Ash Ock by Christopher Hinz

Author:Christopher Hinz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781617561375
Publisher: E-reads/E-rights
Published: 2010-08-10T03:28:53.202000+00:00

“Keep your eye on the main screen,” urged Nick.

The Lion hunched forward, watched the monitor dissolve to black as Nick typed in a clear command. He hoped the midget was not going to take too much of his time. It was late Saturday afternoon and he was due to leave the Alexanders’ retreat shortly. He had to be at the other end of Irrya in an hour to address a special session of the United Clans concerning the just-announced detection of the returning starship.

Nick typed rapidly. Some of his information printed across the bottom of the screen.

FB-330-3367-T569. * irs audit 1991 *

“The first set of numbers,” Nick explained, “is part of today's E-Tech security code for that portion of the archives I'm trying to access. Courtesy of Adam Lu Sang. The second set—IRS Audit 1991—is my own custom program. It's an infinite-repeat scanner, and a fairly powerful one. I coded it into the data vaults back around 2095, but even that was about a hundred years too late. I always wished that I'd had this program back in the days when the real IRS was trying to audit me.”

“The real IRS?”

“Never mind.”

Nick typed: open file GX-P34711-FY7-582HH-095D. Above his command, a green rectangle appeared on the dark screen. Within its borders, twin response lines printed.

opening file GX-P34711-FY7-582HH-095D. closing file GX-P34711-FY7-582HH-095D.

“Cute, huh?”

The Lion shook his head. “I don't understand.”

“The file I just ordered to open is pre-Apocalyptic, circa 2078. It contains technical specs and suggested design parameters for refraction tubing—the stuff that they weave into cosmishield glass to control what particular wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum can pass through. Now this file, in terms of size, contains about eight hundred megabytes—a pretty fair amount of data. It's also nicely protected—nothing as sophisticated as a soft perimeter, but still with enough standard safeguards to discourage illegal entry.

“I discovered this program about two hours ago, during a random search. I notified Adam. He's down in the data vaults right now. He worked up the physiograph—located the file's actual position within the network. Like most of the old files, it's a cascading floater, with geriatric sequence patterns. Finding its exact location, at any one moment, was no simple task, not when you take into consideration the fact that the program has duplicates and backups scattered in a dozen other subsystems throughout the Colonies. We're talking multidimensional vectors. But Adam's a smart boy; he figured it out. He knows his network.”

“I'm sure he does,” muttered the Lion.

Nick grinned. “Sorry, I forgot. You're not real heavy into computers.”

“A sound conclusion.”

“Okay—in simple terms. What we have here is a program that is being opened and closed at the same time, a contradictory situation. That particular type of illogic constituted the basic target parameter for my initial search. I went looking for just such an anomaly. I created a set of tangent cruisers and gave them multistage access to the E-Tech archives. They turned up this program.

“I believe that our sunsetter is inside this file right now, doing its dirty work.

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