Unexpected meeting. Chapter 16

- The government courier calls the board with the local number KFN-34-AC57. I send codes to confirm their compliance.

Another attempt of electronic dialogue between the two spacecraft was not crowned with success. Trying to contact the ship through various communication channels, but having achieved nothing, the AI ​​of the government courier again stated the impossibility of a vehicle landing. The captain of the ship, a young woman, was left to watch the swarming of a man who was trying to gain access to it, which was difficult to distinguish near the gateway. The ship hung at a safe distance from the airlock and, along with its captain, patiently waited for the result of this man’s work.





- What are the predictions for our getting inside? - Finally, Laer did not suffer. - You said that with the availability of the service codes of the shipyard manufacturer, the gateway will open even when I do not have time to fly to it. And there was something about the great Order of the Guardians, the heirs of the ancients and the thunderstorms of this part of the universe, - Laera could not refrain from joking cheating. She was already anticipating a meeting with Lex and for some reason was experiencing a light emotional uplift.

“Talk to me again,” the man snapped unshakenly. “I just have to think and your ship will instantly blow into deep space.” Together with your charming slippers.

The man and the woman laughed. Communication was easy, probably even too easy, and this once again alarmed Laer. As if they knew each other for a long time, and did not meet three days ago, almost immediately after Laera tried to kill him. Although it has actually been a long time since that event, only a few days have passed subjectively for a woman. On the other hand, during these three days, Laera learned enough to imagine and understand the scale with which this person operates. Such people are always dangerous and are not trivialized, which means that he needs her and is unlikely in the short term. The mere possession of the ship's service codes spoke of a great deal.

Along with the hyperdrive and shipboard artificial intelligence, the ship service codes were the same guarded secrets of shipbuilding enterprises. They opened, almost commensurate with the captain's, access to the ship's subsystems. Service codes and protocols were laid during the development of ships and used in their service at shipyards. People with access to service codes and technological protocols were very respected and valuable employees of shipbuilding industries who were carefully guarded and no less carefully controlled, especially when it came to military developments. They rarely hunted for these people, because besides the necessary knowledge and specific neural network implants, special equipment was also required, which very rarely turned out to be outside the shipyards. The exceptions were the accidents of large ships, when a small engineering team was sent on a “technicals”, which was usually accompanied by a non-civilian cover.

However, when it came to generalists, the picture changed somewhat. Their non-standard neural network, in conjunction with a number of implants, made it possible in some cases to use service codes without special equipment. After connecting and configuring, the neural network initiated communication with the ship's AI or independent computing module of the specific node to which it was required to gain access. The exchange was a continuously increasing data stream. The process was not much different from authorization in the ship system with the only difference that the complexity was usually beyond the reach of any ordinary neural network that does not contain special data processing units. The man was playing ping-pong with the AI ​​of the ship, and with each return the ball became more and more. Each received packet had to be decrypted, the data block structure was restored in it, the correctness of the new block was checked and, based on the data of the new block and block history, to form its own block according to a certain algorithm that changed for each new iteration of the exchange. Then the block chain was assembled into a single packet, encrypted with a code corresponding to the data of the received block and the exchange iteration number, and sent to the opposite side. It was necessary to strictly observe timeouts in exchange, which imposed great demands on the performance of external equipment, in this case, the human neural network, since from the ship's AI side there were usually no such restrictions. In the event of any inconsistency, the AI ​​of the ship could isolate the connection terminal, block access to the ship, make an emergency shutdown, or self-destruct in general — everything depended on its assessment of external factors. If access was obtained to some autonomous node, then protection would work, which usually physically guaranteed to disconnect the terminal from the computing module, excluding the repeated connection attempt. For example, on the “Trileme” security system of very old modules in the old manner activated the squib, physically breaking the communication lines, in the newer modules the interface circuits were simply burned out by large currents. The wagon could have opened the gateway of this cargo ship, but it was a difficult process that took time and, given the intense neural network load, it was not easy for a person, leaving behind a feeling of emptiness and weakness. Laere wondered if the keeper was really able to open the gateway in a matter of minutes, even with the possession of service codes.

- But seriously, how much do I still hang here?

- Seriously, it seems that the external control of this gateway does not work at all. Only somehow it turns out to be interesting - some teams still pass. Perhaps once upon a time there was an attempt of unauthorized access and the security system somehow did not completely isolate this terminal, and then just no one began to engage in its restoration. Or maybe he never worked at all. Or it worked, but then something broke, which is not surprising, considering how old the ship is. In general, you have to try to open the next gateway, ”the man concluded.

The figurine of the man, who was Zarkon, began to move on the hull of the ship closer to his tail, Laer overtook the courier to the next gateway. She waited until Zarkon reached the place where the external control terminal of the gateway should be located, and prepared for the second hour of doing nothing. However, unlike last time, the connection started working in a few minutes.

- Here, too, nothing happens. Mechanical damage to the skin, the terminal hatch wedged. It must be cut. Come on.

The man and ship moved to the next gateway. A few minutes later, Zarkon reappeared on the link, this time with good news.

- This gateway is operational and ready for manual control. Ship the ship when I open it. I will go through the gateway next, please turn off the engines after landing.

Ten minutes later, the outer doors of the airlock began to slowly disperse, and when the gate opened a fully silver ship, actively working with the landing microtours, it majestically swam into it. Electromagnetic hooks clung to the deck and the ship sank onto a huge transport platform, after having put forward massive supports.

- It turned out really fast. I take my words back.

A man's voice chuckled. The man in the spacesuit slowly moved inside the lock and hid behind one of the ship's front supports. The sash was closed, slowly cutting it off from outer space, and after a while a normal atmosphere was established in the gateway. Just as slowly, the opposite doors of the airlock moved apart and the massive platform began to move, dragging the ship into the hangar. Zarkon peered appraisingly into a huge room, the gloom of which had not changed during his absence.

***

In the past few dozen days, Lex's life has become almost monotonous. After he solved the problem of stability of power supply and restarted all the contours of internal security, his work was forced to reduce to maintaining the ship's systems in a working form.

Every day on the ship something broke. At first, Lex wondered how so much could break in just one day. Something ceased to work, something again began to work without problems for days on end - the complex system of the ship lived its own life, obeying its own algorithms for parrying failures. Modern shipboard artificial intelligence was one of the crowns of the systems of safe automation, harmonious and beautiful conjugation of metal and man, which practically freed him from the routine of understanding the work of low-level components of the ship. However, in the old, "soulless" ships, sometimes there was something very subtle and delightful in the automatic operation of the central command and telemetry system. Lex, being a generalist, unconsciously felt it.

After breakfast, Lex collected statistics on failures over the previous day and determined for himself the scope of work to date. At first, failures were numerous and chaotic. Lex identified the problem area and tried to turn off and turn on those systems on it that could be restarted safely. The system as a whole somehow reacted to this and this data was analyzed. Sometimes this led to the localization of the problem element in the area under study, sometimes it was necessary to move further along the CCTS of the ship in search of the cause of failures. Sometimes this led to breakdowns in the seemingly unrelated ship subsystem and Lex had no choice but to give up and repair everything that had broken completely and think why something happened that should not have happened. In fact, Lex was engaged in purely engineering work on block debugging of the ship's CCTS. The wagon estimated the reserve capacity of the former captain of the ship - there were enough spare parts in the warehouses to replace the incorrectly working units. The design of the old ships was well known, and over the course of time, this routine of Lex even began to please. A systematic approach to the localization of failures allowed us to quickly get rid of large-scale problems and go to the level of individual subsystems. It was pleasant to realize that from day to day the number of failures decreased and the stability of the ship’s systems increased. If it were not for the fatal destruction of the engine management system, Lex would be able to try alone to bring the ship into a workable look with far-reaching plans, although it would take a considerable amount of time. However, the ship could not move independently, and Lex was unavailable to communicate, so his program of action was to ensure the survivability of the ship and to restore the existing security system. First of all, he put in order the security systems on the flight decks and onboard airlock. It took a lot of time to control access down to each technical gateway, but Lex did it and now he was confident that he would know about the penetration of the ship.

Today, Lex has set himself a job with periodic failures in the network of sensors on the starboard side of the ship. The analysis of statistical data unambiguously indicated the reason - the inclusion of a certain energy converter. The first steps to solve the problem suggested themselves - redefining the working converter in the standard cycle of the power management program. Strictly speaking, it was not clear why this converter was periodically turned on, since the ship lived a rather static life and no bursts of energy consumption were generally observed, but Lex did not want to spend extra time on a secondary, based on current goals. If replacing the converter does not help, then you will have to analyze the moment of failure of the sensor closest to the converter and try to understand the reasons for the failure.

Lex comfortably settled in the captain's chair in the control center and connected to the ship system. For some time he understood ship schemes, taking into account the endless modernization of the ship, after which he began to draw up a route for debugging. The sensors were of the same type and contained digital debug modules inside themselves, so Lex needed to create only one, for a start, a small debugging program, and then transfer it to each sensor. However, when doing this, it seemed simple and well automated, it turned out that some of the sensors did not want to accept the program, sending back packets with content that they simply should not have. After a brief trial, it turned out that these sensors had once been replaced and they only imitated the originals, emulating the exchange interface. What they really were Lex couldn't figure out. He found the replacement record in the ship's archives, but where and for what exactly it was not clear - in the records was “the replacement of regular components”. Lex tried to search for information about the responses from the sensors in the ship technical documentation bank, but he also failed. Then he attempted to analyze the response information from the sensors, sending various commands to them, but this did not clarify the situation. Lex, well versed in many technical aspects, still did not have much engineering experience and the appropriate neural network to effectively solve such low-level tasks. Five hours later, Lex, who was not very far advanced in diagnosing the intended problem, irritatedly disconnected from the terminal. “The ship was being repaired somewhere on the periphery,” he thought, “there anything can be delivered with honest eyes, stating that the blocks are original and tear off five times more money than with an expensive, official repair at the SPM shipyard”.

“Ha-ha,” the man said aloud. Having remained alone on the ship, after the restoration of the ship’s internal security, he sometimes began to think out loud so that, as he told himself, he would not lose the skill of communicating with people. - Half a day is gone! And for what? To download the standard debug program. And by whom? Universal!

Reflecting on the situation, Lex got up and headed to the dining room.

- What am I messing with them? It is worth turning off these problem modules altogether and checking the network’s reaction to switching the converter on and off, he mused aloud on the move. - If fails stop, the problem can be said to be solved. If not, then it will be possible to continue normal debugging further.

“This is if this contagion will eat the shutdown command,” the man thought to himself as he entered the dining room.

After lunch, Lex returned to the control center and successfully disconnected all problem modules. Then came the turn of the control system of energy converters. There were no problems with technical documentation, and after an hour he already knew that the required converter could be operated manually without fear and found out that everything was in order with the energy system, since the converter was switched on not just like that, but it worked out a power drawdown, warning of possible subsequent splash, which actually was not. “Why is there no subsidence in telemetry? - thought Lex. “It was logical to start with this subsystem at all, but who knew that such a breakthrough of time would go to some sensors.”

Finally everything was ready and Lex launched the first test sequence of commands. From the control center of the ship ran the flow of information. The sensors were instructed to turn on the debug mode, accumulate their internal telemetry and transmit it periodically to a specific data bank of the ship. Using this data, the control and verification program should begin to build graphs of changes in internal parameters that are tied to a single time scale — with a relatively good time resolution, it will be possible to analyze in detail the behavior of the entire network. After the transfer of the main array of commands, a little delayed, the team went to turn on the energy converter. Lex called up the debug panel of the ship's generalized telemetry and visually observed its reaction. The image of the ship was painted in pale colors - something worked normally and the area was highlighted in pale green, something did not work for a long time, but, according to the settings previously made, it was considered conditionally uncritical and had a transparent red color, from which telemetry simply did not Received and painted over in neutral gray. The converter turned on, the ship's picture was transformed, but not in the way Lex expected. The energy subsystem increased the brightness of the green color, the observed sensor circuit reddened as expected, but along with it, a malfunction appeared on the right flight deck. “Yes, this is where is this from?” - Lex only had time to think about how the neural network broke out with an alarm signal: the ship's security system reported on external penetration. “Well, at least the security system is working. Epic failure, ”Lex said to himself, sending a command to turn off the power converter and restart the sensor network. Failure in the hangar has not disappeared. “Well, welcome one more malfunction,” Lex frowned at the external penetration telemetry of the fourth lock on the right take-off and landing deck and ordered to reset the current status on the right deck. However, this was not enough and the failure disappeared only after the restart of the hangar control system. Lex sighed and decided to check the crash again. From the control center again flew commands: turning on the network of sensors, setting up the debug mode, resetting statistics in the memory bank, bringing the control and checking program to the initial state and, finally, turning on the converter.Lex watched the ship closely. The network of sensors turned red, in the hangar no change in telemetry was observed. Half a minute passed, and Lex had already decided to finish the first test, which brought another problem to the heap of the rest, as the ship's security system worked again, notifying Lex about the fixation of the mechanisms in the hangar. Lex immediately linked all the events of the last ten minutes into a single picture and caused an image from the hangar. At the fourth gateway movement was observed. The transport platform slowly dragged the spacecraft into the hangar. And that was his government courier.

***

Laera was sitting at the bottom of the ramp of the spacecraft and patiently waiting for at least some changes. From the moment of their appearance in the hangar, it took about an hour and all this time she was chatting, once and for all carelessly, on the neural network with Zarkon. The keeper in general turned out to be an unusually cheerful and contact person, which contradicted the current social pattern for the Order as closed and avoiding people, sticking to their incomprehensible dogmas in contact with the outside world. “It is interesting,” thought Laer, “are they all there, in this Order? Or is this just this? The head of the Order is the same. Head! A successful leader must be contact and open. "

“If you have codes for this ship, then why not just send some message to the whole ship?” Or see where he is now?

- This ship is old and the codes here do not work as well as on ships running full-fledged AI. He apparently cleared and restarted the safety loop of the CKTS ship, I can not even get through to the video surveillance system. You can connect manually, but you need to look for a convenient entry point and there are no guarantees that at that level there is no protection to be detected and bypassed. All this needs to be done and it will take time. It's more rational to just wait.

- If the security system works, then maybe it makes sense to visit the control center of the ship?

- If in five minutes your boyfriend doesn’t show up, then I give the situation to your hands.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Laera snapped back, “the guys of their girls are not forced to wait so long.”

“Well,” said Zarkon, meaningfully, and intonationally highlighted the next word, “not yours yet.” Can he shy you?

- Why is that? We can say we grew up together.

- So you yourself think how much time has passed. I lost a little from people. Of course scary.

Laera wanted to answer something appropriate, but did not think of anything at once.

- Obviously, he did a great job here. If I hadn't prudently pulled out a part of the engine management system, he would have been able to deliver a ship on the course.

- This is not surprising - he is a wagon.

- And you could so?

“Well ...” Laera stretched vaguely, trying to imagine herself in a similar situation. - I have a good understanding of basic processes. But some practical experience and low-level neural network tools. And from a high level on this ship, especially in such conditions, I do not think that there is much use. And my neural network is completely different. I do not see here something completely impracticable, especially considering the availability of spare parts. But I would dig much longer. It is necessary to take into account that my mission on this ship was being prepared and I was prepared, I know the ship. He flew here without any prior preparation.

- Maybe leave you here for a year? - interrupted Zarkon. - Pull up your skills, there is still a lot of work.

Reflections Laer about how to respond more vulnerable to the brazen guardian, he interrupted himself.

- Already exactly an hour as we are here. He could not miss us - the security system should have worked at least twice, surely he had restored it right there. Looks like you have to take advantage of your offer. Will you go alone?

- I think your presence is undesirable because of your last separation.

- Ok, I'm waiting for you here. I promise not to fly away.

Zarkon heard some kind of unintelligible rumbling from a rising woman and grinned rather. Laera, lightly brushing herself off, headed for the exit from the hangar. She went through the nearest exit to the long corridor, reached the first turn and stood startled after him, staring at the muzzle of the impulse pistol that was aimed at her head.

“I-I-ah,” the woman drawled, “she was counting on a more joyful meeting.

- What does all of this mean?

“Did you really send me on a courier instead of flying yourself?”

- Yes.My question?

The woman smiled and immediately cautiously made half a step back, noticing a subtle movement on the trigger of the pistol. She slowly raised her hands. And, as if fearing that she would not have time, she quickly spoke.

- On the courier keeper. The one that was in the hangar. The courier flew all the time a parallel course. He woke me up. He has to you, or rather to us, a sentence, the essence of which he promised to tell only to both. He told me about talking to you. Yes, he said a lot more, it seems that the Order's residency is sitting very deep in the worlds - they know almost everything. Now I go to the control center to find you and arrange a meeting with the keeper. But I would like to check it out. I can tell you about the events about which he told me, and we can make a cross comparison.

Laera paused suspiciously at the man. Lex was silent, making a decision.

- Where is the guarantee that you are not with him? What no bugs that this conversation is now no one hears?

Now it's time to think Laer. She lowered her arms slightly raised.

- The medical capsule woke me up, I was looking for traces of external interference in the process, but found nothing. Although, given that he had the service codes for controlling the ship and the medical complex, he could clean up everything. Their technology is higher than ours, if there is something on me that I don’t know. Clothes, by the way, he gave me. No guarantees Lex. Generally no.

A man and a woman stood and looked into each other's eyes.

- As soon as I appeared on this ship there was not a single calm day. If at least something could go wrong - it certainly happened. This is not an operation, but some kind of forced compromise. I still have no particular choice.

- I would like to make sure that the keeper told me. Although, in his words, he does not have access to the CKTS, for reliability you can go to the technical level and calmly discuss everything.

- What are his goals?

“He said that he needed both of us for the conversation.” Alive. I spent three days with him, but I didn’t manage to learn something specific.

Lex lowered his weapon and extended his hand.

- OK, let's go.

Laer kept her eyes on her, slowly moving. The man shrugged, turned and took a step. Laera, stepped behind him, when Lex suddenly bounced back and, spinning in flight, aimed an auto-injector at her neck. The woman’s reaction was almost instantaneous — she not only completed the evasive maneuver, but also managed to strike a good kick on Lex’s body, which still managed to slide the injector along the very edge of the woman’s neck. The injector did not miss its opportunity and instantly stuck to the body. The special combat drug acted almost instantly, even the resistance of the neural network did not help, trying to localize and neutralize the drug injected into the blood, Laer collapsed to the floor of the corridor. Discarded, Lex stood up and rubbed the bruised place, picked up the falling injector. Attaching Laera’s unconscious body next to the wallhe went to the hangar.

Looking out of the hangar, Lex saw his ship with an open airlock and ramp extended. The space to the ship was open, which made it impossible to get close to it unnoticed. “You have to take a chance and connect like that,” thought Lex. “Just do everything quickly.” He quickly ran back down the corridor, turned the corner, ran past Laer. Turn, one more, long straight, turn. Ten minutes later, Lex connected to the ship's control system, issued the necessary command and ran headlong back. He managed to reach the necessary entrance in the hangar in seven minutes and called the ship to communicate. To his surprise, the ship successfully responded and authorized its captain.

- Daona 37, who am I and what is my status on the ship?

“Lex Orton, captain of the ship,” the ship replied with a short pause, as if he had not expected such a question and was surprised.

- Who else is present on the ship at the moment and what is its status?

- On the ship there is one person with a hidden identifier and guest access.

- Where is he located?

- In the mess.

- Get the image out of the cabin of the company.

On the broadcast picture, Lex did not expect to see a sleeping man, in whom he immediately recognized the hated enemy, the reason he had been hanging out for more than one month. The crypto-key embedded in the data stream was changed as expected and in accordance with Lex's authorization data, which gave some guarantee that the video stream was genuine. Three minutes passed and a wave of silent clicks from the triggering squibs went through the ship. Lex smiled rapaciously - the mousetrap slammed shut. All available modules for manual control of gateways and technological outputs, as well as critical lines of communication with the CCTS core, were disabled. According to Lex’s calculations, Laera only now had to reach the control center. At least something is going according to a hastily made plan, Lex thought, pulled out both pistols, checked the charge and slowly entered the hangar. Sharp clicks on the right,just above the door to the hangar was unexpected, on the right side of my head was pricked. Lex managed to bounce and even shoot into the emptiness of a pistol in his right hand before settling on the deck.

***

Lex awoke, but was in no hurry to give signs of this. He lay on something soft and bound. “The sad statistics is obtained,” the man thought, “the meeting with the keeper always ends this way. One hundred percent of the two cases. Interestingly, is it the case with every keeper, or is it just me with this parasite? ” Time passed, but nothing changed around the man. There was little confusion from playing in a connected unconscious body, and after a while Lex moved a little.

- Welcome to the ship Daona 37!

Lex jumped from an unexpected female scream and assumed a seated posture. Turning his head around, he stared at the bound Laeru. They lay on opposite couches in the mess of the government courier.

- Awoke? - the woman tilted her head to the side, as if touching her awakened comrade. - Let me guess how it was. You put me to sleep and with a clear conscience went to take your ship by storm. The assault is over, you are tired of him and want to sleep. But you have a knight! He returned for me, dragged him into this cozy room and tied him up. Then he went to bed. But you did not fall asleep, because the thought sharpened you - how is it that the girl is tied up, but you are not. Somehow it is inharmonious. And you tied yourself up and then fell asleep.

Lex looked at Laeru without blinking, trying to realize what was said.

- And now I have a question for you. Sturm is good. Bravery, valor, glory. The decision of real men. You tied me up solely because of care - what if I wake up before you, go out to the gateway, fall from the ramp and break my head? Of course it is better to tie. It is even very logical. But Lex, why the hell have you tied yourself up? Do you want to tell me?

The woman returned her head to an upright position.

- Answer the devil you tear! - Laera indignantly shouted at the man sitting opposite her.

- What? - squeezed back in a dazed and completely incomprehensible Lex.

The woman is not able to hold back anymore burst out and fell on the sofa. Looking at his friend's shaking body, Lex also began to smile stupidly, causing a new bout of laughter. Such a picture was presented to Zarkon who appeared in the mess room. He looked at the captives in surprise, but quickly recovered.

- Having fun means? - Zarkon sighed - for whatever reason?

“He tied himself up and fell asleep,” Laera squeezed out of herself.

- Seriously?- Zarkon portrayed extreme surprise, quickly entered the role and pulled out Lex's impulse pistol, waving it towards the station wagon. - I am the lord of this corner of the universe. Lex, why did you do that? Why tied yourself up?

“I ... I don’t know,” Lex answered, thinking that life on the Trileme these months was probably not so bad. Yes, everything broke there, but at least everything was logical.

Laer sobbed on the couch, the keeper smiled good-naturedly. “Well done, girl,” he thought, looking at the bound woman. - Made for me the most difficult piece of work to build relationships with a generalist. "

“Okay, gentlemen,” the keeper removed his weapon and clapped his hands, drawing attention. - Finally, I caught you both alive and well. That in itself is already good, I could not imagine how difficult it would be.

Zarkon untied first Laeru, then Lex.

- You should put yourself in order, eat and chat with each other. In a normal setting, - the keeper looked expressively at Lex. - I will leave the ship for about an hour or two. Lex, kindly requested that I no longer instruct weapons. Otherwise, next time you wake up in the medkapsul. And now it is not a threat, but a promise.

Zarkon laid out the station wagon weapon and the NBS agent on the table and headed for the exit from the ship.

- By the way, - the keeper turned around before leaving, - figure out who the captain of the ship is. I still have to your merry company not enough possible problems with AI.

---

Unexpected meeting. Chapter 16.
Text version: 1.0.2.
Date of first publication: 05/25/2018.
Last edited on July 7, 2017.

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