Free Code Breakers: Beta by Colin F. Barnes

glinted off the screen of the Jaguar, waking Petal from her drug-induced coma. Her dreams were wild and bizarre. They receded away from her with every waking second, blurring her memories. She shuddered and winced in anticipation of the pain from her ribs. But the ‘Stems had done their task. All she felt was a dull ache and stiffness from her awkward sleeping position.
    Her mouth was dry. She coughed. A spatter of blood came out—the results of ‘Stem use. She looked to the back of the craft, towards the main passenger area. It was large enough to carry at least six people, and behind the bulkhead she found a storage locker. It opened easily enough. She found water and rations to last a good few weeks.
    Petal removed a metal box of ration packs, noticed something strapped to the webbing at the bottom of the storage unit: A conical shaped tube with a dark green and grey camo design. Scorch marks covered the opened end. It looked like a recovered front-half of a UAV drone.
    Inside the tip of the drone, she found the usual suite of scanners, GPS aerials, and computer control systems bundled into a neat package. With a toolkit from the cockpit she quickly removed the package, held it in her hand as if it she could somehow divine its contents. Naturally, she thought of connecting to its wireless system with her inbuilt radios, but realised she had no means of connection anymore. Her wrist itched where the implant had crudely been removed.
    She cursed the Widows for neutering her in such a way. Being disconnected made her feel like someone had hacked off a limb. This must be what normal people feel like, she thought.
    She placed the drone control package on the dashboard. The controls of the craft were in that stupid damn language again, but at least she recognised some of the symbols from the last one she was in. She managed to fire the engines without careening into a pile of rocks or the ground and found the main computer control system.
    A holoscreen projected up in front of her. The controls were iconic rather than language based. She hacked into the setup files. Deep into the system, the folders were labelled in English. Luckily, it seemed the programmers were Westerners. It made her wonder if this Jaguar wasn’t Russian-built after all. Within the English files she found a configuration script.
    “About damned time,” she said to herself.
    The system had a number of language packages installed. She simply had to select a new operating system preference. Within a split second the entire dashboard controls were now perfectly understandable. “That makes more sense.”
    While she had access to the Jaguar’s system, she checked the log files and found a recently updated entry within a secure area. At first it wouldn’t give her access, so she brought up a terminal and with a technique learned from Gabe, managed to code an exploit that gave her super-user access, meaning she could now view the previously encrypted files at her leisure.
    First she managed to create a memory overflow within the system allowing her to inject her own code. Using a series of assembly commands within the higher areas of the system’s memory, she gained access as if she were the legitimate administrator. The operating system that the Jaguar used was quite common, being a leftover from the war, so its weaknesses were well known, especially to Gabe who spent years reverse-engineering the various leading military systems.
    Once in, she navigated to the logs.
    “Ooh, this is interesting.”
    The encrypted log file was in fact instructions from what appeared to be the Red Widow base. It was unreadable, naturally. Taking the file of information, she programmed a translation process using the various language packs as the dataset. It wasn’t entirely accurate but it was close enough. The interesting thing was the number of times the word Criborg appeared.
    The file mentioned the operators in that very Jaguar had downed the Criborg UAV while on