You may relieve the watch, Mr. Burnside.”

  “Yeah, great. See you in six stans,” he mumbled through a yawn.

  Charlotte had scooted as soon as Mallory and Burnside came onto the bridge, taking our coffee cups with her. When Juliett had been relieved, I headed down the ladder with her at my heels. At the foot of the ladder I headed to my stateroom for a quick face wash before breakfast and Juliett headed down to the mess deck. Crew’s mess would start serving soon.

  As we split to go our separate ways, she said, “Keep practicing, sar.”

  I nodded and went to my stateroom. It was barely 06:00 and I felt sticky and sweaty. Spending the whole watch with my head in the console like that probably de
hydrated me, and I felt simultaneously wrung out and wired up. I tapped on the door to the head.

  “Occupied,” Arletta said.

  “Okay, no rush.”

  I sat down, trying to determine how to tell her what I’d found.

  I couldn’t talk freely until I could figure out who, if anybody, was listening. I couldn’t send her a message via tablets unless we could encrypt it. I might be able to write on my tablet, and as long as I didn’t save it, or send it, I’d be safe. Of course, that had always been true. Only an idiot thought that their tablet messages were secure from the company. I guess I felt a bit like a fool for thinking that the ship wasn’t wired for sound as well. I wondered if it were recording video as I heard the shower start. That disturbed me until I realized that it took a huge amount of storage and I had a very accurate picture of how much memory was aboard and how much of it was used by the ship’s operations. I made a mental note to look into that when I went back on watch. The problem was that it might not be recorded in the ship’s schematics and the required storage might not be in the ship’s data array.

  The shower cut off and after a couple of ticks, I heard a soft tap on the door to the head. I released the handle and smiled at Arletta.

  “Good morning,” she said. “How was watch?”

  “Hey,” I greeted her. “It was a midwatch. What can I say? How about you?”

  I held up my tablet, slipped the stylus out of its slot, and wrote a sentence: No problems with Burnside…but discovered the ship is bugged. I held up the tablet so she could read it.

  Her eyes widened in surprise and she pointed to the deck and mouthed the word, “Here?” without making any noise.

  I nodded broadly.

  “He left a little mess for me to clean up,” she said, “but I think he had a hot date because he was out of there like a shot.”

  I erased the tablet and wrote: Next watch will know more.

  “Woulda been nice if he’s showered before he came up,” I said.

  She nodded and shrugged.

  “Yeah, well, I’m starved. You wanna shower before we head over to eat?”

  “I was going to, but I think I’ll just do a quick splash. I’m hungry.”

  She backed out of the doorway and I walked into the head. There wasn’t much to say but I ran the water in the sink and washed my face off. It felt good, like peeling a layer of grime from my skin. The coolness of it refreshed me and my eyes stopped burning, mostly.

  It struck me then. The intercoms were in the staterooms. I scanned the bulkheads in the head and realized that there was no place to put one in there.

  “Ya know, I think I’ll take a shower after all,” I said, but motioned her to step in with me.

  I pulled the door to my stateroom closed and turned on the water.

  Arletta looked at me curiously, but pulled the door to her room closed too, and we stood practically nose to nose in the small room with the shower running. Being that close to her was a bit distracting, but it gave me a chance to whisper in her ear.

  “Any intercom in the ship can be triggered from some system utility that I haven’t found yet. The audio gets recorded. I don’t know if anybody is listening, or if I’m just being paranoid, but it’s there.”

  She leaned and whispered back, “You got any idea what to do about it?”

  “Yes, but I need to get some sleep and get back onto the bridge for the afternoon watch to do it.”

  “This is the strangest thing yet,” she whispered.

  “It may be nothing. The installation looks like it’s original to the ship. It’s possible that nobody knows it’s there.”

  “Okay,” she said and shocked me by giving me a quick hug, “thanks for letting me know.”

  I nodded and she slipped out of the head and into her room, closing the door carefully behind her.

  Once she was gone I waited a couple of ticks, shut off the water, and then went out into my own stateroom. After a few more ticks, I stepped out into the passageway, stopping at Arletta’s door, I tapped.

  “Come on, slow poke. I’m starving,” I called to her.

  She chuckled as she came out of her stateroom, and we headed for breakfast.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-AUGUST-11

  Breakfast was a bit strained. I was conscious of the transducer on the bulkhead and wary of the potential listeners. Mostly it was quiet anyway. Mel seemed distracted by something. I think Arletta was having the same kind of paranoid reaction to the bugging as I was. Fredi was the only one who seemed to be having a normal morning, and Fredi was never a morning person. Even Penny Davies seemed a little worse for wear. Poor kid looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. She gave me a worn smile and made sure my coffee cup was full.

  About halfway through breakfast, I found myself caught by the yawns. I finished my eggs and excused myself.

  “I think I should lie down now. Longer midwatch than I thought.”

  They all smiled sympathetically, and I half stumbled back to my stateroom. I passed Ed Simon on my way into Officers’ Country and nodded a good morning as we passed.

  When I got into my stateroom, I stripped down to boxers and tee and fell onto my bunk. I didn’t bother to get in. I just pulled the coverlet around me and rolled into it like a rug. The last thing I remember thinking was that I must have burned a lot of energy studying the ship.

  When I relieved Burnside at 11:45 it looked like he’d barely moved. He hadn’t even bothered to leave me a mess to clean up. I wondered if he’d slept through the whole watch. Mallory was, as ever, blandly non-communicative, but Juliett relieved him smartly enough.

  “You may relieve the watch. Nothing happened,” Burnside said. “It never does.”

  He stood from the console and stumbled off the bridge almost before I had a chance to say, “I have the watch.”

  Mallory followed him down the ladder.

  Juliett looked at me with a little shrug and said, “You look livelier than the last time I saw you, sar. Feeling a little better?”

  “Yes, thank you, Ms. Jaxton.” I managed a small smile. “I got a nap and a shower in. I’m feeling almost human again.”

  I checked the logs and standing orders and discovered that we needed to do a minor course correction to line up with the jump point for the next day. She and I laid in and locked down the change before Ms. Cramer brought my lunch. I made myself take slow and deliberate bites to mask my absolute screaming need to get into that audio system again and find out who, if anybody, was listening.

  Charlotte came to relieve Juliett for lunch and she started the sweep down while I finished eating. I helped clean up so the bridge was shipshape by the time Juliett made it back from the mess deck.

  The two of them settled down to watch and study, and I fired up the systems console. My first concern was who had been listening, and how would I know if they were. I wasted a full stan looking for the utilities that would enable the listening capabilities, and I never found anything. I made a point to stand up, walk around the bridge, and drink some coffee.

  When Charlotte went on her afternoon rounds, Juliett looked at me as if to say, “You’re not fooling me.”

  I grinned at her and sat back down.

  When you’re dealing with complex systems—especially really large complex systems—forget the forest and trees thing. Sometimes you get lost in the weeds. That’s where I was. I’d been so derailed by finding the software tap already in place that I forgot that I’d gone there to put my own in. I’d traced it through to the recording logs and apparently that was when my brain took a holiday.

  The logs kept track of date, time, and transducer number along with the audio. I’d seen that. Even wondered how I could use that information. I wanted to bang my head on the screen, but I was relatively sure that Ms. Jaxton might notice that kind of behavior. I was so hung up on the who, that I’d completely lost track of the what.

  I sighed at my own stupidity and opened
the log to see when the last entry had been made.

  When I saw it, I just sat back in my chair. I didn’t know whether I could even believe what I saw. It was dated 2358-July-06 at 14:53, and lasted only two seconds. I looked back a bit farther and realized that the record had come from docking at Diurnia Orbital. There were three records on that date. Taken in correct sequence I saw from the time stamps that these were routine checks. Bridge called engineering central, central replied, and the bridge acknowledged. I didn’t even need to listen to them, but I plugged in a head set just to confirm. While I listened to what they contained, I extended the log window and found that all the logs had routine maintenance tests.

  I set up a query to look for other instances of the log elsewhere on the system. If somebody were clandestinely monitoring the ship, there was a good possibility that they wouldn’t store that data in the main storage. While that was running, I wrote a little routine that would periodically poll every intercom in the ship to see if it were listening. It might not tell me why, or who, but it would at least tell me if and when. I set my routine running in the background of the main systems array and routed the output to my tablet. I tested it by crossing to the bulkhead and pressing the “talk” button on the intercom. My tablet popped open a window with the message indicating that the bridge transducer was active. I let go of the button and the message went off.

  I knew Juliett and Charlotte were watching me so I crossed to the watch stander’s console and checked the logs. I was careful not to look at either of them. In theory my tablet would tell me when somebody monitored any of the intercoms. I had established the first beach head.

  The next order of business was to find out if anybody else was monitoring the ship. Frankly, I suspected Mr. Burnside, but anybody with access to the interface could be doing it.