Under Siege, page 16
As the drones proceeded, they dropped off relays that would allow her to keep in communication with them as they proceeded into the ship. When they withdrew, they’d retrieve everything they’d left for the operation, so by the time she was done, there would be no evidence they’d ever been there.
When the drones arrived at the airlock she’d selected, one of them drilled a small hole near the external controls and slipped some probes through. They were long and dexterous enough to reach the wiring and block any notifications that the airlock was cycling. Without that information, the only way for the crew to be aware of her intrusion was if they were watching the airlock directly, and that was unlikely considering how out of the way it was.
Once that was accomplished, the drones cycled the airlock open, and all of them swarmed inside. Here was where a little bit of risk would take place. Because she wouldn’t have line of sight to use the laser comms, a short-range radio would have to be employed.
It used burst encryption, and the odds of it being detected were relatively low, but it was still a risk. One that she and David had talked over thoroughly before they designed the relay. When she’d tested it out aboard Specter, she hadn’t been able to detect it at all, even though she knew the frequency, so with any luck, neither would the kingdom crew.
Knowing the interior layout of the kingdom vessel helped her plan the route the drones would need to take. Thankfully, once they were aboard the ship, they could move to the ventilation system and reduce the chances of being detected to almost nothing, at least until they reached their destinations.
One of the drones would go to the computer set aside for intelligence gathering. Whatever the kingdom folks had been doing here, she wanted to know about it. Another would go to the smaller computer the crew used for operations because it might have information about what they were facing if it came to a confrontation with the other humans. The third would go to engineering to access the security system aboard the ship. From there, she could monitor the entirety of the vessel and make certain there were no records of her intrusion.
A lot of what the drones were doing was fully automated and didn’t require her to give specific instructions. She’d put a lot of time and effort into upgrading the drones’ capabilities, and now was time to see if that would pay off.
After the drones had reset the airlock, the three of them went their separate ways through the air system, and within ten minutes, all three reported they were in position. They would wait for her orders to proceed.
She elected to start with the security system. If anything was going to trip her up, it was having the crew detect her presence. Thankfully, she had complete control of Patrick’s program, and if these spies weren’t of the very highest rank, they wouldn’t. There were portions of the program that were designed to penetrate kingdom computers through flaws that were intentionally put in place, and if that kind of gap still existed, it would make her job very easy.
Not that she would count on that. In fact, she’d come at this as if they’d become aware that Patrick’s program had fallen into enemy hands and were actively looking for her to use it. She’d treat this as if the odds of discovery were very high and hack in like the pro she was.
That turned out to be a good thing. While the architecture of the computer system hadn’t changed, there were significant upgrades to a number of the systems, including in the area of security. Even the upgrades might not have caught her intrusion, but the risk was certainly greater than she’d anticipated.
As she was now completely fluent in the kingdom programming languages and knew the way they put things together, she was able to find her way through the tricks and traps the security system had laid looking for someone like her. She wouldn’t say she was ghosting through their system, but she was certainly the cat burglar slipping through the alarms without setting anything off.
Lisa took careful notes of everything. Not only was it a good idea to know how the kingdom was operating these days, but there were also undoubtedly aspects of this new security architecture that she could implement herself, with specific modifications to make sure that the kingdom people wouldn’t be able to bypass her security the way she was doing theirs. Not unless they were as skilled as she was at hacking and also had access to Confederation hardware and programming know-how.
It had been so long since she’d done something like this that she found herself settling in with a grin on her face. Honestly, this was what it was all about. The thrill of hacking someone’s system and gaining complete control no matter what they did to stop her. The feeling of doing something like that just couldn’t be beat.
After she’d defeated the security system, she went back through and searched for something more subtle. The kingdom personnel were paranoid in a way that wasn’t exactly healthy, but she knew the kind of things they liked to employ. Several more passes enabled her to find every single one of the security traps they had in place.
At least she assumed she had. If she was wrong, she’d find out in short order.
Her first step was to make sure that she turned off the alarms that would notify anyone about an intrusion in the three areas where she was present. She also deactivated the notifications for the airlock she’d used and the internal detectors that might pick up a radio transmission. That should make things safer for what she needed to do next.
Using the ship’s internal sensors, she began checking each compartment. There was one person in the room with the computer monitoring the passive sensors. The woman was obviously collating the data and making an assessment of what the Novarites were doing at the second world. There was also someone on the bridge. That man was watching what was going on at the second world too, but he seemed somewhat more relaxed.
The fact that neither of them was watching the area around their ship meant that she was in good shape. She hadn’t been detected on approach, and they weren’t aware that she had drones inside their ship. Perfect.
She set up an automated program to watch both of them. If they did anything unusual or left their compartments, it would notify her so she could pay attention to them more closely. With them out of her mind, she could focus on her real mission.
The first thing she did was begin copying everything out of the security system and sending it to her cutter. She had an isolated computer system there that would store the data for her later perusal. It might not be directly helpful to her, but if it gave her an idea of how modern kingdom computers worked, it would make future intrusions that much easier.
It also gave her access to a treasure that she’d hoped to find: Patrick’s intrusion program. Or rather, an updated version based on the brief comparison she did. The program wasn’t active, so it was a simple matter of copying it over to her system with everything else.
The access codes had undoubtedly changed over the centuries, so she’d have to be cautious in making certain she didn’t miss anything when she tried accessing it. She was willing to wager it was even more powerful than what she had now, and that would be very helpful once she’d adapted it to work on Confederation and Novarite systems.
The next area she turned her attention to was the big computer processing the passive sensor data. As there was someone in the compartment, she had to be careful that her drone didn’t do anything to draw attention to itself.
Thankfully, there were access panels at the back of the computer where the woman would have no reason to go. The drone had the necessary tools to disconnect the panel and set it gently on the deck. Once that was done, it slipped into the computer and began the delicate task of gaining access to the data without revealing its presence.
The security on this system was significantly less pervasive, but it was still there. She went through the same process she’d used before because she didn’t want to get sloppy and blow the operation at the last moment.
There was a ton of raw data, but that wasn’t what she was after. Instead, she began looking at where the kingdom vessel had been gathering data from and how long it had been there. It looked like the ship had been here for a very significant amount of time. If her guess was correct, it had been right behind the Novarites when they’d arrived in force.
Bit by bit, she began pulling the consolidated sensor reports, sending them to her isolated data drive. She also found the intelligence reports that the kingdom spies had generated and sent those along as well. That would make it almost like they’d been there themselves.
Once that was done, she got the intelligence-gathering programs themselves and sent them along. They’d be a potential upgrade to what her ship currently had, and she was also pleased to find full diagrams and specifications for the ship and the computer. Those were very useful because she was sure there were improvements that could be useful to her buried in the data.
When she’d finished, she had the drone withdraw and closed the access panel. Once it was safely back in the air ducts and she had it safely away from detection, she turned her attention to the third drone.
It was poised to access the computer the crew used for storing important information. If there were details about this operation against the Novarites, that’s where it would be.
Again, she painstakingly broke the security on the system and was rewarded when she found the information she was looking for. Admiral Romanoff wouldn’t be pleased. The kingdom had brought a significant force of warships, and they were already inside the cluster, though they were presently located in a system that had no human habitation.
In fact, it didn’t seem that the kingdom spies were aware of the humans at all. They knew that someone had been subjugated here, but they had no details about the race of the original inhabitants of Vesuvius. That meant that they didn’t know about the Confederation or how large it was. The Locusts had actually done them one favor after all.
It still meant they’d have to deal with an armed force of kingdom warships if they decided to attack. The spies had put together an intelligence assessment of the task force, and even though she wasn’t a military person, she could recognize that it was significant enough to be a threat to Hunter or any other ships they decided to fight. After all, the kingdom wanted to exterminate the Novarites, so they’d come in force.
Unfortunately for them, they’d underestimated how many Novarites would be arriving and had quickly determined that they wouldn’t be able to engage the Novarites at Vesuvius without suffering significant losses. Their technological level was higher than the Novarites, but quantity had a quality all its own. In other words, they were in much the same boat that Admiral Romanoff was.
It turned out that there was also a spy ship at Leaping Deer. It would’ve seen everything that Hunter did and was no doubt already on its way to the rendezvous point to pass that along. Thankfully, even with their speedy hyperdrive, they weren’t nearly fast enough to get there before Hunter if Admiral Romanoff decided that was the appropriate course of action.
Knowing him the way she did, that was probably what he’d do. After all, that was where the kingdom leadership would be. They’d be the ones who’d make decisions about whether they would fight or negotiate.
As before, she pulled all the data she found useful, including quite a bit on the culture of various worlds of the kingdom. She wanted to go over the last two centuries to see how things had changed since Patrick had left, but that would have to wait until she had time. For now, she needed to begin withdrawing from the ship.
Getting out was pretty much the reverse of coming aboard. The drones withdrew after she’d made certain all the security arrangements inside the computer programs were reactivated and any traces of her presence were erased from their logs.
The drones picked up the relays as they exited, and the only thing she had to do once they were all back out on the hull was to use one of the drones to undo the bypass she’d installed and fill in the hole it had drilled with anti-sensor material. It wouldn’t stand up to a close examination, but unless someone went looking for something like that, they wouldn’t realize the ship had been penetrated.
Once the drones were back aboard her cutter, she released the magnetic clamps and used the antigravity drive at its lowest setting to edge away from the spy ship. Only once she was fully clear of the hull did she turn in place and begin moving away a bit more sprightly. As before, unless they were directly looking, they’d never realize she’d been there.
Even so, she didn’t breathe easy until she’d put over a thousand kilometers between herself and the spy ship. It was still possible to be detected at that range, but the odds were extremely slim. She upped her speed and continued accelerating away from the spy ship until she was ready to change course and head back to Specter.
This operation had gone far more smoothly than she’d anticipated. It had been a textbook example of how something like this would work, and she’d gotten away clean. With the way she’d cleaned up after herself, the odds of them ever realizing she’d been aboard their ship were virtually nil.
The next play was up to Admiral Romanoff. Once she presented the data they’d gathered, he’d have to make the call about what to do next. As she’d thought earlier, she expected him to meet the kingdom force directly. That would undoubtedly entail her taking a good look around that system ahead of time and getting a full assessment of the ships that were available to the kingdom.
This would be fun. Dangerous but fun.
17
Jack was pleased with the information Lisa had pulled from the deepest parts of the Vesuvius system. Not only had she given them a lot of detail about what was going on both around Vesuvius and the second planet, but she’d also reaped a harvest of data from the kingdom spy ship. David Chen was still going over everything, but it gave them a lot of information that was actionable right now.
She’d also made a pass by the first planet, and thankfully, there weren’t any warships hiding in the planet’s shadow. That was one less thing to worry about because now they had all the enemy ships located inside the system and a true order of battle that the tactical teams could start working up plans to deal with.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of firepower to be dealt with, and he didn’t believe his ship would be capable of winning a battle so deep inside the gravity well. For the last few battles, he’d been lucky that the terrain favored him, but now the tables were turned.
Worst of all, the Novarites were exterminating the human population on Vesuvius. It was likely that billions had already perished, and even more were under threat. Anything with military potential would be destroyed if he could reach it, but he’d spare the civilian centers if he could. He just wouldn’t be worried about the collateral damage around valid military targets.
The tactical department was busy working on options, but he didn’t expect them to surprise him with something he hadn’t considered. They were good, but he had more experience than all of them combined. No, this time around, it wouldn’t be a simple strike.
As it would take time for them to come up with a plan, he’d made the decision that it was time to speak with the kingdom fleet. They were parked in a nearby system, though not the one closest to Vesuvius. Even so, it was well within a single jump of the independent quantum drive, so he’d ordered them to redeploy to that system, and Lisa was even now getting an idea of what they were dealing with.
She’d gotten an order of battle from the spy ship, but he wouldn’t trust any information unless they verified it themselves. The kingdom was filled with clever people, and he wasn’t going to be fooled by something they did, even if it felt like it was a very low-order probability.
Lisa had been probing the system for almost half a day, and the information they’d gotten back was matching up with what she’d retrieved, so he was waiting for a final confirmation that she would maintain her position while he did the talking. Whatever they did behind the scenes, he wanted her to have a bird’s eye view.
Hunter was positioned far outside the jump limit, so getting her signal took hours, but eventually, it came in. She was ready.
“Helm, take us in to the jump limit closest to the kingdom fleet and then accelerate in using our fusion drives. They’re far enough away that they won’t feel instantly threatened, but having an unknown ship of our size appear out of nowhere will discombobulate them. Let’s not do anything to get them shooting just yet.”
“Engaging the independent quantum drive,” Jamie Singh responded. “We’ve blipped out to a nearby system, and now we’re back in the target system and engaging our fusion drives. The enemy fleet is over two hours distant at normal cruising speed, assuming they don’t relocate while we’re on the move. They should be able to see us in about five minutes, and ten minutes will be the transmission lag we’ll be dealing with for communications until we close the distance.”
“Good enough,” he said. “Communications, keep monitoring all frequencies in case they send something on a channel we’re not expecting. There won’t be any response to their hails unless I give the order.”
He turned his attention back to Derek and Amanda. “I’ve made a decision on how to respond to them while concealing the information we don’t want them to have. It won’t be long before they come to realize we’ve had contact with someone from inside the kingdom. We’ve incorporated bits and pieces of kingdom technology into a number of our new systems, and there’s no telling when something will twig for them. Rather than lie to them wholesale, I think I’ll be more surgical in the falsehoods I tell. We’ll go with Operation Mysterious Dead Guy.”
Derek smiled a little and shook his head. “We really need to work on your ability to name operations, sir. That one stinks. I assume you’re talking about how we’ll pretend we found Patrick’s remains and a whole slew of this technology, right?”
