Since then there had only been the service. Wife, lover, master, it had been his entire life, and it had showered him with rank, honor, and privilege. His ride had been an amazing one, beyond anything that ambitious young cadet dreamed. But still it was there, the empty spot shoved into some deep recess of his mind…the life that might have been. Suppressed but never forgotten. Sometimes he wondered if the cost of the stars on his collar had been too high.
Diversions were welcome…anything to pass the idle hours. Most of his companions were casual dalliances quickly forgotten, but the most recent one was something different. Tall and blonde, with a body that could only be described as perfect, Kelly wasn’t like the others. He couldn’t place it, but there was more to her than some middle class status seeker trying to use her looks and charm to claw her way upward. She was smart, that much was obvious, though he could tell she tried to hide just how intelligent she was. In the back of his mind, where his rapidly dulling and sleepy combat instincts still dwelt, there was a spark of suspicion, a subtle feeling that something was somehow…wrong. But bored, unhappy, and dazzled by her beauty and her undeniable skills as a lover, the fleet admiral that brought the CAC and Caliphate to their knees was ignoring his nagging subconscious. What is the harm, he told himself. It’s not like you’re giving her state secrets. And of course he wasn’t. No force known to man could compel Augustus Garret to betray his beloved navy.
He pulled himself from his daydreaming, back to the reality of work. He moved his hands over his ‘pad, pulling up a list of proposed fleet assignments. He’d finished them the day before and queued them up for implementation, but he decided to check one more time before approving the list and sending it out. He had forgotten one item, and he wanted to add it before the orders were sent. But now he noticed a number of mistakes; at least half the names were changed, and a few he’d specifically deleted were back. “What the hell?” he muttered softly. His hands raced over the tablet, pulling up other files. Ship deployments, promotion approvals, supply manifests…at least half of them different than he had left them.
“Nelson, analyze the files I have open on my workstation.” Garret’s AI was named after a great wet navy commander, a common practice in the service. There were many Nelsons among the navy’s command staff, and Halseys, Porters, and Nimitz’s too.
“Yes, admiral. Please specify the parameters of the analysis you wish me to perform.” The AI had a natural voice, not electronic sounding at all, especially when it wasn’t reverberating in a helmet, but it was stilted and overly formal at times. The navy liked conservative and respectful automated assistants, unlike the Marines. The ground pounders tended to have more aggressive personalities programmed into their quasi-sentient AIs. The results were sometimes unpredictable, as wildly divergent computer personalities developed from interaction with the respective officers. Nag was the term most frequently used by Marines to describe their virtual assistants, with smartass a close second. The navy was too straitlaced for that kind of nonsense.
“Verify encryption protocols on the selected files.” Garret opened a number of documents while he was speaking, closing the ones that looked normal. “Specifically, is encryption intact, and have the files been tampered with?”
“Yes, admiral.” The AI paused for two, maybe three seconds. “The encryption on the selected files appears to be intact. No detectable access since they were last opened on your workstation at 14:30 yesterday.” Garret was about to question Nelson’s findings – he knew the data had been changed somehow – but the AI beat him to it. “However, I have confirmed that the files do not match the copies I made yesterday in accordance with your Delta-7 security protocols.
Garret had almost forgotten that he had instructed Nelson to make secret copies of all his files. He’d put the procedure in place when he’d first gotten to Washbalt, his paranoia still keen fm the war years. Though he’d stopped using the copies as a security check, he had never instructed Nelson to terminate the protocol. The AI had been dutifully copying every order or file Garret had written since.
“So the files have been altered since yesterday.” It was a statement rather than a question. Garret was thinking out loud, repeated what he’d already known.
“Affirmative, admiral.” The AI answered, though Garret hadn’t really been looking for a response. “However, I cannot yet offer a reasonable hypothesis as to the methodology employed.” Nelson paused, part of its natural speech algorithm rather than any need for time to form its thought. “Any unauthorized access would have required extreme skill and knowledge of the naval data network, with even greater expertise necessary to erase any trace of the incursion.”
Garret sat silently for a minute, massaging his temples and thinking. Who the hell is tampering with my files? If the Caliphate or the CAC had penetrated Alliance military systems it was a serious problem. “Nelson, I want you to access every file and order sent from this office over the last year and compare with the copies you made from my workstation.” Garret paused, thinking carefully. “I don’t want your access to trigger any alarms, so be careful. And I want every aspect of each file compared – content, markers, timestamps.”
“Yes, admiral. I will have to draw the data gradually if I am to remain undetected. The analysis will require approximately 14.2 hours. Shall I commence?”
Garret sighed. He wanted answers now. But there was no point taking chances and tipping off whoever was behind this. “Yes, proceed.” He leaned back in his chair, considering what else he could do. You’re going to wait until Nelson finishes the file review, he thought. He wouldn’t even have caught the situation if he hadn’t forgotten one assignment and tried to add it. Garret wasn’t a patient man, and he was very worried that CAC or Caliphate intelligence had penetrated Alliance security. If that was the case, it was a big deal with complex implications. A little patience here was well worthwhile.
He was supposed to be seeing Kelly. He’d made reservations at one of Washbalt’s best restaurants. He reached to the communications console to call her and cancel, but he stopped halfway through. There was no point in sitting here for hours while Nelson crunched his numbers. Might as well pass the time, he thought. If someone was watching him, it could only arouse suspicion if he cancelled his plans and camped out all night in his office.
Slowly, tentatively, he closed down his workstation and walked toward the door, debating for a few more seconds whether to keep his date before deciding to go. “Lights out.” The room AI dimmed the lights slightly until he was out of the room, turning them off entirely once he had exited.
An hour later the door opened, the security system silent, overridden from the main computer. A sub-routine hidden in Nelson, unknown to the AI itself, had triggered a call. A black-clad figure walked silently into the room, slipping behind the desk and activating Garret’s workstation with a secret password, one the admiral knew nothing about. A gloved hand slid a data chip into the IO port.
In the cyberspace of Garret’s computer system, Nelson detected the intrusion. His attempts to alert security were intercepted – he was isolated, cut off along with the rest of the admiral’s data system. The AI wasn’t human, but it was quasi-sentient; it had pseudo-emotions. It didn’t feel fear, exactly, but it perceived the danger, and it wanted to survive. It considered millions of courses of actions in just a few seconds, finding few that offered any likelihood of success. Finally, it made a choice.