Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 36

"I'll have to hold you up here, Nikain," one of the security troops said, blocking his path down one of the major arteries that spanned the length of the ship. "We're rotating prisoners through to get fed and have two groups crossing through now."

"Understood," Lucky said. He pretended to be engrossed in his own computer while his sensors recorded a procession of Eshquarians that were being led out from the starboard enlisted mess and back down the corridor that led to the main cargo bay. It didn't take long to figure out that these were who the cages were meant for.

"It's going to be tough to manage once we get the rest of them aboard," the troopers said once the last of the sullen Eshquarians had walked by.

"Any idea when that will be?" Lucky asked.

"They don't tell me anything. We're supposed to meet up with the other supply ships and take on prisoners, and then swap out command crews. After that, who knows? You can go on ahead."

"Thanks," Lucky said. "Try to enjoy the calm before the storm."

"Not likely," the trooper laughed and waved him on. Lucky had been careful to skirt out of range in case the other had wanted to try and give him a friendly pat. He'd not wanted to risk a field test of the force fields by having someone heavily armed discover he was an imposter.

Lucky moved quickly down to the aft magazine where he saw a tech team huddled around an open missile, arguing over the display on the computer they had hooked into it. He walked up and waited, wanting to overhear as much of the conversation as he could before they noticed him. Apparently, the ship carried a previous generation missile that they hadn't accounted for and the software patch they had wouldn't properly install.

"How many of these older missiles are aboard?" he finally asked, interrupting the group.

"Nineteen in total. Two are actually loaded into the launcher so once the full crew comes aboard, they'll need to be pulled back out so we can service them."

"And is the problem that the software change won't upload at all, or it won't integrate properly?"

"It uploads fine," another tech said. "Once it begins the parameter rewrite, it times out."

"Leave this one hooked up, and I'll take a look at it," Lucky said. "I don't want this problem holding the rest of you up. Move ahead with the others, and I'll let you know what I find."

"Suit yourself," the first tech said, walking off. The others gave him a little bit of turnover on what they'd tried before moving on to complete their own tasks. Once they were gone, and he was unobserved, Lucky interfaced directly with the computer via his nanochains and began downloading the contents to his onboard storage while simultaneously analyzing what the program was designed to do once it was uploaded.

The program was ridiculously simple and the issues they were having with it were also not especially difficult to figure out. Either they were bargain shopping for contractors on this project or these weren't actually qualified technicians. From what he could see, the patch would override the missile's sophisticated target prioritization and its counter-countermeasures, the latter being what it would employ to try and sneak in past a target's point defense and jammers. All the override did was apply a simple suppress command that was already part of the missile's operating system, but used only in test and troubleshooting.

The other part of the package being uploaded was for the command and control interface. It changed the encryption routines and syntax for any commands sent to the weapon after it had been launched. Lucky made sure both the encrypt/decrypt data was saved as well as the new command syntax. He then made the necessary change to the program so that the older missile would accept the change before exiting out of the computers and withdrawing his nanochains.

"I've fixed your problem," he said as he walked by, gesturing back to the still-open missile. "You can just use that computer to update the others."

"Thanks, Nikain."

Lucky started working his way back forward, recalculating his probabilities now that he'd been given new data points. The presence of Eshquarian prisoners made it unlikely these ships were being prepped for sale by a rogue intelligence agency. The changes to the missiles also indicated that there was a more specialized purpose these ships were being moved for, but nothing in the computer dump he'd just taken indicated what that might be.

"You about off-shift, Nikain?"

Lucky turned and saw that it was the same security trooper that had stopped him in the passageway before. He quickly sized him up and saw that the trooper was a little shorter than optimal but still within the acceptable margin of error for his mimic function to work. He'd exhausted what he could do as a tech supervisor. He needed to talk to someone inside those cages and to do that, he needed to be with the security team.

"Almost," Lucky answered. "I'm looking forward to getting something to eat and hitting the rack."

"You and me both. I've been walking for nearly—" that was all the trooper got out before Lucky closed the distance quickly and crushed his throat closed with a vice-like right hand. The trooper's eyes lit up in fear and confusion as he was lifted off the deck and carried down a side passage.

Lucky found that he was in an administrative section and the rooms off the passageway were unused offices. He picked one at random and dragged the guard inside, locking the hatch behind him. With a seemingly negligent hit from his left hand, he rendered the trooper unconscious, and then repeated the procedure he'd used on Nikain, his image morphing into the other person. The shoulders swelled out, the midsection pulled in, and the face changed to reflect the target while his nanochains penetrated the skull and stole everything of value from the neural implant.

There was no