J Mauldin - Final Solution

“XO,” I spoke into my wrist. “We’re going to have to do a hard reset on the weapons. Despite yesterday’s clear test, they’re not working. As it stands right now we can’t fire a thing.”

“Copy that. Work fast. We have forty minutes till show time. I don’t wanna show up on stage just to get shot in the face.”

A number appeared on my watch, counting down the minutes.

I took a pull off the vape and climbed into the spine of the ship. All systems had tested fine yesterday, so why go out now? Nearly ten years this ship had been in the void, traveling from world to world with hardly an issue but for regular maintenance. Now the computer was on the fritz? The weapons were out? Most modern, solid state systems could last for decades without issue. Something wasn’t right. This was far too convenient.

We entered the spine of the ship and the pull of gravity vanished.

“Here.” Griffin floated ahead to the weapon’s computer, a grey box with a bank of open ports on its side. “Let me jack in. I think I can reinstall the weapon’s drivers manually.” She unclipped her tablet and plugged direct, not wasting time with pairing or short range wireless beam dropping. Eighty gigabit wired feeds were far more reliable anyways. “Wait, what’s this?” She pointed at the far side of the computer’s box.

A length of optical cable was running away from the box, back towards the aft of the ship, carefully hidden between the various multicolor pipes. I followed its trail, floating from one section to the next.

I shouted back at Griffin, “Oh, shit.”

She spun around and let go of her tablet. It floated into the wall, tethered by its cable. “What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s linked the systems. It’s jacked into the information network and secondary chemical storage.”

“Oh, shit.” She began to work frantically, taking the tablet back into her hands. She flipped through various screens, browsing for the files she needed while also speaking verbal commands.

With hackers having access to computers capable of more processing power than fifty of our ships combined, brute force attacks via the Sol Net were a real threat. It was for this reason we kept our systems both physically and virtually separate. Only in extreme emergencies, when more than three fourths of our crew were dead or incapacitated, were we even allowed to interconnect these systems, and only then by cable. Someone had done this and tried to hide the evidence. There was a good chance that this had been done weeks ago, but was so carefully hidden we’d missed it in our final safety sweep the day before. Whoever had done this, had to have been the one to plant the code I’d found in the chemical storage bios. The target was real. Really real. It wasn’t the former captain.

“Who could have done this?” she asked, then began banging her tablet against the box. “Work, damn it. Work!”

“No time to figure that out. What do we do to fix it? You’re the computer expert.”

“I… I’m not sure. Let’s see, first, let’s disconnect the linking cables so no further changes can be made.”

“Good idea.” I reached around the information network’s box, trying to free the cable. RJ-90 was a particular challenge to unclip without a screwdriver, which for some reason I didn’t have. Come to think of it, many of my tools were missing. The cable’s release clip was a narrow slit in which leverage needed to be applied upon a razor’s edge to free them of their ports. Female maintenance members often found this kind of work easier than males due to their fashionably longer fingernails. Their nails gave them all the leverage they needed without having to carry extra tools on them.

“Fuck!” Griffin shouted, punching the bulkhead beside the weapon’s box. “I can’t get this cable out, my nails are too damn short.”

And as the words came out of her, the two of us stared at one another, eyes wide with a sickening realization.

“Liberty?” I called into my wrist, trying to sound calm. I put my feet against the bulkhead and yanked the cable with all my might. Screw trying to unclip these cables, I’d rip the bitches in half if need be. The cable’s male ends snapped, severing the connection and sending tiny pieces of plastic scattering in the air.

“Captain Fryatt?” I called again, heart rate increasing. I fumbled in my pockets, rushing back to Griffin, looking for the earpiece Liberty had given me those many months back. As I slipped it on I heard tense voices.

“Don’t move,” a raspy male said, “and I won’t burn her alive. Plasma torches get real hot, sir.”

“Kelly, it doesn’t have to be like this,” XO bled in.

“The hell it doesn’t! I was sent here on a mission, and if you people hadn’t been so damn… I mean… Why are you making me do this? I have to do this, you understand, right? I can’t let you succeed. William Fryatt was going to kill us all.”

And there it was. Kelly, it had always been Kelly. Not even the great William Fryatt had known. He’d been too focused on his daughter getting laid to even notice. There was a spy, a saboteur of the Axis on board, but for whatever reason he’d hesitated and not killed us outright. Was it because of guilt? A crumbling resolve? Or maybe he’d had a crush on a smart, sporty tomboy of a girl? It didn’t matter now. We had to fix this problem. I had to save Liberty.

“It’s Kelly,” I told Griffin. “He’s on the bridge. He has Liberty hostage with a plasma torch.”

“That bastard,” she growled at her tablet. “I should have known. I’ve spent more time with him than anyone on this ship. Damn it, I should have known, long ass fingernail.”

“Can you fix it?” I tried to keep a grip on my calm, but it was greasy and slick like pig fat. “’Cause next thing we have to rescue them.”

She went through her tablet again, reviewing the data she’d hastily collected. “Yes, I can fix this, but we’ll have to reset this box and it won’t let me do it through the system. Every time I try and run the command, forcing it to power cycle, it clears away my text.”

I removed the vape pen from my pocket, took a drag and said, “Will a power surge do it? I know it’s got built in breakers, but I don’t wanna cook it.”

“Yeah, but it’ll have to be a lot of juice.”

“Ten thousand volts too much?”

“No. Maybe? No. Yeah. That’s—”

“Perfect.” I flipped the safety switch on the side of the vape pen and jabbed its end against the box, depressing the button. A sizzling arc of blue light came out its end. The lights on the side of the weapon’s box went off, then returned a moment later. The computer had begun its normal restart, a soft whirr of fans spinning up in confirmation.

“That should do it,” Griffin gaped. “I need me one of those.”

“We’ll get you one when we’re back home.”

My watch buzzed. Thirty minutes remained.

As the system booted up she worked furiously, reinstalling a series of older, more reliable weapons drivers. “Can you stun him with that thing?”

“Not before he cooks our new Captain. Besides, I think it’s busted.” I inspected the tube’s blackened end while running simulations in my head. I got the feeling Kelly didn’t want to kill anyone directly, or he already would have. He would let the Razor do his dirty work. There would be no way to tackle him without risking her. We had no guns on board, and if I threw something I’d be just as likely to hit her as him. There had to be another way, had to.

Griffin’s expression pinched. “What do we do?” She disconnected the uplink cable and clipped the tablet to her leg. “Alright, we can release control to the bridge, but not operate remote.”