Archaea 2: Janis by Dain White Page A

wasn't really listening to you there. I was thinking about my coffee cup, and remembering a time around here when I would say hop, and you would be refilling my cup on the way down. I'm afraid all these words you are using are not making any sense. Right now, the words I want to hear, the words I really need to hear are: Soon, Damn Soon, Right Away, Within Moments, and so on.”
    I made a face at the milling machine as it tracked back and forth and took a deep, career-saving breath.
    “Aye skipper. Damn soon, within moments sir.”
    “Very well Gene. Carry on.”

Chapter 6
     
    The captain was reeling in the target slowly, like a fisherman playing the hook. He was coming in hard right astern, trying to hide in her baffles. He explained to me that because gravimetric and other emissions detectors have a hard time reading dead astern when reac drives are burning, our best chance to close into turret range is from dead astern. It seemed pretty risky to me, but this isn't really my thing.
    “Pauli, our handsets work on some sort of network, correct?” the captain asked.
    “Yes, there's a local area network they connect to that uses a radio carrier wave.”
    “What's the range of the network?” he asked, under the shade of a standard-issue eyebrow.
    “Well, there are two networks, in fact, they switch between frequencies to function at different ranges to create local-area and wide-area connections, and when they're in range of Unet, they shunt traffic through Unet nodes to create a network with unlimited range.”
    “What is the range of the wide-area?”
    “Our WAN is pretty good, we can shoot a few kilometers before the signal-to-noise ratio degrades to the point where the network can't effectively communicate.”
    “So there is leakage, of a sort, on shipboard networks?”
    “Yes... in a classic sense, I guess there is. I don't think it's really something we could leverage though. Take our network, for example. We had a pretty decent one when we started working on the Archaea, pretty standard sort of setup. A key is generated unique to the ship, and all traffic is signed and encrypted with that key, to prevent unauthorized access, but also to limit interference from other systems when we're in port. Of course, our setup now is considerably more secure, because I am a pretty heavy-lifting security geek, we use a military-grade shifting key that assigns a uniquely identifiable key per transmitted packet, so each packet is unique.”
    “Well that sounds... fascinatingly nap-inducing, Pauli – but I guess the takeaway here, is there is leakage, and if we get in range, you and Janis can just hack in and take over their systems, right?”
    I shook my head. “I suppose she could, but she's not really built for that type of hack.”
    “Nonsense, she is an excellent hacker, Pauli. She burned right through Europa Station's security system for me.”
    “Captain...”
    “Yes Pauli?”
    “Are you sure that's what she did? She may have just looked up information from the local connection we make when we lock to moorage.”
    “Damn son, you're dangerously close to doubting me. You know that's a capital offense, right? I'd hate to make someone clean something dirty around here.”
    I laughed, “No sir! I wouldn't ever doubt you. I was just asking for information, of course.”
    “Well, in that case... I guess this time I will stand down and put away my serious ship-painting eyebrows. Be warned though son, your captain is a kind, generous, intelligent and devastatingly heroic leader, but he's also a vicious tyrant, a mad dog, a scoundrel of the worst stripe when required.”
    I turned around and was damn near blinded by a brilliantly gleaming toothy grin.
    “Janis, my love, my sweet flower, can you please tell Pauli the technicals about what you did for me on Europa Station?”
    “Absolutely sir. Steven, the captain gave me explicit permission to access any system or network at my own discretion, at any time, so long as