10
October 19th.
Scott Becker:
“Lieutenant Becker…?”
It feels… odd, I guess. He’s gotten to be so familiar, so regular, considering… And so comfortable—with my rank, especially, like it makes perfect sense to him. But then, considering…
“Major Ram,” I greet him back, standing quickly to give him the requisite salute, which he returns with just enough grin to acknowledge the bullshit.
“You wanted to see me?”
In person. And he came, right after running cherry Teams Ninety-Two through Ninety-Five through an Armored Close-Quarters Combat class. He’s still wearing the lower half of his suit, T-shirt above—it shows off that he just led two-dozen gung-ho techno-warriors through a three-hour smackdown session and he isn’t even sweating.
“Yes sir. Something I thought you should see.”
“In person?”
“Yes sir.”
But he slides in like he gets it perfectly. He seals the prototype Mission Tactical Monitor chamber behind him, and I key up Dee’s analysis-stream and walk him through it.
“You’ve apparently got a new fan,” I tell him. “A search-worm. Showed up in the Net this morning. Not the usual hacker jack—this one has intel signatures.”
“Ours?” he asks the obvious, figuring the competing agencies would be wanting to get the skin on what we’re up to down here.
“No. Reads like a hybrid between Russian Black and Sino-Korean industrial crack. And yes, it’s beyond what the known Rads could engineer. Very smart, very subtle. Lots of red-herrings and tracebreakers. I’m impressed—if that gives you any idea.”
“Datascan can’t break it?” he asks with his classic blunted incredulity.
“It could do better if we were fully up. As is, our access is still limited to the public nets and select Coalition agencies. This is coming from something off-offshore. Looks like a Korean uplink, but that’s probably several steps in already. I expect it was planted remotely: hit and run. No link home. They’d have it set to pick up later…”
“After it was done collecting whatever it was after,” he follows. “So what’s it looking for?”
“Us,” I hit him with it. “And you. Specifically.”
He stews for a few seconds, then takes the next step. “Context?”
“That’s the twisty part: keywords reference our little show at the UN last week, including the product-demo we showed them. Too much detail not to be privy. And I’m sorry, but I really can’t tell you who.”
“No match in Datascan’s profiles?”
“Dee’s database is current on terrorist-types, sir. Like I said: this is some whole other level.”
“But not national?”
“That’s the other twisty part: All the big and medium players are in. They know about us. They know you. And if they’re not talking between their own agencies, the first step they’d take is to hack each other. No, this is somebody on the outside.”
“Corporate?”
“I can see a corporate hack going after the intellectual property,” I try. “But this worm is asking about you.”
He sits down in the ops-officer’s station. Digests it.
“I’m assuming it can’t get into Datascan.”
“Yes sir—I mean: No sir. It’s smart, but we’ve got all dedicated one-way barriers at this point. Datascan can get out into the nets, but nothing can get in here, except by dedicated links. But that also keeps me from getting my hands on the thing to splice a good tracker into it.”
“Who else knows about this?” he wants to know.
“Richards and Henderson. And I figure Henderson’s tuned in the higher-ups.”
“They worried?”
“The Colonel seemed a bit bent about the leak, but he seemed to take it as SOP. Henderson… Well, I can never really tell with him.”
I hear his link chirp, and the screens shift as Dee forwards the incoming down here.
“Major Ram?” It’s the new-hotness that Richards gleeped as soon as she came out of livefire training. Ava. Still playing his personal assistant until we get NetCom online.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” He gives her the by-the-book, but the tone is nothing like what he uses on me—or anybody else for that matter. And pretty much simultaneously they both catch the fact that I’m watching them give each other that look and snap to.
“Colonel Richards, sir. He’s going to want to speak with you, too, Lieutenant Becker.”
He thanks her as coolly as I figure he can, and she flips into Richards—though her face remains active on a side-window. Her boss wants her in on this.
“We have a situation of sorts, Major Ram,” Richards gets right into it, looking quite a bit more frazzled than he was just a few hours ago when the worm came up.
“Lieutenant Becker was just briefing me.”
“No, Major,” he corrects sharply. Then he keys over to Ava. “Lieutenant…”
“We just started getting flashes of this on the Rad-sites,” she explains, and when I see what it is I go numb and sick because I got so sucked into geeking over the worm that I was ignoring the popular underground. But that’s Ava’s game: keeping those super-model eyes of hers on what goes on in the big world.
“Bootlegs of our UN presentation,” Richards grumbles. “Cheap and choppy, but spreading. As are the blogs. It’ll be all over the public sites in an hour. INN got wind of it already.”
“What’s the official response?” Ram wants to know, all business.
“Secretary Miller is rolling with it. I expect he’s with the President and the Secretary of State as we speak, spinning. General Collins is shut in with the Chiefs. Our ‘partners’ are probably sweating.”
“We’re blown,” Ram concludes with that spooky calm he slides into. “Early.”
“By at least six months,” Richards complains. “At least we didn’t give them a detailed picture. Still, it’s enough.”
“The lean is that the UN is about to be bushed,” Ava breaks it down. “The early taglines are edgy: ‘Coalition Conspiracy to Martialize UN.’ ‘Military Contractors seek to profiteer from New Imperialism.’ ‘New US-Sponsored Xenocide Initiative against Muslim Nations.’ ‘High-Tech Bushwar Death Squads proposed before Security Council.’ ‘New Military Intelligence AI Threat to Civil Liberties Worldwide.’ The Council membership is already feeling it. They’ll need to go above board, and do it fast, or they’ll all look Evil Empire.”
“That means we need to be shining,” Richards focuses. “Yesterday.”
“Is anyone backing out?” Ram asks the pressing question.
“I’m about to wade in and find out,” Richards tells him. “Only reason I’m stopping to tell you first is that your faces—and mine—are all over this thing. Welcome to celebrity.”
Ram takes a long, deep breath. I try to match it, because I need to come down. I feel so shaky I’m vibrating in my chair, and I’m probably pale as a corpse.
“Where do you need us?” Ram offers quickly. Richards seems to soften a bit at the offer, which is a bit of a shock in itself—I’d have sworn he’d rather just bury us in plausible deniability.
“Stay put for now. I’ll try and earn my keep from this end. Let Miller call the next move.”
“Good luck, Colonel,” Ram offers him. Richards looks like he’s not sure how to respond. So he just nods and unplugs.
“Keep us looped?” Ram asks Ava.
“Absolutely, Major,” she manages a smile. “Looks like I’m working a late one…”
He gives her back a flash of a grin and she logs out.
He doesn’t say anything for quite a while, just sits there watching the feed Ava keyed roll. They’ve got crappy video of him doing his—as Burke nailed it—Captain Kirk Speech. And Richards. And me.
Fuck.
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 57
