Chapter 22: Night Terrors
The three hackers sat inside a stolen garbage transport, as CrazyWold piloted them to Venus-1. The inside of the cargo compartment had almost no lighting, save for the lone functioning wall lamp that appeared dimmer than it should be.
The monotonous drone of the engines could be both heard and felt as vibrations throughout the hull. Punctuating it was the occasional sound of creaking from the weathered metal that seemed to stress with each bank and turn. The hackers shared the compartment with various drums of garbage containers, some of which had broken seals, through which the foul scent of their contents seeped out.
Haylek tried to hold his nose from the putrid smell, but the odor from the garbage containers had nowhere else to go but up his olfactory organ. His stomach was in knots and he fought the urge to vomit. He looked over at the other two and could see from their sickly expressions that they must have felt the same way.
After what seemed like an eternity, he could feel the transport land, and a moment later the rear door ramp of the compartment opened up. He squinted his eyes from the sudden entry of light that invaded the darkness. He could make out CrazyWold’s silhouette against the background of city lights behind him.
“Out,” CrazyWold ordered.
Haylek wasted no time leading the way out of the transport, with the others close behind him. The clean, sanitized air from Venus-1’s artificial atmosphere greeted him. They stood in a sparsely occupied parking garage, and from the signs posted on the walls, he could see they were within Aphrodite Springs proper. Haylek noticed for the first time that CrazyWold was holding a briefcase, which he promptly handed over.
“It’s a terminal,” CrazyWold explained. “You three will have to share it. I only have one.”
“Is that all you’re giving us?” Freeze whined.
“I just said I only have one terminal,” he responded.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, looking at Haylek and Doc. “Do you have any Elation?”
CrazyWold chuckled. “If I had any, I wouldn’t be sharing it.” He climbed into the cockpit. “Good luck,” he added dryly.
“Wait!” Haylek said trying to stop him. “What now? Where’s Chorus?”
CrazyWold shrugged his shoulders as he started to close the cockpit door. “Hell if I know. I’m just following orders.”
“But we don’t know where she is!” Haylek said. “She must have told you what the plan is?”
CrazyWold smiled, exposing those foul teeth again. “I guess she works in mysterious ways, brother. Happy trails.”
The cockpit door closed and the craft’s engines began to sputter to life. Haylek watched the transport lift off and disappear into the cityscape, leaving them alone in the parking garage.
The two looked at him without saying a word. He knew that if he did not get them on task quickly, they would lose focus and eventually desert him.
“All right,” Haylek said. “Let’s set up shop somewhere and tap into the Ocean. We have to find out how Chorus planned to get us off this station.”
The group made their way to the top level of the parking garage, which was completely vacant. In one corner of the garage, they found an emergency stairway entrance that helped conceal them from any potential onlookers. Haylek sat down at the top of the stairway and set up the terminal, while the other two huddled over him.
“I’m going to find an insertion point,” Haylek said.
He began to tap away at the terminal’s surfaceboard until a holographic image of a Waterfall projection appeared above it. It showed a web of interconnecting dots with multiple levels layered in between. The links and dots were all red, with tiny white dots darting about, depicting the packets of information and energy flowing through the Ocean.
“Slim pickings,” Freeze said, sounding disappointed.
“All the better,” Haylek said. “Fewer systems will make finding Chorus easier.”
He continued to tap, and focused his attention on one of the waves that led to a remote and isolated system. Within a few minutes, the red line into the system turned green and socketed into the wave.
“Moof ov’a, Waferider,” Doc said. “My turn.”
They switched places and Doc took over command of the terminal. Haylek watched him exercise his expertise in decryption. He would decipher the entry points into the system and convert them into a format that could be used to interact with its programming. The holographic projector now showed a stream of garbled text and images. The Doc stared at it for a moment then began to tap away madly.
Haylek kept trying to keep up mentally with his interactions on the terminal. Programs would load, run, then unload; Doc would then pipe their stream output to other programs, then repeat the process again at blinding speed. He was surprised at how Doc managed to do all of this without a mind-link.
Eventually, the attempt to keep up with Doc’s line of thinking or predict his next move made Haylek dizzy, so he stopped trying and just averted his eyes.
“How does he do that?” Freeze said, still staring.
The Doc suddenly stopped and stared at the hologram. It now showed a new page of encrypted data along with various status screens for his running programs.
Haylek finally looked at the hologram again in wonder. “Well?”
“Wash dees,” The Doc said with a smile.
He pressed a few keys and the information began to transform into legible images and text.
“You’re going to have to teach me that one day, Doc,” Freeze said.
“Nef’a share m’a secrets!” Doc proclaimed.
“Well, you better share the terminal,” Freeze shot back. “Unless you think you can own the system as fast as I can?”
“I can do dat, too! Me fast’a dan you in everyting! You suck shit!” Doc said, hugging the terminal to himself.
Haylek just shook his head as he watched the two wrestle over the rights to the terminal. Eventually, he reminded them of what happened to Coredump and how his fate would be theirs if they did not get off the station. This knocked a healthy dose of reality into them and Doc reluctantly handed the terminal over to Freeze.
Haylek watched him work his magic on the system’s frontline security as he staged a number of his attack programs into place. He fed them the parameters he learned from Doc, which gave them the necessary protocols to interact with the defensive programs of the target system. After a few minutes, he had hundreds of programs lined up and ready to go.
“Now watch the real elite at work!” Freeze said.
He tapped a few keys, and the programs began to run, injecting themselves past the frontline defenses and into the digital corridors of the system. Soon the defensive programs began to sense the alien programs within the stream, but he already had a counter to this.
Using a set of polymorphic programs that impersonated the sentries, he would attack the programs and replace them with his own code. After each attack, a false positive message would be sent to the core defense program, giving it the “all clear” status.
Within minutes, all the outer defensive programs had been replaced with his own cloned copies, giving him complete control of the first line of defense, and making the core defense program unaware that anything was out of the ordinary. Despite the progress, Doc continued to criticize his methods, and they would go back and forth arguing with each other throughout the hack.
After a while, Haylek found himself getting bored of watching them and leaned against the back wall to stare off into space, trying to ignore the remnants of the stench that still clung to them from the garbage transport. They were literally within the first hours of their freedom and here they were, back on a terminal trying to hack into the Ocean. It was a tragedy to him that none of them had any chance to appreciate their newfound freedom.
He was tempted to just get up and leave them, head down to the Aphrodite Springs strip and enjoy himself. His entire existence for as long as he
could remember was a struggle. From his incarceration at the mining penitentiary, to being forced to work for their former employer in a locked up hideout, it was just one hack job after another. Once upon a time, just the mere challenge of the Ocean would have been enough, but not anymore. Now he had to find a meaning, a life beyond all of this.
His mind drifted to thoughts of Chorus. What was her plan and should they even trust her? She had run with the idea of reestablishing the Brotherhood of Hackers—a vast network of underground groups and individuals intent on freeing the hacker movement. Beyond that, he did not know what their mission was. Now it seemed that Chorus had a grander vision of what that mission should be; yet, the details of it were kept from him and the others.
“Waverider,” Freeze called to him. “I found something you should look at.”
“We found sumtin’ azzhol!” Doc corrected.
Haylek moved closer to them and peered over their shoulder at the hologram. The Waterfall showed a green icon depicting the system they had chosen to hack into. It was now owned by them and would serve as a base system of operations.
“Good work,” Haylek said, trying to sound upbeat and hiding his apathy.
“No, that’s not why I called you over,” Freeze said. “Look at this pattern.” He pointed to a group of waves that connected to their base system. Floating labels pointed at a common pattern of data that would periodically traverse the waves.
“A heartbeat packet?” Haylek mused.
“Yeah, exactly,” Freeze said. “For some kind of backdoor program.”
Haylek shrugged. “So there’s another hacker out there. Probably someone from the Brotherhood.”
Freeze shook his head. “No no. I checked with them, and nobody’s touching this area. Plus, look at this.”
The Waterfall zoomed out to show a larger view of the interconnecting waves. A multitude of labels popped up showing the same pattern emanating out of almost every wave, except for two specific ones where the packets were traversing into them instead.
“That’s a big hack,” Freeze said.
“And ders two hackers!” Doc said.
“Two hackers that are not in the Brotherhood,” Freeze added. “And they managed to plant backdoor programs on every system on Venus-1!”
The Waterfall zoomed in and focused on the two waves.
A disturbing thought occurred to Haylek. “I wonder if our employer could be using another hacker team to track us down.”
“Hackers don’t go after other hackers,” Freeze objected.
“They do if they’re locked up in a hideout and threatened to be turned into ashes by our employer. How do we know they didn’t have another team, just like us, under their thumb?”
Freeze’s face went pale.
“We need to find out who and where they are,” Haylek said, looking at the hologram wonderingly. “Could it be Chorus?”
“Maybe. Why would there be two points of ingress though?” Freeze said. “But… if you could tell if they’re mobile! That’s your specialty isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Haylek said, standing up.
He walked out of the stairway and into the open parking garage, then moved over to the edge of the landing deck and looked out. From this point he had a good view of the cityscape below.
The blue haze of Aphrodite Springs seemed to hang in the air like a fog, floating above the multitude of building structures that reached up into the starlight of space. He focused his attention to the commercial building signs, which were holographically projected advertisements that identified the companies within them. He nodded to himself and went back into the stairway.
“Okay,” Haylek said, “here’s what we’re going to do: we’ll need to hack three more systems. They need to be specific systems whose geographic position we can identify. This will allow us to triangulate where those two waves are coming from. Let’s get to work.”
Hacking the additional systems took longer than expected, mainly because they had to be absolutely certain of their physical locations on Venus-1. After an hour of hacking, interrupted by frequent arguments between the two, they succeeded in owning three suitable systems. Haylek took over the terminal and stared silently at the hologram for a moment.
“So now what?” Freeze said.
Haylek rubbed his chin. “We need to run my triangulation program on those waves.”
“Okay, so what are you waiting for?”
“If it’s not her, and there are hounds from our former employer on the other end of it …” Haylek began.
“Dey gonn’a know where we are!” Doc finished.
Haylek nodded. “It will give away our position.”
“Well, why don’t we build up a network to hide behind then?” Freeze suggested.
“No. That would take too long. Remember it took us almost a day to build up a buffer back at the hideout. I don’t think we have that kind of time.”
“So then what do we do?” Freeze said, his eyes wide.
Haylek stayed thoughtful a moment. “We’ll have to take our chances,” he finally decided. “If the wave is not her, we’ll immediately work on the other one and hope we don’t attract the wrong attention.”
Haylek began to tap on the terminal. The hologram of the Waterfall changed and now filtered out all but the two waves. As he began to focus on one of the waves, he noticed something unusual happen with the other: it disappeared.
“What the hell?” he said.
A second later, the wave reappeared on the Waterfall.
“Power outage?” Freeze mused.
Haylek ignored the anomaly and ran his triangulation program on the original wave. A topographic map appeared adjacent to the waterfall. It showed a depiction of the Venus-1 station. A flashing dot designated the location of the wave.
“It’s nearby,” Haylek said. “The Springs Casino.”
“Maybe it is her!” Freeze said. “She did specifically have CrazyWold drop us off here!”
“All right, Freeze. It’s your turn.”
Freeze grabbed the terminal and immediately loaded up his personalized hacking kit of programs. Haylek watched him socket into the wave and fire off his infiltration program into it. The hologram changed to show the perspective of his program as it traversed the outer layer of security. The program scanned through all the ports of entry looking for the path of least resistance. A list of candidate ports showed up on the hologram, and soon it began to narrow down the list.
Just as the list began to shrink, the displays from the infiltration programs disappeared and the hologram changed back to the Waterfall display.
“What happened?” Haylek asked.
Freeze shook his head. “I don’t know, the wave just… collapsed.”
At that moment, a sound emanated from the stairway below them.
Footsteps …
“It dem!” Doc yelped and darted out of the stairway and into the open deck of the garage platform, Freeze quickly following.
Haylek did not budge as he looked down at the stairway below. He caught sight of a lone figure that emerged out from the shadows below and into the full light. It was a woman, in an unusual show dress that glistened with red beads as she moved up the stairs. She wore a wide brim hat and her dark hair fanned out from the sides in a bun.
From her neck hung a clear jewel necklace that glittered with a spectrum of multicolored lights that danced inside it. But it was her bright green eyes, which seemed to illuminate from within, that made his breath stop. She came halfway up the stairway level and smiled at him.
“Hello, Waverider,” she said, her voice smooth and melodic. “I’m so glad to finally meet you in person.”
Haylek finally forced himself out of his trance. “Who… who are you?” he managed.
“You know who I am,” she said.
He heard movement near the door and turned to find the other two standing there, watching with him in stunned silence.
; Haylek shook his head slowly in wonder. It can’t be, he thought to himself. “Chorus?”
She gave him a single nod, and as she did so, the shadow of her hat passed briefly over her face. It should have blocked any reflections of light in her eyes from the hall, but they defiantly glowed with their green luminescence nonetheless.
“I know you have many questions,” she said, addressing the three of them now. “And I wish I had time to answer them now. However, time is not always on our side, and it is important that you do your part to prevent it from completely turning against us. The three of you must go out to the platform and wait. A shuttle will be there shortly to pick you up.”
Haylek stood up and looked at her. “Where will it take us?”
“To my home,” she responded. “Please go now; it is not safe here. If all goes favorably, I will see you all again.”
At that moment, thin wisps of white smoke oozed from the air around her, encircling her form. The smoke surrounded her and became thicker until it blocked her from sight. It began to swirl around her, picking up speed as electrical discharges of blue energy crackled soundlessly within it.
Suddenly, Haylek heard a loud snap, and then a rush of wind hit him hard, causing him to fall back. He landed on his rear and covered his eyes. He blinked hard for a moment, and when he finally recovered, she was gone. Lying on the ground in her place was the jewel necklace that she had been wearing.
Haylek stood up and walked over to it. He picked it up and looked at it a moment, then turned to the others, who hadn’t retreated as far as he’d thought.
“You heard Chorus,” he said. “Let’s go.”
******
In his bunk, Julius shut his eyes, hoping first that his crew wasn’t getting into trouble on Venus-1… and even more, hoping that he wouldn’t have another one of his dreams of the past. He grimaced. Not likely …