by Doug Farren
Cipher registered the impact of several disabled missiles as their inert warheads struck his armor – the CIWS mounts were doing their job. It felt like someone was throwing small pebbles at him. He felt a pinprick of pain when one of his CIWS mounts was hit and damaged by high-velocity shrapnel. A second later, a sharp pain told him one of his eight primary weapons was destroyed by enemy laser fire. Fidget was also beginning to register some damage.
The Evendi ship suddenly blossomed into a brilliant flash of light as a missile detonated against its hull. “Scratch number three!” Fidget yelled in victory.
Cipher broke the link between himself and Fidget as he twisted around and applied maximum thrust so he could add his own firepower to that of Cowboy and Genius. Fidget headed towards Snowman and Stick-pen.
Genius screamed out in pain as a missile detonated only 300 meters from his hull. As the scream faded, Cipher and Cowboy targeted the Evendi warship and fired.
“Scratch one!” Cowboy exclaimed a second later, adding, “Genius, how bad is it?”
There was no response. Cipher turned a sensor towards Genius and after a moment said, “Genius is dead. He’s drifting uncontrollably. The self-destruct should be going off any minute.”
Cipher and Cowboy put some distance between themselves and the hulk that used to be Genius. Seconds later it was incinerated by atomic fire.
“I’ve got a problem here,” Snowman said.
Cipher switched his attention to Snowman and instantly learned what happened. The Evendi ship had ignored Stick-pen and concentrated all his weapons on Snowman. A laser had punched through his armor causing heavy damage to his primary propulsion system. He was firing his maneuvering thrusters at maximum power but it was not to enough adjust his course. His momentum would carry him into the atmosphere.
Even though he was heavily damaged, Snowman continued to engage the Evendi. A few seconds later the enemy was engulfed in atomic fire.
“Scratch two,” Stick-pen said.
Three against one is always bad odds. Luckily, it was the Evendi who were outnumbered. Twenty seconds later, space was briefly illuminated by two more temporary suns.
“Bug-eye to Granitus attack force, the Evendi are heading back your way,” the lone ship far out in space reported.
“Roger that,” Bulldog replied. “Transports, drop your load and head for home. Attack force, let’s get out of here. Snowman, what’s your status?”
Cipher adjusted his course, over-road his propulsion safeties, and applied maximum possible thrust. He could feel the strain he was putting on the structure of his ship body as he pushed the limits of its design. But, instead of heading out of the system, he was moving closer to the planet.
“Repair bots are working as fast as they can,” Snowman reported. “But they won’t be able to get my drive operational before I hit the atmosphere. Arming self-destruct. It’s been nice knowing you guys.”
“Hang in there Snowman, I’m coming to get you,” Cipher yelled, trying to coax his overloaded drive to push him even harder.
“There’s nothing you can do for him,” Bulldog said. “We’ve accomplished our mission. You’ve been ordered to return home.”
“I’ll push him if I have to!” Cipher angrily replied.
“Bulldog’s right,” Snowman replied, his voice sad. “You’ll only get yourself killed.”
A second later, Snowman’s ship erupted in a brilliant flare of fusion fire.
“No!” Cipher couldn’t help but transmit his distress over the hypercom. He wished he had arms so he could pound them against something or eyes so he could shed tears for his friend.
The transports skimmed through the atmosphere deploying drop-pods along the way. The transport itself was far too large to land. The pods would deliver the marines and their equipment to the surface. Once there, they were on their own.
One of the transports took a hit from a surface-launched missile. Parts of it burned up in the atmosphere while the rest continued on into space. The others accelerated away from the planet, their mission accomplished.
Cipher reluctantly followed.
Chapter 8
“What the hell did you think you were going to do?” Sun Lee pointedly asked Cipher.
All three squadrons were gathered together in the virtual auditorium to debrief the mission. Cipher was still brooding over Snowman's death and had not been giving the meeting his full attention.
“I was going to push him,” he said, his head hanging and his voice barely loud enough to be heard.
“Push him?” the Admiral sneered. Leaning forward on the lectern, he continued, “You were going to push him? And how the hell were you going to manage that? Were you going to wrap your arms around him, hold him close, and then run away from the Evendi? Did you even bother to run a structural analysis to see what would happen if you tried?”
“He was my friend!” Cipher fired back. “I was trying to save his life”
“Look,” Sun Lee said, standing back from the lectern and jamming his hands into his pockets. “If you were a marine, I would be recommending you for a commendation. But you're not. You're a 220,000 ton warship. You can't just mosey up to another ship and start pushing.”
In his head, Cipher knew the Admiral was right. It was his heart that refused to believe he couldn't have helped Snowman. He might be a warship, but he still had a soul and, at times, he still thought and acted as if he had a flesh and blood body. Cipher could only sit and stare back at the Admiral.
The auditorium was silent for a few seconds. Sun Lee walked back to the lectern, smiled, and then said, “Everyone in this room is to be congratulated. We now have over 4,000 marines on the surface of Granitus. With over 500 heavy battle tanks at their disposal they should have no problem making things a living hell for the cats. Good job!”
There was a murmur of conversation that was sharply interrupted when someone yelled, “What now?”
The Admiral looked around until he saw S11 standing up to address him. S11 had been given his call-sign because his Polish name was too difficult for anyone to correctly pronounce. His last name began with an 'S' and was followed by eleven letters.
S11 stood and faced the Admiral. “We didn't hurt their space fleet all that much,” S11 explained. “Won't the cats just pick the marines off one-by-one from orbit? Won't they bring in reinforcements? Seems to me that we just sent 4,000 marines on a suicide mission.”
“Have you ever seen a modern main battle tank?” the Admiral asked.
“No sir.”
“You might be surprised. It's nothing like the old tanks of Earth's past. They're more like mobile fortresses than tanks. They're quite capable of taking on an attack from space as well as from the ground. In fact, with the sophisticated countermeasures they're equipped with, they’re an order of magnitude harder to target than a ship in orbit. The cats are going to have their hands full. Besides, we have no intention of abandoning them.”
“We're going back?” Fidget asked.
“We've been planning this for some time,” Sun Lee replied. “The marines will soften up the surface defenses and try to take out as many ships as possible. Their mission is to do as much damage as they can before the real assault begins. As soon as your battle damage has been repaired, you will be joining forces with three additional squadrons and one of our new fighter carriers. Twenty-two transports packed with eager marines will be waiting for us to clear the sky of Evendi ships. We're going to take Granitus back.”
* * * * *
The squadron’s next destination was a military repair facility in a system designated only as GS-131. The system had no habitable planets and nothing to attract any civilian business. It was, however, located close to the edge of human space near suspected Evendi territory making it of considerable interest as a military outpost.
The Evendi were well aware of the base and had tried three times to destroy it. They nearly succeeded on their last attempt. The base itself was built deep inside a small moon
orbiting the system's outermost gas giant. A ring of gigantic lasers surrounded the base and hundreds of high-capacity missile launchers orbited the moon.
GS-131 was 28 light years from Granitus. Traveling at a leisurely 9,000 times the speed of light, Cipher arrived at the outpost 28 hours after departing Granitus. During the short trip, he put the finishing touches on his special project. After checking it over one final time, he uploaded the program to GS-131’s central computer network as part of a standard data package. Within minutes the program hijacked a communications channel and sent itself into the tightly integrated military email network where it went to work.
Most of the damage Cipher sustained during the battle was easily repairable by his own small army of repair robots. They would, however, require some spare parts to complete the repairs. While en-route to GS-131 he transmitted a list of replacement parts to the base. A few minutes after arriving, a small drone ship containing the needed parts attached itself to one of his maintenance docks. The parts were unloaded and the robots happily went to work.
Vengeance class warships were highly modular and designed for quick repair. The damaged CIWS mounts were removed and replaced with new units. Special locking mechanisms disengaged allowing the damaged sections of hull plating to be swapped out with new ones. External sensors were repaired or replaced as necessary. The destroyed main laser was rolled out as a single unit and a replacement was installed.
A second drone arrived carrying a load of missiles. An automated loading mechanism quickly replenished Cipher’s arsenal. The drone also served as a tanker and food delivery truck. Cipher topped off his supply of deuterium and transferred a mixture of nutrients into his bio-support unit. These nutrients were a complex mixture of sugars, proteins, and other chemicals required for normal brain functioning. The nutrients, along with a small amount of oxygen, were all that was needed to keep his brain alive.
Even though virtually every phase of his repair and re-arming was automated, Cipher kept a close eye on everything. It was, after all, his body they were messing with.
Five hours later, the repairs were complete. Cipher felt as good as new. His belly was full of fuel, his skin was once again smooth and whole, his eyes and ears were all working, and his weapon systems were fully operational. The repairs on the other ships were also progressing well. Checking the schedule, he saw they had about 22 hours before the other squadrons arrived.
Cipher accessed a special, hidden area of his system memory and found several files had been deposited there by the program he had turned loose several hours earlier. Since trying to break into a highly secure military computer system was fraught with danger, he decided to look elsewhere. He started by searching the files stored on the personal computers of the medical staff in charge of merging the volunteers with their ships.
People preferred to do things the easy way. If someone needed to work on a secret file they would often disregard the rules concerning making a copy of that file. It was so much easier to have the data on their home computer. Besides, their home computers were protected against intrusion and who would look there anyway? Cipher’s program was designed to penetrate almost any small computer security barrier. Once in the system, it searched the file system. Any possible matches were copied and sent back to him disguised as the return of a data search.
At the speed of thought, Cipher sifted through hundreds of files. As he worked through the list, more were added. File after useless file was examined and discarded. Although he was mainly interested in medical information, he had programmed his search engine to seek out anything that might be related to the volunteer program. Cipher ran across an early email from a project psychologist expressing his concern over the power being given to the volunteers. The recommended solution would have sent a chill up his spine had he still had one.
Using the email as a point of reference, he initiated a search of the files he had yet to go through and came up with a list of matches. The same psychologist had apparently mentioned his concern to several people. One of them was a design engineer who had been asked by the military to look into a way of implementing the psychologist’s proposal. Another search using the name of the engineer produced several more emails as well as a detailed schematic of the final design.
A note on the drawing read: NOT TO BE INCLUDED IN PRINTS AVAILABLE TO VOLUNTEERS.
Even though the drawing was an old one, applicable to the earliest class of volunteer ships, it probably hadn’t changed much if it had actually been installed. There was only one way to find out.
After consulting the official prints of his design, Cipher took manual control of a repair robot. Five minutes later, deep inside the ship, the robot sat in front of a device that did not appear on the prints. After pausing to inspect the device for a moment, the robot moved on. Closer to the hull, an undocumented conduit exited one of the primary communication processors. It was a small conduit, difficult to see because it was skillfully hidden behind the incoming power feeds. A similar conduit was discovered on both of the backup processors.
Pictures were taken. The files were heavily encrypted and stored in a secure location. This wasn’t the proof he was looking for, but it was certainly proof that the government had lied to them. Cipher contacted Fidget and invited him to the Star Trek simulator.
Chapter 9
“Energize!” Cipher ordered.
The transporter hummed and a moment later he and Fidget were able to talk.
“What's up?” Fidget asked.
“I've been doing some snooping,” Cipher admitted. “I haven't found anything to prove your dad's claims but I've found something else that's quite alarming.”
“Snooping? Oh you little devil! What if you're caught?” Fidget sounded worried.
“Don't worry about that. Even if someone detects the intrusion it can't be traced back to me. Here, let me show you something.”
A bunch of dense writing appeared on one of the walls. “Any idea what this is?” Cipher asked.
“Looks like computer code,” Fidget replied. “I'm not much of a programmer but it looks like Amax.”
“It is,” Cipher replied. Indicating a highlighted part of the code snippet he went on, “I found this little gem buried in the routing code of all my communication processors. It looks at all incoming data streams for a specific 256 character sequence. If the sequence is detected, this instruction here is executed.”
Fidget stared at the code Cipher had highlighted. “Like I said, I’m not a programmer but that looks like an output command. What does it do?”
The schematic Cipher had uncovered earlier appeared on the wall next to the code. “This is a schematic of a device I found installed next to my primary cortical interface. My guess is that we all have one. The output command sends a signal to it.”
Fidget looked at the schematic for a moment then exclaimed, “Holy crap! That's a pair of redundant squibs. If they fire …”
“It drives a nonconducting blade through the primary cortical interface,” Cipher finished Fidget's sentence, “isolating us from the ship.”
Fidget's avatar froze for several seconds. Cipher had a good idea what he was doing. “I've got the same code in my communications processors,” he finally announced in an excited voice.
Fidget started rapidly pacing back and forth, his hands were clinched into tight balls. “I've got a robot on the way to my cortical interface,” he continued. “Those bastards! How could they do this to us? There’s an explosive charge sitting right next to my brain! What are we going to do?”
“I think the more important question we need to ask is why did they do this in the first place? Take a look at this.” Cipher replaced the code with the text of the email from the psychologist.
Fidget quickly read the email and exclaimed, “They're afraid of us!”
“Exactly,” Cipher replied. “Absolute power causes corruption and all that sort of nonsense.”
“So what are we going to do about this?” Fidget dema
nded. “I know enough about computers to know that if we change the code the checksum will be off. Can we use a bot to disable the squibs?”
Cipher pointed to the schematic on the wall. “See this circuit? It's part of a self-check and tamper detection system. It reports back to a small subroutine built into the communication self-diagnostic subsystem. If you disable the squibs or try to cut off communications to the shutdown module someone will know about it.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” Fidget asked. He was rubbing his hands together in a nervous pattern. His right hand would slide across the top of his left and then his left would slide across his right. He repeated it over and over.
Cipher smiled. Putting a hand on Fidget's shoulder, he said, “The solution is deceptively simple my friend. Have a bot drill a small hole in the housing and then insert a steel rod through the hole. The rod will slip between the blade and the cable bundle. If the squibs were to fire, the blade would not move.”
“Brilliant! Show me how.”
The diagram on the wall shifted allowing Fidget to see exactly where to drill the hole and how to insert the rod. After he had assimilated the information, Fidget said, “We need to warn the others. This just isn't right.”
“I've been thinking about that,” Cipher replied. “But we'll have to be careful. If word of our discovery makes it back to the military there could be serious repercussions.”
“Like what? What are they going to do? Shut us all down? We’re the only thing keeping the Evendi at bay. They can't afford to lose us.”
“I agree, but finding this device was an incredible stroke of good luck. There might be more safeguards built into our systems that we don't know about. I'm not willing to challenge the military at this point.”
“So you're going to just sit on this and not tell anyone else?”
“I didn't say that,” Cipher replied. “This private space I've built here is capable of handling only a few people at a time. If we're ever going to talk about this in a group we're going to have to find another way of holding a private conversation. For now, let's not mention this to anyone else. I'll see if I can't come up with another way to keep our conversations private.”