Jungle colony book 2, p.53
Jungle (Colony Book 2), page 53
“Ikeda here. Kombes? That you?”
“It is, Kaori,” Kombes said. “How’s the team doing?”
“Fine so far,” Ikeda said, glancing back at the discussion she’d abandoned. “We’ve made some interesting finds out here. Nothing that can’t wait, but interesting all the same.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Ikeda said. “Silva might have to get some better botany equipment. What he’s got right now probably isn’t going to cut it for getting a core sample from one of these trees. Anyway, what’d you call about?”
“We just got an update from our eye in the sky, Kaori,” Kombes said. “The storm’s picking up speed.”
“It is?”
“It is,” Kombes voice confirmed. The connection was clear enough that Anna could hear the inflection in her voice, though the signal indicator in the corner of her visor did confirm that there was a fair amount of signal distortion coming with it. “It might be on us before sunset. But there was more bad news with it.”
“More?” Ikeda’s words were loud enough to get the attention of Lankiss and Silva, and though neither of them were likely privy to Kombes’ half of the conversation, they stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Ikeda.
“Yeah. The satellite? It’s picked up another one of those surges.”
“Damn. You’re sure?”
“Pretty confident, Kaori,” Kombes said. “There’s a definite increase in activity on all frequencies moving across the surface of the planet. Still no idea what’s causing it, but it’s ahead of the storm. Could be on top of you within minutes.”
“Wait, it’s moving?” Ikeda asked. “Rolling across the—?” She seemed to catch herself. “You know what? You can show me later. At least we’re getting some data on it. We’ll head back immediately.”
“Got it, commander. Stay safe out there.”
“As armed as our security escort is? She’d burn half the jungle down if something went wrong. Watch for the fire. And no,” Ikeda said, turning to look directly at Anna. “I’m not saying that just because I’m fairly certain she’s listening in. Anyway, thanks for the update, we’ll get heading back.” Ikeda dropped her hand, the conversation over, then stepped over to Silva and Lankiss, urgency in her step.
“Bad news from the hab,” she said, her voice ringing loud and clear through the jungle. She motioned towards Botha and Anna, calling them both over to the group. “The storm’s picked up speed; it’ll be on us by nightfall. We need to head back.”
“Already?” Silva said, holding up a half-full sample vial of the fluid the tree had been leaking. “But I—”
“This isn’t open for challenge, Silva,” Ikeda said, cutting the older man off with a wave of her hand. “It’s not just the storm. The eye’s picked up another one of those surges like the one that made Botha’s equipment go haywire coming toward us.”
“Coming toward—?” Lankiss started, but once more the commander waved her hand, ceasing her interjection.
“The interference, whatever it is, shouldn’t harm us, but I don’t want to take chances,” Ikeda said. “Everyone grab your gear, grab your samples, and pack up. I want to be gone in a minute.”
“But—?” Silva began, only to cease speaking as Ikeda glared at him. “I apologize,” he said quietly. “There will be other times to gather samples.”
“Less talking, more packing,” Ikeda replied. “From what I gathered, you weren’t sure you could gather any more of that tree anyway.”
“Right,” Silva said, stepping away. Lankiss had already moved to gather her equipment, and Botha appeared to be helping her—likely because she didn’t have much equipment of her own to repack, and no samples.
“Neres,” Ikeda said, and Anna turned as Ikeda looked at her. “Care to give me a hand with my soil samples? I need hands.”
Anna nodded as she stepped forward. “I can do that,” she said.
“Good.” The commander moved quickly, gathering her equipment and passing some of it to Anna to hold. “By the way,” she asked, glancing in Anna’s direction. “You were listening in on that, weren’t you?”
No point in hiding it. “I was,” she said as she carried the commander’s equipment over to the ATV. “I’ve left my gear passively monitoring all available channels, and in case you ask, I won’t change it. I might tell you I have, but I’ll be lying.”
“Well,” Ikeda said, looking up at her as she set her samples down on the front of the ATV. “You’re forthright, though for the record I don’t disagree with your decision. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Good,” Anna said as Ikeda tightened the last strap. “Now let’s get out of—”
“Anna?”
Jake’s voice tugged her attention away, and she snapped her hand to the side of her head. “Yes?”
“Just warning you, that surge isn’t technically here yet, but I’m starting to get some faint noise over my comms. Whatever it is, it’s coming.”
“Roger,” she said. “Go ahead and get inside. Keep the door open for us.”
“You sure?”
“Jake …”
“Right, door open. Got it. Moving now. Get back.”
She dropped her hand and turned to face Ikeda. “That was Tames, reporting signal snow. Whatever that surge is, they’re feeling it at the bio-hab already.”
“Then we need to get back,” Ikeda said, tightening a final strap and then stepping around the side of the ATV. She mounted the saddle a moment later, and Anna jumped up onto the cargo rack behind her, taking the time to strap herself in.
“Everyone ready?” Ikeda called as the ATV hummed to life. She and Anna both glanced behind them to see Lankiss and Botha at the ready, Silva just finishing up strapping himself into place.
“We’re going to go a lot faster,” Ikeda called gunning the motor and pulling the handlebars hard over. The heavy-duty off-road machine obliged, the tires sliding on the moss and sending the machine into a tight one-eighty. “The hab’s already reporting communications problems, so stay in sight. If you do get separated somehow, just wait until the surge passes and home in on the bio-hab’s beacon! Clear?”
“Clear!” Lankiss called back, and Ikeda slammed the throttle down again. The ATV leapt forward with a jerk, accelerating a rapid pace. The suspension and bulbous tires worked hard to overcome the uneven surface beneath them, but at the speed they were going, weren’t quite enough to keep the ride from being rough.
At least our tracks are still there, Anna thought as they bounced through the jungle. The twin marks of their journey there were still scraped in the moss, though lightly in places. They were a bit hard to see in the dim light of the forest, until Ikeda snapped the ATV’s lights to life, brilliant LEDs cutting through the twilight.
How long were we out here? Anna brought up a clock on her hud to see that they’d only been gone a little under an hour. It’s darker than I thought it would be, she thought as light spilled across her back. Lankiss had activated the lights on the other ATV.
The storm, maybe, she thought as they rattled onward, bouncing over the ground. The jungle’s pretty dim already. If it gets overcast …
A faint crackle in her ears sent her eyes to the corner of her hud, where the bar that indicated signal strength was fluctuating wildly. With it a faintly audible hiss began to echo through the air, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t coming from radio, but rather from the air outside her.
Not a hiss, she thought as she looked up to see the secondary canopy shifting in a breeze she couldn’t feel. A rush. Wind.
Which meant that the storm had to be close indeed. That, she thought as the ATV roared around another tree trunk, bouncing. Or it’s something to do with the surge. Either way, it sent a chill crawling down her spine.
She glanced at her hud again, watching as the distortion grew heavier and heavier, the clear marker signal from the bio-hab’s beacon alternately fading and then growing stronger almost at random. Then, as she watched, it vanished, only to appear in a completely different direction. She heard a cry of surprise from behind her.
“The bio-hab’s gone!”
“Idiot,” Lankiss said. “It’s the surge. The signal’s been overpowered!”
Good, they’re still following us, Anna thought as the signal returned to its original position, then moved again, this time to another location, and then two locations simultaneously.
Concerning, Anna thought as the signal line in the corner of her visor continued to grow more violent. But hardly full cause for alarm. Though to be fair, I’m used to being jammed in the field. Ikeda was driving faster now, the ATV almost catching air over some of the larger roots.
Then she saw it. The gradual thinning of the trees, the line of light ahead of them. And just barely visible, the silvery-grey exterior of the bio-hab. They were almost back.
About time, too, she thought, watching as the signal line became even more erratic. It was hardly visible anymore, bottoming out or passing the top of the indicator in rapid succession. This is going way past a jammer. The hissing rush of the canopy was growing louder, too, rising as they neared the tree line.
Then they were out and skimming across the grass. A wave of wind hit them, hard enough that the ATV jerked to the side, and Anna turned to see a titanic storm cell moving down the valley toward them. That explains the wind.
The door to the garage was already opening as they neared the bio-hab, and Ikeda barely slowed, driving the ATV up and into the module without pause. The other ATV followed a moment later, the door dropping shut behind them. As soon as it was sealed, the signal distortion in the corner of Anna’s hud lessoned, though it was still there. The intercom let out a faint ring.
“Glad to see you made it back,” Kombes’ voice said. “The surge is almost about to sweep over us, or at least we think, since we’re losing contact with the eye. Wind’s picked up too.” The last comment was mostly useless, since Anna could hear it roaring outside the hab.
“Glad to be back,” Ikeda said, letting go of the handlebars. “Hopefully it all turns out to be for nothing, but better safe than sorry.” She turned to look at the rest of the group. “Also, we’re not going back outside until that storm’s over, so we’re going to have to use the interior airlock for decon.” There was a groan from the group, and she nodded. “Yeah, one at a time.”
“Great,” Silva said, looking down at his samples. “That means cleaning these things.”
“Perks of the job,” Ikeda retorted. “Or you can leave them in the garage …” The look on Silva’s face made it clear that wasn’t an option. “Or decon the whole garage.”
“Airlock,” Silva said, lifting his sample case only to frown as Botha darted into the open doorway at the end of the room and slammed it shut behind her.
“Snooze and lose,” Lankiss said with a laugh. “And I’ve got next.”
Anna sat back, her attention shifting upwards as Silva began trying to coerce Lankiss into letting him through the airlock first. The bio-hab wasn’t shaking, but she could still hear the faint hum of wind buffeting against its sides.
Maybe we’ll get through fast enough that I can watch the storm through the common area windows, she thought. That’d be nice. She’d loved watching the winter storms as a child, hearing the wind whip against the side of their small home and see the rain cascade down the window. Anything to take my mind off of where we were, she thought.
Granted, her love had diminished somewhat after she’d served in several theaters exposed to such weather, but from time to time it was still nice.
Like now, she thought as Silva, still complaining, took a place behind Lankiss next to the airlock. Botha was still in decon. It’d be a nice way to relax.
Maybe. Maybe once she was out of her armor and at the window, assured that the storm bearing down on them wasn’t going to be a reason to climb back into her armor on a moment’s notice … though if that happened, there probably wasn’t much point given how hardy the bio-hab was.
Still, it was something she could look forward to. Maybe talk with Jake while the eggheads spend their time messing with their new samples, she thought as the airlock door opened, Lankiss stepping into it with her sample cases at her side. After all, I could use some relaxation after that jungle.
The airlock door closed, and she leaned back against the wall, a thoughtful look on her face. Yeah, I want to do that. Relax.
She watched and waited as the storm bore down on the hab.
Chapter 18
“Attention. Attention.”
Sweets looked away from the book he’d been reading as the cabin lighting switched to yellow, bathing everything in an amber glow. He knew what was coming before Varus’ voice echoed across the ship-wide intercom. Over the last week, the message had come twice before, each time with an accompanying alert.
“The ship is now coming under cyber attack. Please power down personal electronic items immediately. Repeat, power down personal electronic items. If you are unable to power them down, alert your deck commander.”
Sweets sprang from the bed, his feet hitting the cool, metal floor of his cabin as he darted across the room, book forgotten. Here we go again. His laptop was already powered on, the antenna he’d connected to it live. Lights flashed across its base; it was picking up the newest intrusion attempt.
Good, he thought as he sat down in front of the laptop. Its software had already gone to work, sterilizing what it was receiving from the antenna and compiling it in a number of separate formats. It was a little overboard, but he didn’t want to risk the chance that something could sneak past his security measures.
Overhead, Varus’ voice had been replaced by an annoying but not quite rage-inducing alert tone that complemented the yellow lighting. All across the Casimir, Sweets knew, crew would be running about in what were by now well-practiced motions, checking the ship’s systems to make sure that they were either offline, protected, or behaving normally. Another set would be readying the ship for combat, in case their mysterious assailant decided to follow-up or combine their digital strike with a physical one.
I doubt it, Sweets thought as he began pulling up data on the current intrusion attempt. Unless UNSEC has got some sort of worm embedded in this that’s designed to take down targeting software or something similar. And even then, they’d probably fire duds. UNSEC is ruthless, but I doubt they’d open fire on one of their own ships—especially an expensive one—with live weapons just for a test.
Even if they did, unless Varus was prepared to issue some very hasty orders, the crew was definitely going to fire back with very live weaponry. And even then, Varus’ own instructions wouldn’t be able to stop a soldier with an itchy trigger finger, especially if said soldier thought that Varus had somehow been suborned, as impossible as that was with the AI’s hardware-specific loyalty compulsions. Physical access would be required to make the AI actually turn against the crew.
That, or a lot of very expensive, time consuming rewrites, Sweets thought as he started looking at the data from the latest—and still ongoing—attack. Varus would notice it long before it became a problem and voluntarily deactivate himself. Which would still be an effective way to cripple the combat effectiveness of the ship, but if an intrusion was deep enough into the ship’s systems to begin rewriting an AI, it was likely the losing end of a fight anyway.
Either way, it made the likelihood that they’d actually be attacked by something fairly low in his opinion. I suppose they could use decommissioned ships with drone protocols, but even then that’d be pretty expensive.
The yellow lighting still hadn’t faded yet, not that he was surprised by the fact. The Casimir had been waiting in the system for almost a week now, and in that time had experienced two of the strikes, the current one being a third. In each instance, the strikes had lasted roughly eleven-and-a-half minutes.
Which means that I’ve got another ten or so minutes of this lighting to look forward too, Sweets thought as he glanced up at the ceiling. Lovely. He’d considered disabling it with a short hack of his own after the second strike, but given that it was part of the ship’s emergency system, had chalked it up to a poor idea and gone back to work.
Speaking of which … The first details of the ongoing attack began to scroll across his screen. Let’s see what we’ve got today … He opened a secondary file, one he’d set up detailing the types of intrusion attempts made so far, as lines of text and commands filled the live feed.
Huh. The lines looked immediately familiar. He scrolled down, watching new ones appear as his system observed them. Weird. If this is what I think it is, then the next thing I should see would be a—He paused as the command came up.
It can’t be, he thought, clicking away from the feed and jumping to the record of the last attack. Identical text and commands stared back at him. They’re trying the exact same thing they tried last time? Again?
I mean, I guess it is a brute-force attempt, he thought as he compared the two documents. And not exactly the same thing. Alongside each of the commands his system was analyzing was a number denoting how many times each command had been tried, as well as how many variations of it had been noted. Those were different—the number of variations had gone down, while the number of basic attempts had gone up.
So whoever this is, they’re narrowing their tweaks down, and increasing the number of attacks. Huh. Hopefully Varus could hold them off, though there was little worry of that given the pattern so far.
If I can see it, then Varus probably noticed it a while ago, he thought as he watched the attack continue. Probably within seconds of the second attack starting.
Still, it’s interesting to note, he thought, sitting back. Probably won’t tell us much about the attacker, but … He let the thought trail off, still staring at the screen, then let out a sigh. Man, this is boring.
