CHAPTER 10
---ANSWERS---
Flying back to Virgil from FTB, Raptors watched as the station exploded in a beautiful spherical plane, like a fireworks show. The pause for observation was brief, because debris from the explosion flew outward, in all directions. The Raptors, Virgil, and the surviving civilian ships were right in the debris path.
The Squadron of Raptors still in the air watched as the civilian ships jumped away. They also watched as Virgil left without them. Thankfully, Virgil relayed the rendezvous jump point before she left.
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The interior of FTB reappeared in close proximity of the sun. Instantly, an explosion cascaded around the remains. The Battlestars, that jumped with the interior of the station, began to fall towards the star. The gravity of the star began to rip the ships apart, causing them to explode into pieces. A few seconds after appearing, the nuclear war heads in the Battlestars detonated from the radiation of the sun. Everything was engulfed by a light ten times brighter than the star. Acropolis was not there.
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Acropolis appeared in deep space, somewhere. . .
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The digital alarm sounded. I looked over to the far port side of the CIC, at the Damage Control Station. I saw red indicator lights around various outer sections of the ship, where the pressure doors did not close. Damage Control used an old static layout of the ship, with LED lights, to display problems. This CIC was just as old as FTB was.
I looked up at the massive DRADIS console above me. We were in the clear. I looked over to Slaton. He was standing frozen with his hand on the glowing blue FTL Jump Key. He had turned the key, initiating the jump, the instant before FTB did. His quick actions resulted in our survival. I looked over to Goodie. He was holding his breath. Then I realized something: everyone was in stunned silence. All of us expected to be dead, yet we lived. Jacobs stood up, and gave me a pat on the shoulder, then quietly limped out of the room. He had enough arguing for one day.
I sighed, then collected my thoughts. "Give me ship wide," I ordered out loud as I grabbed one of the corded phones connected to the lighted table. Goodie flipped a few switches, and I heard the speakers cue. "Everyone, everybody, listen up. We are alive. We are living. We are breathing. Right now we are adrift in space. I need all members of the military, that made it on board, to report to the CIC. Of the civilians on board, if you have military, technical, pilot, or engineering experience, I need you to report to the CIC. We have to get this ship up and running if we are going to survive."
I hung up the phone and looked at my watch. "Damascus."
"Is that the next light house?" asked Slaton. I nodded. Slaton checked a few terminals, then walked over to the elevated tactical station. He pulled out a few maps from under the tactical lighted table. He spoke as he sprawled the maps out, "Damascus is currently on its return slingshot from the edge of the system." Slaton pointed to its probable location. "Is anyone on it?"
"No," I answered. I stepped up to the elevated tactical station. " Awhile back, Cody sent a Raptor team to check it out. No one made it there. It's so old, we figured the Cylons wouldn't care about it."
"Well. . . let me get our position plotted and we can calculate a jump. But first thing's first. We got to get this old girl up and running."
"What do you recommend?" I asked.
"This is an Original Battlestar. So we have only one option, given the age of this lady." Slaton walked over to the Systems Allocation Terminal. He pulled out the green binder from under the desk area. It was named 'GREEN BINDER'. "We start with step one."
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Getting the ship up and running was no easy task. And, given our severe technical inexperience in running an old Battlestar, it took twice as long to start the ship than the book deemed plausible. We knew we did it right when we all felt the flight pods extending.
By the time Acropolis was running, we sent a Raptor to Damascus. Virgil, and her fleet, rendezvoused with us, and, for good measure, we jumped one more time. While we fixed all the ships, and came up with a plan, we left Raptor teams at the lighthouses around the system. After everything had been said and done, we realized just how bad it was.
Three days later, everything was finally running smoothly. A meeting was convened to discuss several issues. It was composed of myself, Commander Tinker, Colonel Marks, the Commander of the Metanira, the senior fleet captains, and the Quorum of Thirteen, including Jacobs. I brought along David Slaton; he was my jack of all trades, and he would be presenting the information.
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"11,280" said Slaton.
We were on the Battlestar Virgil, in one of her ceremonial rooms. The room was carpeted with blue and yellow. The walls were a dark wood grain. Tables were set up, forming a half square and facing a center podium. Luxurious leather chairs, enough for every person summoned, were at the tables. The podium sat on an elevated stage. Behind the podium was a wall that doubled for an interactive display. Lit up on the display were numbers.
All those summoned sat in the chairs, behind the desks, and watched Slaton.
Slaton continued, "Out of 16,176 people, we lost 4,896. The losses include half of our trained military force, combined with two Battlecruisers, one Battleship, and the station itself." Now the display began showing schematics of the fleet ships. "Out of six designated emergency escape transports, only three made it out. A freighter, science vessel, hauler, an executive, and a corvette made it out, without being prepped for evacuation." The display switched to a poorly rendered simulation of the battle inside FTB's dock. "We are attributing this to the fact that our main escape vehicles were destroyed, or the means of accessing them were destroyed. And above all else, most of the survivors escaped on the Acropolis." Schematics of Acropolis began scrolling.
"How, exactly, Mr. Slaton, did this all happen?" asked Jacobs. It was clear to me he was looking for someone to blame. The council looked at Slaton with earnest ears.
Slaton looked at Marks, then to myself. He quickly glanced at Tinker, but Tinker was looking down, at the table. It was as if the two were trying to not look at one another. He then sighed and began, "Clearly, a virus entered Craton. All the evidence points to D'Anna Biers, a Hotel-Charlie, or Humanoid-Cylon. She entered Craton's Network Administration Office, and did it all from there."
"Yes. . ." Jacobs coughed. "But you are leaving out the how. My dear boy, did you, or did you not, rewrite Craton's programming? From the ground up?"
Slaton sighed. Then he grew frustrated. I could sense he was coming to the same conclusion I was: they were going to blame him for it. "After we first arrived on FTB, Admiral Ryan Cody and I both decided it would be best to format Craton. As a matter of fact, we did that for most of the Military ships. We wiped Craton cleaned, all her hard drives."
"And you rewrote the system that allowed a virus to control Craton?" asked Jacobs, with a devilish grin. I couldn't help but wonder what he was getting at. What did Jacobs hope to accomplish by nailing Slaton to it?
"It is true, the system we created was taken over by a Cylon virus. But it is pure speculation that it was because of my system!" Slaton said with a raised voice.
"Careful Chief," said Jacobs. He was offended by Slaton's tone of voice. "If you remember, that's how you lost your commission." I looked over to Marks, who I saw roll his eyes. Marks lost his promotion the same way, smarting off to Jacobs. "The point is, we don't know for sure." Jacobs addressed the Council and the room, "so we can conclude that the only logic point was because of the system Slaton built, that led to this."
"Excuse me sir?" asked Slaton through closed teeth.
"Tell me Chief," continued Jacobs. His voice began to raise, "how do we know you didn't purposely redesign the system to allow for this to happen? Chief, are you a Cylon?"
Slaton looked at Jacobs with contempt. Then Slaton looked over to Tinker. Tinker nodded and handed a note to his aide, who then took the note and left the room. Slaton continued, "Council members of the Quorum, Chief Councilor Jacobs, Commanders, Captains, Colonel. I know EX-ACT-LY how all this transpired."
Jacobs looked up curiously, "Oh do you? Or is this nothing but a fabrication because you are worried about us finding your true motives?"
"You know Jacobs, I loved one person in my life. He taught me that you always had to be ready to show, through means other than words, the reasons of your actions. And while you may not know as to what that may mean, you can start with saving. . . all the information you can." Slaton picked up the podium and moved it off the elevated stage. Now the line of sight was clear to the entire wall display.
"This is preposterous," said Jacobs. "What information? The station was lost."
"Councilor Jacobs," said a Councilwoman. "We would like to listen. Please be quiet." She turned to Slaton. "Chief, show us what you mean."
Slaton inserted a Colonial Information Disk into the computer, next to the wall display, and began. The image was a screen filled with information. One side had video logs, another side had video playing back. The bottom side held a time-line. "Craton's last engagement before this one was about three years ago. We jumped in to pick up seventy five survivors from Devils Basin, inside the tropical forest of Aquarius. We got jumped on by a Cylon Basestar. To expedite the evacuation, we landed Craton, and picked everyone up in one shot, then jumped out. The whole process was very quick. Later that day, when I was cross checking the system for any sign of Cylon infiltration, I discovered a transmission had been made to the base ship."
Everyone sat up in their seats. "What kind of transmission?" asked the councilwoman.
Slaton continued as he brought up the specifics of the transmission. "It was heavily coded. After a few months, Cody and I managed to break it open. It was a message to the Cylons, informing them that the Virus had been successfully uploaded." Slaton brought up earlier logs. "How that virus got on, I don't know. But I know, for a fact, it is not the program responsible for controlling Craton during FTB's destruction."
Everyone began to whisper to each other. "Son, are you going to get to a point?" asked Jacobs. I looked across the room and saw Tinker smile a bit as his aide handed him another note. Something was going on.
"The point is, we found the virus, but couldn't delete it. It had embedded itself too deeply into the root source code. Cody and I decided to only tell the top military leaders, because, quite frankly, we can't trust civilians." Slaton stared down Jacobs. He turned back to the screen showing Craton's hard drive capacity. The other side of the screen showed a programming tree of Craton, with highlighted red lines showing the virus imbedded throughout the tree. "So we had to format the hardware. All of it! We lied and told everyone we were doing it in case a virus tried to upload itself, even though it already had. Let us remember this point: we formatted the hardware and rebuilt the system using totally original software engines. It took ten months, but we did it."
"What does that mean?" asked a ship Captain.
"For any virus to be able to use this system, it had to break into it first. And with a totally new security program protecting it, it would require direct hacking, by a Cylon mainframe, to get into it." Slaton pressed another button on the wall, and the screen began displaying more dumbed down pictures demonstrating his point. "The original attack happened when the Cylons shutdown the Colonial Defense Mainframe. You can only do that if you have been studying it for a long time. We made Craton the same way, you can only break into her programming after studying it for a long time. To add action to thought, the system was attacked by a virus during the mission to save Athena a few days ago. It effectively repelled the attack."
"But they did get in," reminded Jacobs.
Slaton smiled, "Yes they did sir, thank you for bringing that up." Slaton brought up the security footage of D'Anna killing the young communications crewman, and getting on the Craton. Everyone watched the screen diligently. "I will tell you how I got this footage in a second. Right now, I will answer your question. D'Anna killed Crewman Quinn, and used his body as a distraction outside of Craton's CIC." The footage was from different angles, showing the attack. "The CIC crew was only comprised of a handful of people because she was docked. The distraction lured the crew to the corridor outside. D'Anna entered through a maintenance hatchway on the adjacent wall, and got into the NAO corridor."
The video showed her walking down the corridor, entering the NAO, and sitting at the terminal. I looked to the back of the room, behind the council members. A team of armed Marines entered and stood quietly along the back of the room.
The video wall was showing D'Anna trying to get into Craton's system. "Here," continued Slaton, "She attacks the hard drive itself and gets in rather quickly, in less than twenty seconds. She also managed to avoid setting off all the detection nets. That should not have been possible." Slaton brought up a pie chart of the hard drives. "This is a visual that shows all four server farms on Craton as one. She attacks all four, then she sees something." The video showed her leaning forward in the chair. Slaton brought up some numbers. "If I take the total space on the system, one exabyte of storage, subtract that from the amount of space we have used, and compare that to the total available free memory: we get a discrepancy of 57.6 gigabytes. That discrepancy caught D'Anna's eye."
"What was it?" asked the councilwoman.
"One of the hard drives on server three had a partition on it, which is a separation within the drive. On that partition was the Cylon Virus we thought we deleted. It saved itself." Slaton brought up the visual code of the virus. It appeared to resemble vertical scrolling red symbols. "With the time she had, D'Anna needed a way onto the system, and the partition allowed her an ability to access the hard drive. From that partition, she built a bridge to the main drive, got into the root code of Craton, and released the original Virus, which she modified, enabling her to avoid all the security programs. She activated the CIC fire suppressant system, escaped the ship, and made her way to the Stations FTL, where we all know the rest of the story."
"How did the virus take control of the guns then? If you said they were protected from itself?" asked Jacobs.
"That, I can only speculate. The reason I have all this information," said Slaton as he nodded to the video of D'Anna playing on the wall, "is because I have a redundant link setup between Craton and a backup server. When ever Craton is docked, she is 'backed up' on the server, and a real time data link copies, and secures all information coming through that link. That link also enables a real time feed of everything happening on the ship."
"Why?" asked the councilwoman.
"It was first used in case I screwed up while rewriting the ships program a few years ago. Then Cody and I saw how useful it was in case something happened," answered Slaton.
"But you did screw up Chief Slaton. How did you not catch the partition? Was it your Cylon programming?" asked Jacobs in a sarcastic way.
"What a wonderful question Sir," said Slaton equally as sarcastic. "Commander Tinker already knows the answer, and I am happy to tell you." I looked around the room. The Marines were slowly walking forward. Tinker was looking angry. "After examining the saved information from the backup link, I discovered a few interesting tid-bits. D'Anna knew exactly where the partition was. The existence of the partition was kept secret from Cody and I. Someone erased the log of the Memory Systems Check, and rewrote the Applicable Memory Available file so any further checks would have the same result."
"In layman's terms Mr. Slaton," said the councilwoman. She was becoming frustrated at the technical mumbo-jumbo.
Slaton spoke slowly, "Someone hid the partition from Cody and I, so that normal memory checks show up fine. The Applicable Memory Available file is the code that tells me how much memory I have, without physically adding all the bytes with a calculator." Slaton brought up the access logs. "Then that person deleted their access log. They also deleted it from the backup data-link! And that happened a long time ago, before D'Anna even was found."
"What does that mean?" asked the Councilwoman.
"Someone here is helping the Cylons. Who?" I asked.
Slaton was now staring down Jacobs. "They deleted their virtual footprint. But they might not of thought to check a second tier backup. I save deleted trash also, just in case." Slaton pressed another button on the wall.
The access log came up, along with another video file, with Jacobs in it. Jacobs access code appeared highlighted on the display. Jacobs was the one who hid the file. "You knew about it, only you Councilor. Tell me, what model are you?" asked Slaton as he walked up to Jacobs. "You are a Cylon right?" In regards to that question, the Quorum members next to Jacobs scattered.
"Marines, arrest the Councilor!" yelled Tinker as he stood up. The rest of the room stood up.
Jacobs smiled as the Marines threw him out of his chair, and onto the table. They cuffed his hands behind his back.
The Marines stood Jacobs up. "Is this true?" asked the councilwoman.
"The Chief is correct, I am a Cylon," said Jacobs. "What model number I am is not important, but you can call me Cavil." The Marines pointed their rifles at his head. Cavil smiled.