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“Good girl,” Ravik said. The glimmer of pride in his eyes filled my chest with a pleasant warmth. “Can you make us battle worthy?”
I bit my lip while pondering how to answer the question. “First, I need the antivirus to finish deploying and to initiate the system restore. And then we can see what we’re working with.”
“How did you find the cure so quickly?” Baldur asked, making no effort to hide his suspicion.
Ravik narrowed his eyes at his captain but didn’t intervene, which pleased me. I was a big girl, able to fight my own battles.
“I know it because technology is my job and because there isn’t a single piece of Guldan hardware or software that I don’t know.”
“Excuse me?” intervened a Braxian with pretty, pale-green eyes. Despite his rough traits and severe expression, there was an odd softness to his features, like that usually found in good-natured people.
“You heard me correctly. This virus is clearly of Guldan signature.” My hip leaning against the side of the console and my palm resting flat next to the control panel, I stared at him with my usual sassy attitude. “Now, no need to get those brawny muscles of yours all twisted in knots; I had nothing to do with it. Your captain here,” I added, pointing at him with a gesture of my head, “should be able to confirm the virus was first planted before the Magnar and I boarded this vessel. Not to mention that I wasn’t even supposed to be here. So, can we drop the suspicions and work on solutions?”
He scrunched his brutish face, his thick brows bunching to form a single continuous line. I raised a questioning eyebrow at him. He pursed his generous lips, and then grunted his assent.
“Good,” I said, before turning back to check on my holographic monitor. “As I was saying before this interruption, with the virus being of Guldan origin, and assuming the Magnar’s speculation is accurate—which I believe is likely the case—even repaired, this ship may not be able to face off against Guldan forces. Our technology is far too advanced.”
“We have tremendous firepower,” Baldur argued, his pride visibly stung.
It was so cute, I wanted to pet him.
“You do,” I conceded. “But it’s completely useless against ships you can’t see. After the Tuureans, the Guldans possess the best stealth technology. At the same time they decloak, they’ll be shooting you full of holes. You’ll never have time to evade.”
“But you told Fenton you know Guldan technology well,” Ravik said, referring to the pale-green-eyed Braxian. “How do I get past their cloak? I would see the face of my enemy.”
“That would be telling,” I said.
Ravik frowned, his expression darkening.
“Relax, big boy. One thing at a time.”
Ravik stiffened, and his officers gasped, giving me an outraged look.
Fuck.
Me and that damn irreverent mouth.
“Sorry. I mean Magnar,” I mumbled.
The chime of the antivirus finishing to deploy gave me an excuse to focus on my computer. Within seconds, the map of the ship’s systems confirmed the progress of the virus had stopped. I typed a few more commands on my computer. It ran a series of empty functions that would resemble a complex subroutine to the laymen, especially ones who couldn’t read Guldan. I needed that distraction to cover the real method by which I would revert the damage.
Placing my palm on the navigation board of the ship, as if for support, I stared unseeing at the holographic screen of my computer, pretending to be observing the program running on it. Extending my psionic senses, I used my touch activated Veredian power to seek out a ship-wide subroutine in which to implant my command. In my mind’s eye, every program running the ship appeared like a ghostly tree diagram, spreading its branches in every direction, each connection instinctively recognized and catalogued.
I understood viruses well becauseIwas the greatest of them all.
While nanites remained my favorite method of propagation for their versatility, software also worked well, especially in this instance. I targeted the life support systems, which connected to every subsystem of the ship in one form or another before implanting a revert command. Unlike my niece Amalia, who could take control of entire systems and perform complex reprogramming, I could only issue a simple command that would spread and replicate until it met its end condition or it had saturated the host. In this case, my command would reset every system to yesterday morning—hours before the virus was implanted—and then self-destruct.
I never left behind any traces of my viral presence.
In my head, I could see it spreading over the ghostly tendrils of the tree. Refocusing on the room around me, I furtively looked at the Braxians surrounding me. To my relief, none had noticed me using my psi ability. I gazed up at the screen, and a smile stretched my lips when many of the red sections on the ship’s map reverted to orange, then yellow, then white.
“Fuck me,” Baldur muttered, his eyes glued to the screen.
Unlike the Guldan virus which had targeted systems in a specific sequence, mine just spread in every direction at once.
“It will take about fifteen minutes to complete its work,” I said, facing Ravik. “Add to that however long it will take some systems to reboot after the reversal.”
“Well done, little bird,” Ravik said, his eyes gleaming with pride.
