Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

crust and flood-knows-what-else peppered his face. He wiped his cheeks with both hands and shivered. Part of him considered sabotaging the water pumps prior to the coming flood, just to give the joint a good rinse.

Reaching inside his best pocket, Walter extracted the ID badge, his only remaining bit of loot from a night full of complete busts. First, his winnings at Rats had been denied him. Then, his blasted uncle had nabbed his gun, probably worth an easy two hundred. “You better be worth it,” he told the plastic chip. He shook the card so it would know he meant business.

With a deft one-handed flourish, Walter called up a few macros he’d stored in the computer, and his private card-reading program booted up. He inserted the ID into the scanner. With a hesitant swipe, he ran the magnetic strip through—silently hoping for something good. A ticket off-world was almost too much to dream of, but some info he could sell would be nice. Anything to make up for the night’s losses.

The card’s code flashed across the screen, filling the smeared monitor with lines of green-phosphorous text. Walter’s beady eyes flicked from side to side, trying to tease out the pertinent from the mundane.

Gradually, a glimpse of what he’d stumbled onto began to coalesce out of the lines of code, and Walter realized just what he had.

And he realized he had not been dreaming big enough.

•• THE RAID ••

The two moderators crouched close to Walter and peered down at their computers as he slid the card through the reader and loaded his program. He watched the moderators press their refresh buttons over and over, expecting his successful hack to appear on the GU website at any moment.

It will, Walter thought. But his complex program had a few other tasks to perform before it sent anything as mundane as messages off to Earth.

He remained perfectly still and tried to exude calm, even as another roll of thunder boomed in the distance. While Walter waited, he imagined what was going on in the ethereal realm of code and connected computers. With his eyes closed, he pictured his elegant hack zipping off through cheap copper wire. He traced its route through Palan, knowing where the main trunks were buried from so many data-jacks over the years. The program would round High street, dash down River avenue, then course up Cobble. That’s where it would enter the Navy’s Bell Phone containment tower—

Walter’s heart raced as he suddenly realized his code could not be recalled. His actions could not be undone. He had pulled a trigger of sorts, knowing what the fired bullet would do, but only after having done so did the repercussions fully seize him. Entire clans would be heading to Earth, taking their ships with them. Or was it the other way around? The play on words evaporated Walter’s dread, replacing it with a sudden urge to giggle. He opened his eyes and looked to the moderators, wondering if they could sniff his mix of fear and humor. Hoping to replace the scents, Walter focused on the fact that his secondary program would soon dutifully reach Earth and perform a successful hack of the GU site. He also reminded himself that his program, swirling in the entangled particles of the Navy’s containment tower, would not be there for much longer. Soon, the floods would come and wash them away, the turbulent waters taking all signs of Walter’s duplicity. He thought of these happy, calm facts and tried so very hard to refrain from thinking about what his program would do in the meantime…

•• TWO DAYS BEFORE ••

Simmons. The card owner’s name was uncomfortable to even think, leaving a residual hiss in Walter’s mind. But that wasn’t what really stood out about the ID badge. What was weird was that the Human had two official names. He seemed to go by Drummond while he was on Palan—at least to the markets, the Regal Hotel, the passenger shuttle office, and the cabbies. To the Navy, however, he went by the name of Simmons, and as far as Walter could tell, he wasn’t even supposed to be on Palan. He was on what Walter would call a rogue mission, and what the Human Navy referred to as “clandestine.”

It was the first time Walter had gotten to rummage through the file of anyone in Special Assignments—the first time he’d heard of anyone getting the chance. But that wasn’t the big surprise, either. The big surprise was how unbelievably sloppy Simmons was to be so seemingly well-connected. Walter hit a goldmine when he came across a file named “Passwords.txt.” He had thought it was some sort of joke until he opened the file up and saw its contents.

The next thing he had to do was immediately raid the snack closet for some Chedder Puffs and a warm Pump Cola. Like his trainees before him, Walter was about to pull an all-nighter.

Simmons, it seemed, answered directly to a Navy admiral, one Wade Lucin. Their entire message history was logged in a Navy database, opened as slick as grease with the contents of the passwords file. It appeared Simmons was on Palan to secure a “package” of some sort. He even had two accomplices heading his way from Earth. Walter scanned these messages, but none of it seemed too terribly interesting. What caught his eye among the terse lines were the words “username” and “password.” For some reason, the Admiral had given Simmons temporary access to his own account. It was a one-time login and no longer any good, but it was enough to get Walter guessing the Admiral’s full-time passcode. He knew from hacking Human laptops that all their passwords were slight variations on a single theme—either their limited noses kept them ignorant to the threats swirling all around them, or they just couldn’t hold more than a few tidbits in their brains at any one time. Walter suspected it was a blend of both.

It took less than a dozen tries to log in to the Navy database. All the Admiral had done was transpose the two words in his password and increase the four-digit number by one. When the login screen disappeared and the master account page popped up, Walter nearly spilled his can of Pump. He whipped around to make sure nobody was behind him, his entire body tingling with the thrill of found treasure. Pulling the keyboard into his lap, Walter began flipping through account tabs. The overwhelming choice of devious tasks to perform made his head spin.

Walter scanned the Personnel page first. The Admiral had almost complete control over what looked to be thousands and thousands of Humans. Walter briefly considered transferring every staff member with an ‘S’ in their name to the front line. He laughed to himself at the thought. There was a massive sub page for Humans ranked as mere “cadets.” With half a thought, Walter could’ve flunked or expelled whichever brats he chose. He thought about changing some grades, or possibly admitting himself to flight school, but like the frontline transfers, these were all ideas that would arouse suspicion and turn out to be no more than practical jokes. Annoyances, sure, but with no real outcome, no payoff other than a locked-down account and someone in Human IT lecturing the Admiral on how not to be so stupid with his passcodes.

The best solution, Walter knew, was going to be to just sell the account to someone off-planet. Take their money and let them deal with the heat their actions might bring. He went to the admin page and set up a few secondary logins so he could access the account even if the primary password was changed. He then went to the Admiral’s inbox and deleted the automated messages warning of the account changes. He also opened the IT log file and removed the entries for his last actions and reset the time stamp for the last logon. Satisfied, Walter went to log out, but after closing the IT tab and just before he exited the Admiral’s inbox, something caught his eye: An older message entitled “Delete After Reading.”

But it hadn’t been deleted.

And with a title like that, there was nothing Walter could do but read it.

••••

TO: Adm. Wade Lucin

FROM: IT Specialist Second Class Mitchell

Admiral,

The alterations to the simulator were completed today, and I even stamped Hearst’s name on the modifications in case anyone looks. I promised I wouldn’t ask about these mods, but I want you to know how hard that promise is to keep. I’m dying to know. Anyway, everything was done remotely and I covered my tracks good. I expect to see those reprimands expunged from my files like we talked about.

As for the hyperdrive question, I can only assume you’re talking about hypotheticals. For the sake of discussion - assuming for a moment you had a drive that could ignore gravitational permutations - there are ways to remotely input jump coordinates and bypass the Navy control boards. It isn’t easy, but it’s doable. The radio interface for sending out coordinate verification can be turned around the other way, but you’d have to come up with a master key for the hack to work. I just don’t see why you’d want to. Why not input the jump arrival directly in