Free The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Nikki Sinclaire

on board there was a homing device that on a daily basis transmitted a purposely scrambled and cloaked signal. To make it harder to locate, each time, after transmitting for a few minutes, the beacon would shut down. The ship’s itinerary and flight plan were well documented and available for public review, so it made no sense to plant such a device to track the ship itself. It was simply not necessary. The device was targeting the location of one of his passengers. Someone on his ship, either knowingly or unknowingly, was being tracked and reasons for doing so were rarely honorable. Which one of his 1,200 charges was being targeted, he wondered. And, more importantly, why?
    As he walked into the shuttle bay, the smell of exhaust and the sound of the giant external bay doors locking shut alerted Captain Maverick that the shuttle bearing his uninvited guest had already docked. Before he could search the faces moving about, a distinguished-looking middle-aged man approached him with an extended hand.
    “You must be Captain Maverick. I am Marshall Troy Delaney.”
    “Marshall, welcome aboard. Your hail and order to stand down was most unusual. I don’t mean to be short, but what the hell is going on?”
    “Please accept my apologies for interrupting your flight, Captain. I would not have done so had it not been deemed necessary. I have reason to believe that an escaped convict is hiding aboard your ship.”
    Captain Maverick’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “What are we dealing with, Marshall? How dangerous is this person?”
    “Fortunately for all involved, I don’t believe he’s dangerous at all.” Delaney took out a picture of Derek Hart and showed it to the Captain. “He’s a white-collar criminal. Actually, at one point in his life he was a bit of a celebrity amongst the eggheads in the scientific community. Seems he’s some kind of a genius in the field of holography. Probably owns the patents to a good portion of the components used to design the holographic suites on this ship.
    “The guy is loaded, yet it wasn’t enough for him. Seems he programmed a Trojan horse into the higher-end home-use holographic chambers his company was selling. Customers would pay through the nose for one of his chambers, and innocently install them at home. The chamber’s AI would watch the occupants, determining by their actions when they would be gone for a length of time, communicate the fact to him and, having learned the home’s security codes, would unlock it when his cronies showed up to ransack it. Every job, in essence, was an inside job.”
    “If he was that smart, why did he bother with petty theft and breaking and entering? Why not something more challenging? I assume he didn’t do it for the money since it sounds like he already had plenty.”
    “That’s a good question that was never answered during the trial. Maybe he just wanted to experience power over his customers. Who knows? The point is that he was found guilty and computer crime being what it is these days, he and the moon are going to become very well acquainted during the next twenty years.”
    “Marshall, something has been going on that perhaps is related in some way to the search for your escaped convict. Since we left Earth several days ago, my Security Officer has detected several unauthorized transmissions over the galactic-net between our ship and Earth. As you can imagine, that in itself is not so strange. During my tenure as Captain of this vessel, I have encountered such transmissions before and relatively easily traced them back to their source. This time, however, the transmissions are untraceable. Whoever is riding piggyback on the ship’s communications network is cleverly hiding their location. My security people are very, very good, yet they are no closer to finding the source of the signals. In addition, a homing device has been activated and is intermittently issuing its signal. We are currently assuming, or at least hoping, that