System Shock Part 19

They were colour-coded. The on-line nodes were in green and those that were on the network but not yet directly addressed from Hubway were red. As the Doctor watched another node Milan flicked from red to green. They must want access to as many nodes as possible before they copy over the Voractyll files, the Doctor reasoned. That way the widest distribution in the quickest time was a.s.sured. It would also prevent anyone from quarantining part of the highway if it was all accessed at once.

'Well, we'll soon see about that,' the Doctor said to himself and swiped his mouse across half a dozen of the green icons.

Then he called up a menu for the nodes he had swiped. One of the choices on the menu was Disconnect. He chose it, and the icons immediately changed back to red.

'That should keep them guessing,' the Doctor grinned. He swiped another collection of nodes.

The technician was frantically trying to trace the intrusion.

Stabfield was seething behind him as the technician opened trace windows and requested local area addresses.

'How did they get past the Bug?' Johanna asked.

'Ask it.'

The technician hurried to obey.

> Access granted to new id. State reason code.

There was a pause. The three Voracians exchanged glances.

The response should have come back at the speed of the line.

>> Code 000 'There's no such code,' the technician said. 'So what does it mean?'

> Give reason code expansion >> Access granted to genius 'It's gone non-linear on us,' Johanna said.

168.

'No,' Stabfield replied. 'More than that. There's some form of rational corruption in the cognitive emulation.'

The technician was trying another approach. 'Trace completed,' he said. 'It's local.'

'You mean it's from within the superhighway? That hardly offers a high a.s.sistance quotient.'

'No, sir.' The technician turned in his seat. Most of his head was made of metal. But a single organic eye rotated in its oily, moistened socket, swivelled upwards to look at Stabfield. 'I mean it's within the building. The adapter address is defined to the local systems.'

There was silence for a while. Then Stabfield started giving instructions. 'Try to get a geographical fix,' he told the technician. Then he said to Johanna: 'Get the internal security cameras bugged and converted. Then set up alarm codes in all the areas we aren't accessing. If anything moves across the line of sight of any camera, I want the output routed to a monitor in here as well as to main security. I want the pictures taped and immediate action taken on any unauthorized movement that registers.'

Johanna went to the phone and called the two Voracians at main security control in the new block. She nodded to Stabfield when she had finished relaying his instructions. 'I'll tell Lewis,' she said.

'Do that,' said Stabfield. And make no mistake, I want the network intruder located and deleted. Find him and give him the golden handshake.'

169.

Bugs Now that he was actually into the Hubway network, the Doctor was having fun. He reminded himself of the seriousness of the situation, that Stabfield had Sarah and others held at gunpoint on the ground floor, but he still had to stifle a laugh as another window opened on the monitor.

This latest window showed a grainy black and white image of a staircase. That in itself was not particularly interesting.

But now that he had worked out how to do it, the Doctor would soon have some of the more strategically placed Hubway security cameras slaved into his workstation. Whoever designed the systems must have thought it a neat trick to route the images and control through the Hubway local area network itself. If nothing else it saved a whole load of extraneous cabling.

The only real problem the Doctor had was that his screen was not physically large enough to show many images from the cameras. So he linked them into two windows on the screen, each of which he could switch with a keystroke to show another of the cameras. He set about writing a program which would cycle through the cameras' outputs on a preset sequence. It would not be long now before the aliens came looking for him. The Doctor had no illusions that they would be happy to have their carefully established network nodes deleted as they appeared.

The next stage in the Doctor's somewhat spa.r.s.ely defined plan was to somehow warn the outside world of what was happening at Hubway. The most obvious means was to send an e-mail note to someone anyone. But the network access accorded by the software spider was local only, which was 170 why he could not delete the network nodes until they appeared locally defined. And sending a note to Stabfield to tell him that aliens were at Hubway seemed if anything counter-productive.

As he waited for his short program to compile and run, the Doctor pondered his few alternatives.

He was sitting at his desk in his office, staring at the calendar on the wall, when the call came through. He had not slept properly for a week. When he did sleep, half his body rebelled, trying to keep the weaker parts awake, trying not to admit to the weaknesses of the flesh. When he did sleep, the nightmares came.

So he tried to relax, staring at a point on the wall where, coincidentally, a calendar showing paintings by Turner hung.

He had used to appreciate Turner the feeling and emotion evoked by the texture and the line. But now he found it an inefficient rendering of reality. Even the colour balances were inaccurate, and whereas once that had been part of the appeal, now it was an indictment.

He stared at the calendar, but did not see it. The telephone rang, and he did not hear it. He was raised from his reverie by his secretary. She had taken the call, and now stood in the doorway to his office. He swung his head to look at her properly, to listen to what she was saying. His head felt unusually heavy on his weak neck, and swayed gently as he manoeuvred it round.

'Sorry?'

'The Home Secretary, sir. She said to tell you code 965.

COBRA is convened.'

He nodded. This was hardly unexpected. 'Thank you. Call them back and say I'm on my way.'

He collected a folder and his coat and was in his car in less than two minutes. He was wide awake, ready, alert. As if the whole of his life had been building to this summons. He had work to do, duties to perform. He had his instructions and would despatch them to the best of his efficiency.

The hostages were still sitting huddled on the floor of the great hall. Their captors stood watch, unmoved, machineguns 171 levelled. But now the hostages spoke to each other in hushed voices, continuing bizarre small talk left over from the interrupted reception. Sarah and Westwood talked about the future of Hubway and the Superhighway a parody of the interviews Sarah was so good at.

Westwood was an easy person to interview. He seemed to need to talk, to express his otherwise suppressed anger at the aliens who had taken over his installation. He saw Hubway as a personal project. He had fought long and hard for the job and then for the funding to do it. He had personally chosen the house in Wilts.h.i.+re and installed his own office on the first floor before any of the other staff had even had their appointments ratified.

But Sarah felt far from easy talking to Westwood. She recognized the garrulous manner and need to dwell on past achievement. But it was not the normal nervous behaviour of a hostage, rather it was the stressed reaction of a man close to breaking point. Westwood had probably been overworked for years, and now he saw the fruit of his exacting labours being overrun by vicious aliens who seemed determined on its destruction. He twisted his hands together and glanced round the room before continuing with his detailed history of Hubway.

Meanwhile, the American Amba.s.sador and the d.u.c.h.ess exchanged banter about mutual acquaintances, while one of the Amba.s.sador's closest friends lay in the next room waiting for a body bag. One of the technicians tried to draw a Voracian into conversation, but was met with a stony indifference which seemed now to be more comical than threatening.

Usually.

Occasionally one or more of the hostages would catch sight of the b.l.o.o.d.y mess down the wall, or spot a cartridge case across the hall floor, and become silent and glum. Then they would lift their spirits back into the conversations, as often as not to try to distract another hostage whose attention was wandering dangerously close to those same things.

The Amba.s.sador was beginning to sense that this was the time to try to move things along. Unless they did something soon, the inaction would gain a kind of momentum and 172 become a positive action in itself. No decision is a decision in itself, he was fond of pointing out to his staff, and that particular axiom was worrying him now.

'Hey you,' he called to the Voracian in charge.

The Voracian still maintained his human guise, and was referred to by the others as Lewis. He turned towards the Amba.s.sador and raised his gun, but he said nothing.

'Yeah, you. You seem to be in charge round here. When are you going to sort out some comfortable seating?'

'You'll be staying where you are.' Lewis turned away.

'Yeah, right. Sure we will. We'll get more and more restless here on the floor, and hence harder to control.'

Lewis turned back. 'Is that a threat?' he hissed.

'No, sir. It's a fact.'

Lewis glared, his grip on the gun tightening.

'He's right,' Sarah said. 'It's not very comfortable down here.

We'll need to stretch our legs a bit.'

'You'll stay where you are,' Lewis repeated.

Tor how long?' the Amba.s.sador asked. 'You can't keep us here forever.'

'Why not?'

'Well, in the most simple case because before long people will need the bathroom.'

Lewis paused. His head swayed slowly and the gun wavered slightly.

The Amba.s.sador grunted. 'Huh. Hadn't thought of that, had you?'

'You'll have to think about it soon,' Sarah said.

Lewis said nothing for a minute. Then he turned and walked quickly from the room.

Stabfield had hooked a monitor into the superhighway and was surfing data when Lewis came in. He was checking through all the information he could find on hostage situations.

'I want to know,' he had told Johanna, 'the likely chain of events from this point. We need to validate the plan and prepare contingencies.' He was especially keen to discover all he could about the military solutions to hostage sieges.

173.

'I thought the pilot study took care of that aspect,' Johanna said.

'Not entirely.'

Lewis had entered the room at this point, and waited while Stabfield continued. 'The Pullen Tower siege was extremely useful to us, which is why it was arranged, of course. As a pilot exercise we learned much about the SAS tactics and the timescales and agenda involved. Our agent at COBRA was also able to observe first-hand the process which he will soon be involved in again. He will have an understanding of how best to stall the process.'

'But we will have enough time,' Lewis commented. 'That's the point, is it not?'

'That is the predicted scenario,' Stabfield agreed.

Johanna nodded at the technician still struggling to bring up and maintain the system nodes on Stabfield's laptop computer.

'There are unforeseen difficulties, however. How do they affect the risk a.s.sessment?'

'Difficulties?' Lewis latched on to this at once. 'What difficulties?'

With obvious reluctance, Stabfield explained the current situation. 'We'll track him down eventually,' he said.

'And when we do, there'll be another unfortunate road-kill on the infobahn,' Johanna added.

'But in the meantime the schedule and the plan are both exposed.' Lewis seemed almost to relish the situation. 'You failed to allow for this contingency, didn't you?'

'There is some slack on the Gantt.'

'Well, here's another thing you failed to allow for: the hostages will soon need to avail themselves of certain biological functions. How does the Gantt chart address that?'

Stabfield stood up and walked round the room. Both Johanna and Lewis watched him. Eventually he stopped behind the technician and tapped him on the shoulder. 'I want those nodes on-line as soon as possible. Time is, as you all point out, of the essence. You, Johanna will start a search of the facility. Use the data from the security cameras and the badgelock readers if you can access that quickly, but make a physical search as well.' He turned to Lewis. 'You, Marc, will 174 arrange for whatever facilities you deem necessary for the hostages. You are empowered to do that. But remember that with empowerment comes responsibility.'

'And what will you be doing?'

'I shall recalculate the schedules and reset the plan, factoring in the information I have about similar situations. I also need to update the plan to take account of the SAS success at the Pullen Tower.'

'In what way?' Johanna asked.

'According to our source at COBRA, BattleNet exceeded their expectation thresholds. They will certainly use it again.'

Johanna and Lewis both understood the implication of that.

It removed a certain amount of risk from the plan. If the SAS did attempt to retake Hubway, they would rely on the planning and strategic information from BattleNet to determine how to achieve the a.s.sault. They would simply feed in data on the situation and get a resultant plan. BattleNet would signal that same information the SAS plans to Stabfield. During the raid, BattleNet would provide the video-link communications and command and control net for each of the soldiers. And it would also provide that same information and video direct by local wireless network to Stabfield's laptop.

In short, the Voracians would know the SAS plan and be able to monitor its progress.

One of the first things COBRA did after being convened was to get a status report from the scene of incident officer. That officer was Commander Harry Sullivan.

Harry had a.s.sumed that once the local police arrived they would want to take charge. In fact, this turned out to be far from the truth. They were more than happy for Harry to take command, and he had no illusions about why. If anything went wrong, it would not be their fault, but his.

The armed police units had arrived and set themselves up in strategic positions overlooking the house. Apart from this fact and the tapes of his conversations with Stabfield, Harry had little to tell the committee. Not that he minded, he was sure they would thank him very much and pa.s.s the command to a senior police officer.

175.

He was wrong. He sat in the police control van and listened nervously as m.u.f.fled voices at the other end conferred. When the video link was set up, he would be able to see them deliberating, but for the moment he was stuck with the indistinct mumbles and murmurs. But m.u.f.fled or not, he could tell one of the voices belonged to his boss, Hanson. When the Home Secretary came back on the phone, she thanked Harry for his excellent work so far. Then she told him the committee had, in the light of his acting head of department's recommendation, decided to appoint him the officer in charge at the scene. He was totally in charge of the second-to-second operations and decisions while the committee would decide and ratify strategy, if there was time. Their initial thoughts were that this situation was rather better planned than the amateur City incident, and a waiting game was best. Harry was to draw the situation on for as long as possible.

'I'm not sure that's the best approach,' Harry hazarded. 'It seemed to us here that Stabfield is doing his best to draw things out. To win time.'

There was a pause from the other end of the phone. When the Home Secretary replied her voice was sharper than previously. 'I'm sure you have the best information available, Commander, and we will listen to your ideas and suggestions of course. But I hardly think any of us is yet in a position to determine the exact motives and plans behind this action. Do you?'

Harry gulped. 'Well, probably not, Ma'am. But nil nil combustibus pro fumo combustibus pro fumo.'

She ignored him. 'So, you'll get back to us as soon as you have any further information then, Sullivan. In the meantime, do whatever you deem necessary to bring this business to a swift and bloodless conclusion.'

There was a click from the receiver and the phone went dead before Harry could respond. He hung up and stared at the wall of the van for a few moments. Then he climbed out and went in search of Ashby and Fawn to give them the good news. If he was staying, then so were they.

He picked his way through the crowd of policemen. Some were setting up barriers to keep the press back when they 176 arrived, as they surely would. Other officers were positioning huge arc lights ready for the approaching dusk. Harry spotted Ashby through the gathering dusk talking to a couple of other policemen. He headed towards them, stepping aside to let a line of officers in navy blue battle gear run past, rifles held across their chests.

The spider again. This time it was spinning its web round the access points to the alarm control systems. The Doctor frowned. Since he had managed to tap into the cameras, he had not antic.i.p.ated any trouble with the alarm systems linked into the same local security network. Somebody had decided that control was more dangerous than just watching. And they were probably right.

'Oh well, here we go again,' the Doctor muttered as he reached for the keyboard.