Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  Just when Eileen thought she’d clearly identified the worm’s unique signature, she’d come back to a machine she’d found it on an hour earlier and discovered that it was gone. Not really gone, just hidden in plain sight. She’d wiped an infected computer’s hard drive, only to discover that the worm restored itself to a different part of the drive later, having managed to write its kernel into a programmable keyboard’s random-access memory.

  The worm was amazingly aggressive, migrating through any connection to writeable memory. It loved flash memory, as well as anything that let it save off a version of itself.

  The time line confused her. So did the infection vector. Clearly the infection had been present for some time prior to the attack. And as adept as the worm was at spreading and hiding itself, this was a TEMPEST facility. Even if she assumed that someone had illegally carried in an infected flash drive or DVD, the worm’s propagation should have been spotty, with areas of high concentration and others that were infection-free. That wasn’t the case here.

  It was as if the worm had simultaneously penetrated the entire facility, like a burst of high-energy radiation. One of the worm’s behaviors had brought it to Eileen’s attention. Whenever it found an Internet-capable system, it opened a telnet port, then hid that port from standard sys-admin tools. Eileen had found it with one of her own special security tools, a program that created its own port map in addition to sniffing all Internet protocol packets.

  Eileen identified other back doors, but she felt pretty sure the telnet port had been the door the Valkyrie had used to take over the Ice House. The cameras had gone down first, followed by the facility lights. Then all electronically controlled locks were opened, initiating the prisoner escape. All of those first events had been initiated over an internal Wi-Fi link. Eileen hadn’t yet traced the source, but it was only a matter of time.

  Of greater interest was the security monitoring room from which the following attacks had come. Someone had killed the two guards with a series of expertly placed, powerful blows. The subsequent events—halon gassing of the primary control room, diversion of camera video to the Valkyrie’s station, initiation of selected fire suppression systems, and selective manipulation of building lockdown mechanisms—were all indicators that pointed to an infiltrator, possibly disguised as a guard. But the fake message redirecting the security teams to defend the building perimeter had been the key. That had been a woman’s voice, and it had been routed over the public address system from the security station laptop. But last night’s personnel logs showed no female staff on the night shift.

  That left the two women in the facility at the time of the attack, Heather McFarland and Jennifer Smythe, both captured at Jack Gregory’s Bolivian compound. They and Mark Smythe were people who had an interest in the captured laptops, although Eileen was mystified by how they had known where to look for them on their way out. And she was pretty sure that they’d made it out alive; at least the medical examiner hadn’t identified their bodies.

  Eileen wasn’t an expert on Jack Gregory’s tactics, but the confusion caused by the Fort Meade bombings fit what she imagined his profile to be. Leaning back in her chair, stretching her arms above her head, she cracked her knuckles. She’d leave that to Levi and his team. Right now she had a lot more work to do if she was going to be fully prepared for General Wilson’s eight a.m. meeting. Aside from who had done it, he was going to want to know how they had gotten the worm into every system in the Ice House and how she was going to purge it, two questions Eileen didn’t yet know the answer to.

  Eileen wanted those answers.

  The trip from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Salamanca, on New York’s Cattaraugus Reservation, had been uneventful, but for Jennifer it had been part of the descent into hell she’d begun yesterday. Heather had taken over the subspace hacks required to ensure their travel security while Jennifer huddled in a fetal ball in the backseat, alternately sweating her shirt through and shivering hard enough to damage the car’s suspension.

  She’d read all about the physical effects of heroin withdrawal, but living it was a different matter. Heather and Mark had repeatedly tried to help, but there wasn’t a damned thing they could do except let her fight her own battle.

  Jack had posted encrypted instructions for their rendezvous on the web and Heather had downloaded them. They’d led to a safe house in Salamanca where Heather had used the laptop to remotely open the garage door. Then they’d settled in for the night. If all went well, Jack would arrive sometime in the morning. In the meantime, as Mark and Heather started their planning, Jennifer, plagued by deepening depression, had taken herself to bed.

  To have so much power and feel so helpless filled her with self-loathing. Every meditation she tried failed. It was as if all her neural enhancements had amplified her drug experience as well as its accompanying withdrawal.

  Maybe she was attacking this all wrong. She knew clinics sometimes used methadone to ease addicts off of heroin, not that she wanted to substitute one drug for another. But maybe there was another way to ease her symptoms. Opiates such as heroin caused the body to release an excess of dopamine. Perhaps if she used her perfect memory of what it had felt like to sink into that opiate haze, she could trigger the same bodily response. The downside was that she’d be putting herself back into the drugged state.

  Her self-debate didn’t last long. She needed to feel that feeling one more time. Besides, Mark and Heather needed her mentally sharp in the morning. And if her idea worked, she could gradually wean herself from the need.

  Leaning back against the pillows that she’d piled against the bed’s oak headboard, Jennifer pulled forth the memory she wanted. As the lovely rush wiped away all her cares, one last clear thought brought a smile to her lips. Good decision.

  Jack dropped the kickstand and stepped off the black motorcycle onto the concrete driveway, pausing in the early morning sunlight to survey the Native American neighborhood that surrounded the safe house. Some people would describe it as sleepy, but dead was the word that came to mind. Fine with him. Sometimes dead was good.

  Removing his helmet, Jack walked to the front door, giving it three good raps with his knuckles.

  Heather opened the door a crack, then flung it open wide, wrapping her strong, slender arms around Jack’s neck as he lifted her off the ground. As Jennifer reached him he shifted to allow her into the group hug. Seeing Mark’s grin, Jack released the girls and stepped forward to accept Mark’s powerful handshake. Jack felt a warmth that he hadn’t experienced for a long while fill his chest. “Janet told me to give you all a hug for her. Mark’s going to have to wait to collect his in person.”

  “That’s OK.” Mark laughed. “I’d rather get it from her anyway.”

  “Let’s not keep Jack standing in the driveway all morning,” Jennifer said. “Besides, everything’s a bit less conspicuous inside.”

  “Good thinking,” Jack agreed.

  Heather led the group into the living room, but Jack carried his satchel to the kitchen table and pulled out manila envelopes labeled HEATHER, MARK, and JENNIFER.

  Tossing them on the table, he turned toward Heather. “Do you have some coffee going? We’re all going to need some before we dig into these.”

  Heather grabbed the pot as Jennifer set out four cups. Jack accepted the steaming mug and took a seat facing the door, a habit so old he no longer noticed it. As the others settled into their chairs, he leaned back and smiled.

  “I know you’re probably all curious about what’s been happening in the outside world while you’ve been locked away, so I’ve prepared a detailed summary as part of your briefing packages.”

  Mark opened the envelope’s metal tabs, dumping the contents onto the table in front of him. He glanced at the pile of aerial and satellite photographs attached to the printed reports and let out a low whistle.

  Jack continued. “Inside your packets you’ll find copies of reports Janet and I put together on the activities at the Large Had
ron Collider site in Switzerland, as well as identities you will be using to individually infiltrate the November Anomaly Project. But before we get started, I need to hear a rundown on your last few weeks as NSA guests at the Ice House.”

  For two hours Mark, Jen, and Heather recounted their captivity, as Jack insisted on hearing every detail, up to and including their escape. He showed particular interest in the layout of the lab and workstation from which Heather had retrieved the subspace receiver-transmitter USB devices.

  “Sounds like whoever they dug up to replace Dr. David Kurtz is just as good.”

  “The nameplate on the workstation read ‘Dr. Eileen Wu.’”

  Jack pulled his laptop from the satchel and handed it across the table to Jennifer.

  “See what you can dig up on our new friend, Dr. Wu.”

  As Jennifer plugged in and fired up the laptop, Jack settled in, once again looking forward to watching her work her magic.

  “So how bad is it?” General Balls Wilson directed his attention to Eileen Wu.

  “Bad.” She manipulated the mouse, projecting a diagram onto the wall screen. “This shows all the Ice House electronic systems prior to the attack, including wireless devices and approved tablets and Wi-Fi phones.”

  She clicked a button and the display changed.

  “Now this shows the still-working systems after the gun battle. As you can see, despite all the bullets, explosions, and fire suppression systems engaged, the vast majority of the electronic equipment is still functioning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the attackers wanted those systems working. One of their first actions was to kill the lights on sublevels three and four. They killed the lights, but not the power.”

  She clicked the button again. “And this shows the systems infected by what I’m calling the Ice worm.”

  “I don’t see any difference. Which systems are infected?”

  “All of them.”

  “All?”

  “Every single programmable component, along with any writable memory attached to those systems. And I mean everything, down to programmable calculators, MP3 players, and overhead projectors like this one.”

  Balls Wilson stared at her in disbelief. The low murmur that had begun around the table of assembled senior NSA staff became a buzz that was silenced by General Wilson’s glare.

  “Do you know who infected my facility?”

  “I did.”

  The silence hung in the air between them, forcing her to continue.

  “When I finally gained access to my lab yesterday, I noticed that two small USB dongles were missing from my test bench. I confirmed that they were the only things taken, then began asking myself why they would take just those dongles. That caused me to go back and review the tests we ran on the two laptops.

  “As you recall from my previous briefing, I isolated the first laptop in a Faraday cage, instrumented all the laptop circuit boards to record data flow, switched it on, and bypassed the log-in.

  “Exactly one minute later, my instruments began recording unexplained activity on numerous circuits, including the TCP stack. Since the laptop was completely isolated, this didn’t cause me concern. Last night’s events and my subsequent analysis of the original data indicate that my original confidence was a mistake.

  “Somehow, without sending any measurable signals, that laptop identified every computing system in the building and infected them with the Ice worm. The worm managed to hide itself, migrating to new systems that were subsequently brought in.”

  “Jesus.” Karl Oberstein’s face looked drawn.

  “Bert,” General Wilson asked, “do you agree with Dr. Wu’s conclusions?”

  Dr. Mathews glanced at his young prodigy, saw no fear in Eileen’s face, and nodded. “I’m afraid I do. I reviewed her data before this meeting.”

  “So if it didn’t send out any signals, how did that laptop access all our systems?”

  Eileen Wu clicked off the projector and turned to face him. “I don’t know.”

  “Gregory.”

  “More precisely Heather McFarland and the Smythe twins. The Ripper may have helped on the outside, but you can bet that everything that happened inside the Ice House was orchestrated by those three. Worm or no, their escape was some unbelievable shit.”

  General Wilson stared directly into Eileen’s dark eyes. “Could you have pulled it off?”

  She shrugged. “The computer stuff, if I knew about the worm. Everything else though, forget about it.”

  General Wilson leaned forward. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had data appearing inside TEMPEST-certified systems in the last couple of years. Karl, you and Levi take a look back at some of the old Jonathan Riles files from when he sent Gregory’s team to Los Alamos. Find out what Gregory stumbled onto that enticed him to go rogue.

  “Eileen, you make damned sure that worm stays confined to the Ice House.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, General. But if Gregory’s team has its hands on the kind of technology we think they do, that worm is the least of our worries.”

  Mark looked up as Jennifer closed her briefing folder and rose to stand beside the kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry, guys, I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  Mark bent a questioning gaze on his sister. “Sleep?”

  Jennifer shrugged, and in that motion Mark noticed the slight tremors traversing her body. “Heroin’s a bitch. Sleep helps, even for me. OK, Jack?”

  Jack studied her closely, then nodded. “I guess you can catch up with the others in the morning, but you’re going to have to bring it.”

  It wasn’t exactly a gracious dismissal, but Jennifer appeared not to notice. A glance at Heather’s concerned face told Mark that she had. He understood Jack’s need to drive them all hard, but Mark didn’t have to like it, especially when it came to ignoring what the NSA bastards had done to his sister.

  After all, they’d worked on the plan for sixteen straight hours. Mark knew the construction plans for the ATLAS cavern and for the matter ingester power station nicknamed the MINGSTER, knew the blueprints, knew every aspect of the electrical wiring, knew what companies had which contracts. Still Jack wasn’t satisfied. Now they were working their way through the dossiers of all personnel currently assigned to the November Anomaly Project. Still on the docket for the night, Mark had to learn the stasis field generator wiring and construction plans. Heather still needed to study the rest of Dr. Stephenson’s papers.

  Jack had selected their future project roles, but he was waiting for them to complete the background work before he took them through his plans for getting them the right jobs with the appropriate firms, and for getting them assigned to the desired positions on Gateway Day.

  Mark found his future role intriguing. He would become Gunter Fogel, a hotshot young electrical technician with Kohl Engineering. His mission was to impress the lead engineer, Gerhardt Werner, and get himself assigned to the construction team inside the ATLAS cavern. Jennifer would take on the role of Dr. Nika Ivanovich, a Russian postdoctoral scientist working on Dr. Peter Trotsky’s team specializing in the theory and operation of the stasis field controllers.

  Heather’s mission would place her in the role of Inga Hedstrom, to become one of the Swiss security guards in the ATLAS cavern on G-Day. Dr. Stephenson had insisted that no military be assigned near the wormhole device through which the anomaly would be transported on G-Day, the military’s role being to ensure security of the entire site, preventing outside forces from disrupting construction or operations. Only a couple of guards would maintain watch within the cavern, typically two or three to a shift, and those would be provided by Paladin, a Swiss private security firm. The inside guards were only there to do Dr. Stephenson’s bidding, including evicting unwanted personnel from the premises.

  This would leave Heather with little to do on G-Day, exactly what Jack wanted. It put her in position to use her unique abilities to recognize unanticipated pro
blems and to take immediate corrective action. While her position would be the least complicated, it would also be the most difficult to set up ahead of time.

  Rising from his seat, Mark walked over to the coffeepot and refilled his mug. Rolling his neck, he felt it pop and crackle. Definitely too much sitting. But as he raised his cup to his lips, feeling the hot liquid flow over his tongue, he held no illusions. The butt-flattening had only just begun.

  The stasis tendrils swarmed to complete the last of the repairs, each delicate line of force its own thread of execution within the massive neural net that was Raul. He was so close now to accomplishing something Dr. Stephenson had never imagined, bringing the Rho Ship back to full functionality.

  Not that he intended to go anywhere in his starship. Although he could explore the solar system, he couldn’t get to the stars, not and survive the trip. The one advantage the Altreians’ subspace warp technology had over the power of the wormhole drive was the way it enabled the ship to travel to the stars with living occupants. While the subspace engine allowed faster-than-light travel, it was nowhere near as fast as making the distance between here and there cease to exist the way his wormhole drive did. Still, the whole dying thing limited that sort of travel to unmanned ships.

  Raul knew what Stephenson was trying to accomplish. He knew what Stephenson had done when he’d used Raul to unknowingly facilitate the November Anomaly’s creation. He knew how Stephenson had used that to force the world to build his gateway. With access to the history of the Kasari Collective, Raul knew all about how things were supposed to work and what had gone wrong here on Earth.