Command Authority, page 10
part #5 of Last Hunter Series
That was harsh, but Lisa supposed there were worse fates.
“Yarest will press the button when you gesture to it,” he said. “Then he will take the condemned and leave so that you can care for Mister Fogg.”
“Then we’re ready now,” the doctor said, her face twisted in distaste as she pointed to a jury-rigged control.
Yarest didn’t hesitate and stepped forward to press the button firmly. There was a pop inside Mister Fogg’s body as miniature charges severed every filament simultaneously. The doctors quickly extracted the symbiote in the impermeable sack.
The alien leader took the crippled Tardan and strode out of the room. Pastan followed, and so did David Chen.
The doctors jumped to the task of extracting the filaments. Lisa turned her back on the gory affair and headed for the door herself. She was done with this and ready to get back to something less distressing. She had a computer to crack and data to extract if they could manage to do so safely.
We’ve been experimenting with the big computer for a while now. Do you think we’re ready to try the military computer and see what happens?
The two of them headed back to where the Tardan military computer was set up. It had been a while since they’d directly worked on it, but she’d gained access to the firmware. With the tools she’d put together in consultation with Regex, she believed she’d be able to bypass the security, but it was a risk.
If she made a mistake, it was possible the computer would erase the data they wanted. They’d made copies, but no one knew if they’d be able to interface with that data outside the hardware where it usually resided. If she’d been constructing a computer like this, it was something she’d have done. She had to assume that the Tardan military was just as paranoid.
The equipment she’d constructed was a conglomeration of Tardan instruments and Confederation add-ons. It had taken quite a bit of effort on her part to make the modifications so that she could use her hacking tools on the alien equipment. If she was lucky, she’d get her hands on some Tardan hacking tools at some point and be able to make an even more effective set for dual use, but those wouldn’t be just left lying around.
She sat on the floor behind the computer and pulled the keyboard into her lap. The screen she was using was leaned against the computer and powered by a cable that ran to some other equipment. It was very much a hodgepodge, but she liked it.
The firmware on the Tardan military computer was different from the civilian computers but shared a similar lineage. It was sure she’d run into unexpected issues, so she’d take things slowly and watch for signs she was about to trigger something. She had a lot of experience doing this with Confederation machines, and it would be interesting to see how this played out on alien hardware.
The first problem she had to deal with was that the firmware was also encrypted. Unlike the regular computer programs and data she needed to access, this was built into the hardware itself, and the key to unlocking it would also be there. She just had to be smart enough to find it.
Spending time digging around on the civilian computer had given her an idea of some of the places she could look. She’d modified her programs and the Tardan hardware that would be carrying them to check the most obvious locations first and then work to get into some of the more difficult spots if needed.
She had no idea how something like that would work, but she was willing to try. They had a limited time frame to operate, so she needed to get this show on the road. Moving slowly, proceeding step-by-step, she inserted her programs into the hardware looking for weaknesses in the firmware.
Interestingly, everything she saw began constructing a virtual duplicate in her mind. She was able to play out certain options and get an idea of what she thought might happen. She wondered how that would change when she had access to the firmware. Right now, all she had was the civilian version and a general idea of the hardware she expected to find. There would be a security node that the various security programs operated out of, and that was her ultimate target.
As she found holes in the regular firmware, she’d made note of them, hoping that many would still be available in the military version. If that were the case here, she might get lucky early.
Unfortunately, it seemed someone had gone through the firmware, closing all the obvious holes. Even most of the ones that weren’t so obvious. That didn’t mean that they got them all, though. She found one that was identical to one she’d located in the civilian firmware.
That made her smile in anticipation but also made her proceed more carefully. Another thing she’d have done was leave a noticeable gap in the security that would snap shut on a hacker as soon as they stuck their fingers in. If that was the case, she needed to be ready to mitigate the damage or bypass it if she could.
All in all, this would be Zen. Her experience always translated into split-second decisions and going with her gut. This wasn’t going to be any different. In fact, it would be even more like that than she was used to. If things played out the way she wanted, she’d be ghosting her way through the machine, undetected and unnoticed.
Well, let’s get the show on the road, shall we?
The more she thought about it, the more confident she became that the apparent hole in security was a trap. It would lure the unwary into sticking their fingers where they shouldn’t before chopping them off. When digging her way through an unknown system, she got a feel for it before deciding what the weakest place to strike was. Only then did she act. This had to be the same.
After bypassing that first security lapse, she finished mapping her way through the basic hardware and made note of a couple places that looked interesting. She wasn’t sure if they were weaknesses or merely a portion of the hardware she didn’t understand, but poking around in them probably wouldn’t be harmful in and of itself.
In fact, it would be good practice. She might get a reaction out of the security programs that fell below the most stringent response if the area wasn’t seen as something under threat.
Her mental vision of the hardware became clearer the more she looked at those potential weak spots. Once she thought she understood one of them well enough to bring her tools into play, she carefully inserted her code into the hardware and tried to open the area for closer examination. Her efforts failed, but they didn’t fail catastrophically. That meant she got some information that might be helpful when she tried again.
Over the next fifteen minutes, she poked at that area using different methods and tools. One of the methods she expected to fail instead opened up the piece of hardware for her to examine more closely. That’s why she experimented sometimes. Luck was often fickle and peculiar.
As she’d expected, the hardware wasn’t anything important, but it had links to things that probably were. And now that she was inside the protected hardware—lightly protected—her queries seemed more legitimate. She could query connected pieces of equipment and, based on their responses, make a map of interesting places she might try next.
It took almost two hours for her to worm her way through the system until she was so deep that she’d bypassed most of the exterior security measures and looked for the important ones at the center of the tangled mess of programming.
Part of what she’d thought of as exceptionally intricate code turned out to be old and messy. It wasn’t designed to be better at keeping people out, but it was just so obtuse that it was difficult to get into, even for authorized users. This was the kind of thing she loved doing for fun, but they were on a clock, and she needed to keep pressing her way in until she located the encryption key to the security system. Once she did, she might be able to pull it straight out of the hardware.
She’d already created herself a login for the system. It wasn’t very hard once she had enough access, but she wanted to give it the equivalent of administrator privileges. She wanted control of everything.
Lisa got into such a rhythm that it felt like she was working on confederation equipment. All her fear of working on an unknown alien system had vanished. With Regex’s deep knowledge of Tardan hardware and her skills at intrusion, she wasn’t finding this nearly as difficult as she’d expected.
So, of course, that was when she triggered a security alert. Her failed intrusion attempt set off a series of software queries running throughout the hardware, looking for code that wasn’t supposed to be there. It found some of what she’d done, which made things worse, but it didn’t see her. The intrusion she’d concocted was still active and now monitored the communications back and forth with the security hardware.
It thinks it has. I left a redirect buried in the firmware that made the erase command vanish into nothingness. It wasn’t expecting a direct response to the command, which was kind of shortsighted if you ask me, so I was able to fool it. If we keep poking at it, it’ll probably figure out something is wrong, but we’re okay for the moment.
I was able to see where the commands were coming from and make some guesses as to its physical location. That will likely be where the encryption key is as well. We dig it out and see if we can unlock everything.
Now that she knew where the hardware was, she could use a cutter to get into the computer casing. The designers had put this hardware out of reach for regular users, which made complete sense to her. Once she had her eyes on it, she noted that there were access ports, but she doubted those would be safe. Attempting to access the hardware in such a blatant manner would trigger a major security alert.
No, she’d have to be more subtle. There were already wires connecting it to the computer, and one of those would be her pathway in. It was sort of like using the software to get in, but if she could hardwire some of her tools directly in place, she could short-circuit the response time and maybe gain access that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
She went through the box of materials she had, found some wire that would work, and rigged up an intrusion device. Then she carefully scraped the coating off the wires and tapped in. There was always a chance that the security sentinels would detect a change in voltage and trigger a response, but they didn’t. The designer hadn’t been suitably paranoid after all.
With her potential access point now active, she settled in and wormed her way through the initial layers of security, being as paranoid as possible while looking for areas where they might try to trick her. Since she was at the heart of the security protocols, any mistake she made now would be instantly catastrophic.
Once again, their paranoia wasn’t sufficient. She got through the initial layers without triggering anything and found herself in the center of the security regimen with nothing holding her back. So far as she could see, there were no advanced security protocols active inside the hardware itself, and she had complete access.
She turned off the security protocols one by one until the computer had no protections whatsoever. If there was any response from a secondary security system, she couldn’t see it. It looked as if they were trusting in this single point of failure. Too bad for them.
Relatively confident she’d achieved her initial goals, she searched the hardware for a copy of the encryption key. If any piece of hardware would unlock the data on command, it was this one. It took half an hour of diligent searching, but she extracted the encryption key. She tested it on the copy of the data they’d made and was pleased to see it opened everything up.
To be certain that she’d removed everything dangerous, she pulled the security hardware. It couldn’t set off some hidden protocol if it wasn’t connected. It then went into a shielded box to make certain that even wireless signals couldn’t propagate. She wasn’t going to come this far and have the system fail because she’d triggered something after the fact.
That done, she returned to the regular keyboard and logged in with her fake account. As it gave her administrator privileges, she was able to enter the encryption key, which unlocked the entire system.
“Woo!” she exulted, giving herself a fist pump. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
I don’t think I’d sell yourself short. If you work with some Confederation equipment, I’d wager you’ll be able to pull some of my hacking skills into your repertoire. Now that we have a shared set of knowledge and skills to draw on when it comes to computers and programming, I believe you’ll be able to do far more than you think. Now, that’s not to say that I think you should try to hack a computer like this because that’s not your strong suit, but don’t count yourself out in a pinch.
I think the first thing we should do is locate any information on the Tardan military. The prisoner indicated Argent was one of the areas they were setting up bases, but we need to find out if that’s true. If there are other spots they’re congregating, we need to know where. Everything he told us could have been a lie, and we need to verify it.
Matching actions to words, Lisa began searching the data, using the knowledge she’d gathered from Regex to search more efficiently. It didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for. In fact, she discovered far more than she’d expected.
Buried deep within the classified information, she found their grand invasion plans for the cluster. It was detailed, and there were annotations made based on changes they’d encountered once they’d arrived. It was out of date because the Confederation Navy had destroyed the gate system, but that hadn’t stopped them from entirely investing in the cluster before they’d been cut off.
More interesting to her was the fact that while every system was swept by motherships and drones, just a few were marked for actual Tardan presence. Argent was one of those systems, as were two others deeper in the cluster: Emerald and Morning Glory. She didn’t know much about them, but as she had heard of them, they had to be significant.
In addition to those three worlds, New Copenhagen and half a dozen others were marked for lesser occupation, which meant the prisoner had lied about the extent of the incursion. Big surprise.
There was also data about how many motherships were allocated for each system and how many Tardan warships were present. It looked as if each of those systems with an actual Tardan presence was marked as receiving colony vessels, so they hadn’t intercepted the only colonization wave. That would complicate matters, but that wasn’t her problem. Commodore Romanoff would have to figure it out.
She copied the invasion plans to a hybrid machine that she’d created. She’d be able to use it to translate the plans to their language and then into documents the Chens could access on Confederation computers.
Once that was working, she shut the Tardan computer down and sat there for a few minutes, basking in the pleasure of her triumph.
As much as I hate to admit it, I’m kind of getting used to having you around. I’m still not happy about it, but this isn’t a situation I have any control over. What’s done is done, and even if I still blame Doctor Romanoff and Captain MacKinnon, we wouldn’t have accomplished nearly as much as we have if we weren’t joined at the proverbial hip.
I’m not sure how the Confederation will react to that, but once again, that’s someone else’s problem. I know your civilians weren’t involved in what happened, and I’m trying my best not to hold it against them, but you can be sure that others in the Confederation won’t be so easygoing. They will blame your people as a whole rather than just the military.
I’m good with that. I’m wrung out and starving. Let’s grab something to eat and then go see him.
Lisa headed for the mess hall. She wasn’t going to get a sandwich this time. As much as her passenger liked that sort of thing, she wanted something more substantial. Maybe they had some stew going. That sounded good.
What sounded better was having Hunter go to Argent to kick the Tardan military’s asses. She was looking forward to that. It was payback time.
