Operation Fury (The Drift: Nova Force Book 3) by Susan Hayes

Author:Susan Hayes [Hayes, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988446585
Publisher: Black Scroll Publications Ltd
Published: 2020-03-02T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Son of a starbeast. I’m an idiot. Why didn’t I think of that before?” Eric exclaimed from the other room, his voice carrying over the sound of the shower she was indulging in. After years of short, tepid showers, the luxury of standing beneath a cascade of hot water had eclipsed almost all other benefits to freedom. Except for the food. The food was incredible.

Over the last few days, Nyx discovered that Eric kept strange hours, waking up in the middle of the night-cycle or early morning to spend time on one of his projects. Sometimes she’d join him, reading or watching vids as he worked. If it was one of his personal projects, she’d ask questions, learning more about robotics and mechanical repairs as he enthusiastically spoke about his various tasks. If he was working on IAF projects, she stayed in bed, giving him privacy so that no one could claim he was breaking security protocols.

This time he was working on IAF matters, so she had kept her distance, but his exclamation made her curious. She threw on one of Eric’s shirts, and went down to the end of the hall, still toweling her hair dry, to see what he was talking about. “What didn’t you think of?”

“V.I.D.A.” he answered without looking away from the holo-display above his desk.

She checked the time and walked to the food dispenser, her bare feet making no noise as she moved. She’d also learned that when he was distracted, it could take him a few minutes to finish a thought. “I’ll make coffee. You’re due back on duty in an hour.”

“Huh? Oh. Right. Damn. I meant to come back to bed before now.” He turned to wink at her. “I really have to get my priorities straight. Beautiful woman in my bed and I’m in another room, chasing data.”

“I don’t mind. It’s nice to have company that sleeps almost as little as I do. So, what did you think of?”

“When I was jacked into the research station where I found you, something about the place felt familiar. Like walking into a room you knew, but hadn’t been in for a long time.” He gestured to the display. “It was there all along.”

“Remember that my expertise is in a very different field than yours, and explain what I’m looking at.” She gathered up their mugs and brought them over, setting one down on the desk. He hadn’t gotten it replaced, yet. It was propped up with an assortment of spare parts he had on hand, and it looked as if it might fall over at any moment.

“All programs have a distinct fingerprint of a kind. The way their code looks, the way data flows—it all comes together to create a pattern.” He pointed to a three-dimensional shape at the center of the display. “Like that.”

“Is that a fractal?” she asked.

He nodded. “Cyberspace isn’t like the real world. Data has a shape there. Lots of them, actually. It’s beautiful. Many of those shapes are fractals, which are really just repeating patterns.

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