by J. J. Holden
- 13 -
0715 HOURS - ZERO DAY +380
CHOONY WIPED SWEAT from his brow and handed Jaz a loaded rifle, taking the empty one from her to reload. She had started with just her own rifle, but when the chaos started yesterday, spare rifles and ammo became easy to find. A chance to sleep for even twenty minutes, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found.
“Dammit, Choony, I can’t see straight to shoot straight. I’m doing the one-eye thing, I’m so tanked.”
Choony nodded. He knew she meant that she was exhausted, not drunk. Right now, he’d have rather enjoyed getting drunk… being anywhere but here would be an improvement. “Let it go. Your body is tired because it is tired. You are awake because you choose that over death.”
Jaz handed another rifle back to him, retrieving the one he had just reloaded. “My shoulder is killing me. It wasn’t healed all the way. This shit,” she said over the din of firing her rifle, “is totally not fair.”
Choony shrugged. She was right, of course. “The world has no fairness in it. Accept this or suffer in resistance, but nothing changes either way. You remain tired and hurt, or dead. To your right!”
Jaz swung the barrel right and fired just as a man stepped from behind a car with a grenade in hand. He fell, and a second later the grenade went off. Another man flew from behind the car as well, propelled by the blast.
“I wonder how Nestor is doing,” Jaz shouted over her rifle fire. “You see where he went after the airport got overrun?”
“No. He may still live but either way, we’ll have to pull back soon. His Night Ghosts killed the tanks, but there are still infantry.”
There was a lull in the shooting just as Jaz exchanged weapons once again, and in the sudden quiet, Choony heard the unmistakable sound of heavy gunfire coming from the distant auditorium. “Jaz, our left flank’s about to get overrun. We must fall back.” His voice was calm and even, a counterpoint to Jaz’s adrenaline-filled ragged voice.
“Shit. It’s not fair, Choony. We lost too many people to walk away from this school.”
“I recommend running, not walking. I’m sure the dead will not mind.”
Jaz shouted an angry, wordless bark toward the invaders. They answered with renewed gunfire.
“If we stay here, we’ll get flanked next.”
Jaz’s face flashed with anger. “Goddammit, Choony. Fine, grab the damn ammo pouches and let’s pull back.”
Choony understood her reckless anger. Wild thunderstorm that she was, of course pulling back made her angry. She resisted the idea, so it caused her great pain. “Let it go, Jaz. And let us go. Now!”
She and Choony sprinted toward the classroom’s back wall, where the door promised life for a little longer. Bullets peppered the walls randomly around them, knocking more bits of cement away, but they made it through the door and turned left, away from the flanking attack. They followed the wall into an open hallway intersection, then bolted right. They only had to cross one hundred yards to reach the final remaining fallback point near the strip mall, the last defensive lines. At least that put the school between them and their attackers, Choony realized, and thanked Buddha for the small grace.
If Nestor lived, they’d find him at the strip mall lines. There wasn’t anywhere else for him to be. As they made it to the first cover in the last remaining defensive line, they heard gunfire far behind them, but then they were safe for the moment. “Safety is relative,” Choony muttered. It wouldn’t be safe for long, he knew.
* * *
Cassy stood on the Liz Town walls with Carl, having returned there several hours ago well before dawn. Carl was agitated, but she couldn’t blame him. There had been no right answer to the Harrisburg refugee situation, but then Cassy came along with resources Carl hadn’t had and saved the day. A man like Carl, she knew, didn’t like to be showed up by anyone, much less someone who wasn’t even a Liz Towner. “Stupid pride is stupid,” she muttered.
Carl had been trying not to let his irritation show. “Yeah, ain’t life a bitch? So what did you ask me up here for?”
“Well, you have a problem with the wildlanders falling back toward Liz Town. They’re afraid Harrisburg will fall.”
“Don’t forget the bike raiders who crossed elsewhere. Your guy Ethan says they’re wreaking havoc right now along the Confed’s western edge. They could easily raid into Elizabethtown.”
“Right,” Cassy said. “My point exactly. What will you do when the wildlanders get unruly and desperately want to get inside, where it’s supposedly safe?”
“Shoot ’em, same as anyone else who tries to get in.”
Cassy nodded. The Liz Town answer to most problems. “But your Sewer Rats band has loyalty to them, and friends still out there in the wildlands. Do you think they’ll be happy about that? Or do you think they’ll sneak in as many as they can, right under your nose? Then you’ll have a hell of a conflict, internally. You don’t need that.”
Carl let out a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What choice do I have? I can’t just let them in. The other bands would take things into their own hands then, no matter what I say. Even some Timber Wolves would go along with them. Wildlanders didn’t build Liz Town, and they didn’t cement the rubble with their blood like we have.”
“True. They just bled and starved the whole time you were behind these walls. That is why you snuck them provisions, isn’t it? Yes, I heard about that. The Sewer Rats will be forever loyal because of it, if you don’t abuse that loyalty.”
Carl nodded slowly, his shoulders slumping as he dropped his arms to his sides. “So what do you suggest I do?”
“Bring them in.”
The words hung between them for a long moment.
Finally, Carl said, “What, like we did with Sunshine’s people? It isn’t that simple.”
“How so?”
“First, convincing the other Bands to take in refugees, when the whole confederation has been drained to supply the guerrilla Free Republic people. Of course, talking the refugees into coming in will be an issue as well—they don’t much trust Liz Town.”
Cassy nodded, but remained silent.
Carl continued, “Also, finding a band willing to house, defend, and police all those strangers would be a problem. Letting Sewer Rats sneak them in might solve some of those problems, but then the other bands will go apeshit.”
Cassy was quiet for a minute. Carl seemed content to just stand up there with her in silence, no doubt politely waiting for her to reply. At last, she said, “I have one solution that fixes your three problems and raises one more.”
“Fire away.”
“Put a call out for all their able-bodied adults armed with at least a knife or bat. They can come inside, but only with their immediate family members. They will form another band, or two if there are enough, but they start at a deficit and must work that debt off.”
“Makes sense.”
“And the Confederation will put out another call for supplies, both from the Confederation and New America. When this war ends, the newcomers will either be dead or they will have earned their stay in Liz Town as a new Band. To sweeten the deal, the Clan will accept any wildlanders who later want to come, and we’ll set them up among our Clanholds.”
Cassy saw Carl slowly nodding, probably against his better judgment. “That might work, but I can’t give the new Bands voting power until after the debt is paid off.”
“Understandable.”
Carl wiped his face and said, “Yeah. I know the existing bands will worry about losing influence in our system if they add another group. But in the long run, they’ll be thankful to me and the Speaker.”
“Gratitude breeds loyalty, if that gratitude isn’t taken for granted and abused.”
“So true.”
Cassy nodded. “And we can make another Confed run on the armory that you, me, and a couple other people know about. Arm the new Band for defense of Liz Town. This would be a debt to the Confederation that Liz T
own would be responsible for, but I’m sure we can work out those details later. I trust both you and Mary Ann to honor your word, once given.”
“I’m not sure the Confederation can come up with enough supplies for all of them, but they’ll be better off than they were before. I’ll talk to Mary Ann about it, but I think I can convince her.”
“She’s a good Speaker. Smart, reasonable. Not to mention pragmatic.”
Carl chuckled. “She’s all of that and more.”
Cassy looked out over the slowly decaying ruins of Elizabethtown outside the Lizzie walls and let out a long, slow breath. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? These cityscapes, I mean.”
“In a macabre sort of way. In a hundred years, what will be left? If aliens came to visit, what would they find?”
“Humanity will go on, but nothing will ever be the same, no matter how far we come in recovering our old way of life, our old tools and technologies.”
“But maybe that’s not so bad. I like many things about this new world. What did you once call it?”
“This dark new world,” she replied. She smiled briefly at the memory of her first conversation with Carl, when he was a new envoy to Clanholme and she had first used that term with him. “No power, no civilization. Kind of a double entendre.”
“Yeah, well, not all of it is dark. Yes, billions died or are still dying—humanity’s worst tragedy ever, I think—but we who remain are the smart and the lucky. The strong and the loyal. Because everyone who doesn’t have those traits is gone, burned away like deadwood.”
“It’s like a reset button on humanity. But there’s still evil in the world. That much hasn’t changed.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Carl said. “Anyway, time’s up. I have meetings, but I’ll talk to Mary Ann tonight.”
They shook hands and Carl left Cassy on the wall with her thoughts. Then a new idea struck her. What if she looked elsewhere for those much-needed supplies she promised Carl? The northern invader cantonment… They couldn’t possibly want the Mountain King and the Empire to win this war with New America and the Confederation. If the Mountain won, the invaders would have an aggressive new neighbor. Maybe they’d be willing to help provision the new Bands. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the old saying went.
She wished Choony were there to talk to. He’d talk in riddles, mostly asking more questions until Cassy found her right answer by herself. She missed her confidante and counsellor. “Wherever you are this morning, Choony,” Cassy muttered, “I hope you and Jaz are well.”
Cassy let out a sigh, and then heard her stomach rumble. It was past time to get breakfast, she decided, and hurried down from the wall.
* * *
After lunch, Ethan sat at his desk, opened up his laptop, then cracked his knuckles as he stretched. Time for business. Right after breakfast, his bloodhound programs and the zombie army of computers it had created alerted him that penetration was complete. Every computer they could find through the network had either been infected and tracked or their data line was grayed out in his logs—after ten attempts, his program stopped trying to infect that computer and deleted the logfiles of its attempts from whichever server it attacked from.
Amber sat next to him, reclining in the other office chair with her pretty little feet up on his desk. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked.
“I’m about to hack into Watcher One’s intranet through a back door I installed. I want to see what he’s up to, and what connections he has that I don’t.”
Amber leaned her head back, staring up at the bunker’s red, corrugated metal ceiling. “Sounds like tons of fun. Well, I’ll leave you to your games, then.”
As Amber began to get up, Ethan groaned and said, “But who will I share my upcoming victory with?”
Amber grabbed her shoes from beside the desk. “Me, later. If you win, that is. But I have a ton of work to do. I’m on kitchen duty from nine o’clock until evening chow. Man, I hope they put me on pies instead of canning. It’s too damn hot to be standing next to the stoves for eight hours.”
“Oh no,” Ethan said with a smirk, “it’s so terrible that you have to work on all that food. I feel your pain.”
“You ever want to get laid again?” she said, and punched him in his arm. Hard.
“Ouch! Brat. That hurt.” Ethan grinned as they went through what had become their morning routine.
She struggled to get her shoes on while standing up. Shoes finally on, she put her hands on his shoulders, leaned down, and kissed him quickly on his lips as he looked up at her from his chair. “See ya tonight.”
Ethan nodded and waved goodbye. When she was gone, he turned back to his computer. What she ever saw in him, he’d never know, but he sure wasn’t going to ask.
Okay, now it really was time to get down to business…
He spent the next hour setting up another Virtual Machine on his main computer, and loaded it with the programs he figured he’d need. Which was most of them, so it took a while to get that done, too. Then he connected through his old backdoor on a satellite, the one he didn’t normally use. If he was tracked, that bird wouldn’t have miles of logfiles with him on them. He was pretty good about clearing his tracks, but he could never be certain he got them all. From there, he connected through a series of VPNs that led around the world and back again.
Then he homed in on his target. Watcher One’s gateway was marked in red on his monitor, just a line of data that looked like gibberish to most people. Not to a hacker, though. He connected to his friendly little worm-bot…
…and he was in! Watcher One’s intranet revealed itself to him in all its glory. Three terminals, or computers, were visible. He set his bloodhound-slash-worm to work on infecting those, then activated a packetsniffer. It was complicated and involved spending an hour installing a couple utilities onto Watcher One’s system, disguising them as system files. This activated an alert, but because he had slaved Watcher’s box, he alone saw the query pop up asking to authorize the file changes. He clicked “Approve.”
His packetsniffer would begin to filter and record everything Watcher One did, every password he used, every VPN he accessed. All of it. And once per week, it would spit that data back to a temp logfile on an enslaved computer in Germany, just waiting for “Dark Ryder” to come and collect it.
Ethan stood and stretched his back. Looking at the clock, he saw he had been hunched over his computer for two hours. The extra time and precautions were necessary, though, because Watcher One was almost as good as Dark Ryder himself.
Ethan sat back down once the knot in his left lower back relaxed a bit. He went into Watcher One’s files throughout his little network. Of course, he wouldn’t see anything kept on a computer that was currently not connected to that intranet or stored on a USB drive, but nothing could hack that. Not directly—he’d have to wait for his packetsniffer and logfile snooper to relay information about any of those. Even that wouldn’t be very useful, though, as they wouldn’t be the actual files themselves.
He found one oddity. It was labeled as an image file, but it was exactly 7.0 gigabytes in size. “There’s no way that’s a simple JPEG,” he muttered. More likely, it was a disguised virtual drive. He set up a download manager he had programmed himself, which would copy that file byte by byte and piggyback tiny fragments to his German slaved system. It was essentially a peer-to-peer utility, much like a Torrent. It could take days or weeks to get all the data collected, and even then he’d still have to decrypt and decipher it, but it had to contain something juicy or Watcher One wouldn’t have bothered to encrypt and hide it like that.
Hours later, Ethan decided that was enough for one day. He had set up a grand hack, but it would take time for everything to come to fruition. He was about to back out of Watcher One’s intranet when a fourth terminal appeared, blinking faint and red. Ethan almost let out an excited victory yell. Someone else just connected to Watcher One’s network, bringing their intranet into connection with his own. And it h
ad Admin permissions! Ethan laughed. Who on Earth would have permissions to openly connect to Watcher One’s intranet through a remote connection? “I’ll give you one guess,” Ethan said aloud without realizing it.
He quickly set up a mirror of Watcher One’s system, allowing him to see whatever Watcher One saw, go wherever Watcher One could go on this new arrival, and anyone on the other side wouldn’t even see it. It was just part of their existing data stream unless they were carefully monitoring it, which he highly doubted. That would be too resource-intensive to use on what was clearly a trusted connection.
He entered the new addition to Watcher’s network, but did nothing beyond looking around. He didn’t want to raise alarms, just snoop around the unsecured accessible portion.
It immediately became clear to Ethan that the new connection was exactly who he had thought it was. He was looking around the honest-to-goodness network at freakin’ NORAD itself. Hot damn… NORAD… He was inside the Mountain’s network.
Okay, he mused, it was probably just a brief connection to sync files or something equally mundane. That meant the connection wouldn’t last long. Ethan took a deep breath and loaded a utility on his computer, adjusted the settings, and then his finger hovered over the Enter key. If this worked, he was about to install a worm into NORAD itself. Had that ever been done before? He didn’t know, but he did know this was a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
On the other hand, if someone noticed it, the connection would be severed and NORAD would begin aggressively backtracking through the fake maze of connections behind which Ethan hid. He’d have to immediately begin wiping every trace of himself from each system he had connected to, beginning with the earliest one and moving on in order, so that they couldn’t follow him all the way back home. And they’d definitely install software to look for him in the future. Every connection he made from then onward would be a deadly risk.
But this was NORAD. The risk was worth it. He clicked Enter and watched as his worm tried to install itself. The popup on Watcher One’s end came up asking for authorization, which Ethan approved. But had someone on NORAD’s end received the popup, as well?
