By Wes Parish
I think I was feeling depressed that morning, which accounted for me being fifteen minutes late to my desk, and my supervisor snarling at me for being late. Even worse, I'd had a few nightmares that night, which kept me from being my usual chirpy self.
The co-worker I'd been working with, Marie SaintArnulf y Borges, on this satellite tracking project the Commonwealth government had started with insufficient funds, smiled at me as I sat down. "Late again," was all she said though, then turned back to her screen.
So far everything that had been forecast about the Kessler Syndrome had failed to eventuate; but the establishment of the Australia-New Zealand space debris tracking commission had come fast in the wake of the current US president's reawakening of the Star Wars dream of his predecessor. So far the orbital interceptors had been tested in low Earth orbit, and the debris had decayed rapidly into re-entry.
But that wasn't what I had had those nightmares about. Today was the launch of the Presidential Rocket to visit the new All-American Space Station and then also do a flyby of some of the higher-orbiting orbital interceptors.
We hadn't had a computer network systems vulnerability warning since this president had shut down the US federal organisation studying the issue; some EU states tried to fill the gap, and that was useful, but only if we were using their equipment.
I had dreamed of trying to plug a hole in the dyke near where my grandparents lived, near the Zuider Zee, with a plug made of twisted pair network cable lacking a connector, and the dyke had broken on top of me. Little wonder I couldn't get back to sleep ...
"Hmm," Marie said, suddenly. "There's a problem with this connection. I can't link up to the All-American Space Station. There seems to be a mixup in the verification codes. Here, you try it, Hendrik. You've got more knowledge of that particular protocol than I have."
And so I tried. Oh Lordy, how I tried! It "wiggled", if you can use that term. At one point I had the connection, then next minute it changed and I couldn't get back into it.
The https connection was sound, and I tried to use it to send a message to the space station, but the subsystems handling the email forms were also off and not working.
By some great stroke of luck I could log into the docking cameras and saw the tragedy as it happened.
The Presidential Rocket rose into view, identification codes were sent between it and the space station, and out of the corner of my eye I saw sudden movement. The identification codes switched off; a new set of identification codes were sent from this movement, and the replies of the Presidential Rocket were summarily dismissed.
A blur of movement, and a sudden flash of light, and the Presidential Rocket underwent a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. A blinking light from one of the other screens announced — when I took the time to look at it — that one of the orbital interceptors had made a successful interception against a heavily disguised nuclear missile aimed at the All-American Space Station.
The room went silent. Then desk phones rang and everybody started talking at once.
Marie leaned over to me and said, sotto voce, "I think we've just seen an unexpected use of the orbital interceptors, caused by someone hacking into the command system via the All-American Space Station system's vulnerabilities. I suppose you could say he had it coming, disbanding the US federal Cybersecurity Agency."
I nodded. Poetic justice, you might say.
About the Author
Wesley Parish is an SF fan from early childhood. Born in PNG, he enjoys reading about humans in strange cultures and circumstances.
His favourite SF authors include Ursula Le Guin, Fritz Lieber, Phillip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard and Frank Herbert.
Wes lives in Christchurch, NZ, is an unemployed Java and C programmer, and has recently decided to become a mad ukuleleist, flautist and trombonist, and would love to revert to being the mad fiddler and pedal steel guitarist.. "Where oh where has my little pedal steel got to ... ?"
My time at Nambucca Valley Community Radio began back in 2016 after moving into the area from Sydney.
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