Assault on Ambrose Station: A Seth Donovan Novel (12 page)

16.

Tac struggled to get used to his new body. Sure, it was more agile and kept up with Artemis far more easily, but it was using a method of locomotion that at first had looked much easier to use – bipedal walking. The other crew members made it look so natural. Captain Max had forced him to give up the Corporate model, in favour of a purpose built chassis, saying it drew too much attention. She was right, of course, Captain Max was a very wise leader. Tac understood why she was in charge. Still, his current form was taking some getting used to.

He currently rode in the vacated chest cavity of a utility variant he had designed. There were thousands like it throughout the galaxy, so this was the far more subtle option Tac could take. No doubt, should a member of the Protectorate look at him all they would see was another faceless automaton on some mindless task.

He spent the time taken for Artemis and him to traverse the station, towards the military police area, thinking up design improvements. He would change the position of his knee actuators, for one. The current actuators made him stagger like a drunk. Another change would be widening his hip joints, adding a better pivot position to it. A secondary gyro in his upper body would be useful for balance and stabilisation. A full spectrum sensor suite, better than the standard rudimentary optical system, would also be an improvement. He didn’t need all this for his task, but the engineer in him couldn’t help tinkering.

His task, assigned to him by Max and Art, was to create a local event around the security station. By local, he meant focused on the digital systems only. The outer systems were easy, they were monitored by AI brains that would be easily fooled. Real people, however, monitored and controlled the inner systems. This challenge excited him – he had never gone up against a flesh and blood sys-op before.

One part of the mission confused him still. What was Artemis’ final play? He knew that the last line of defence in the security station would be nearly impossible to hack in a short amount of time. He would need several long hours before he could bust through the security firewalls alone. Doing so without detection was going to take even longer. Despite this, Artemis assured him that she had the final barriers covered. Captain Max had surmised that she had seduced one or more ranked officials, stealing their access cards. Perhaps she had hidden talents, or technological devices, that allowed her to bypass these final layers of security.

Regardless, all he had to do was make it easy for her to get through secured vents, bypass electronic locks and evade security cameras. For that, he needed a hard line connection.

The Captain had ordered that the attempt to break First Mate Donovan out of his cell was not to start before they were ready to leave, and the crew used that time to finish repairs, load supplies, refuel and re-arm the interceptor drone bays. Not until she was happy with the state of the ship did she give the green light for the attempt. That gave Tac nearly two days to prepare, building his new robotic body.

Artemis had used that time mostly exploring the station, although Captain Max usually told Tac that she was off ‘slutting it up’. Whatever that meant, Tac was sure it had been fruitful, as Artemis was confident in her ability to retrieve First Mate Donovan when the time came.

Reflecting on this time, Tac recalled an encounter he had witnessed the day before. He had been fine-tuning his mech rig after a particularly data rich test he’d just run, when a trio of rough looking men approached the aft cargo access ramp. The ramp served as the primary access to the ship when docked, and Tac was at the top of it when they came. No one else was in view so they asked Tac’s robot body, mistaking it for a synthetic.

The leader, a scarred Garz’a, spoke first, “Synth, warrior wishes to speak to Seth Donovan.”

Tac hastily enabled the robot’s voice synthesiser and logged into it’s interface.

“I’m sorry, First Mate Donovan is unavailable right now. Can I take a message?”

The Garz’a seemingly ignored Tac, advancing several steps up the ramp, then began calling out Seth’s name. Tac was about to repeat his statement when Crege and Maxine came into view from the forward part of the cargo hold.

“
Ertak! Et ka kak, bezak?
” responded Crege, “
Naga-zak ke ka ho tak.
Synthetic
imo ko dan.”

One of the other two men, humans both, looked to their leader. “What’d he say, sarge?”

“Garz’a say listen to robot,
naga-zak
not here.”

“What do you men need Seth for?” asked Max.

“Warrior apologises. Warrior is friend to Seth. Sergeant Kekkin.” The Garz’a gestured that he meant himself. Next, he pointed to the other two men. “Harris, Renthal.”

Renthal stepped up the ramp towards Maxine, and offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. You must be Captain Cooper. Seth has told us a great deal about you.”

She took his hand, an eyebrow raised in amusement. “Has he now?”

“All good, ma’am. He has a lot of respect for you. That’s good enough for us.”

“And you must be Naga Team. He mentioned you before.”

The thin wiry man, Harris, stepped up then and shook Max’s hand as well. “Pleasure, ma’am.”

The two Garz’a, however, started sizing each other up. They began pacing each other, circling as if about to start a fight. Crege, still recovering from his wound, limped around, trying his best to stand straight despite the pain he must be in.

Max stepped closer to the men and spoke in conspiratorial tones, “Your bird do this all the time as well?”

“Yup.” said Renthal, chuckling.

After a few moments, the two Garz’a stopped circling and faced each other. They shared a few words in their own language before shaking hands. They seemed to have come to some sort of agreement.

“What did you decide?” asked Max when Crege returned to her side.

“Warriors will duel when this warrior is healed. Will decide then.”

“You Garz’a are mad, you know that? You don’t need to fight each other to respect each other.”

Both Garz’a did a double take, as if shocked. This caused the three humans to burst out laughing. When they had finished, the conversation started again.

“Where can we find Seth?” asked Renthal.

“He’s indisposed at the moment, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” said Max.

“We checked your docking schedule. You’re due to depart later today. We aren’t trying to cause any trouble.”

“Human is right,
kitrak,
” said Kekkin, “Warrior merely wants to pass on regards.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him when I see him next. If you’ll excuse us, we have a lot to do before we leave.”

Kekkin and Renthal turned to go, nodding their thanks, when Harris grabbed Renthal’s arm.

“Something’s not right. What aren’t you telling us?” he said, “Where’s Seth?”

Max looked like she was about to tell them another lie, then thought better of it. She sighed in defeat. “Look. It’s complicated.”

“Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Sort of. We have it covered, though. He’ll be fine.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“No, it’s our mess, we’ll sort it out. Thanks for the offer, though.”

Kekkin stepped forward again, “Warrior would be honoured to assist.”

“Look, guys. We really can’t accept any help for you. I don’t want to get you guys caught up in this as well. It’s messy, and it’s not strictly legal.”

“Ma’am,” started Renthal, “Half the shit we do ain’t exactly legal, either. We’re spec ops, we do the stuff no one else wants to do. If there’s something we can do to help, we’re your men.”

Maxine pondered this for a few moments. She looked over at Crege and he nodded. “All right. Maybe you can help. Seth got himself locked up by military police. He was trying to get us a deal on some supplies we needed and had to do some dirty work for one of the black marketeers on the station. He got collared for it.”

“How come you guys need all the extra supplies?” asked Harris, “Why can’t you get it from Gossamer Station through the Gate?”

“Do you guys want to help or not?” replied Max, giving Harris a heavy dose of stink eye. Kekkin put his hand on Harris’ shoulder.

“Warriors would be honoured to assist,
kitrak.
Reasons not important.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. We have an active getting herself inside, and a security expert providing computer assistance, but we’d appreciate something along the lines of a distraction.”

“Something to keep the MPs busy?” asked Renthal.

“Exactly. We’re not using lethal force in any of our plans, and we’d rather get away cleanly with minimal fuss. The less questions we need to answer once we have Seth back, the better.”

The trio looked between each other for a moment.

“Op Tamer?” offered Renthal.

“No, too much collateral.” said Kekkin. Renthal looked disappointed.

“What about the Frikk Gambit we did on that helium platform?” offered Harris.

“Possibly. Warrior remembers operation on Mace. The penal colony.”

“Yes!” said Renthal, getting excited.

“Do we have enough smoke grenades for that?” asked Harris.

“We’ll hit Porter up,” said Renthal, fist pumping the air, “he still owes us from cards the other night!”

“Warriors will provide distraction,
kitrak.
Just tell us when.”

Maxine was smiling, “You lot remind me of him, you know. Crege and Donny are always talking like that. I’ll send you a link to our ship network. You’ll get a message from the Dreaming when it’s time.”

She shook all their hands again and they left. Tac sauntered over, discovering a loose knee actuator in the process.

“You’re looking a bit imbalanced.” said Max as he approached.

“Minor set-back, Captain Cooper. Might I enquire as to the wisdom of including these strangers in our plans?”

“I understand, Tac. There’s just something about those guys.”

“I’m not sure I follow, Captain.”

“It’s hard to explain. Call it intuition.”

“I am familiar with the concept. Making conclusions without logical, empirical data.”

“That’s sort of true, I guess. Is that something you can do?”

“I can, although there is rarely a circumstance where I could see that would be the reasonable thing to do.”

“I just have a feeling, I trust them. Seth trusts them too. Is that enough data?”

“So using First Mate Donovan’s judge of character is your data for making this decision?”

“Not all the data, but a large portion of it. I trust in Seth’s word that these guys are on our side, he says they’re worth listening to, then that’s good enough for me.”

Tac pondered this for a few nano-seconds. “I also trust First Mate Donovan’s judgement.”

“So what do you think, given those parameters?”

“It would seem that we have an unforeseen asset in this Naga Team.”

“See? That’s intuition. Sort of.”

Tac still didn’t fully understand it, which frustrated him a little. He considered it while he was plugging into the station’s hardline connection the following day. Was he missing a vital part of what it means to be alive? Was intuition only a tool of the truly living? He filed the worry away for analysis later, and focused his attention on the task at hand.

He opened his first port to the station’s network and copied several AI’s into the hardline’s storage module. Like a digital general assessing his troops, Tac prepared to bust open the Jump Station’s data system.

17.

Hacking in the modern era was not so much like programming or coding, the systems were far too complex for that. Instead, artificial intelligence programs did the heavy lifting. These self-sustaining programs, called constructs, would perform various tasks in a data system or network, while being guided by the user. Each construct had both very robust and powerful, yet narrowly defined purposes, or had low powered, yet broadly defined sets of actions at their disposal. Of course, good hackers had a variety of constructs available, from both ends of the spectrum and several in between. What made a hacker good was their ability to nurture AIs into useful constructs, and knowing how to use them.

To use these constructs, a hacker needed an entry point to a system that was big enough to upload their constructs and this usually meant a physical port such as the hardline that Tac used.

Tac uploaded his tools into the system, five constructs of various strengths and purposes. His front line construct would probe out the defences of the system and look for watchdog constructs and traps set by the security systems. Backing the probe construct up would be a solid, yet sluggish defensive construct designed to withstand military grade counter intrusion measures.

The defensive construct was essentially harmless, though. It couldn’t retaliate, nor initiate an attack on any systems, it could only prevent a program from deleting his probe, or his other three constructs that would trail the probe through the system.

His initial exploration of the station systems several days before told him that the station used what was known as Porfillian architecture. This was a data system design that was developed by a race of small, skittish rodents called the Porfilla. They were geniuses with data systems, and were often employed as network engineers.

Tac was familiar with the layout of the system, identifying the features right away. Porfillian architecture was built around four-dimensional geometric shapes, usually hypercubes or hyperspheres. This one appeared to be the former, in digital space.

Each section of the hypercube was a defensive wall, with systems behind each wall that could be breached and the contents plundered. Having authorised access to such a section would mean a user could access the system functions freely, while intrusion access, such as what Tac was about to attempt, meant access for a short amount of time before the breach repaired itself. The time was measured in microseconds, but was ample time to send the constructs through. Breaching previously breached sections of the cube was progressively harder, if one used similar programs to do so, and returning to the site of such a breach was a sure way to be spotted by a watchdog construct or active user.

With all five of his constructs loaded, Tac sent out his probe to inspect the nearest section of the cube. Being an outer system, the section was relatively low security. There were no constructs protecting the section, and it did not appear to be monitored by an active user. The probe reported that the function of the section was a utilities monitoring system, possibly a temperature sensor or smoke detection system. It was a good enough entrance as any, and Tac ordered his attack construct into the section.

The construct didn’t actually
fight
the system, rather it executed billions of commands designed to root out access points and weaknesses in the security, then exploit them. In microseconds, the construct opened the port and the other constructs flooded in.

Next in the hypercube were several avenues, pathways that lead to the second layer of the system. From this point, Tac had access to dozens of systems that utilised the data obtained by the monitor system. He quickly catalogued them all, and identified which sections to attack in order for Artemis to be given access through the maintenance corridors and ventilation shafts.

There was a security door, electronically locked that led into a ventilation maintenance room. There was a sensor in the compartment to turn on the lights whenever the door was accessed. Tac’s probe reported that it was monitored by a broad construct that appeared to be nothing more than an access watchdog.

Tac’s fourth construct was an anti-construct program. It’s role was to divert the attention of constructs away from the attack construct. It was the best AI for the job, as rather than causing damage to the opposing construct it merely subverted it for a time. Tac set it to task, while the attack construct filtered the door’s system for loopholes and passwords. Through analysing the most commonly pressed buttons on the door, the construct put together a list of all possible combinations. With the watchdog blinded, the attack construct entered all the codes until the right one was chosen.

Tac sent a text to Artemis that the door was open.

Got it, I’ll text when I get stuck.

Good luck, Ms. Derris.

Next came the waiting part. Tac was ill equipped to deal with this kind of task, as he could perceive time in as small a measure as pico-seconds. Considering he had nearly half an hour to wait, this seemed like an impossibly long time to be idle. So he become curious.

Shifting his perception back to his constructs within the security system, he sent the probe to gather more information regarding the ventilation shafts. Sure enough, there were sensors along the shafts to measure such things as temperature, humidity and airflow. By extrapolating the slight changes to humidity and air pressure, not to mention temperature, Tac devised a simple program to track Art’s progress through the vents. He analysed the next security measure she would need to pass, and began to formulate a plan to defeat it. An alarm and security camera in the compartment monitored the vent access in the restricted area she was heading towards. The alarm was simple enough, but the camera was another concern.

Now that he was roaming about higher functions, in tighter controlled domains, he knew that security would be tougher. The first block came in the form of a hard feed monitored by a flesh and blood guard. These were always the most delicate operations, as alert guards could pick up even momentary glitches. The probe construct reported that tough security protected the video feed. He analysed the data and decided that his attack construct could break the encryption. His fifth and final construct was a mid-range utility that could do all sorts of things. One such function was video editing.

Once the breach was open, the attack construct fed the video through to the utility construct and it began looping the video feed around itself. When there was several full sweeps about the compartment, the video was sent back into the system with a worm virus attached. The worm would automatically delete the loop and itself after fifteen minutes of operation. Ample time for Artemis to exit the compartment.

From this compartment, there was a long corridor leading to the processing area of the security station. Called a controlled access gangway, it was depressurised when not in use. There were no breathing apparatuses keep within the holding cells and adjoining office, making it an excellent physical barrier for escaping prisoners. When transferring prisoners, they pumped atmosphere into it, and emptied it when not in use.

Both physical and digital systems monitored it. A guard would operate the controls when contacted by a hardline. Therein, Tac had a weakness he could exploit. The same hardline provided a decent access to the compartment’s systems.

Tac sent his probe in, but it soon came back with bad news. There was a high-grade construct protecting the airlock controls. He spent several minutes analysing this AI, there was no doubt that it was a tough one. It would have a weakness, however, if it followed the same design principles that Porfillian architecture followed.

Constructs above a certain level of competence and potency were too bulky and slow when operating within four-dimensional systems, so Porfillian style constructs are built by combining dozens of smaller, more agile AIs. When bandwidth became an issue, the constructs could flood through in smaller amounts and become operational immediately, albeit at reduced effectiveness. When the construct gained more of its discrete AIs it became more intelligent and useful, and the full gestalt construct was obviously the more powerful form. This allowed defences to move faster about the system, and become more powerful as the defence progressed, or to split up and defend multiple systems at once.

Tac issued a command to his attack AI and swiftly captured an air vent control valve farthest from the airlock guardian. The construct allowed an anomaly alert to escape, causing the guardian construct to become active. Immediately it started to snake its way towards the construct, but it had several lesser systems to travel through before it could erect a full defence. Tac’s defence construct was installed into the vent control system and the attack construct moved to another system nearby. Once that too was subverted, the guardian split into two streams, trying to head off both anomalous readings. At the second system, Tac installed the anti-construct AI. When the first few streams of the guardian encountered the defence construct, Tac was certain it would hold for some time before the guardian discovered the cause, but the anti-construct AI would not be powerful enough to last long. It wouldn’t need to though.

The guardian entered the second system and immediately, Tac’s anti-construct AI started to unwind the guardian. The relatively small discrete AI’s were no match for Tac’s construct, for now, but in moments would be overrun. At that point, the construct would become aware of the intrusion and act accordingly.

Before enough of the discrete constructs made it through, however, Tac commanded the attack construct to disrupt the pathway. He attacked and subverted a simple sensor system, which had a small bandwidth, and disabled it. To the system, it looked like it malfunctioned and was flagged for maintenance. To the guardian construct, it was effectively cut off from the rest of its body. The remaining discretes were easily handled by the anti-construct.

Back to the defence construct, which was mounting a valiant defence against the growing gestalt guardian, Tac moved his utility construct to the system and ordered it to issue a series of commands that mimicked a function test.

During functional tests, constructs need to remain clear of the system’s inputs or else risk the system being flagged as malfunctioning. In it’s weakened state, it didn’t notice the attack construct also cutting off the pathway to the valve control, much as it did for the anti-construct.

Now there were essentially three separate discrete guardian constructs moving about the systems. All three were weaker than their whole, and easier to control. The attack construct assaulted the guardian still in control of the airlock, and deleted it without any trouble. Tac knew that should the construct become whole again it will rebuild the lost data, but it would not know why it had lost a third of its discretes.

Now that Tac had control of the airlock, he bled the oxygen from the guard’s compartment, enough so that he became feint and passed out. With luck, he would wake up in a few hours with a headache thinking he’d fallen asleep.

With all systems leading up to the prisoner processing area dealt with, Tac relaxed and focused once more on Artemis, who was even now wriggling out of the ventilation shaft to the first compartment. He bled oxygen into the access control gangway, and unlocked the airlock as Artemis approached. Once through the airlock, however, she was on her own. He didn’t dare attempt to breach that level of security.

He only wished he could see what she did next.