Kandara raised a hand and started ticking off on her fingers. “The factory that produces pipe drilling remotes used by your water utility services, attacked nine weeks ago, that one shared a network with three teams researching lincbots. It’s been a goal for decades, bots that can mechanically cling to each other to multiply their overall physical size and strength, and simultaneously network their processing power. We have lincbots, but the concept has plateaued; the network connectivity protocols are difficult to establish and glitchy even then. Your people are working on bots from ant-size up to big-dumb mechs. The ant-size are particularly interesting; when they linc up it’s called the dry-fluid effect, where these things swarm in units of up to half a million. Picture a nest of army ants in perfect synchronization but with added intelligence—and purpose. I don’t want to think of the damage they could inflict on a flesh body. While a clump of linced big-dumbs could take out entire city blocks.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that could have aggressive applications,” Kruse said. “What else?”
“The molecular bond fabricators. That research had spin-off research on shields. Obvious.” Kandara sipped her green tea, putting her thoughts in an order that would make the most compelling argument. “Then there was last month’s attack on the assembly core that puts together relays for the planetary power grid. That network was hosting a university lab working on magnetic confinement systems—also for power applications, mainly MHD chambers, which the solarwells use.” She glanced around the blank expressions, enjoying the moment. “No? These ones are small-scale confinement chambers, with monopolar magnetic field generators—very powerful. Perfect for spaceships with plasma rockets—or maybe missiles.”
“Oh, come on!” Oistad objected.
“Coherent X-ray beam emitter tubes, for micro-medical applications. Scale that up and you have gamma and X-ray beam weapons.”
Tyle and Kruse exchanged a look.
“Damn,” Jessika muttered.
“You said it,” Kandara said. “The data attacks are irritants. This, on the other hand, takes everything to a whole different level.”
“But why?” Kruse asked, genuinely puzzled.
“One aspect at a time,” Kandara told hir. “Let’s try and confirm there is a pattern first. Tyle, can you check those projects I’ve just mentioned, see if any of their files have been cracked or copied?”
“Sure.”
“If you find anything, then we can start looking for motive.”
—
Servez brought their breakfast on the patio as the sun rose, shining a sharp bronze glimmer across the bay below. Kandara had eggs benedict, with freshly squeezed orange juice, followed by croissants and wild blueberry jam. When she was working, she wasn’t as strict with her health food regime, figuring you never knew if you’d need the calories for extra energy.
Jessika ate with her, while the others coordinated their review with the Bureau’s G8Turing. “Nice job,” she told Kandara.
“I’m familiar with the game.”
“I wonder who we’re up against.”
“The obvious choice is a weapons company.”
“Not so obvious. Why include the attacks? That’s political, or maybe ideological. If you’re stealing data you need to be stealthy.”
“Misdirection?” Kandara mused.
“But they knew we’d react to this. We had no choice.”
“Once we have more information, like who it is, the motivation should fall into place.”
“But that’s the thing. What motivations can there be? They damaged us, the whole of Akitha. Who does that?”
“Fanatics,” Kandara replied automatically. “I’m no longer surprised by what they do, by the misery and suffering they inflict on others. Ideology is a sick-soul-meme; it gnaws basic decency away until you can self-justify the most extreme acts as worthwhile to further the cause. Any cause.”
Jessika gave her a surprised look, a spoon of fruit salad poised in front of her mouth. “I didn’t have you down as the philosophical type.”
“I’m not philosophizing. I’m simply telling you what I’ve seen.”
“Hell, I thought I’d seen bad stuff when I worked for Connexion Security.”
Kandara gave her a sympathetic grin and reached for another croissant. That was when the villa doors opened and Kruse came out, followed by Tyle and Oistad.
“They cracked the files, didn’t they?” Kandara said. She barely needed to ask.
“I had to go deep into the management routines,” Tyle admitted. “And even then all we found were ghost traces. The routines they’re deploying are extremely sophisticated, and incredibly hard to detect. The Bureau is worried. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
“So it is a weapons company running an espionage team,” Jessika said.
“I think it might be worse than that,” Kruse said. “We’ve only had an hour, but I asked the research teams to check the files. Some of them appear to have been altered.”
“Altered how?” Kandara asked.