Once they were out of the building, it was easier, because he had to focus on being nonchalant while they returned to the ship by a circuitous route different from the way they'd arrived.
Chapter 45: Waiting
Since Anailu had stayed up late, of course the next morning they had to start earlier than usual. A sandstorm was predicted that morning, so they were in a race to get into the desert and set up before it hit their preferred site. The Admiral was looking forward to the opportunity to hunt golden sandharns.
By the time they were ready to leave, they knew it would be a close run to reach the best sandharn grounds and get set up before the storm arrived. Annalise pushed Anailu to explain the time pressure to their escort, which turned out to be a good idea: the escort commander told her to go on ahead without them. Obviously the Admiral's happiness was more important than security.
With the extra time that gave them, the safari staff had the hunting vehicles ready and the camp set up in plenty of time. The other ships arrived just before the storm, but once they were down and in position, all the staff had to do was connect them to the tube-passages which had already been set up to allow safe movement between the ships during the storm. By the time full force of the storm rolled over the ships, the Admiral and the rest of the hunters had already departed for the hunt.
Since Anailu's encounter with the count, she had found herself uncomfortable being alone during sandstorms. The first time she returned to the desert, she hadn't realized what was bothering her until she was passing through the tube-passage between the ships. Today, like every trip since then, she would spend as much time as she could with other people in the Torrells' airship while the storm raged outside.
The officers who stayed behind broke up into several groups, engaged in conversations or various entertainments. Anailu noticed that Annalise was spending little time with the other senior officers. Instead, she spent virtually all of her time talking to the most junior officers who had come along merely as support staff.
When Annalise was alone, Anailu shared her observations, and asked why she seemed to be almost avoiding the senior officers.
Annalise was happy to explain. “If you stay on the staff of a poor commander, you eventually get tarred with the same brush. Sometimes, though, even the worst commander can get lucky and find some real talent. If he does, he will tend to hold on to them like his career depends on it – sometimes because it does. This practice is also terribly destructive to some bright young officers, who burn out or go bad under a bad influence.
“So, I'm just investigating to some prospects. If I can find even one young, bright light who wants to escape that fate...if I can rescue them before they are ruined or burned out...then it's good for the Empire and the Navy...and me.”
Once the hunt was over and the storm was past, they packed up and flew back to the Arch Falls campsite. On this trip, Anailu was finally traveling slowly enough to keep the escorts happy.
As they approached, she checked the ship's sensors. The beacons were still there, apparently in the same location. That worried Anailu, but she knew that bugging Annalise about it wouldn't change anything. Instead, she focused on getting ready for the formal dinner that evening. Annalise's revelations about the uniform left her even more nervous. What if someone else at the dinner recognized it? She didn't understand why Dodato had given her a design so much like the one the Navy had chosen. It didn't make any sense.
The dinner went by uneventfully, though annoyingly. Anailu was seated beside the Captain-Baron, who was apparently a big fan of two people, and he wanted to talk about them. Unfortunately, those two people were Count Forvallete and himself. The only positive was that with how much he loved to talk, Anailu hardly had to say anything. On her other side was a beautiful blonde woman captain, who was only interested in talking about fashion and who was 'in' on the capitol, Teurna. She also spent a lot of time complaining about being “stuck out in the sticks.” She repeated her stories and all her complaints. Anailu was amazed that such a person was a Naval officer, much less in command of a warship. She really didn't seem to be very intelligent. The conversation was so painful that she was actually relieved when she was able to turn back to listen to the Captain-Baron complimenting himself again. At least he was creative.
Chapter 46: A Well Executed Plan
This evening would be more complicated. The plan required getting into the warehouse system again, but also the base automated supply system and the Empress Tana's logistics system. It also required specific timing. The finale of the whole show would be the Stoneforge launching on an Emergency Departure Drill, so Taizu and the major would have to complete their work, remove all trace of their presence in the base systems, and still make it back to the ship before she launched. They'd timed it all out, and there was a reasonable margin to make it from the empty office building to the ship without pushing the envelope.
They arrived at the vacant office building just after the main shift ended. The people who worked in the assessment warehouse had left, so they didn't have to worry about assessors or auditors noticing anything. The base supply system still had the same stock of target decoys, so Taizu's feared “run on target decoys” hadn't happened.
Taizu was able to access the warehouse system directly this time, so he made the target crates visible and accessible again. The system still thought they contained target decoys, of course. Then he made his way into the base supply system. Even though this was secure base, it was a standardized system with standard security holes in it. He started generating false requests for empty cargo containers at the warehouse. The basewide system happily complied with the requests. Automated trains of empty containers, pulled by simple robotic tractors, began converging on the appraisal warehouse. The robotic tractors would arrive, disconnect from their containers, and rush off busily to retrieve more. As the containers arrived, he tagged them as “in use” so the system wouldn't decide they were better off elsewhere. Taizu kept his requests coming, being careful to avoid overloading the system (which would trip alarms requesting human assistance), but never quite letting it catch up. When the supply system ran out of containers at base facilities, it automatically moved on to request empty containers from all the ships landed at the base, including the Stoneforge and the Empress Tana. Empty crates quickly filled every available space in the warehouse, and many more were parked outside, lining the streets for a block in every direction. When Taizu had every empty container on the base, he canceled all the remaining requests before the system reported the shortage to a human.
With every empty crate being 'used' at the warehouse, it was time for the next phase of the operation – the Empress Tana would have to simultaneously need target decoys and not need target decoys. For this part, the major was taking the lead. Taizu was pretty sure they just didn't want him to get good at subverting Imperial Navy ships quite yet. He wasn't quite ready to break into a Navy ship, so he could live with that. Anyway, he had enough to do monitoring the warehouse and supply systems.
Taizu didn't know all the details of the Tana crack, but he knew the basics: another member of the team, an infiltration specialist, was in the computer core of the Tana to do three things. First, they had connected a radio interface to the Tana's core, to allow the major to connect directly and crack the system. Once she was in the system, the infiltrator had a signing key, which had to be physically plugged in to authorize the major's fake requests. Finally, the infiltrator was there to physically block communications between the redundant computer cores of the Tana. Normally, each of the redundant cores did the same work at the same time and constantly compared the results, but for generating signed requests, only one of the cores would normally complete the task.
With two cores blocked off from the rest of the ship's computer cores, the major simultaneously placed a request on each of the two separated cores: one for empty crates, the other for a specific model of target decoy. To be accepted by the base system, each request needed a
signature from a requester (from the signing key they'd plugged in), a signature from the ship's computer (to verify it would be tracked at the destination), and a unique identifier, issued by the ship's computer in sequence. Gaps in the sequence would be noticed and investigated. Duplicates were not supposed to be possible – unless the computer cores generated them simultaneously.
Right now, the two cores were being told they were alone, so each core created its request with the same identifier. The major made sure only the request for empty containers was logged, but both requests were passed on through the communications system and out to the base supply system.
The base supply system was designed to expect only one request with a particular identifier, but it wasn't as securely designed as the ship's computers. It didn't know what to do with simultaneous signed requests sharing the same identifier, so it attempted to fulfill both of them. While no empty containers were available at the moment, the base supply system found exactly the right number of the right model of target decoys. It happily told the warehouse system to prepare those six crates for pickup, and sent a transport bot to pull them from the warehouse to the Tana.
The warehouse system moved the crates out, transferred them to the control of the transport bot, and notified the supply system. At the same time, the bot accepted the crates, informed the system it had them, then hooked up to the crates and went on its way.
When the bot told the base system it was moving the parts for that particular request ID, and the system still had both requests floating around with the same ID, it tagged both requests as “in transit.”
As Taizu watched the transport bot drive off with the crates trailing behind it, he immediately realized he had a problem: instead of heading straight for the starport, the bot made a right turn, going off in an entirely different direction!
Taizu had to work quickly. If those crates arrived somewhere else, things could get complicated. He pulled up the bot's status to see what it thought it was doing. Then he discovered what had gone wrong. The bot was still planning to go to the Tana to drop off six crates of target decoys, but it was going to the excavation site first to satisfy a real, higher priority request by dropping off the six empty crates, which the system thought it also had.
Oops!
The easy answer was to find six empty crates that were closer to the excavation site to send instead, but of course, Taizu had done an excellent job of bringing all the empty crates to the assessment warehouse, and of course the bot was already closer to the excavation site than the warehouse.
He started considering alternatives.
He could block routes, so that the system would decide his train of containers would take longer to get to the excavation site than containers at the warehouse, which he could easily release. That much of a blockage would set off an alarm though. The system would request assistance from human supervisors to clear the routes, so that wasn't a useful option.
He could reclassify some other crates as empty, but that would require breaking into another system, and that would take time. It might work, but it might be too late.
The solution hit him like a ton of garbage. The supply system had direct control of all of the trash containers on base that weren't actually inside a facility. He searched for trash containers near the excavation site that were also currently empty. He reclassified six of them as regular cargo containers and vwoop! the supply system efficiently decided to send the former trash containers instead of Taizu's containers.
The whole hack only worked because at temporary bases, trash containers were actually just regular cargo containers that were flagged as only for use with trash. Most of the time, that was usually after they were mostly worn out as cargo containers, but here, the base hadn't been around long enough, so they really had just reassigned some unused cargo containers to be trash containers instead. Taizu just hoped the ones he'd reassigned hadn't been used for anything stinky.
He told the major what had happened, half expecting to get in trouble, so he was surprised that she didn't seem to care.
“We've got a bigger problem. Disconnect, we need to move now!”
Taizu did as he was told. The major took a few moments to reseal the panel, then they left the comm room. As soon as the door was closed, they took off running down the hallway. As he followed her through the building, he was struck by the thought that her ass looked nice while she was running, too.
Shut up, brain, there's no time for that now!
When they exited the building, they dropped to a fast walk. If anyone happened to see them, they had to be sure they wouldn't stand out. Since the end of their plan required a faster exit than the previous evening, they had already “unofficially borrowed” a ground truck from the base maintenance crews. They got in, and the major drove them toward the landing fields as fast as she could without appearing reckless. As she drove, Major Kolos explained, “You know I was going to connect back into the Tana when the crates arrived, to finish things? With so many ships parked here today, she landed on one of the annex pads further out – and they don't have the annex physically linked to the main base yet. Right now, the Tana only has a radio connection to the main base.”
Taizu understood immediately. The automated supply system didn't expect duplicate orders, which was making this whole approach possible. When the transport bot arrived at the Empress Tana, the system would request an acknowledgment of delivery for both the empty crates and the target decoys. The ship's computer did know what to do when it got duplicate orders based on the same sequenced ID. It would see it as a potential attack, and the ship's computers would set off an alert. So, they needed to keep that from happening, or even being recorded as happening.
It was very difficult to put persistent, unauthorized programming into a ship's computers – the system itself worked hard to find it, discard it, and alert the crew. To make a change properly and permanently, you needed multiple senior officers all acting together, in person, to approve the programming change. If you got into the core and stayed there, you could make some changes, but only for a few minutes, and you had to keep the specialized tool allowing it physically connected to the system while it was running. That was what they'd done before, but their infiltrator had already exited the ship, and couldn't get back in now. Since they were trying to make sure nobody found a problem later, the infiltrator had made certain no evidence was left behind.
As part of explaining why physical security was so important, one of Taizu's tech school instructors had said physical access was required to affect a warship's computer cores. He'd gotten used to learning that not everything they'd taught him in the course was 100% accurate, so he hadn't been too surprised when the major had previously explained that with the right tools, you could also do some things to a ship through a wireline connection, but the ship's computers needed to trust it, which meant a connection to a Navy base system. Since the Project Anchor base was the headquarters of the new Doran fleet, it was already equipped as a Navy base, too.
“Will they have a trusted connection established at all?” If the crew didn't have the trusted connection activated, the major wouldn't be able to work from outside the hull, period.
“It was up earlier today. Remember, it's standard procedure to link to a trusted facility, to pull official data updates, and the annex facilities are still a trusted facility. It just acts as a separate starport until they get it connected to the main base.”
They had left the buildings, landing pads, and lights of the main base behind them. As drove through the dark between the main base and the annex, the major slowed down while she looked for something along the side of the road. There were no lights along the road, and not many at the annex. The few ships occupying the annex pads ahead had to rely on their own external lights to illuminate their pads.
The major drove the truck off the side of the road and stopped, shutting off the truck and killing the lights. “We're here. Are there any tools behind the seat? We need a prybar
or something.”
Taizu checked, and sure enough, there was a small toolkit with a prybar wedged under it. He extracted the prybar from the truck and held it up triumphantly. “Got it!”
The major's voice came out of the darkness. “Good, bring it over here.”
Only a dim remnant of the lights behind them made it out this far. It was barely enough to make out the major's silhouette. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and used it to illuminate a route over to the major.
She was standing over a manhole cover, wearing some sort of compact light-enhancing goggles. “Pop the lid.”
He nodded and bent to the task. The cover had a lock, but it wasn't fastened. The cover itself was solid and heavy. He used the prybar to lever up an edge, which the major grabbed. She pulled the manhole cover off to the side, making a loud scraping sound as it dragged across the rim of the hole. Looking into the hole, Taizu saw only a black blotch against the already dark ground around it.
Dropping the lid, the major ordered, “Get in there. There's a ladder on the side.”
Playing his tiny light around the edges of the hole, he found the steel ladder embedded into concrete on one side of the hole. He couldn't make out the floor at the bottom, but the major wasn't giving him time to investigate from up here. He hunched over the manhole and climbed down the ladder into the darkness.
The hole only went down about three meters. At the bottom, he stepped off the ladder onto the concrete floor. As he played his light around, he could see he was in a concrete communications vault, clean and new. It was a little wider than his armspan, and almost tall enough to stand up in. There were wires coming in from pipes on each end, parallel to the road, but they were not connected in the middle. It looked like they hadn't quite finished the installation.
The Sculpted Ship Page 29