by Chris Hechtl
That was the plan anyway, but the A.I. had been too quick in his retreat to fully map where those cores were at.
“We didn't take it out,” she eventually reported as she accessed the camera feed to check on the team.
“Take what out?” Mister Black demanded.
“The ship's A.I. It's still there,” Queen warned. Miss White nodded.
“Okay, but it's not interfering?” Mister Gray asked.
“No. It is inside its shell. Appropriate given it's a Tauren I suppose,” Queen replied.
“We can suborn it later,” Mister Gray stated. “Or I should say, you can.”
“No, it's bottled up. We've got it contained for now,” Miss White said. “But not forever. It's blocking access to itself, and we don't know where those cores physically are so we can't shut them down by hand. That's a problem.”
“What she said. It's pulled itself into its kernel, and a firewalled core Boogeyman can't penetrate.”
“Good. Keep the Boogeyman in check and nipping at its heels until we can do something about it properly,” Mister Black ordered.
Boogeyman's primary duty was to scare the A.I. into thinking it had been infected by the Skynet virus and force it to go into a shell to protect itself, cutting off all contact. Its secondary objective was to map the system and pass the information as well as any systems it managed to gain control of over to Queen.
Its third objective was to suborn any systems it could while also barking and chewing at the various firewalls in the network. That would allow the A.I. and its antivirus to focus on Boogeyman, not on Queen and the cyber teams so they could secure the system.
The simplest expedient to taking the A.I. down, perhaps for good but for the moment just temporarily, was to map where its cores were and where it had retreated to, and then take them off line physically.
In other words, unplug the A.I. That way the A.I. couldn't interfere. Doing so might invariably trigger a self-destruct package, but that was a risk they'd have to take. But that was easier said than done since Leopold's hardware was distributed across the ship in strategic locations to keep him and the computer network from being taken out by damage.
5
The threat of a fuel leak and potential explosion threw the bewildered skeleton crew in main engineering into controlled chaos of damage control. The havoc with the computers only added to the problem. However, they were trained in how to deal with the damage; their training came to the fore as they began to settle down as professionals and work the problem.
However, they found they couldn't call out. Some sort of signal jam had cut the ship's communications down. It might be part of the computer havoc so they wrote it off and buckled down to do what they could.
Mister Blue, aka Rook One, had the same distance to go as King's team but had only a sketchy map on how to get there. Several missed turns and a couple backtracks and one or two encounters with luckless Bismark sailors later, they arrived at their intended destination.
Mister Blue led the assault. First he took his mask off and signaled the others to do the same. Then keeping his weapon behind his back, he strolled casually into the bay, ignoring the screaming alarm klaxons and the flashing lights. “Bit of a pickle, ain't it?” he asked, checking each of the sailors, their locations, and if any were armed.
Fortunately for him, none were. They were in red and green emergency suits but not in armor or armed it seemed. The others walked in behind him.
A Veraxin Petty Officer looked up in confusion. “If you don't belong here, go somewhere else.”
“Well, see, mate, that's just it,” Rook One said, whipping his weapon out and shooting the bug in the torso. “I do. You don't, at least, not any longer,” he said, picking the gaping other members of the engineering watch apart one by one as the rest of the team came in.
Once his team secured main engineering, Rook One ordered two Pawns to go around and tack weld all but one door while the others formed up. “You lot get to sweep this area in a spiral. You know what that is, right?” he asked, making a show of spiraling his left hand with the pistol around his right. “Stay in radio contact at all times. Don't shoot our own people or I'll be bloody annoyed,” he warned.
Pawn Seven nodded and waved his people out. “Rook One to bridge. Package secure, no casualties,” he said, looking around once the Pawns were gone.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, looking around. “Can't bloomin’ well think with all that racket! Someone bloody well find the mute and light switch quick!” he snarled, waving his gun hand. He went over to a station and called the bridge. Of course it was automatically blocked; Boogeyman he thought. He frowned and then threw in a move when he sent the hail a second time. Rook One to K1, he typed, then waited.
A text box appeared and he snorted. “About time,” he read out loud then shook his head. “Funny.”
He stuffed the pistol into his pants and then typed out a rapid fire response. “I need stats on the drive. Start bringing the sublight drive up. Get those reactors under control,” he barked.
<===@^{:::}{<
Mister Black nodded at the report from Rook One and logged it mentally. “Queen, order Boogeyman to release main engineering control to Rook One and not to interfere. I want the systems up under our control pronto,” he ordered.
“Aye aye, sir,” the A.I. replied.
Now that he didn't need them; the Pawns with Rook One were released to sweep their section of the ship. The remaining Pawns as well as the Knights would move out and sweep the ship to kill any resistance while locking the ship down. That was his number one priority.
But coming up hard on its heels was the exterior threat. He had a ticking clock—one internal, one external. Both were ticking down, but he had no idea how much time was left on their clock faces.
“We need to get dug in as quickly and as deeply as we can.”
“This is a big ass ship, bigger than expected,” Miss White, Bishop One warned. “We may not have enough players, even with venting the sections under our control that we didn't need.”
“And I can't vent them all; some are down to local control. The crew is cutting the central control network out of the loop and dropping systems into local control,” Queen warned. “It's tying my hands.”
“I don't need excuses; I need answers. Work the problem,” King snarled.
<===@^{:::}{<
SOP and training called for the surviving crew to don their skinsuits and noncombat personnel to recover those injured or exposed to vacuum while holding sections of the ship as emergency shelters. Captain J'ck'zR'll had been with Commander Montoya and Commander Young checking out a thorny missile tube cluster when all hell had broken loose. He like the others had been away from his cabin and thus away from his personal suit. However emergency suits were set aside in lockers for such contingencies. They were uncomfortable, but they were far better than attempting to breathe vacuum.
“SITREP?”
“ Main engineering and the bridge aren't responding, sir. We're cut off from the core of the ship since this compartment is in vacuum. I've got engineers setting up a temporary airlock to let us get back into pressure, but it's taking time, sir,” Young said over the radio.
“Stay on that. What the hell happened?” the captain demanded.
“Obviously something bad, we've already lost personnel,” the XO said, pointing to a body floating by. The compartment was dark; power for lights and gravity had been cut along with the rest of life support.
“Do what you can to find out. I heard reports of a major cyber-attack. I'm wondering if it is that Xeno virus so be careful when you jack in,” the captain cautioned.
“Yeah. I'm going to firewall myself by using a tablet if you don't mind,” the XO said. “As soon as I can find one,” she expanded, looking around the compartment.
“Find enough for all of us. You stay on that. The rest of us will be useless until we know what's going on,” the captain seethed.
<===@^{:::}{<
<
br /> Pawn teams started to hit more and more resistance the deeper they got into the ship. There had been only a single squad of marines on board, along with four MPs. Two had been taken out at the lock, a third Corporal Vesper had died trying to protect the bridge. Lance Corporal Chi was shot in the back and like the others, relieved of his gear. The plan called for two fire teams to sweep marine country before they went back to the rest of the ship, since marine country and the ship's MPs would be the points of highest resistance.
Both were only lightly manned, and the marines were busy getting into their gear and getting ready for damage control duties while also attempting to assess the situation when the first fire team arrived on the scene and started firing.
That was a mistake. They might have had surprise on their side, but the unarmed marines had years of training and partially armored skin suits. As the first of their number fell, the others sent out warning calls that the ship was under attack from within.
That call went through their implants as well as the ship's communications network. The network could be shut down by Boogeyman and Queen; however, the implant calls could and were passed from one person to the next like a daisy chain. The word was out. Surprise for the hijackers was lost as the crew and surviving marines began to fight back.
<===@^{:::}{<
“This isn't going as we'd expected,” Queen warned as she watched the Pawn Team retreat under fire. Only three of the original five were retreating; the others were dead. The six surviving marines took cover or attacked despite taking fire, soaking up the limited fire from the single shot plastic guns to allow their fellows to get in close and kill the retreating Pawns. As she watched the last surviving Pawn got on the other side of a door just ahead of two angry Neo marines. She slammed it shut behind him just as the second fire team rounded the corner to his location. “I think you forgot; this is the Federation we're dealing with.”
“Why? What's wrong?” Mister Black demanded. He was still getting used to the ship's systems. His cyber team was struggling to crack the keys and gain full control of every system. Fortunately, they had plenty of bodies to access and copy them from the implants. Unfortunately, it seemed being dead meant their self-destruct packages had been triggered upon illegal access. That meant they didn't have what they needed.
And their single prisoner had gone into a coma when they'd tried to interrogate him for the codes. His implants had also self-destructed.
Fortunately, they hadn't been able to lock the ship completely down or get a warning off to anyone due to the signal scramblers. And they did have partial control of some of the systems thanks to Boogeyman, Queen, and the two human cyberists.
“The bug captain survived. He's ordered the crew into their skinsuits. The surviving marines are fighting back. Unlike the normal targets we dealt with, these people all have suits and many are trained to fight. Many are already suited up. All of them have implants too with spacer packages to resist exposure to vacuum. They are recovering people now.”
“Frack,” Mister Black muttered.
“We've got a shot clock. Surprise is gone. They've still got numbers on their side, and they can eventually get into enough weapons or systems to shut us down. They may have gotten word out to someone on the docks. If they have it's only a matter of time before a shuttle comes filled with troops to route us out. The robots are already scooping up the people that got sucked out by the way. So, what's next, oh fearless leader?”
“We get out of here. Bishop Three if you please,” the hijack leader said, waving a hand. “Get us out of here.”
“They won't release the mooring clamps. We're not in those systems,” Bishop Three warned.
“And I can't hack them from here so don't ask. Some are already set to manual,” Queen stated flatly.
“Break us free, by force if necessary,” Mister Black stated, settling himself in the captain's chair.
Bishop Three frowned then returned to his station. He'd taken the time since he'd come onto the bridge to familiarize himself with his station. Now he had to put that newfound knowledge to the test.
Mister Tan, aka Bishop Three, used the emergency RCS thrusters on the massive ship to break the mooring arms and get them clear of the unwanted embrace of the station. Puffs of vapor announced something was amiss as Bismark rolled in her berth, snapping mooring lines, robotic arms, docking arms, boarding tunnels, and anything caught in the sudden roll like they were matchsticks and thread. Metal and plastic shrieked soundlessly in vacuum as they ripped and tore free of their mounts to wind their way around the ship, fouling her flanks.
But she was free. The titan was free of the incestuous grip of the station. With additional puffs the ship moved out of her slip and towards deep space. Tugs, robots, and space-suited personnel scrambled out of her way. She didn't need a weapon; her bulk was her weapon. Components and gear bounced off her hull like dribbles of hail.
Water and other fluids that had been in the process of being pumped into the ship snapped out into the vacuum instantly turning to vapor and snow.
“Bring the grav pods up,” Mister Black ordered.
“We're trying to do that now. Taking the ship's A.I. offline instead of suborning it has made things difficult,” Bishop Two said. “We've unplugged the module here,” he indicated the A.I. computer bank near the pedestal, “But it's not enough. This A.I. is powerful. It knows the battlefield; we're still learning it. Surprise won't last forever.”
“Don't give me excuses, just do it,” Mister Black snarled. “The captain?”
“The bug is an unknown. We don't have control of security,” Miss Red said, shaking her head.
“We need to get to deep space fast, before the Feds can react and get a marine boarding team to us. Rook Three, secure the ship the best you can. Anywhere we're not, close the hatches and shut down the life support. That should slow them down or kill off any laggers.”
The woman nodded. “Aye aye, sir.”
“Mister Plaid, no Mister Purple,” He paused then grimaced as he realized he'd slipped up on the names. He needed to get his head out of his ass and keep focus. “Sorry, Rook Two, work with him on security, but I want real progress on the ship's systems. We need them under our control pronto. Make certain we lock main engineering down.”
“What about the other access points? We need to get to the captain's room, ready room, wardroom, and chief engineer's room to destroy those access points. Rook One should be securing main engineering with his team as we speak so that's covered—also CIC and any spare bridges this place has,” Rook Two warned.
“Frack. How many shooters do we have left?” Mister Brown demanded. “I can handle some of it, but I need to take Miss Red and sweep up the resistance with the remaining Pawns before it gets too strong to handle,” he said.
“Of Pawn Team, two fire teams still in contact, another just moved out of range. Two Pawns here guarding the bridge,” Bishop Two said in a remote voice, indicating Mo and Jock.
The larcenous captain checked his appropriated pistol and then nodded. “We can hold the bridge. You two,” he pointed to the two individuals. “Get to the chief's quarters and smash that control. Then head to CIC and then to the spare bridge. Bishop Three will direct you,” he said, indicating the cyborg plugged into the ship. “Feed them a map.”
“Just follow the bouncing ball, and you won't get lost. Run into a problem call us,” Mister Yellow, Bishop Three said from the comm station.
“Right,” Jock said grimly. He glanced at the small screen strapped to his wrist and then nodded when the map came up. The time to jump ship was past he thought. It was all or nothing time. And he didn't come here to lose. He nodded to his partner and then left the compartment.
“I've got the door,” Mister Black said, rising to stand next to it. “Knights, check the captain's ready room and compartments nearby first. Spiral sweep as you know. Secure them.”
Knight One looked up from the body he was kneeling next to, nodded, and then went ba
ck to work.
“We've got another problem. The virus is targeted against the ship's A.I. and is busy there. It can't help me fend off the crew,” Bishop Two replied.
“The crew? What about them?” Mister Black demanded.
“The crew is entering the net through their implants. They can access systems that way as well,” Bishop Two replied. “I'm trying to fend them off but they know the battlefield. I'm still learning it.”
“So am I,” Miss White, aka Bishop One, said, focusing on her own implants.
“Frack,” Miss Red muttered as she picked through the bridge's small armory for gear. She checked and noted Knight One was policing the marine and their point man's body for weapons and ammo. Something told her before the day was done, they'd need both badly.
<===@^{:::}{<
Once he digested the extraordinary report of being boarded, Captain J'ck'zR'll realized they might need backup since the ship had only a skeleton crew. He also knew it was his duty. He turned to the ratings that had gathered around him and made the hard choice. “Get in a suit; get out onto the hull or in an airlock. Patch into an antenna, punch a signal out to command. Omni broadcast or if you can, get a whisker laser. Whatever works,” he said.
“On it, sir,” Petty Officer Second Class Maui replied.
“Here,” the captain said, uploading a quick SITREP to the rating. “Now go.”
<===@^{:::}{<
“What the frack is going on?” Commander Vestri Sindri demanded, padding into the security control room as quickly as he could. “I got the alert, but you didn't make any damn sense!”
“It seems Bismark's in a more serious state than we thought, sir,” Lieutenant JG Ali Ulster, the security administrator on duty replied, indicating the display. “It's not a breach, it's a fracking hijacking. We just got word from someone who punched a comm signal through to us.” He knew his career was probably toast for this frack-up but he didn't have the time to dwell on past mistakes or the ruin of his career before it had really gotten started.
