The Feeding of Sorrows

by Rob Howell

  “Still? It’s been almost three months.”

  “I know. My boss is probably ranting in his office.”

  Russell grimaced. “I don’t doubt that. I’ve been stomping around here quite a bit.”

  I nodded. “I’m worried, too.”

  We spent the next half hour discussing a variety of scenarios and options. I broached the subject of Maquon, and he revealed enough for me to know he had never been involved in a massacre there. He hid op details, like he was supposed to, but showed no discomfort.

  And if anyone would know, it would be him, right? The ranking NCO?

  I bid farewell, and the next morning I walked into my company’s headquarters.

  “Blaine, get the fuck into my office!” Bullitt had been filing some papers in the spare cabinets in the reception room. He slammed the stack on top of the cabinet and almost pushed me inside.

  “Good to see you too, boss.”

  “What the fuck has been going on?” He shook a file at me. “A GenSha world? Do you know how much that hotel cost?”

  He was in fine form, so I smiled and let him rant. I pulled out my sweeper, plugged it into the hard line at his desk, and sent over the BFRRs from Tlanit. I waited until he took a breath and said, “Look at that.”

  Bullitt glanced down and his eyes widened. “How many Biffers is that?”

  “I think every single one since humanity joined the Union.”

  “Holy hell, you asshole. How the hell did you get them?”

  “I’ve a new friend. His name is Tlanit.”

  “The Peacemaker?”

  “Why, yes, I do believe that’s his current occupation.”

  “You’re an asshole.” He glanced down with a grin. “But you’re an asshole that makes me money. I might even be able to shut HR up some with all of this.” His eyes sharpened. “You got more, didn’t you?”

  I sent the full download to him, and he glanced through it.

  “It’ll take years before we know what’s here.”

  “Your favorite thing, wallowing like a pig in facts and details.”

  He guffawed. “Damned if you’re not right.”

  I returned to the sweeper and sent a query to the company’s full database.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I was looking up a merc unit.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Tahrietha Trackers.” I glanced at the query’s results. Nothing.

  “Who the hell are they?” he asked.

  “A Zuul unit. I looked them up in our out-of-date copy of the Zuul database. They seem to have been folded into the Stalkers in the Stars.”

  “Why do we care?”

  “Maybe no reason. Maybe everything.” I expanded the database. “They went out on a contract and never returned.”

  “What contract?”

  “They fought the Foresters on Maquon.”

  “The Foresters are tough, but I didn’t realize they had annihilated the Zuul.” Bullitt shook his head. “It happens, though.”

  I sent over the footage Tlanit had given me. “Watch that.”

  His face turned grim. “That fucking Edmonds!” He paused, staring at me. “You’re not convinced.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “The video is edited?”

  “I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t find evidence it had been. You should have the forensic guys check.”

  “Damn right I will, and if it’s valid…”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “What are the odds you haven’t heard any hint of this before? It’s been nearly ten years, and a company of troopers in a bar somewhere has never mentioned mowing down a bunch of surrendered Zuul? No ‘No shit, there we were’ stories?”

  “Welllll…”

  “One reason I can’t find any evidence the file was edited might be because it was created. Your guys downstairs could probably do it, and I’m damn sure the elSha or other tech wizards in the galaxy are at least as good as our guys.”

  He blinked. “I suppose.” He tapped his sweeper, and after a moment he added, “I’ve sent the file down to the techs. I marked it ‘right the fuck now,’ so check back in a day or so.”

  “Is there any other instance in the Foresters’ history that suggests they routinely do this sort of thing?”

  “Not that I’ve seen or heard.”

  Good, his mind’s working again.

  “Watch the video again. Tell me about the troopers. They followed orders immediately and easily. No bitching. No hesitation.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, if they routinely did that sort of thing, we’d have heard about it.”

  “And if they don’t, the troopers would’ve protested.”

  “You think it’s a setup.”

  “I do. Think about it. All you’d have to do is fake a video and make a unit disappear. Sure, that’s not something everyone could do, but…”

  “The Galactic Union is big and there are a lot of people who could.” He swiveled in his chair and ate some pecans. “Let’s do it the standard way.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll assume the Foresters didn’t do it, and it’s a setup.” I shrugged. “I was going to do that anyway.”

  “I figured. It’ll be easier for me to find proof they did do it from here.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your next step?”

  I sighed. “I think Edmonds has a mole. I want to see if I can find it. That’s another reason I think it’s a setup.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I pulled up a report comparing the data I pulled off the Foresters’ system when I first went to their office to the data Tlanit had. Other than metadata tags, they matched precisely, based on the time codes.”

  Bullitt looked at it. “Damn. Straight from their system.”

  “Yeah. I haven’t had time to do a full read of the metadata yet, but while I’m here, I’ll take a look.”

  My boss leaned back, his lips twisted.

  “What? I could do this, but your techs are better than I am, and they have better tools.”

  He waved my comment away. “It just hits my security buttons. Take it to Heidi. She’s the tech I assigned to the video file.”

  “Will do.”

  “While you’re at it, show her the whole copied folder the Peacemaker gave you. I want to make sure we don’t miss any hidden treasures.”

  “Good idea.”

  He nodded. “Then get the fuck out of my office.”

  “I live to serve.”

  I left the building and went to the mom and pop donut shop across the street. Then I headed back to the tech lab carrying a couple dozen treats. I always brought them donuts. Strangely enough, they were always happy to help me. A tech with his mouth full of a maple-frosted donut gestured toward Heidi’s office.

  The slim, short-haired girl looked up at me with a scowl on her cute-as-a-button face. “Whoever you are, now isn’t the time.”

  “Heidi?”

  She turned back to the screen. “I’m busy.”

  “I know.” I put a glazed donut on her desk. “I bring gifts.”

  She didn’t turn away from her monitor, but she chomped into it. “Thanks.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced up at me with narrowed eyes. “Who’s asking?” The belligerent tone contrasted sharply with the laugh crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

  I slid my badge into the security pad next to her system and put my hand on the scanner when prompted.

  Her eyes widened as a line of clearances scrolled past. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Opsec is a good thing.” I smiled.

  “Besides, it doesn’t really effing matter.”

  Effing? I liked this girl.

  I kept the smile off my face. “Why not?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “You’re not asking about that video file, are you? The boss just gave it to me an hour ago.”

  “
No, I figure that’ll take you at least a day.” I opened my sweeper. “I’m going to dump a directory into your system. I want you to scour it.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything, really. Let’s make sure it doesn’t have any malware. I want to see if it’s clean or if there’s data hidden inside the other data. Make sure there’s nothing wrong with the metadata. You know the drill.”

  “If I start today, it’ll take two days.”

  I pursed my lips.

  “Look, I can’t do anything about it. Not with the Binnig stuff and the video file. Not unless the boss gives me server priority, and you know he hates doing that.”

  I grinned and clicked my comm. “Hey, boss.”

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  “I’m passing the files to Heidi. She says she can cut her search to a day if she has priority on the servers.”

  I heard him crunching pecans.

  “Do it.”

  After a moment, a small icon appeared on her monitor.

  Her eyes widened. “Holy effing poop!”

  This time I didn’t hide my grin.

  She turned back to her monitor and began the process. I waited while she set all the parameters to her satisfaction, then started the program.

  “Alright, it’s going.”

  “Excellent. Now you can tell me why it doesn’t effing matter.”

  Her face twisted in frustration. “The damn Binnig data is strange.”

  “Something shut down their systems like—” I snapped. “I’d expect it to be strange.”

  “Not like that.” She brought up a report on her monitor. “Look at this.”

  I leaned down and saw a series of daily reports. The reports showed results that were mutually exclusive. The totals of some routines changed. The time of errors changed. Processes running on the files generated different reports, though they ran on the same sections of code.

  “That is odd,” I mused.

  “Before you ask, we tried to hack through our system to match those results. Not a chance. Our software is working fine. Our malware checkers have been back and forth through our servers twice a day more than normal. It’s not us. It’s this damn data.”

  “It’s corrupted?”

  “Not in any way we can find. Bit checks come up normal. Quantum parity checks come up normal. It all comes up normal. But at some point, as we’re analyzing it, the data seems to shift.”

  It had to be a mole at Binnig. Another answer forced its way into my head. Or it could be a mole here. Please, by all the gods, let it not be that.

  “No signs of malware?”

  “No, sir.” She focused on the screen in front of her. “Binnig’s security is really good. It’s a lot like ours.”

  “How so?”

  “Similar quality. Our malware guys are breaking it apart to see what they can pull from it.”

  “I can hardly believe Binnig let us have this.”

  “I wondered about that too. Someone over there is having kittens.”

  “No doubt.” She giggled, then sobered as she remembered what had happened.

  “This is all strange.” I shook my head. “They’re going to deliver the armor eventually. What’s so important about blocking this particular delivery?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind, Heidi; just me thinking.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m going to keep at it, but I have no clue when I’ll have something real to tell you.”

  “I understand. While you’re much sharper than I am at data manipulation, I know enough to see the mountain you’re climbing. It’s a bitch, and you’ve done well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “When will you find out about the video and the other data?”

  “I’ll know something tomorrow. I’ll be tweaking the analysis software throughout the night.”

  “Do you ever sleep?”

  “Yeah, on the cots down the hall.”

  I chuckled. “Thanks, Heidi. I’ll be in tomorrow. Unlike you, I need my beauty rest. Morning okay?”

  “Whatever.” She turned back to her monitor. “If you bring donuts again, my favorites are chocolate with sprinkles.”

  “Gotta have the sprinkles.”

  She flashed me a grin.

  The next morning, again armed with donuts, I entered the tech lab. Heidi saw me and yanked me into her office, looking like a kitten with a new ball of yarn. I barely had time to grab her chocolate with sprinkles out of the box.

  Once in her office, she pointed at a highlighted sequence on one of her monitors.

  “Do you see this stretch of code?” she asked.

  “Yes. I don’t recognize it.” I stared at it for a moment. “And I don’t see what it does. It certainly doesn’t seem to be involved in the video playback.”

  “No, sir, it isn’t. Nor does it contain any message that we can decode. And there’s no extra data hidden in it that we can see.”

  “It’s the equivalent of a few bytes.”

  “Nine bytes, sir.”

  “In a file how big?”

  “Around a hundred gig.”

  “Damn. How did you find it?”

  She looked sheepish. “I got lucky, sir. I was looking for hidden data, and I set the computer to filter out all known patterns. If I had been thinking, I’d’ve had it filter out all known patterns related to videos, but I was tired and left that parameter out. I wasn’t worried about run time because I needed to get food.”

  “And this was left over?”

  “No, sir, it was filtered out, and I never saw it. This morning, I got frustrated and decided to look at the filtered patterns, just in case.”

  “And you stumbled across this?”

  “Yes.” The tech yawned and drank from her coffee mug.

  “At what time?”

  “Five-ish.”

  I reached into my coat. “I also brought you these.” It was a fresh pack of energy tabs.

  “Bless you. I’m out.” She popped one and continued. “Anyway, this sequence only occurred once, so it was first on the list when I sorted by quantity. At that point, I could hardly miss it.”

  “What pattern is it?”

  “It’s a marker from a Zuparti antivirus program.”

  “You’re saying some Zuparti ran this file through an antivirus program?”

  “Or the program was run on a Zuparti system at some point. The Zuparti tend to be paranoid, and their anti-malware stuff tends to run automatically on any file that touches their system.”

  “We do that too.”

  “Yes, sir, we do. Not everyone is as smart as we are.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Thanks, sir, but the file shows no evidence of editing. It’s as clean as the day it was created, with the exception of a few markers like the Zuparti code and our anti-malware stuff.”

  “When was it created?”

  “Here’s the date code. About eight years ago.”

  “That’d be the right date.” I sighed. “You didn’t find any fiddling with the date code?”

  “No, but to be honest, if we wanted to create a fake video, we wouldn’t need to fiddle with the code. We’d just fiddle with the system and spoof its connection to the GalNet to have it pull down a date code that matched what we wanted. Then we’d run it through some other systems to give it the date trail we needed. Easy as pie.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “It’s not difficult, really, if you have the resources.”

  “And the resources aren’t uncommon.”

  “No, sir. Any major corp has a system that could be rigged to do it.”

  “Shit.” I paused. “Can you tell what the original input looked like?”

  She shook her head. “No. It all came in as ones and zeroes. It’s irrelevant to the file’s creation whether those ones and zeroes came from a camera or were generated by a system.”

  I shook my head. “I’m being stupid. Adding a time code is the default
setting on cameras, but it’s a setting that can be changed.”

  She smiled. “It’s alright, sir. We asked that question too and hunted for a hint, just in case. However, absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”

  “Or a fake, in this case.”

  “Yes, sir. What I can tell you is that the video looks genuine in that I can’t prove it was edited or falsified. But I can’t prove it wasn’t either. I can also tell you that it passed through a Zuparti system at some point.”

  “Did it go through other systems?”

  “Yes, but you know them already. There are Peacemaker markers all over the place. Also, Merc Guild markers.”

  “No other racial ones?”

  “Not that I can prove.” She hesitated.

  “What?”

  “There are a few gaps in the code. Some null values.”

  “And?”

  “They’re exactly the length of some Veetanho markers.”

  “And you went looking for those.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s standard procedure. Most files contain a bunch of null values. Sometimes they give us hints, so we always track them down.”

  I nodded. “Standard or not, you did really well.”

  She turned away from the compliment. “Yours was just a small file, and it was lucky I found something so quickly.”

  “Luck is the residue of design.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  “You’re welcome. How about the other stuff? Do you have the metadata reports?”

  “Yep, they finished about an hour ago.”

  I glanced through them, and my heart sank. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s source routing codes, it sure looks like it.”

  “All this data came from one source?”

  “Yes. One server, WR018, sent the data to a hub in Toronto, then up to the GalNet.” She turned around.

  “And what server is that? Does it come from Owen Sound?”

  “Is Owen Sound north of Toronto?”

  I nodded.

  “Then, yes.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “It’s odd, though.” Her face twisted. “I wouldn’t have expected to get this much information.”

  “Why?”

  “All the other metadata is scrubbed. Time codes. Routing after it hit the GalNet. Everything else.”

  “So, someone left this particular detail alone on purpose?”

  “Yes, sir.”