Springboard

7

For a man of lesser technical skill, creating scenarios for VR could take away valuable time better spent on the problem that needed to be solved. Jay, who had been among the best in the biz for years, didn’t have that worry. He had a shelf piled high with stock scenarios, figuratively speaking, and he could always grab one and plug it in. You built stock when things were slow and you had time to get it right. And if you couldn’t get it right, why bother? Grab some commercial product, light it, and ride somebody else’s train…

Not this boy, no, sir, nohow, no, thank you!

Jay grinned as he slipped into the VR gear. The mesh, the casters, the feelware, it was all getting better and better every year. A man suited in full sensory mode could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch things in a VR scenario. It still wasn’t as good as RW in a lot of ways, but some of it came awfully close.

Jay had brought his personal gear to the military annex — he wasn’t keen on wearing somebody else’s sweaty, non-custom-fit stuff. If they were worried about him somehow hiding information in the suit’s system, he could leave it here — he had two more sets just like it, one at home, one at Net Force HQ.

It was true that the military systems had their private gestalt, but applying his own scenario to them was doable, if not as easy as interfacing with civilian stuff. He grinned again and shook his head. You didn’t throw a pebble out in front of Smokin’ Jay Gridley and expect him to trip and fall on his face.

The biggest problem was, he had to be here physically to do it, since there was supposedly no way to access the systems from without. Which, of course, was clearly wrong, since somebody had apparently gotten in somehow and bollixed things up pretty well. And if they hadn’t gotten in from outside, then there was some social engineering going on, and it had been an inside job. Finding and closing the open and hidden door was what needed to happen. That was Jay’s job. If it turned out the bad guy was one of the military’s own? That wasn’t Jay’s problem.

Rigged at last, Jay called up a new scenario, one he had just finished building a few weeks ago. Seemed like a good time to try this one out…

“There she is, sir, off the starboard bow.” The first officer’s British intonation was crisp and properly deferential.

The air was full of the scents of salt and sunbaked oak and warm tar. Well, creosote for tar, actually, which was close enough.

Captain Jay Gridley, of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, nodded. He raised his polished brass spyglass and searched for the target. It took a while to locate it — the field of vision in these old scopes was terrible… ah, there it was.

The pirate’s ship flew the Jolly Roger, the skull and crossed bones leering in the bright tropical sunshine.

“There’s a squall off our port, sir,” the officer said.

Jay lowered the telescope. “Yes, Redbeard will certainly make for that, hoping to hide. Well, we will not allow that to happen, will we?”

“No, sir. Of course not.”

Jay laughed softly. He loved the British Navy. At least the fictional historical version he had created, which was admittedly a combination of Horatio Hornblower and Captain Blood. The real Navy during this period had not been quite so dashing. Men on board a wooden ship in the Caribbean were sweaty, seldom-washed, and brutal. An educated and relatively refined captain, who might while away an evening playing his violin or with chess, could have a man flogged for almost any reason, and did so often, from what Jay could determine. There were times when actual history was better, and times when the fantasy was more fun. Besides, in fantasy, Jay didn’t have to get the names and details exact — or spot-on, as the Limeys would say…

The three-masted Riggs had made full sail, and the rigging creaked under the driving, hot breeze, the canvas and lines stretching and straining as the vessel cut through the sea in pursuit of the dreaded Redbeard, a man who had plundered fat merchant ships for far too long…

There had been several nasty pirates called “Redbeard.” Jay had also heard of Blackbeard and Bluebeard. He wondered if there had ever been a Blondbeard? Did they call a man who shaved Nobeard?

He smiled, then shook his head. No matter. In this scenario, the information that Jay chased lay just ahead, cast in the form of a pirate ship. The Riggs was faster, better armed, and, because Jay had made it, better crewed. They would run the pirates down, board and capture them, and then make them talk.

His first officer interrupted Jay’s thoughts: “We’ll be within range soon, sir.”

The weather was freshening. The salt spray splashed harder, driven by the herald winds of the approaching rain-squall. The pirates were hoping to get to the rain before the Riggs ran them down, to hide in the weather.

“Bring her about, Mr. Smee.” Jay almost laughed every time he said his first officer’s name, but managed to keep a straight face most of the time.

“Yes, sir.”

They would line the ship up for a broadside. The pirate ship would strike her colors and surrender, or they would be bloody sorry. Har!

Oops. That was the pirates’ expression. British Naval officers were more articulate. They had come up with such terms as “square meal,” “son of a gun,” and “no room to swing a cat,” this last being for the cat-o’-nine-tails used to flog crewmen whether they deserved it or not. Wouldn’t be any of that on Captain Jay’s ship, by gawd. Nor any “hars.”

The sea was choppy, waves driven by the rain and wind growing in size. The Riggs drew closer to the pirate vessel, a couple hundred yards away now, parallel and almost even with her.

Jay took the loudspeaker cone from a crewman and aimed it at the pirates.

“Hallo, the Jolly Roger!” he yelled. “Strike your colors and prepare to be boarded!”

For a moment, Jay wasn’t sure they could hear him over the freshening wind and chop. Then the pirate ship fired its cannon, at least four on her starboard side. Clouds of dense white smoke belched from the enemy ship’s cannon ports.

Fortunately for the Riggs, the rough sea must have affected the pirate gunners’ aim — the whistling balls fell twenty feet short, splashing white gouts as they sank.

So much for that idea.

“Return fire, Mr. Smee. All port guns!”

“Aye, Captain!”

The officer yelled at a relay, who passed the command on.

Five seconds later, the guns of the HMS Riggs spoke as one, and five cannonballs shot through the air, covered the short distance to the pirate ship, and smashed into her. One ball hit a mast, toppling it — lucky shot, that; one ball hit the deck amidships and plowed a splintered furrow in the deck; the three remaining balls hit the hull, one above the waterline, and two below it. The pirate ship began taking on water.

“Make ready another volley!” Jay yelled.

If they wouldn’t give up, they would pay.

They would learn, by God, that it was not a good idea to defy Captain Jay Gridley. Though he wasn’t happy about having to sink the pirates. Satisfying as that might be, it didn’t get Jay the information he wanted.

Oh, well. Might as well enjoy what he could…

Thorn leaned back in his chair and reflected on the call he’d just ended. The head of CyberNation was coming to the U.S., and he wanted to meet with Thorn. Along with a visit from the head of the Chinese version of Net Force, this was going to be the week for company.

Too bad Marissa Lowe wasn’t in town. He’d like to get her take on these visitors. Still, she went where the CIA sent her, and even though she was the liaison from that agency to Thorn’s, she had other duties. The world was a busy place for intelligence groups these days…

Well, there might be something he could learn on his own. He wasn’t entirely dense. CyberNation’s goals weren’t ever going to be reached, he believed that, but they did have a very solid network and some outstanding people. Thorn knew guys who had been bright lights in the field who had opted for CyberNation’s employ. Good pay, good benefits, access to cutting technology, CyberNation had no trouble hiring first-class people.

And the Chinese were up and coming. Still not anywhere near the level of the United States when it came to computers, hard- or software, but rising, and you couldn’t ignore an industrializing country with a billion and a half people in it.

Thorn waved his hand over the intercom, wiggling his fingers for the optical reader.

“Sir?”

“Is Jay Gridley in the compound?”

“No, sir. He’s at the Pentagon Computer Annex today.”

“Ah. Would you give him a call?”

“Yes, sir.”

It wasn’t as if Quantico was a million miles from the District; still, making Jay drive out here wasn’t necessary. If a phone call with visuals wasn’t enough, they could log into one of the secure VR rooms Net Force maintained for more personal meetings. Jay would have his virgil; the call’s coded pipe would be more than enough protection. Thorn was comfortable with that.

He smiled. He should be. His company had developed some of the software for such chats. He had written much of the code himself.

He’d get Jay on board, maybe have him show the CyberNation guy around, what was his name? Seurat? Like the painter…?

“Excuse me?” Thorn said.

“I said, ‘Absolutely no way,’ ” Jay said.

Thorn stared at Jay as if he had suddenly grown a second head. Disagreement was something he encouraged in his people, but this was too far, even for Jay Gridley.

“Explain,” Thorn said.

The VR room was very realistic. It took real-time images from phonecams and used those, so what you saw was more or less real. It was modeled on their RW conference room, just down the hall from Thorn’s office.

Jay frowned. “Look, Commander, long before you came on board, Net Force had a major battle against CyberNation. It got real ugly. John Howard got shot because of them. We even got sued by another one of their people, a man who later fired at us himself.”

“CyberNation?” Thorn said. “The computer geeks who want to start their own on-line country?”

Jay nodded. “Yeah, that’s them. They came at us electronically, politically, and live and in person.”

“I don’t remember being briefed on this — and believe me, I would have remembered if I had ever heard a word about it.”

Jay shrugged. “It’s been a couple years and they’ve been quiet since. This was back when they were trying to get big numbers to join up, and they didn’t care how they did it. Part of their scheme was to take down a major chunk of the net, leaving themselves as the only real viable option.”

Commander Thorn shook his head. “The net was designed so that couldn’t happen.”

“The Internet was, yeah, Commander, but that was a long time ago. The World Wide Web pretty much replaced the old Internet a while back, and with the increased ease of use came increased vulnerability. These days, if you know which backbone servers to take out, you could do a whole lot of damage. The net, the web, they are more complex now than ever before, and everything is linked to everything else — communications, servers, private companies, government, military. There were some real bad apples at CyberNation, and it came down to guns and bombs. People died. The government apparently decided it was better to keep most of it hush-hush. Eventually it all got squared away, but not to my satisfaction.”

Thorn thought about that for a moment. “So why is CyberNation still around if they are such bad folks?”

Jay smiled grimly. “Good question, Boss. These guys all wear eye patches and pegs legs and carry cutlasses, as far as I am concerned. But the official tale was that a rogue splinter group was responsible for the crimes. We took them down, and nobody could prove it went beyond them, so that was the end of the story.”

Thorn shook his head. The concept of CyberNation was like that of Communism — too idealistic to work. The hope that geographical nations would cede the rights and privileges of a real country to citizens of a virtually created one? It would never happen. However much time you spent on-line, you still had to be somewhere in the real world, and that spot, if it was on land, belonged to somebody. Nobody had built a giant raft-city way out at sea yet, and if they did, probably not a lot of folks would go live there. You were subject to the laws and regulation of an RW country, and the idea that most countries would give that control up because some net organization paid them taxes on a citizen was simply not realistic.

Oh, sure, there were some poor countries that might go for it. Some Third World spots where the idea of big numbers being able to get wired and on-line was fairly unlikely, which kind of killed the point, but only a relative handful of those would take such a deal. No major country was going to buy into the idea that one of its breathing citizens living in a house on Elm Street would suddenly become a foreign national who had allegiance to a web server and was no longer subject to the local laws, like some kind of diplomat. No way, nohow.

And yet, CyberNation had convinced millions of people to join up in the hope that just such a thing was going to come to pass. In doing so, it had become bigger than AOL and able to offer some very good programs. They had the best VR scenarios available commercially, with a wide range of choices.

Still, Thorn was always amazed at how gullible some people continued to be, even in this supposedly enlightened age. A virtual country? Not on this planet.

“Listen, Jay, we have reason to believe that whoever is attacking our military is also taking potshots at CyberNation.”

“Good for them.”

Thorn shook his head. It was just the two of them, alone in a VR room. “Things change. Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend. You know how that works. At the moment, CyberNation and Net Force seem to have a common problem. We want to solve that. We will take any help we can get.”

“It sucks.”

“Come on, Jay. That is the way of the world, and you are much too bright to not know it.”

Jay didn’t say anything.

“We’ve also got a guy coming over from China, the head of their Internet police agency.”

“Chang Han Yao?”

“You know him?”

“I know who he is. He’s got a few moves. What’s he over for?”

“Ostensibly, to talk about modernizing China’s agency, maybe to pick up some tips. The Chinese are our friends these days. Communism is on the way out, and they have become a major trading partner. Have you seen that exhibit from the Forbidden City at the Smith?”

“Yeah, VR. Very interesting. I got no grief with the Chinese.”

“And you’ll help with the man from CyberNation. A French guy.”

“Seurat. I know his work. He wrote a paper on quantum computer applications that was… passable.”

“I do seem to recall something about quantum computers and Net Force,” Thorn said.

“Yep, that was a crazy English scientist and a dotty old lord. They shot at us, too.” Jay shook his head again. “You know, for an agency that is supposed to be a bunch of desk jockeys riding expensive chairs in dark and quiet rooms, we seem to get shot at a lot.”

Thorn smiled. “Probably that won’t happen here.”

Jay didn’t smile back. “I wouldn’t bet on it, Boss. CyberNation claimed to have gotten rid of all the bad guys, but it’s hard to believe the people at the top didn’t have a clue what was going on.”

“But you’ll help me with this guy?”

Jay nodded, his face glum.

“Thanks, Jay. I appreciate it.” Thorn paused. “So, anything new on the war game hacker?”

Jay frowned again and shook his head. “I’ve been running things down, but so far, nothing. The military sysop is pretty good, and the system isn’t supposed to be reachable from outside, so it isn’t like some wahoo can just dial up and log in, even if he had the codes. We’re dealing with somebody who has been very careful.”

“But you’ll get him, eventually?”

“Oh, yeah. I always get ’em, Boss. It’s just a matter of time… ”

Chang stared through the window, but there was nothing to see save a dense layer of clouds a few thousand feet below the jetliner. Normally, he didn’t take a window seat when he flew, especially on long flights; he preferred to have the aisle, so as to be able to stretch his legs now and then, or attend to business in the toilet.

But the flight had been crowded — relations between China and the United States were at an all-time high, and even with a new airline that added several flights a day to the States, the jets were, so he had been told, usually full. Plus, this was a direct flight to Washington, D.C., and much faster than the old ones where you had to fly to Los Angeles, then switch to an American carrier for the final leg across the country.

Cutting five or six hours from your travel time made this flight much in demand. Normally, Chang would not have had the clout to merit such a flight. Then again, a man who knew as much about computers as he did had some advantages. He had access to reservation codes, and booking his own flight with those had been a simple matter. The state of the industry in China was such that this was not even illegal — nobody had ever worried about it, since nobody outside of himself and a few of his employees even knew it was possible.

He grinned. He would have to plug that hole when he returned home. At least for others…

“Would you care for a drink, sir?”

The flight attendant, a pretty, moonfaced young woman with a bright smile, stood in the aisle, leaning slightly over a couple traveling from Beijing to visit a daughter who, Chang had been told, lived in Baltimore. The attendant’s chest, completely covered under a shirt and buttoned jacket, loomed over the husband, who had the aisle seat.

“Some club soda, please,” Chang said.

The young woman moved on, much to the disappointment of the man seated on the aisle, Chang felt.

The Canadian, Alaine Courier, had provided Chang with some excellent software, and, more importantly, an introduction to a U.S. official who had access to Net Force. As a result, Chang was traveling to Washington to meet the head of the agency, which could not help but be useful. Just to see how the place was laid out, what equipment he could see, anything, that would be wondrous.

There were those in his government who wanted very much for China to be a match for the United States in all things. Properly approached and primed, such men could be most helpful to Chang’s desire to upgrade his systems and technicians. Why, yes, Comrade, I went to Net Force Headquarters. They are so far ahead of us, I fear it will take many years for us to even begin to catch up. Of course, a few million carefully spent would close that gap considerably, if a man knew exactly what to buy and how to use it, but… what are the chances of that happening…?

Chang would rather not play those political games, but in these times, there was no choice — not if you wanted to stay in the race. He did not enjoy such things, but he was learning how to be adept at them. It was, alas, part of the job. Better he know how to do it than not…

Next to him, the woman said, “Did I mention that my daughter and her husband have given us three grandchildren?”

Several times, Chang thought. But he smiled. “Really? How wonderful for you… ”