“Jeez, wait,” Cam said, navigating around the consoles to the back row of computer access terminals.
“Um, you know what you’re doing?” he asked as she pried off the cover panel of one of the units.
“Come on, didn’t you ever cross a few wires to get an extra game in the arcades?” she asked, vetting out the bundles of cables from the other mechanical innards.
Cam didn’t see how the two could ever compare. “That’s just a cheap trick.”
“Not really,” she said, swapping chips and testing the keyboard.
“Who’s that?” Cam asked as a student profile popped up on the screen. Stats and summaries scrolled by, but Cam stopped the feed at the photo. A black-haired boy with yellow eyes and freckles stared back at him, familiar and yet foreign at the same time.
“Slick, huh? I made it during combinatorial analysis when the teacher opened up the class’s access to student projects.”
Cam squinted, his mind hitching on the juxtaposition of the yellow eyes against a cherubic face. “But this isn’t a real student…”
He stopped himself, glancing at Tomia. With a proud smirk, she crossed her arms. “I couldn’t create a totally new student profile, not without getting flagged.”
Touching the picture, he traced the curve of the boy’s cheekbones. “So you mish-mashed existing ones?”
Tomia nodded. “It’s a copy and cut of about five students. It flies totally under the radar.”
“You used Jahx. And Stempton,” he said, stepping back.
“Good eye,” she said, typing some commands on the keyboard.
Cam watched in silence as she tried for access outside of the intra-school network under the falsified profile. Finally, he asked: “Who taught you this?”
“There’s wasn’t a lot to do in the icefields of Midra,” she said. Then, with a detached coolness, she added: “one of my brothers was a data hustler.”
Cam knew what that meant. “Arrested or killed?”
“Arrested,” she said, still typing away. “He didn’t really take sides in the telepath war, but he did like money. Telepaths were paying ten times the normal prices for transport info to get off Cerka…”
She stopped mid-sentence to input a set of commands into the opened search. “Chak. I can’t get us access.”
Cam came up beside her, opening a second screen so he could view the fake profile. “You named him ‘Jim Walker?’” he chuckled.
“It’s from an Old Earth short story I read years ago. The kid was conflicted, weird. This fake kid is just as weird.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Enrolled in five classes, rated highly in three, just passing one, and miserably failing stats. And he’s listed on gaming probation for failure to show up to challenge matches?”
“Well, it’s tough to have him physically show up to game,” she said with an irritated breath.
Reflexively, he brought his thumb to his teeth, but chewing the nail made his entire hand ache.
“Chak,” he muttered, shaking out his hand. “Okay, so what can we do with this profile?”
“Jim’s got normal student access.”
“No external network access?” he said, glancing at the door. At this hour he didn’t expect any other students or teachers to interrupt their secret operation, but that didn’t mean a guard wouldn’t sweep the area, or some late-night wanderer would come strolling in.
“No; that’s only for students in officer training corps since they run real operations.”
“That doesn’t really help us.” Snapping his fingers, he nudged Tomia aside to take the keyboard.
“What are you doing?”
“We can find Iggie,” he said, typing in a search for her signature.
“I’ve already tried that,” she said. “She’s not listed on the premises.”
Cam encountered the same frustration as the map of the entire school lit up in the holographic projection, but none of the hundreds of blinkers moving around the map registered as Iggie.
“These are all students wearing their uniforms, right? So they’re being live-tracked?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well Jim is a student, and he isn’t on here. But he exists?”
“Yeah, I guess. Look, I’ve already tried that,” she said as he typed in a filter to highlight all the last-known locations of students not wearing their uniforms. “See—Jim and Iggie show up the same—inactive.”
Giving it another try, Cam applied a new filter, showing how many times a student logged into their profiles.
“I tried that too,” Tomia said, exasperated. “Iggie logged into her personal datapad two days ago, and no activity since. No log-ins, no live-tracking.”
“There’s got to be some way to find her,” he muttered, hitting the keyboard harder and harder as his frustration mounted.
Tomia crossed her arms. “Seriously, Cam, I already tried all of this. I even tried tracing her through her private signature.”
She’s right; how could I possibly figure something out that she already hasn’t?
After all, Tomia earned her way into the Academy by merit, unlike him.
Ashamed, Stempton’s criticism resurfaced: “Figure it this way, rub: you’re not smart enough for any of this.”
Then, the freckle-faced boy tossing him the blue chip.
The stat hack…
“Wait—Iggie’s listed as inactive because she hasn’t logged in for two days, right? What if we forced her profile into activity?”
“How?”
“Jim challenges Iggie to an Endgame match.”
“Not if he’s on probation,” she countered.
“Not with this,” he said, pulling the chip from his pocket.
“What?”
Cam ran his other hand through his hair, over-excited by his idea, unsure if it would work. “Stempton’s gift to jack me up. He said it was some kind of stat boost, but I’m sure it’s a setup.”
Tomia took it from him, inspecting the chip. “But if it worked…”
“We could boost Jim’s stats, and he can challenge anyone.”
Wagging her finger, Tomia followed his line of thought. “And then the gaming system would find the nearest location for the two of them to meet.”
“At least we can figure out what part of the Academy she’s in without exposing our assinos,” Cam said.
“Yes…but you’d lose this chip. For whatever it’s worth.”
He hated the pity in her voice, the way she diverted her gaze. “I’ll manage.”
After slotting in the chip, Cam stood back as Tomia worked Stempton’s cheat.
“So why is Stempton after you so hard?” she asked, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
“He wants me to go after other cadets.”
“Isn’t that what Hoch and Walli are for?”
“Apparently they can’t get close enough to some of his targets.”
Tomia paused, tilting her head to the side. “That sounds fishy.”
“I know,” Cam said, glancing at the empty desks, and the inert gaming station. “I think some of the competition is making him nervous.”
“Yeah, well, with the Endgame open to all students, I’m sure he’s crapping his pants that some little punk is going to make a fool out of him.”
Who are you so afraid of? Cam thought, heading over to the desks as Tomia continued to work.
Remembering the conversation with Jahx about battle footage, he called up the files from Stempton’s desk. Nothing remarkable caught his eye; as he would suspect, the Crexan prioritized the highest-ranked student battles at the top of his desk and shuffled all the other lesser battles below.
I don’t have time to go through all the footage, he thought, blowing a breath through his teeth. Body aching, he plopped down in the seat and knotted his fingers in his hair. Staring at the long list of battle files, anxiety and inadequacy crept up his spine like icicles. (How am I ever going to catch up, let alone compete with kids like this?)
That’s it.
The number of views. A kid with an ego as big as Stempton’s wouldn’t rank his files with anything but the biggest, most epic battles. But what he watched and returned to the most would reveal the true nature of what he prioritized.
And what he fears.
Cam filtered out Stempton’s battle footage records by the number of user views.
Stempton’s got his eye on Shiggla, he noticed as her top twenty battles against other students populated near the top of this list. His eye caught the same last name higher in the list.
She’s got a sibling? As he matched the surnames and compared the profile pics, he saw the familial resemblance. A stronger player, Shiggla’s brother Soling proved to be a top contender in the games. I bet that makes her crazy…
But it wasn’t Shiggla’s, or any other older cadet’s battles, that were Stempton’s most-viewed files.
Stomach turning to ice, Cam stared at the name highlighted in electric blue on the desktop.
Jahx Drachsi.
Why? Cam thought. The boy still held a neutral rating.
I wonder… Typing in a new set of commands, he searched the desk for any other stored battle footage in the Academy. A long list of battles showed up, mostly between senior students and final competitions. Applying the same filter, a short list of names turned up amongst the top battles.
Jetta. Jaeia. Jahx.
Stempton viewed everything from their solo gaming sessions to their individual stats just as must as he did the final Endgame competition from several years ago featuring the famed Drakken Varkanian.
Drakken Varkanian is a legend, Cam thought, reading down the list of all the boy’s accomplishments. Sent off to officer training corps as a preteen, he held an impeccable rating throughout his Academy days, as well as several unbeaten school records. Why the hell does Stempton care about three little street kids as much as he does a military prodigy?
He leaned back in the chair, letting out the air in his lungs as he stared at the triplet’s names. Why is he so afraid of you three?
Stempton watched as a video of Jetta struggling against a newbie cadet in a fighter sim, but then, after watching a match between two older students, beating her next opponent, a sophomore student, in less than two minutes.
Her eyes, he said, rewinding the video of her watching the older students’ game and zooming in on her, arms crossed, gaze intense, as if she meant to bore through their skulls. What is she looking it?
Beads of sweat formed on his palms and forehead, his breath quickened. Whatever nerves he felt, maybe Stempton felt it too.
That’s why you want me to hurt them, he thought, watching the video of Jahx tying up another game with a formidable opponent.
(…you’re afraid of them, too.)
“Hey, Cam—I’ve got something.”
Returning to Tomia, he looked over her shoulder at the map with a yellow marker hovering over a smaller gaming area near the operations and command center of the Academy.
“She’s by the infirmary.”
Cam zoomed in on the map, noting the greyed-out areas inaccessible by students.
“And the isolation units.”
Silence captured the moment as they both took in what that could mean.
“What do you think… what do you think happens there?”
Thinking of the East Wing, of his dream of the machine monster, he shuddered. “I don’t know.”
Cam checked the door again. “How long before this profile gets noticed?”
“Not long. A few days? Stempton’s cheat was designed to fail,” she said, pulling up lines of code that meant nothing to him.
Before he could catch himself, he whispered, “Stempton just needed me to hurt the triplets.”
“The triplets? Why?” she chuckled. “I mean, Jetta can be a sour turd, but Jaeia and Jahx are sweet and innocent. I mean, Jaeia still can’t go to the restroom without her sister, and Jahx cries in his sleep. They’re just frightened little kids.”
“Frightened little kids that don’t want to get noticed,” he mumbled, thinking of his last interaction with Rogman.
“Huh?”
“Look, we can’t wait; we need to risk it all,” he said running his right hand along the abnormal contours beneath the surface of his left forearm.
“Risk what?”
“We both want external network access, right?”
“Well, open access, yeah.”
“We gotta bump Jim into officer’s training corps.”
Tomia pursed her lips, her brow knotting. “That will get the profile shut down in hours. Maybe minutes. And besides, who the hell am I going to mesh in with this profile to give Jim that kind of boost? We can’t just hack his stats.”
“Drakken Varkanian.”
Tomia whistled. “Yeah, I heard about him. The older kids talk about him like he’s a god.” After doing a quick search, Tomia’s jaw dropped. “Holy chak. I guess they’re right.”
Cam watched as she scrolled through his impressive list of credentials. “Undefeated, top scores in every Endgame category… He’s flawless.”
“Wait, stop,” he said, seeing a gap in his service and training history. “Why is there a six-month gap?”
Tomia shook her head. “It could be anything.”
Cam looked at the explanation noted in the gap. “He was shipped off training grounds? And right after a live battle? Something must have happened.”
“Oh wow, I didn’t know he was the Fleet Commander’s son.”
“Second son. He had a brother, Xercius,” Cam read, noting that the young man only lived to seventeen. Clicking on the file for Xercius, he scrolled down to the date of death. Right before Drakken’s service gap.
Biting his lip, he fit together the pieces as he noticed the two brothers had been in the same battle. Maybe he witnessed his brother’s death and freaked.
“Come on, Cam, if we’re going to do this, I’d say let’s steal from Drakken.”
“Okay,” Cam said, standing back as she hacked into his file.
Unable to aid Tomia, Cam walked over to the rectangular window in the classroom door and checked for any activity. Lifts whizzed by, crammed to the rails with kids, but none stopped at any of the classrooms.
Where are they going this late at night? Not that he couldn’t guess. The Endgame…
Turning around, he leaned against the door, his body aching, his stomach aflutter. What the hell did I do?
Tomia motioned for him to join her. “Okay.”
“Jeez,” Cam said, coming up beside her. “That didn’t take long.”
“You said to risk it all…” she said, punching in another set of commands into the keyboard as she used the profile to gain access to the wider network. “We don’t have much time.”
“Can you patch me through?” he said, starting up the adjacent workstation.
“Yeah. Hey, Cam—do you think they’re watching us?”
Cam paused, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder and to the ceiling and walls, where he imagined cameras—Rogman—recording their every move. Avoiding her eyes, he tried to sound unaffected by the question. “No.”
As soon as Tomia connected Jim Walker’s profile to his station, he dove into the search he’d been waiting to make since he first arrived: United Starways Coalition, list of survivors and prisoners of war, Kara Jhean Ferros.
When the search produced no hits, he specified his home planet and her date of abduction. A list of Dominion prisoners of war populated on the list, but none from the USC.
“Chak,” he swore through gritted teeth.
“What’s up?” Tomia said.
Too frustrated to answer, he typed in a new search: United Starways Coalition, prisoners of war.
Several articles, written by Dominion analysts, populated on the screen. He clicked on the first, then the second, third, and fourth. The same words popped up as he skimmed the articles: t
elepath, demonstration, law of retaliation, death.
“The USC doesn’t keep prisoners of war,” Tomia said, glancing over at his search. “They kill all prisoners in demonstrations, under their laws of retaliation, for the deaths of the telepaths. Didn’t they teach you that in your intros course?”
“I didn’t get an intros course, remember?” Cam grinding his knuckles into the keyboard, confusing the search engine. Heat burned through his chest and up his throat, tensing his shoulders and his jaw. If they murdered my sister over a chakking leech—
He couldn’t finish he thought, his mind frenzied by the possibility. Without her, without Kara, then—
No, she’s still alive, he told himself. She has to be.
“Cam…”
Shaken by the frailty in her voice, Cam looked over at what Tomia had unearthed in her own search. Under Jim Walker’s profile, she’d infiltrated the Academy network, and pulled up the personal files of all the students.
When he didn’t realize what she intended fast enough, she pointed at her own profile, highlighting the notes and flags at the bottom of a row of candid pictures.
“What is this?” she said, her finger shaking as she highlighted the date of her arrival—and her termination from the program. “That’s next month… Are they planning to ice me out? Why?”
Cam couldn’t make sense of it. Per her teacher reviews, Tomia maintained good grades, performed well, and got along with other students. But the yellow and red flags tagged to her name bespoke of something else—something that even open access couldn’t unlock.
“Iggie is the same,” she said, pulling up Iggie’s profile beside her. “Same termination date. I don’t understand this—”
Before Cam could look over Iggie’s profile, she brought up his. “And you—your entire profile is locked,” she said, tapping on the greyed-out areas under his picture.
Except for one line at the very bottom of the screen: pending beta trials review.
Beta trials. With a flinch and a retraction of his left arm to his chest, he remembered the words spoken over him as he lay trapped:
“Inform Rogman that I want this subject reassigned to me.”
“Sir, he’s part of the beta trials.”
“He’s too valuable to be their fodder.”
A name resurfaced. Naum. Dr. Naum.
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 19