Unity code, p.18
Unity Code, page 18
The diagnostic view offered a much better look at it. It was wide and black, just as before, a gouge that probably would have killed a living creature. The penetration went deep into her projected chest cavity, well past what claws or teeth could have accomplished, and…
“It’s not a real wound,” she muttered to herself.
“Indeed not,” Raijinn said, popping into the virch next to her. Its form resembled the kugu it normally puppeted. Nothing revealed, nothing shown. “Now what do you suppose could have made this?”
“Serket told me it was nothing.”
“Predictives do not like things that fall outside their comprehension parameters. The contemplation of the unknown or the previously unimagined is best left to your kind,” Raijinn said. “But this is not nothing. This is quite serious.”
“It disappeared after Serket said something. I thought maybe Emily was fucking with me. You know how she likes to screw around.”
“No,” Raijinn said. “This is not one of Emily’s games.”
“What, then?”
“This,” it said slowly, “was a hijacking attempt, if I’m not mistaken.”
“But nothing can hack abiota.”
“Yes, and aliens are not real. Perhaps it is time to reconsider certain…settled ideas.”
Daelia’s exhaustion was a lead blanket around her shoulders, but her need for sleep was tempered somewhat by the problem in front of her. “How far did it penetrate?”
The view changed, the dragon form coming in and out of focus. “You’ll need to look at the code.”
“It would go faster with help.”
“Undoubtedly,” Raijinn replied. “But this is a task that does not fall under my skill set.”
“Don’t give me that ‘primary purpose’ shit,” Daelia grumbled.
But Raijinn was already gone.
“Like it’s my skill set either,” she said, and stifled a yawn with the back of her brace.
There was no help for it.
She flicked open a couple of command-line screens, woke up the analyzer-bot, and got to work.
“Are they ever going to let you have a day off?”
Argo looked up from his phone at the woman who’d just spoken. He didn’t recognize her, but she had cyber wings on her chest and a smile on her face. “I, uhh, you are…”
“Jenn Kirby,” she said, and held out a hand. “Shift tech for today. You’re the new guy, right? Argo, uhh, Captain Irvington? I built all your accounts.”
“Thanks,” he said, and shook her hand. “Everything’s been working fine.”
“So? No days off?”
Nosy. Great. But he’d been stuck here in the SCIF’s outer foyer for almost an hour, and he was starting to get antsy. What the hell? “I had an encounter with a, uhh, foreign agent last night. Rover wanted me to come in and get debriefed.”
“Pilots get to do all the cool shit,” she said, and started unloading her pockets into one of the wall cubbies. “Where’d you run into some foreign dignitary?”
“Cirque de Synthétique.”
“Ohh…” And that had her full attention. “I have been bugging my husband about taking us there next weekend, when it’s in town.”
“It’s here right now.”
She smiled ruefully. “I’m from San Antonio. Got swept up in the mobilization orders. But I told Norris that there’s no way I’m staying here every weekend when it’s only a three-hour drive back to see my kids and rescue my husband from—”
Something buzzed.
And there. On his phone. An email from Aiden. Another one. After nothing for a few days, this had been waiting for him when he woke up this morning. Reassuring him that everything was fine. That they were all safe. He passed his EVA, he said, and as soon as traffic resumed back up in the orbital archipelago, he’d be on his way home.
Didn’t sound right to Argo, though. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was off. “Uh-huh?”
“These mobilizations are a bitch,” she said, and paused. “Sorry if I’m annoying you…”
“No, no, not a problem. Just waiting on Blankenship to get done with whatever so we can get this over with,” he said, and yawned. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Sure.”
“Is there any way to tell if an email account’s been hacked?”
“What do you mean?”
He held up his phone. “I’ve been getting messages from somebody, but they’re off somehow. I don’t know, just a feeling.”
“There are plenty of ways to hack an email,” she said. “And plenty of reasons why somebody might do it. Hard to prove, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Best and easiest thing for a hacker to do is load up a copy of Scribblr with every email that person’s ever written, and then have it autogenerate messages in their exact style. It’s got a pretty good success rate.”
“I thought there was metadata that came with writing abiota output.”
“There is, but metadata can be stripped out pretty easily. My students do it all the damn time.” At his look, she clarified. “I teach high school.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I assign really obscure essay topics and require a list of words be used properly in context. Scribblr is shit for research and good with the words. Either one’s a tell. Then I apply a little military-style mockery. Tends to clear the problems right up.” She thought for a moment. “I take it you don’t see this person regularly?”
“No,” he said. “We’re not in the same geographical area right now.”
“You have a cypher? Something that you haven’t brought up in emails, wouldn’t be immediately searchable on your friend’s social media accounts, but you would both know? A pet, a street name, something from a movie you both like, anything?”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking. “Yeah, I’ve got a few things like that.”
“Try that,” she suggested, and looked at the TV behind him. “Well, would you look at that.”
It was the Envoy, doing another one of those daytime streaming interviews.
“Is there anywhere that girl isn’t these days?” Argo asked.
“I don’t know. She’s kind of growing on me,” Kirby said. “And come on, unlimited knowledge from the whole universe? Who doesn’t love that idea? Maybe they can get us an OS that works, instead of this buggy-as-hell Delphi crap.”
Argo gave her a look. “You thinking about going in for Unity testing?”
“No, no, according to the data pull from last weekend, I’m not compatible,” she said, still watching the TV. “And it’ll be a cold day in hell before I run wires into my brain.”
“Same,” Argo said, and started typing out a reply to his brother’s last email.
Might as well give Kirby’s suggestion a try.
Functional workspace was at a premium in the 121st’s operations facility. While the unit had done an excellent job remodeling it—as well as could be expected under a military contract, anyway—the unit’s primary mission functions were so sizable that little room had been left for anything else.
Server rooms, the Ops floor, offices for support functions like Weather and Intel, hell, even the auditorium and training room all took up a surprising amount of space. Everything else was squeezed down, around, or out.
Like the gym.
Like the secondary conference room.
The place was little more than an alcove, a dent large enough for a ten-person conference table and a wall of whiteboards. It was an afterthought, a space created by default after the gym had been sited. Usually, it served as a place for people to leave their supplement shakes or have lunch.
It was also where Sausage had—apparently—stuck the investigative team.
Just Daelia’s luck.
She’d given up on identifying the flaw around 0600. She couldn’t quite get a handle on it. Every time she thought she had the error corrected in the simulations lab, her patch wouldn’t take. She needed somebody who was good at the imagery stuff. Lara maybe, if Lara was in this week. That was going to be her next stop, Cyber Surety, right after she talked to Rover.
At least, that was the plan.
She hadn’t realized she was going to be walking straight into the SIB team’s work area.
The odd space didn’t seem to be affecting them too much, however. They had their own equipment setup, a bulky half rack in its own internally cooled case, along with monitors, terminals, and what looked to be an AR screen. They’d hung this up in place of a wall, separating their space from the hallway, angled to avoid the glass-fronted gym door.
Daelia looked in there now. Somebody was using an elliptical. The one with the gears that squeaked and ground against each other.
Distracting.
“Ah, Miss Hall,” Smith’s kugu said, coming around and extending her a hand. “I assume you aren’t here for a morning workout?”
“No, not at all,” she replied, ignoring the outstretched hand. Abiota only affected human niceties when they felt they had to. She had no desire to play along right now. “I was looking for Rover.”
“He finished about half an hour ago.”
“And, uhh, Colonel Levinson? Is he here?”
“He’s out on the flight line, discussing a few things with the Storm Gryphons’ commander before they depart. Shall I notify him that you are here?”
“No, no, I can go find him out there if I need to,” she said. “I just thought I’d say hello if he was.”
“I shall pass that along when I see him. Is there anything else I might do for you?”
Daelia hesitated. Asked anyway. “I was wondering if you’ve come to any conclusions yet about, umm, Emily.”
“Why do you ask?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Ah.” The kugu’s eye apertures tightened a little. The abiota was focusing on something. Probably trying to determine if she was lying or not, Daelia thought. Such things in humans had physical tells, after all. “Not many humans would make such a claim.”
“Have you talked to anybody in this unit? Everyone’s fond of her.”
“Mmm,” Smith replied, the sound mechanical. “The Air Guard is a different place, I see.”
“No offense, but I’ve noticed sometimes it’s easier for people to get attached to emergents.”
“Yes. They’re more animal-like. Unpredictable. This speaks to something in the human mind, I believe.” Smith sounded disapproving of this. “But they are a danger to military operations, behaving this way. It makes them much harder to manage when errors arise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something was corrupted in the AR field, causing…hallucinations, shall we say. The best we can determine at this time, the two aircraft that went rogue did so because they were acting on faulty information.”
Daelia regretted bringing this up with a kugu. Especially one that was potentially scanning her for deception. She kept her face as blank as she could. “So what does that mean?”
“The exact origin of the problem is currently defying analysis,” Smith said calmly. “But I am confident I can identify its presence now, if nothing else. It is our conclusion that this likely affected other abiota here at Ellington.”
“Like Emily?”
“Exactly so.”
Daelia huffed out a long breath. “Like you said, she can’t be reset.”
“No. Emergents cannot.”
“So what are you going to do to her?”
21
Rover was already having a shit morning when Daelia showed up in the squadron front office, fuming.
It was gray outside. Storms predicted all day. Rain always put him in a bad mood. Sucked all the joy out of his world. On top of that, a number of his people had failed their damn fitness test over the weekend, two of them for the third time.
Of course, both of those were enlisted sensors. Of course, both of them were full-timers. Of course, if either one of them failed their makeup test in six months, Rover would have no choice but to kick them out of the Guard. And that was going to leave a massive, massive hole in his manning document that would probably take a year to fill.
“So what do you want to do about these guys, sir?” Scurvy asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Rover rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. You talk to them?”
“I’m third in line, behind supervisor and flight commander. I’m expecting the usual cascade of excuses.”
Everyone said squadron command was the highlight of any career.
Rover was pretty sure that was bullshit.
People were—
“Have you heard about this?” Daelia demanded.
The squadron commander looked over at Scurvy, who just shrugged.
People could be irritating as hell sometime.
Rover didn’t particularly want to deal with Daelia’s attitude at the moment, but here she was. She could wait until he’d gotten himself some coffee, he decided, and went about his business.
Every unit in the building had their own coffee setup. The one here in the front office was an old commercial brewing system with double heaters for the extra carafes. Scurvy babied the thing. Kept it assiduously clean, brought in bottled water so the city’s chlorine crap couldn’t screw it up, only used a certain type of filter that he swore created a better tasting cup.
Rover wasn’t sure about that last one. Scurvy used twice as many grounds as you were supposed to. The stuff would have stripped paint.
The machine sat atop an old credenza they’d picked up a decade ago, back when the Wing headquarters had gotten new furniture and all the old furniture was either farmed out across the base or sent to Randolph for disposal. Rover had worked that project—it had been a six-month-long nightmare. But he’d liked the credenza, so he’d kept it. It was a little worse for wear now, but what wasn’t, around here?
The drawers, normally stuffed with snacks, were badly depleted after the weekend. Rover grabbed a bag of peanuts, which was the only thing remaining, and made a mental note to go harass the el-tee who was in charge of keeping the thing stocked. He hated peanuts.
Shit. Morning.
Daelia was glaring at him. He liked the kid, but her dad really needed to teach her some tact. Rover tossed a couple of dollar coins in the coffee-fund can and took his time filling up his travel mug. “What can I do for you on this fine morning, Daelia?”
“Do you know what they’re fucking planning?”
He took a sip of his coffee before putting the lid back on. Oh, yeah, that was strong.
“Who’s planning?” Scurvy asked.
“The investigative team!”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with Emily,” Rover said. “But that’s no reason to come in here and throw a fit.”
“I’m not…” she began, and then took a deep breath.
Then she told him.
And sure, maybe her anger was indeed just a little justified.
“Chief, sort this PT shit out for me. I don’t care what you do, just take care of it,” Rover said, and gestured to Daelia. “You. Walk with me. We’re going to go talk to Levinson.”
Levinson was out in the cockpit hangar when Rover found him. He was apologetic, he was understanding, but he was unyielding.
“Look, Rover, I’m sure you can appreciate the severity of this issue. It warrants a severe response.”
“Only if that’s the only way to fix the problem,” Rover replied. They were far enough away here that Emily couldn’t hear them. Probably. “I want you to prove to me that it is.”
“Whatever else happened, I have enough evidence to prove she acted intentionally.”
“She—” Daelia started to protest.
Rover cut her off with a wave of his hand. Shit, last thing he needed was her making this worse. “I think you haven’t done enough analysis to know what she did or why.”
“Nobody wants to take an abiota with as much experience as Emily off the line,” Levinson said. “But think about ACC’s position. Having two of their Storm Gryphons go crazy? Having them ripped out of the sky by a, let’s be honest, inferior airframe like the MQ-9? In front of a live audience?”
“Are you saying this is political?” Rover asked, dropping his voice.
“Is it ever not?”
“So Emily’s going to get bricked because ACC’s pride is wounded?”
“She acted intentionally. On her own. That’s enough for bricking right there, even without the threat of potential contamination in her system.”
“But you can’t prove what that contamination is or isn’t,” Daelia said, piping up. Rover sent her a text message, NULI to monocle.
Shut up.
Too late.
“Oh? And what do you know about it?” Levinson asked sharply.
Daelia looked a little nervous now, like she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Didn’t stop her, though. Never did. “She’s not corrupted.”
“ACC isn’t going to take the word of the local contractor.” Levinson looked over at Rover. “You want proof? I’m going to have to pull it. And not from the servers. We’re going to need to do a rudiment core scan.”
“That’ll take some time, right?” Rover asked.
“To set up, yes.”
“And get permission from the Domain Array,” Daelia added.
“That won’t be a problem,” Levinson said. “And the execution should be fairly quick.”
Daelia was glowering.
Rover just shrugged, like he didn’t care either way. Inside, he was seething. “I’m not going to let you throw her out into the Repose without evidence. If she’s got an issue, we need to know that, too. I’ll take her out of the mission rotation myself. If there’s evidence.”
“Okay, I’ll get the paperwork filed, have Smith get a scraper-bot together.” He looked at Daelia. “Whatever you were planning on doing, don’t.”
“I—”
“Thank you,” Rover said, and sent her another cease-and-desist text. “Daelia, let’s go.”
Rover got her out of there before she could say anything else stupid.
“Never commit to anything, Daelia,” he told her as they walked back to the squadron in the miserable gray drizzle. “Never show your cards. Never take a solid position until you have to.”
“It’s not a real wound,” she muttered to herself.
“Indeed not,” Raijinn said, popping into the virch next to her. Its form resembled the kugu it normally puppeted. Nothing revealed, nothing shown. “Now what do you suppose could have made this?”
“Serket told me it was nothing.”
“Predictives do not like things that fall outside their comprehension parameters. The contemplation of the unknown or the previously unimagined is best left to your kind,” Raijinn said. “But this is not nothing. This is quite serious.”
“It disappeared after Serket said something. I thought maybe Emily was fucking with me. You know how she likes to screw around.”
“No,” Raijinn said. “This is not one of Emily’s games.”
“What, then?”
“This,” it said slowly, “was a hijacking attempt, if I’m not mistaken.”
“But nothing can hack abiota.”
“Yes, and aliens are not real. Perhaps it is time to reconsider certain…settled ideas.”
Daelia’s exhaustion was a lead blanket around her shoulders, but her need for sleep was tempered somewhat by the problem in front of her. “How far did it penetrate?”
The view changed, the dragon form coming in and out of focus. “You’ll need to look at the code.”
“It would go faster with help.”
“Undoubtedly,” Raijinn replied. “But this is a task that does not fall under my skill set.”
“Don’t give me that ‘primary purpose’ shit,” Daelia grumbled.
But Raijinn was already gone.
“Like it’s my skill set either,” she said, and stifled a yawn with the back of her brace.
There was no help for it.
She flicked open a couple of command-line screens, woke up the analyzer-bot, and got to work.
“Are they ever going to let you have a day off?”
Argo looked up from his phone at the woman who’d just spoken. He didn’t recognize her, but she had cyber wings on her chest and a smile on her face. “I, uhh, you are…”
“Jenn Kirby,” she said, and held out a hand. “Shift tech for today. You’re the new guy, right? Argo, uhh, Captain Irvington? I built all your accounts.”
“Thanks,” he said, and shook her hand. “Everything’s been working fine.”
“So? No days off?”
Nosy. Great. But he’d been stuck here in the SCIF’s outer foyer for almost an hour, and he was starting to get antsy. What the hell? “I had an encounter with a, uhh, foreign agent last night. Rover wanted me to come in and get debriefed.”
“Pilots get to do all the cool shit,” she said, and started unloading her pockets into one of the wall cubbies. “Where’d you run into some foreign dignitary?”
“Cirque de Synthétique.”
“Ohh…” And that had her full attention. “I have been bugging my husband about taking us there next weekend, when it’s in town.”
“It’s here right now.”
She smiled ruefully. “I’m from San Antonio. Got swept up in the mobilization orders. But I told Norris that there’s no way I’m staying here every weekend when it’s only a three-hour drive back to see my kids and rescue my husband from—”
Something buzzed.
And there. On his phone. An email from Aiden. Another one. After nothing for a few days, this had been waiting for him when he woke up this morning. Reassuring him that everything was fine. That they were all safe. He passed his EVA, he said, and as soon as traffic resumed back up in the orbital archipelago, he’d be on his way home.
Didn’t sound right to Argo, though. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was off. “Uh-huh?”
“These mobilizations are a bitch,” she said, and paused. “Sorry if I’m annoying you…”
“No, no, not a problem. Just waiting on Blankenship to get done with whatever so we can get this over with,” he said, and yawned. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Sure.”
“Is there any way to tell if an email account’s been hacked?”
“What do you mean?”
He held up his phone. “I’ve been getting messages from somebody, but they’re off somehow. I don’t know, just a feeling.”
“There are plenty of ways to hack an email,” she said. “And plenty of reasons why somebody might do it. Hard to prove, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Best and easiest thing for a hacker to do is load up a copy of Scribblr with every email that person’s ever written, and then have it autogenerate messages in their exact style. It’s got a pretty good success rate.”
“I thought there was metadata that came with writing abiota output.”
“There is, but metadata can be stripped out pretty easily. My students do it all the damn time.” At his look, she clarified. “I teach high school.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I assign really obscure essay topics and require a list of words be used properly in context. Scribblr is shit for research and good with the words. Either one’s a tell. Then I apply a little military-style mockery. Tends to clear the problems right up.” She thought for a moment. “I take it you don’t see this person regularly?”
“No,” he said. “We’re not in the same geographical area right now.”
“You have a cypher? Something that you haven’t brought up in emails, wouldn’t be immediately searchable on your friend’s social media accounts, but you would both know? A pet, a street name, something from a movie you both like, anything?”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking. “Yeah, I’ve got a few things like that.”
“Try that,” she suggested, and looked at the TV behind him. “Well, would you look at that.”
It was the Envoy, doing another one of those daytime streaming interviews.
“Is there anywhere that girl isn’t these days?” Argo asked.
“I don’t know. She’s kind of growing on me,” Kirby said. “And come on, unlimited knowledge from the whole universe? Who doesn’t love that idea? Maybe they can get us an OS that works, instead of this buggy-as-hell Delphi crap.”
Argo gave her a look. “You thinking about going in for Unity testing?”
“No, no, according to the data pull from last weekend, I’m not compatible,” she said, still watching the TV. “And it’ll be a cold day in hell before I run wires into my brain.”
“Same,” Argo said, and started typing out a reply to his brother’s last email.
Might as well give Kirby’s suggestion a try.
Functional workspace was at a premium in the 121st’s operations facility. While the unit had done an excellent job remodeling it—as well as could be expected under a military contract, anyway—the unit’s primary mission functions were so sizable that little room had been left for anything else.
Server rooms, the Ops floor, offices for support functions like Weather and Intel, hell, even the auditorium and training room all took up a surprising amount of space. Everything else was squeezed down, around, or out.
Like the gym.
Like the secondary conference room.
The place was little more than an alcove, a dent large enough for a ten-person conference table and a wall of whiteboards. It was an afterthought, a space created by default after the gym had been sited. Usually, it served as a place for people to leave their supplement shakes or have lunch.
It was also where Sausage had—apparently—stuck the investigative team.
Just Daelia’s luck.
She’d given up on identifying the flaw around 0600. She couldn’t quite get a handle on it. Every time she thought she had the error corrected in the simulations lab, her patch wouldn’t take. She needed somebody who was good at the imagery stuff. Lara maybe, if Lara was in this week. That was going to be her next stop, Cyber Surety, right after she talked to Rover.
At least, that was the plan.
She hadn’t realized she was going to be walking straight into the SIB team’s work area.
The odd space didn’t seem to be affecting them too much, however. They had their own equipment setup, a bulky half rack in its own internally cooled case, along with monitors, terminals, and what looked to be an AR screen. They’d hung this up in place of a wall, separating their space from the hallway, angled to avoid the glass-fronted gym door.
Daelia looked in there now. Somebody was using an elliptical. The one with the gears that squeaked and ground against each other.
Distracting.
“Ah, Miss Hall,” Smith’s kugu said, coming around and extending her a hand. “I assume you aren’t here for a morning workout?”
“No, not at all,” she replied, ignoring the outstretched hand. Abiota only affected human niceties when they felt they had to. She had no desire to play along right now. “I was looking for Rover.”
“He finished about half an hour ago.”
“And, uhh, Colonel Levinson? Is he here?”
“He’s out on the flight line, discussing a few things with the Storm Gryphons’ commander before they depart. Shall I notify him that you are here?”
“No, no, I can go find him out there if I need to,” she said. “I just thought I’d say hello if he was.”
“I shall pass that along when I see him. Is there anything else I might do for you?”
Daelia hesitated. Asked anyway. “I was wondering if you’ve come to any conclusions yet about, umm, Emily.”
“Why do you ask?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Ah.” The kugu’s eye apertures tightened a little. The abiota was focusing on something. Probably trying to determine if she was lying or not, Daelia thought. Such things in humans had physical tells, after all. “Not many humans would make such a claim.”
“Have you talked to anybody in this unit? Everyone’s fond of her.”
“Mmm,” Smith replied, the sound mechanical. “The Air Guard is a different place, I see.”
“No offense, but I’ve noticed sometimes it’s easier for people to get attached to emergents.”
“Yes. They’re more animal-like. Unpredictable. This speaks to something in the human mind, I believe.” Smith sounded disapproving of this. “But they are a danger to military operations, behaving this way. It makes them much harder to manage when errors arise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something was corrupted in the AR field, causing…hallucinations, shall we say. The best we can determine at this time, the two aircraft that went rogue did so because they were acting on faulty information.”
Daelia regretted bringing this up with a kugu. Especially one that was potentially scanning her for deception. She kept her face as blank as she could. “So what does that mean?”
“The exact origin of the problem is currently defying analysis,” Smith said calmly. “But I am confident I can identify its presence now, if nothing else. It is our conclusion that this likely affected other abiota here at Ellington.”
“Like Emily?”
“Exactly so.”
Daelia huffed out a long breath. “Like you said, she can’t be reset.”
“No. Emergents cannot.”
“So what are you going to do to her?”
21
Rover was already having a shit morning when Daelia showed up in the squadron front office, fuming.
It was gray outside. Storms predicted all day. Rain always put him in a bad mood. Sucked all the joy out of his world. On top of that, a number of his people had failed their damn fitness test over the weekend, two of them for the third time.
Of course, both of those were enlisted sensors. Of course, both of them were full-timers. Of course, if either one of them failed their makeup test in six months, Rover would have no choice but to kick them out of the Guard. And that was going to leave a massive, massive hole in his manning document that would probably take a year to fill.
“So what do you want to do about these guys, sir?” Scurvy asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Rover rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. You talk to them?”
“I’m third in line, behind supervisor and flight commander. I’m expecting the usual cascade of excuses.”
Everyone said squadron command was the highlight of any career.
Rover was pretty sure that was bullshit.
People were—
“Have you heard about this?” Daelia demanded.
The squadron commander looked over at Scurvy, who just shrugged.
People could be irritating as hell sometime.
Rover didn’t particularly want to deal with Daelia’s attitude at the moment, but here she was. She could wait until he’d gotten himself some coffee, he decided, and went about his business.
Every unit in the building had their own coffee setup. The one here in the front office was an old commercial brewing system with double heaters for the extra carafes. Scurvy babied the thing. Kept it assiduously clean, brought in bottled water so the city’s chlorine crap couldn’t screw it up, only used a certain type of filter that he swore created a better tasting cup.
Rover wasn’t sure about that last one. Scurvy used twice as many grounds as you were supposed to. The stuff would have stripped paint.
The machine sat atop an old credenza they’d picked up a decade ago, back when the Wing headquarters had gotten new furniture and all the old furniture was either farmed out across the base or sent to Randolph for disposal. Rover had worked that project—it had been a six-month-long nightmare. But he’d liked the credenza, so he’d kept it. It was a little worse for wear now, but what wasn’t, around here?
The drawers, normally stuffed with snacks, were badly depleted after the weekend. Rover grabbed a bag of peanuts, which was the only thing remaining, and made a mental note to go harass the el-tee who was in charge of keeping the thing stocked. He hated peanuts.
Shit. Morning.
Daelia was glaring at him. He liked the kid, but her dad really needed to teach her some tact. Rover tossed a couple of dollar coins in the coffee-fund can and took his time filling up his travel mug. “What can I do for you on this fine morning, Daelia?”
“Do you know what they’re fucking planning?”
He took a sip of his coffee before putting the lid back on. Oh, yeah, that was strong.
“Who’s planning?” Scurvy asked.
“The investigative team!”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with Emily,” Rover said. “But that’s no reason to come in here and throw a fit.”
“I’m not…” she began, and then took a deep breath.
Then she told him.
And sure, maybe her anger was indeed just a little justified.
“Chief, sort this PT shit out for me. I don’t care what you do, just take care of it,” Rover said, and gestured to Daelia. “You. Walk with me. We’re going to go talk to Levinson.”
Levinson was out in the cockpit hangar when Rover found him. He was apologetic, he was understanding, but he was unyielding.
“Look, Rover, I’m sure you can appreciate the severity of this issue. It warrants a severe response.”
“Only if that’s the only way to fix the problem,” Rover replied. They were far enough away here that Emily couldn’t hear them. Probably. “I want you to prove to me that it is.”
“Whatever else happened, I have enough evidence to prove she acted intentionally.”
“She—” Daelia started to protest.
Rover cut her off with a wave of his hand. Shit, last thing he needed was her making this worse. “I think you haven’t done enough analysis to know what she did or why.”
“Nobody wants to take an abiota with as much experience as Emily off the line,” Levinson said. “But think about ACC’s position. Having two of their Storm Gryphons go crazy? Having them ripped out of the sky by a, let’s be honest, inferior airframe like the MQ-9? In front of a live audience?”
“Are you saying this is political?” Rover asked, dropping his voice.
“Is it ever not?”
“So Emily’s going to get bricked because ACC’s pride is wounded?”
“She acted intentionally. On her own. That’s enough for bricking right there, even without the threat of potential contamination in her system.”
“But you can’t prove what that contamination is or isn’t,” Daelia said, piping up. Rover sent her a text message, NULI to monocle.
Shut up.
Too late.
“Oh? And what do you know about it?” Levinson asked sharply.
Daelia looked a little nervous now, like she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Didn’t stop her, though. Never did. “She’s not corrupted.”
“ACC isn’t going to take the word of the local contractor.” Levinson looked over at Rover. “You want proof? I’m going to have to pull it. And not from the servers. We’re going to need to do a rudiment core scan.”
“That’ll take some time, right?” Rover asked.
“To set up, yes.”
“And get permission from the Domain Array,” Daelia added.
“That won’t be a problem,” Levinson said. “And the execution should be fairly quick.”
Daelia was glowering.
Rover just shrugged, like he didn’t care either way. Inside, he was seething. “I’m not going to let you throw her out into the Repose without evidence. If she’s got an issue, we need to know that, too. I’ll take her out of the mission rotation myself. If there’s evidence.”
“Okay, I’ll get the paperwork filed, have Smith get a scraper-bot together.” He looked at Daelia. “Whatever you were planning on doing, don’t.”
“I—”
“Thank you,” Rover said, and sent her another cease-and-desist text. “Daelia, let’s go.”
Rover got her out of there before she could say anything else stupid.
“Never commit to anything, Daelia,” he told her as they walked back to the squadron in the miserable gray drizzle. “Never show your cards. Never take a solid position until you have to.”
