Parabellum Snippet 3

 So, I'm in the process of uploading and publishing the manuscript but I hit a snag with B&N. They are lagging horribly. Still loading... (I've had 2 games of spider solitaire)

Anyway, while I wait, here is another and most likely the last snippet:

Chapter 3

 

Minox IV

 

“So, you are telling me there is nothing, not a damn thing you can do to fix the situation?” President Ramhorn, leader of the Tauren Confederation demanded as he leaned on his fists and stared at his cabinet ministers. “That is unacceptable!” he fumed, nostrils flaring in barely suppressed rage.

It had been several weeks since the message from the human President Irons and the sudden cessation of their ansible. The leading experts in ansibles had no idea how he'd done it initially.

Now they knew something, but only because the A.I. network monitoring the system had reported a major security breach.

He had been frightened, angry, and shaken by the demonstration of power by the humans. That they had managed to tap into his people's ansible network and pass on a message like that said a lot about their abilities … and a lack of security on the part of his own people. It gnawed at him; if they were deficient there, what else were they going to find lacking?

“The ansible hardware is toast,” Director Ren stated, voice flat. “We now believe they used viruses to get past our computer security and into our network. They triggered the self-destruct packages once they passed on their message,” he said. He shook his head. “There is no way to get the hardware back online. The muons are gone.”

The president turned a look on him. “Gone?”

“Gone. If a split muon touches something else, they poof, are gone out of existence. The hardware is cooked too. Centuries of investment gone. As an act of war, it was a pretty damn good one. It is hurting us on a lot of levels,” he said.

The other cabinet ministers winced but didn't dispute that.

“At the moment, my people are working on getting new ansibles going to nearby star systems. It is a process though, and it will take time to get each ansible to its location. The further away they are, the longer the time it will take to get them there,” the communication director said.

Director Blacksight winced internally. Ren was new to the cabinet, his predecessor had been the female Flax. She had wilted under the president's raging tantrums and resigned just before he'd publicly fired her for the fiasco.

She had taken the brunt of the blame and heat for the fiasco but it wasn't all her. His people had quietly determined that the enemy had performed the hack by getting into the ansibles in their space. They didn't know which ones specifically, but it explained how Irons had managed to get into the network at all.

What he'd done before he'd made his presence known was keeping the director up a lot at night lately. How long he'd had access was another big question.

“Obviously our cyber security was lacking,” Ren stated.

“Obviously,” the president stated as he sat down in his chair heavily.

“We're working with the best techs to overhaul it and find where the enemy got in to prevent it from happening again. During this process, we've run into some nasty things that the Feds left behind in our net.”

“Ah?” the president asked, eyeing him coldly.

Ren was made out of sterner stuff than his predecessor. The president was slowly reshaping his cabinet to an all-male one. He had made it quietly known to his closest supporters that he thought cows were weak and would wilt under the stress of the job.

In truth they just got tired of his tantrums and blame game Director Blacksight thought. It was why he was in the room instead of his boss Admiral Clear Sight. She'd excused herself by “being stuck in transit” to get out of the meeting.

“We are still trying to get a handle on the level of presentation and the data stolen,” the communications director said, shooting a look to the Director of Intelligence. “We don't know their level of penetration into the military and intelligence side. But during the process of investigating and repairing the damage, our cyber security experts have run into a series of viruses and bots. They were left in our network …,” he paused as the president sat up straight and glared at him. “To, ah, try to further penetrate our systems and do more sabotage.”

“You intercepted them though?” the president asked.

“Yes, sir. And we now know what they look like so our A.I. are scrubbing their firewalls and looking for more. We are introducing cyber vaccines to protect against similar attacks in the future.”

“Ah. But you can't guarantee you got them all?” the chief of staff asked carefully.

“We can barely detect them. We're working on it, but we're going to have to go through all branches as well as the civilian side to make sure we cleared it all out. We are working with cyber security both in the government and in the civilian sector to take steps against it.”

“Fix it. Fast,” the president growled.

Director Blacksight nodded. The president turned to him. “What did they get?”

“We don't know. We do know that they gained access through the ansibles outside of the Confederation.”

The president's nostrils flared and his eyes lit with rage. “Your shop I believe?” he asked coldly.

“Yes, Herd Leader. One or more of their ships must have intercepted a signal going to an ansible platform. From there they located it and hacked it.”

“I see.”

“They are very good. How they got around our security is still being investigated as is how they got in so deep. The ansibles outside the Confederation are, or I should say were, extremely limited on bandwidth. Obviously, they found a way to get around that.”

“Obviously,” the president said scathingly. He sat back and drummed his massive fingers on the edge of the table.

The director didn't hold his breath or squirm. He was a professional political animal; he knew better than to show signs of weakness. He'd owned up to his part of the failure but refused to be cowed or surrender. If he did, he'd be out on his ass or worse before the meeting was over.

The president continued his scowl. The intense frustration he emanated was palatable to all in the room. He wanted to call them incompetent but he knew better. He could feel some of the frustration emanating from them too.

“Obviously, we can't deny we've suffered a major setback,” he said evenly. “The war that was to unite our people and push our boundaries out is now an issue.” He turned to the admiral.

“We have had a major command and control setback. Not just with command and control of our forces and bases but also with gathering intelligence in the Federation,” Admiral White Skin stated evenly. The admiral was a rare albino breed of Tauren. He was a brilliant strategist and politician and had managed to outmaneuver Broken Tooth and others for the coveted CNO slot. “We are trying to compensate with couriers but there is a major time lag involved with using them. We were also very short on them to begin with so we are pressing destroyers into service where we have to.”

The president nodded.

“At the moment, we know that Admiral Hard Nose has taken 77 and moved on to Triple Threat with the intent of taking it and then holding it until we give the go-ahead to move on.” He used his implants to trigger the holographic emitter.

The lights dimmed and the star chart of the sector came up on the table in front of them. A blinking icon where jump lines on their eastern border was shown.

“We have consolidation and follow-up forces moving into that area now, but they may have been stalled by the ansible strike,” the admiral stated.

The president looked ready to demand if he knew or not but stopped himself. He knew that the admiral did not know so asking the stupid question would have made him look foolish.

“In the north, Admiral Ela is taking the long road to 95 to ambush the enemy's pirate hunting Task Force 4.4. After that he is to check in and then move south to secure the north and consolidate with Hard Nose.”

The blinking icons indicated the locations for a moment and then more appeared in the southeast.

“In the southeast, Admiral Brewster was moving out ahead of Admiral Broken Horn. His last report was that he was taking 80 while Admiral Broken Horn had just departed Purple Nights. The main battle line has several major capital ships so they are slow in hyperspace.”

The president grimaced but nodded.

“I have forces moving to support all three fronts, including carrier task forces. All are of course out of contact,” the admiral stated with a shake of his head. “I received a single courier from the north checking in but that is it at the moment.

“There is a spot of good news,” Ren interjected. All eyes turned to him. “I was reminded of the war front last night. We moved some of our spare ansibles in the direction of the eastern and southeastern fronts in preparation of supporting our forces in the field if they were out of contact with an existing platform.”

“Go on,” the president ordered.

“We checked, those ansibles were not harmed. So, there are sixteen ansible cores moving in the direction of the fronts. I'd like to send a courier to run the transport down and have them drop off the ansibles in the Confederation instead.”

The president sat up straighter and nodded. “Good. Forgot to mention that earlier?” he demanded.

“Yes, Herd Leader. We moved on rather quicker than I expected,” the communication director said, indicating his notes.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Not at this time. I do need your authorization to stop the transports.”

“You have it,” the bull growled with a nod. “Get that going now.”

“Yes, Herd Leader.”

“We have another issue with the lack of the ansible and not just the political issues—the economy,” Cron, the Director of the Treasury, stated flatly. “We are already staring down a recession,” he warned.

There were quiet grunts around the room. “We went from gaining new markets and gaining new customers and supplies to this. It is going to hit hard.”

“We're working on getting the ansible up,” Ren stated defensively.

“The longer it is down, the harder this will hit our economy. We may be looking at a bad recession,” Cron said again.

“I've frozen the markets to keep the stampede to a minimum. Cooler heads will prevail.”

“That is a temporary fix. It is staving off the inevitable slide as hedge funds and others wait to sell off what they can to protect themselves,” Cron warned. “Once that happens, the others will follow and it will be a cascade effect.”

“Then we will trigger another shutdown. A cooling-off period.”

Cron nodded and flapped his ears. “If this goes on too long, it will hit the budget like a bomb as well.”

“At the worst time in a war too,” Admiral White Skin said just loud enough to be heard. “Damn, Irons timed it good.”

“You don't have to admire him,” the president growled.

“I can admire a foe and respect him. Not taking him seriously will lead to disaster. It is what led us to this point to begin with,” the admiral stated.

The president's eyes flared and then narrowed. Director Blacksight's face was expressionless. Other professional politicians around the table had their own masks up. “What do you mean?” the president demanded.

“We need to reevaluate the political calculus involved,” the admiral said flatly. “We built our strategic picture on a series of assumptions that are now invalid.”

“For instance?”

“We didn't believe that the Federation would react in time. Now they have struck back and hard. We also believed that they would fold once we were on the warpath and took over the sector. Now that assumption is invalid.”

The president scowled.

“I'm afraid the quick and clean war that we thought we had is about to become anything but,” the admiral said quietly.

“It gets worse,” Director Blacksight said, surprising even himself. The president's eyes cut to him. He cleared his throat and then continued. “Irons indicated they knew about our xenophobia and final solution plans. That indicates a level of penetration we didn't anticipate. Couple that with the surprise attacks and it will have a different impact than we expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the strategic simulations were run, we anticipated their morale would crack and break when they were overwhelmed. Now we know that isn't true. Worse, we handed them a major reason to fight. Fight, and fight hard, pulling out all the stops to find a way to win.”

“How can they handle a war on two fronts?” Cron demanded.

The director shrugged. “They are doing it anyway. Our last intelligence about the war with the pirates was that it was winding down. They had political issues to deal with. Our attack and our final solution will unite them behind Irons again and he'll use that.”

“Did the envoy ship get out?” Cron asked. “Did you get anything from them?”

“No idea,” Blacksight replied. “We can't contact the ansibles and don't know. They might have stopped the ship at any point in her journey. With the ansible network down, they can't report in on anything they picked up in their intelligence-gathering mission either.”

“Frack.”

“It gets worse,” Admiral White Skin said humorously. They looked to him again. He flapped his ears. “We can't get at their vitals to stop their ship building. They have a long voyage here, but they are now committed to it. We have at least a year or more to get to the clusters to put the cork in the bottle. But we have to do it with a large fleet before they send reinforcements. With our coordination down, that is questionable. Factor in any resistance from the forces they have in the sector now and it may not be possible.”

“Then make it possible,” the president said firmly as he got up and stormed out.

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