Kilo-61 (Damned of the 2/19th Book 19)- Ongoing

BS, Lies, and SIGMA

The Egg - WAN Sysop Control Area
Site Lima-One-Nine-Echo-Three
Bighorn National Forest
Central Wyoming
United States of America
6 April, 2002
2000 Hours

Donaldson slid the chair over next to me, pulling his helmet off and hanging it on the back of the chair before sitting down. The Lieutenant did the same, sitting on the other side of Paige, who was sitting close to me. Heather put her hands on the back of my chair. Behind us Kincaid stood in the doorway to the cage, the gas flame of the ignitor an evil hiss that was only the sound for a long moment.

"Jesus," The LT said when she took one look at the screen.

"Doesn't care about Special Weapons," Paige said. "Only the Arch-Angel Michael does." I flashed her a steel grin and went back to staring at the screen.

"Is this accurate, Corporal?" Donaldson asked, clenching his hands and staring at the screen.

"Without taking a physical inventory, it's accurate as far as I know it," I told them.

"This stuff is just sitting here, all unguarded?" The LT asked. Her voice sounded faintly sick.

"Unguarded?" I laughed. "Ma'am, just knowing about this place is better protection than goddamn ICBM silos. Then you'd have to get inside. Then you'd have to access the computer system. Then you'd have to access the Event Systems. Then you'd have to physically access the Event Stores. Beyond that, I can guarantee you that all of this stuff is in storage mode in a way you've never seen," I waved my hand. "There's maybe a handful of people alive who knows how to bring that kind of stuff up to usability, a handful that knows about this stuff, and of both handfuls there's probably a thin minority who knows what of this is all about. Everyone else only knows bits and pieces. I'm one of that narrow handful who can refurbish, repair, reassemble, arm, and utilize this equipment as well as can access it and knows about these sites."

I tapped the screen. "I have no doubt that this equipment is sitting there, but tell me what the chances are that someone who gets inside of here is going to be able to access this, much less use it?"

The LT shook her head.

"Is this going to all be like this?" The LT asked.

"If you're lucky, this is all it will be like," Donaldson told her.

My terminal beeped and I turned my attention back to my terminal.

Incoming Response Request: 011.021.211.039:14.63.103.255:05AE31F
REJECTING
Override Authority Received
CHECKSUM ERROR
Override Authority Rejected

I tapped the screen. "It took thirty five minutes for someone to realize that this site has dropped off the network," I stared at the IP number. "That's DoD Intel Informations, off the old standard. It's also low level, probably on the original MILNET nodes."

"So what does that mean?" The LT asked.

"It means that it preceded the internet, and is probably the military side of the original ARPNET," Paige said.

"When I was in college I was told that ARPNET was never hooked into the silos and all that," The LT said.

That made me laugh as Paige spoke, "It wasn't, the military developed their own hardened system that couldn't be easily accessed without the proper equipment."

I leaned over and tapped what looked like a network switching box. "Looks like your standard network cabling box, right?"

The LT nodded.

"It's not. It's a proprietary encryption system that works in the token ring to ensure that only authorized traffic reaches this system and encodes everything for transmission, with then stunning 16 bit encryption, on short packet data that is ignored by any system that doesn't have one of these boxes."