by Amy DuBoff
“Fok! Tell the entire fleet to disconnect from the network,” Wil ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Rianne confirmed while the others glanced at Wil with sudden alarm.
“Whatever the error, it looks like it’s spreading like a virus,” he continued. “Notice the distribution pattern—it’s along the routes that have registered a beacon ping in transit.”
“What’s it doing?” Ethan asked.
Wil shook his head. “Saera, any thoughts?”
She looked up from her analysis at the front console. “I can’t be certain, but I think it’s rewriting the beacon lock protocol, preventing any ship from being able to get a fix. There’s some kind of cipher running in the background.”
“Can’t get a lock unless you know the secret password,” Wil muttered.
“Fok, the Bakzen hijacked our nav network!” Ian exclaimed.
“That’s my best guess right now,” Saera confirmed, her face drawn. “That was the flaw in our workaround for the independent jump drive. The fleet can’t coordinate without the beacon network,” she added telepathically.
“I should have anticipated this contingency.” Wil rubbed his eyes. As he pulled his hands away, he noticed that everyone was looking at him, awaiting his orders. What can we do? Half the fleet already can’t move without risking getting trapped in subspace. We need to act before the whole network is down. “Do we have any ships currently engaged in combat?”
“Two cruisers and their complement are assisting defense of a border post,” Michael replied.
“How strategic is the position?” Wil asked.
His friend frowned, anticipating where he was going. “It’s a significant supply cache. And, Connor is with them.”
An unacceptable loss. “All right. Saera, calculate a manual jump. We’ll give them backup. Tell everyone to stay put and keep a low profile until we figure out a solution.” His officers telepathically relayed the messages to their contacts throughout the fleet.
“I have the coordinates,” Saera stated after a minute. “Do you want to check—”
“No time.” Wil grabbed the podium and telepathically reached out to the ship. The jump drive charged in response to his unspoken command.
A blue-green cloud overtook the Conquest as the ship slipped into subspace. Wil bolstered his connection with the ship, ready to draw it back into subspace if they emerged in the wrong place. The vibrations softened as the ship arrived at the destination. Objects began to take shape on the viewscreen through the cloud. He spotted the asteroid well out of harm’s way, but one of the cruisers was directly in their path.
Wil extended himself in an instant, enveloping the ship in a subspace bubble to prevent it from materializing inside the other ship. At the edge of his consciousness, curses sounded around the Command Center as the others realized what had happened. He felt his officers coming to his aid. Together, they sustained the subspace bubble as they drew the Conquest away from the ships around the asteroid. Once clear, they released the ship into normal space and took in their surroundings.
The two TSS cruisers formed an inverted V around the outpost on the asteroid, which was protected by a shield. Jets deployed from the cruisers were engaged with three squadrons of Bakzen jets, along with a heavily armored warship and four battlecruisers.
“Shite!” Ethan breathed.
They were completely out-gunned any way Wil looked at it. Further, without witnessing the preceding action, he was blind to the Bakzen’s strategy and behavior patterns for the battle. Brute force was the only option.
“Let’s take them out!” Wil declared.
He gripped the podium and established his link with the ship. His officers followed his lead. “Time to see what kind of damage the telekinetic amplifier can do. This’ll be our one chance to catch them by surprise with it,” he told them.
“Ready,” they confirmed in unison.
Together, they channeled telekinetic energy through the relays within the ship. The podiums hummed and warmed to the touch as the ship charged. A buzz filled the air until the ship could hold no more. They released the charge—aimed directly for the warship.
A beam of white light shot from the bow of the Conquest, striking the warship almost instantaneously. The target was enveloped by the white light, each feature of its hull standing out against the blackness of the starscape. For a moment, it shone brighter. Wil squinted against the light replicated on the viewscreen, noticing that the TSS jets had fallen back toward the TSS cruisers. Then, the Bakzen warship disintegrated in a spectacular flash, as though each molecule vaporized from the center outward. A shockwave radiated from the destroyed vessel, hurtling the two Bakzen cruisers closest to the warship and their jets to the side.
The TSS jets darted behind their cruisers just in time to avoid the wave of debris as it collided with the shields protecting the TSS cruisers.
“Don’t give them time to regroup! Finish them off,” Wil ordered.
He sensed Ian connect directly with the Conquest and target the ship’s weapons on the stunned enemy cruisers. The Bakzen ships’ shields were disabled in the blast, and the Conquest’s rail guns sent fatal shots cleanly through their hulls. The TSS jets reemerged from behind their cruisers and opened fire on the Bakzen jets drifting through the scraps of the former warship.
Though the TSS fleet made quick work of the two cruisers that had been next to the warship, the two remaining cruisers were relatively unscathed.
“Again!” Wil commanded. He poured energy into the Conquest, charging the telekinetic relays. The air hummed with the stored force waiting to be released.
His officers joined him in the charge—filling the ship near capacity.
“Divide,” he instructed.
Two beams shot from the ship, one heading for each of the Bakzen cruisers. Both ships disintegrated on impact, releasing a burst of white light.
Wil let go of his handhold, his breath labored and heart racing. Next to him, his officers let go of their own podiums, looking equally fatigued.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to do that too often,” Wil said as his heart rate settled.
“No joke,” Ethan replied. “But talk about effective!”
Michael surveyed the destruction on the viewscreen. “I never thought I’d see anything like it.”
Saera studied Wil from her position at the front console. “Are you okay?” she asked telepathically.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just a little more exertion than I’m used to at once,” he assured her.
“Incoming communication from the Victory,” Rianne announced as a chirp echoed through the Command Center.
Wil turned his attention to the viewscreen. “Accept.”
A holographic image of a middle-aged Agent appeared on the screen. Her face was tense below the tight bun of blonde hair on top of her head. “I’m Agent Drenda, in command of the Victory,” she said.
Next to her, Connor sat in the First Officer’s chair. “Thanks for stopping by! That telekinetic amplifier is really something.”
“Yes, it is,” Wil replied. “Captain, is your ship damaged?”
“No, nothing more than cosmetic. You showed up just in time. All the jump drives in our unit were acting up.”
“Unfortunately, the issue is network-wide,” Wil told her. “Everyone is to hold their current location until we can identify the cause of the issue.”
“I got the order after we were already engaged,” Conner said. “Is it something the Bakzen did?”
“Most likely,” replied Wil. “We’ll stay here with you, for now. I don’t want to make any unnecessary manual jumps.”
Agent Drenda nodded. “Happy to have your company, sir. Let us know if you need anything.”
“Thank you.” Wil ended the transmission. “All right. Any other distress calls, Michael?”
“We’re good for now. I’ve been able to account for the entire fleet. We were really lucky.”
“Good thing we programmed in those fails
afes.” Wil exhaled with relief. “Okay, now let’s figure out what’s going on.”
Saera pulled up the network map again. “Your initial assessment of a virus seems pretty spot-on. The origin was this beacon near the Defense Barrier, as far as I can tell,” she said, highlighting the beacon in question. “It’s targeting the nav computers in the TSS fleet and seems to transmit from ship to ship as soon as a course is locked in.”
“So the more jumps, the faster the whole network will go down,” Wil realized. “What about civilian transit?”
“For now, it appears to be limited to the TSS fleet. It was calibrated to our long-range jump systems. I can’t say whether or not it could spread.”
“Bomax.” Wil groaned. If the civilian network goes now, we’re foked. “Ideas? I’m open to anything.”
“System reset?” Saera offered.
“Won’t do any good if the underlying code is corrupted,” Wil replied. “The backups are located at specific hubs rather than in each individual unit; the resets are designed to just reboot the beacons.”
“So, we need to write our own protocol to push an update to the network—our own virus to restore the original functionality,” Curtis suggested.
“Yes, closer. But what do we need that update to do?” Wil asked. “Ideal scenario.”
“Restore the ability for our ships to maintain a beacon lock, obviously,” Ian said.
“Create a firewall to prevent further hijacking,” Curtis added.
“And ideally,” Saera interjected, “prevent the Bakzen from piggybacking off of our beacon signals, like we know they do.”
“That might be too ambitious. We’ve never been able to stop them before,” Wil countered.
“Except, we didn’t know how they did it before. They inadvertently gave us the key to their kingdom.” She grinned as she pulled up a snippet of highlighted code on the front viewscreen.
Wil examined the code. Stars, she’s right! “The cipher controls the lock, but the communication protocol between the ship and beacon is right there in the open.”
“All we have to do is a little extrapolation,” Saera continued. “I never would have thought to put a cipher on that part, myself—it’s innocuous enough on its own, but it’s the last missing piece we needed to understand how they read our fleet movements.”
“Do you have enough now to code a lockout?” Wil questioned.
She nodded. “Ninety-nine percent sure, anyway. The rest of the code repairs are an extension of the work I did earlier.”
Good thing I was willing to delegate before. I couldn’t possibly deal with all of this on my own right now. “Great, get going on it as soon as possible. Grab any help you need. This is top priority.”
“I’m on it,” Saera acknowledged. “Except, I think it would be best to work directly at one of those hubs you mentioned. I’ll need to study how it sends the update signal.”
Wil hesitated. He disliked being separated from the Primus Elites, let alone sending Saera off on her own. “It’s not safe—”
“It’s safer than the whole fleet being trapped in their current locations,” Saera replied. “I can look after myself.”
“I know you can, but—” he started to protest telepathically.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” Saera stated with a clear tone of finality.
Reluctantly, Wil nodded. “Okay. Just there and back.”
She smiled. “I’ve got this.”
CHAPTER 18
The Bakzen had thoroughly screwed up the SiNavTech network, that was for sure. Saera let out a heavy sigh as she massaged her eyes, taking a break from the tedious coding.
She glanced over at the beacon hub station attendant, a stocky man in his fifties. Based on his tepid reception of Saera, it had been clear he’d taken the remote assignment due to a profound disinterest in having company.
“Stan, have you finished the—” Saera started to ask.
“Yes, the relay protocol is already uploaded. I’m just waiting on you,” Stan replied with a dour expression.
Saera doubted that his tone would be any different even if he knew she was married to a SiNavTech heir. “I’m almost done with the new firewall.” She turned back to the viewscreen, steeling herself for the final push.
Situated in a completely unpopulated sector, the hub was a standalone station tethered by a subspace anchor, like any other navigation beacon. Its compact form barely had enough amenities for one inhabitant, let alone a visitor. Saera had been camping in her transport shuttle for power naps every night, but the circular control room with its array of viewscreens and administrative access panels had turned into her temporary home away from home.
The last three days had been an even more intense grind than when she’d led the initial coding to interface the independent jump drive with the TSS fleet. The beacon hub had a backup of the uncorrupted navigation program, fortunately, but creating the new firewall to block out the Bakzen’s piggybacking on the network had proved more difficult than she’d anticipated. After two failed attempts, she had finally isolated the sequences to enact the required countermeasures to read the fleet’s movement; the Bakzen would likely still be able to use the nav beacons, but they would no longer be able to access the TSS’ travel logs. All that remained was inputting the final patches to restore capabilities for the TSS ships to lock onto the beacons. If all went well, they could roll out the updates before the civilian network was impacted.
She spent the next hour reviewing the mind-numbing lines of code for the new sequences. At last, she was satisfied that the quality control checks were sufficient.
“All right, Stan, let’s see if this works,” Saera said.
He only grunted in response, but the touch-surface on top of Saera’s console changed to a security screen. Hidden characters for the password appeared in sequence as Stan entered them via his console on the other side of the compact control room. Once logged in, an upload screen appeared.
“Activating the new lock system,” Saera declared as she tapped the corresponding controls.
A holographic map depicting the beacon network appeared above her console. The beacons were presently red, indicating a failed lock. Hopefully, the patch would fix that in short order.
Saera rapped her fingers on the console while the network interface refreshed after the upload. She sensed Stan glaring at her hand, annoyed by the offending sound inside his sanctuary. After listening to him loudly clear his throat for the last three days, Saera couldn’t care less that he was bothered.
Seven minutes passed. The console refreshed with an updated network graphic. All the beacons were once again displayed as pleasant gold icons.
She grinned with relief. “Good as new!”
Stan scoffed. “Be more careful next time.”
“You’re the one monitoring the network connections, not me,” Saera shot back.
“Well, I didn’t start the war.”
“Neither did anyone in the TSS who’s alive and fighting now, but we’ll be the ones to end it.”
Stan swiveled back around in his chair. “If you say so.”
Saera swallowed her exasperated groan. “I guess I’m finished here. Let me know if you detect any anomalies.”
The attendant let out another grunt to acknowledge her statement.
Shaking her head, Saera headed for the only door out of the tiny control room. The narrow corridor branched to either side, and she stayed to the left toward the docking bay. Less than twenty meters in length, the docking bay was overcrowded with two ships parked in tandem—her sleek TSS transport ship barely fitting behind Stan’s utilitarian evacuation shuttle. A pressurized door separated the room from space, but the heating controls were set to minimum levels. Saera hugged herself as she jogged to her ship, her breath appearing as a cloud in front of her face.
Saera palmed open the door to her shuttle and hurriedly closed it again behind her. Inside was no warmer, since the shuttle had been powered down all day. She climb
ed into the pilot’s chair, the seat frigid through her clothes. Shivering and with a cloud of breath billowing out with every exhale, she powered up the main systems. Within moments, heat radiated toward her numb face and limbs. She soaked up the warmth, flexing her fingers as the feeling returned.
Once Saera felt reasonably thawed, she pulled up the communications interface to contact the Conquest.
After a moment, the Command Center appeared in a holographic projection in front of her, with Wil and his men at the center.
“Hi,” she greeted.
“Hi. What’s the status?” Wil asked.
“Everything looks good on this end,” Saera replied. “I think it’s safe to boot up the nav system and see if it works.”
“Would you like me to attempt a beacon lock?” Rianne asked from beyond the camera’s view.
Wil nodded. “Set it for the Medea outpost, we need to regroup.”
Ten seconds passed while the nav system initialized on the Conquest.
“We have a lock,” Rianne confirmed.
“Excellent. Saera, can you meet us there?” Wil asked.
“Sure, I’m on my way.”
“See you soon.” He ended the transmission.
Saera checked the location of the Medea outpost on the map; it was intentionally positioned away from a beacon, but not so far that a manually calculated jump was necessary. Given that her transport ship wasn’t equipped with an independent jump drive and she was fatigued enough that she didn’t trust herself with manual calculations, she elected to jump to the beacon and travel the rest of the way through normal space. The extra hour of transit time was a worthwhile tradeoff for the added caution.
She relaxed back into the chair for the trip. Soon she’d be back with Wil and be able to sleep in her own bed again. They had a new system to limit the Bakzen’s movement and the TSS would have the advantage. Everything was looking up.
* * *
“If it works like we planned, the Bakzen’s navigation capabilities will be severely compromised,” Wil explained over the viewscreen to the captains on the ships gathered around the Medea outpost.