A Wish the Heart Makes: Fornever in Blue Genes

by Tigger

Chapter 22: A New Woman

An obviously exhausted Mandy looked up from her work station
as Cat Donovan entered the room.  "You paged me, Mandy?" she
asked as she swung her long frame into a nearby chair.

The Big Cat looked as tired as she felt, Mandy thought
blearily.  Neither of them had gotten more than 3 hours sleep
in the fifty plus hours since the attack that had resulted in
Bob's death - Cat had probably gotten considerably less than
that.

She sighed softly and forced her leaden brain to focus.  "Yes. 
I know what they got when they hit us."

"I thought we already knew all that," Cat retorted. 
"Everything Bob had done since the moment you pointed him at
that dual gene solution, which gives them everything," she
said wearily, only to catch the peculiar look on Mandy's face. 
"Didn't they?"

Mandy chuckled.  "You'd certainly think so to look at the file
directories.  Almost all of Bob's Project-coded files show
recent updates, and most of them are dated the day of the
attack."

Cat sagged back into her seat.  "So, why did you call me?"

"Because the updates are bogus.  Bob was evidently playing
games with the system."

"Boss, I am one tired trooper just now, okay?  My head is
running too slow for these games.  Spell it out for me, in
easy words, if you can manage it."

"Right.  Look, I am as surprised as anyone because Bob always
pretended he hated computers and refused to have anything more
to do with them than he absolutely had to, but I guess he's
picked up a few tricks in his years with me, and *this* one is
a dilly.  Okay, after I checked the files still in the main
core, I went back and pulled out our recent backups and tried
to see what had changed and basically, it was everything. 
Scared the hell out of me.  But then, I realized that the
listed files sizes of a few key files I looked at had not
changed, even though their dates had changed."

"Well, small changes don't always change the listed file size
all that much . . . not when you are dealing gigameg files,
Mandy.  Even I know that."

"True enough, but then I noticed that none of Bob's files had
changed size . . . not even the ones that weren't all that
large, so I started running bit-by-bit file comparisons using
the files listed in the main core and any available backups. 
Guess what?  None of Bob's have changed since my own
transition.  The sly old dog has been putting up copies of his
old, unaltered files into the main so the date in the
directory would change.  Obviously, he didn't trust our new
and improved security system after the original system
compromise."

Cat thought about that, and then looked at Mandy.  "But,
Mandy, he said he'd worked out a fix he wanted to test. 
Hell," she said pointing at two amber bottles on Mandy's desk,
"he was ready to test the fix.  I don't understand much of
what goes on here, but I do know there's no way he could have
done something like that without computer support."

Mandy sighed and pushed away from her desk.  "Of course he
needed computer support, and he had it.  That lash up he
insisted we put into his lab was as powerful as the main
system for the rest of the compound.  We justified that
expenditure for controlling the transitions.  It was
independent of the main system, so any load on that system
would not slow the monitoring and control functions for the
transition, but if the med system went down, we could use the
main system as backup."

"So you think he was doing his work on his lab computer, and
not updating the main system?"

"Only answer that fits the data, Cat.  Problem is we don't
know any of the details of what he discovered.  We just know
he thought he had discovered the answer to our problem.  Well,
at least that means the bad guys don't know his solution,
either.  They killed their chance at getting their answers
when the shot that killed Bob took out his computer system,
too."

"Wait-a-minute!  You said you used backups to find out what
Bob was doing.  Don't they back up the med system?"

Mandy considered that. "I am sure they do, but the "they" in
that case were Bob's folks because we included backup
capability in his system, too.  We figured anything he had was
just too important to miss backing up.  The question is, Cat,
is where the hell are the backups?"

"We've turned that place upside down, Boss, and we haven't
found a thing.  Looks like the opposition might have won after
all."

"Noooooo," Mandy replied speculatively.  "Bob knew that
backups are kept off site when possible and he knew why.  If
he made a conscious decision to keep his data secure from the
main system, he'd have kept the backups somewhere else, too."

"I'll get a team on it, Boss.  There can't be too many places
he'd consider safe enough for that kind of data."

"Okay," Mandy agreed.  "I just wish there was more we could do
at this point.  I am exhausted, pissed off and feeling
helpless, Cat, and I really, really hate it."

"Join the club, sister.  Why don't you get a few hours of down
time?  I will hit the rack myself as soon as I get Davies on
this backup thing."

"Dammit, Cat!" shouted a suddenly furious Mandy.  "It's been
almost three days since they hit us, and we still aren't any
closer to finding Morrie!  How the hell can I just go to bed? 
How the hell can *you* just go to bed?"

"Mandy?" cut in Cat in a dangerously quiet voice.  "She was
mine, too, okay?  And I am the one who assigned her to Project
Mandy, so I understand what you're feeling.  But the bottom
line is that you *will* go rest, as will I, because we won't
be any damned good to anyone, least of all Morag, if we are
too damned tired to think clearly when the time calls for it."

She started to respond, but caught the look in Cat's eyes and
came up short.  "Sorry, Cat.  That was uncalled for, and you
are right."

"S'okay.  C'mere, Mandy," Cat ordered.  

Mandy moved toward the bigger woman slowly, only to find
herself enveloped in a strong embrace.  Instinctively, Mandy
brought her arms up around Cat's waist and held on for dear
life as the tears she'd kept bottled up inside for more than
two days finally burst free.

~--------------~

"What I don't understand, Leader, is why we just don't destroy
the BioCybernetics compound with a bomb or something," Freuda
said.  "We know we can do what we set out to do, and if their
capability to undo our work is a hazard to us, a low order
nuclear weapon will solve that problem permanently.  Why do we
need to attempt this covert mission to infiltrate
BioCybernetics and kill Donovan and Sorenson?"

"Because it would call too much attention to them and their
work.  Sorenson is too smart not to have his critical data
mirrored at other, unknown sites.  The first politico who
could convince the public what we'd done to him will likely
activate whatever plan he and Jacobs have hatched, and all
their, or rather *our* secrets would become public.  And very
likely countered, too."

"It's still very risky," Freuda warned.

"The greater the risk, the greater the reward.  In this case,
the reward would be BioCybernetics - with all their secrets
and technologies intact.  Think of what we could do with all
of that, Freuda."

"So, you are determined to go through with this?"

"Of course.  Unless the required data isn't in the stolen data
core?"

"It's there.  West even updated the file when he discovered
his solution to the survivability problem.  The day he died,
in fact."

"Very well, prepare the transition treatment.  I will be here,
in the flesh, in two hours."

"Everything will be ready, Leader."