Free Special Forces 01 by Honor Raconteur Page A

“civilian” lives were going. Rys, knowing full well how much they could all eat, ordered two dozen pizzas and the pizza delivery man was greeted with much cheer and back slapping. Rys took one box with him back to Geek Central and used it to lure the working men out of the room and back to the rest of the world.
    There not being any room in the house that could really sit all twenty-two of them, they retreated to the back deck and found any available corner or vacant space to sit and eat.
    Steve wound up sitting next to him. After consuming three slices, he leaned in and murmured, “So why do we have two Bijordan Intel officers here?”
    “Gremlin invited them. He said they needed some pointers.”
    “Ah.”
    The evening air was slightly cool and pleasant. Rys felt himself go a little lethargic because of the peaceful scenery around him and the nice, warming sensation of having his stomach full. He made himself stop after six slices, afraid that one more would send him into a drowsy state.
    When the last pizza box had been emptied, the relaxed ambience of the group fell away and they unanimously got down to business.
    Rys, as the most senior Captain in the group, took lead. “Alright, Gremlin. You said that you found something interesting.”
    “Boyce found something interesting,” Gremlin corrected with a quick thumbs up at his fellow geek. Boyce flashed him an acknowledging smile in response. “We’ve just been verifying it for the past few hours. Sir, this is far from conclusive, and I’d like to look at about a hundred more systems before we jump to conclusions, but it looks like there’s a piggy-back system on all of the Novans network systems.”
    Rys frowned. He didn’t like the sound of this. “And what does this piggy-back system do?”
    “It seems to have a two-part function.” Gremlin’s voice was painfully neutral as he spoke, his eyes tight. “Part one is that it taps into any network or device within range and makes a copy of it.”
    As the words penetrated, Rys felt his blood just drain from his face and his stomach gave an uneasy lurch. “How sophisticated is this system?”
    One of the Bijordan Intel officers responded grimly, “It can penetrate most firewalls, sir. Only the top two classified systems in the government could withstand its attack.”
    Rys felt like swearing. Not the answer he’d hoped for.
    “What’s part two, Bran?” Miles asked in a deceptively calm voice. “You said this thing was dual purpose.”
    “Part two is actually what worries me the most,” Gremlin admitted with a quick glance around the group. “The second function is to do an in-depth scan of the infrastructure.”
    A cold, heavy silence descended like a lead weight. No one had to voice the obvious: the only reason why someone would need a detailed blueprint of a planet’s infrastructure was if they were planning to either a) conquer it, or b) blow it up. It could possibly be a mix of both.
    Duane was the one to break the silence and ask the next obvious question. “Which Novans are carrying this thing around?”
    “That’s the part that we’d like to confirm by hacking another hundred systems.” Gremlin spread out his hands in a slight shrug. “From what we can tell right now, every Novan does. From merchants to tourists and everything in between.”
    Rys blew out a breath as he asked the next hard question. “Do they know? Are these operatives undercover?”
    “Another question I can’t answer until we can hack more systems. My gut feeling is…at least some of them are just innocent dupes.”
    Well, at least they had some notion of what Nova was up to. Now if they could only figure out what use all of this information would be put to. “Gremlin, I don’t have to order you to re-start your hacking party, do I?”
    Gremlin grinned at him like he’d just been handed tacit permission to do something naughty. “No, sir!”
    “While you hack, we’re going to figure out just how much