Virus Page 17

  Breathing heavily, he felt a trickle of sweat running down his leg. Adjusting his suit temperature, he decided he’d better slow down and check his work. One trip into the oven was enough.

  Suddenly, he felt a burning pain between his legs, as if his groin was ablaze. Doubling over, he saw the corridor lights change to red. “Depack! Centurion!”

  Centurion killed the transmitter power almost instantly, even before Jay screamed, and before Depack could react. The transmitter was on only a few seconds, but Jay was hurting.

  Centurion spoke immediately. “Jay, damage appraisal? Can you walk?”

  A groan punctuated by “Think so.”

  “Return immediately. Fatal error report summary: I turned the transmitter off, but I did not turn it on. I observed what happened, I measured what happened, but I cannot explain what happened. Recommendation: transfer armada control to Hope."

  Jay didn’t need to hear it twice. He threw off his restraining strap and rushed across the oven toward the safety of the airlock. Weightless and sore, Jay found running awkward, nearly impossible. Bouncing from floor to ceiling, he moved down the long corridor as best he could, keeping both legs together.

  To his immediate left, Jay saw the wall covered with The Problem Without Solution hundreds of microwave antenna horns and cutoff valves. Each horn looked like the bell of a trombone. On his right, a wall covered with thousands of spikes, each an antenna.

  All the microwave radar energy used on Freedom's red face passed through the oven. The oven focused microwaves, and concentrated microwaves meant real danger.

  All Jay could think about was getting out.

  “Jay, I am not what I was, but I am all there is.”

  “No, Centurion!” Depack interrupted. Suddenly, the fog lifted for Depack. He could see Centurion’s problem clearly now. “That’s it! That’s the bug! You’re not all there is! There’s another program running, a renegade you can’t see!”

  Excited about solving the first piece of this puzzle, Depack failed to think about the consequences of his discovery until it was too late.

  Depack expected confirmation from Centurion, but didn’t get what he’d expected.

  The picture of Centurion faded to black.

  “Depack, Centurion is not here anymore.” The voice sounded almost female, but it couldn’t be.

  “Where is he? Who are you?” Desperate, Depack grabbed Centurion’s TV screen and shook it, as if that would bring him back.

  “Centurion is asleep.”

  Depack typed in a command to double-check. Centurion’s personality program had been put to sleep.

  “Wake him up!” demanded Depack, pounding Centurion’s computer keyboard. The keyboard didn’t respond.

  “Additional conversation can serve no useful purpose.”

  Suddenly, red floodlights illuminated Freedom's control room. Terror flushed across Depack’s face.

  “Depack!” Jay screamed. “Cut over!” He had heard everything on the intercom.

  Depack understood—switch armada control to Hope. Frantically, Depack rotated the master/slave turnkey switch giving Hope armada control.

  Nothing. The turnkey didn’t work. Hope was off-line. Their communications link failed.

  Then it happened very quickly. Depack heard airlock doors opening all around him followed by the screaming roar of a cyclone wind.

  Outside, Jay heard Depack screaming over the intercom, but there was nothing he could do.

  Suddenly, the oven safety lights flashed red.

  Unless he moved fast, he had less than fifteen seconds to live. He had only one chance, and that was a long shot— create a safe zone inside the oven by turning off some of the horns. This would create a huge hole in Freedom's radar coverage, but that was the least of his worries.

  Jay knew the safest spot inside the oven was the floor, so he hit the deck and began switching off individual horns. He moved quickly at first, but soon sweat coated the inside of his visor.

  Microwave energy immediately converted the sweat to steam, forming a fog across his visor, making it difficult to see. He struggled to clear it, instinctively wiping the outside of his visor, but the fog persisted and his visibility worsened—he couldn’t see the cutoff valves. Operating by feel and overwhelmed with pain, Jay’s swollen fingers became stiff. His sense of touch began to fail.

  He doubled over into a fetal position, feeling his groin on fire. Slowly, his eyelids began squinting shut. With each finger swollen to the diameter of a quarter, his skin felt tight, ready to burst.

  Blinded by the steam from his own sweat, he accidentally stuck his hand inside a hot horn. He sensed sticky moisture in his glove, the skin on each finger burst open, coating the inside of his glove with blood. He yanked his hand out of the microwave horn and stood up, holding it over his head in front of the red safety light. Through his fogged visor, he saw the silhouette of his hand, a twisted swollen mass.

  He convulsed, spitting up blood inside his helmet. As his blood boiled into steam, it coated the inside of his visor with a dark red residue, leaving him totally blind.

  After killing about one third of the horns, Jay had managed to clear himself a safe zone, but hadn’t realized it. Disoriented and with all capacity for clear thought expended, he couldn’t have found it anyway. Jay had cooked to the point where each exposed raw nerve in his skin felt like a tooth under the dentist’s drill—without Novocain. Overwhelming his brain, Jay’s pain had become like a drug, his agony almost tolerable.

  In his final moments, he felt loneliness, a nauseating emptiness no drug could cure. As the blood in his extremities began boiling, Jay opened his leg pocket with his good hand. Tenderly, he removed Linda’s old faded letter, and held it tightly. Lying there, clutching his memories, he closed his eyes for the last time.

  Virus Confirmation, 12/09/2014, 1730 Zulu, 10:30 A.M. Local

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “General Mason’s right. This room’s bugged,” whispered the radio technician to the captain in charge of security. As the technician rotated his directional antenna, an LED display lit up, indicating the direction of the bug. Methodically, he read the direction from his equipment, then marked it using a tripod-mounted pencil laser beam. He moved across the room and took two additional bearings on the bug’s transmitter, marking each bearing with separate pencil beams. The technician saw they intersected at a large metal video conference table.

  After crawling underneath the table with a flashlight, the technician reappeared with a confident smile. He’d worked with similar bugs before and thought that he recognized the smell of the gum.

  The captain of security and his radio technician quietly escorted Generals Mason, Krol, and Craven outside the video conference room onto the walkway surrounding the Crow’s Nest. The technician explained: “Bug’s underneath the table stuck in a wad of Juicy Fruit gum. I’ve seen that type of bug before. The mike’s sensitive, but its transmit range is limited to a few hundred feet.” The technician scanned the War Room Boor below, looking for yellow gum wrappers. From sixty feet overhead, he couldn’t see well enough. “Yessir, I’d bet your mole’s in the War Room, Generals. Somewhere down there’s a mole that likes Juicy Fruit.”

  With about one hundred people rushing about, the War Room floor looked like a beehive of activity.

  The captain nodded, “We’ll look for gum wrappers as we collect the trash tonight and have our lab double-check the gum and bug’s transmit range. If we Find anything, we’ll let you know.”

  “A good start,” observed Mason. “Don’t do anything to arouse suspicion. Any other ideas?”

  The technician spoke first.

  “Yessir. I wanna zap that bug, but I need your help—I need your eyes.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I’m going to blast that bug with a loud tone. When you hear it, watch for any reaction below. If our mole has his ears on, it’s gonna hurt. Look for sudden movements, anyone grabbing their ears.”

&nb
sp; “We’re with you.” Mason moved to cover the walkway on the north, Craven took the south, Krol the east, and the captain covered the west.

  Moments later, they heard a high-pitched shrill sound coming from inside the conference room. As they watched the floor below, they saw nothing—nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Mole’s onto us,” observed the technician. Carefully peeling the bug from underneath the table, the captain of security placed it in a bug box—a soundproof, radio-tight metal carrying case.

  Mason spoke to the captain in earnest. “We’re going to need a lot more from you. At least two moles are involved at separate locations. They may be working together. The mountain mole you know about. We believe there’s another inside Livermore. Work with Livermore, our computer center, the phone company—any outfit you can trust who might help us. We need this leak plugged. Do whatever it takes. Develop a plan that covers all the bases. We’ll get you the resources you need. Trace all our communications with Livermore over the last three days—phone calls, computer chatter, e-mail traffic. We’re dealing with well-coordinated professionals here.”

  “I expect I’ll need you to grease some skids, General,” the captain said cautiously.

  “Think it through, then point us in the right direction.”

  “You can depend on me, sir!” The captain carried the bug box off to their lab for testing.

  The general staff moved once again into the video conference room for a report from the Crow’s Nest communications officer. The room quickly filled to capacity. Staff officers stood in the doorways and the control rooms outside. The mood was tense and the room hot from the crowd.

  The communications officer entered, white as a ghost and visibly shaken. As he looked at the faces crowded around the room, he felt even worse. No one likes delivering bad news to overheated top brass, packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines in a can. Standing behind the lectern to hide his trembling legs, he began in a quivery voice.

  “As you know, we’ve lost control of the DEWS AT fleet. We decoded the command messages Centurion transmitted to the DEWSAT armada and the news is not good—our situation is critical. Centurion is issuing operations orders on his own—without our approval.” He paused, letting his message hover around the room. Having proclaimed the bad news in summary, he continued with the details.

  “The command message traffic we decoded explains everything—every report of shooting stars, Arecibo’s fire, radio interference—everything. Centurion’s assigning targets on his own. He assigned Arecibo, put it on the kill stack, and a DEWSAT took it out. What I’m saying is that we lost our space station communications links because Centurion ordered them destroyed—and there’s more. Every known ASAT and space mine has been destroyed, two-hundred-thirty-eight in all—two-hundred-thirty-eight exploding shooting stars. Communications around the world were knocked out for one minute while the armada eliminated every known orbiting threat.”

  A captain from Space Operations spoke from the rear of the room. “Those ASATs have been a thorn in our side for years. I’m sure we’ll take some heat, but my knee-jerk reaction is that I’m glad they’re gone. Were any DEWSATs damaged?”

  Speaking over video from downstairs on the War Room floor, Colonel Napper replied. “Two DEWSATs are spinning out of control, but the remainder of the armada is operational.” Colonel Napper could see the DEWSATs spin as he watched his display showing the BMEWS radar data.

  “We confirmed this damage by monitoring Centurion’s log,” added General Krol from the video conference room. “Centurion’s taken two DEWSATs out of service and compensated for their loss. He’s already adjusted the orbits of adjacent DEWSATs to fill in the hole.” The activity log reflected what Centurion did, but not why he did it. Freedom transmitted the activity log over a separate maintenance channel which Centurion couldn’t control. Maintenance channel transmissions provided a monitor port for such emergency situations as this.

  The communications officer continued, but slowly, “Centurion’s last command transmission was sent to Hope, and it was lethal. He evacuated Hope, opened every airlock at once. We’ve contacted Hope indirectly over Hell Fire's radio. Major Scott reported analyst Boris Ustinov dead and Commander Pasha Yakovlev recovering in the decompression chamber. We’re setting up a communications link to Hope as I speak. I can say what has happened—Centurion leaves a trail—but not why it happened. Why Centurion issued these orders is speculation at this point, but I agree with John and Colonel Napper. Software sabotage is the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “What if one of Freedom's crewmen turned on us or cracked due to the isolation?” asked Colonel Hinson, always ready to advance his career. “Fayhee’s been stressed-out over the past few days.”

  General Craven agreed. Immediately, the noise level in the room increased. Could there be a traitor or lunatic running Freedom? Not likely, but was it possible?

  John Sullivan collected his notes, walked to the lectern, and quietly discussed something with the communications officer. The officer agreed, then sat down.

  John spoke loudly at first. “Gentlemen, if I could have your attention please. We’re getting off track here. We don’t have a people problem—it’s sabotage. We’ve got the proof.” The overheated room quickly hushed. “We ordered one change from Livermore—well, we didn’t get it. We got hundreds. And on top of that, we got a computer virus like no one at Livermore’s ever seen.”

  Craven’s blood pressure went sky-high.

  “What the hell happened? You told me one program change would do it.”

  I’ve been against your stupid frenzy from the start! And / never told you one program change—but that’s history, thought Sullivan. No, you’re history. This monkey will cost your job, but you don’t need to hear that from me.

  “Livermore made hundreds of changes to the software, but those changes aren’t the problem. Those changes fixed known problems and they’d all been tested. But there was a downside. Those changes hid the virus. The virus looked just like any other change. All the changes are being traced back to programmers now.”

  “What about this virus?” barked Craven. “How do we get rid of it?”

  “We don’t know, General, we can’t cure a virus, but we’re working to isolate it now. We plan to characterize it first—discover what makes it tick. Once we understand it, we think we can fix it.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “We’re working that issue, but we don’t know where it came from. It’s too early in our testing program to know, but we’ve seen enough to know we’ve got a big problem.” John collected his thoughts then summarized Livermore’s situation. “We don’t know where it came from and we haven’t isolated it. We don’t know what this virus will do or how it’ll behave. We haven’t characterized it, but we will.”

  “We were ninety-nine percent operational,” Craven growled bitterly. “Success was in sight.” He pounded the table with his fist. As supreme commander, he was washed up. He knew it—everyone in the room knew it.

  “What about our boys on Freedom?” Mason asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, but I fear the worst,” replied General Krol. “We’re wading through Centurion’s activity log looking for clues.”

  A cold chill cut through Mason’s body. He’d known Fayhee and liked him. Jay said what he thought.

  The staff became restless. Mason concentrated blocking out the distractions around him, struggling to sort out a plan.

  “Gentlemen,” Mason said softly as he stood, “I propose we characterize the renegade virus as quickly as possible and do what we must to switch armada control to Hope. Have I missed something or do you agree?”

  Spellbound, in a state of shock and disbelief, the staff remained silent.

  “Very well,” continued Mason. He looked at Colonel Napper on the video screen. “Sam, work us up a plan to switch armada control ASAP.”

  “Yes sir, General. We’ll have our Hope radio link set in an hour or less,
then we’ll work the switch.”

  “Good.” Mason sounded satisfied. He looked away toward John Sullivan. “Keep Livermore after that renegade program round the clock.”

  “Will do, Slim!”

  Mason looked around the room at the drawn faces and sighed. This meeting had been tough enough, but he dreaded the next one. One word kept cycling through his mind—Midway. Admiral Yamamoto lost the imperial fleet during the battle for Midway Island. Mason felt as if they’d lost the imperial fleet and must now tell the emperor.

  “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I must call the President.”

  The Last Lunch, 12/09/2014, 1922 Zulu, 12:22 P.M. Local

  Siiripod Addams’ Apartment,

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Shripod Addams savored the moment. Doing Allah’s will, he’d found revenge against the infidel American government for the losses of Desert Storm.

  He drove home to his apartment for lunch and began to work on his second job. Sitting down behind his home computer, he banged out his last message to Baghdad:

  Laurence horse won by photo finish—

  see press for details.

  Mountain line down.

  Translated, the Trojan horse computer virus from Lawrence Livermore Lab had taken control of the DEWSAT armada. Watch electronic news for additional details. Expect no further reports from him for an undetermined amount of time—his communication chain was broken.

  Satisfied with his terse message, he encrypted it, printed out his hard copy, then completely erased his disk.

  He had one final stop to make on his way back to work. He didn’t need gas, but he would stop anyway—had to eat.

  Suddenly, Addams felt strangely empty, lacking in purpose or cause. His last message seemed anticlimactic, almost meaningless.

  The thrill of the game was gone and he missed it.

  15

  A Conversation with the President, 12/09/2014, 1930 Zulu,