Fall of Reach - Cortana Hack 2

She linked to the UNSC personnel and planning database on Reach. The ONI AI there, Beowulf, knew her . . . and knew not to let her in. Beowulf was thorough, methodical, and paranoid; in her own way, Cortana couldn’t help but like him. But compared with her code-cracking skills, he might as well have been an accounting program.

Cortana sent a rapid series of queries into the network node that processed housing transfer requests. A normally quiet node—she overloaded it with a billion different pings per minute. The network attempted to recover and reconfigure, causing all nodes to lag, including node seventeen personnel records. She stepped in and inserted a spike wedge, a subroutine that looked like a normal incoming signal, but bounced any handshake protocol.

She slipped in.

The Colonel’s CSV was impressive. He had survived three battles with the Covenant. Early in the war, he received a promotion and volunteered for a dozen black ops. For the last few years, however, his efforts had focused on political maneuvers rather than battlefield tactics. He had filed several requests for increased funding for his Special Warfare projects.

No wonder he wanted the Master Chief gone. The Spartan IIs and MJOLNIR were his direct competition. Worse, they were succeeding where he failed.

At best, Ackerson’s actions were treason. But Cortana wasn’t about to reveal all this to the ONI oversight committee. Despite the Colonel’s methods, the UNSC still needed him—and his SpecWar specialists—in the war. Justice, however, would still be meted out. From the ONI database, she masqueraded as a routine credit check and entered the Colonel’s bank account—to which she wired a substantial amount to a brothel on Gilgamesh. She made sure the bank queries sent to confirm the transaction were copied to his home immediately. Colonel Ackerson was a married man . . . and his wife should be there to receive them.

She cut into his personal E-mail and sent a carefully crafted message—requesting reassignment to a forward area—to personnel. Finally, she inserted a “ghost” record, an electronic footprint that identified the source of the alterations: Ackerson’s personal-computer pad. By the time Ackerson was done untangling all of that, he’d be reassigned to field duty . . . and get back to fighting the Covenant where he belonged.