116 Chaos.
Shi Lang hitched a ride on a freighter with the help of fellow Secret Division soldiers. They might be from different subdivisions but they all had one thing in common, their identities were secret yet they all had the same purpose, the rectification of scum from the forces and keeping them clean and integral.
The freighter was going to move through the region closer to the planet Shi Lang needed to be at and to get down on the planet, he needed to steal an emergency escape pod from the freighter. This was not going to be a simple thing for him to do. However, it was not impossible.
At the moment, Shi Lang was sitting on his knees inside the cargo hold of the ship. He was smuggled inside the cargo hold by the secret division members, just when the ship undocked with the spaceport bay it revealed a gap inside the docking point. Through that gap, Shi Lang got inside the ship.
After he got in, the docking point closed, and the ship corrected the air pressure inside. At this moment he was wearing a black spacesuit, this attire stuck to his body, with almost no weight, a helmet enabled with a HUD, and thermal sensors. Shi Lang crawled his way to the cargo bay using a small duct left by the manufacturer for the movement usage of the secret divisions.
This was a standard safety protocol, a hundred years ago, space pirates would sneak inside the passenger ships, they would hack the systems and hijack the ship. The manufacturers tried to overhaul the software but every now and then incidents would take place. A secret division head suggested this suggestion and within a month of implementation, the hijacking was reduced to zero.
Secret Division forces would use single pilot ships and dock with the hijacked ships. Those ships would go undetected and then similarly to Shi Lang, the forces will take action. Shi Lang raised his hand and began to use his communicator.
After entering the ship’s mainframe, he sneaked into the onboard surveillance network. This was a freighter but it was monitored by military personnel and robotic units. He needed to go undetected if he wanted to make use of the escape pod. So, he took notes of the surveillance routes and patrol timings.
Shi Lang sighed, “This is getting so difficult.”
After taking notes, he hacked into the robotic unit network and made it so that one of the units will trigger an alarm every ten seconds. The location of the units will stay random. He was going to raise chaos inside the freighter. The goal of this chaos was to force the control team to reboot the robotic units.
This reboot will take five minutes, after all, the whole ship would be guarded by only human forces. Shi Lang will have no trouble slipping past the web of humans patrols by exploiting the loopholes they left. The reboot was going to provide him cover for another motive.
…
Shi Lang made a touching gesture and at the holographic panel in front of him and Chaos began.
…
Inside the control room of the freighter all the people were sitting in front of their work panels monitoring the status of the sections they were responsible. Suddenly, a young man said, “Captain, we have code blue alarm triggered in the star board section, near the pantry.”
The captain was an old man, he pressed a button on the hand rest of his chair and said, “Patrol Unit thirty, search the are around Pantry, we might have uninvited guests on board.”
He has just stopped giving out the instructions when another alarm was triggered, this came from another section inside the freighter. The captain raised his brows and mobilized multiple teams. Soon, every robotic unit on the ship was blaring with sirens. The people had no idea what was going on.
The search reports also came back negative. They did not have any idea of what was going on with the robotic units. Old Captain said, “Private Sans, scan the mainframe for any bugs.”
Private Sans was the person responsible for maintaining the ships computer system. He replied, “I have already checked, Sir. The mainframe is clear just the robotic network has a glitch in the code.”
The captain asked, “What is the solution?” his voice was solemn.
“Sir, it can be fixed with a reboot. If I want to search the code manually then given the amount of data, it might take days. A reboot will only take five minutes.” replied the Private.
Captain sighed, and said, “If we choose the reboot, then the ship’s security will be compromised. However, if we do not, these alarms will make me go crazy. Well, go do what you must.”
Here the captain issued the permission to reboot the robotic units. Inside the Cargo hold, Shi Lang moved. He was aware that the ship had a no blind spot surveillance, so, he slipped in a code that will trigger the surveillance reboot as well. He moved quickly and quietly. The patrols had there hands full with searching the areas where the alarms were triggered.
Shi Lang moved quickly to the escape pod bay. This freighter was equipped with hundred escape pods, equal to the amount of people traveling on it. Shi Lang came inside the bay with ease and taking advantage of the fact that the ship was going under a reboot process. He hacked into the access console and got inside the escape pod.
He quickly bypassed the escape pod surveillance system to hide his presence, as he accessed the escape pod, the system will trigger a priority alarm. If someone checked the inside images they will find Shi Lang sitting in the pod and it will make things go south.
…
Private Sans did check the surveillance but due to the bypass committed by Shi Lang, he only found the pictures of an empty pod and discarded the alarm as a glitch. The reboot was complete and all systems were working in order.
After the scans were complete, Captain gave the order for the space jump, and there stop was going to be near the planet that Shi Lang intended to reach. Inside the escape pod, the youngster was able to hear every instruction given by the captain. He sneak inside the intra-comms.
The space jump lasted for five minutes and as soon as the ship exited the space jump sequence. Two escape pods were launched from the ship. The alarms on the screen displayed the information to the crew in the control room. Finally, the old captain lost his temper and said, “What the fuck is happening on my ship? Who can tell me, which bastard deserted us?”
Private Sans spoke up, “Sir, the escape pods are empty, it is the virus from earlier that is causing this. We need to get the ship inside a spaceport and conduct a proper diagnosis to reach the roots of this.”
The old man glared at him and said, “I thought you said, the reboot will fix this goddamn thing.”
Private Sans did not dare to answer back, the old captain said, “Make course to the nearest spaceport. And someone keep an eye on the pods. We need to salvage them later.”
…
Shi Lang did not know what fury his actions caused. He leaned back in the chair of the pod and waited to land on the planet. The escape pod looked like a pea, and it was equipped with a landing gear and a small engine to break the fall.
After slight turbulence, the pod entered the atmosphere and the first thing Shi Lang did after landing, was to contact his team. He got a hold of Hunk, and the person gave him a location. The place where Shi Lang had landed was on the other side of this planet. Upon confirming the coordinates, the youngster almost cursed himself for not taking this factor in account any sooner.
Shi Lang searched the map for the nearest Terran settlement and decided to steal a vehicle from there. That was the only way he can get to the coordinates to meet with his team. In his communication earlier, Hunk reported that the two hostages were alive. The enemy was trying to extract information from them and the people were being put through torture.
Shi Lang was angry about this and it gave him a sense of urgency, because when he was told that the enemy would give send them both to the healing pod after they were done torturing, he understood that things were not looking up for them.
Another thing that he was worried about was if the enemy decided to put them through any shameful methods, then the two people might be able to preserve the information they have, but their souls will break, thus he quickly rushed on foot to the nearest settlement. He was going to save them and kill the enemy at all costs.