Command Authority, page 22
part #5 of Last Hunter Series
Once she had everything she needed, she headed for the small craft bay. Christine was already there with a drone hovering nearby. She had an even heftier bag with her.
“What’s in that?” Lisa asked.
“Tools to work on various things. I never go to the field without having everything I need to repair one of my drones. If I don’t bring it, it’s a sure bet something will break.”
“I suppose so,” she allowed. “Let’s get going.”
The flight back to the station went smoothly, and Lisa contacted the professor to have him arrange for them to get a pair of consoles they could work on before they got there. They’d undoubtedly be infested with malware watching her every move, but that was part of the game. She wanted to see just how eager they were to spot what she was up to. The level of attention they gave her would tell her a lot.
When the cutter landed, she saw a bit more activity, but that was mostly people coming and going from the planet’s surface. No one was waiting for them, and she thought that was an oversight. They didn’t know who she was. She might be coming over for any reason. Like, say, to spy on them.
Christine, for her part, acted as the perfect distraction. She had her drone up in the air and scanned everyone around them as they walked. She was muttering into a headset, no doubt giving some rough draft commentary. Lisa didn’t understand how she did it. That kind of work would drive her crazy. Taking random video and turning it into a comprehensive story that moved people? That was not something she was capable of doing.
Do your people believe in documentaries? Those would be recordings of events and people telling their stories to others who want to watch it later.
You’re not alone. Humanity has its share of people who have done awful things. All you can do is stop them and then try to pick up the pieces. Right now, they’re still doing what they’re doing, so we’re on part one of that particular plan. Let’s focus on that.
The professor came up just as they were exiting the small craft bay. “My apologies, ladies. Miss McElroy had me distracted. Nevertheless, I’ve arranged for a small compartment with some consoles for you. I’m afraid they’re not very powerful, but they’re connected to the station’s network. The logins I got for you are guest only, so you may have to call someone and ask for extra access if you need something.”
Christine raised an eyebrow. “And just how did Miss McElroy have you distracted? Anything I should be worried about?”
He laughed. “Nothing so sordid. We were going over everything that had happened to us, and she was making notes. As Admiral Allen’s first assistant, she’s responsible for making certain his notes are complete. I suspect she’s also a direct employee of the cluster council and the president. Whatever she discovers will make its way to their ears in fairly short order. In other words, she’s a spy.”
“You make that sound so disreputable,” Lisa said with a smirk. “What would David and Tina say?”
“I’m sure they’d have some pithy saying that put me properly in my place. Fortunately, I can handle it. What are you doing here, Christine?”
The other woman patted her bag. “I’ve got the first part of the documentary. I have to find someplace suitable to release it. If I just wanted to get it out there, I could release it into Argent’s public network, but I haven’t been paid in months, and having a little spending cash would be nice.”
Lisa suspected that distribution rights—Confederation wide at some point—would bring her friend an incredible amount of money. “That’s very mercenary of you. I approve. If you need help negotiating, I’d be happy to lend you my skills. For a cut, of course.”
Christine grinned back at her. “Oh, I think I can handle this just fine. While I’m setting up, I’ll make a few calls and send some samples to the networks here on Argent. They’re going to want to get it on the cheap, but there will be a feeding frenzy once I start the bidding with all the big players. Trust me, I’ll have no trouble getting the best price.”
“Isn’t it the property of the Sons and Daughters of the Locust War?”
Christine shook her head. “They paid for a documentary on the restoration of the ship. They’ll get that. This is all me.”
The professor led them into a small compartment with three computer consoles arranged along one wall and what looked like a break room at the other end. She had no idea what purpose the room served under normal circumstances, but it was perfect for her needs. She took a few moments to look in the snack area and was pleased to find a coffee maker and all the coffee she could desire. There were also various kinds of crunchy chips that would suit if she got hungry. And cookies. Who could argue with cookies?
By the time she’d returned to the computer consoles, Christine was already at work loading her project files and software. She ran into trouble because guests weren’t allowed to install software, so the professor had to call someone.
Unsurprisingly, the person that came was Bronson Rowe. As a professional spy, this was the perfect opportunity for him to see what was going on and, if necessary, install monitoring software of his own. She inclined her head with a smile that outwardly said she was pleased to see him, but inside she was merely saluting a worthy opponent.
Once Christine had introduced herself and laid out what she was doing, Lisa spoke up. “I’ll need the same level of access that she has. The translation software needs to be installed, and I’ve got to create the directory structure for the files the same way it is on my hardware. Nothing too extensive, but outside the normal operating parameters of a guest account.”
“That’s right,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “You’re a computer specialist. I’m going to have to keep my eye on you to make sure that you don’t steal all our secrets. You hackers always seem to like collecting software and information that isn’t yours.”
His crack—made in jest—didn’t even make her smile waver. “In this case, I assure you that my motives are pure. You’re more than welcome to keep an eye on everything I’m doing because this is for both of our benefits. If you’re ever going to communicate with the aliens in a straightforward manner, you’ll need to have the appropriate software. I’ve put a lot of work into this program, which will save you so much trouble. You wouldn’t want to see how bad the first iteration was.”
He laughed. “I can imagine. I’ve read some of the attempts at communication back and forth between the Tardans and us, and it wasn’t pretty.”
He stood and gestured toward Christine’s console. “There you go, Miss Hooghuis. I have to say I’m very eager to watch some of what you’re doing. Would it be possible to send the working copy to this console so I can watch and listen while I’m waiting to see if you need further assistance?”
Christine barely raised an eyebrow, and Lisa inclined her head slightly. The war correspondent and documentarian smiled. “That wouldn’t be any trouble, but I have to insist that we make this copy secure. I’m going to sell the rights to one of the major networks, and I can’t afford for it to get out into the wild. I’ve got my own fail-safes built into it, so I can give you a play-once version, but anything humans can create, humans can undo. I want your word that you’ll watch this version but you won’t do anything else with it.”
“Who am I to stand between a woman and her money,” he said with a grin as he raised his hands in surrender. “You have my word that I’ll only watch what you allow me to watch and that you can distribute it however you see fit. My curiosity is intellectual, not monetary. I’m certain that the government will want to see it, though. So will Admiral Allen. Is any of this stuff classified? It will have to be vetted if you’re planning a public release.”
“Already done,” she said with a smile. “Commodore Romanoff and Commodore Nastasi say there’s nothing in it that would be considered a government secret.”
Lisa wondered how that particular feat had been managed. After all, the Marines had been fighting on a volcanic island that housed a hundred million nuclear warheads. Surely that was a military secret. Maybe they just edited out any reference to what the island was for or its location. If Sara Nastasi said that it was good, who was she to argue?
It only took Rowe a few moments to get her set up, and then he was off to watch part one of the documentary on the console next to Christine. She took advantage of his distraction and inserted a data chip containing her hacking programs. One of the benefits of having to allow her to load her software meant they had to enable her to upload files. They’d be scanned, of course, but she’d worked long and hard to make sure her intrusion programs didn’t trigger any alerts.
Within a few moments, a small blinking green light appeared at the far left of her console. The programs had successfully loaded themselves and were undetected. Now they were busy scanning for monitoring programs and security protocols that would be paying attention to what she did. She couldn’t type anything on the keyboard without it being logged until they’d cleared the system.
Not that the people watching would know that it had been tampered with. The translation program would install itself, and the logs would be updated to show her doing all the necessary work to make that happen, including several tweaks to make everything work. That allowed her to focus on her real task.
She kept what she was doing low-key and had an eye on Rowe. If he wasn’t monitoring her console remotely, then he was likely a disappointment to Confederation Intelligence. No doubt he was watching everything she was doing. Rather, everything she was supposedly doing.
And there it was. Her program had isolated his monitoring thread and was now feeding it the information she wanted it to see. Now he could look to his heart’s content, and unless he walked over and stared at her screen, he wouldn’t know what she was really up to.
With the freedom to get to work, she dug into the protocols and began looking for ways to enhance her privileges. A guest account—even one with the ability to install files and run specific programs—wouldn’t be able to get access to the secure portions of the network. For that, she needed administrator access and was confident she could get it.
To his credit, Rowe paused the documentary every once in a while and walked around to make sure they had everything they needed. No doubt, he was taking the opportunity to make certain he understood what they were doing at the same time. Good for him and Confederation Intelligence’s investment in him.
Unfortunately, she had a boss screen set up where she could switch over to her translation program with a single keystroke and cover all the windows where her hacking programs were working diligently to infiltrate the system.
Of course, he might not have been computer savvy enough to realize what she was doing, but she wasn’t going to count on that. No, she was much happier letting him believe she was simply a programmer doing programming work.
She’d never tried anything this brazen before. Hacking into the civilian systems on the station wasn’t as challenging as getting into the military versions, but she suspected Admiral Allen had brought something aboard to allow him to do specialized work. Once she got herself ready to go, she’d be doing something very delicate right under the very nose of the person meant to keep an eye on her. It was a challenge unlike any she’d attempted before, and she was ready for it.
Cracking the administration codes took less than twenty minutes, and it would’ve been much shorter if she had allowed herself to cut loose. Instead, she’d gone step-by-step and spoken with Regex every bit of the way to make sure he understood what she was doing. This was an educational moment where she could bring the scientist in on precisely what she was doing and perhaps enhance his understanding of Confederation systems. And of hacking in general, of course.
During that time, Rowe had become totally engrossed in what he was watching. Now he barely glanced at what she was doing. He was undoubtedly counting on his monitoring software to verify she did nothing unusual, but it had been subverted long ago.
Tricking the system into giving her administrator authority was simple enough since there were security holes that hadn’t been patched. It was amazing how often computer administrators failed to make the updates required to keep their software and systems secure. It was as if they just didn’t care.
Their loss, her gain.
With the administrator privileges in her pocket, she widened her search looking for secure systems linked to Admiral Allen. In an actual military facility, there would be no connection between the military and civilian sides other than a heavily protected computer system acting as a buffer between the two. Truly critical information would be isolated, and no one would even chance allowing potential intrusion onto a weapons research center or something like that.
Admiral Allen wasn’t that careful. She found a trail that led right to his system because he was querying the system for information under his own ID. That made figuring out which data pathways were necessary pretty easy. Once she knew which direction to go, she could locate his system and determine that it should have been secure. It would have been if he hadn’t disabled the security protocols.
She loved users, especially ones with authority. He probably thought it made his system faster. Or, if he were dirty, he didn’t want what he was doing logged.
Lisa soon had everything interesting copying over to a data drive she set on the console and plugged in. Some files were encrypted, and she’d have to work on those later, but his communications were wide open for her to pilfer. As they suspected him of being part of the conspiracy, this was the easiest way to find him talking to someone about it.
He was sending messages back and forth about meeting with their people and detailing what had been said, but nothing stood out as being all that suspicious. No hidden messages urging someone to kill Commodore Romanoff or Commodore Nastasi. No urgent requests for him to get more information to make sure their identities were safe. Nothing like that.
What she did find was a series of messages back and forth with the planetary president’s office. In fact, there were several direct exchanges with Caroline Ibarra herself. The planetary president had the same sort of questions that anyone would have of a political leader dealing with the military and wanting to know how safe her world was.
Nothing stood out as being out of place except for one small thing. Or maybe it wasn’t such a small thing. Troy Allen was her brother-in-law.
A quick check revealed that President Ibarra was married to Adam Allen. Looking into his background revealed he wasn’t and had never been in the Confederation military. He was a politician and had served as staff to many political figures. It seemed he’d made a good impression on at least one of them.
Was this something she needed to be worried about because of the conspiracy? Maybe. All she could do was collect data and see what David and Tina had to say.
By the time she’d finished scouring the computer systems, Rowe had finished going through part one of the documentary and was staring at the console. She understood how he felt because it had been a gut-wrenching experience just to be along for the part she’d been there for. Everything taken together had to be very difficult.
She cleaned her software off of the system, though she left herself access if she needed to come back. Once that was done, she put everything back the way it should have been and enabled the translation program. She’d give them a thorough walk-through of how everything worked when it came, but her primary work was done.
If Admiral Allen were part of the conspiracy, he hid it well. Was he more competent than she’d expected, or was he perhaps innocent?
“So, what do you think?” Christine asked. “Do you think it’ll play well for general release?”
Rowe slowly turned toward her. “Allow me to give you the highest marks possible for creating something that grabs you by the gut and never lets you go until it’s done. I don’t know anything about making documentaries or doing war reporting, but I think you’ve got a lot of talent at it, and the public will eat this up. How could they not?”
He stood and ran his hand through his hair, obviously still disturbed. “I knew a bit about what had happened, but I didn’t realize just how close things had been. How close they still are. We’ve avoided being crushed as a species several times in the last few months simply because of Commodore Romanoff, your people, and that ship. It’s no understatement to say that you’ve saved our lives, and I, for one, am deeply grateful. If there is ever anything I can do for you, no matter what that might be, all you have to do is let me know.”
“It was pretty intense,” Lisa agreed as she stood. “I’m done over here, and I can show you how the program works.”
Lisa spent the next hour walking him through how the translation program was meant to be used, and by the time she and Christine were on their way back to their cutter, she had a very good idea of just how shaken Rowe was. He hid it well, but the sheer scale of what they’d overcome and what was still coming toward them had rocked his world. She’d pass that information along to the Chens, and they’d know what to do with it.
“So when are you planning to release it?” Lisa asked as they walked toward the small craft bay.
“As soon as possible. Right now, it sounds like Jack is having problems because people want to replace him. If I can show just how effective he’s been as our commander and overcome the obstacles we’ve faced, I think that should go a long way to quelling the agitation. I mean, after all, seeing everything that’s going on, would you really want to be in charge of fighting that war?”
“No, and I’m grateful that someone better at doing that sort of thing is taking care of the problem for me. Let’s get out of here and get something to eat. I’m starving.”
