“Power them down,” Geary called. “Kill all power to them.”
“Got it,” Matson said. “I’ll call you back as soon as it’s done.”
Geary had only a moment to wonder if they’d get the transmitters shut down in time before he realized that was only one of their problems. “He said Boundless would be destroyed within a few minutes of us entering his room.”
Rycerz and Dr. Bron both stared at him. “How could he destroy an entire ship of this size?” Rycerz asked.
“Unless he somehow smuggled aboard the parts for a nuclear weapon, the only means of being sure of that would be sabotaging the ship’s power core,” Geary said.
Rycerz hit another link on her pad. “Colonel Webb! Dr. Kottur has set up something to destroy this ship within a few minutes of 1210. Admiral Geary thinks he may have sabotaged the power core, but it’s possible he smuggled weapon components aboard.”
Colonel Webb didn’t require even a few seconds to absorb the news. “We’re on it! I’ll inform you of whatever we find.”
“What happens if we can’t stop that message from being sent?” Rycerz demanded of Dr. Bron.
Bron shook his head, looking dazed. “We’ll be dead.”
“Can’t we reactivate the safe-collapse system?” Geary demanded.
“No. No. It would take too long to do that. The collapse would be well underway before the system finished reinstalling.”
“We have time he did not intend us to have,” Rycerz said, pointing at Dr. Kottur’s body. “We need to use that. There must be something else we can do!”
“There’s nothing else that I can do!” Dr. Bron said.
Geary tried to sound calm even though he’d seen the damage that a collapsing gate could do to ships and worlds in the same star system. “The only thing we could have done if we had time was to get every ship as far from the gate as possible in the time left before it collapsed and hope the energy had spread out enough for our shields to handle. But with only about twenty minutes left, we can’t even do that.”
“Assuming our own ship doesn’t explode at any moment,” Rycerz said. From the way she was looking at Dr. Kottur’s body, she would have killed him then and there if he weren’t already dead. “The escape pods . . .”
“We couldn’t get far enough away to be safe from a power core explosion that soon on a ship this size,” Geary said. “And the rest of the people on Boundless would barely have time to reach the pods before the ship blew. Besides, if the gate goes down, the pods will be no protection at all.”
“We need to warn everyone in the star system,” Dr. Bron began. “No, our warning wouldn’t arrive until just before the shock wave hits,” he added, sounding as if he was about to cry in frustration. “Wouldn’t it be better to let them die without knowing what was coming?”
“I still need to tell my ships,” Geary said, pivoting to reach the nearest comm panel. His ships, Tanya . . . Ancestors how can I save Tanya. “Dauntless. Fleet command priority.”
Tanya Desjani was in her stateroom when she took the call, gazing at him with a look of curiosity that changed to concern in a moment’s time. “What happened?”
He told her. “We’re too close to the gate. If we can’t stop that transmission—”
“I’m seeing transmitters still active on Boundless,” Tanya snapped as she checked her display. “How long does it take them to kill power to their transmitters?”
Geary looked at Rycerz, who growled an obscenity as she hit her comm pad again. “Captain Matson! Why aren’t your transmitters shut down?”
Matson sounded frustrated. “Something is blocking the power-down commands. My technicians are trying to— What? Why are they accessing the power core? Madam Ambassador—”
“Colonel Webb is acting on my orders. The power core may have been sabotaged. Get those transmitters shut down! Colonel Webb!” Rycerz called, hitting that link again. “I want every transmitter on this ship shut down as quickly as possible by any means necessary!”
“Yes, Madam Ambassador!”
“Dr. Bron!” Rycerz spun to focus on the unhappy scientist. “Why can’t you do something?”
“There isn’t anything . . .” Bron said, his voice trailing off.
“Kottur planned this well,” Geary said. “Captain Desjani. I want active jamming of any signal from this ship. Link the whole fleet into the jamming if necessary to get enough power behind it.”
“Yes, sir,” Desjani said. “How will I get any more word from you?”
“I’ll send you an all clear by flashing light from Boundless.”
“Yes, sir. Consider it done.”
He had a moment as her image vanished to realize those might be the last words they ever spoke to each other. But they couldn’t waste time with more words.
Two of Colonel Webb’s “honor guard” came running into the room, checking portable scanners as they moved about the room. “All clear in here,” one reported to the ambassador. “If he has a nuke, it’s nowhere near this room.”
“How about the power core?” Rycerz demanded.
“Colonel Webb has our hack and cracks checking the operating system while the rest of us search for bombs, ma’am.”
“Then keep searching.”
Captain Matson called in, anger warring with frustration in his voice. “We can’t power down the transmitters. They won’t respond. I’ve ordered the power links physically severed.”
Geary checked the time. “We have one minute until noon. Kottur said he’d sent the message ten minutes before 1210, so that’s our deadline.”
“Unless he lied about that, too,” Dr. Bron said.
A faint vibration rumbled through the ship. The first signs of a power core going unstable?
Matson called in again, outraged this time. “Those maniacs with Webb are blowing up my transmitters!”
“Good,” Ambassador Rycerz snapped at him. “They’re trying to save all of our lives.” Turning to Geary, she held up her pad where the time was displayed. “It’s noon. Let’s hope Colonel Webb found whatever Kottur was planning to use to destroy this—”
The lights went out.
As an emergency light flared to life to give them illumination again, Dr. Bron turned to run.
Geary grabbed him. “If the power core was going to blow, we’d already be dead.”
“What does this mean, Admiral?” Ambassador Rycerz asked, her voice rigidly controlled.
“It probably means they shut down the core to keep it from blowing,” Geary said. “If sabotaging the power core was Kottur’s plan, shutting it down will give the crew time to go through the operating system and find any malware.” Another vibration ran through the hull. “The transmitters will have battery backups, so they’ll still need to be taken down.”
The sound of feet running down the passageway was followed by Colonel Webb himself bursting through the door. “All transmitters shut down by physical destruction,” he reported to Rycerz. “Two of them were sending something. The ship comm techs said it looked to them like some sort of malware had taken control of the communications system.”
“Did you stop the transmissions in time?” Rycerz demanded.
Webb shook his head. “I don’t know, Madam Ambassador.”
“I’ve got the fleet actively jamming transmissions from Boundless,” Geary said.
Colonel Webb nodded, his expression somber in the limited light cast by the emergency illumination. “There are methods of getting through that,” he said. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Admiral. We found malware in the power core control system. My people are still analyzing it but it looks like it would’ve caused an overload despite every safeguard built into the core system.” He gazed at Rycerz. “Ambassador, whoever provided the malware used for this had access to the very best, or worst if you will, available. Which means they might�
�ve used a transmission method that could get past the fleet’s jamming.”
“It’s 1205,” Dr. Bron said, his voice faint. “We’ll find out whether the worst happened in about fifteen minutes.”
They all turned as someone else entered the room. “Dr. Bron?” Dr. Cresida looked about her, dispassionately taking in the sight of Dr. Kottur’s body. “Is he dead? I received a message from Dr. Kottur to come here at 1210. Can you explain the situation here?”
Her expression barely altered as Dr. Bron raced through an explanation, causing Geary to wonder at Jasmine Cresida’s self-control.
“Oh,” Dr. Cresida said as Bron finished, her voice revealing as little emotion as her expression. “You’ve stopped the threat to the ship? Good. I wouldn’t worry about any danger to the hypernet gate.”
“Dr. Cresida,” Ambassador Rycerz said, her voice almost trembling, “do you know of something we can do to stop the gate from collapsing even if that message was able to transmit?”
“No. Because the gate will not collapse.” Dr. Cresida turned her gaze to each person around the room. “I’m certain of it.”
“Why?” Colonel Webb demanded.
“Because I distrusted Dr. Kottur. I distrusted this mission, thinking it might be cover for an attempt to expand control over this region, or to threaten the Dancers, or to attack the enigmas. Something aggressive. So I broke into his private files to see if Dr. Kottur had secret orders.” Her gaze grew defiant as she spoke. “I found the destructive gate collapse program in there. Very well hidden, but I was looking for very-well-hidden items. I didn’t know what use Dr. Kottur intended to make of it, but I don’t think such a program should ever exist or be used. I went through it and deleted every command line, every set of instructions. All that was left were the shell, a user interface that no longer connected to anything, and disconnected code segments. I added enough junk data to return the file to the same size, then I resaved it, looking as if it was still intact.”
Geary couldn’t remember if he’d been breathing, but he suddenly inhaled fast and deeply. “You’re sure that Kottur couldn’t have spotted your deletions and repaired them?”
She shook her head. “Kottur wasn’t that good at coding. His scientific skills were mostly in the area of academic politics. I could tell he hadn’t written the original program, which was beyond him. Even if he’d spotted the damage I did, he couldn’t have repaired it.” Her eyes focused intently on Geary. “I recognized the hand behind a lot of that code. It was my sister’s. Whoever put together that program used the original code written by Jaylen.”
Ambassador Rycerz seemed to be trying to regain her composure. “Which means whoever helped Kottur get that program had access to the original in highly classified Alliance files.”
Colonel Webb nodded, his eyes on Dr. Cresida as if he was reevaluating whatever he’d thought of her. “Like I said, Ambassador, whoever it was had access to the worst malware out there. The Alliance has got a serious internal problem.”
Which wasn’t exactly new information, Geary thought, but when news of this got back to Unity there’d be some more hell to pay. “Did Kottur need any help aboard this ship to get the malware planted?”
Webb grimaced. “Possibly. He could’ve done it alone. All he had to do was download the malware in the right places and it would’ve done the rest. But an accomplice, or more than one, would have made that easier. Madam Ambassador, we should assume there are others on this ship who helped Kottur. My people are going to find them.”
Ambassador Rycerz spoke again, this time in a fully controlled, formal voice. “Keep me informed, Colonel Webb. Dr. Cresida, we, and the entire Alliance, owe you a debt that is impossible to ever adequately repay.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Dr. Jasmine Cresida said. “I didn’t want my sister’s work misused.” She glanced at Geary again. “I’ll be honest that I suspected the program might’ve been provided by the military. Or some secret government agency. That’s why I waited to see who would try to use it, and how.”
Dr. Bron turned a look of pure hatred on Kottur. “He timed this so we’d know what was going to happen, but have no chance to do anything to save anyone! Just so he could try to justify himself for what he was doing! And then apologizing for dooming us as if that would make it all right? If we hadn’t come in early, if the ambassador hadn’t ordered his lock overridden, we’d probably all be dead now. I trusted that man! I liked him! He was always smiling!”
Smiling faces, Geary thought. He should’ve remembered that warning.
“How could he have tried to do that?” Dr. Bron wondered, bafflement warring with his rage. “He tried to kill us all!”
“You did say he apologized,” Dr. Cresida said, her voice dry.
The lights came back on, happy shouts rising in the passageway as others reacted to the power returning. “The power core must be safe again,” Colonel Webb said.
“We’ll have to brief Captain Matson on all this,” Ambassador Rycerz said. “Is it possible to revive Dr. Kottur?”
“Why bother?” Bron said, kicking Kottur’s leg.
“If we can revive him, we can interrogate him and perhaps learn who helped him in this,” Rycerz said.
“On it,” Colonel Webb said, going to the comm pad that had powered up again as well. “Medical emergency! This compartment! We need emergency care here as quickly as possible!”
“What do we tell the medics?” Geary asked, his mind latching onto the security aspects of the situation. “What do we tell anyone?”
Rycerz gave him a long look, her lips twisted as she thought. “Even though it’s been resolved without real danger, we should keep this between us and Captain Matson. Oh, Admiral, you told someone aboard your ship?”
“Captain Desjani,” Geary said. “She won’t say anything if I tell her it’s confidential.”
“Good. I’ll prepare a full report, so it’ll be on the official record. But I ask each of you not to discuss this with anyone else. Dr. Kottur . . . attempted suicide because of personal matters.”
“Why protect his reputation after what he tried to do?” Dr. Bron demanded.
“I’m not worried about Kottur’s reputation,” Rycerz said. “I’m worried about everyone else in this star system. A panic could erupt if they even knew an attempt had been made to collapse the gate and destroy everyone here. And the leaders of Midway might well withdraw their permission for the effort to realign the gate. That would partly serve the purpose of whoever was behind Dr. Kottur’s sabotage.”
“The ambassador is right,” Geary said. “This mission can still be sabotaged even though Kottur’s chosen method failed.”
Dr. Bron breathed in and out slowly a few times, then nodded. “Right. We don’t want to help him. Not one bit.”
“Dr. Cresida?” Ambassador Rycerz asked.
“I will accept your request to not speak of this,” Cresida said. “But, if we are to continue, we first need to go through the realignment programming with a fine-tooth comb, to be certain no malware or Trojan horses or other malignant code has been hidden in that.”
“That’s right!” Dr. Bron said, nodding rapidly. “It’s supposed to be clean, it’s been checked repeatedly, but if Kottur did this, maybe he had a backup plan. I’ll get the team together. You’ll assist, right? You’re the best at this.”
“I’ll assist,” Dr. Cresida said as medical personnel and equipment came swarming into the room. “I’ll follow in a moment. After I say something to the admiral.”
Wondering what Dr. Cresida intended, but willing to listen after learning she might have saved everyone in this star system, Geary followed her into the hallway.
“Admiral,” Jasmine Cresida said, looking straight at him, “one thing coders have done since ancient times is add notes to their work, embedded in the code. Explanations, thoughts, sometimes even jokes and comments. At
the end of the destructive collapse program that Dr. Kottur had, I found a comment that traced back to the original coding. It was written by my sister, and said, ‘I have unwittingly unleashed from its bottle a genie that could destroy us all. I pray my commander and my comrades will have the wisdom to help humanity find a way to render that genie harmless.’”
Geary had to look away, painfully remembering Captain Cresida’s optimistic enthusiasm. “That’s what I would have expected,” he finally said.
“And what you told me to expect,” Dr. Cresida said. “Proof of your word. For the record, I did believe you, because I wanted to believe you. I’m nonetheless glad to have found confirmation. Tell me something, Admiral. Do you have that program on your ship?”
Geary frowned at her, momentarily puzzled by the question. “Do you mean the destructive collapse program? No. Even though the safe-collapse systems are supposed to block it or at worst ensure a collapse doesn’t give off damaging levels of energy, no ship in the fleet is supposed to have that aboard. It’s never to be used, and it’s never to be available to be used if someone gets their hands on it.”
Dr. Cresida studied him. “But some form of that program was used at Unity Alternate.”
“Yes. I don’t know where Victoria Rione got her copy of it. All physical evidence was of course destroyed, so there was no way to learn the answer afterwards. She had a lot of software that she wasn’t supposed to have.”
“Fortunately for us all.” Dr. Cresida turned to go. “Don’t thank me for stopping the destruction of the gate here. You gave me back my sister. We’re even.” She walked away without another word.
* * *
THE next day, at the time Midway’s gate was to be entangled with the Alliance hypernet, Geary was on the bridge of Dauntless, watching the gate a few light minutes distant. The technicians were in a ship much closer to the gate, able to correct any problems within seconds. Tanya Desjani was on the bridge as well, along with the primary watch standers, all interested in observing the historic event. Of them all, only Tanya knew how close they’d come to disaster the day before.
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