Democracy's Might

Chapter Twelve

Marian Fairchild stopped outside her apartment door and fumbled in her pocket for the keys. The fingerprint scanner was broken again, thanks to the youth gangs that roamed this part of Luna City, and she had to use the manual way. She cursed the little bastards under her breath as she opened the door. Somehow, her rank as a Mid-Level Programmer in the Cicero Industrial Plant didn’t entitle her to an apartment on a higher level, even though her boss had told her that she was one of his most valuable employees and he wasn’t going to let her seek promotion or a transfer. Instead, she had to put up with the gangs damaging her door and praying that they wouldn’t decide to break in one day. Both of her daughters were just too vulnerable when she wasn’t in the apartment.

Inside, she glanced at herself in the mirror, scowling when she saw the dark shadows encircling her eyes. Any hope of a date with a hot man had vanished when her boss had told them all that they would be working double shifts from now on, leaving her tired and exhausted when she staggered home every day. Her dark hair was already starting to thin, she realised, or at least it looked that way. And there was no way she could afford a cosmetics treatment when she also had to pay for the girls…

Her blood ran cold as she realised what she was missing. The girls. They were normally noisy, playing that dreadful racket that passed for modern music every time she came home, but now the apartment was quiet. She peeked into the bedroom they shared and saw no one; indeed, the room didn’t look to have been entered since she’d sent them both to school in the morning. The small picture of their father — the only memento they’d had of a man who had walked out on them shortly after they were born — was still where they’d left it, positioned neatly so he could overlook their bed. It gave them enough comfort that Marian had never had the heart to remove it.

But there was no sign of the girls. Feeling a cold tremor running through her heart, she glanced into the living room and kitchen and saw nothing. They normally took a drink from the fridge as soon as they returned home, but there were no traces of anything having been taken. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that the girls had ever come home.

They were teenagers, with all of the rebellious impulses that implied, but they knew better than to stay out after school. They’d always come home before, even when they’d wanted to go stay with a friend for a few hours. She’d trusted them to understand the dangers…

She stared in horror, her imagination providing her with all kinds of horrifying possibilities, each one nastier than the last. The girls were thirteen and fourteen, respectively; there were slave or prostitution rings that would pay dearly for such young girls. Or they could simply have been raped and murdered by the gangs. Or…

The communicator rang. She stumbled towards it, pressed her thumb against the scanner, and activated the device. There was no caller ID, nothing to show who was calling or why. Normally, she would not have bothered to answer, but now… she couldn’t escape the feeling that it might be connected to the girls. Perhaps the security guards had found them…

“Good afternoon, Marian,” a voice said. It was completely atonal, probably computer-generated. “You will be wondering, by now, what has happened to your kids. We have them.”

Marian stared down at the blank screen. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the voice informed her. “What does matter is what you are going to do for us.”

“I don’t have money,” Marian said, feeling her life shattering around her. If she went for a loan, now, it was unlikely she could get more than a few thousand credits. And how did she know the kidnappers would return her children after she paid the ransom? “What do you want?”

“If you look under the sofa,” the voice said, “you will find a datachip. We expect you to take that chip with you tomorrow, then upload the program to the main computer network and activate it. Destroy the datachip once you have used it. Should you do so, your children will be returned to you alive and unharmed. If not… well, you will never see your children again.”

Marian hesitated, unable to speak. She knew the dangers of uploading a program of unknown origin, everyone did. It wouldn’t just cost her the job if she was discovered; it would ensure that she spent the rest of her life on a penal colony, while her children would be taken away and given to someone else to raise. If, of course, the kidnappers didn’t kill them anyway, no matter what they’d promised.

And yet… they were her children.

She could go to her boss, she knew. It was certainly what she was supposed to do. But she knew better than to think her children could be rescued, not when the corporation’s main interests would be securing itself. She would go into a holding cell, the datachip would be examined carefully and the children would be left to fend for themselves. There might be an attempt to arrest the kidnappers, but they wouldn’t be too worried about the children. What should she do? What could she do?

“Your choice,” the voice told her. “We’ll know if you upload the program. If you do, your kids will be freed. If not, you will lose them forever.”

“I will,” Marian promised. She knew she couldn’t trust her boss to take care of her children. Besides, if the kidnappers expected immediate results from whatever program was on the datachip, they’d know she’d tried to alert the authorities. “Just don’t hurt them, please.”

The line broke. Marian stared down at it, cursing herself. She should have asked for proof they were still alive, proof the kidnappers even had them… she stepped back, then walked over to the sofa and looked underneath it. As promised, a simple civilian-grade datachip was waiting for her. She picked it up and examined it, but saw nothing. The only way to know what was on the chip was to examine it in a computer. And doing that, she knew, might trigger the program.

Putting the chip in her pocket, she walked over to the fridge and removed a bottle of cheap wine she’d picked up for the times her job felt like too much. Taking a large swig, she sat down on the sofa and closed her eyes, trying to put the whole thing out of her mind. But images of her children kept floating up in front of her, some memories from when they were little girls, some her imagination showing her what might happen to them. Sickened, she curled up in a ball and tried to sleep. It didn’t come easily.

The following morning, she had to force herself to shower and swallow two pills before she could even leave the apartment. Some of her friends greeted her as she boarded the transport tube for the ride to the plant; she had to force herself to act normally, knowing that if they reported her she was doomed. The security staff wouldn’t thank her for bringing the datachip into the office, even though it was safe as long as it wasn’t actually inserted into a computer. She felt sweat running down her back as she got out of the tube and walked through the security gate with the others, wondering if the guards could sense her guilt. But no one tried to stop her as she entered the complex and made her way to her own office.

It was a good job, even though it was tedious at times. Everything from starships to orbital fortresses and industrial nodes required computer cores, which were produced and given their first programming at Luna Base. Marian was surprised that demand hadn’t fallen, despite the destruction of the Jupiter Shipyards, but apparently there were shortfalls everywhere. Or, as some of the techs had muttered when they thought they couldn’t be overhead, the immense corporation had simply failed to cancel orders even though they no longer needed them.

She sat down in front of her desk and activated the computer, silently grateful that she hadn’t run into her boss. Her job — along with hundreds of others — was monitoring the prime programming inserted into computer cores, then certifying them for shipment. It was a difficult task at the best of times, particularly when the techs were experimenting with newer non-standard pieces of software. Even the ban on innovation outside the labs wasn’t enough to stop them.

Carefully, she pulled the datachip from her pocket and inserted it into the slot. There was a long pause, just long enough for her to wonder if the chip had been prepared properly, then the screen blinked up a note. PROGRAM ACTIVE. Marian shuddered, then blanked it from her screen and went to work. She took the datachip as soon as it was expelled and threw it into the disposer. All physical evidence would be gone by the end of the hour.

She caught sight of her boss and winced. The man wasn’t as bad as some of the others she’d had, certainly not compared to the one who’d spent most of her time trying to get into her panties. But she’d betrayed him, as badly as anyone had ever been betrayed. It the chip was truly dangerous, it wouldn’t be just her neck that paid the price…

Colin Venture had endured an astonishing amount of teasing from his colleges since the name of the rebel leader had leaked out. They’d asked him when he planned to rebel, then why hadn’t be rebelled yet and finished by demanding to know why he hadn’t led a commando raid on the kitchens and secured some good food for once. Normally, by the time the manufacture crews were back on the station, the good food was gone. Colin had ended up punching the loudest loudmouth in the face, which had resulted in him being given extra EVA duty.

His supervisor didn’t seem to realise that it wasn’t exactly a punishment. Colin loved drifting in space, watching as the automated systems slowly put the starship together. There was little for him to do, unless something went very badly wrong. Indeed, he wasn’t entirely sure why they bothered with EVA operators at all. Maybe it was just some long-forgotten safety precaution that had never been repealed, even though it was outdated…

There was a sudden crackle on his radio, then silence. Moments later, the suit’s internal life support system — an ever-present background hum — faded away to nothingness. Colin blinked in surprise, then hit the reset button. Nothing happened. Panic flickered at the corner of his mind as he realised the oxygen was going to run out… then he looked up at the shipyard. The whole system seemed to have gone crazy. Each of the giant automated arms was now tearing into the starship they had been building, ripping it apart piece by piece. The whole superstructure was coming apart.

And it was suddenly very hard to breathe.

The alarms went off just as Marian and her co-workers were about to take their lunch break. Grumbling, they stood and made their way to the emergency shelters, even though there was no hint of just what had gone wrong. Marian had a feeling she already knew. Their system was intimately connected to thousands of other systems, while her workstation had clearance to access most of them without needing passwords to break through the firewalls. It wasn’t meant to be that way, but it was efficient. All of a sudden, she had a feeling that efficiency was about to bite her ultimate employers on the backside.

It was nearly an hour before they received any word from their superiors. “There has been a chaos attack on the main computer datanet,” the boss informed them. His face looked pale and sweaty in the dim light. “So far, forty-two people are reported dead. We have no idea just how much money has been lost, but it is certainly over a billion credits.”

Marian blanched. What had she done?

“Work has been cancelled for the day,” the boss continued. A low cheer ran through the compartment. “Security Techs are currently investigating the source of the chaos attack. If any of you have any suspicions you wish to share with them, please do so when you are interviewed. I must remind you that failure to cooperate will be taken as grounds for a full interrogation, even if you are innocent.”

He turned and left the compartment. Marian watched him go, thinking hard. Chaotic attacks, by their very nature, were extremely difficult to pinpoint because the virus erased all traces of its passage before it attacked. In theory, it should be impossible to identify her workstation as the source of the attack. But in practice… she had no idea. Would the designers have bothered to ensure her identity was protected? If they hadn’t, she was likely to find herself under arrest shortly — and she would never see her children again.

Tiberius looked down at the report, bitterly. “How much damage?”

“The chaos virus caused one hell of a lot of damage,” Hanno said. She was the family’s expert on computer security, one of the few people everyone trusted. “Right now, over seventy people have died. We also lost about five billion credits worth of infrastructure and starship hulls — so far.”

Tiberius blinked. “So far?”

“This was a particularly nasty virus,” Hanno told him. “The designers ensured that it infiltrated every processor it could reach, but it didn’t go active everywhere. Right now, there are processors that have to be regarded as suspect, even though they worked as designed throughout the crisis. I think we will simply have to strip them all out and destroy the units rather than trying to recycle them. There may be fragments left behind even if we completely reformat the processors. Replacing them all is going to be a headache.

“Then there’s the manufacturing complex itself,” she added. “Is that trustworthy or is it going to start churning out chaos-infected processor nodes. And then we have to ask ourselves how long the virus infected our system before it went active. We produce hundreds of processors a week. How many of them are infected?”

Tiberius blanched. At the very least, the family’s reputation had just taken a bloody nose; at worst, they would have to replace thousands of computer processors, including ones that hadn’t been infected during the first outbreak, but might have been infected by now.

“Give me some good news,” he said. “Do we have anyone to blame yet?”

“Not so far,” Hanno said. “We do know the virus was inserted from a workstation inside the firewalls, but that only narrows it down to thousands of possible suspects. I believe that the security officers are currently carrying out interrogations — gentle interrogations. But we don’t know if this was a lone protester, someone connected to the underground — or someone linked to the rebellion.”

“Or both,” Tiberius said. “The rebels are bound to make contact with the underground here, aren’t they?”

He scowled at the thought. The underground was very good at hiding, unsurprisingly. They had plenty of experience. The ones who didn’t learn how to avoid attracting attention died, sometimes at the hands of their fellows. They knew they couldn’t risk bringing the full might of the Empire down on their heads.

“Almost certainly,” Hanno agreed. She straightened upright. “With your permission, I will return to my station. We have already barred all further shipments of computer cores from Luna, but we have no idea how far the problem has already spread.”

“No, we don’t,” Tiberius agreed.

He watched her go, then turned to stare out of the window overlooking the High City. The Families Council was going to be very sarcastic about the whole affair; by now, they would have at least a general idea of what had gone wrong. And, once the full story sank in, they would be reluctant to use anything from the factories. Tiberius couldn’t blame them for it, but right now they didn’t have a choice. They had to get Home Fleet up and running before the rebels arrived.

And that, he reasoned, proved that the rebels were involved. It was hard to see how the underground benefited, but the rebels certainly did. Unless, of course, they had already made an alliance. The rebels could easily have dispatched couriers of their own from Sector 117 to Earth, perhaps even before the Battle of Camelot.

He shook his head, bitterly. There was no point in worrying. All they could do was tighten security and hope it was enough to prevent a second disaster.

The questioning had actually been quite mild. Marian kept her eyes lowered and answered in a monotone, hoping and praying that they weren’t using sensors to monitor her vital signs. But they didn’t grab her and throw her into a cell. Instead, they told her she could leave the complex and take two days break. She couldn’t tell if it was intended as a reward for putting up with their confinement or if her superiors wanted to bring in others to sweep the offices.

Back home, she discovered her children. They’d been brought in, somehow, and left tied up on their beds. Marian pulled them into her arms and started to cry. They hugged her back, awkwardly, as soon as she untied them.

“They didn’t touch us,” Gayle assured her. “They just told us that you would have to pay.”

“I did,” Marian admitted. “I paid for your safe return.”

And then she started to cry again.