Metropolis region — Barvigrard constellation
Hek system — Planet IV
Krusual Tribe Bureau
30 August YC 127
Seeing that I was in a company of Keita Eslin, Aura assumed a blandly polite expression and said in a neutral tone, “Good morning, Captain. How can I be of service?”
Hiding my smile, I said, “You may be of great service if you help us understand how these files,” I pointed at the screen, “appeared in my combat logs.”
Without batting an eye, Aura said, “Unfortunately, I am not aware of the circumstances in which they were produced, Captain.”
I stared at her for a few moments and said, “And now answer this question as if we were talking privately.”
Aura shot a quick look at the agent and asked in a normal tone, “Are you sure, Cap?”
I nodded reassuringly.
Aura shrugged, “Okay, I got them from the mercs.”
“You mean the mercenaries who were guarding Dagan’s lieutenants?”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a pause after which Keita and I exploded with questions.
“How did you manage to get them?”
“Why are there only six?”
“Did you get anything else?”
Aura looked at Keita, then at me, then at Keita again.
When we stopped yelling questions at her, she asked coolly, “Which question should I answer first?”
I raised my hand before Keita could say anything.
“Tell us everything from the beginning.”
“Where do I begin?” Aura mused. “Right. Two days ago, while you were asleep, I was patching the ship’s firmware.”
“What does it have to do with the mercs?” Keita interrupted.
“Patience!” I said. “Let Aura tell it her way, then we can ask questions.”
Aura gave me a grateful look and continued, “There was a known vulnerability which allowed privilege escalation through RAP.”
“RAP?” I asked, confused.
“Remote Access Protocol. It’s typically used for software configuration by authorised technicians when they are not physically present on the ship, but recently hackers discovered a bug which allowed anyone to bypass authentication and authorisation. The vendor rather quickly released a patch which I installed. Then I decided to test it, just in case.”
“Test it? How?” I said.
“Oh, I wrote an exploit.”
I started doubting the wisdom of having that conversation in Keita’s presence.
“An exploit. Okay. Go on.”
“Then I tried to use it to get through the security controls, and I am pleased to say that it didn’t work. But then it occurred to me that I should have tested it on the unpatched software first, to make sure it worked at all. I didn’t want to roll back the patch on our ship…”
I held my breath, dreading what would come next.
“…but then you came and said we had a mission. When we arrived to that star base and I saw the mercs, I wondered if their ship firmware was patched. So I deployed my exploit and, as Gallenteans say, voila!” Aura finished and looked at us triumphantly.
“Voila what?” I asked.
“I got access! I could see the file system on their onboard computers, and I could download files, which I did.”
“But why were there files only from six ships? There were seven mercs, if I remember correctly.”
“You do remember correctly,” Aura said and added in an accusatory tone, “but you shot down the seventh one before I managed to get anything from it.”
“So, you managed to get the travel logs from those ships. Was there anything else? Anything that could explain why the mercs visited those locations?” Keita asked eagerly.
“Well, there were other files but they were encrypted,” Aura admitted reluctantly.
“Why didn’t you store them in the combat logs too?”
“What’s the point? Until they are deciphered, they are useless.”
“Can you decipher them?” I asked.
“I tried, but it’s taking ages on a destroyer’s computer. I need at least a battleship to complete the decryption in a reasonable time.”
I looked at Keita, “Do you have a spare battleship?”
The agent snorted, “I don’t, but even if I did I would not let a Caldari contractor to take control of it. No offence meant. But I may have something better. Recently, we upgraded the station computing array, and it has a lot of spare capacity.”
“Is it better than battleship’s?” Aura asked.
“Much better,” Keita smiled. “Okay, given the potential importance of information stored in the encrypted files, I’ll give you user access to the computing array. Feel free to use whatever spare capacity it has to decrypt the files as quickly as possible. What’s the name of your ship again?”
“Kaukokärki,” I said.
Keita tapped something on her datapad and said, “Done.”
“Yay!” Aura cheered and ended the connection.
The agent looked at me pensively and said, “Um… I meant to ask you, Vlad, is you navigational AI a standard issue?”
“Stock standard,” I replied with a deadpan expression.
“Mmm,” Keita murmured doubtfully and changed the topic. “How long do you think it will take to crack those encrypted files?”
“Dunno. I think Aura will start the process and get back to us with an estimate. She’ll need to measure the progress for a few minutes.”
“Alright, so we have a few minutes,” Keita said standing up. “Want a coffee?”
Before I could answer, the lights in the room blinked, became dimmer and then gradually restored their brightness. The agent frowned, sat back in her chair and started doing something on her datapad.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Trying to find out.”
While she was tapping furiously, I noticed that the wall screen was frozen. I stood up, opened the office door and peeked out. At first, I didn’t see anything unusual but then I noticed a delivery robot stuck in the middle of a corridor, confused faces of people who tried to go through automatic doors which did not open when approached and, most alarmingly, through the viewport I saw a growing queue of ships waiting for a docking permission. The queue was not moving.
“Vlad!” the agent called.
I returned to the office.
“Can you check if you have access to any local station services? Even something as simple as the station directory,” she asked.
I took out my datapad and tried to connect to the directory. The request timed out.
I shook my head, “Nope, I can’t,” and then told Keita what I saw outside.
“Damn!” she cursed. “It looks like the computing array is down. And it’s when we need it most!”
“Shall we call the IT support?”
“Nah, if it’s a major problem, they’ll be useless. I have a better idea.”