Starfade

by Gary Swaby

  Within seconds, both their devices received calls from Commander Pearson. They both answered and the Comm-link system automatically sorted them into a group call.

  “Well done on the landing,” said Pearson. “Quickly dispose of your parachutes and try not to draw any attention to yourselves. You’ll need to walk an estimate of twenty minutes uphill to reach the data center from your position. You landed farther out than intended.”

  “That may not be a bad thing. It means we can scout the building and make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises,” said Varxen.

  “Precisely; watch your back, and send word once you reach the center.”

  Chiaki and Vraxen proceeded to tuck their parachutes back into their packs. They stashed their packs under some leaves by the side of the path. Chiaki slid her visor up and took a deep breath. The air felt thick and fresh; and suddenly Chiaki was full of purpose. It was as if the intake of fresh oxygen had hit her brain and given her a dose of motivation. “Let’s get going, boulder-face.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Come, short girl.”

  Chiaki strutted alongside the Stowyth, smiling. “That was the lamest comeback I ever heard.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHIAKI SLOWED INTO A CROUCH, creeping up towards the large carbon steel structure.

  “I hear something,” said Vraxen. Stowyth’s were known to have sharper senses than humans.

  “What kind of sound is it?”

  Vraxen tilted his head. “It sounds mechanical,” he said. “I believe it’s a drone.”

  “A security drone, huh?” Chiaki could easily hack a security drone, but she needed to get it in her hands first. Getting it was the hard part, because most security drones would send out an alert on any sign of impact. “I need to get my hands on it. I can reprogram it so that it covers our backs. Then, instead of it alerting these thunder-assholes, it will alert us if someone shows up.”

  “If I shoot it down it will alert them,” said Vraxen. “You should have taken some EMPs from the Lapwing; I told you it was a bad idea to not come prepared.”

  Chiaki rolled her eyes. “Cry me a river, Vraxy. The Alliance aren’t the only ones with tools.” She reached into a small compartment, located on the left thigh of her suit. “Nova always comes prepared,” she said, pulling a small marble shaped ball from the compartment. It was a metallic object, with a mini magnet strip on one of its curved edges. “All I need is for you to catch the drone,” she pointed. “After I toss this on it, it’s gonna hit the dirt fast. Think you can do your stretchy limb thing to get it before it shatters to a million pieces?”

  “What is that thing?” he asked.

  “It’s a mini-EMP. Good enough to shut down small, mobile electronics. But it's too small to shut down anything over two-hundred volts.”

  Chiaki waited, until she saw the drone fly into sight while circling the building. She counted to three before throwing the object at the drone. The EMP attached itself to the drone and they heard a mechanical click as the device was shut down.

  Vraxen demonstrated the abilities of a healthy Stowyth by running forward and stretching his arms out to catch the drone as it spiraled from the sky. Chiaki knew she had just a minute to work her magic, before the effects of the EMP wore off.

  “Set it down,” she said, jogging to Vraxen. With the drone on the ground, she opened a compartment on the side of her Comm-link that housed a GSB connector. She popped the cable into the drone’s frame, under its four propellers. It was now connected to her Comm-link. “Tobi, run my drone re-write code.”

  “Shall I include your latest patch, even though you’ve yet to finish it?” Tobi asked.

  “No, just run the vanilla version,” she said.

  “Why vanilla?” Vraxen asked, “you don’t like flavor?”

  Chiaki swallowed hard. “Just let me work.” With her own software now running on her display, she used the on-screen controls on her Comm-link to scroll through the drone’s functions. Her customized software allowed her to add in her own modifications at the tap of a finger. It also translated any code that was written with a different language. In the Milky Way, one programming language was widely used, but that coding language had at least ten language variations. A hacker would have a tough time if they didn’t have an auto-translate software at the ready. Chiaki’s only worry now was that the EMP would wear off before she found the alert function. “Dammit, where is it.”

  “Chiaki, you have twenty-five seconds until the EMP wears off,” said Tobi.

  “Screw it,” said Chiaki. She hit a macro key that she’d programmed to run a find and replace command. Typically, she avoided using the command as it took too long to load and then she would need to either type in or speak what she’s looking for. In this case, it was taking too long for her to scroll through the drone’s programming, so maybe the risk would be worth it. “Find the word ‘alert’,” she told Tobi.

  “There are zero instances of the word alert,” he said.

  “Shit, they’re smart with their coding.” The lack of the word in the code meant that the Thundercloaks had taken precautions, masking the names of its functions to give hackers a hard time. To narrow down her search to the alert function, she simply needed to think of a variable that only pertained to the alert feature. “Tobi, find sendto,” she asked. This would look up any instances where data is being sent to a third-party from the drone.

  “Six instances of the term sendto have been returned.” Chiaki quickly scrolled through the six instances, searching for anything that looked like a security alert. She saw that there were functions to send diagnostics and weather conditions at two hour intervals.

  Finally, something caught her attention. There was a function called notifyElf. Inside the function was a condition called OnStrike. Usually, a drone’s alert condition would be named OnContact but she guessed that the programmers had renamed the condition for inconvenience. “This has to be it,” she said.

  “Five seconds until the EMP is disabled,” said Tobi. Chiaki quickly input comment tags around the function to prevent it from working. “EMP disabled,” said Tobi.

  Chiaki saw Vraxen’s head tilt through the corner of her eye. “Did it work?” he asked. At that moment, the drone came back to life below them, its propellers turning slowly. Chiaki quickly hit the switch to disable flight mode.

  “If the alert was working, this red light would blink to indicate that it’s sending data.” She pointed to the red light on the drone’s tail.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Let’s continue on.”

  “Give me one moment,” said Chiaki. “I still have to reset the alert so that it will come to us instead.” With no danger of an alert being sent, Chiaki could now take her time to modify the code. She re-wrote all sendto actions so that they would instead send data to her Comm-link.

  “You think these guys might be Lord of the Rings fans or something?” she asked, wondering why the alert function had been named notifyElf. Could it be that these Thundercloaks were as nerdy as she was?

  “You are asking me things that I know nothing about,” he said.

  She shook her head. “None of you non-human species give Earth entertainment its due diligence.”

  Once Chiaki had finished re-writing the drone’s code, she reactivated its flight mode and watched it soar into the skies. “Now we’ll know whenever something moves within its range.”

  “Good,” said Vraxen. “Now you must work your magic on this door.”

  Thankfully, disabling the alert on the door was easy now that she knew the notifyElf function. She had used another EMP widget, but she was running low on her supply. With the front door alert disabled all she needed was to get it to open.

  “How long will this take?” Vraxen asked as another bolt of lightning rippled through the skies. A barrage of thunder sounds followed.

  “You’re not scared of a little thunder, are you Vraxy?” she said, kneeling by the door while operating
her Comm-link.

  “Please, do not call me that.”

  Chiaki disregarded Vraxen and brought her attention back to the task at hand. Since the door responded to a biometric authentication system, she would need to re-write the authentication code so that it would trick the door into opening up for them. There was only one problem…

  “Shit, these scripts are all encrypted.”

  “What does that mean?” Vraxen asked.

  “Tobi, run my script cracker,” she said. When she saw the program open up on her Comm-link, she glanced back at Vraxen. “It means that this could take a while.”

  Vraxen’s dark lips curled, revealing his platinum shaded teeth. “Now I know why I’m not a hacker,” he grunted.

  “Wanna know the secret of the Milky Way?” she asked him. She continued without waiting for a response, “Patience. If you learn patience, you’ll learn everything there is to know about this universe before your demise.”

  Vraxen blinked. “If that’s the case, why don’t you know who killed your brother?”

  Chiaki twitched. She breathed in and out to calm herself. “Some people are good at covering their tracks. I’ll find them eventually.”

  “With the help of the Alliance, the organization you harbor so much hatred for?”

  “Chī shǐ, shithead,” she snapped, cursing him with her slang. On her wrist, she saw that the script cracker was still trying to break the encryption. Arrays of symbols that represented the encrypted characters were slowly formulating into their correct arrangements.

  “My mother fell sick,” said Vraxen. “That’s why I went to the loan sharks on Utrion. I needed enough money to buy her medicine and pay for her treatments.” Vraxen cupped his hands together, rubbing his palms. “They gave me enough money to keep her treatments going for five years. They said I wouldn’t have to start paying them back for two years. I didn’t even know how I was going to pay them back; I just wanted to keep my mother alive. I told myself I would figure it out later. But then—.” Vraxen paused, his head panning towards the sky. “My mother died a year into her treatment.”

  Chiaki closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry.” She too had lost her parents many years ago. She and Kura had traveled to space from Earth as orphans.

  “Since I’d only used a years’ worth of the money, I offered to give the loan sharks back the rest of what they gave to me. But they were unreasonable. They said they wanted it all paid back with interest, in one lump sum. They gave me just a month to come up with one-hundred Utrion Orbs and two-hundred-thousand credits.”

  Utrion Orbs were a currency exclusive to the Utrion ecosystem, whereas credits were a universal currency used across the Milky Way. It was foul of the loan sharks to ask for absurd amounts of money across two different currencies, in just one month.

  “Of course, I was in no position to pay. My only options were to steal a number of weapons from an outpost and use them to protect myself every time the mercs caught up to me. This one time I was at a bar, wallowing in my sorrows. Some mercs came to collect or assassinate me. I managed to fight them off in a skirmish that completely destroyed the bar. Commander Pearson had been watching me the whole time. That was when he asked to recruit me for his cause, in exchange for paying off my debts.”

  Chiaki could just imagine Pearson watching the fight with that smug look on his face; not even thinking about intervening. With his authority, he could have ended the fight anytime he wanted. The thought sickened her.

  “I know you have your reservations about the Alliance, but they do help people. In many ways,” he said.

  “So basically, your leash was handed over from one master to another,” she said. “You’re wasting your best years, Vraxy. You could be free, like me.”

  Vraxen exhaled deeply through the slits on his face.

  “Nova, the code is fully decrypted,” said Tobi.

  “Finally,” she said. She scanned through the code and made the necessary modifications. All that was left was for her to take a picture so that the system would recognize her face and proceed to give her entry. When the Comm-link camera blinked, she closed an eye-lid and stuck her tongue out. A clicking noise indicated that the photo had been taken.

  “Seriously, how old are you?” Vraxen asked.

  Chiaki ignored him and wrote some additional code that would wipe her picture from the system after two hours. When she was done, she ran the authenticator and the door came back to life.

  “Okay, we’re in business. Let’s go, Vraxy.”

  “Please, stop that,” he said, walking towards the door.

  Chiaki stood and faced the biometric camera on the side of the door. She replicated the expression from her photo and the door slid upwards to admit them.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHIAKI PACED HER STEPS as she entered the dark and dank hallway. Her nose wrinkled at the vile smell. “It smells like carcasses in here,” she said.

  She heard Vraxen take large intake of breath through the nose. “It’s just animals,” he said.

  They moved towards a railing and Chiaki peered over the side. Below was an indoor garden full of dead plants and flowers; an attempt to make the building more environmental when it was inhabited. She could see that there were two squared railings below their level, indicating that there were two more floors below them. And probably even more floors that they couldn’t see.

  “Use the infra-red,” said Vraxen.

  She removed the round device from her pocket and pushed in the button on it’s underside for three seconds; it bleeped to indicate that it was on. She tapped the same button again to pair the device to her Comm-link. On her Comm-link, she used the scanner to receive the device’s signal. The device bleeped once more to confirm that it was paired. Chiaki then slammed the device against the panel below the railing. On her Comm-link she could now see a feed that showed all energy sources in the building as red dots. There were an abundance of computers on the levels below them; as well as fans, heaters, drones and other appliances.

  “Look,” said Vraxen, pointing to something on her Comm-link screen. “There are floors even lower than the garden.”

  “No shit,” she said, “and look there.” She pointed to a moving energy source that was way below them. “With how big that dot is and with how it’s moving, it could only be a security droid.”

  “We will need to proceed carefully.”

  Chiaki used the scroll wheel on her Comm-link to pan the feed. “Right there,” she pointed. “The security droid is right by a ton of red dots. That has to be the server room, and that’s where the mainframe will be.”

  “Okay, keep that feed running. We’ll use it to guide us. At least we’ll know when something is coming.”

  Chiaki disregarded Vraxen’s words and looked around her, from left to right. She made a mental note of the ventilation duct to the far right of the platform.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  Chiaki said nothing. She wondered how quick Vraxen’s reflexes were. “Aren’t you tired of being a babysitter?” she asked, taking three steps back. “Surely, running from loan sharks would have been more fun than this.” His head tilted and the slits of his eyes tightened.

  Chiaki reached into one of her suit pockets. By the time Vraxen registered her movement she had slammed a smoke pellet on the platform. Waves of smoke shot into the air and Chiaki heard violent wails that she guessed were Stowyth coughs.

  She ran across the opposite side of the platform, putting as much distance between herself and Vraxen as she could before he could catch up to her. When she reached the caged ventilation entrance, she stole a glance behind her. Vraxen was emerging from the smoke, his eyes wide with disbelief.

  Chiaki pulled on the top-right corner of the cage as hard as she could until she felt it shift.

  “His Comm-link signal is getting stronger, Nova,” said Tobi, trying to make her aware of the Stowyth’s distance.

  She p
ulled the bottom corner now; being too careful not to break a nail. Vraxen’s feet were pounding the aluminum platform behind her. She gasped, as the cage finally ripped apart from the duct opening. Without looking behind her, she held onto the top crevice of the opening and threw her legs inside. Vraxen’s arm went through the hole after her, as the duct swallowed her body.

  Chiaki felt herself sliding down the curved slopes. She was able to spread her feet and slow her descent before the final bend that would take her two floors below. Her chest pounded as the adrenaline in her body slowed. But it wasn’t the time to be calm, because as she glanced up the duct, she witnessed Vraxen’s arm stretching itself down the duct, feeling its way around for her.

  “Shit!” she whispered.

  “Why do this, Nova?” came his voice, echoing down the duct.

  She shuffled her body down the curve until she was resting on her back. Another cage was blocking her exit. She slammed her foot against the cage and applied pressure. When it didn't budge, she continued slamming her foot against it.

  Suddenly, she felt Vraxen’s arm slide against her hair. He was feeling around, deciding which part of her body would be the most appropriate to grab. At least he had some level of respect. After bypassing her hair and her neck, he soon found her underarm and decided he would try to pull her up by it. Chiaki felt her body shift and she lost some of the reach she needed to continue kicking the cage open.

  “Leave me alone!” she yelled. She heard her own voice trailing up the duct and Vraxen loosened his grip in response.

  She took advantage by slipping her body further down the bend, condensing her already small body. She leaned on her side and kicked the cage with her free foot; kicking harder each time.

  Finally, she felt the cage shifting.

  “We need to stick together, that droid is dangerous.” She heard.