Chief Riggs stepped back from the console, wiping his brow as he assessed the damage to the Camelot. The ship was adrift, its systems barely operational, and with most of the bridge crew taken, Captain Valdez was now in command.
“How long until comm systems are back online, Chief?” Valdez asked from the command chair, her voice steady despite the urgency of the situation.
The surviving crew had swept the ship in the aftermath of the boarding, discovering numerous improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by the invaders. Disarming them all had been slow, painstaking work, with Goode leading the effort, her technical expertise proving invaluable.
“I’ve got my best team on it, Captain,” Riggs replied, his voice rough with fatigue. “Those Red Brotherhood bastards did some serious damage to my ship. If Commander Sung hadn’t stopped their sabotage attempt in the engine room, we’d all be floating in vacuum by now. Thanks to Goode and the tech crews, the bombs they planted have been disabled, but it’s going to take another few hours until we get this tub back online properly.”
After clearing the IEDs, Goode had returned to the bridge, her mind focused on one goal: bringing ELON, the ship’s AI, back online. The Red Brothers had done more than physical damage; they had managed to bypass key systems using hacking techniques she scarcely understood, effectively shutting down the AI that was the Camelot’s brain. Without ELON, the ship was virtually blind and very vulnerable.
“Goode,” Valdez called, turning to where the tech specialist was hunched over a console, her fingers working over the controls. “How’s it looking?”
“Not good, Captain,” Goode replied without looking up. “I don’t know how, but they’ve scrambled ELON’s primary circuits, rerouted power away from the mainframe, and locked me out of several critical systems. It’s like they knew exactly what to hit.”
“Can you get him back?” Valdez asked, her tone serious.
“I’m working on it,” Goode said, her voice tense with concentration. “I’ve managed to bypass some of the security measures they put in place, but it’s like peeling back layers of an onion. Every time I get close, there’s another lock, another trap. But I’ll get through it.”
Valdez watched her for a moment, then turned back to Riggs. “Keep the repairs going, Chief. I’ll be back shortly.”
She crossed the room to where Goode was working, her eyes narrowing as she studied the holographic display flickering with lines of code and data streams. “What do you need?” she asked, knowing that offering support was better than standing idle.
“Time,” Goode replied, finally glancing up. Her eyes were sharp, determined. “And maybe a bit of luck. The Red Brothers aren’t just brute force; they’ve got someone on their side who knows their way around a system. This isn’t just sabotage; it’s hacking at a level I’ve never seen before.”
Valdez nodded, a grim look on her face. “You’ve got both. Just get ELON back online.”
Goode gritted her teeth and turned back to the console, her fingers dancing over the controls as she tried another approach. She knew that if she could access the mainframe, she might be able to reset ELON’s core protocols, but getting there was the challenge. The Red Brothers had installed multiple firewalls, each more sophisticated than the last.
She leaned in closer, her eyes narrowing as she spotted a weakness in the code. “There,” she muttered to herself, exploiting the vulnerability. The console beeped in acknowledgment, and she felt a small surge of hope. She narrowed her eyes as she processed what she was seeing. She turned to Valdez.
“We need to get someone into the server room right now. I think I’ve just discovered how they took ELON offline.”
Valdez nodded. She pressed a button on the command chair’s arm to access the Camelot’s internal comms.
“Matthews, Sung, report to the server room asap. I’m patching you through to Goode.”
Both men acknowledged and after a few long minutes they pinged back.
“We’re outside the servers,” Sung said.
