Chapter 63: Reaction Time

“What’s the status?” I asked as soon as I was in a hastily cleared room outside the ballroom. Lila’s team had been using the room, but now was spreading through the hotel to ensure there was not a missed threat here as well as on Astra.

“We started getting some spurious signals on the control network as the intra-day checks ran,” Allen answered. He was still plugging into our network via a laptop, and had a comms headset on getting live updates from his ops teams.

“Two sets of thrusters began firing, slowing station rotation. We cut out the automated control systems and have local control keeping things stable for the moment, but we are also starting to get alarm indicators on some of the hab systems. They look to be spoofs, but we’re still tracing them.”

“How many souls on board?” I asked.

“Two hundred and twelve staff and tenants, fifty-eight guests at the Hilton. Two GOTs docked right now. One OTV six hours out,” he answered.

“Paul, right now, eighteen of the Hilton guests are Chinese nationals,” Lila said. “We have more Chinese on station now than we ever have had before. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

Given that they had shown a capability of spoofing some of our hardware systems before, I had to agree with her assessment.

“What are our options?”

“I think we send the generator quick reaction team up and ensure a safe evacuation of the non-essential personnel from the station, starting with our Chinese guests and tenants.”

“Make it all commercial tenants, just to be safe,” I said after considering things for a minute. “Let’s also stop all commercial comms from the station. The GOTs should be able to get a majority of folks down easily.”

“We’re on it,” Allen said as he typed on his keyboard. “We’ll verify evacuation with on station staff and do another sweep once the QRT is aboard. What sort of ETA, Lila?”

Lila was already on her phone. She held up her finger asking for a moment. Finally, “They’ll be departing Dublin in thirty minutes. They’ll do a direct launch and approach, and should be ready to dock within the hour.”

“Good,” I said.

I pulled out my phone and hit Sheryl’s number. It took several rings before she answered sleepily. “What’s up, Paul?”

“Under the charter, who do we notify if there is an issue on Astra?”

“Shit.” She was awake now.

“You’ve got a couple of options. Purely informational reports go to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. We can route that through the NASA liaison.”

“My guys will get ahold of Stanley, per SOP,” Allen volunteered. Stan was the liaison officer our Park City offices.

“What about under security concerns?” I asked Sheryl.

“DOD or FBI liaisons. What’s going on?”

“Get up and plugged in,” I said. Tamara will call back with details. Get Tom and our media team up as well. I don’t know what we’re going to have to release or when.”

I ended that call and punched another.

“Sam, this is Paul Taylor,” I said when I got Sam Johnson’s voicemail. I did not know were he was physically at, but suspected someplace close to D.C. It was getting late as far as local time went. “We have a possible security event underway on Astra Station. Please contact Lila Greenwood as soon as possible for a full briefing.”

I looked at Hunter. “Do we have a watch number for anyone at the DOD?”

He shook his head.

I looked through my contacts and then hit the number for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff number.

“Chairman’s office, this is an unsecured line, Master Sergeant McNeil speaking, how may I help you?”

“Master Sergeant, this is Paul Taylor calling for the Chairman. We have a security incident in progress on Astra Station that may have national security implications. We don’t have any watch officer numbers to report the incident to,” I concluded.

“Sir, can a watch officer contact you at this number?” The Master Sergeant asked.

“Yes.”

“You should be contacted within fifteen minutes, sir.”

The line went dead and I handed my phone to Hunter. “Answer it if anyone calls,” I said. He nodded.

“Okay,” Allen said as he stared intently at his screen. “We’ve got rotational thrust under control. We’re below our standard rate, but it has stopped slowing.”

“What about the other alarms?” I asked.

“We’ve routed critical systems to the back-up internal network. Mike has two staff members in our server room and is unplugging the primary network from the routers to keep whatever is happening isolated.”

“Have them unplug our research servers as well. Get Thomas to isolate anyone allowed physical access to the R&D data up there. I want them off the station ASAP and in a controlled environment.”

Lila looked at me. “What are you thinking?” she asked quietly.

“A network intrusion affecting the housekeeping and station keeping systems of the station might be a distraction. How well vetted are all of the researchers we have up there?”

She started to answer and then stopped herself and nodded. “When Sam calls, I’ll get him double checking everyone with access. I’ll keep my team focused on the tenants and guests for now.”

I nodded and saw Hunter answer my phone. A moment later, he handed it to me.

“Paul, you couldn’t even give me a first evening without a crisis?” I heard Kelly ask after I announced myself.

“Well, Madame President, we wanted to keep you on your toes,” I joked.

“Seriously, what the hell is going on?”

“We’re still working through it. Some sort of hack is occurring on Astra. We think it’s a little suspicious that we have more Chinese researchers aboard than usual, and have a large contingent from China at the Hilton up there when our network starts acting funny. We’re handling it.”

“Why the call the the JCS staff then?”

“After getting reamed by one of your predecessors for not reporting a possible action against my I.P., I figured I should let someone in the five-sided funny farm know something was going on.”

“What is the risk?” She asked.

“We’re doing a lot of R&D up there. We also manufacture some of our newer materials on station and ship them down the gravity well. I’m guessing industrial espionage is the goal.”

“What do you need from me?”

“Lila could use some help from the FBI,” I said even as she answered her phone and then waved her hand at me. “But, I think her liaison contact is on the line with her now.”

“Okay. I’m going to have the V.P. contact your team with the Secretary of State for a follow-up once you have all the facts straight. If this is government sponsored, it could be a test of my administration. I need facts before I react, Paul, but I also need to know if there is more going on than industrial espionage.”

“I’ll keep your folks informed. Try to put a good face on the last balls you need to attend. I’ll work with the DoD and FBI to get you an update as soon as possible.”

I paced in the small room, wanting to take some action, but recognizing that everyone here was in the same spot. We had some data, but the people that could actually do something with it would not appreciate arm-chair quarterbacking right now.

“QRT is launched,” Lila said. “ETA is eighteen minutes to Astra.”

“Delta GOT-Four is loaded with researchers and commencing departure from Astra,” Allen said a few minutes later.

“How long until the other GOT is ready to depart?” I asked.

“It’s mostly loaded,” Allen replied. “I’ve got station staff making a final sweep to ensure everyone we want off the station is aboard before they depart. Where do you want them brought down at?”

That was a good question. I looked at Lila and arched an eyebrow.

“Kenya or Learmonth,” she said. “I’d prefer Kenya.”

I wanted to ask why, but resisted the urge. Something must have shown on my face.

“It’s more isolated and we’ll be able to fully debrief everyone as they debark. I’ve already got a good team at the base and we have sufficient shelters there for emergency accommodation if needed.”

“Okay,” I said.

“In the meantime,” Lila continued, “I want to get out of this hotel and to a better location. We’ve got a twenty minute window to get to your Georgetown house. Security there is already set up and tight. We’ll go in two shifts. Allen, I suggest you and I stay here with some of the detail until Paul is online from there.”

I was not given much choice and found myself hustled out a side entrance and into a waiting Range Rover with Chrissy, Tamara, and Hunter.

“How is that possible?” I asked.

Astra had just reported that all spurious signalling on the primary network had stopped. In the twenty minutes is had taken to move from the location of the ball to my Georgetown property, the Quick Reaction Team had docked at the station and begun a final sweep of to ensure all non-essential personnel were on the final GOT.

“I’m guessing,” Lila said over the video conference link, “that our Chinese friends had to unplug whatever they were using when they finally evacuated.”

“How do we confirm that?” I asked.

“We need to get a specialist team up there to look in their living and work spaces, she said.

“Wait a second,” Sheryl chimed in. “We need more than suspicion to break our lease agreement. We need some indicator or probable cause to violate the privacy restrictions on their sections of the station. We open ourselves to all kinds of penalties if we go in there uninvited.”

“Shit.” I ran my hands through my hair and thought. “Allen, is the station stable?” I asked.

“Affirmative. We’re still a little low on our rotational speed, but I don’t want Michael to do anything until we know root cause on the incident.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Has the GOT departed?”

“It’s undocked, but has not begun de-orbit procedures yet. They’re a couple of klicks from the station.”

“When, exactly, did the signals stop?” Lila asked.

“They stopped when the GOT broke away from the dock. Why?”

“The last think to be separated is comms,” I said, following Lila’s train of thought. “It’s like someone was piggybacking on that comms line. Is that possible?”

“We’re going to need help to determine that,” Lila said.

“What sort of help? We need to make sure everybody is safe before we let anyone back on the station.”

“I think we need some folks from the Puzzle Palace to help out,” she said. “Any chance you can ask the DoD for some assistance?”

“I can ask,” I replied. I glanced at the clock on the screen. “Let’s have the operational team document the timeline of events. We’ll reconvene at 6:00 AM my time, and then I’ll chat with the government. In the meantime, let’s get some statement ready for the press.”

“I’m on it,” Billy said. She had joined the video conference from Park City. In the moment, I was very glad she had not taken Kelly’s offer. “We’ll release a statement on DigiNet that we’ve evacuated the station as a precautionary measure and that we expect the resumption of normal operations shortly.”

“Good. Lila, how are we planning on handling debriefs in Kenya?”

“I’ve got a team scrambling to head down. Local crews are getting shelters set up. Base ops is going to meet the GOT and ask everyone to write out their experience as the start of the debrief. We’ll collect those and then start doing interviews under a post-mortem guise.”

“If we don’t see anything damning,” Sheryl said, “We’ll have to arrange transportation once we conduct those interviews.”

“Can the FBI help with the interviews?” I asked.

Lila looked like she was considering it. “Not a bad idea. I’ll call Sam if you can handle transportation for them.”

“My GOT is here at National. Let me know when his team can be there.”

Lila nodded and I saw her video channel mute as she raised a phone to her ear.

“Okay, we have a plan. Let’s work the plan and try to get answers by the morning. Thanks, everyone,” I said.

Chrissy moved behind me as I ended the video call. She was still in her stunning red dress. I had removed my jacket and she reached up to rub my shoulders.

“What do you think this means?” she asked after working at the tension in my back and neck for a few minutes.

I reached up and patted her hand. “I think this means the Chinese are getting desperate, but I don’t know for what or even why. It’s troubling.”

“Let me know what I can do to help,” she said softly as she leaned down and wrapped her arms around me to give me a hug.

I turned and kissed her before standing and pulling her into my arms for a hug. She felt wonderful pressed against me. I let my fingers slide down her back and she pushed away from my slightly.

“You have to be back up in less than four hours, Paul. Shouldn’t you get some rest?”

I kissed her, hard. “I think I might have trouble sleeping with all this on my mind,” I said a moment later as I undid the clasp of her dress and dropped my hands to the short zipper at the small of her back.

She purred. “I might be able to help with that,” she said a moment later as she reached for the buttons of my shirt.

“Our computer forensics team found it,” Shaun Bowman, the liaison to the DoD/NSA team said. We were in our morning status meeting, five days after the Astra incident. We were looking at a packet dump from the logs of the network routers.

“It’s a very subtle approach,” Shaun continued. “It requires at least two entry points with the right signals to initiate the data transfer.”

“Wait a minute,” Hunter said. “You’re saying that someone initiated these signals from two network nodes, and then the router controllers began sending out data?”

“Not data,” Shaun replied. “It looks like they began systematically scanning the network and trying to find specific endpoints as well is intermediate control paths.”

“How is that possible?” I asked.

“We think they had to subvert the manufacturing process for the router chips themselves. Your FLO interfaces ensure communications integrity, so for this data to be exposed, it has to be coming from within the hardware. The only way this set of data could be exposed is if the internal routing tables of the network were exposed. Those are stored on-chip in your network.”

“Christ, I thought we had procedures to keep people from swapping chips ever since the incident back in ‘95,” I said, looking at Lila.

“We do, on the orbiters,” she replied. “We pulled the chip-sets from the initiating node in the Hilton module. We don’t see any sign of replacement. We’re tracing the supply-chain now.”

I straightened up. “You’re saying all of the chips in our internal network may be compromised?”

“That’s what we’re trying to determine. Those modules were assembled and installed in Barcellona when the station assemblies were being outfitted. If we don’t see any irregularities there, we’ll look at the component suppliers. The fact that the interfaces passed QA seems to indicate there is something embedded in the actual chips that remains disabled until the trigger is sent or detected.”

“What do we do while the investigation unfolds?” I asked.

“We’ve got the original specs and designs for the chip-set,” Tamara said. “We’re reviewing those, to make sure the design itself does not support this, and then we can get another run of them to swap out with the stations infrastructure.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Three weeks, minimum,” she replied.

“Can we fab them ourselves? I don’t want to go back to a vendor that might be compromised,” I said.

“Maybe. It might take longer,” she answered.

“Get me an assessment on it for tomorrow.”

She nodded in acknowledgement.

“Were the same chips used anywhere else?”

“We’re still assessing, but we have to assume they were. They’re almost identical to the commercial sets, just hardened for more extreme environments.”

“So networks across the world could be compromised?” Sheryl asked via her video feed. “What’s our exposure.”

I wanted to snap at her that the cost didn’t matter, but stopped myself. She was right, we could be exposed if we manufactured or designed the chips.

“The design is common,” Tamara replied. “We only sourced hardened chips for our non-terrestrial networks. We didn’t produce them or supply the design, so we should not have any liability, but a lawyer should review.”

Sheryl nodded.

“Shaun, what should we be doing next?”

The government man looked over at Sam Johnson of the FBI. “I’d be looking for network hardware on the evacuated personnel.”

Sam shook his head. “No such luck. Almost everyone had personal electronics, even if they were just phones. We can’t take another look at everything, since we wrapped up the exit interviews two days ago. Everyone is scattered beyond our reach now.”

“Sheryl, I’m assuming we have permission under the lease agreements to go through private spaces for critical system updates and repairs?” I asked.

“Yes, especially if there is a safety concern.”

“Shaun, how do some of your folks feel about getting a short-course orbital indoctrination? I’d like some of your experts looking over our shoulder as we start the on-site assessment.”

He grinned at me. “I always wanted to be a space man. How many people do you need?”

“Let’s keep it small,” Allen said. “Lila’s team is three people. If we can buddy people up, we should keep from stepping on each other’s toes.”

Shaun nodded. “I’ll find two more volunteers.”

“Get five, incase anyone has issues in the training. Lila, has your team been through the course already?”

“No,” she answered.

“Get them all going through together. Have your next two alternates included. I’ll tell Dublin we have a rush course starting the day after tomorrow.”

Everyone nodded.

“Do we have any idea what they were after yet?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Do we have any proof it was the Chinese?” I asked.

“It’s all circumstantial at this point,” Lila replied. “If we find out how they compromised the chips, we’ll know, but until then, there is not sufficient proof to take any action against them.”

“Lila, let’s assume it is the Chinese and start a working group to assess counter-moves,” I said. I saw the government representatives perk up. “Sorry, gentlemen, but that will be all we need for today’s meeting. We’ll reconvene tomorrow at the regular time.”

I ended the video conference and saw Lila giving me a dirty look from across the table.

“You should have ended the meeting before you mentioned any retaliation,” she said.

“I know. I wanted word to get back to Kelly that we were going to be ready to do something once we had proof. Keep them out of our sandbox as we come up with plans.”

“What range of options do you want?” she asked.

“As you said, a range. The low end could be poor commercial terms going forward, to generate stoppages. The high end could be termination of business with them. Let’s look for realistic options we can execute, and then we’ll figure out the proportionality of them if we get proof they are behind it.”

“If a chip manufacturer was compromised, it’s pretty damning proof that a nation-state was involved,” she said.

“Unless it was a really powerful company,” I countered.

I was pacing in our large conference room in the Park City offices. It was getting near lunchtime. We had held our morning status briefing via video conference and then rolled into contingency planning in person at the offices.

“So, there are three concerns we need to plan around,” Allan said, recapping much of our morning discussion. “Firstly, we need to ensure all the bad routers are replaced with secure ones. Second, we need to ensure no other orbital assets have been compromised and if they are, swap those out as well. Finally, we need to decide which retaliatory options we want to pursue once we have proof China was behind this attack.”

“How far out are the new communications chips and routers?” Sheryl asked.

“Three days for the first batch of five-hundred,” Tamara said. “But we need to think about how we handle the replacements. What happens if a tech does the changeout and ‘accidentally’ puts the old one back in service? There are a lot of nodes on Astra.”

I nodded. “Good point. How do we know who we can trust?”

Lila paled. We had found quite a few possible points of infiltration when we took a harder look at the entire supply and assembly process.

“Interns?” Allen asked.

I caught his meaning, even if others didn’t. “All of the Orbital Interns have a vested interest. Are they all trustworthy, Lila?”

“Maybe, but they aren’t all available,” she answered quickly. “Also, there are a lot of routers to change out, just in Astra.”

“Over twenty-six hundred,” Allen provided.

“And we need to coordinate changing certain sub-nets,” Michael warned via video. “We can’t just work the problem in a linear fashion, module by module.”

“Do we have a protocol identified yet?” I asked.

He nodded. “I want to change the station control primary net first. Once we complete that and verify it, we can shift back to the normal network for control and then adress the back-up network. Then we do the same thing with the monitoring systems. Commercial communications for tenants would be the last networks updated.”

“Thomas, what do you think?” I asked.

“I agree with Michael. Let’s make sure we’re not going to have any more attitude control issues, then ensure life-support and normal operations. I want to keep the research network offline until we are certain its not compromised.”

“We need to make it a completely segregated network. I’m not sure how we overlooked linking it into the other networks.”

“That was likely a result of ops tempo,” Tamara said. “We got in the habit of bouncing people around locations which required access to data remotely. Sooner or later, that touches the core network for transmissions down here, or to Aristarchus.”

“Do we have spare fiber runs up there?” I asked.

Hunter nodded. “We built for growth,” he said. “In the primary conduit runs there should be spare fiber bundles already strung.”

“So we could turn up a parallel network instead of replacing the primary?”

People exchanged looks. “In theory,” Michael said. “Why?”

“If we are committing to not having remote control, it would be more secure to have a dedicated, on-station network for your teams.”

“It would be a lot more work,” Tamara cautioned. “We’d need to install the routers, verify connectivity, then unplug all the actuators and thrusters from the old primary network and plug them into the new network, then go back and swap the back-up network routers and the old primary network routers. We don’t get any efficiencies doing it that way.”

“But it would be much more secure,” I countered. “Tamara, work with Michael on a full failure-mode analysis of both approaches. Having a fully redundant, isolated control network might be a good insurance policy going forward.”

“How long to decide?” Michael asked. “We’ve got a lot of people who would like to get back to work sooner than later.”

Sheryl was nodding in agreement.

“I’d rather we ensure station safety than rush anything. Allen, while they’re focused on the station, I want you and Hunter to figure out how we handle all the other orbital assets. We need to inventory and identify where else this attack might work. Lila and Sheryl, the three of us will look at retaliatory measures. I’ve already told Cindy that we’re publicly increasing prices for generators. If we have proof of one country being behind this, everyone else can have discount back to current rates. That’s about the least impactful measure we can take, and I want us to have immediate options if needed.”

“How do you feel about using the bank?” Sheryl asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The Fusion Bank is uniquely situated to provide incentives or punishment,” Sheryl said.

Based on Bluey’s review in the fall, we had begun moving forward with establishing a new private bank based in Switzerland. It handled the generator sales settlement of gold based purchases and then put the income from sales and operations back to work as loans. In some cases, we planned on purchasing sovereign debt to enable them to issue bonds locally, purchase generators and power, and then retire the loan over time.

“It’s probably too early, but we should include it in the mix of ideas.”

Sheryl nodded.

“Anything else for today?” I asked.

When there wasn’t, we adjourned. Allen and Tamara followed me on the short walk back to my office.

“What’s up? Not enough work to keep you busy?” I asked.

They both shook their heads. “Just the opposite. We’ve got too many irons in the fire, even with all the PA’s moving to shift work in teams.”

“What can we do? Until we know Astra is safe and stable, I can’t slow down.”

“We want to pull prior interns back in to assist,” Tamara said. “Maybe they can be used for the network repairs, but there are a ton of other tasks we could use some proven, action-oriented thinkers on.”

“Like what? I want to keep the retaliation plans very closely guarded,” I said.

“Not that, but pretty much everything else. If we had a team we trusted up on Astra, we could start pulling the primary control network routers. We could have a trusted team handling the inventory of the other comms networks, in orbit and down here. We could train up another station watch team and rotate Michael’s folks to get them some rest. Right now, our critical resource is trust,” Tamara concluded.

“Makes sense. How far do we extend the trust?”

“Our folks that were orbital interns or Mars candidates, would be the first group. They all had so much vetting, if we can’t trust them we are truly fucked. The only people that would be better would be shareholders, and there just aren’t enough of them that aren’t already involved in this.”

“Okay. What are the operational impacts of pulling those folks in on this going to be?”

“We’ll try to minimize them,” Allen said. “We’ve got another Mars supply run and crew rotation early next month. Other than that, we hold expansion efforts until all the reviews and refits are done.”

“It’s probably a six month delay to the overall plan,” Tamara added.

“Six months?”

They both nodded.

I sighed. “Okay. Let’s do it and keep me posted on any issues.”

“You know the hardest part of all of this?” Bluey asked as we looked at a shared spreadsheet over the video conference. “I have to keep checking that we’re handling the conversion from millions to trillions correctly. Christ Paul, this will be the fifth largest private bank in the world this year based on assets under management. We’ve already got a hundred and twenty trillion dollars on the balance sheet.”

“That’s why I want to make sure we’re using the money appropriately. Our operational accounts take thirty percent of revenue right off the top. Then we pay bonuses and dividends. You’re looking at the remainder that we have not tapped for capital expenses in the past few years.”

Bluey had accepted my offer to join the organization and become the head of the Fusion Bank, as we had decided to charter it. Camilla had been bittersweet about moving from balmy Sydney to Geneva in winter, but Jane had been nearly ecstatic about it. Jer and Ali were keeping in touch with her and were begging for some European skiing for their spring break. Chrissy and I were considering it, depending on the status of our work.

“You know,” Bluey said, “your gross revenues are going to surpass the projected GDP of the States next year. If you don’t spend too much, the bank will be the biggest in the world. You really are the king of the world, aren’t you?”

I laughed. “It sure doesn’t feel like it most days. Besides, we’re probably going to be spending a pretty chunk of change on the final Aristarchus build out this year, as well as Mars. Thomas is pushing for a station at L-5 as well.”

“What in the hell is L-5?”

I explained the Lagrangian points, our asteroid mission and what we wanted to do at L-5.

Bluey shook his head. “I can’t believe all the shit you’ve got going on. It’s no wonder the Chinks are trying to steal something from you, you passed their economy a couple of years ago.”

“That might be part of their concern, if they really did this to us. We’ll see what the experts come up with. How are we positioned to leverage all that cash you’re sitting on?”

“I’ve got a couple of plans and connections getting firmed up. First is Taiwan. We can be ready to float them essentially a free loan of up to a quarter trillion dollars at your say-so. Nominally, they’ll secure it with bonds, but the intersting thing is that they have a fair chunk of Hong Kong debt they would like to get off their accounts. If we took those bonds in exchange, you would have some direct leverage with Beijing. I think a loan to them would be our easiest way to rattle the folks behind this. We can sort out the securitization after we sign the deal.”

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Support the author's future writing by purchasing this book from Bookapy

A New Past (The Complete Trilogy)

Charlie Foxtrot

$26.99