Deep

Chapter 92 The calm before... scratch that. The storm.

The next two days were again quiet. Our friend shadowed us at a constant hundred thousand kilometres.

I had a gnawing suspicion that something bad was going to happen soon. I had not seen hair nor hide of Bob for the last three days, since he manned the PIG grid. 

Today I got a text message via Bob's chat app. 

It read -It's too quiet.- 

I sent back -I think so too.- 

Just as I sent that off, all hell broke loose. Every PIG in the sensor array close to the initial intrusions activated, and it expanded outward from each contact in an arithmetic pattern. 

Dammit, I knew it was too quiet.

I was resting in my quarters at the time. I retrieved my carbine, and I raced to the bridge. While I was on my way, I got a call from Seki. 

'We have multiple crew sightings of something humanoid popping up all over the ship.' 

'Crap, is there any pattern to these blasted alarms?' I asked.

'Come again... Not... Receive...' My connection with Seki failed.

I arrived at the bridge and immediately called up Alice. 'Alice, any signs that these alerts are a glitch.' Alice was slow to respond.

'Please wait... checking systems... there are no... signs... of errors... in the system.' I lost connection with Alice, too.

I tried to get into contact with the Major next. My connection to him was just as bad as the connection to Alice.

'Yes... Captain...' The connection failed. 

Somehow, this thing had saturated ShipNet. With the size and capacity of Tama Maru's network, that was no easy feat.

I was desperately trying to reach the Major again when Bob showed up. 

'What the hell happened? I just lost my connection with the network.' 

I think we've been had. Bob, find me a pattern. Anything?

[Me?]

Bob, don't you have a before and after snapshot of ShipNet?

[Okay]. Bob pulled out another of his glowing items and set up a terminal right next to me and displayed a three-dimensional wireframe of the Tama Maru. [This is the network initially, and it progressed from zero to every PIGS activating within thirty seconds.]

Okay, show me where it doesn't have stuff going on. Highlight quiet areas.