part0027

At least she’d managed to get the lights back on for Fischer. That had been a considerably less overwhelming problem to solve than what was in front of her. Cassandra’s cyberattacks were overwhelming her. The fifth security gate had just fallen, setting off an automated alarm. Only two security gates remained to protect Masada’s mainframe.

If only Bekah had still had Carrin Bohannon to help her. But she didn’t. And she refused to look at Carrin’s body. That would only distract her. She didn’t have time for that. Not now.

“Sound off,” Bekah said. The audible alarm ceased, leaving only a flashing red light to mark the threat.

She rotated the model she’d been studying. The 3D image hovered over the biggest smart desktop in the War Room, helping her to visualize Cassandra’s progress in wearing down their defenses. At the center, resembling a small planetoid, was Masada’s computer core. The two remaining firewalls surrounded the core like dermal layers. Thousands of tiny dots constantly assaulted the outermost wall, and it reminded Bekah of an image from a long-ago biology class showing thousands of sperm attempting to fertilize a human egg. A more striking metaphor came to mind—the dots resembled piranha eating their way past the muscle and sinew of security protecting the Company’s secrets.

She grabbed the outer security layer surrounding Masada’s core from the air and threw it to the main screen. The spheroid shield morphed into thousands of lines of nested security code. Most of the lines still appeared green, indicating they were uncompromised. An entire section suddenly turned yellow, showing a threat. In places, the yellow had become red.

Bekah touched the Hammer around her neck. She’d never quite believed she’d need to use it but now … after watching five gates eaten away by Cassandra’s piranha code, Gregor’s nuclear option seemed inevitable.

But it wasn’t necessary yet. She targeted her diagnostic algorithm on the red bits of code. The cleaning program constantly trolled the code underlying the mainframe’s security to identify weakness. It monitored, evaluated, and diagnosed how the assaulting code acted, then targeted that same friendly code for rewrite. Using the algorithm, Bekah could update, test, and shore up code on the fly like a medieval defender bracing the castle gate against an enemy’s battering ram.

Each time she revised the security protocols—the mortar between the layers of Masada’s virtual walls—Cassandra’s piranha code adapted to attack another, weaker spot. Carrin had been right, Bekah thought, grief at her friend’s loss returning. This time, she couldn’t avoid a glance at Carrin, a kind of acknowledgment of the dead woman’s wisdom. Not all the collective brain power of the entire human species could best Cassandra’s ability to process trillions of decisions per second. Humans grow tired. Humans make mistakes. Cassandra’s layered, constant assault was too sophisticated, too relentless.

Break it down, Bekkalleh .

Opa Simon’s wisdom came on its own.

Complex problems often have the simplest solutions . Hearing his voice in her head calmed Bekah’s racing heartbeat. Don’t let the drama distract. Find stillness, find the answer .

The red, blinking code had multiplied tenfold. It must have made up a quarter of the code onscreen now. Already, Bekah could see the metaphorical mortar crumbling faster than her algorithms could plug the gaps.

The Hammer hanging around her neck felt heavier. Her mind playing tricks on her.

Simplify , Opa Simon said. Solve the problem .

“In the beginning…” she said. The phrase her grandfather had always used to help Bekah clear her mind and focus on the fundamentals.

What was computer code? A mathematical language used to generate predictable outputs via executed operations. And like all language, a way to communicate. And communication requires—

“Connection,” Bekah said aloud.

She stood up so fast from her console, her chair toppled over behind her. She turned and was stopped hard by the sight of Carrin’s corpse.

No , she thought, shaking her head. That comes later .

Masada’s second to last security gate had fallen.

The console alarm began barking again.

A glance at the model showed the piranha code already gnawing at the thick, green code-skin of the last wall protecting SynCorp from extinction.

Bekah yanked the Hammer from around her neck, the gold chain snapping in two, and inserted it into the mainframe’s quantum port. One turn, that’s all it would take. One turn to wipe away all those secrets. They’d exist only in the engrams of the Hammer itself, waiting for Gregor’s magic ingredient of human DNA to return them to life as human knowledge.

She glanced up at the 3D model. The last wall still stood strong. For now.

“Sound off,” Bekah said. The barking alarm disappeared again. Stabbing herself with Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! she moved quickly to the communications station. She didn’t need to use the Hammer, not yet. The answer was the simplest solution to every computer problem that had ever existed.

Bekah called up the station’s communications array. Onscreen, the large dishes on the roof of the station appeared, a pale line of eight battleship-gray sentries arranged in a horseshoe, pointing at deep space. Saturn hung behind them, a curtain of orange and white.

She’d tried closing the infiltration point Richter’s betrayal had created, giving Cassandra access. But Cassandra’s worm merely adapted, hopping to a new port channel and reopening access to continue the attack. But there was something Bekah could do—she could simply turn off the array. Cut off all connection to the universe outside Masada Station and, with it, Cassandra’s ability to reach the mainframe at all.

Bekah brought up the array’s controls, her fingertips dancing a happy ballet over them, powering down the eight dishes, one at a time. She watched with exhausted glee as the power indicators dropped to zero.

So simple , she thought, turning her attention to her 3D model. So simple it was hard to think of .

The final wall guarding Masada’s mainframe stood strong, its perimeter a thick, healthy green. The thousands of viral attackers had vanished. Cassandra was cut off.

“Take that, bitch!”

Bekah took a moment to enjoy the sound of her own voice in her moment of victory. Human ingenuity—perhaps a bit late in the game, but better late than never—had triumphed over the shock and awe of artificial intelligence. She couldn’t wait to tell Daniel Tripp all about her solution.

Closing her eyes, Bekah conjured the image of her opa’s smiling face. He would be proud, she thought. A complex problem solved with the simplest solution imaginable.

The alarm barked again.

The red light blinked again.

“Oh, please,” Bekah said. “What now?”

She turned to find the visual model over the smartdesk alive with activity. Cassandra’s piranha code was pounding on the final gate again.

“That’s not possible.”

In sections, the defense code had already begun turning a bloody red.

She glanced down at the array’s controls. The power levels on two dishes were at eighty percent. The other six were returning to life too.

“That’s not possible!”

From the back of her brain, something teased at her memory, something Rahim had said in the department head meeting.

“No, no, no, no,” Bekah exclaimed, punching keys on the console. The commands were nonresponsive.

Cassandra had outthought them—a backup program was powering up the array, had locked Bekah out. Cassandra must have inserted similar programs around SynCorp facilities all over the solar system. Infiltrator code waiting to be activated whenever she needed it.

“Think, think, think!” Bekah shouted. In the 3D model, green lines became yellow, vulnerable code. Yellow surrendered to red as the code was compromised.

She stared at the Hammer loaded in the quantum port of the mainframe. One twist, and all this would be over. One turn of that platinum key would deny Cassandra victory… But what if Gregor’s magic process for rebuilding the knowledge base failed? What if Cassandra had anticipated the Hammer as she’d clearly anticipated the strategy to shut down the array? What if she was just waiting to trigger a counter-program?

The alarm’s volume rose as the defending code crumbled beneath the piranhas’ assault. It was like a dull metal rod dragged across the naked vertebrae of Bekah’s spine.

“Sound off, goddamn it!”

Bekah reached out, taking the Hammer between thumb and index finger.

She should turn it. Play it safe. Gregor’s tech almost never failed. She should trust in that.

“What do I do?” Bekah demanded of the universe. “What do I do? ”

Simon Franklin appeared in her mind’s eye. He was smiling.

Simplify. Solve the problem .

In that instant, she understood. She had the answer.

“If I can’t turn it off,” Bekah whispered, cautious of the new hope rising inside her, “I’ll overload it.” How that would work appeared in her head like a gift. She pictured it with absolute clarity.

“I’ll overload it!”

Releasing the Hammer, she pulled up the array’s positioning program. Quickly scanning the code, Bekah searched for the command language that would—and there it was. Part of the program’s function was to prevent exactly what she was attempting to do.

Piranha code ripped at the final gate. Red lines of code dissolved like flesh submerged in acid. It would be close. Very, very close.

Bekah overrode the parameters prescribing how the dishes faced outward to deep space. Dishes eight and one began to rotate, as did three and six. Each pair of dishes angled to face its opposite in the horseshoe. No receiver, no way to accept the signal. Even Cassandra obeyed the laws of physics.

A glance at the 3D model confirmed it.

Crimson reflections from the flashing red code lit up the War Room, but there were fewer piranha already. Repositioning the array, interrupting the signal, was cutting them off. They winked out of existence by the dozens, the score, the hundreds.

But there was only one way to ensure the signal was cut for good: short out the entire array. Overload it with a broadcast so powerful, so broad across the frequency spectrum that it would take weeks of replacing burned-out components to bring it back online.

Bekah turned her eyes to Carrin Bohannon’s body. She still had time. Her responder code was shoring up the final gate, gaining ground, driving the piranha back. She still had time!

The corners of Bekah’s mouth ticked upward. Carrin had loved Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen and how it dramatized Norse mythology. She’d play it over and over again whenever she encountered a stubborn programming problem. It inspired her to think bigger, Carrin said. Now it was Carrin who inspired Bekah.

She called up the music library, searched for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and programmed her selection to blast from Masada’s eight dishes at maximum power across all frequencies. Carrin had sacrificed everything protecting Masada. It would be her honor in death to save it.

“Thanks for the inspiration,” Bekah said to her friend. She patched the sound through to the War Room, so she could listen too. It wasn’t necessary. But it was something she needed to do.

Bekah called up the music selection. Strings swept upward, followed by flutes hovering like hummingbirds, holding the strings aloft in the air. Then the woodwinds churned like horses’ hooves cantering, preparing for a grand charge. The flutes and strings became eagles’ wings beating hard as they carried their riders high into a blood-red sky. Then a battle line of brass marched forward, calling the charge, and “Ride of the Valkyries” reached every corner of the War Room.

Bekah watched the overload warnings flash on the comms panel. Her tears made it difficult to see them. At last, a moment to pause, to grieve for Carrin and the rest of her team. In the model, the piranha swarming Masada’s final gate were fewer. Dishes four and five went first, followed quickly by each of the other facing pairs. In less than a minute, Masada Station had dropped completely off the grid of the subspace network, the circuitry of its array burned to cinders.

Bekah turned her blurring vision to Carrin.

Sleep, Valkyrie of Masada Station .

Then the emotion came, not tears alone but sobs that racked her chest, a self-exorcism of guilt for their having died at Richter’s hands. Bekah let Wagner’s music sweep her upward with its emotion, her screams of sorrow rivaling its thundering crescendos.

“Daniel? Are you there?”

Bekah tried again to raise Daniel Tripp on his sceye. And, once again, she received no answer. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering?

She returned to her ministrations, dipping the napkin lightly in the glass of water. She drew it slowly across Carrin’s forehead, washing the skin that was already beginning to cool.

Bekah had lowered the gravity and laid Carrin on the small meeting table. She’d buttoned her uniform formally, flattening the fabric with her palms. She’d considered removing Carrin’s clothes and performing the same death ritual she’d performed for her grandfather. Except Carrin wasn’t Jewish, and she hadn’t really been family—except, of course, that she had been. But the most intimacy Bekah had ever shared with her had been to hold Carrin’s head over the porcelain god after a night of too much drinking. So she’d settled for perfectly arranging Carrin’s uniform and washing her friend’s exposed skin as a sign of love and respect, of appreciation for Carrin Bohannon’s life and too-soon sacrifice.

We’re put here to do good, Bekkalleh. That’s really what loving God boils down to. Anything else is just Man placing himself at the center of the universe .

Bekah dipped a handful of fresh napkins into the water and resumed her task. The crusted blood rehydrated. She was doing good for Carrin. She thought her opa would be pleasantly surprised.

Carrin Bohannon’s ritual was, in one way, more personal than Simon Franklin’s had been. Certainly, it was more horrific. Bruno Richter had sawed through Carrin’s neck, half decapitating her. The violation of Carrin’s flesh gaped at Bekah, a ragged jack-o’-lantern scream. Maybe Bekah couldn’t save Carrin from what was already done. But she could offer her a final act of kindness.

In a little while, the wound grew clean.

No less horrific. No less unnatural in its barbarism. But clean.

And Carrin, Bekah hoped, was at peace.

The comms pinged, startling her. Was it Fischer or Daniel or…

She touched the panel.

“Franklin here,” she said in little more than a whisper. “Stacks, is that—”

“Bekah! Thank God.”

“Daniel! Are you okay? Richter’s out there! You’ve got to—”

“Richter’s dead.”

Those two simple words lifted a burden from Bekah’s shoulders she hadn’t realized was on them.

“What’s the status of the mainframe?” Daniel pressed.

“It’s … I fried the array. We’re cut off.”

“Excellent!” he said, taking a moment to breathe. “Listen, I need you to get down to the infirmary—”

“Wait,” Bekah said, “Richter’s dead?”

“Bekah, I need your hands! Fischer’s in bad shape. Come to the infirmary now!”

She blinked once. A need to move injected adrenaline into her bloodstream. Death wasn’t taking someone else from her—not today. Bekah snatched the Hammer from the quantum port and slipped it into a pocket.