Jethro: First to Fight (74 page)

“True.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, the frigates are manta class, they
have one particle gun, also spinal mount, and two microwave guns, these are
mounted on the tips of the drive pods.”

“Okay.”

“Along with the microwave guns they have
a plasma weapon cluster at each. I'm not sure I follow the logic here, but I'm
assuming it's for show. It would make for a big bang.”

“Plasma being short ranged and
unstable?”

“Yes. Again, point defense turrets, two
dorsal, two ventral and one on each flank. Again one kilometer range and
limited to firing one turret at a time.”

The Captain nodded thoughtfully.
“Missiles?” she asked.

“Again the short ranged missiles, all
crude, nonnuclear in design. Four cells of twenty missiles, but there are
mounting points on the hull to carry what looks like either torpedoes or
capital missiles.”

“Oh? That would make more sense on a
gunboat.”

“The gunboat is for interdiction and
running down a target Captain. Frigates are only slightly slower but have the
hyperdrive.”

“True.”

“Civilian fusion reactor, civilian grade
hyperdrive. Crew of about a dozen humans, most likely hot bunking.”

“I'd hate to have to be in that. It was
bad enough in Sun-Yat.”

“True.”

“Armor?”

“Four centimeter thick layered armor.
Again, I didn't get a sample, I wish I had. Again, no fullerene, but there are
reflective and ablative elements in it.”

“Heh, they're so toast,” a rating said
softly. The Captain looked his way and then away. It was true, firefly's armor
was over a meter thick over her vitals, and arranged in layers. There was even
some space in two layers for spalling effects to trap shrapnel or plasma from
breaching the inner hull. There were layers of diamond, fullerene, sapphire,
and other even more classified materials, all arranged at angles in an attempt
to deflect or absorb incoming damage. The armor was thinner over non-vital
parts of the ship, down to in some cases ten centimeters, but still better than
what the pirates had.

“Someone didn't think these designs
through did they?” the Captain mused. “I'm assuming the corvettes are right
around the same lines?” she asked, shooting the elf a questioning look.

The elf nodded. “For the most part,
these are either designs thrown together for militias to defend a system in
haste, or...”

“Or?”

“Or they were purpose built for piracy
in mind Captain. To chase down unarmed freighters, not tangle with a proper
warship at all.”

“True, so let's show them what a real
warship can do shall we?” the Captain asked. There were grins around the bridge
at that. Feral grins. One or two of her crew had seen what the pirates did to
prisoners up close and personal. The idea of getting some of their own back was
a powerful one. She couldn't really blame them, but she'd have to watch for
excesses.

“So, to summarize what you are telling
me,” the Captain said. “The tin cans are it. Once we kick or kill them there is
nothing else that can hurt us?”

“Not individually Captain, but in
concert...”

“I know. But still.”

“Essentially... yes.”

“Okay, why not just say that in the
first place?” the Captain asked, with a bit of mirth in her voice. She knew the
report of the pirates and how outclassed they were was going to make the rounds
on the ship soon enough. Morale should get a punch in the arm.

“I was getting to that,” the elf said.
“The implications strategically...” she shook her head and blinked her goat
eyes. “And I wanted to be sure.”

“Fine, be thorough while we've still got
some time. Right now we have a battle to fight. But log all this deep thought
for later.”

“Aye aye Captain.”

...*...*...*...*...

Just as the enemy got set up Firefly's
AI and the cybers from Prime combined their efforts to attack the pirates. They
spammed the Horathian's computer and communications net, hammered them with
worms and viruses at a thousand hits a second, cut off their radio net with jamming.
Some of the viruses got through the weak firewall. Once they were in they
copied the headers and information about the ship and then adapted their
attacks on other ships with that information. The Horathian's didn't see it
coming.

The same thing happened on the station,
the cybers launched a divide and conquer campaign. They cut Major Zimmer's
groups into small chunks by slamming doors shut, trapping groups into pockets
with little life support.

Major Zimmer had anticipated such
tactics, after all, they had been doing it for the past ten days. But the
stationers caught him off guard by using robots and volunteer welders to weld
hatches shut in areas he had thought had been secured.

...*...*...*...*...

“Shit,” the tac officer muttered, checking
his feed. Today had seemed like a good day, things were finally getting
somewhere on the station, they had destroyed a planetary defense center on the
planet last night with a rock, and now a freighter was sailing in all fat dumb
and happy. But now things were going south fast. “What the hell's going on?” he
demanded, turning to glare at the JTO. “Fitzgerald!” he snarled.

“It's not me boss! Honest!” The junior
officer replied, hands up. “Something's going on with the computers, they
started running stuff in the background.” He had been known to screw the
tactical computer up by running sims that were too much for the grafted piece
of shit to handle.

“What the hell's going on? Some sort of
computer glitch?” the XO demanded, coming over to their stations.

The tack officer's mouth worked as he
pecked at the keyboard with a little more force than required. He wiggled his
track ball, clearly frustrated. “Yes, you could say that sir, something's going
on. A recompile or something, I'm not sure. Maybe a patch in progress.”

“It's not us, at least I don't think
it's us,” the engineering rating said looking up from his station. “The
computer is scheduled to do that sort of thing on graveyard when no one's
busy.”

“Well, someone screwed up somewhere,”
the JTO snarled as his screen futzed. His display went from normal to
flickering with the colors all screwed up, to blank after a moment. “What the
hell? I just lost my feed!” he snarled.

“Implants?” the XO asked.

“With the network screwed sir? We
wouldn't know what we're supposed to look for sir,” the tac officer said.

“Tactical, where's my feed,” the Captain
growled, looking up from the main display.

“We've got a hell of a computer glitch
skipper, I'm trying to pull CIC's feed now,” the tactical officer replied,
tapping at his keyboard. When he didn't get a response he swore, slapped at it,
then picked up the phone next to his station. He tapped out a three digit code
for CIC but didn't get anything but a loud squeal. “Well, whatever's got the
computer in a snit has the phones down too,” the Tac officer snarled, slamming
the receiver down.

“Of all the times for this to happen,
right when a battle is about to happen. We've got front row seats...” a rating
muttered.

“Talk about the timing,” another sighed.
They were used to issues on their ship, it was normal to have something or
other go down. Logistics had improved greatly over the past decade, but they
still had a long ways to go.

“What's going on?” the Captain asked.
“Get engineering on this pronto.” He turned and pointed to a rating. “You, get
to engineering, get Roberts on this or I'll tack his worthless ass to the
wardroom bulkhead and use it to play darts.”

The rating scampered out fast. The
Captain turned a scowl on his bridge crew. “Is it just lagging?”

“It's laggy, but, well, it's freezing a
lot,” the helm officer replied. He jiggled the controls. “No, we're definitely
lagging sir,” he replied.

“Fix it.”

“Sir, I don't even know what the problem
is!” the tac officer said. He glared at the ops officer.

The ops officer raised his hands in
defense. “It's not me. I just checked, diagnostics are now running. But we're
not running any maintenance, so I'm not sure what the hell is going on.”

“Could it be another virus? We picked up
that one from that porn module,” a rating muttered. The officers frowned.

“Someone had better not have been
playing with their damn winky at a time like this! Shit!”

“Anything?”

“Not a damn thing,” the engineering
rating said, clearly frustrated and now a little afraid.

“Reboot. Or reset or something.”

“Sir, the computers control everything
from our life support to the power plant. We can't just shut it all off.”

“Shit.”

“We can reset parts of the network,”
Fitzgerald said, frowning. His brow concentrated then he scowled. “I just tried
it while you were talking. It worked for a few seconds but I lost my screen
again.”

“
Fix
it!” the Captain raged.

“We're trying sir,” the XO said, trying
to manage his skipper and the rapidly deteriorating situation. The lights
flickered. He like everyone else on the bridge looked up with a sudden
trepidation of fear.

“Well try harder!” The Captain snarled.
“Before we run into something, like oh say a stray missile! Can you at least
give me a situation report?”

“Last check is we're still on our
previous heading,” the helmsman reported.

“Shields were up. Crew were at battle
stations. Missiles loaded in all tubes, all weapon turret capacitors charged,”
the tac officer replied.

“Sensors went offline but I've got an
estimated plot here,” the sensory officer said, holding up a piece of paper
with notes written on it.

“Reduced to paper and pencil. What a way
to run a warship,” the Captain muttered. He turned on the ops officer.

The small wiry ops officer hunched his
shoulders. “Still working cap,” he said.

“Working he says, he doesn't even know
what the damn problem is,” the Captain muttered. “Not worth the cost of a
pulser dart,” he snarled. That made the ops officer flinch. “Or the damn
paperwork involved,” he snarled, pounding his arm rests in frustration.

“I'm trying to run a list of running
programs and services now sir. I'm not... damn it!” The ops officer swore,
tapping at the PC hard and then hitting the on off switch on his station. “I
keep losing it. It runs fine for about ten to twenty seconds but then when my
station syncs with the net it freezes and crashes.”

“Well, that's not good,” a rating said.
“If the entire network is like this...” he looked up as the fans died and the
lights went out. After a moment the emergency lights came back on.

The Captain came over and shoved the ops
officer aside. He stared at the blank screen and then slapped the top, then
side of the station. When that didn't work he punched the side hard. The screen
futzed briefly with a scrambled screen then blanked again.

“Sir, that doesn't help,” the
engineering rating said patiently. “It just addles it.”

“I beg to differ, it made me feel
better,” the Captain snarled, looking around. “I'm going to knock some heads
next if I don't start seeing some results!” he growled.

“Still won't work,” the rating muttered,
shaking his head. He turned away from the basilisk look the Captain shot his
way. “Captain we're getting buffer over runs in the memory. I've isolated my
system from the general net and run a quick scan anti-virus. It's some sort of
rabbit eating up the free memory then tearing into the memory for our operating
system.”

“So it is a damn virus!”

“But from where? Did Kilwalksi screw
around again? If he did I'll damn well cut off his balls and ram them down his
throat then shove his own dick up his own ass.”

Most of the bridge staff winced at that
threat. The Captain was deadly serious. Usually something like that would get a
laugh, but in their culture, it was something that sometimes actually happened,
granted, usually to a prisoner or slave, but still, it could and did happen.
And if it could happen to one person, it could happen to others. Others like
themselves if they didn't get the situation sorted out. Suddenly everyone was
intent on the task.

“I tossed that virus out the lock like
you said,” the ops officer said, shaking his head.

“You sure? You didn't pass it on to
someone to do it for you?” the Captain asked, eying the ops officer.

“No sir, did it myself. Told Kilwalksi
if he brings another on he's next. Made sure he saw me flush it too,” he
growled.

“Ah,” the Captain nodded in approval.
“Someone find Kilwalksi anyway and find out if he had another of those damn
flash sticks,” he said, looking to the security guard. The guard nodded and
passed the order on to a second. The second moved out of the bridge at a trot.

“Sir,” the communication's rating said
looking up. The Captain and XO looked up in irritation.