Pirate Empress Snippet 5

So, I got the manuscript back from Goodlifeguide.com earlier this morning. I'll toddle on over to begin publishing it in a moment.

Here is the last snippet...

Chapter 4

Catherine called a cabinet meeting nine weeks after the first cyberattack and her coup, one week after the latest attack. New people and old were still settling in; she watched from a window as they arrived. Many were not happy about the additional security and obviously nervous about being in her midst after the coup. Well, that was too bad. The meeting had to be a physical one in the palace; they couldn't trust their own communications, encrypted or not.

Catherine was polite and even smiled as they settled into the wardroom. She listened to the reports from each minister gravely. It amounted to a lot of hand-wringing about a lot of damage. They were nowhere near restoring order. What they had was a thin venire and a few holdouts barely holding on.

There were a few bright spots, like the fact that several stations still survived. And cyber security was finally taking their duties seriously. The Admiralty had initiated a plan to blunt the next attack which was still five weeks out. “Most of the military hardware was only lightly touched. What we have left has been cleaned. Anything critical was already isolated and air gapped against intrusion,” Vice Admiral Rupert Bradley stated.

The vice admiral was a temporary addition to the cabinet since they lacked a minister of industry. She had pressed him into service as a temporary fill-in, forcing him to divide his time between trying to salvage his original command, BuShips, and trying to salvage and restore the entire civilian industry at the same time.

Obviously from the slack look on his face and deep drawn eyes he hadn't gotten much sleep as of late. She was sure despite her makeup she had a similar look. At the moment, she could care less about looks as she did results.

“Air gapped?” Catherine asked, sitting back and crossing her ankles under the desk as she played straight man.

“We were working on a program to air gap our hardware to cut it off from any network. Our most sensitive hardware in secret facilities was already like that; some bases run on their own network without being connected to external communications at all. Some have multiple networks all independent of each other. Data is moved through portals like encrypted flash drives only after being carefully vetted. It is the only way to protect it from our own hackers,” the admiral explained.

Catherine nodded.

“When the Federation began using cyberattacks, field units and vessels most distant went to air gap protocols. Those range from bases to forts and ships. Unfortunately, some were infected with delay action attacks,” the admiral explained, showing them a diagram of the cyberattack as it filtered through the various commands.

Catherine nodded curtly. No one wanted to mention the extensive damage to the shipyards. Logistics was still trying to rebuild their databases, mostly by doing inventory all over again. Some of the stations had been abandoned. Some had lost attitude control and were tumbling, shedding their contents. At least one was in a slow and agonizing path to burning up in the atmosphere. If it was allowed to happen, the mega tons of material would rain down and destroy quite a lot below. That which didn't burn up on reentry of course.

Unfortunately, there were few tugs available to alter the course of the station. It was just one problem among all too many at the moment.

“The problem is the lack of communication seriously hampers our units. Only audio commands can be sent, no data. The threat of spoofing added to the confusion and delay in action. All internal Wi-Fi has been disabled, which hampers internal communications as well. But that is why their second cyberattack was blunted.”

Catherine nodded again. The Federation prowlers had recently struck again on the eight-week  anniversary of the first cyberattack, just as promised. Since then a lot of prowlers had been observed jumping away to H001, most likely to report back to their chain of command and resupply. It can be assumed that they'd return.

Of that she was bleakly certain about. She cleared her throat. “Audio commands I know. I remember doing that when Cyrano had us run drills against a possible Xeno opponent. Sharing data was a pain in the ass,” she said, face working in disgust.

Mentioning Cyrano brought no flash of anger anymore. She had no time for such things. She could have used his steady hand and the staff he'd built but they were dead and gone thanks to her father. She fought down a flash of anger at his stupidity and regret over her own inaction. She'd been forced to hold off on her plans, accepting the executions as pawns being sacrificed.

She was pretty sure she'd have to do that again in the future.

“Agreed. But it was the only way to protect our ships from infiltration through their communications. Sometimes data could be sent over encrypted bursts or direct line of sight. But it was hard to trust it.” the admiral shook his head. “Even audio isn't fool proof.”

Catherine looked up with a frown.

Admiral Cartwright and others grimaced and nodded in support of their fellow admiral.

“The enemy can get samples of our voices and use them to sow disorder in our ranks,” Admiral Rico stated. “In fact, they already have.”

“If they have the encryption keys to react in real time. And if our people are foolish enough to accept an omni broadcast,” Catherine said frostily.

“A prowler on the right heading could pull it off in theory. Which is why we're adding code words to our encrypted communications,” Admiral Cartwright stated. “We have to hand deliver code sheets and new encryption keys to each command, which is in itself a slow process. We have been working on our own A.I. and cyber defenses, ironically using what we picked up from the Feds.”

“Ah.”

“But, it turns out that some of that was a trap,” Elvira said as she looked up from her tablet.

“It was?” Catherine blinked and then frowned as she turned to her partner. Elvira had remained silent for the majority of the proceedings up until that point. She hadn't wanted to be there but Catherine had insisted. “I thought it was to teach people modern technology?”

“If you learn the concepts, you are more or less fine, but there are hidden Trojans in the files. In our haste to utilize the tech, our people took shortcuts too. The copy and paste method has its advantages. But it left back doors in the programs, and the enemy exploited it,” Elvira explained, passing a tablet to Admiral Bradley. A section of code was highlighted.

The admiral took it with a frown, read the data, and began to scowl. “Damn. She's right,” he said grudgingly.

The countess took a look over his shoulder and then sighed and gave a rueful shake of her head. “Right under our noses,” she murmured.

“Tricky. Tricky bastards,” Cass Suzzette, the minister of agriculture, ventured boldly as the group muttered.

“Yes, my sentiments exactly. They knew we'd use it. We've dealt with Xeno traps before. And other cyberattacks have been encountered over the centuries. You'd think we'd learn from them, at least learn better methods than air gapping our systems,” Elvira said with a shake of her head. “Usually in the field, the best method is to shut down communications, reboot, and disable or destroy the infected hardware.”

Catherine grimaced at that news. She nodded though. There were plenty of horror stories of greed getting in the way of common sense to the detriment of salvage teams. And there were no doubt dozens, perhaps hundreds of stories out there of it killing the team and never getting back to them.

The problem was the money from salvage was too lucrative to pass it up. No risk, no reward. Besides, when an A.I. normally realized it was being salvaged, security protocols would call for it to wipe itself or self-destruct.

This was different. This was a deliberate crippling take of unprecedented scale. All carefully and maliciously planned.

“I'm not big on software so I can only see the big picture. I admit, I'm probably guilty of the copy and paste error myself,” Elvira said with a shake of her head. “But I agree, cutting down our communication networks will help to some degree. Cleaning all software, possibly down to resetting to factory default from firmware, will do a lot to mitigate any hidden viruses waiting to strike.”

“It already has. The civilians are doing the same. Network transfer is a problem. They've switched to just hard lines but we only have so many to begin with. It is cutting into our efficiency. Wi-Fi is out as is satellite communication. But it is the only way to be sure the data is clean,” Countess Newberry stated. “The flip side is that the networks being down means that hooligans who are behind some of the more dangerous civil unrest are cut off from their supporters. But it means we can't actively track them either.”

A few people nodded.

“The good news is changing our encryption and methods of data transfer have hampered the Fed's intelligence activities. I believe that's a case of seeing a silver lining on a barn burned to nearly ashes, but it means that anything we plan from here on out will hopefully be secret,” the countess ended.

Catherine winced at the qualifier.

“There are no guarantees. We're still running into delayed logic bombs and viruses that try to upload data they gathered. Our cyber people believe we aren't infected by an actual A.I., but they can't guarantee that,” Admiral Bradley stated flatly.

“An A.I.? In our systems?” the countess asked.

“In the hardware. A software download is possible. It would need to be a large system. We're pulling people in that have some experience with such things.”

“Rogue A.I., that's all we need,” Admiral Rico muttered.

“I have my doubts that there is one. That's a lot of data to transfer. Then again, they had plenty of time to send information to our networks before they launched their cyberattack,” Elvira stated flatly. “We are still running across back doors and viruses. Breaking the networks down has severely hampered their ability to attack us in the same fashion in the future.”

“We need to continue on that path then. Once burned thrice shy.”

“That is a defensive measure. We still can't find the prowlers and hit them back,” Admiral Cartwright growled, glancing at Elvira. She had made some suggestions, which had worked to some degree, but it wasn't enough. It had trapped the prowler's recon drones and tracked their buoys, even caught one or two ships, but there were still more.

Or will be when they come back he thought darkly.

“True,” Catherine said with a nod. “Let's take a break for an hour and then we'll reconvene,” she offered.

She could tell that offer was gladly accepted. She also noted that the countess wanted to tell her something. She nodded to a side door. The countess nodded slightly back. Catherine paused to check in with her people to get an updated SITREP and then went to see what the countess had to say privately.

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