J Mauldin - Final Solution

Her brows crinkled. “I suppose. But why? It would be really hard to do, being that those drives are basically fixed in read only. Let’s see, maybe you could add something into the chemical drive’s BIOS. Make it part of the self-check system. It runs a whole series of commands on startup to ensure, say, life support isn’t killing us, habitat keeps rotating, communications are calibrated, telemetry is linking up and we’re booting properly. Basic settings.”

“That’s it.” I grabbed her by the shoulders and grinned. “That’s it! The BIOS. If anyone comes looking for me make something up. There’s something important I have to do.” I lowered the maintenance core’s ladder and began climbing. The spine of the ship flashed red, alarms echoing. Between the ocular flares I swore I saw something blurry and white move about fifty feet ahead. I narrowed my eyes to check again. The way was clear.

“Sir, where are you going?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I can’t do this alone!”

“Yes, you can.”

“But…”

“Look, Griffin, I’m sorry. I should have apologized sooner, but I’m sorry. I was way out of line with César.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, you weren’t. It all makes sense in a way. It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”

“Do you know who retaliated against me?”

Her lips compressed into a line as she thought about it. “I, well, this isn’t really a good time. I don’t want to implicate anyone, because I’m not totally sure. I have a guess, but I’m scared to say.”

That would just have to wait for later. “Look, you can do this on your own, I have faith in you. César is watching over us.”

“Okay.” She wrapped her arms around her belly and nodded. “Go. Do what you have to do.”

“Don’t tell anyone, but I have to do something to save the ship.” I entered the maintenance core and closed the hatch.

I might not have been able to save César, but I could damn well save the rest of us. The target might’ve been one step ahead, but I was closing in fast. My blood began to pulse with the promise of revenge. It felt good, like a filthy, bathtub brew made of drain cleaner and hate I knew better than to inject.

“You’re mine, you little bastard, all mine.”

Like a bullet roaring down the barrel of a rifle, I shot myself through the maintenance core while unexpectedly plunged into darkness. Three for three. Something wasn’t right. In my mind’s eye I could see Griffin running in the dark between sections, desperate to restore power while forcing away her acute nausea. From the sour smell in the air I realized some of her puke had found its way onto my jumpsuit.

Robbed of all sight, the top of my head cracked against the bulkhead. I crumpled into a ball of weightless meat and waited, caroming off the rotating walls heading God knows where. It was all I could do. I had a rare moment to think, and added an additional inquiry to the list of things I needed to check once inside the computer’s core.

Power came back on, lights flickering like an ill toddler waking up from a hard nap. I’d drifted quite a ways in the wrong direction, ending up nearly two sections down. I took hold of a handle and threw myself in the opposite direction.

Moments later I floated up beside a series of black and grey boxes studded with clear tubing and colored bulbs—chemical storage. To prevent total data loss during power overloads the result of firing our rail guns, these boxes were where everything was backed up until restart. EMFs weren’t kind to old style magnetic, or even solid state storage systems, but chemical hard disks, while expensive and limited in lifespan, were wholly unaffected by the intense electromagnetic fields produced when firing our weapons.

My watch vibrated. REPORT? IT HAPPENED AGAIN. The Captain’s tone was undeniable.

I wasn’t sure if it was the situation or just me, but his patience had run out.

I inspected the side of the box and found a length of RJ-90 run to one of the bridge’s secondary report stations. That answered one question. The Captain was watching a live feed on every startup, probably from his personal terminal, though, he could only guess at what he saw displayed, being that the feed would show thousands of lines of code per second.

I unclipped my tablet and connected it to chemical storage. I started reviewing the code line by line, not the big data blocks the Sol Net sent over, but merely startup and registry. I could read Sage language, but wasn’t proficient enough to write new code, only halfway edit what was already made. Everything was clear so far. I checked the BIOS as Griffin had suggested, the basic input output system used to direct our main computer during startup. It didn’t take long to locate what I was looking for; too bad it wasn’t in Sage. This was an assembly code, bane of all programmers, professional or not. I would have only been guessing if any of this had posed a danger, but our target was so damn stupid he’d led me right to it.

Whoever had coded this must not have expected anyone to find it, and had left commenting tags to the right of several lines, similar to remarks, rem :, as they were called in Sage. These were commonly used by programmers as not to lose track of what a specific function in a highly advanced system was intended to do. Not smart for keeping things hidden. I found several tags ‘;start false com check’ and ‘;add to disk image’ and ‘;xmit location’. I removed the code, first copying a set to my tablet’s note pad for safe keeping. I found myself hoping I could even trust these comments. Were they a trap? Would removing these bits do something terrible, like shut down life support and suffocate us?

Like a surgeon performing a lobotomy after only reading the wiki article, I carefully highlighted everything from start to ‘;end false com check’ and hit delete. I hoped that was enough. Any lingering, incomplete lines could interfere with normal ship operations, revealing what I’d done before being ready to make my final move. I inspected what was copied to the note pad several times, trying to take a guess as to who might have written this. The style, far as I could tell, was direct, to the point, and efficient.

I messaged our impatient Captain, noticing that another doodle was on the box made in black marker. THREAT REMOVED, I said, and received no reply. I ran a finger over the drawing, cocking my head to the side. It was the face of a bearded old man, a single tear falling from his right eye with its edges morphing into a knife.

XO cut in over the intercom, “Good work, crew. We will not be firing again for some time. Please standby. Take a few moments to collect yourselves.”

A calm of a sort washed over the ship. It was over for now, but not for me.

I made for the closest hatch and climbed down. A few crewmembers meandered past, slapping me on the back in congratulations for keeping power up and the guns firing. We were still alive, that was something. Griffin was waiting for me, a giddy smile plastered on her face.

“You were right,” she said, looking tough in spite, and possibly because, of the filth spattered down her white jumpsuit.

I patted her on the shoulder and made for Crew 1. I needed time to collect my thoughts, maybe even a nap. My eyes were dry and scratchy. Hot damn, I was exhausted, and could use a stiff drink.

The hallway was busy, crew heading everywhere at once. I made a mental note of each one of their expressions, searching for guilt among the pack. Dour Face and Lank Hair were carrying a man to the brig. Doc took someone’s vitals in the hall. Navigation sauntered past, tossing peanuts down her throat while sipping on a red liquid.