State of War

16

There were four of them in the conference room: General Howard, Jay, Toni, and Michaels himself.

Alex said, “So that’s the situation regarding the legal stuff. Obviously we are not going to drop our investigation of CyberNation, or even put it on hold, especially in light of what Jay has turned up. We are, however, going to take Tommy Bender’s advice and make sure we are squeaky clean on this one.” He looked at Jay as he said that.

There was a moment of silence. Toni broke it by asking, “How sure are we about the clerk, Jay?”

“I’m positive about the money transfer. I haven’t been able to find any reason why a Supreme Court justice’s clerk should be getting any money from CyberNation. I’ve also gone through this guy’s files looking for anything to indicate that he might be a special case — like if he’d done some legitimate work for CyberNation and was still receiving payments from them — and I’ve found absolutely nothing. I am convinced this is a bribe.”

Howard said, “We had better be absolutely certain before we go public on this one. The judge will chop us all into tiny pieces if we are wrong. They don’t like even the smallest hint of improper behavior over there.”

“Amen,” Toni said.

Michaels looked at Jay. “Get us something bulletproof, Jay.”

“I will.”

“Anything else that we should know about coming down the pike?”

Jay shrugged. “Just about these worms and viruses that have been hitting the web recently. I am convinced that the same guy is doing them, and they are getting progressively worse — which means I think there is more to come. There is not much you guys can do to help with that, it’s pure net stuff, but I thought you should know.”

Michaels nodded. “Look, I know this lawsuit is a real pain, and that we all have better things to do. I also know that there is a very good chance this might all be a big smoke screen on CyberNation’s part to keep us from focusing on our investigation. Still, we have to pay attention to it. We’re under the microscope on this one, even more so than normal. Let’s not do anything that could come back to haunt us.”

He got a group murmur of assent.

Alex looked around the room at his team, the people he trusted most in the world. This was where he was supposed to say something inspiring, but he realized that he just didn’t have the words.

Besides, he realized something else as well: There was a reason why these were the people he trusted most in the world. Every one of them was a consummate professional, the best at what they did. They didn’t need inspiration from him. They just needed his confidence and support.

“All right, guys,” he said. “Let’s go get ’em.”

Jay was mad. Saji had called him as the meeting was breaking up, and now he felt like going out and killing someone.

He went into his office and sat behind his computer, still fuming.

It all started with the pictures. Saji had loaded their honeymoon pictures on her computer in the living room. Which was fine, of course; she wanted to share them with the family. He could understand that. But she had disabled their virus protection during the install.

That wasn’t what was bothering Jay, though. He understood how it had happened, and even understood why it had happened. Saji had spent some time editing the photos as she loaded them, and you usually wanted to turn off any virus checker while working on graphic-intensive programs. Even with power machines like he had at home, there was just too great a chance of conflicts if you didn’t.

But Saji hadn’t turned it back on.

Jay’s systems were protected behind a double firewall — including one that he had coded himself — but that only protected his machines from hackers trying to break into them from the net. Firewalls didn’t work against viruses or other programs loaded — accidentally or otherwise — through e-mail, which was why he also ran the top-of-the-line virus checker, which constantly automatically updated both its code and its data files.

None of which meant a thing if somebody turned it off!

The software was even programmed to turn itself back on when the system was rebooted, but Saji hadn’t done that. She finished her uploading and editing just fine, with no signs of system instability, so she didn’t think to restart the machine.

The worst of it was that Jay had programmed his virus checker to restart itself anytime it had been turned off for more than half an hour. He had done that because he knew how easy it was to forget such things. Saji had spent quite a bit of time editing, however — far more than half an hour — so she had disabled its restart as well, which meant that her computer — and, consequently, his entire home network — was vulnerable to a virus.

And they got hit.

Jay hadn’t traced it yet so he didn’t know if it came from someone in Saji’s family or one of her friends or one of the listservs she belonged to. For that matter, it might have been a random e-mail generated by an infected system. It didn’t really matter where it came from. It only mattered where it started from.

The virus that hit them was the newest one, the crasher, the one that reformatted hard drives. It got their pictures, and her e-mail address book — after popping copies of itself to everyone in it, including Toni, Alex, and several of their other Net Force friends. And it got his machine, too, jumping the LAN connection and wiping out his hard drive as well.

Yeah they had back-ups of everything, even of the pictures, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they got hit. The point was that Jay’s own machine, as well as his wife’s, had sent out copies of a virus to everyone in their address books. Jay Gridley himself, head techie and virus guru for Net Force, laid low by a simple virus.

He was not happy.

If Saji hadn’t shut off the virus checker, nothing would have happened, but she had, and it had, and she was very sorry.

Dumb. He didn’t say that, having learned at least a couple of things since he’d gotten to know her, but he’d thought it. Even a schoolkid knew better than to touch the net without virus protection. Even kindergarten kids knew that…

But it wasn’t Saji he was mad at. She didn’t live in a world where every electronic move was automatically covered. She didn’t think about such things like he did.

It was the hacker Jay wanted to stomp, the author of the virus, the jerk who had taken advantage of Saji’s good nature. He was the one to blame.

Jay was going to nail this hacker. This guy was going to learn that you did not mess around with Jay Gridley, and you sure didn’t make him look bad by using his wife.

He stared at his computer a moment longer, still fuming, then reached for the keyboard and set his system to accept no intrusions less than a Priority One. It was time to get to work. Under normal circumstances he loved his job and couldn’t wait to begin the hunt. This time, though, it would be even sweeter. This time it was personal.

Jay had written and released his own share of viruses back in his college days — just the usual “Gotcha” type programs to show that he could. He’d never coded anything really damaging, of course. He’d also hunted a good many of them as Net Force’s chief safari leader, so by now the opening steps were pretty routine for him. The key was to track the time trail, see when computers got infected to centralize a point of origin. Once you had that, you’d start tracing from there, working your way back toward the source.

Naturally, these days people could pipe things all over the globe, but they had to start somewhere.

Unfortunately, by the time he’d realized the first two bugs were related, a lot of information had gone by the wayside. The first two viruses were pretty mild; they hadn’t done any real damage, so they hadn’t been followed very closely. This would make it harder for him to gather data on them.

It would take a lot of testing, which would take a lot of time.

If he did it the normal way.

Jay put on his VR gear and called up a scenario he hadn’t played with since his college days.

Jay stood in a large, circular room, dimly illuminated by a scattering of candlelight. All around him were various arcane devices, jars of rare herbs, odd-looking mechanical contraptions, and musty old books, bound in various animal skins, from lizard to ostrich to what looked like human…

A crystal ball and a small but stout wooden cage sat on a clear area of the bench. Next to that was a long, thin wand, intricately carved with golden runes that glimmered slightly from within.

A faint musty smell hung over the room, and the air tasted stale. It felt as though it hadn’t been aired out for hundreds of years. Jay was impressed. He hadn’t been in the workshop for years, and the details were excellent.

I am good.

Nothing he didn’t already know, of course, but it was nice to be reminded, particularly by his own work.

He picked up the wand. It felt slightly warm, exactly as he remembered. It vibrated in his hand, a tool of creation waiting to be unleashed.

There was a reason Jay hadn’t played with the workshop for a number of years. This was where he had made his own viruses. Those days were gone, of course. He’d chosen the high road, gone with the good guys, and ever since making that decision he’d refrained from playing with such things — except when he needed them to figure out better ways of defeating the bad guys.

Sometimes it did take a thief to catch one.

This wasn’t precisely one of those times, but he was going to take the latitude he had as Net Force’s chief hacker and use it. The hacker who had destroyed his wife’s hard drive, and through her had gotten Jay’s own system at home, was going to be very sorry.

This was not an easy decision for him. He remembered all too well Alex’s warning about playing this one by the book, but he wasn’t too worried. For one thing, this had nothing to do with CyberNation. For another, what he was about to do wasn’t really wrong. Oh, it violated the spirit of the “non-self-perpetuating-code” laws that were on the books — he had served as a consultant on some of those laws — but the code he was about to write would be completely harmless… except to a certain hacker out there.

Mostly, though, it came down to the fact that this was the only way Jay could see to stop this guy quickly, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

He took a deep breath and began.

He waved the wand in the air, forming a star-shaped pattern with it, and a fiery glowing pentagram appeared on the solid floor of the small wooden cage. He tap-tap-tapped the wand in the air, and alternate points of dark and light appeared around the vertices of the star.

He paused for a moment, trying to remember the incantation. He’d been seriously into fantasy gaming for a few years in college, had gotten into a wizard’s role, and done all kinds of research into ritual magic.

Oh, yeah — he remembered.

Jay spoke, and as he did so, the sounds of his words burst into the room as colored balls of fire, illuminating the chamber in flickers of rich red and gold. Details in the room stood out, more supplies and old tomes became visible, all casting hard shadows as the globes moved toward the cage.

Within the cage the glowing balls of light that represented his words of power combined over the pentagram. He heard a popping sound as a formless something appeared within the wards he’d set up. It slowly took on shape and color, coalescing into a minor demon.

“WHO DARES CALL ME TO SERVICE?” The little thing’s voice was deep.

Jay smiled a bit at his younger self. Pretty melodramatic stuff.

“It is I, Jay Gridley.” When he said his name, the little demon cringed as he’d programmed anything he summoned to do. Even though he knew it was infantile, he couldn’t help but think it was kind of cool.

Well, some things hadn’t changed.

He spoke to the demon, laying out what it was to do. As he gave it instructions, it gradually assumed a somewhat different shape to match its goals.

It ceased glowing and became smaller, more transparent, like the viruses he’d analyzed. It resembled a tiny devil, with horns and a tail, but more squat, dwarflike. Its eyes grew huge, so it could see better, its nose longer to sniff out traces of the target viruses, and it grew wings, tiny batlike things that spun quickly, like a hummingbird’s.

Jay reached into the pocket of the wizard’s robe and removed the bug-forms of the three target viruses. He tossed them through a gap in the top of the cage. The creature grabbed them, sniffing and probing each one before ripping it open to devour the buglike guts of each.

“I AM READY, MASTER,” it said.

“About time,” Jay said. “Go.” He waved the wand. The cage dissolved in a shimmer of gold sparkles, the wards fell dark, and the creature flew up and out through a tall window by the bookcase.

He let out a breath he’d been holding. Well. He’d done it now. All the old adages came to him—it takes a thief to catch a thief, absolute power corrupts absolutely, it’s a slippery slope.

Although he had certain powers and rights as Net Force’s chief VR man, releasing a virus on the public wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, if he called it a tracker program, he might be able to get away with it.

Not that he was going to call it anything unless someone came asking. Since he was the chief cop on the block when it came to viruses, it was unlikely anyone would.

Besides, he’d made it good. Although he hadn’t used it in years, he’d kept the workshop program updated on the latest techniques for virus construction. That was part of the overhead of keeping on top of things: updating software you might never use.

It was hard work, being king of the mountain.

The virus wasn’t going to damage anything, or even make itself noticeable. It would piggyback on incoming and outgoing traffic only, and only report to him information about when the three viruses had hit — and where. It would erase all tracks it had ever been there, and no one would be the wiser.

He hoped.

He waved the wand again and the crystal ball on the table grew to the size of a beach ball. He uttered a word, and a tiny simulacrum of the United States appeared within it. As he watched, tiny dots of red, blue, and yellow began to appear on the map, each one corresponding to a computer which had been infested with one of the three viruses.

The dots expanded at a geometric rate, getting faster and faster as his imp-virus multiplied and expanded in its own wave of infestation.

Pretty soon now he’d have an idea of what to check next. The hacker who’d messed with him had better enjoy his last few free computing hours.

Mess with the best, go to jail like the rest.