Netlink (21 page)

Lieutenant Ferris paused his strider, listening.

“We are tracking incoming aircraft,” Sandman reported. “Bearing at one-eight-two, range seven-five kilometers. They’re coming in fast and low, skimming the sea, and just cleared the horizon. We think they’re transports from Syria Planum.

“All striders, assume defensive order Gamma. Initiate!”

From the south, Ferris shifted his Red Saber, studying the dark horizon. He could see nothing, even with enhanced senses, but the Artemis had senses better than his by several orders of magnitude.

Swiftly, he began moving south, toward the coast. He had to find a good place to hole up and get ready, because when those bastards arrived, they’d be eager for a fight.

The Planetary Defense System’s weaponry control was clear. Ishimoto had thought it would be… but he’d had to make certain. More, he wanted to be very sure there were no unchecked hiding places at his electronic back as he closed in, relentlessly, on the most probable location of the intruder. He’d already alerted both the AI ICS and the other human operators on the current security watch. They’d informed him that, yes, one of Aresynch’s ranging lasers had been firing continuously, unnoticed by anyone in the Defense Command. It almost certainly was being used as a beacon to mark the MilTech labs as a target for the enemy raiders.

A small and simple program had been running the software end of the laser in the weaponry control banks, a shadowy something revealed by the ViRsimulation as a small and brightly colored fish circling above a particularly ornate head of coral. He reached out with a thought… and the alien program evaporated. Another thought, and the laser was switched off. Not that that would do any good now. The damage was done, the raiders landed, the attack under way. Someone, Ishimoto reflected, was going to wish he’d never been born, once the Kasei Imperial Military Command got through with him.

He devoutly hoped that that someone was not going to be Genji Ishimoto.

But it might well be. He had been in charge of security on the Kasei end of the Net when an enemy agent had slipped in, turning the Net against its owners to assist the attack on MilTech. It might not be enough that he’d been performing his duties to the best of his abilities… and it was no excuse that the Net was far too vast for any one human to monitor it thoroughly from within.

But it would help, it would help a lot if he could catch the intruder. And he thought he knew now how he was going to do just that.

Obviously, the intruder had penetrated the Planetary Defense System’s computer network, using it to access the targeting laser and paint the MilTech facility for the raiders. He would have been stupid to remain, since sooner or later someone was going to realize that the laser was still running and come in to check it out. No, the intruder was hiding someplace else, someplace nearby. The question was… where?

And where would I go if I wanted to oversee the action on the surface of Kasei?
Ishimoto thought to himself.

The answer was obvious—so obvious that it seemed almost too easy.

Carefully, he moved toward the Network’s surface monitoring node.

Kara realized she was going to have to break cover if she was to provide any help to the ground forces at all. Worse, she was going to have to retrace her steps, returning to an area she’d already visited, one which by now could well be crawling with Imperial computer security programs, both AI software and organic.

No matter. Part of the reason she was here in the first place was to do anything she could to delay, confuse, or break the Imperials’ response to the MilTech raid. Her shell as a housekeeper program ought to give her cover enough to make the transfer, so long as no one examined it too closely.

Uploading a transfer request, she slipped from the surface monitoring node back into weapons control.

As he was going in, something else was coming out. Ishimoto caught only the flash of a shadow, a dull and undetailed fish-shape that, as he brushed it lightly, told him it was a routine housekeeper program, searching for lost clusters to eliminate from the system. Ignoring the program—it was little more than a miniscule portion of the system’s overall background—he pushed past it and entered the surface monitoring node.

Kara was sure that she’d just brushed past a security program of some sort, one going in as she was coming out. It might have been an automated program, or it could have been something more dangerous, an AI-generated hunter-killer routine, or even a human operator, working, like herself, within the Net. If she was right in her guess, though, security was close to tracking her down. She would have to work fast.

But she also felt a degree of freedom now that she’d not possessed earlier. During her first penetration of the Net, she’d had to move cautiously and with great circumspection to avoid calling attention to herself. Somehow, she’d alerted the system anyway—she still wasn’t sure what she’d done to trigger that initial alarm—and moments after that the transmission of a high-priority bit of radio traffic from the surface had signaled the fact that there was indeed an intruder loose on the Net.

She could move boldly now, without worrying that a mistake would give her away.

Slipping herself into a quiet corner of the Aresynch Defense Network node, she addressed the monitoring AI. “Targeting,” she said.

“Targeting accessed.”

“Fire request.”

“Please upload target coordinates.”

“Target is a flight of transports with changing coordinates. Link to Aresynch Traffic Control screen and accept ID upload.”

A pause. “Upload accepted. System is now tracking four air/space transports, designated Target 01. Weapon select.”

Kara took a deep, mental breath. “Any available laser in the five-hundred to one-thousand-megajoule range, with acceptable targeting parameters on designated targets.”

“Weapon designated, quad-mount 600 MJ beam laser, turret three-one, section twelve. Confirm.”

“Weapon designation accepted and confirmed.”

“Please upload clearances and authorization codes.”

Kara braced herself mentally. This would the high-risk part… and where the information provided by CMI’s agents on Earth would really prove itself. She had a code authorization for a fire control request, but it was an old one, and no one knew if it would be accepted by the system or not.

“Authorization code
Okha,”
she said.

She waited… and waited… and just when she thought that a silent alarm must have been given and that she’d better back out and run for it now, the AI replied, “Authorization code Orange Blossom accepted. Weapons release approved. Proceed.”

“Initiate target lock and automatic fire sequencing,” she said. “Code red-one-one, priority immediate. Execute.”

“Firing…”

On the ground, Ran Ferris was picking his way through a heap of smoking rubble, trying to find a good site that would give him a clear field of fire to the south. Updates from Sandman had verified the approaching force, almost certainly four Hippo-class transports coming in big-time, hard, heavy, and ready for anything.

A counterattack had been inevitable, of course, and much time had been devoted to a counterattack scenario both in op planning and in the rehearsal simulations. The only real chance the strike force had was to get in, get the goods, and get out before the locals could respond.

Obviously, they hadn’t moved quite quickly enough, and now the whole character of this op was about to change. It would be up to the three warstrider squadrons and the marine leggers to hold off all comers until the specialists finished their analysis of what was in the main building. And then—The southern sky lit up.

Lieutenant Clifford was inside the main lab building as a half dozen civilian specialists in heavy combat armor gathered about a communications module. One of their number, Carol Browning, had shucked her armor down to skintights and climbed inside, hoping to make direct connection with the lab computer. Clifford had just walked toward the shattered windows on the south side of the building when the sky in that direction lit up, a glaring white and silent flare that dazzled off the water.

“What the
gok…
?”

Several other soldiers and most of the technicians joined him, staring out the open window as the light swiftly faded. A second flare ignited, glowed, faded. And then a third.

“Sandman, Red Rover. What the hell’s going on in the southern sector?”

“Sorry you weren’t informed,” Sandman’s voice replied a moment later. “It took us by surprise, too.”

“What did? What’s going on?”

“Someone up in Aresynch’s having some target practice,” Sandman said. “With Imperial troop transports as targets.”

A fourth flare lit up the night. There was a long silence after that. “Okay, everyone,” Sandman’s voice announced. “That’s four up and four down. I think someone upstairs just saved our bacon. Now let’s get this job done so it wasn’t a wasted effort.”

Clifford knew what Sandman meant. “Someone” would be their covert helper smuggled into Aresynch. If that guy had managed to subvert the synchorbital’s defensive lasers to take out incoming Impie transports, it was a sure bet that all hell had just broken loose at the top of the Pavonis Mons sky-el.

He decided that he was very happy to be safely down here in the middle of a firefight, and not up there, inside a computer Net that must be on full emergency alert by now.

Soldiers, he reasoned, were paid to take risks… but there are some risks with such goking bad odds that accepting them wasn’t a matter of following orders.

It was more like… suicide.

Chapter 14

The aim of military study should be to maintain a close watch upon the latest technical, scientific, and political developments, fortified by a sure grasp of the eternal principles upon which the great captains have based their contemporary methods, and inspired by a desire to be ahead of any rival army in securing options in the future.

—
Thoughts on War

B. H. L
IDDELL
H
ART

C
.
E
. 1944

To Kara, it felt as though the walls of the undersea cavern where she was currently residing were suddenly collapsing in upon her. All Aresynch was on full alert now, and she could sense the closing of gates across various nodes, sealing them off from the outside and making them as inaccessible as the MilTech labs. The emerald swirlings around her were filled with shadowy objects, programs suddenly activated; some might be defensive hunter-killers.

She signaled her Companion, releasing a shape of her own into the swirling mix. The program was unintelligent and of limited power, but it did a good job of imitating an intruder who was clumsily trying to escape a system node and making a great deal of noise while going about it.

Abruptly, her control of the Aresynch defensive lasers was terminated, the shock like the swinging of a blade.

“Targeting,” she said.

“Targeting access denied.”

“Accept Authorization Code
Okha.”

“Authorization denied.”

Evidently, the system had gone to a higher alert level, one specifically designed to deal with intruders like her, and was refusing to deal with input commands unless they were from someone with a higher authorization code than Orange Blossom.

But there was one more trick she might try.

“Housekeeping.”

“Housekeeping access granted.” She was, after all, still wearing the shell of a housekeeper subroutine, and access to the housekeeping subnodes was more or less automatic. In a system as complex as this, only the most sensitive nodes and operating areas would be restricted… and
no
one paid attention to the housekeepers.

“Accept Authorization Code
Baika.”

There was a pause. “Authorization Code Plum Blossom accepted. Awaiting uploaded instructions.”

The AI began accepting her upload, a bundle of special instructions for that part of the system that dealt with routine housekeeping chores. Piggybacked with those instructions, though, were hidden codes that allowed her to continue her monitoring of surface communications. AI systems were immensely powerful and capable of tremendous intelligence… but in routine or low-level matters they often betrayed their evolutionary origins as relatively simple-minded calculators.

Sometimes, in fact, they really weren’t very bright at all.

Hal Clifford leaned over the console, staring at the com module. It was a custom model with a transparent door, and he could see Carol Browning lying on the couch inside, apparently unconscious.

“Anything yet, Doctor?” he asked, anxious.

“The system appears to be intact,” the woman’s voice replied, speaking over his helmet radio. “There are several thousand directories, however, and no clear indication as to which might hold the material we want.”

“Can you just upload all of it?”

“If you can afford to wait here for a couple of days, certainly. It was my impression that you were concerned with speed, however.”

He sighed. “Okay, okay. Just keep looking. We didn’t come all this way to—”

“My search would be considerably more efficient,” she told him, interrupting with a brusque irritation, “if you would stay the hell out of my way while I’m in here looking!”

Clifford’s head jerked up at the rebuke, and he felt the eyes of the other civilians on the recovery team on him, amused, even laughing. Carol Browning had a reputation for being both brilliant with computer systems of all kinds and impatient to the point of rudeness with fellow humans. Goking civilians…

“Red Rover, Red Rover, this is Sandman. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative, Sandman.”

“What’s your status in there, Cliff?”

“We’re working on it. No luck so far.”

“Keep up the pressure, son. Skymaster bought us some time, but we still can’t dawdle.”

“Dr. Browning is inside the system now,” he said. “She says there are a lot of directories to search, and it would take too long to upload them all.”