PROBABLE CAUSE OF DEATH: WELLSEEKER MALFUNCTION.
PROBABLE CAUSE OF WELLSEEKER MALFUNCTION : SOFTWARE INFECTION.
ILLEGAL MODIFICATIONS TO THE VICTIM’S BRAINWARE MAKES FURTHER ANALYSIS UNAD-VISABLE. FAMILY SHOULD NOTIFY STATION FORENSIC LAB WITHIN 24 HOURS IF THEY PLAN TO ARRANGE FOR PRIVATE AUTOPSY.
BE FOREWARNED THAT ANYONE HIRED FOR SOFTWARE AUTOPSY MUST BE WARNED OF THE PRESENCE OF ILLEGAL MODIFICATIONS IN THIS SUBJECT, AS PER STATION CODE 3410-97-9E. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN FINES AND/OR IMPRISONMENT.
Software infection. Wellseeker malfunction.
Shit.
He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, a cold and clammy and downright ominous sensation. Because they’d been screwing around with a major software virus right before Torch went down. It was something Chaos had found on the outernet, massive and complicated and as intelligent as a virus could get. Awesome stuff. She’d looked at it too closely herself, and gotten fried. Poor Chaos. She was good at what she did, but she was never very careful; she relied on intuition to decide when to take precautions and when not ... and this time, apparently, it had failed her.
They’d posted her death notice on the moddie networks, and a thousand faceless friends from throughout the outerworlds had sent in obits or roasts or whatever to commemorate her brief life. She’d become well loved among them, as befit someone who once made all the Hellsgate Pol computers churn out yellow smiley faces whenever they were asked for mug shots. Man, that was a classic. The best part was that she’d once slept with this guy who worked for the Pol there, some ex-hacker they’d later bribed into doing data security, and she probably could have gotten him to just give her safe access to the system, if she’d wanted it ... only she didn’t. She wanted to do it the hard way. Which was why they all loved her like they did.
So the death notice had gone out and the responses came in, and along with all the notes of grieving and sympathy came an odd little packet from Lisalia. Seems the crowd there had picked up a few samples of a nasty little virus, and it looked very much like what she had been playing with. It took Phoenix’s crowd a week to yank its teeth so they could even copy it without getting burned, but at last they had a copy they could take a close look at, safely. Sure enough, it matched up with the one she’d inloaded, at least in the parts that mattered. This was Chaos’ killer.
He was willing to bet that’s what Torch had been working on, too. Maybe all its teeth weren’t out, after all. Maybe it was nasty enough to grow new ones. He could feel a cold knot of hate growing in the pit of his stomach, a kind of hate he’d never felt before. If this was what had taken Torch down ... then there would be vengeance. One moddie death might be an accident—maybe—but two meant that someone or something was targeting their kind. And that would not be tolerated.
Was it possible the government was conspiring to take the moddies out? Torch had thought so. It was no secret that the augmented hackers were a thorn in everyone’s side, from the loftiest Guild authority down to the lowliest shipping clerk. Everybody’d been hit at one time or another, be it with a playful infection that translated all their private documents into Pig Latin, or a subtle, insidious mole that ground government functioning to a halt when it finally broke out. When you had a central processing system to which everyone and their mother were plugged in, such pranks were inevitable. The majority of problems were caused by youngsters who really didn’t know what they were doing, of course, out to prove their fledgling manhood by screwing with other people’s data; they generally got caught, and their wrists were heavily slapped by the Powers That Be. Most quit the game at that point. Those that didn’t tried again, and tried harder, and in the end they got good enough not to get caught any more. Which was a good thing, ’cause that kind of behavior could get you put away for life. Which is why Phoenix was damned glad that Torch had fixed his own files, the one time the pols had picked him up. If they’d ever figured out just how much havoc he was personally responsible for, the goons would have canned him, for sure.
So maybe this virus was somebody’s way of getting back at them. Maybe somebody got hit by an electronic prank and didn’t appreciate it for the art form it was, and decided to exact his own revenge. Torch had always believed that the virus which took out Chaos was a government plot, a way of dealing with hackers through their own choice medium. What if he’d been right?
Then there will be hell to pay, Phoenix swore silently.
There was a code of behavior common to all hackers: unwritten, unspoken, but absolute. You didn’t hurt people. Their businesses were fair game, their possessions, and even their governments—but not people. You might shut down the whole Paradise shipping ring just to watch the state of electronic panic which ensued, but you didn’t screw with a med center. You might target a politician known for anti-mod campaigning, and add a few thousand live-sex calls to his vid bill (alerting the press, of course), but you didn’t do that to a politico on whose reputation some disaster relief bill was riding. You might even rig a bank executive’s account so that when he woke up one day he discovered that every cent he possessed had been donated to the Friends of Earth, or some other such fringe group. But you never, ever, took money that was needed to feed a hungry child, or purchase medication, or otherwise save a human life. That just wasn’t done. And likewise the government’s attempts to crack down on the hackers—an effort that went on constantly, with notably little success—always fell short of the ultimate penalty. It was an unspoken agreement, to which both sides had adhered since the beginning of electronic time. Thou shalt not kill.
Until now.
He stared at the thing on his monitor, hating it, loving it, needing to dissect it in that primal way that animals need food and water. He hated working on a monitor, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to load the damn thing into his head. Had Torch done that, had Chaos? It was always tempting. You could manipulate code much better internally than you could through a stone-age mechanism like this. Had Phoenix’s packmates gotten frustrated one day, decided they could handle the consequences, and let the monster in? Modware was notoriously sensitive to such assaults, it lacked the kind of safeguards that came with legal implants. That’s what you got when you added to a system piece by piece, rather than planning it out from the start. Had they figured they could handle it, neutered the virus and then inloaded it only to find out that it hadn’t been neutered at all?
He was going to find out. He was going to take this sucker apart bit by bit if he had to, squeeze it until its secrets ran out like blood, and find out where the hell it had come from. And God help the feds, if they were behind this thing. Or the politicos. Or ... whoever.
The full destructive potential of Phoenix and his kind hadn’t been unleashed for generations, not since the terrorist hacking of the third new century. God help the deadheads if they had forgotten their history lessons, and thought that people like him would sit back and submit to their petty extermination efforts. Did they really believe the moddies would die off one by one in silence, never asking who their enemy was, never striking back?
Fat fucking chance. If the hackers went down, they’d take the outworlds with them. Anyone who thought it couldn’t be done needed to go back and run their history chips again.
God help you all, if Torch was right.
Trust is a luxury to those in power, and those who indulge for no better reason than a hunger to taste its sweetness will know the full power of its poison.
GUILDMASTER PRIME HARLAN NAGASAKI; Memoirs
GUERA NODE TIANANMEN STATION
THE PRIMA knocked when she reached Devlin’s office. She didn’t have to (and with some subordinates never did, it kept them on their toes that way) but Devlin’s rank deserved the courtesy.
“Come in.”
The door slid open in response to his words. When she entered, it slid shut behind her, leaving her in near-darkness. Most of the room was taken up by a holographic display, some bizarre kind of star map that provided
the only light in the room. She recognized the icons representing Earth and Guera at opposite ends of the holo, with a fine webwork of glimmering lines connecting them to the three or four dozen stations between them. It was a large display, the kind you could walk through to get a better perspective, and Devlin was in the center of it. His vision was focused on a pattern of fine white lines so thickly gathered about one point that they looked like a mass of tangled silk. He looked up and saw her then, and the pleasure on his face that it was her and not some annoying subordinate was unmistakable. “Lights to half,” he said aloud, and the room went from dark to semi-lit. He was smiling as he walked toward her, the holo patterning his body as he moved, but she could see from his tightly knit brow and the tension of his shoulders that he had been stressed, was stressed now, and would remain stressed for some time to come.
“Working, I see.”
“Always.”
The display looked chaotic to her, but of course it wasn’t. Nothing he did was ever chaotic. “What is it?”
“Patterns of communication. Compliments of your loving and loyal subjects, whose only purpose is to serve you.” His tone was dry. He reached into the display and pointed to one of the most active icons. “Delhi.” Then another, linked to it by a number of bright lines. “Kent.” And another, some distance away. “Varsav.” And on Paradise, “Ra.”
“You’re monitoring them.”
He smiled darkly. “Of course. Didn’t you tell us that even our own people were suspect? I’m watching them now, as I’m sure they’re watching me.”
“Perhaps if they had the technology they would,” she said, smiling slightly. “As it is, I think you have a slight advantage in that arena.”
He didn’t smile outright, but the comment clearly pleased him. “That’s as it should be, don’t you think? God help this office, the day your Guildmasters know all my tricks.” He looked back at the display once more. “Still, Delhi has some hackers I’d like not to duel with, and Varsav’s security is downright Moebian in logic. Or so I’ve heard,” he added quickly.
She took a few steps closer to the display and studied it herself. From here she could see that the seemingly empty space between station icons was webbed with even more delicate lines, each of them pulsing with its own secret rhythm. She knew that the thickness of each would have meaning to Devlin, as would its luminosity, its rhythm, and its duration. Another programmer might have rendered the same data in a list of numbers, or some other more prosaic form. Devlin preferred a more abstract format, that hinted at complexities no mere list of figures could capture. That was his strength, and the facet of his intelligence which had allowed him to rise above all his would-be rivals. She couldn’t always understand what he was doing ... but could she have relied upon any programmer whose work was fully comprehensible to her? He was a programmer; she wasn’t. She expected mysteries.
Her predecessor had been different, of course. He had ruled the Guild with an iron fist, a simba among simbas. Such lack of subtlety can become a weakness, if exploited properly. Identifying such weaknesses was her own field of specialty.
Which is why she was where she was, and her predecessor was ... gone.
“So what does this tell us?” she asked him.
“That Delhi’s more active than usual. I think she’s got some special project going, and knowing her, that bears watching.”
She caught the cautionary edge in his voice and mused, “You think she’s dangerous.”
He looked up sharply .at her. “They’re all dangerous, Alya. These are the ones most likely to get your job if anything happens to you, and don’t think that a day passes without them thinking about it. If something like this virus were to bring you down....”
Her expression darkened ever so slightly. “Don’t think that a day goes by without my being aware of that, Dev.” She nodded toward the display. “Go on.”
“Kent’s also increased his com activity. He started the day after you met with them all, before he even got back to his station. Now, he’s always been the quickest to respond to any threatening situation, but in this case his speed was truly noteworthy. Perhaps it’s the subject matter here which inspires him; he still thinks of himself as an outpilot, you know. No doubt he sees himself as their natural protector in this crisis ... so his activity is probably Lucifer-linked. Something to watch, not necessarily something to worry about.”
“Perhaps,” she said quietly. She considered whether she should tell him what she’d heard, and if so, how to word it: At last she said, “It’s been suggested to me that Kent might be ... connected to all this.”
“Based on what evidence?”
“There is none ... yet. But it’s been pointed out to me he does have a possible motive.” Her eyes were fixed on him now, and she set her brainware to record what she was seeing. It wasn’t as good as a full-view cam, but it was the best she was going to get. (Damn this virus, which forced her to treat her own loved ones like suspects!) “It has been suggested ... perhaps his resentment over his injury....”
There was a long silence. She could read nothing in his face.
“You think he might strike at the other outpilots? Out of jealousy? Resentment? What?”
She spread her hands wide in speculation. “It’s simply been suggested at this point.” She watched him for a moment, his brows drawn together in contemplation. Quietly she said, “What do you think?”
He took a deep breath before answering. “I think ... it’s possible of course. Anything is possible.” He processed his own thoughts in silence for a moment more, then shook his head. “It’s good we sent for an independent to help with this. Yes, Kent could be guilty. So could I. So could any of us. We’d be better off tracking this thing to its source than trying to second-guess its maker’s motive, don’t you think?”
“I think right now we have to do both,” she said grimly. “Which brings us to the next question, one I didn’t want to ask in front of others. How sure are you of your staff?”
“Suspicious of them all, of course.” A faint glimmer of dark humor touched the comers of his mouth. “Just as you have to be suspicious of yours.”
Yes, she thought, all of her staff. Her guildmasters most of all, because they had a motive to bring her down. Her lover, because he had the means. And every programmer and pilot and secretary who served them, because Earth would pay billions to have the Guild’s secrets, and someone might have wanted riches badly enough to sell out his own people. Who could she trust in this? No one. But you had to have someone to work with, you couldn’t do this kind of thing alone.
God, there were times she hated this job. Not what it was, but what it had done to her. You should be able to run the Guild and still remain human. You should be able to shuck off your responsibility at the door when you came home to your lover, and enjoy the sweet refuge of companionship without being strangled by the paranoia of your office. Maybe someday she’d learn how to do that. In the meantime ... well, it was a sweet dream. He understood. Several other men hadn’t, and they were no longer part of her life.
She walked into the display herself, and put a slender hand up to where Delhi’s icon hung in the air. As if she could touch it. “Are they serving themselves, do you think, or the Guild?”
“Probably both,” he said dryly. “Isn’t that the way it’s done?”
She looked at him sharply. But there was no hint of accusation in his tone or manner. There never was. I know how you got here, his expression seemed to say. I know what bodies were left behind you when you started your own rise to power. But there was no criticism in the thought, not anything but acceptance. Perhaps even admiration. He’d have left an equal number of bodies behind him, if he’d needed to. Fortunately, his skills had made that unnecessary.
We are such cold creatures, all of us. Power robs us of our humanity. It’s an ancient formula, hard-wired into our brain cells, and any attempt to circumvent it is an exercise
in futility. Devlin had not had to fight
so hard for his position as some others did, but she valued him all the more for that. There was still a spark of humanity in him, which the climb to power generally crushed. The day that she described her plans to him and saw horror in his eyes, that was the day she would know she had gone too far. He was, one might say, the litmus test of her own humanity. And he was priceless to her, for that reason if no other.
“Hsing will be home soon,” he told her, gracefully changing the subject. “I’ve plotted out his probable com pattern and will compare it with the real thing when he gets here. I expect no surprises there; he’ll be too busy reinforcing his power base to worry about much else. We know the general pattern of his alliances; I don’t expect to see much else out of him for several E-weeks at least.”
“And Masada?”
He started to speak, then stopped himself.
“Devlin?”
“You sure about this man?” he asked quietly.
“Sure that I can trust him, or sure he can do his job?”
“Both.”
“Well, then ...” She hesitated. How much should she confide in him? Yes, she felt in her heart that Devlin was loyal ... but she also knew that loyalties could be complex, and the only kind of Guild officer without secrets was a dead one. How much did she trust Devlin because he deserved that trust, and how much because she just needed to trust someone? It was a question that haunted her constantly.
But in this case, there really was little question. Clearly there had to be an independent investigator in this matter, she had insisted upon it. Of all the choices available he had agreed that Masada was best. If he had his doubts now, as the man approached outspace, that was only natural. Such doubts needed an outlet sometimes, and he could hardly share them with his staff.