Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (3 page)

“Bubble
gum and bailing wire. Which is probably why they figured it was okay to get rid
of us. They figured he'd pull a rabbit out of his hat and fix anything that
breaks. I bet they pulled us out just so they could get him out of Pyrax come
to think of it.”

“Rabbit...
“ Bailey shook his head in confusion. “Where the hell do you get these human
metaphors,” he sighed then paused. He frowned, not liking where his thoughts
were leading. “I just had a thought.”

“And
not a good one seeing it from where I am,” Harry snorted.

Bailey
waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah. I was just thinking, maybe chasing us out with
him isn't such a good thing after all. Like oh, say if they did it to get rid
of him? Permanently?” He gave Harry a look.

“Um,
with all due respect, isn't running him out of..” His face cleared and then his
brows knit as he caught on. “Oh. Oh.. Yeah. That'd suck for us as well.” He
sucked in a breath looking around the compartment. Yeah, that would suck. He
for one had a lot to live for.

“Yeah.
Which could explain our computer problems. And this harmonic.”

“Maybe.
But don't rule out good ole' Murphy yet boss. He's all likely to get all put
out and bite us in the ass if you do.”

“Clever.
You think that one up on your own?” Bailey snorted. He pointed to a console.
“Get with the bridge. See if they can dial down our hyper speed, it should
smooth the ride out.”

The
Admiral felt Sprite access the Wi-fi node and traffic packets started flowing
back and forth. He noted and set aside the thought as he studied the piping in
the ceiling and walls. He'd have to run a level three diagnostic on the drive,
something that was hard to do when it was in use...

Sprite
got a feel for the engineering subsystems as the handshake protocol cleared and
she entered the net. Engineering was a separate system from the main for
obvious reasons. She tended to avoid it since she didn't want to mess with
anything running. She had pulled in her horns a day before entering hyper,
making sure she hadn't damaged anything in the process. That could be thought
of as a bad thing. But she saw something she didn't like right away, a program
that was coiling around different systems and  the coils were scattering
ominous black files like shed scales. It hadn't been there before and it
definitely didn't belong. Only each... shit!

“Macro
Virus!” Sprite spat out. He felt his entire bandwidth max out in a sudden
torrent. Defender fully activated. All three AI jumped into the net. “Admiral
jack in NOW,” Sprite ordered.

“Shit!”
Hastily he looked around. “Where is it, the nav?” He spotted a jack near
Bailey.

“It's
a nasty bugger. Primitive, sabotage, but it just found out we're onto it,”
Sprite said, trying to get a feel for it before she went to war. She felt the
others rising, getting ready. Good.

“Crap.”
He lunged for a jack near the chief's station knocking Bailey aside.

“Hey
what gives?” Bailey asked startled. His brow knit in confusion.

“Virus,”
Irons ground out, jacking in. Bailey's eyes went wide as the Admiral's hand
morphed and then plugged into the universal port. He glanced at a now concerned
looking Harry and then back.

“Virus?”
he asked dumbly.

“In
the navigational suite. Sprite just opened a can of worms and now it's trying
to kill us.”

“Shit
oh shit...” The chief looked around. His eyes found the big bald assistant
right away. “Harry boot the back ups!”

“No
don't! The virus over wrote them with a rabbit. It's done the same for all the
third tier back ups. It looks like it started there and worked it's way out
since those systems weren't in use. It's been tweaking the sensors,
substituting it's own version of reality. That's why you are getting the
harmonic, you are about to get some nasty cross shear,” Sprite said over the
intercom. “If you open the back ups it will swarm.”

She
was afraid it might already be too late. The virus had the edge, it was already
in the systems it wanted to infect and it probably had some sort of hardware,
some sort of flash chip somewhere it was calling home. She sent out search bots
for it.

“Shit,”
Harry swore, hand on the switch. He looked at it and then paled. The
engineering staff looked up at the overhead. “What the hell do we do?” Harry
asked looking around. His eyes locked onto the Admiral.

“Working
on it,” Irons ground out. He could feel Proteus and Sprite battling. Defender
had thrown firewalls up to protect him.

“Admiral,
do me a favor, get someone to make a back up navigational system offline right
now. I'm doing what I can to put firewalls around the critical systems but this
thing is embedded in the core itself,” Sprite told him directly.

“Not
good,” Irons grimaced. “We need to isolate critical systems from the net and
make sure they stay clean. Sprite is trying to track down the virus's kernel
now.”

“But
it sounds like it's in the core, How the hell did it get there?” Harry grimaced
in thought and then began to swear vilely. Bailey looked at him.

“An
idea?”

“Yeah,
that computer upgrade we got but didn't need. The one that kept us in drydock a
week,” Harry spat out. He turned and lunged to the door.

“Pull
it fast then...” Bailey said as Harry rushed out.

“He
hopefully knows what he's doing,” Irons said eying the chief.

“Harry?
Yeah, he does,” Bailey nodded. “Best assistant I've got.”

“Good.
I suggest the bridge be alerted. I'd suggest an emergency break out but we're
too far into this gravitational wave to break the harmonic for hours.”

Sprite
was too busy working to care what the organics were talking about. Proteus was
beside her, tearing into the virus. Unfortunately every time they thought they
had it cornered a new head popped up and started spitting rabbits all over the
system.

“It's
gotten into life support,” Proteus reported.

“Which
sucks for the organics, but they can suffer a couple of hours until they flat
line. Until then let's see if we can nail this thing down,” Sprite shaped a
virus bot module then copied it a million times and sent it out. She threw up a
firewall at the remaining uninfected systems and then began filtering packets
to and from them. Net activity slowed to a crawl.

“That
is doing almost as much damage as the virus is. You've slowed processor speed
by ten percent.”

“We've
got to kill it.”

“If
processing speed drops further it could delay critical functions. Or lock them
up all together,” Proteus warned.

“Don't
tell me, tell it!”

Harry
lunged through the computer room door and knocked a veraxin computer tech
aside. The tech danced on his stilted legs, not happy about the overbearing
human in it's midst. It buzzed angrily at the intruder, considering whether to
call security before it realized who the intruder was. Humans all looked alike!
M'rak thought angrily.

The
room was large but filled with computers. It was warm despite the AC running
full blast. Warm was not good for electronics. No time to think of that now. He
tore into the files, finding the last changes then started pulling cards.

“What
are you doing?” the veraxin demanded, getting back to it's feet. It gave an
angry buzz as it brushed off it's vest with it's lower hands.

“Virus.
Now pull the A bank. All of it,” Harry said, looking for the right bank. It was
around here... damn it where was it?

“Virus?”
The veraxin's eye stalks moved in circles. “So? The anti-virus software will
isolate and kill it.”

“Not
if it's in the damn core itself! In the anti-virus module!” Harry snarled
suddenly realizing where it was. His eyes found the label he as looking for. He
pulled a bank then tossed it aside and moved to the next.

The
veraxin blocked his path. “Get the hell,” he paused seeing cards fall to the
floor. “Oh. Or not,” he said sheepishly as the veraxin finished pulling the
last card.

“May
I ask how we discovered this virus?” the alien asked, turning it's rear pair of
eye stalks to Harry.

“The
Admiral's AI caught it. They were tracing it but I remembered that sleazeball
and the upgrade we got a couple of days before we left dock. You know, the one
we didn't want or need? That didn't do anything?”

“Interesting.
Of course this is all supposition without evidence,” the veraxin chittered. 
His mandibles twitched. “We only have the Admiral's word that this virus
exists. It could be a manufactured crisis to get back into our good graces.”

Harry
grimaced. He ran a hand over his bald scalp. “To tell you the truth, I don't
know.”He shook his head. “I just don't know. But I know where we can find out
the truth,” he said. He pointed to the computer cards. “I think we should take
these apart. In an isolated system of course. Do a code comparison.”

“Ah,”
The veraxin's head stalk bobbed in an approximation of a nod. “Good idea. I'll
get on it.” His pincers picked up a card.

“I
think Chief Bailey will want in on this as well. Just a soon as we sort out the
mess.” He waved to the pile of cards and ripped wiring. “Document everything
you find.”

“The
human Harry Chambers did it,” Proteus reported a few minutes after the big
engineer had rushed out. His avatar was spread out, looking a great deal like a
silvery spider web as the AI tried to hold the ship's systems together with
it's presence alone. “The virus kernel has been pulled from the net.”

“Which
of course just leaves the shadow it created in the RAM and buffers... got it,”
Sprite said smugly.

“Isolated
it's fingerprint?” Proteus asked. “How?”

“The
parent. It's a shadow clone. I dissected one of it's op files and then did a
code search of suspected files.” She shot him the file through their shared
link.

“Commendable.
And I have... the other,” Proteus reported after a moment.

“Ah.
So that's that,” Sprite said with a shrug.

“Not
quite. I for one am not going to rest until I am sure this system is one
hundred percent clean. Are you?”

“Well,
when you put it that way...”

“We
also have to repair the damage it and we inflicted...”

Irons
stared off to the bulkhead as the group around him looked nervously at each
other and their controls. After a moment he smiled slightly. The group's
tension eased explosively.

“They
got it. Harry too. Harry and a veraxin pulled the core. It was inside the
anti-virus module.”

Bailey
didn't like the sound of that. “Cute. Hidden where you would least expect a
virus to be,” Bailey scowled. He was leaning forward over his console, glaring
at everything and nothing. “Between you me... and well... everyone here.” He
waved to the crew. “You think that's it?”

“Proteus
and Sprite aren't sure and are going to take their time scanning every bit in
the system,” Irons responded slowly. “Chief I'd recommend an eyes on diagnostic
of every critical system and a hard look at any suspicious upgrades or packages
you've had in the week or two before we left,” he said thinking hard and fast.
He was now wondering to what lengths they would go to destroy this ship... did
they have a back up?

“Packages?”
a voice asked from the doorway. The group looked up to the captain and the
chief of security. “What's going on? I only caught that last bit. Sabotage?”

Bailey
nodded, thoroughly incensed. “Yes captain. It looks like it. We had some shifty
goings on while you and I were in that meeting before we left dock.”

“The
one the councilor called us to then canceled after having us cool our heels all
day in his waiting room?” the captain asked.

“Yeah,”
Harry said coming in behind him. “I remembered some shifty guy came and
insisted on rebuilding our system,” he scowled. “I wish I'd had the time to
check the system over after he left. Hell, I wish I'd thought of it,” he shook
his head.

“Why
didn't we hear about this before?” the security chief asked, eying Harry and
then Bailey.

Bailey
looked at his assistant who looked a little sheepish. “Cause I got busy and
forgot about it,” he grimaced. “Boss man came back and well...”

“We
got right into the rebuild of the hyperdrive since I was pissed and wanted to
make up time,” Bailey said. His simian face grimaced. “Yeah, I remember now,”
Bailey shook his head then slapped his chest. He didn't even wince when his
hand hit his breast pocket filled with screw drivers. They were hard but he
didn't care. The pain made him feel alive. That was a good thing right now.

“Well,
it's caught. We'll have to do an investigation, log the evidence, the ah,
recordings,” the security chief shot a glance to the Admiral who shrugged.

“You'll
have Sprite's report when I do,” he said and then shrugged. He cocked his head
and accessed the AI but felt them in the middle of a bit by bit comparison.
“But I don't think it will be right now, they are going over the hard files
with a fine tooth comb. Bit by bit comparison of files and rebuilding damaged
files will take time.”