Free Athena Lee Chronicles 0: The Lost Pilot by T S Paul Page B

reason the drains from the cafeteria leaked down into his 'office.' There was no ventilation available so the office smelled like a sewer under a burger joint. Brown viscous grease dripped down the walls and clogged his computer terminal and systems. His primary duties now included repairing computers, removing malware, and teaching Computer Skills 101 to first time employees. Motherboard replacement and general cleaning took up the majority of his time.
     
    Cries of 'free Neville' and 'no prison for children' forced state law enforcement to make plans to move him from Maximum Security inside the prison, to a protective custody location near the State Capitol. Transfer paperwork errors temporarily slowed this process. Unable to exit the prison, state officers placed Neville in a general holding cell to await transport. An occupied general holding cell. The young boy did not survive the experience of being in general population among the killers, rapists, and thieves. His broken body shown in graphic detail by on line bloggers. The media firestorm of outraged accusations almost broke the government. Hackers, in protest, hacked government offices causing destruction and mayhem. Neville's personal crusade against those that destroyed his family and the reasons he enacted his revenge were lost. Now all that mattered to his fans and followers was that the government pay for his death.
     
    Effective computer security was now a thing of the past. The world had become too technological for its own safety. Government sponsored hackers joined the fray. Did you want to get back at a neighboring government? Have hackers shut down his electrical grid. Did you want revenge? Have your hackers freeze another country's financial assets. All the dirty tricks came out. Secret black operations groups came out into the light as the hidden war began to heat up. Then the international corporations got involved they pushed industrial sabotage and espionage to new levels. The undeclared war just got very real. The Cyber wars were beginning.

Chapter 1
     
     
    He could hear the wild dogs howling. Eddie Bakker pulled his head back into his small and shabby apartment. The packs of wild dogs were still a major problem for those on foot at night. Despite whatever the local Government had to say about them. Still, he was very glad that Mrs Southcott down at the warehouse he worked at hadn't kept him very long today. Just last week he had been chased three blocks by a pack of dogs. Eddie sat down in his chair next to the window. His wife, Ann, should be home soon. She had a good Government job working for the local medico's down at the local dispensary. Seeing a flash, Eddie looked up, the lights were flickering again signaling a brown-out. He walked over to the kitchen cabinet. Reaching in he pulled out an old fashioned glass oil lamp. He hated to use it, because of the fuel cost, but it would be nice to see his wife's face as they ate dinner. With a buzzing sound the lights flickered and then went dark. He could hear the cries of outrage coming across the alley from his neighbors. These power outages were becoming more frequent. Goddamn Cyber terrorists! The National Government swore up-and-down that the 'war of cyber terror' was over. They swore that the Cyber terrorists were all dead or locked up in prison. Eddie was not so sure about that. They had lied about things before.
     
    He had seen, on the vid, that giant robotic drones operated by 'suspected' terrorists were still rampaging across Europe killing indiscriminately. Those stupid frakking Military leaders thought that those remotely operated drones were such a good idea. "It'll save human lives." Sure save them so that the out of control robots could kill them! At least in this country, they'd melted all those things down. Or at least they said they had, just like they locked up the terrorists that controlled them. Whatever happened to the 'good ol' US of A? Eddie could, just barely, remember a