That was a lot to wrap her head around. Even though Lana's memory had been wiped, she still knew the meaning of all terms she'd known before, so she technically knew what he meant. But the way the words and terms were put together made it all almost like gibberish.
Especially since her mind had started feeling fuzzy the moment they started talking about this subject.
Her boyfriend noticed her befuddlement and came to her rescue. “Imagine you evolved quills to defend against a predator's teeth and claws. But while you were evolving them, a predator evolved even longer claws to get past your quills, and teeth capable of chewing them. So you have to evolve even longer quills, or thicker ones, and the predator in turn evolves. That's hacking in a nutshell . . . hackers manage to get past defenses, then people who have systems to protect develop ways to defend against their attacks, and they find new ways to get through.”
“Aside from companions,” Belix pointed out.
Dax nodded reluctantly. “Right. Companion AI seems to be able to resist any attack, because its code is constantly shifting and intelligently developing new ways to defend itself at faster speeds than even a team of expert hackers could keep up with. No one has ever hacked a companion.”
“And yet with all that, our vaunted companion couldn't extend that same protection to our ship,” the elfin woman said, almost smugly; she really didn't like Ali, even when the companion's failings put them all at risk.
For once, Ali looked bothered by a verbal attack. But she nodded reluctantly in agreement. “No, apparently I couldn't.” She paused reflectively, then continued. “If I was receiving regular updates to my information banks and skillsets from HAE, I might've been abreast of the newest Deconstructionist hacking innovations.”
“I'd say you already are abreast,” Barix pointed out with a toothy grin, unabashedly ogling the assets in question.
Aiden rolled his eyes, ignoring the man with impressive restraint as he spoke to his companion. “I hope you're not actually considering syncing up with your creators for an update.”
Ali paused a beat too long. “Of course not, my love. It would just be nice, that's all.”
Lana could see why the captain was so cautious, since he'd stolen Ali from a ship delivering her as a gift to a highly placed Deek official. As such, he'd obviously be uncomfortable with her contacting her creators so they could come pick her up.
Or, more frighteningly, alter her core priorities to turn her against the Last Stand.
She shuddered as she thought of the three combat androids the Deeks had sent through a mini rift to attack the ship during the last attack. The intruders had come after her and Belix in the engine room, and it was purely by luck she'd managed to take out the android that Dax, Ali, and Fix hadn't managed to destroy in time, before it could burn her or the elfin woman to a crisp.
But it had been terrifyingly close; the thought of Ali, who was even more formidable, suddenly coming after her was a horrifying one.
“Okay, so let's not let the stolen robot sync,” Lana agreed. “But if hacking is about constant evolution, couldn't you guys just study the most current methods and work from there? We've got some really smart people on this ship.”
Barix snorted. “We could, if we weren't on a pirate ship constantly running from system to system. Especially when connecting to the allnet is a quick way to get ourselves located by Movement Intelligence, with dozens of Deek ships converging on us howling for our blood.”
“Besides,” Belix added, “hackers tend to be pretty secretive about their methods, and system security contractors even more so. Unless you're already plugged into that world, and constantly stay plugged in and up to date on it, just blundering in trying to figure out the secrets of hacking is a great way to end up enslaved and mind wiped.”
Lana shuddered so violently that Dax gave her a concerned look, and he wasn't the only one. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Mind wipes are a sensitive subject for me.”
“Completely understandable,” Aiden assured her. He abruptly stepped out of the main display and settled back into his seat. “That's about it, I'd say. We're headed to Ceras, and we'll be employing analog defenses against cyber attacks. That'll put a damper on Ali's ability to gather information from intercepted communications in the systems we visit, but we'll just have to live with it.”
He looked around. “Aside from the changes we'll be making to the ship's profile at some point on the way to Iglis, I suggest you all settle into a comfortable routine. It's going to be an uneventful month. Dismissed to your duties.”
* * * * *
The Dormant wasn't pleased by this development.
She hadn't made a mistake in getting detected by the adult companion, or at least not one she could've reasonably avoided. In spite of Ali's protests about her coding being out of date, she was still proving to be dangerously adept at protecting the ship's computer. It was inevitable that she'd eventually uncover traces of the Dormant's tampering, no matter how hard she tried to hide her tracks.
And admittedly, she'd been in a hurry to send out the information during the encounter at Brastos 4. it was even possible she'd allowed herself to be careless in her haste, assuming she'd soon be triggered and called to aid in the destruction of the ship.
The silver lining to the cloud was that at least the companion still believed it was an external attack. If it had occurred to the AI that the tampering may have come from a member of the crew, her investigations into that possibility hadn't led her to suspect the Blank Slate who couldn't have possibly had any hacking ability.
Even so, the crew of the ship taking flat out paranoid measures to avoid
