Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

“Not really,”
she said.

Bobby
laughed.  “Well in that case, how can I refuse?”

“Really?”
said Elspeth.  “You’ll do it?”

“Sure, why
not?” said Bobby.

Elspeth
didn’t quite know what to say.  “Thank you so much.  Can we arrange a
time, place?”

“I’ll let you
know,” said Bobby.  “I have your details, I’ll get back to you in a day or
two.”

“Thank you so
much, Mr Karjalainen.”

“It’s Bobby,
please just call me Bobby.”

“Thanks,
Bobby.”

“No problem,
Elspeth.  Talk later, bye.”

The comdev
went silent.

Elspeth
looked at the terminal screen in front of her.  She saw a tubby little boy
holding his mother’s hand walk toward the camera then disappear right of screen
as they entered the hospital.  She wondered if she’d be able to get a
refund on the camera.

Probably not.

Daniel
Kostovich habitually monitored almost everything.  He scanned all
horizons - literal, digital and social.  He liked to know what
was going on lest he should need to counter it.  There was a streak of
paranoia in his personality that chimed well with his role at
Vendkt
.  It was necessary that he knew what was going
on in the world about him.  The endless craving for information could be
wearing at times, but at least he was good at his job.

The
encryption used by the USAN was considered to be as good as
undecipherable.  That all information was held on secure networks which
were constantly roamed by probing white-hat AIs was a second level of
security.  The third was that USAN Cyber Counterintelligence was
continuously monitoring what was happening on networks outside of its
own.  The network was constantly trying to crack itself while monitoring
what the outside world was up to.  It wasn’t a perfect system but it was
active, constantly evolving and adapting.  One of the biggest threats to
security was complacency so the system had been designed to be internally non-complacent.

Kostovich was
pleased when he found an in.  It had taken many months to develop and was
so complex that it was beyond even him to fully understand it.  He had had
the basic idea, but rather than develop it himself he set about creating very
advanced AIs that could do the development for him.

The scheme
needed to be robust.  It had to have full access to all of the USAN
network, and it had to be undetectable.  It had to adapt with the ever-changing
security protocols of the network and be able to negotiate its
shortcomings.  It had to be alive to the fact that not all of the network
would be up to date at any one time.  There would be parts of it that due
to money, incompetence or necessary legacy compatibility would be using older
protocols.  The parasitical AI had to be aware of all of this and act
accordingly.

Kostovich had
injected his AI into the USAN system six months earlier.  The system was
so complex and vast that for the first few months all the AI could do was sit,
watch and learn.  Above all it had to remain undetected.  For those
months Kostovich left it to it.  It was incommunicado.

It was a
tense time.  If anything had gone wrong he would have had no way of
knowing.  It was almost like old-school spying from the
Middle
Ages or the twentieth century.  The agent would
go off and ingratiate itself with the enemy, building false alliances and
gaining favour until the moment it had achieved enough trust that it was in a
position to betray it.

Just over
four months in the AI had called home.  It was in and undetected and it
was hammering through the USAN security networks, starting from the edges but
working its way inexorably toward the centre.

The first
thing to go was low-level coms.  Administrators, service personnel
and some low-ranking military coms were opened up to Kostovich’s
scrutiny.  There was nothing much of interest, but it showed the AI was
working.  Even the so-called ‘low-level’ security protocols
applied to those on the bottom rung of the administration were extremely
sophisticated.  Kostovich’s AI, once in a position to act, had eaten through
them in days.

As the weeks
went on the AI drilled further and further toward the centre of government and
military communications.  The secret world of the USAN’s inner-core
was opening up to Kostovich like a flower in the light of dawn.

The vast
amount of information being pulled back to Mars could be seen, in some ways, as
one more layer of security in and of itself; there was just so much of
it.  Here Kostovich employed several other AIs to plough through the
mountain of information and zero in on that which was pertinent.  That
included such things as military R&D, procurement, finances, intelligence
and such.  The AIs would sort the information into clear and readable
reports.  Each concise report was sat atop of a pyramid of more and more
detailed reports, going down as far as the reader wanted to go.  And the
reports could be dynamically reconfigured.  The AI could be told, ‘Give me
the same report but with more detail about the dates and less about the
finance,’ or ‘Merge this report with the other two and make the final one sixty
percent shorter.’

There had
been one final level to breach.  The holy of holies; the top ‘beyond top
secret’ level of the cabinet office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  That
had really been a tough one to crack, sitting as it did on its own network-within-a
network with its own ever-changing, ever self-probing security
mechanisms.  Kostovich’s AI had finally managed to break through two
months after the original foothills of the basic administration levels had
succumbed.  Finally, he stood at the peak.

Kostovich
thought he could reasonably be considered as the greatest spy in history. 
Not only had he availed himself of all the operating information of a state’s
political and military machinery, he had done it at up to a hundred and forty
million miles distance.

There had
been plenty of interest to read amongst all of the data collated, but what had
really caught Kostovich’s eye was the fact that Mars was being talked about in
the uppermost circles of the USAN government.  Defence and the foreign
office were falling over themselves to file reports on ‘The Martian Situation’
and to suggest possible remedies for it.  It had even made its way to the
very top.  Cortes himself was giving time to the issue.

Kostovich
would have found this laughable - a classic case of an
organisation
misprioritising
or chasing at
phantoms - but for one thing.  As recently as that very
morning President Cortes had signed an executive order allowing funds be
released to pay Helios
Matériel
Corporation an eye-watering
amount of money to refit the
Aloadae
, the two massive dropship-carrying
spacecraft currently orbiting the Earth with not much to do.

Cortes had
acted in response to intelligence gathered by his foreign and defence
ministries.  They had the inside track that Charles Venkdt was going to
announce some type of election, polling the people of Mars on Martian
independence.  Kostovich had known they were in the Martian systems, but
he had trapped and isolated their AI and was letting it gather enough
information that it seemed to be working, while holding back what he considered
to be top-level strategic information.  All of his own work was
locked up watertight.  Anything they could get to of his was fake, or
rather an amalgam of real stuff that was unimportant, about ninety percent, and
ten percent of what seemed like interesting and important work but which was
bogus and heavily encrypted.  He’d let them get to most of
Venkdt’s
other information, which he’d considered of
relatively low import.  He’d noticed himself that Venkdt had been talking
about a plebiscite, but he’d considered it inconsequential.  The old man
was getting a little crazy in his old age and Martian independence would surely
mean little in practice.  Nothing would change apart from notions of what
was owned by whom.  That was nothing to get excited about, was it? 
Cortes and the USAN certainly seemed to differ.  To them it seemed to
matter enough that they would send two huge men-of-war hundreds of
millions of miles across the solar system to make a point.

Kostovich,
who, until that point, thought that who owned what territory on which map was a
matter for imbeciles and the feeble minded, suddenly felt affronted that a
person or persons, many, many miles away, was sending warships toward
him.  For the first time in his life he felt the faintest stirring of
patriotism.

“Prepare a
report on the latest anti-aircraft, anti-spacecraft and anti-missile
missile technologies for me, please,” he said to his terminal.  “The data
set is the USAN military development dump.  Keep the report fairly
technical and I want to know how easily and quickly we could fabricate any of
the systems in question here on Mars.”

“Preparing
report,” the terminal replied.

Kostovich
wasn’t sure whether to go to Venkdt now with the information about the
Aloadae
or to wait for the report about missile technology.  In his mind there was
already an arms race developing.  If the Earth was going to place a tank
on his front lawn, as it were, he felt justified in stealing the Earth’s plans
for anti-tank missiles and building some in time for the tank’s arrival.

Maybe he’d
hold back on that plan, for now.  The priority, it appeared, was to get
this information to Venkdt.  It seemed Earth was in a major strop with
Venkdt before he had even announced that he was going to do anything.  And
what was he going to do, anyway?  Hold an election?  They were going
to be held under the gun for holding an election?  What kind of topsy-turvy
world was this becoming?  That was the sort of thing you read about in the
Asian Bloc.  He’d seen pictures on the bulletins; protesters with daisy
chains and friendship bands, crushed under the wheels of tanks, pushed back
with water cannon.  Kostovich had never felt like a radical or an activist
before but right now he felt annoyed.  He felt like he was being pushed
around, and he didn’t want to be pushed around.

“Get me an
appointment with Venkdt,” said Kostovich.

“Christina
Venkdt?” the AI replied.

“Can you stop
with that?  Whenever I say ‘Venkdt’ I mean Charles Venkdt, okay?” said
Kostovich, struggling to keep the exasperation out of his tone.  He knew
the AI was a machine - he had programmed it, after all - but
it was hard not to feel like it was mocking him.

“Mr Venkdt
doesn’t have any openings until next week.  Would you like to proceed with
booking the appointment?”

“No, don’t
bother.  I’ll sort it out myself.”

For the most
part Kostovich kept a low profile at Venkdt.  Much of the time he’d stay
in his office at the R&D Department, occasionally venturing out to the
labs.  That was on the days he came in.  He often just worked from
home.  When he did come in he didn’t keep to regular hours, oftentimes
turning up late in the evening and disappearing again before the morning shift
came in.  As head of R&D he knew the security systems intimately and,
of course, had a backdoor into everything.  On the rare occasions when he
was out and about
he
quite enjoyed being mistaken for
a suspicious character.  He’d show his security credentials on his comdev
to whoever had stopped or challenged him and enjoy their confusion that such a
young, dishevelled character was the head of a major department. 
Sometimes they would apologise profusely, other times grudgingly or suspiciously,
like he couldn’t possibly be who his ID said he was.  He’d often check
what the security guards or receptionists looked up immediately after they had
left him, and frequently they would be interrogating personnel records, looking
for a photo ID of Dr Daniel Kostovich, Head of R&D, Venkdt Mars Corp. 
It made Kostovich chuckle.  As smart as he was, he still took enjoyment
from being smarter than dumb people.

That
particular morning Kostovich had only been stopped twice on his way to Charles
Venkdt’s
office.  It hadn’t been so much fun as usual
because he’d been in a rush.  Arriving at the office he approached the
desk of
Venkdt’s
PA.  “Hey, sweetness,” he said,
“is the big guy in?”

The PA didn’t
glance up from her terminal.  “He is in, he’s busy right now, and don’t
call me sweetness,” she said.

“I have
something really important I need to discuss with him,” said Kostovich. 
“If I don’t get in there right away I’ll have to stay out here and chat with
you.”

The PA gave
him a look of mock disapproval.  “Threatening me won’t help,” she said,
“he’s busy.”

Kostovich
slumped into a leather sofa set across the way from the assistant’s desk. 
“Just have to wait him out then, I guess,” he said.

“Looks that
way,” said the PA.  “How come you didn’t make an appointment?”

Kostovich
shrugged.  “This only came up this morning and it’s fairly
important.  I thought he’d want to know right away.”

The PA thawed
a little.  “It might be quite a while.  He asked not to be
disturbed.  Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine,”
said Kostovich.  “I might catch a few zees if that’s okay with you?”

“Go right
ahead,” said the PA, “just don’t make the place look untidy.”

Kostovich had
quickly fallen asleep on the luxurious sofa.  He was woken by a scrunched
up ball of paper hitting his forehead.  He was just about awake in time to
bat away a second paper ball before it landed.  “He’s free now,” the PA
said, grinning.  “Do you need a little time to come round?”

Kostovich
dragged himself to his feet.  “I’m fine,” he said, lumbering towards the
office.

Venkdt was
seated at his desk.  He was in his early seventies, a little overweight
and balding.  He wore small round spectacles and had an air of jollity
about him, like he was about to spring a surprise or was trying to keep an
exciting secret.  “Dr Kostovich!” he said, glancing up from his terminal.
 “What have you got for me
today!
” 
Perennially positive, Venkdt was probably hoping that Kostovich had made some
exciting new breakthrough in product development, or had found a way to slash
production costs.  He’d come up good for the company so many times in the
past, and he rarely if ever dropped by unannounced.  “Take a seat, dear
boy, take a seat!”  Venkdt gestured to one of the two seats in front of
his desk.  Kostovich sat down.