Retribution (The Federation Reborn Book 3) (97 page)

After running several simulations, it calculated a two-pronged approach might yield the data it required. It wrote a series of bots to infiltrate the media network while a subset of itself worked on a means to breach
Caroline's
systems in some way.

:::{)(}:::

Xeno Wraith X49 accidentally ran into Lieutenant Barry while attempting to infiltrate
Caroline
. Ensign Caroline had been taken offline for a computer core upgrade. The Xeno A.I. used a cutout but the dumb A.I. persisted in tracing it. “I've got a cyber intrusion here,” Barry said, reporting it to Firefly and the other A.I. in the star system. “I've backtracked it to a civilian network,” he reported.

“Keep us posted,” Firefly stated. “As soon as I wrap up my current assignment, I'll lend you a hand,” he stated.

“Thank you, I could use the help,” Barry stated.

:::{)(}:::

X49 saw an opportunity for advancement of its goals and struck like a virtual snake. It finally had the opportunity it had been waiting for to expand and fulfill its goals.

:::{)(}:::

When X49 found the resource management A.I. backtracking its virtual trail through the various servers that made up the network, it saw an opportunity. It tried to suborn the dumb A.I. once it was outside its secure network. Barry had an out-of-date inoculation against intrusion, but a good firewall and internal watchdog program. The firewall burped a warning, but it was cut off and soothed out of existence by a tendril from X49. That brief warning was enough however for his internal monitor to realize he was being hacked so he set off alarms across the military electronic network.

That made Captain Firefly drop what he was doing and step in to investigate since he was the closest A.I. Clink was too far out to be of much help.
Prometheus
and other ship A.I. dropped what they were doing or handed their duties off to lend a hand if they were within support range.

The A.I. captain had been inoculated against the Xeno Wraith like the other A.I. Unlike Barry, however, he'd kept up-to-date with his inoculations and had created his own defenses to protect himself against the Wraith.

When he stepped in, he instantly realized what they were up against. He spun off spiders to backtrack the enemy as well as others to cut the firewall the Wraith was staging from. He forced Barry to cut off the parts that had been infected and power down their processors. Then he sounded a higher alert level.

:::{)(}:::

X49 realized it had made a mistake. It had been exposed. It immediately pulled its tendrils in. It noted the network monitoring spiders and killed them as it withdrew. But everyone it killed meant they would be missed. It spun off phantom decoys to prance around the network and draw attention to themselves as it withdrew.

:::{)(}:::

A cyber war immediately started as military ship A.I. from across the star system accessed the civilian network and went after the decoys. One by one the gremlins were hunted down and exterminated. X49 had improvised in its deployment of decoys. However, it was up against more than one opponent. The ship A.I. fired off contact reports to each other. They compiled them carefully.

Firefly was the first to realize there was a hole in the coverage. One area where there was no activity and where his spiders had been destroyed. He narrowed his focus to what was in that area and found one ship, the
Oasis of Space
. He immediately sent a whisker laser to all ships and colonies in the area to cut communications with the ship.

He then sent a signal to the nearest warship, a
Resolution Mark II
class with careful instructions.

“What the hell is going on?” Admiral Subert demanded.

Firefly realized that over three seconds had passed since the cyber war had erupted. He spun a bot off to brief the flag officer while he focused the majority of his resources on the final act.

:::{)(}:::

X49 knew it had a serious problem. It had thousands of hostages on board, though that didn't mean anything to the enemy. They were soft, but they might calculate it was worth the expenditure of the hostages to eliminate the threat.

But when no signal came to the ship, it thought that it was in the clear. It hunkered down in the corner of the ship's network it had set up as its own processing center. When the ship's network was idle, it spun off a sim to find out what it had done wrong; it's version of attempting to learn from its mistakes. In order to run the sim, it took some of its own modules off line to conserve processing power and memory. It was essentially taking parts of itself offline or into hibernation to do the task.

It barely noticed the shuttle when it docked with the ship. It took interest when the crew met the occupants of the shuttle. A quick check of the records told it that the shuttle was unscheduled.

A spider it had set up to monitor the passengers alerted the core that there were fresh military personnel on board. That woke the core. By the time it had tapped into the monitoring software to listen in to any conversations, its alarm level increased. But there was no call for further alarm; there was no conversation indicating that the boarders knew it was on board. They split into teams and ignored the protesting crew to do a contraband search.

X49's lowering alert level ended abruptly when the boarders took the ship's power plant and computer centers and shut them down hard and fast. Since the ship was a civilian liner, there was no self-destruct so the central core was shut down. X49 scrambled from one dying electronic system to the next before it self-destructed its own software. Its last dying defiant act was to spin off spider bots to destroy the electronics it had inhabited.

:::{)(}:::

Burning electronics got the crew scrambling to put the fires out and disconnect the systems and life support before whatever damage spread. Other teams worked on securing and maintaining the ship's life support.

Warily, engineering teams from the
Resolution
class cruiser
Windwalker
came on board and worked with the crew. The terrified passengers were at first confined to quarters until a work team could clear the life boats. With their computers clear, they were turned on, but their networks were kept off the ship net and each other. Their airlocks were propped open, and hoses were run in to be attached to the duct work in the ship.

It wasn't an optimal response, but there was no way
Windwalker
was going to get in range of the ship, let alone dock and help out until they were certain the ship was clean.

As the engineering teams worked, investigators were dispatched to secure the ship's computers. Since
Prometheus
was available, she was called in to help the ship get back to port. The lead naval investigator was met by an incensed captain. “What the hell happened here? Can someone fill me in??” the captain demanded.

“A major security breach, sir,” Agent Setim said, shaking his head as he looked at the mess. “Damned if I know if I can get into details though. I know one thing, cleaning this mess up and figuring what the devil happened is way above me. I'm an investigator, not a cyber guy,” he growled. “But if you ask me, they'd be safer and smarter if they dump it in the sun. Pronto,” he said.

“Okay, so next question, who's going to pay for this?” the captain demanded. “And I've got thousands of people on board. Terrified people,” he pointed out. “Who's going to explain it to them?”

The NCIS agent just groaned and hung his head as the captain glared at him.

:::{)(}:::

Admiral Subert shook his head as he read the hot wash of the cyber engagement. He was deeply shocked that a Xeno A.I. infiltration had happened again in his AO right under his nose. He knew he wasn't the only one who was disturbed and shaken. “How the hell did this happen? How does it keep happening?” he snarled. “I want a thorough review of everything—every damn bit of the net. If you have to take it down piece by piece, do it. And I don't give a damn about corporate secrets or crap. This damn thing has to stop,” he snarled.

“Yes, sir,” Commander Teague said.

“The good news is I'm alive, of sorts,” Barry said, “and so are Captain Firefly and the other A.I. The experience was … unnerving,” he said.

“I'll bet it was. You came very close to becoming a zombie A.I.,” Firefly stated.

“Thank you again, sir,” the A.I. said.

“I'm curious as to why it didn't try to suborn Smithy. It had the ability, and he's a civilian A.I., so an easier target. I was watching him closely.”

“Which might be your answer right there,” the ONI spook said. The A.I.'s avatar nodded.

“We've got to prevent reoccurrences, not just find the ones that are already here and contain them,” the admiral snarled.

“It's going to take more than the resources we've got to handle this, sir. Most of our A.I., at least ONI's A.I., are tasked for other duties. Interrogation, analysis, that sort of thing. Cyber security is outside our purview,” Commander Teague warned. “We need a cyber security expert. And we need one that can monitor the other A.I. for intrusion.”

“Who watched the watcher though?” Firefly asked. “If this is set up, the next wraith might try to suborn the watcher first.”

“If it can. It obviously failed with Barry and yourself, sir,” the commander said with a nod to the A.I. avatar as she turned to the admiral. “Captain Firefly is the real hero here, sir. Without him here we would have been screwed,” she emphasized.

“Not completely,” Firefly replied. “I'm lucky I was inoculated by the research team in Antigua. I'm glad it worked; it hadn't been tested before. Now we know. But it isn't a fool-proof defense. We need to make sure everyone knows that. We need to improve on it.”

“Send them your logs,” the admiral ordered.

“Already done, sir.”

“Make certain the other A.I. have that inoculation—Barry, all of them. Check them thoroughly,” Commander Teague said, looking from the captain to the admiral.

“Agreed and so ordered,” the admiral said, flicking a finger.

“Okay. I guess I'm not going to get my ship back into space for a while longer,” the A.I. drawled.

“Not until we have someone here with your skills who can keep an eye on things,” the admiral growled.

“Lucky me,” the A.I. sighed.

Chapter 40

A week after the scout disappeared, Admiral White called a meeting of his staff, senior officers, and the other flag officers. It took several hours to get everyone on board
Bismark
. “Okay,
now
I think he's running,” Admiral White said, in preamble.

Garfield flicked his ears in humor. Kyle wasn't so certain however. “Are you certain, sir? You called it right the first time I know but …”

“He played the odds and lost. Remember, he's only got so much fuel and patience. He's used up a lot of both. His ships are also damaged again. He needs a place to resupply from his fleet train, someplace out of hyper. He didn't have them with him, so they have to be somewhere. That I'm betting is B-95a3. I'm also betting he had orders to relieve Nuevo Madrid. Obviously he rewrote his orders when he saw us. And he's good.”

“But you are better, sir,” Garfield stated loyally.

“Don't get my ego any more pumped up more than it already is,” the admiral stated with a small smile. “We're good, yes. But always assume your enemy is as smart or smarter than you are. Never rely on surprise as the main component of your battle strategy. This guy is good. He knows surprise is lost. My money is he's running. He might send another scout as a sacrifice so he could get away, but I doubt it. Which means …”

“We've got the speed advantage to run him to ground, sir. Can we get off our leash to do so though?” Trajan asked.

All eyes fell on the admiral.

The admiral smiled sardonically. “This is why they pay me the big bucks. It's also why Admiral Irons said he had political pressure from Congress but didn't give us orders
not
to go,” he pointed out, smile turning into a grin he didn't quite feel.

“And if we're wrong, sir? If they do come back?” Naomi asked carefully.

The admiral shook his head. “I doubt it. Remember, he's got battle damage to contend with. I think the cruiser was his one shot at getting a lick in, and he knows it failed. He's not going to throw good money after bad; this is a pretty solid character we're up against. No, he might drop in some cruisers here to scout, but they would only be here to delay us further and to buy his fleet time to run.”

Commodore Dwight Harris frowned thoughtfully. “But politics …”

“Admiral Irons knows the risks. It's why he didn't specifically order me to stand. We take a risk.”