CHAPTER NINE
Armaros Theron Techcropolis, Tesla University of Technical Arts, Physics Building, Basement
A familiar acrid-sweet smell snapped Jayne out of her melancholy. She popped her head up and listened. Sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps shuffling across the ground before Vlad appeared in front of her.
He took in her dejected appearance and glanced quickly at the optic whiteboard behind her. “Huh. A little privacy away from roommates, if I recall correctly?”
She flushed at being called out. “A good cover.”
“Eh, not really. You guys didn’t exactly strike me as being involved.” Vlad held out the joint. “Want a hit?”
Jayne took it. Spy school had prevented her from ever “getting into” drugs, with exception to being trained in their use. You never knew when you might have to get fucked out of your head to maintain your cover. She had gotten stoned for class several times and liked it. The offer of a joint could not have arrived at a better time. She took a deep hit and blew it out smoothly. The mellow buzz settled in instantly and her load lightened.
She smiled without realizing it.
Vlad took the joint and stepped closer to the board to inspect the code Fred had left running across it. “Not bad,” he muttered, his gaze darting from one side to the other.
He stopped. “It didn’t work?”
Jayne shook her head. “We broke the selvanium canister we were going to use for the pairing.”
Vlad nodded knowingly. “That’ll screw it, all right. I don’t even want to know what a couple of kids like you are doing with selvanium anyway.”
Morosely, she replied. “Trying to stop a bomb.”
Smoke trailed from Vlad’s lips as he spoke. “I can see that. I mean, I don’t want to know why you had it before you decided to use it to deactivate some bombs.” He raised a restraining hand. “No, no. Don’t tell me. I prefer not to get involved in student drama. Always ends badly.” He pointed at the screen. “So now what? You’ve given up?”
It would be easy to call it quits because she had no good moves left. But quitting wasn’t in her nature. She shook her head and stood. “Just taking a breather.”
Vlad smiled. “Good, because I might be able to help. Since you were coding a pairing sequence, I assume you have schematics on the bombs?”
She nodded. “They’re on there. We don’t have anything on the actual bombs, but their selvanium cores come from weapons that we have the full schematics and IDs on.”
Vlad closed out the program Fred had spent so much effort and time creating. “That’s a good thing.” He opened the files containing the weapon details and skimmed through them.
Jayne sidled up behind him, more curious than suspicious. “What are you looking for?”
Vlad hummed. “The size of the selvanium cores. Based on that I can figure out how large an explosion to expect from each bomb. Hm?”
Jayne scrunched her brow. “What good will that do? The police already have all the sites evacuated and cordoned off.”
“Well, if the cores are small, they aren’t really that dangerous so long as nobody is around. But if they’re big, they could take out buildings or even entire chunks of the city. It’s possible the police cordon isn’t remotely large enough. Get enough of the stuff cobbled together and you essentially have a mini nuke.”
Vlad suddenly stopped scrolling. His eyes widened.
“Shit. They’re big. Too big. Let’s see…” He focused on the left and waved his finger in the air, presumably performing advanced calculations in his head. “Okay, so this isn’t good. The bombs are placed in such a way that they’ll destroy seventy percent of the campus as well as some busy and important neighboring areas, including the air purifiers.”
Vlad raised his hands above his head and stepped away from the optic whiteboard. “Well, we have two choices.”
“What do you mean?” Jayne asked.
He took another hit. “We can either set off four EMP’s at each of the bomb sites. Or we can set off one giant EMP.”
She blinked in surprise. There were billions of credits worth of data and electronics in the area. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. We’d destroy all the electronics on campus.”
The professor waved his hand dismissively. “Only if we use a single large one. If we use four small ones, I’m confident we could make their effective radius small enough to only affect the bombs and maybe a small area around them. It’s a far more preferable alternative to having the entire campus vaporized in a selvanium blast, hm? Don’t you agree?”
A good point, but perhaps moot. “How long will it take you to build them?”
“A few days,” Vlad replied.
“Well, that’s pointless, then. The bombs might go off at any moment, and they’ll definitely have gone off within that time period.”
Jayne kicked a pile of textbooks, sending the stack toppling. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
Vlad rubbed his goatee furiously. “Uh…Hm…” He snapped his fingers. “You know, they said the bombs have a timer that hasn’t been activated. And since the bombers obviously won’t return to the sites in person to turn them on, that means they have to be activated remotely. I could build a jammer that blocks their signal.”
“Effectively deactivating them. That’s brilliant!”
“Exactly. But I’ll need the right equipment. Most of the materials should be either down here or scattered throughout the building. You might have to make a trip to the metal shop across campus, though.”
“Not a problem. But how long will this take? If you say a few days…” Jayne allowed the words to trail off meaningfully.
Vlad smiled, exposing dimples hidden in his cheeks. “We’re talking hours, not days. Assuming you can get what I need fast enough, we’ve got a good shot at getting this done in time.”
She nodded, looking him square in the eyes. Unlike earlier that day when a slight pink tinge ringed his cornea, the whites of his eyes were now completely red.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”
He cocked his head and gazed at her, confused for a moment before the realization hit him. “Oh. Because I’m stoned, you mean. Yeah, I’m fine. I do everything stoned. It’s my baseline.”
The professor shoved boxes of textbooks aside, clearing a space in the middle of the basement. “You should see me when I’m off my high. I’m too genius for reality to handle. Or to handle reality. It’s one of those two. I can never decide which.”
+++
Armaros, Theron Techcropolis, Tesla University of Technical Arts, Physics Building, Basement
A hand shaking her shoulder brought Jayne out of the slumber she had fallen into. She moaned and pushed the hand away, too tired to wake up.
“Jayne!” More shaking followed. She blinked her eyes open. They didn’t want to work and it took them a moment to focus. A handsome man leaned down over her, a man with pepper-gray hair and a five o’clock shadow.
A name came to her. Vlad.
The bomb!
Jayne thrust herself upright, trying to banish the grogginess from her mind. “Shit! Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” Cardboard boxes crumpled under her weight as she flung herself off the makeshift bed. Grabbing the materials he needed had sapped the last of her strength after a long sweltering afternoon of programming.
The room had finally cooled off, but her energy hadn’t recharged. Even knowing she had to stop a bomb, her body still demanded sleep.
“It’s okay. You needed sleep,” Vlad said simply. “Look.” He pointed toward the middle of the room. A hot mess of microchips and antennae had been soldered into an ugly steel frame that now plugged into what she assumed to be the professor’s phone.
“Does it work?” she asked, trying to suppress her expectations.
It probably didn’t. Nothing else had worked that day.
He smiled. “Oh yeah, it works. It’s blocking all incoming signals. Well, almost all. T
he global XaaS cloud can still beam in from satellite. Try using your phone.”
If the XaaS is still up, though… Jayne’s thoughts were sluggish. She forgot what she was thinking about and retrieved her phone. A blank screen greeted her.
“It’s dead,” she slurred, unable to shake off the fog of sleep.
Vlad walked over to a stack of boxes and picked up a phone laying on top. He tapped the glass and it glowed. “Here. Use this one. I found it while I was clearing the space.”
Fred’s phone.
He must have left it when he stumbled off. Jayne took it and rolled her eyes. Fred’s wallpaper was a half-naked anime girl. Of course it was. In the very top right corner of the phone, the reception meter had full bars with a little x next to them.
“XaaS is still providing a signal,” Jayne scoffed in disgust. She tossed the phone back on the pile of boxes. Yet another colossal waste of time. “Vlad, what good will the fucking jammer do if they can use XaaS to trigger the bomb?”
“It stops the radio signal,” Vlad said, “and you’ll like this. I thought we’d hack XaaS and crash the entire thing at first.”
Jayne rolled her eyes again. That was fantasy talk right there.
He continued. “But while I was jamming the signal, I tracked all the traffic in the area and found one device that had been passively broadcasting to all four bomb sites in search of a connection. I believe this to be the one the bombers plan to use to detonate the bombs.” He pulled a new joint out of his shirt pocket. “And I have a lock on it. We merely need to hack XaaS and sever this one device’s access and they should have no way to trigger the bomb.”
“Unless they have another device that can send the signal,” Jayne countered.
Vlad scrunched his brow and looked at her as though she was crazy. “Who’s going to program and carry two trigger devices? This isn’t a matter of copying a file from one to another. Those are dirty bombs. Each one would have to be programmed manually to respond to any triggering mechanism. I guarantee they only have one device that the bombs can receive detonation commands from.”
Jayne suppressed an exasperated sigh as she squeezed the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Vlad, any bomber worth their shit will have multiple detonators. We’d have to shut down XaaS throughout the city.”
The professor lit his joint, inhaled deeply, and nodded. “Okay, do that then. Increase the panic and have the police hunting for us.” He shrugged and exhaled smoke. “Or, instead of making things worse, you can block the detonator program’s access to XaaS. I’m completely confident that you can hack the system and blacklist the device.”
Now why would he think she could hack XaaS?
Jayne gave herself a second to process what he’d implied. She didn’t like what he was getting at.
“Vlad, why the hell do you think I can hack XaaS? They probably have the best security on the planet. And I’m an…uh…” She blanked momentarily as she tried to remember her new field of study. “An ethics major.”
He sat on his stool in front of the jammer and twirled to face her. “Come on, Jayne. You reek of special training more than I do of weed. You’re either military, a Torsa System spy, or a federal operative. I’d put money on federal operative.”
Skewered, just like that. She’d have to split, find a new place to settle, and build herself back up.
Fuck!
“I think you smoked a little too much pot, Professor. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Playing dumb won’t help you,” Vlad said as he rested his cheek against his hand. “I’ve spent time on the space station, stayed in hotels near the academy, and drank in bars off the campus. I’ve seen your type all around there. I even supplied the academy with—” He stopped himself.
Jayne cocked her head and arched her eyebrows. “With?”
He forced a cough and wiped his hands on his pants. “Anyway, what I was getting at is I’m sure a trained spy can hack XaaS. And don’t worry, I won’t blow your cover. Your secret is safe with me.”
My secret is safe with me, and no one else, Jayne thought, but she forced herself to smile at him. If he could keep his trap shut, at least she wouldn’t have to get up and go.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Vlad took a hit and blew out smoke rings. “Can you hack XaaS?”
Jayne grumbled. It wasn’t nearly so easy a task as he made it out to be. But he did have a point. She was trained to do it. Then again, she might not have to.
“Why don’t we inform the police and have them block the program’s access to XaaS themselves?”
A slow melancholy sigh escaped her companion’s lips. “Maybe on another planet. But this one is run by the corporations. The police have no power to influence anything. You’d have to convince XaaS yourself. And considering that they’re a mega corporation based on another continent, good luck even getting a meeting.”
“That is a fucked-up system of government,” Jayne said acidly before changing to a softer tone. “I can give hacking XaaS a shot. But first, kava. Otherwise, I’ll fall asleep before I’m even five minutes in.”
“Perfect,” Vlad agreed. “I’ll stay here with the jammer. You take this tablet.”
He pulled the device from his pocket and handed it to her. “Go to the kava place around the corner, have a cup of Joe, and shut down the program’s XaaS access before the bombers can blow us all to hell.”
The possibility of bombs exploding and killing her was the type of thing she was trained to ignore in order to succeed in a mission.
Might die?
No sweat. So long as she was active.
She left the building with the tablet tucked under her arm. I did only get a C last semester in Deep Infiltration Hacking, though.
She pushed the worrying thought away and headed to the nearest kava joint.
CHAPTER TEN
Armaros, Theron Techcropolis, Kava-Kava Kava Shop
The soft yellow glow from the shop had long been a beacon for night drifters. Two drunk couples made out on couches in the back corner. Whenever they got too loud, the barista walked over and whispered that they needed to keep it down. Jayne caught one of the drunk girls slipping the barista a kiss during one of her warnings. The staff member giggled and looked around guiltily. Apparently, the drunk make-out party was part of her social circle.
Four students sat on stools at a counter facing the windows. Their optic monitors were open before them and they scrutinized the contents with an intensity that bordered on pyrokinesis. None of them spoke. There was no time for talking when you needed to get an A+++ .
A stoned student sat at a table reading On the Hyperstream. He snacked absentmindedly on the kava shop’s mini-muffins. At four credits a pop, he spent a lot of money to do something he could as easily do at home. There was something pleasant about being around other people, though.
Two tables away from the stoner, a goth sipped kava and looked casually at porn while tisking in distaste at everything she saw.
Just another 3:30 a.m. night at the Kava-Kava Kava Shop.
Except for the expelled spy trying to hack the planet’s biggest corporation in order to prevent everyone within a mile radius from being blown away by a selvanium bomb.
Unfortunately for Jayne, while her kava did its job just fine, she didn’t.
The hacking program she used couldn’t get around XaaS’s firewall. Every time she made a change to her attack software, the end result was the same: an annoying bloop on the XaaS app and a message that read:
Oops! Something went wrong!
Would you like to report the issue?
No, Jayne did not want to report to XaaS that she failed to hack their system.
With her latest adjustment completed, she crossed her fingers and hit enter.
Bloop.
“Mother-fucking…” she muttered, putting her head in her hands to keep from screaming. She really should have applied herself more in her hacking classes. It wasn’t something she imagined
herself specializing in, though. Spies were supposed to have teams, and she always figured she’d have a specialist on her crew for the really tough cracking jobs.
The sound of a chair being pulled out beside her snapped Jayne out of her sulk. She glanced up and saw the goth, the porn still playing on her tablet. She was dressed all in black with black hair, lipstick, nail polish, and heavy eye shadow. She was wearing a t-shirt for the 1000th anniversary hologram Marilyn Manson tour. The girl pushed her hair back behind her ears and Jayne noticed her knuckle tattoos: “LIFE” and “SUXX”.
“I’d recognize that sound anywhere,” the girl said with a grin. “It’s the sound of the XaaS firewall telling you to fuck off.”
Jayne blinked in surprise. “How did you—”
“Experience,” she said dismissively as if it was nothing, but her grin spread. Cocky little girl.
Jayne quickly sized up the goth. She hated hasty judgments, but there was no time for subtle interrogation tactics. “Do you know how to get around the firewall?”
“I can do it in my sleep.” The girl’s eyes lit up and she minimized the porn on her own tablet and opened a file.
Jayne’s tablet pinged as she received it.
“How did you know which device was—”
The goth shrugged and leaned across Jayne to open the file. “I hack everyone who comes in here. I like to see what they’re up to.” With a couple of taps, the girl had the file program open and running. Her fingers flew, and she initiated a pre-programmed command. The XaaS firewall dropped, and their system back-end opened to them.
“Holy shit,” Jayne uttered, impressed.
Her companion smiled. “Yeah, I know. I make it look really easy. So, what are we doing now that we’re in?”
“We?” Jayne asked, taken aback by the girl’s self-inclusion.
“I could always leave and turn the firewall back on if that’s what you want.” The girl’s eyes were alight with playfulness. They both knew Jayne wouldn’t go back to being on the other end of the firewall.
“‘We’ it is, then. I don’t suppose you know anything about blocking a program’s access to XaaS, do you, uh…”
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