Then, of course, those were only the ones who made the mistake of getting close. Most people were smart enough to run the other way when they saw a Longknife coming.
Unlike the Marines behind her.
They were all volunteers. Dumb Marines.
The launch gently came to hover above the most extreme arm of the space station. Like all other Iteeche space stations Megan had seen, all one dozen of them, it looked like someone had taken a flat snowflake and pulled it out until it was a stack of the same snowflake. They had picked a place about as far from the command center as they could get.
The station was rotating, so the boson’s mate moving this vessel was doing one hell of a job of flying to keep them just a quarter meter above the station’s hull. Then she applied just a smidgen more down power, and they settled smoothly onto the station.
There was a hissing sound as the docking collar sealed tight with the station.
One Marine hauled up a hatch that hadn’t been in the deck of the launch before this afternoon, and clambered down onto the hull. For a brief moment, the screech of a drill came through Megan’s boots, then the Marine hopped out, and Megan hopped in.
She was wearing a belt and bandolier of Smart MetalTM, wrapped around her space suit, as was Captain Sung. Quickly, Lily exuded a thin wire of the fine metal and Megan directed it to the hole. It fit perfectly.
On the other side, as yet invisible to Megan, the wire shed tens of thousands of nano scouts, command nanos, and comm relay nanos. Lily dispatched the scouts to get a good look at what lay below them.
Megan saw the picture begin to develop. In a moment, a holograph appeared before her. Below them was a hodgepodge of junk; crates, containers, broken tugs, luggage carts, lift cranes and even what looked like a fire truck.
What Megan didn’t see was a single live Iteeche. What she wanted to see was a security camera or an auto cannon. She wanted very much to disable the cannon and suborn the camera.
The scouts searched further afield. They found no cannon. They did find a camera. It wasn’t working. One of the cranes had been backed into it, knocking it off the wall.
It dangled by a single wire. Scouts modified themselves, infiltrated the camera and found that no power was getting to it. Further checking showed the network connection to this station was also dead.
Megan considered activating it and using it to infiltrate the station, then discarded the idea. It wouldn’t do for some alert Iteeche or observation routine to notice a dead node suddenly going active. It would take Megan a few minutes, maybe more, before she had total control of the station’s computer system. Those few or more minutes could ruin this idea of Kris Longknife’s and leave Megan and her Marines very dead.
No, Megan needed an active node she could suborn and make nice with.
The Navy lieutenant commander hopped out of the docking collar and stepped away from the hatch on the floor. Two Marines hopped in and went to work.
They took a moment to lay out a long thin line of explosives, slapped an armored cloth over it, and climbed back out.
“Fire in the hole,” was called on net, as the two Marines slammed the hatch down and locked it. Aboard the launch, anyone who was still breathing ship air slapped their helmet closed. The boson had been on spacesuit air since they launched. Anyone smart had followed her lead.
They waited. Two seconds later, there was a whoomph. The launch rocked, but both the explosion and the docking collar had been designed to vent the explosion either into the metal they wanted cut, or out into space.
Again, the hatch opened, Smart MetalTM had already converted the docking collar back into a solid seal. Gunny ordered four Marines through the hatch. They dropped one after the other.
Megan had her computer Lily giving her a live stream from the Marines’ helmet cameras. Each Marine landed on a crate and immediately hopped from there to the deck. The first turned toward center of the station and checked out that approach, his rifle up, following his eyes. The second jumped off to his right and did the same to that quadrant. The third turned to the left and found himself checking out the nearby station hull. The last jumped to cover their rear. He ran his eye and gun over what Megan and Lily’s nano scouts had found unthreatening.
It never ceased to amaze Megan just how paranoid Marines were about having the enemy at their backs. Especially when there might be shooters around them.
Maybe the Marines weren’t so bad.
“Clear.” “Clear.” “Clear.” “Clear,” followed one after the other on net.
“All clear, go, go, go!” Gunny ordered, and more Marines dropped through the hatch. Gunny jumped about in the middle of the lineup.
Now a staff sergeant took up the call of “Go, go, go!”
Megan, Quinn, and the Marine LT waited until gunny reported that all was safe for the likes of them.
It hadn’t taken Megan long around Kris to discover that Gunny was spelled G. O. D.
My momma hadn’t raised too many dumb children.
Megan pulled out her service automatic but aimed it at the overhead. The Marines had her surrounded. She wasn’t here for a firefight.
Hopefully.
She dropped through the hatch to land with a thud on the crate. Her boots absorbed the shock. It was a short hop down to the deck. She was here to find a data outlet, lean her head against it, and see if the strange tumor in her skull could hitch into the Iteeche net and save a lot of human and Iteeche lives.
Even as Megan came up, automatic ready, Lily was spinning more nano scouts off of the two bandoleers that Megan and Quinn wore. Scouts hurried toward the center of the station, leaving relay nanos behind them to pass what they found to Megan.
For the moment, all they found was an empty station.
Since they’d landed about as far down a pier as they could and not end up breathing vacuum, Megan said, “Lieutenant, can we get moving inward? There’s no data link here.”
“Yes, ma’am. Gunny, advance us cautiously down this pier.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Gunny said, and sent his troops forward in waves, about a third moving while two-thirds held, tight against the wall or splayed out on the deck, and kept their guns aimed farther up the wide and spacious deck.
A few Marines still covered their back, as if something might appear behind them.
You could never know.
When the Marines had advanced far enough, Megan and Quinn began moving forward, their backs planted firmly on the bulkhead, their eyes focused down the pier. The only thing moving was in Marine camouflage which, at the moment, looked very much like the pier bulkhead or deck.
“Halt!” Megan whispered forcefully on net. “Drop! Go to ground.”
Ahead of her Marines froze where they were. Those exposed dropped slowly and cautiously to a prone position on the deck.
“I’ve got a surveillance camera up ahead,” Megan reported. “It’s aimed this way, but I think it’s focused on the short range. Wait one.”
Lily worked with Megan to invade the camera and check out its feed. The camera was focused on the space a hundred meters out, or less. Another camera covered the promenade directly across from the pod, and a last one was aimed at the hundred meters toward the center of the station. As nanos slipped into the cameras, both adjusted their focus to sweep the next five hundred meters.
Megan switched back to the camera pointed toward them. If it began to move its focus too far out, enough to capture her lead Marines, she’d have cut it off.
The camera did adjust its lens to sweep further up the passageway. Megan watched, hardly breathing, as it reached maximum extension. The busted camera must have been intended to cover the next five hundred meters. Megan zoomed in tight on the signal. You would have to study it very hard to spot the low lumps on the deck or bulkheads. The camouflage was earning its pay.
The camera slowly pulled back its focus, and Megan breathed a sigh of relief and tried breathing again. It was a very nice addiction her body had to oxygen.
“
Stay down. I need five minutes of take before I can create a loop,” Megan softly ordered. Strange, there really was no need to whisper, but like a good burglar, she did.
The Marines stayed down. The cameras made a second zoom out and retreat. Megan waited until the third zoom exercise was completed, then switched to her own feed. While Megan had observed the camera take, Lily had been doing some video editing. Any hint of a lump on the deck or bulge on the bulkhead was gone from the feed that now went live.
Nothing here. Nothing to see. Move along and look somewhere else for something to worry about.
Megan wondered how many of these she’d have to suborn before they found a nice data outlet she and Lily could hitch into.
Slowly, they advanced down the corridor. Megan checked out the camera she controlled. It was rather primitive. The data leads into and out of it were tiny, just enough to carry the camera feed and no more.
No, a camera would not offer her a way to infiltrate the network.
Megan remembered an evening with Kris at Nuu house. Grampa and Gramma Trouble had come out for supper and Grampa Trouble had taken to telling stories. It was amazing how he could make life or death situations sound so funny.
Following the Unity War, when the both of them had been involved in chasing pirates, slavers, and drug growers, they’d needed to capture a space station, not at all different from the one in front of Megan. One of Kris’s unofficial aunts, Aunt Trudy, had been sent in to get inside the computer but, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hack it.
That was very embarrassing and could have led to a lot of dead Marines.
However, Aunt Trudy had chosen to improvise. She’d printed out a handful of job application forms, found her way to the window outside the data center, and offered to hire every one of them there at triple the salary for a five-year contract on Wardhaven.
Ten minutes later, Trudy controlled the station’s computer. Thirty minutes later, Marines controlled the entire station without a shot fired.
“Got to love those bloodless ops,” Grampa Trouble crowed.
Somehow, Megan doubted she’d be in any position to repeat that bloodless coup.
She did manage to stay two camera pods ahead of the advancing Marines, recording longer surveillance of nothing and turning it into a loop before the Marines came in range. Still, there was no data port and no significant computer net access.
Megan tried slipping nanos into the data conduits. They were tiny things, just large enough for a thin fiber optic thread. Still, nanos had little trouble slipping into them and racing up the line. As more and more threads began to form into a small wire, Megan was still looking for a major outlet.
Six cameras down, some six kilometers into the station, Megan finally discovered a pier. Hopefully, it would have a data port. It was empty at the moment. Most of the ships that had previously swung around this station were now in loyalist hands.
There, Lily finally spotted a data port. Unfortunately, while the pier was empty of ships, it had several armed Iteeche loitering about.
That complicates things.
For a long moment, Megan considered her options. If she advanced, she was going into one hell of a fire fight. If she withdrew, her mission was a bust. That left her standing where she was and wondering how to complete her mission from where she stood.
“Launch, I need the Smart Metal in your hull,” she ordered.
“Aye, aye, Commander. Wait one.” Half a minute later, the boson was back on net. “I’m in the station, ma’am.”
“Keep an eye on the station hull,” Megan ordered. “Nelly, could you move the metal inside, seal the hull, and get us some working luggage cart tugs.”
“On it right away,” Nelly answered.
“When you have the working carts ready to move, Sailor, bring them up to our rearguard. Also, roll the rest of the Smart Metal with you. We may need it for defensive positions.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Megan turned back to her problem. The data port she wanted to access was up there, with a couple of dozen Iteeche workers, guards, malingerers, whatever. If she tried to force her way into that, the fight would be on, and she didn’t want that fight.
Megan checked the data conduit beside her. It was too thin to carry much bandwidth. Of course, that was typical Iteeche kludge. She started reeling out more fine filaments from her belt and bandoleer. Hurriedly, fiber optic Smart MetalTM extended itself down the side of the conduit until it reached the data port. At the same time, Lily got ready to cut over the data feed from their Iteeche line to the much smaller human one.
Once that was done, they’d reel out the Iteeche cable and replace it with human cable. That would give them all the bandwidth Megan, Lily, Nelly, and Sal needed to operate deep inside the station and its computer system.
The boson drove a nondescript cargo tug up to the rear of the Marine formation. Trailing behind him were loads of empty cargo bins. Driving along beside her were what looked like the same cargo bins, but was actually their Smart MetalTM supply on wheels.
Megan signaled for one of them to be sent up to her and she used it to cut into the outer wall of the deck. Now she had lots of the nice metal to send down the line to thicken up her bandwidth.
To improve communications with Nelly and Sal back on the Princess Royal, Megan had one kilo of Smart MetalTM punch a hole through the outer hull and set up a comm link. Suddenly, Nelly and Sal were much more present in her skull.
“Very good, Megan. Thank you,” Nelly said.
“I’ve got some problems attaching to the network,” Megan admitted.
Before, Megan had always had to lean her head against a system she wanted to hack into. Admittedly, there had been times when she was a kid that just being too close to a computer got her nightmares, but those had been basic human systems in her family home.
To hack a fully protected alien system, she needed proximity.
“Let’s take a look at the data port ahead of us,” Nelly said, and in a moment, an image of one floated in front of Megan’s eyes.
“Hmm,” Nelly said, as the image rotated in place. “I wonder if you have to be up against an authentic data node, or if it be an exact imitation of one.
“I think we should try that,” Sal’s voice said. Since, at the moment, all three of the computers were talking through Lily’s device at Megan’s throat, and each one was sounding exactly like they always did, this interesting conversation was drawing some weird looks from the Marines around her.
Still, they’d volunteered for a Longknife mission. They had to know things like this came with the territory.
“I think we have enough cable between us and the next data port. Let’s create our own port,” Nelly said, and a data port, exact to the manufacturer’s face plate, appeared on the bulkhead next to the hole they’d drilled to feed cable down.
Megan undid her helmet and coughed softly. The humidity in the air was almost enough to swim in and the taste of salt and other things made her throat itch. Still, she leaned her forehead against the port. In a moment, she was racing down the cable toward the next data port. That one was a bit harder to work through.
It took her a moment to make her way past the end block that had been set in place. The port was heavily protected. First, it wasn’t mean to work without the physical presence of a work station plugged in to activate the port. Besides that, there were also several passwords and a firewall that needed a key.
While Megan ordered Smart MetalTM to form the necessary physical presence of a communications station to activate the port, Nelly and her kids set about cracking the other security safeguards.
Suddenly, they were through.
Immediately, Megan saw herself as a girl on roller skates zooming through a herd of buffalo.
The lieutenant commander grinned. There had been a song, back on Santa Maria that warned “You can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd.” On Santa Maria, a horned, six-legged creature of the plains had been named
a buffalo. It ate grass and its droppings were huge.
There was no way one could roller skate around all those piles.
Megan, however, had jet packs on her feet, and seemed to be shooting along a good foot above the ground. Soon she was joined by Lily on her right, and Nelly and Sal on her left. Together, they shot up the data stream.
They passed several more data ports. Most were inactive. A few showed a little sign of life. All told, however, the station seemed quite somnolent.
“Where is everyone?” Lily asked.
“Getting drunk, or whatever you do when your world is about to end,” Sal said.
The data stream slowly grew wider with more data flowing toward the center with very little making the trip back. There was no evidence that anything exciting was happening along this pier promenade.
The Iteeche always went for one central computer. They were quite huge compared to human computers. In reality, it had thousands, or tens of thousands of central processors, and massive amounts of data storage. Still, the Iteeche abhorred distributing it out and held onto it tightly in the central information center.
It was there that Megan lead Nelly and her children.
Once again, Megan ran into a solid, black wall just like the one she had encountered when she tried to get into the Iteeche Capital network from the Pink Coral Palace. This time, however, she knew how to handle it. Quickly, the four of them converted themselves to birds, Iteeche data packet birds, and the wall vanished in front of them. Apparently, once you learned to masquerade as an honest, hardworking, Iteeche data packet, fire walls vanished into thin air.
They flew on, deep into the computer. Below them, vast herds of beasts lumbered along, seeming to bounce from their hind legs to their front ones, then back again. They moved in long columns with no room between them for small birds to swoop in and pick at their droppings, to take them off to nearby wetlands and drop them in the ponds to feed eels that somehow converted the data into information to present on monitors as had worked with the Iteeche fire control computers.
Clearly, this was different architecture from what they’d encountered before. Different and bigger.
Kris Longknife Page 29