Prime Alpha (Planetary Powers Book 1)

by Joshua Boring

  “Sir,” the sniper said. “Whatever you decide to do, wherever you decide to go, I will respectfully have your back. I will never doubt you. But be warned; you are dangerously close to doubting yourself.”

  Nathen drummed his fingers against the Coyote for a moment. Trent waited, fiddling an empty shell in his hands. After a moment, Nathen pushed away from the table, leaving the Coyote, and straightened his uniform.

  “Sorry to interrupt your shooting session,” Nathen said, waving a salute, which Trent returned. “Let me know when you finish up here.”

  Nathen turned and clasped his hands behind his back, walking for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Trent asked.

  “I’m going to go check on Phillip,” Nathen said. “And then I’m going to look for Calico.”

  “You’re going to confront her?” Trent asked.

  “No,” Nathen said, looking back. “But I’m going to talk to her. Maybe that’s something I haven’t done enough of.”

  The sniper nodded his understanding and started to pick up his rifle.

  “Trent.”

  Trent looked up. Nathen hovered by the door, hands behind his back.

  “Do you think it’s her?”

  The former Ranger looked very thoughtful, then shook his head and racked the bolt on his Greylance.

  “I don’t,” he said, resolutely. “She’s too honest.”

  Nathen turned back to the door. “Alright. Keep an ear to the ground. I get the feeling this is going to end soon.”

  Trent hefted his Greylance up into his arms and pointed the barrel downrange. “I hope you’re right, Commander. ‘The enemy you ignore may be the unseen snake.’”

  Nathen smiled. “Jason Denver. The man has a fortune in pearls of wisdom. What would we do without him?”

  ***

  “It’s a virus,” Phillip’s exasperated voice said over the radio. “It’s a virus, and if I touch it, it’s going to activate, and infect the entire station.”

  Nathen waited by the radio next to the airlock for Phillip to take a breath before responding.

  “What kind of virus is it?”

  “The bad kind,” Phillip responded. “The sneaky kind. From what I can gather from the file size and surface layout I’ve deciphered, this thing is some kind of… of, of, of puppeteer virus! I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s a dreadful piece of work, and I’ve seen-”

  “Daytana?”

  “-some of the implications of this are disturbing, but that’ll be NOTHING compared to what will happen if it gets loose to-”

  “Daytana!”

  “-S’what? Who’s that?”

  “Daytana,” Nathen spoke, sternly into the radio. “Shut up and speak to me rationally.”

  There were a few deep breaths and a dry cough on the other end of the radio.

  “Sorry,” came the response. “Yeah, I’m… I’m just…”

  Nathen leaned in close to the airlock and peered through the portal into the core, picking Phillip Norsehill out against the glow of the access terminal.

  “Phillip, when was the last time you took a break?”

  He saw the suited figure reach up and touch his helmet. “Uh, let’s see, that was… never-oh-hundred hours ago.”

  “Tether back to the airlock,” Nathen said. “Before your eyes fall out.”

  “But I still have-”

  “Back away from that console,” Nathen ordered. “You’ve been breathing the same recycled air for nearly twenty-four hours. You’re oxygen deprived. Now get over here before you do something really stupid with that virus.”

  The suited figure lifted his arms away from the computer, obediently. “Okay,” Phillip said, swallowing. “Okay, I’m coming. Roger that.”

  The figure turned, clipped to a lifeline, and pushed off, swimming through zero-G back to the airlock. Nathen waited as Phillip climbed into the airlock and shut the door behind him. Air vented into the chamber until the pressure equalized. When the overhead light turned green, Phillip reached up and lifted his helmet off. The technician, still floating in zero gravity, let the helmet float free as he took a long, deep breath. His face was caked with the moisturized spit that had filmed on his skin, then dried with the constant recycling of air. When the technician had a moment to collect himself, he pulled himself in close to the portal to face Nathen.

  “It’s a game changer,” Phillip said, lucidly. “This virus can infect a computer, and then it erases the command protocol and inserts itself as the new root command. At that point, it waits and will only respond to a certain key. You insert this virus into a computer on a station or, maybe a ship, and it has it by the balls. And then… it squeezes.”

  Nathen furrowed his brow. “That doesn’t make sense. If the virus only activates after it has inserted itself as the root command, then what’s to stop anyone from just purging it?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Phillip said, waving a finger for emphasis. “The only reason I found this one is because it hasn’t infected the core. Yet. Once it’s infected its host, it damn near impossible to detect. It blends with its system, but more than that, it functions with its system. It will continue to give total access using the original command codes until it receives an order to do otherwise. No one would ever know something was wrong.”

  Nathen gave Phillip rapt attention. “What does this virus do once it’s activated? Slave the ship?”

  “No,” Phillip said, shaking his head. “No, no virus can do that. A virus can only infect computers, it can’t control the hardware. You need hackers to… Well, forget it. Once this virus activates, it does constrict what it has infected until it shuts down. The harder you fight it, the tighter it grips.”

  “So it can’t directly control a computer, but it can-”

  “Cripple one, yes,” Phillip confirmed. “And any station or ship it controls.”

  Nathen nodded in understanding. Then something occurred to him that made his blood chill. He looked up at Phillip, who came to the same conclusion with wide eyes.

  “My God,” Phillip said. “You don’t think…”

  “Haven Alpha,” Nathen said, grimly. “She’s been infected already.”

  “That explains all the critical system failures she’s been experiencing,” Phillip said, rubbing the light stubble on his chin that had accumulated over the last day. “But how the heck are they hijacking her communications? You’d need physical hardware to do that…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nathen said. “Now that we know, I want you to go back to Haven and-”

  “No, you don’t get it,” Phillip said. “The virus is activated every time the signal is sent, from here. I need to get the hacker program out to stop the signal, which won’t stop the virus but at least the mole won’t be able to activate it.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yes, but it’s going to take a little while. Because they set up a virus to infect the space station if I tamper with the hacker program. I’ll need to tread very carefully.”

  Nathen turned away, thinking out his next move. “Do it, and fast. Where’s that technician who was helping you?”

  Phillip brushed his gloved fingertips against his hair and blustered out an exhale. “I dunno. Gone hours ago. I didn’t notice.”

  “Let's get you out of here and refreshed. Some food and rest will get you charged back up for the task.”

  Phillip grunted, as if the thought disgusted him. “This thing's not going to wait for me to limber up. It's backed into a corner. I've got to close in before it blows. Otherwise... well, I can't spare imagination on what might happen. I need to save that creativity for a solution.”

  “Fine,” Nathen conceded, reluctantly. “Just get it done. And Daytana, be careful. They have to know we’re getting close.”

  “I hear you,” Phillip said, reaching for his floating helmet and clamping it back on. “I’ll call you when I get it done.”

  Nathen watched as the air pumped out of the airlock and
Phillip tethered back onto the lifeline.

  “Hang in there,” Nathen said to the empty airlock. Phillip never looked back as he floated back to the core, and the glow of the console screen.

  Chapter 36

  [7 hours later]

  Nathen slowly paced his way down the observation hallway on the outermost part of the station. At first, the sense of being so close to a cold vacuum was shocking, with only two inches of plastech separating him from a one-way trip to absolute nothing. The feeling eventually drained away once he acclimated to the constant proximity of the observation windows. The deck led halfway around the station and provided a clear view of the docking area positioned above and below the skirt of solar panels. When he leaned in toward the curved observation windows, he could look up at the underbellies of other ships.

  No sign of Calico. The young ESC had not reported in, and had not been seen by any of the others all day. If Nathen weren’t already so suspicious, he’d say she was deliberately avoiding them. Some small part of him could sympathize with that. She’d blundered her way along; that was likely embarrassing for a young soldier trying to prove herself, and her ineptitude had nearly resulted in the deaths of two team members. Whether the tension between her and the rest of the team was real, Nathen didn’t know. But he did know if there was blame for anything, then she was being her own harshest judge.

  The commander stopped his walk to stare out the window at the sea of stars. He hadn’t memorized constellations for the Vetrus System, but he recognized a few that had gained his attention in the past. It was hard to wrap his mind around the thought that the stars he was looking at, distant as they were, could be reached as quickly as a few days or even mere hours.

  In what had become a sort of ritual every time he was in space, Nathen scanned the various glowing dots that filled the view port. He could spend hours staring out the window. It was like listening to crashing waves, and calmed him as little else could.

  “Commander Bracken?”

  It took Nathen a moment to tear himself away from the stars. Once he did, he found himself facing a young station officer, a corporal, from the looks of it, with a datapad tucked under his arm. Nathen sighed deeply as he glanced one last time out the plastech. The corporal seemed to discern Nathen’s mood.

  “Was I interrupting something?”

  Nathen slowly shook his head, finally bringing himself back. “Nothing. What can I do for you?”

  The corporal pulled the datapad out from under his arm and handed it to Nathen without another second’s delay. “We just got these reports in. They’re about the progress the bomb techs have had in their searches for the missing explosives.”

  Nathen took the datapad from the officer and flipped it around so he could read it. Timelines filled the screen as Nathen slowly scrolled along with his finger, taking mental notes and making estimations. After a few minutes, Nathen shook his head.

  “Fourteen pounds of explosives have been located,” he said out loud.

  The corporal nodded. “Yes sir. You requested the exact amount of recovered explosives be recorded, reported, and escorted to the station safe room. The recovered plasmatics are secure and under heavy guard.”

  Nathen scrolled back up and began re-reading the information for memorization. “What about mishandling? Have there been any incidents? I’ve caught word that the medical station has had a few more patients than usual.”

  The corporal nodded, grimly. “Yeah, unfortunately. The bomb boys estimate approximately two pounds of plasmatics were lost in failed attempts to disarm the blast caps. Four wounded, one critical. We managed to take adequate precautions to minimize lethal accidents.”

  Nathen tapped on an icon and brought up a minimized file. It simply stated the precautions that were being taken to ensure the recovered explosives weren’t re-acquired by the thief at large. “It could have been worse,” answered Nathen, closing the file and handing the datapad back to the officer. “Hopefully the rest will be re-acquired without serious incident.” Nathen bit his lip in thought.

  Fourteen pounds have been apprehended, two pounds detonated, that’s sixteen accounted for. Which leaves thirty-four pounds still out there. Something’s not right. The numbers don’t match up somehow. What’s wrong? Think about it…

  Nathen brought his attention back to the officer. “Corporal, I didn’t see a roster of how many routers there are or of how many have been cleared.”

  The corporal looked from the datapad to Nathen, then back. “Uh, yeah, let me think… We’re still working on clearing the rest. I remember hearing they found somewhere around thirty routers hidden throughout the station. Our people have cleared... maybe three quarters of them. About twenty-two.”

  Nathen furrowed his brow, suddenly thrust back into his analysis. Unless the remaining explosives are grouped together in those last eight routers, which seems unlikely…

  Nathen found himself drawing a disturbing conclusion. “Corporal, I need your co-operation. Judging by these numbers, I’m going to bet that not all the explosives are being used to destroy evidence. If I’m right, and let’s hope I’m not, only half the plasmatics are going to be in routers.”

  The corporal, put on the spot, looked confused. “What about the other half?”

  Nathen looked down at the floor as he racked his brain for an answer. “If I’m right, we’ll find them placed where they can cause a lot of harm. Somewhere critically important.”

  The corporal glanced down the hallway, growing more alarmed at Nathen's words. “I’ll have a bomb crew check the bridge and life support systems.”

  Nathen cast the man a salute, and the soldier returned it before spinning on his heel and hurrying away.

  At that moment, low beeping filled the near empty hallway. Nathen reached down to pull his comm. unit free of his belt. He calmly switched it on and opened the text message, but his calm demeanor quickly changed as the message scrolled across the palm-sized screen. It was short and to the point, but it said plenty.

  ESC assistance. Angel cafeteria. Combat in progress.

  Nathen took off at a run. The cafeteria wasn’t that far off, maybe a two-minute’s run at full sprint. He had lived through firefights that didn’t last that long. There was no telling what was going on at that exact moment. He whisked by clueless stations techs and ducked down another passageway. In no time, Nathen had reached the cafeteria.

  Nathen quickly ducked inside the open archway and skidded to a halt at the sounds that greeted him. The primal chant for blood was matched by the battered cries of pain. There were nearly two dozen voices shouting all at once, but one in particular had the booming resonance that Nathen recognized as belonging to his gunner.

  “COME ON! I’LL THROTTLE YA ALL, ONE ET A TIME OH ALL ET ONCE! BRING ET ON YA JOLLY JESTERS!”

  The thundering challenges were promptly met with sounds of heavy impacts and screams of agony. Near the center of the cafeteria, through a throng of twenty or so Infantry uniforms, Nathen could make out a pair of white and black uniforms identical to his own.

  Kyler Jeston and Jonathan Harper stood back to back, surrounded by nearly two dozen worked-up Infantrymen who looked like they might bull rush them at any moment. Nearby were two unconscious soldiers, tended by comrades who were trying to revive them. Another five lurked at the edges of the mob, licking their wounds. Kyler was constantly moving, flaunting his arms at the attackers like a pacing lion, while Jonathan stayed low, in the giant’s shadow while keeping his lethal gaze on everyone.

  Nathen smoothly pulled his Denchura free of its shoulder holster as he started toward the mob. He didn’t know what was going on, but he saw enough to guess he didn’t want it to go any further. One shot over everyone’s heads would break their concentration. Before he could make it three steps, the sound of a loaded Coyote being cocked brought any immediate action to a halt.

  “Drop your weapon.”

  Nathen grimly obeyed. As his Denchura II clattered to the deck, he chanced a look
sideways. Two soldiers, who had been watching the fight from beside the archway until his arrival, had their Coyote assault rifles trained squarely on his back. Nathen didn’t move as the nearest Infantryman came up behind him. His comrade hovered off to the side, ensuring no escape. Nathen realized they only needed one glance at his White Sun uniform to know whose side he was on.

  “Brandishing an unsecured weapon within a no arms zone is a serious offense,” said Nathen, keeping his hands level but steady. The soldier seemed to be breathing right in Nathen’s ear, he was so close.

  “And I suppose you and that pistol were just gonna go have a peaceful discussion. Not on my watch, merc. You’re sitting this one out.”

  The soldier finished talking just as one of the soldiers broke ranks and charged, thinking he saw an opening.

  The man attacking Kyler looked like he knew how to handle himself, coming in fast so he wouldn’t leave much room or opportunity for counterattack. But anyone who tried to attack a seven-foot tall giant was just looking to have something broken. The soldier came in with a swing that would send another man reeling. The Paxtonite turned to meet the punch head on. The attacker’s fist disappeared into Kyler’s massive hand, which squeezed down with the force of an alligator’s bite. Then, like a death roll, the gunner wrenched his grip around. The soldier realized his costly mistake as the sound of cracking bone slipped out from between Kyler’s vice-like fingers. The soldier screamed, and two of his friends charged to the rescue.

  Jonathan intercepted them. The first one took an elbow to the ribs, followed up by a snap punch to the kidney. While that soldier staggered into his mate’s arms, wondering what happened, the second soldier flashed a punch at the black-haired stealthist. Jonathan slipped just out of range, and the soldier, pressing his attack, followed up with an impressive slash kick. He hit nothing but air. As his foot set down, suddenly Jonathan’s hand flashed out, raking the soldier across the face like claws. The soldier flinched as his opponent’s fingernails caught him in the eyes. Jonathan lifted the soldier’s arm overhead, ducking under his reach, and calmly drove his right heel into the side of the man’s knee, snapping it like a branch. The soldier crumpled like a stringless puppet to the deck, screaming like he was on fire.