Chapter 3
Queensgate Hospital
Singapore
January 5, 2121
2330 hours
Major Batu was uneasy with all the arrangements but there really wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. The Secretary-General was sick and had been taken to a nearby hospital that evening, cutting short the address he had been about to make to the Lions of Commerce Association on his new vision for the upcoming General Assembly session. He had a fever and it was rising. The physician detail that always accompanied the S-G prescribed some pills and sent him off to Queensgate, with orders to go to bed and get some rest. More pills and fluids were taken. Dr. Li, lead physician of the detail, had just told Batu he wanted to do a medbot insert the next day, to investigate the malady.
That’s when Batu started having heartburn.
Jaime Aquino, the S-G, was okay with the idea of an insert, even though he’d be incapacitated for several hours. As head of the S-G’s security detail, Major Batu had little choice but to reluctantly agree. The insert was planned for early tomorrow morning. Aquino had dismissed Batu and turned in for the night.
Batu went downstairs to the security command post that had been set up in a first floor waiting room. He chain-smoked. He chugged gallons of coffee and tea. He watched street traffic through the window, mindlessly counting pedestrians, vehicles, rikshas and made up stories about the working girls inhabiting every corner. Sleep was the last thing on his mind.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up.
Upstairs in the SG’s suite, Jaime Aquino couldn’t sleep either.
As he lay awake tossing about in his bed, he noticed a faint light outside the window. The suite was on the fifth floor of the Queensgate, a special suite reserved for heads of state, dignitaries and celebrities. Aquino watched the light for a few minutes. It was diffuse, almost blue-white in color. And it was getting brighter.
He got up to investigate.
As he approached the window, he knew right away what the light was. Already he could hear the keening buzz of nanobotic conflict; the bots of the security barrier were already engaging something outside the window. Aquino inched closer.
Almost immediately, the light flared into blinding brilliance and a sharp hiss could be heard. Aquino staggered back and lost his balance, falling heavily to the floor, completely blinded by the light flooding in. A wave of heat washed over him as he scrambled away from the window. Then as he squinted at the battle now joined outside the windowpane, the buzz reached a shrill peak and cool air began drifting in. The window vanished in a flash and Aquino quickly found himself enveloped in a cloud of bots.
He flailed, tried screaming but found the pressure of the cloud was too great. He was being smothered, suffocated, fighting and kicking and scratching and clawing there was no air and slowly, but surely the tunnel yawned wide and he tumbled headlong down the black corridor at breakneck speed, spinning spinning spinning until at the end….
There was nothing and he lost consciousness.
The flickering cloud descended over the prostrate body of the SG, fully engulfing him in a small supernova of incandescent brilliance.
Half an hour later, the ball of light began to dim and in a few minutes, the light died off and the cloud dispersed. The body of Jaime Aquino, Secretary-General of the United Nations, had vanished…seemingly consumed by the cloud.
The room was dark and only the tattered, smoking shreds of curtains remained, flapping in a gentle early morning breeze wafting up from the harbor two kilometers away.
Major Batu had drifted off to a fitful sleep but startled himself awake, nearly falling to the floor of the command post. A nearby door clicked shut and Batu found himself staring up through bleary eyes at a lieutenant from the security detail, pecking out something on a nearby keypad.
“What time is it, Yang?”
The lieutenant saw that Batu was awake. “Almost four a.m., sir. You asked me to wake you at this hour. I was about to—“
Batu waved him away. “Never mind.” He shook his head to clear the last vestiges of a bad dream. Maybe he had imagined that insistent buzzing sound. “I’d better go hunt down Dr. Li. He wanted to get the SG prepped early for the insert. Fix me some of that tea.”
He scanned the board quickly, noting that the security barrier around Aquino’s suite was fluctuating in intensity. “Have you dropped the barrier, Lieutenant? The integrity signal’s blinking.”
“No, sir…I just noticed that myself.”
Instantly, Batu was fully awake. “Take Jurong and Bukrit and get up there. Make sure the barrier’s intact. I’ll find Dr. Li and get him started. I don’t like it. This place has too many gaps.”
They found the suite seemingly undisturbed. When Batu showed up moments later, with Dr. Li and several nurses, Jaime Aquino was asleep, under light covers in bed. Li bent over and gently awakened the SG.
Aquino yawned and stretched and meekly submitted to a quick exam by the doctor and his nurses. Batu scanned the room. The window was open and the curtains were flapping in a stiff morning breeze but otherwise he could detect nothing out of sort. A fine ash lined the floor around the foot of the bed. Batu stooped to finger it, putting it experimentally to his nose. Probably blew in from the harbor or the Esplanade, he figured. Some container ship cranking up its diesels. Still, it ought to be checked out.
Li was fussing over his patient. “He’ll need something for that fever. Seems to have gotten worse since last night. Do you feel well, sir? Do you have any aches or pains, joint discomfort, that sort of thing? You’re still running a low-grade fever.”
Aquino sat up in bed. “A little washed out…that’s all.”
“Doctor—“ one of the nurses showed Li a reading from her scanner. “His skin’s pretty warm, too. Almost like an infection…it’s all over. I don’t see any rashes or anything…maybe it’s below the epidermis—“
“Let me see,” Li clucked and hmmed at the scanner display. He bent over and felt along Aquino’s arm and chest, pursing his lips as he did so. “Most peculiar. I’m not sure what to make of this. Sir, I think we’d better get you into exam room. Can you walk? Or do you want us to wheel you in?”
“I can walk,” Aquino said weakly. He smiled faintly at Batu and told his security chief to go back downstairs. “I’ll be okay, Major. Go get some sleep. You look like hell.”
Reluctantly, Batu complied and disappeared out into the hall. He headed for the lift.
Ten minutes later, the SG was strapped down on the exam table in the medbot containment chamber. A bioweb field flickered faintly in a dim halo around the bed.
"Okay, Doctor." One nurse, whose name tag read Simag, patted down the pinprick incision she had just made in the side of Aquino's skull. "Subject's prepped and ready."
Dr. Li manipulated the inserter tube, attached by hose to the containment chamber. "Steady even suction, Simag. AMAD ready to fly?"
The nurse came back, "Ready in all respects, Doctor."
"Vascular grid?"
"Tracking now. We'll be able to follow the master just fine. You'll be able to replicate once we're through the blood-brain barrier."
"Watch for capillary flow," said another nurse. Her name tag said Dibruk. "When his capillaries narrow, your speed will increase. And viscosity will stay up."
"Like slogging through molasses. AMAD's inerted and stable…ready for insertion."
But the insertion went south almost immediately. A slug of plasma forced the replicant master into Aquino's capillary network at high pressure. Li got an acoustic pulse seconds later and selected Fly-by-Stick to navigate the system. A few minutes' run on its propulsors brought the medbot master to a dense fibrous mat of capillary tissues. The image soon appeared on Li's panel.
“What the—“ Li adjusted the display. “This is nothing like—“
That’s when both nurses reali
zed what they were dealing with.
“It’s an angel!”
Straight away, AMAD was overwhelmed by the swarm that was Jaime Aquino.
The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across their view like shadowy ping-pong balls. Li studied readouts from AMAD's sounder…something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. He fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter.
Something approximately sixty nanometers in one dimension, narrow with a globe structure at one end…and scores of probes, effectors, cilia, whatever. Incredible mobility…triple propulsors beat an idling rhythm as AMAD closed in….
“Here they come, Doctor…”
The Secretary-General’s body was no body, but a dense collection of nanobotic elements, woven together so completely that, even on close inspection, they couldn’t tell the difference. It took the medbot sounder to prove the truth.
“I’m pulling out!” Li manipulated the controller but it was already too late. As AMAD sped forward, the bots that were Aquino grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speed. The outer membrane of the mechs seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.
The gap between them vanished and AMAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield.
Standing beside Aquino's bed, Simag’s voice rose and fell, repeating incantations in a low tongue. She squeezed and twisted rosary beads like they were going to fly off into space.
Li was stunned by the speed of the assault. A battalion of swarmbots soon engulfed AMAD. No time to replicate now…got to get free…signal daughters….Li fired off a burst of instructions to gather all the daughters AMAD had replicated going in. It might be too late.
The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.
Several minutes passed. The imager view vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The water was soon choked with cellular debris. The swarmbots replicated several times, adding new molecule strings. It stripped off electrons to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms. In seconds, Li’s medbot was immobilized by the chlorine sheath.
"I can't hold structure!" Li yelled. "I'm reconfiguring…shutting down peripheral systems!"
Nurse Dibruk had taken a place beside Li at the interface controls. "Got to disengage, Doctor…emergency truncation. Everything not critical. We've got to get AMAD out of there before we lose him!"
"I'm trying…but the damn mech's penetrated the signal path…if he cuts the link…."
"I know, I know…just keep trying…internal bonds on main body structure weakening…you’re losing all grappling capability…."
As they watched, the swarm that was Aquino systematically dismantled AMAD, molecule by molecule. Nobody had expected this. With ruthless efficiency, Aquino, or what had once been Aquino, whirred and chopped every device the medbot could generate. Li and Dibruk tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers--but it was no use.
AMAD was quickly attacked and immediately disassembled, shredded into atom fluff inside the body of the S-G.
For a few moments, Li and his nurses stared down at the prostrate body of Jaime Aquino. Outwardly normal, sedated and snoring lightly, the SG was to all outward appearances a fifty-ish, slightly balding man of slender build, prepped on an examining table in the middle of Queensgate Hospital’s Medbotic Containment Lab. Li withdrew the inserter tube and carefully placed his gloved fingers against the skin of Aquino’s neck.
It feels real. It gives, it rebounds. I can pinch it like skin. And yet, at the nanoscale level, Jaime Aquino was no bag of bones and blood vessels, but rather a collection of nanobotic devices.
An angel.
Li wiped perspiration from his eyes. “Bring me another container. Another medbot…we’ve got a pod in that cabinet over there.”
“Doctor—“ Simag started to protest, her eyes wide and unblinking at the full horror of what lay on the table. “Doctor Li, I don’t—“
“Just do it!”
Simag hustled over to a nearby cabinet and selected a small capsule from the shelf. She scanned the label: Autonomous Medical Assembler/Disassembler (AMAD) V3.1. Observe All Safety Procedures When Using This Device. Flustered, nearly fumbling the thing to the floor, she gingerly handed the capsule to Li.
Li fastened the capsule to the outer port of the inserter. “Now, let’s try this again…must have been something in the insert. AMAD replicated early and started executing on its own…I’ll turn on all inhibits this time. AMAD won’t be able to do anything until I give the signal.” He checked the capsule connection for any loose ends and fingered a few control studs on the side, priming the device inside. “Okay, prepare to launch—“
Dibruk signaled her readiness. Simag covered her mouth, tasting her rosary beads.
“Okay, let’s do it. Launch AMAD.”
As before, an audible whoosh followed, as the slug of plasma forced the AMAD master into Aquino's capillary network at high pressure. But this time no signal came back.
This time, right before their eyes, the Secretary-General himself began disassembling on the exam table.
Li jerked the inserter away from Aquino’s head. “Get back! The thing’s dissolving—“ He flung the control pad down and made for the hatch, but it was already too late.
Simag was the first to go. While Li lunged for the containment controls, trying to jab at the beam injector, the prostrate body of Jaime Aquino disappeared in a blazing orb of light, engulfing the exam table, the console, Simag and Dibruk, everything nearby in a big bang of nanobotic overdrive. The botcloud swelled outward like a slow-motion explosion in miniature.
Simag screamed, clawing at her face, her hands flailing in terror. “Get it off me! Get it off….arrrrrggghhhh!” She went down hard to the floor and in seconds, only her hands and feet twitching were all that was left. Dibruk dashed over to the outer hatch, trying to spin the door handle open, but tendrils of bots snaked out and she was on her face, slapping and kicking and shrieking at the top of her lungs.
Li managed to reach the electron beam controls and stabbed the button. Instantly, the examining room was bathed in a blue-white light as trillions of electron volts slashed through the air, ripping electrons from atoms, frying molecules into atom fluff.
But the defense system had no discernible effect. When it had first appeared, the swarm that had once been Jaime Aquino had erupted billowing from the examining table. At first, the swarm resembled nothing more than trembling shadows, a pale flickering cloud of dust motes in a shaft of sunlight streaming into the chamber. As it ascended from the table, the swarm thickened and gathered itself into a roughly spherical shape, still pulsing, still throbbing, backlit from within by the fires of atomic bonds being broken, new structures being slammed together, new bots being formed.
The Aquino-angel hung in the smoky air like a swollen cloud, ready to dump torrential rains on a tropical forest. But they were a long way from any rain forests. The swarm unfurled itself and hung in the air like a great storm front, a trembling fist, flashing purple and orange and magenta all at the same time.
Dr. Chen Li, lead physician of the Secretary-General’s medical detail, lasted less than five minutes. When it was all done, only a faint residue was left, small nearly invisible piles scattered across the floor tiles. That and the alarm which sounded in the first-floor security command post…that was the result of electron beam injectors going off. In seconds, alarms, klaxons and sirens were going off throughout Queensgate Hospital on all floors.
Hospital security joined Major Batu and his detail, racing up flights of stairs four at a
time, up to the third floor Medbot Lab.
“Come on! Something’s triggered a flash!” someone yelled. RF guns were drawn and security officers approached the outer hatch of the Lab cautiously, creeping along the walls, scanning floor and ceiling for traces of bots in the corridor.
Batu gestured at the hatch controls. “Get that thing open now!”
Hospital staff frantically worked the keypad, cycling through biometrics and ID verification as fast as they could. Finally, the hatch spun open and Batu shoved his way into the exam room.
Inside, he found….nothing…seemingly nothing out of the ordinary. The SG lay on the table under light covers. He blinked back at the assembled force.
“Is there a problem? I’d like to get this procedure over as soon as possible--“
Batu and the security officers stared in open-mouthed amazement. “We heard the beam alarms going off. Are you all right, sir? Anything wrong…and where is Dr. Li anyway?”
Aquino yawned. Batu didn’t notice that the SG’s lips didn’t quite track with the gesture…like something interfering with a TV signal, a shadowing effect that was subtle and gone before anyone noticed it.
But one officer had noticed it. Sergeant Bedok Jurang’s eyes narrowed, even as the SG moved to sit up in bed, propping himself up on one elbow.
“I really would like to get this procedure over with…my schedule is jammed today. I haven’t got a moment to waste. I don’t know where Dr. Li is…he’s just vanished.”
“Check the whole room,” Batu ordered. The security detail went over every square centimeter. His eyes narrowed at the window; something definitely didn’t look right there. “Sir, I think we’d better get you out of here.”
Aquino waved that off. “I’m okay, Major…I just want to feel better…get this probe done and get back to work. I have a big speech coming up, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was Sergeant Jurang who saw what nobody else saw. Next to the bed, a monitor stand displayed vital signs from the bed scanners. A separate console on wheels was for the probe itself. Containment controls, imager screen, acoustic and effector controls…a full panoply for medbot insertion and operation. There was no probe underway, no inserter connected to the SG.
Yet the medbot panel was active, showing swarms in the area, nanobotic swarms in operation. Jurang kept his eyes on the SG and inched his way closer to the side of the bed, to take a better look.
It couldn’t have been any clearer. Jurang studied the readouts out of the corner of his eyes: elevated thermal emissions, electromagnetic activity, acoustic returns…something was driving the display. And there were edge effects too. When Aquino moved his hands and fingers…something was wrong. His fingers were blurred momentarily. They didn’t rest naturally against his chest, but disappeared partly below the skin--
Jurang tapped Batu on the shoulder. “Major--?”
“What is it, Sergeant? Found something?”
Jurang subtly motioned the Major to step outside of the exam room. The remainder of the detail continued checking and scanning the room.
Jurang related what he had seen. “That isn’t the Secretary-General in there, sir. I’m sure of it.”
“What are you talking about, Jurang. Of course, it’s the SG.”
“This patient isn’t what he seems to be. Check the medbot monitors. It’s an angel. I’m sure of it. All the monitors show it. High thermals, the works. I’m telling you that thing in there is an angel.”
Another officer scoffed. “That’s nonsense…I’d know if that was an angel. That’s the Secretary-General of the United Nations in there…maybe feeling a little poorly, but still—“
Major Batu was skeptical but knew he couldn’t rule anything out. There had been a beam alarm. Something had happened up here. And with what the Assimilationists had been up to lately, it was getting harder to tell Normals from angels. You just couldn’t be too careful.
But the Secretary-General?
Batu withdrew his weapon. It was an rf pulse pistol. He thumbed the setting to maximum and went back into the exam room.
U.S. Cyber Corps Headquarters
National Threat and Intelligence Fusion Center
January 5, 2121
Herndon, Virginia
1215 hours
Captain Anson Leeds took the stairs down to NTIFC’s Watch Center three at a time. This better not be another false alarm, he told himself. There had been enough of those the last week to last a lifetime. He checked his wristpad and grunted as he nearly twisted an ankle on the stairs landing. Another Level 1 alert and more threatcons to follow. Something had stirred up WorldNet like a stick in a bees’ nest.
The Watch Center was a semi-circular mission control room with screens and displays on every available surface. The Big Board showed an outline of North America, the eastern seaboard to be exact. Red, green, blue and white lights blinked on and off, strobing in synch with key node and server farm activity levels, as the Net breathed and pulsed zettabytes of data every second around the earth and into near-earth space.
Leeds spotted the Current Status desk and headed for it. He recognized the two duty officers right away: Lieutenant Linda Tracey and Sergeant Will Vogt.
Good techs, both of them. Leeds knew they’d be on top of anything that came up.
“What have you got for me guys?” Leeds landed next to their station and studied the Big Board. The entire east coast was flickering with lights and data blocks.
Tracey was harried, shaking her head, swearing under her breath. “It’s ECSO, sir…East Coast System Operator. We’ve got a Level 1 cascade going down right now…multiple flashovers in key junctions…transients up and down the network…race conditions at two control centers….”
“And threatcons coming in from WorldNet like a tsunami, sir,” added Vogt. “High risk gradients on all of them. Look at this—“ he pointed to a display on his console, scrolling system status from multiple nodes. “Server firewalls breached at every location. Rootkit exploits popping up everywhere like mushrooms. Tricky stuff too, sir. Runtime environment’s contaminated at over a hundred nodes. They’re re-directing, but this baby’s spreading fast. Jamestown’s already down. I’ve got twenty others on the edge.” Vogt threw up his hands. “There goes Watkinsville and Cliff Valley…that whole sector’s toast. I haven’t seen anything like this in months, maybe years. We may be looking at kernel-level rootkits here…maybe even some zero-day stuff.”
Leeds could see it was serious. A growing power blackout was rippling up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard. Along with the blackout and its cascading effects radiating outward like cracks in a sidewalk, WorldNet alarms were going off, lending a circus-like atmosphere to the Watch Center. Techs scurried from one station to another. People gestured. Voices were raised. Fingers were pointed.
Something was attacking key nodes and server centers around the world, something big and coordinated. Was it a drill? Another exercise ordered by General Pacer? Leeds hadn’t seen anything on the boards lately about an upcoming exercise. The bi-annual Com-Ex games weren’t due for another four months. Not that the USCINCCYBER needed an excuse to run a drill…or an ORI visit. Operational Readiness Inspections made everyone‘s breakfast taste like brass fillings.
“What does COHEN have to say?” The AI that ran the Watch Center had been given the nickname months ago, coming online after years of testing and debugging. The Cyber Operations and Heuristic Algorithmic Network could digest yottabytes of data every second and spit out analyses and conclusions like a university professor on steroids. Plus some wise guy had adorned the voice response system with a faint Yiddish accent. Jokes, puns and wisecracks abounded in the weeks after COHEN went live.
“COHEN thinks this is a Sandstorm variant, Captain,” Tracey said. “It’s seeing some of the same kinds of exploits, some of the same techniques, digital certificates, grabbing protect
ed memory and buffer-overflow tricks. This one may be an updated variant of earlier Russian or Chinese versions…Sandstorm with some new tools.”
Leeds bent down to study the code scrolling on Tracey’s screen. COHEN was filtering and comparing and running correlations at high speed, too fast for any human to follow. All you could do was trust the system and try to get out of the way.
“I’m seeing bits and pieces of Sandstorm here,” Leeds admitted. “Kernel-mode stuff. Lots of .dll calls. But something’s different…look, even COHEN thinks so.” Even as Leeds watched, the AI was flagging code blocks and lines that it didn’t understand, or couldn’t find any compares to list. “Analysis, guys? I’ve got to give something to CINCCYBER in about ten minutes. Anytime a Level One sounds, Pacer wants the gritty details on his desk immediately, if not sooner.”
“Sir, I think we should deal with this as an updated, maybe altered or souped-up version of Sandstorm, until we learn differently. There are differences and things COHEN can’t figure out. I’ve seen a few gotchas and Easter eggs myself, just in the last hour. But treating this like Sandstorm gives us a place to start.”
“How about attribution? Or are we dealing with a botnet here or a cutout network?”
“Even COHEN can’t keep up with all the proxies, Captain,” said Vogt. “They’re exploding like mushrooms.”
Or like nanobots in big bang overdrive, thought Leeds. But he didn’t say that. “Okay, boys and girls, I’m headed upstairs. Give me the latest and I’ll put it before Pacer as a probable Sandstorm attack.”
Vogt synched COHEN’s emitter at their station and the analytics went straight to Leeds’ wristpad. The captain checked the results, pronounced himself satisfied and headed out of the Watch Center.
CINCYBER’s office suite was seven stories up, the penthouse view of snow-covered rolling hills and Virginia horse country. Leeds rode the secure lift and found himself face to face with General Wesley Pacer, who frowned and chewed the end of toothpick as he scowled at his own display.
“COHEN’s got his hands full today, Captain. Sit, sit. You’re saying this is Sandstorm we’re facing? What about the power outages?”
Leeds sat down. Pacer was mid-fifties, not enhanced, so far as anyone knew. Steel gray crew-cut, hard cheeks and facial planes, like a shovel blade with eyes. Big ears that stuck out and absolutely no one made any wisecracks about them, if they wanted to live. Pacer was a doer. He got things done.
“ECSO is at the center of this, General. It’s a cascading failure and all the telemetry shows the same thing. We’ve got multiple surges, overvolt and undervolt events and none of the system controllers can balance the load…it’s like something’s infected all of them. They’re sluggish, when they operate at all. There’s a two-hundred gigawatt load sloshing around out there like a runaway freight train…wreaking havoc everywhere it lands. None of the generators can account for it. It just appeared. This Sandstorm event’s caused server and alarm failures up and down the line. Multiple voltage and power spikes and we’re completely blind to what’s happening.”
Pacer snapped the toothpick clean in two with his clenched teeth. “I’ve already sent a PURPLE message to the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House. I’ve also activated CyberFence but all these countermeasures are like taking this toothpick here and poking an elephant. Net result has been zero. Hell, we may have actually made things worse. The friggin’ blackout’s spreading into Canada and west to the Great Lakes. Even places in western Europe are going offline. I expect POTUS will be making a call here any minute.”
“Sir, the consensus from COHEN is that Sandstorm’s responsible, but we don’t know who. Maybe the Russians. Maybe the Chinese. Maybe some Bulgarian teen-ager. Maybe the Old Ones from outer space. But there are some significant differences, things we can’t ignore.”
“Like what, Leeds?”
“The rate this thing is spreading, for one thing, sir. Even in all the past exploits and assaults, even in the COM-EX exercises, no virus or worm or Trojan or logic bomb or any kind of malware has spread this far, this fast. It essentially erupted everywhere at once, like a global instantaneous assault at every WorldNet server center and node at the same time. It’s like there are ghosts inside the Net, inside PHAROAH itself. Something at the very heart of WorldNet’s operating system that mirrors every action, every command and link, and every execution, then when the right word or condition comes, pow!... it puts a hand over PHAROAH’s mouth and starts running the whole show. I’m wondering if we’ve got some kind of malware right in PHAROAH’S main memory, right in the very kernel of the system.”
Pacer was about to respond, but the Crystal vidcon chirped, indicating encrypted traffic coming in. The Seal of the Presidency flashed up on the screen.
“Here he is, Leeds…right on cue. Good day, Mr. President.”
On screen was Samuel L. Kenley, President of the United States. POTUS was white-haired, ruddy-cheeked from a recent ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where the Leader of the Free World had hung out for the last week in a borrowed mansion the size of a small country.
Leeds started to get up but Pacer waved him back to his seat. “Stick around,” he told Leeds. “I may need you. Sir, I just flashed the latest from COHEN to your inbox. We think it’s Sandstorm again, maybe a newer version.”
Kenley’s face was a map of conflicting emotions, all boundaries and crags and wrinkles, fighting each other. He blinked at the screen. “Attribution’s all I care about, General, at this point. Is this Russia? Is this China? I need somebody to blame. The public’ll have my head in a noose if I can’t blame somebody. This—“ he stopped when he realized they had a new participant on the line.
The vidcon had chirped and another window opened up on the screen. It was the UN Security Affairs Commissioner, Evelyn Lumumba. UNSAC was an ebony-black Cameroonian woman of striking beauty, with fierce warrior eyes and bristly conical hair, adorned by an ivory and bone hairpiece that rattled when she turned her head. She conned in from UNSAC’s offices at the Quartier-General in Paris.
“Good afternoon, Evelyn,” POTUS said. “I was just asking General Pacer here if it’s Russia or China again.’
CINCCYBER was unequivocal in his answer. “Without a doubt, Mr. President. Couldn’t be anybody else. The forensics all point that way.”
Not all of them, Leeds thought to himself. But he said nothing.
Lumumba sat back and thought. Her hairpiece rattled again. “I’d say maybe, Mr. President. We’ve seen the analyses your COHEN system has sent over. But our own people think there could be other explanations. Already, we’ve detected quantum state fluctuations around the perimeter of Kipwezia…indicating Config Zero’s up to something again. He’s been quiet for over a decade, so we don’t know what’s up, but a team has already been formed to track down these disturbances and make sure Config Zero stays in quarantine.”
UNSAC words galvanized Leeds. The moment seemed opportune. He raised a hand to flag CINCCYBER’s attention. “General, if I may--?”
Pacer waved him on. “Go ahead, Major.”
“Sir, I guess I have something of a contrary view. There are network indicators we should be considering here…the speed of the infection, if that’s what it is. The nature of the assault…we’re looking at kernel-rootkit assault, right at the very core of PHAROAH, the Net operating system. The fact that there appears to be a series of very serious, very subtle zero-day backdoors going on here, even inside Russia and China. This thing has appeared out of nowhere and appeared everywhere almost instantly. That tells me this is a foundational attack, something fundamental to the very protocols that operate WorldNet and Solnet. Even Gateway Station and Farside are reporting malware on their systems.”
POTUS was unconvinced. “So the Russians and the Chinese are also infected…that means nothing. At the end of World War II, Stalin shot his own repatriated POWs and soldi
ers. Couldn’t let the Perfect Society be contaminated by exposure to the Nazis or the other Allies. This proves nothing.”
“There is one other indicator we should consider,” Leeds went on. “We’ve all seen the same reports about unusual meteor showers in the skies over the last few weeks. I checked with Solnet News before I came up here. Just yesterday, before all this started happening, there was an enormous spike in meteoric activity and so far, no known astronomical source can account for it. Yeah, there are dust clouds flitting around the Solar System, usually cometary or asteroidal debris…the Geminids, the Perseids, things like that. But these showers last a few days at most, as the Earth plows through some dust stream and they’re over. That hasn’t been happening. Somewhere off Earth, there’ s a source of dust that’s producing these showers. The fact that they spiked in volume just a day or so before a big malware attack on the Net and a Level 1 power outage up and down our eastern seaboard may well be a coincidence. But I don’t think we can discount the possibility of unknown interference effects on our digital systems. Solar activity plays havoc with comms all across the Solar System…that’s a known effect. Maybe, the Net has finally become so complex, so sensitive, that effects like these meteors can cause cascading failures on a scale we’ve never seen before. Sir,” he faced POTUS directly on the vidcon, “we shouldn’t discount the possibility.”
POTUS, UNSAC and CINCCYBER all nodded in unison. POTUS cleared his throat and ran a hand through an unruly lock of white hair. The man was starting to resemble Einstein on a bad hair day. “Major, your concerns and analysis are duly noted. However, I’m going with the preponderance of the evidence. I’ve seen enough. It’s Russia. Or China. It has to be. And once and for all, it’s high time for us to retaliate. I am going to authorize CyberSword. General, make all necessary preparations and load up your guns. Then come back to me for authority to proceed. I’ll clear it with our friends at the UN and with State and Defense.”
Pacer nodded. “At once, sir. Mr. President, you are fully aware of what authorizing CyberSword means…we did a run-through during the last Com-Ex.”
POTUS took a deep breath. “I do, General. A massive pre-planned offensive cyber response to this Sandstorm attack, taking out trunk lines and key nodes and major server installations inside Russia and China. I fully expect we’ll cripple large sectors of both nations’ economy and industry. It’s well past time to teach these jokers a lesson they won’t forget. We can play the same game as them.”
Anson Leeds swallowed hard. What President Kenley has just authorized was a massive ‘nuclear’ response. A killing response. He couldn’t help shake the feeling. CyberSword wasn’t what was needed. It would cause more problems than it solved. It was like taking a howitzer to a gnat. Not only that, Leeds was more and more convinced the gnat wasn’t the problem. While Kenley and Pacer and Lumumba were chasing gnats, other bugs had somehow crawled into the Net from a different direction. Leeds was sure of it.
He just couldn’t prove it yet.
The President and UNSAC discussed coordination between the U.S. and UNIFORCE for a few minutes.
“Well, I’ve got a press conference in an hour,” Kenley said. “I suppose I’ll get hammered by all the reporters over what we’re doing. But damn it…the Russians and the Chinese can’t just slam our infrastructure with viruses and worms and expect to get away with it. Sooner or later, somebody’s got to pay. And now’s the time.”
Lumumba agreed. “It’s past time to take the initiative, Mr. President. I’ll advise the Security Council and the SG of your plans. And we’ll need to make sure there are good communication links between Quantum Corps and your Cyber Corps people.”
Pacer chimed in. “I’ve got just the liaison in mind, Mr. President. Major Leeds here has worked with Table Top and other Quantum Corps sites for several years now. They participate in our Com-Ex exercises every year, sometime as a Red Force, sometimes with us as part of Blue.”
“Perfect,” Kenley decided. “Now if you’ll excuse me—“ The vidcon link to the White House went dark, to be replaced by the Presidential Seal.
“I’ll talk with CINCQUANT myself,” Lumumba was saying. “General Argo will want to keep his forces on full alert when CyberSword goes down. The Russians and the Chinese will surely respond in kind after we drop a few logic bombs on them. I’m authorizing ThreatCon One. Argo will have to keep his botshields humming at every site. There’s no telling where the enemy will strike.”
“Agreed,” Pacer said. UNSAC signed off and the vidcon was over. The General turned to Leeds.
“Leeds, have you lost your cotton-pickin’ mind? What’s all this crap about ‘lights in the sky’ and men from Mars? This is full-scale cyberwar and we know who did it. I don’t want to hear any more fairy tales about space dust and alien invasions. We’ve got a war on. The President has just authorized CyberSword and we’ve got a job to do... you’ve got a job to do.”
Leeds was already wishing he had kept his big mouth shut. With POTUS’ orders, Pacer was like a retriever on the hunt…he smelled blood and nothing would dissuade him. “Sir, I just happen to think CyberSword is not necessary. It’ll do more harm than good, for all of us. It’s an over-response.”
“I suppose we should just let all these worms and viruses run wild around the Net, destroying our power plants and water supplies…Major Leeds, I know you better than that. You and I both took an oath of office. After Sandstorm or whatever the hell this is, if we didn’t respond and return fire, we should both be tried for treason and shot.”
Leeds shook his head. “That’s not it, sir. There’s more going on inside WorldNet than just Russian or Chinese cyber-mischief.”
Pacer scoffed. “What proof do you have, son?”
“Ever heard of the ADAM Project, General? James Tsu’s in charge of that effort.”
Pacer thought for a moment, then recognition came to him. “Isn’t he that egghead down at the Wizard Works?”
“CyberLab, sir…that’s the official name. The ADAM Project is a research effort that’s looking into whether or not the Net could be exhibiting evidence of sentience, even intelligence. It’s become complex enough and there’s a school of thought that says once a system becomes that complex, it can achieve something like intelligence. You personally approved the effort, sir.”
Pacer frowned. “I must have been out of my mind. It doesn’t matter anyway. The Commander-in-Chief has given us our orders. It’s our job to obey and carry them out. Keep monitoring and analyzing the situation…keep feeding stuff to COHEN and see what he comes up with. As for me, I’ve got a war to run.”
Major Anson Leeds was dismissed and returned to the Watch Center downstairs. Cyber-hell was about to be let loose across WorldNet and Leeds had a bad feeling about what would happen. If James Tsu was even half right, the Net or whatever had infected the Net was about to get a big kick in the pants. CyberSword would soon send insane quantities of worms, viruses, logic bombs, Trojans and other malware flying across the Net. The Russians and the Chinese would do the same.
A cat fight was a certainty and nobody could say who would get scratched worse after it got started.