Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 by Lj Cohen Page B

hand-coded the authority algorithm specifically for each of them. "Anyone get priority except your parents?"
    Jem winced. "Barre," he said. "Just Barre."
    "I have to weight your folks in there, too, Jem. If they're looking for you and can't find you, they could get command involved. Too many people get curious and they'll find my little tweaks."
    "Do what you need to do," he said, staring past her.
    Guiding him over to her corner of Micah's lab, Ro pushed Jem into the only open chair. Every other possible surface was covered with her equipment. He sat heavily, staring past her, the muscles along his jaw bunched.
    "Can you set up my terminal and access? Just the hard wiring. I'll do the config after."
    He shrugged and stood, turning to organize the desk.
    Ro pulled out her micro and added Jem to her ghost protocol. It wouldn't hold up to a full-on decontamination, but the innocuous little program didn't look like much to the casual observer. That's what people got wrong. They wanted the big hacks, the monster hacks. Ro prided herself on writing subtle code, code that never called attention to itself, modest code. She smirked.
    Maybe that's why she'd been able to throw so many tweaks into Daedalus's systems over the years she'd been trapped here. Even it didn't seem to notice.
    "You're good to go," Jem said. "Can you pull up Barre's medical file now?"
    Directly hacking in to private records was probably next to impossible and it would take her time away from the AI code mods she'd started playing with. The program lived in her head and she couldn't wait to get it locked down and tested. "I don't know, Jem." She raked her fingers through her hair considering the risk. Frowning, she twisted it into a braid and snatched a spare wire tie from the floor to secure it out of her face. "Couldn't you just ask your parents?"
    "No."
    "Why don't you just go and see him for yourself? It's not like the chart's going to tell you a whole lot anyway." She could start work on the repair drones. They had a lot to do before tackling the AI proper anyway.
    Jem stared at her, his face set in hard lines.
    "Unless you're already a doc, too," Ro said, trying to lighten the mood.
    The muscles in his face rippled as he clenched and relaxed his jaw. "I need access. It's the tox screen. I know Barre was using. They know Barre was using. But if they have the proof, this time they'll send him off-system to mandated rehab."
    "Seriously? For bittergreen? Isn't that a little overkill?" They said mandated just rebooted the addiction centers, resetting the brain's neurotransmitters back to pre-drug exposure levels, but Ro knew a few kids who'd undergone treatment and came home more broken than when they left.
    "You don't know my parents."
    "No, I guess I don't," Ro said, thinking of her father and the times she wished she didn't know him.
    "Look, if you won't do it, I will."
    Crap, that's just what she needed — an amateur mucking about. Cleaning up after him would take even more time away from what she needed to do. "You're talking more than a hack and a look-see. Do you have any idea the kind of checksums they have around medical records?"
    "I won't let them do that to my brother. He may be an idiot, but he doesn't deserve having his brain turned inside out. Do you have any idea what happens in places like that?"
    Ro frowned, her hands on her hips. He didn't know what he was asking. If she got caught, it would be more than the end of her dreams. Tampering with personnel and medical records carried big-time penalties.
    "They'll burn the music right out of him. Ro, please, it's all he's got." Jem's eyes got shiny.
    Ro turned away, uncomfortable with his naked emotion. If someone tried to take away her ability to program, to see code as a living, breathing entity, she wasn't sure what she'd do. Even her father — who'd pretty much taken everything else from her — understood that. "All right. I'll do what I can."
    Jem's smile blazed through the small room like