33. Under Cover

Chi had received the mission from NP. An undercover mission with 00 privileges and under no circumstances was she to leave traces back to PA or TGFT. She packed her kit and dressed in a non-descript blue jump utility suit and walked down to the launch bay ready for the next shuttle to Dau Senate. This was going to be a challenge, but also very fun. She checked in under the name of Paltor Chissen, the ID being one of her get-away’s if she ever messed up. 


###


William Cutting kept on boosting towards Azumi, never quite reaching her, but keeping the distance so small that if she were to slow for a jump, she would be shot to bits. Ahriman turned to the bright yellow moth that had just entered through the wormhole and boosted over to the ship. He quickly and expertly shot a string of positrons into the ship, forcing it to slow.


"Azumi, I shall kill this trader if you do not move along peacefully."


Azumi knew that all of the traders in TGFT were covered under the Automated Pilot Recovery System, APRS, and as such the worst that would happen for Hortan was the loss of his ship, which wasn't supposed to be here in the first place, and a good long sleep. She decided to call Ahriman's bluff.


"Go ahead swine, he is covered." 


Ahriman complied and sent a torrent of fire into the mining vessel, resulting in a single strange looking life support unit being ejected to one side and the ship exploding around the armoured cargo hold, scattering the precious content all over space. He immediately boosted after the life support pod that accelerated slowly toward the 3k mark, matching speed with it easily.


"Lets try again, turn back and I won't kill the trader."


Azumi had seen with horror how the APRS on Hortan's ship had malfunctioned and how the escape pod that was an integral part of all ships had instead activated and by launching violently was protecting its valuable human cargo. She knew what it would do, it would slowly run towards the jump point and jump to the nearest station unless scooped up by a ship.... or killed by an unscrupulous person like Ahriman. The pod was slowly turning, something leaking out of it, some fluid or such. She slowly turned her ship around and started twisting and dodging to avoid the flare shot she knew was coming from the valk.


"Let him go you bastard."


She moved towards the valk at 70 m/s, and at the optimum firing distance for the flares, she activated her turbo instead of dodging, hoping to get under the arming envelope. The gamble paid off, only a single neut hit her ship sending it to 14% armour. As she came to ten metres from the valk, she activated her belly boosters at maximum for half a second and started turning her ship ass over head. The top of the valk appeared and she poured positrons in a double pattern across the top of the valk, one of the shots penetrating to the power coupler and exploding the ship. Her own small ship was rocked by the explosion that was large enough to further reduce her armour. She was now at 3% effective armour and Ahriman was closing fast. She resumed her avoidance pattern, dodging, spinning and boosting in all directions seemingly without pattern. She could not afford getting hit once. Ahriman was equally a very good pilot, and for about twenty seconds the two ships exchanged shots with none of them landing hits. Azumi noted that Ahriman always dodged down after a left dodge, and so she waited for the next left and put a torrent of positrons under his ship at that time. Hits, reducing Ahriman to 7% armour, effectively in the one shot to kill range like herself. She smiled, she had him now, he once more dodged left, and she steadied her fighter and unleashed under the EC expecting the victorious blast. Ahriman had anticipated this and lured her into a trap. The millisecond she steadied her ship, he dodged up and managed to glance her ship with a single dose of positron fire. Her ship ejected the life support pod and duly exploded, the damage finally ending its proud life.


Ahriman aligned his ship toward the pod and opened his cargo bay. He was going to get his cargo even if it had been expensive. He engaged the turbo to close the 780 metres that the pod had moved from the burning wreck.


###


Captain Burn was slowly and methodically sifting through the data logs of the attack he had orchestrated on PA, TGFT and TPG. As far s he could see, nothing had gone wrong, all his programmes had done what they were supposed to, even the data lock he had thrown on NP's headware. He really couldn't blame himself for not anticipating how paranoid his target had been, or how skilled the tracking person in TGFT had been either. Now he merely had to take these factors into account if he was to make another attack another time. Which was rather likely considering the nature of his guild's work. He noted a small dissonance in the data around the time that the reset occurred, what you could call a speed bump. He took the data and unfolded it, how had this been achieved? He had taken his precautions, the programme he used for these tasks was on a separate system, and if anything violent were to happen here, the system semi-conscious AI would just shut it and him down. After that the AI would restart his own internal headware after un-jacking him manually from the separate system allowing him to choose to online the headware or not. It was fool proof. Interesting, the bump unfolded to a very complex search algorithm that had been sent from TGFT HQ. He would see if it could be used for his own purposes and maybe shove it up their backsides. 


###


The semi-self-aware AI attack programme that NP had sent forth did not care about bumps in the data. It looked specifically for software to hardware integration interfaces and located these while noting their function. After three milliseconds, the AI had noted all these and started infesting them. The AI was best likened to a fungus, with mycelia spreading along opportune venues and maturing where the parameters were fulfilled. Once it had infiltrated a location completely, it took over all processing power and used it for further mutation of the data mycelia and spread it along all connections the location had. The central node cut all connection with the infestation and settled in to watch for its real target. The digital fungal infestation continued to spread and blossom in every interface, data mycelia from different locations trying to infest each other with a resulting infiltrationwar collapsing the control points switching hardware off-line in the process. The central computing centre that Burn was the proud owner of, was failing rapidly.

 

###


Burn was alerted by his brainplant that the temperature of the main server cluster was uncomfortably hot, more that 19K. He connected to the main system and sent a query down to the coolant control. It came up empty. Strange, he sent a query down to the secondary unit, expecting it to be online if the primary had for some reason failed; no reply. He frowned and sent a wide-ranging query for systems readiness across the board. Half his critical systems and nearly all his non-criticals came up dead; something was blocking his queries and shutting the systems down. He cursed just like everything he did, slowly and methodically while working on a counter measure. He tried to subvert the data mycelia that had infested his subsystems, but managed to spread it even more, even crashing two of his life support systems. Crap, that had been a mistake. He was down to single systems across the board and needed some raw power now to flush the fungal infestation. He opened his brainplant connection to the main cluster. That was the last mistake he was going to do for a long time. Something large and bad with a multitude of long hairy legs, that went bump in the night swarmed into his brainplant. The last message he received before tottering into insanity on shaky legs was from the owner of the virus.


"We all float down here."