Some more ideas what could have happened just before the first alarm is raised... maybe a little bit too selfish, but I want to hear your opinion on it. If there is something Cortana is good at, its using the software defined radios of the Stargazer... 
Deception
Like most Fenspace conventions before SerenityCon was present in two different universes.
In the physical world a huge number of Fen of all kinds were running around, having a good time and discussion more or less important things.
The second part of SerenityCon was happening in cyberspace. Even network specialists from Earth would never have been able to comprehend the amount and complexity of communication between the hundreds and hundreds of AI equipped crafts, the adhoc networks, virtual servers and remote controlled avatars. Some of it were running with the same speed as the physical world, other parts were running at an accelerated timeframe to keep the participants from being bored.
Cortana was enjoying her time and listening to the local traffic. On the right two groups of AIs were playing a large game of tower defense with some of the webservers of the convention, while others were discussing, categorizing and analyzing the most recent discussions of the other Fen. There was even a small gambling place where AIs were betting cpu power on things like important discussion results, number of biomods per minute on a certain cafeteria and harmonic resonance frequencies of large groups of Fen having a party.
It was the fifth day of the Convention and the proportion of work to partying was slowly sliding more and more to the parties. Not everyone was happy with the things happening in the last year, but at least most Fen were having a good time. Later this hour there was an announcement about a large scale core war hacking contest and Cortana was already looking forward to see it. Hacking was not really her area of interest, but it was always fun to watch.
Suddenly Cortanas virtual avatar blinked and looked around, she had the feeling something strange was going on.
Concentrating on the input from the Stargazers radios, Cortana finally found the source of her strange ‘feeling’.
“Hey you little guy, what is wrong with you” she murmured and looked more closely to the weak signal of one of the sensor satellites of the Ganymede network.
“Perfect encoding, all checksums right, frequency as expected, nothing alarming on your data... but why do I think you are a little drunk today?” she whispered while accelerating her timeframe as much as she could.
All analyzer subroutines told her that the signal was perfect as ever, but Cortana was sure that her standard software was wrong this time. She began comparing it carefully with the data she recorded when getting into Ganymede orbit and frowned slightly.
The signal had gained some minor features it had not some days ago, and Cortana was pretty sure that changes like this were not just a matter of wear.
“I need some insight from someone with a different perspective” she thought and browsed through the attendance list of the convention.
“Ah, yes” she acknowledged, “you are perfect...” when she finally found the entry she was looking for. If there was one ship you could bet on that it was NOT parking on the ground, it was the Blackbird call Magnificent Midnight.
“Cortana of the Stargazer to Magnificent Midnight, I think we are in trouble and I need your help.” With a few short sentences she described her the funny features of one of the sensor satellites of Ganymede. “Please do a passive scan on the frequency of the sensor network and send me all results you got in an encrypted reply... and please hurry, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Cortana wrapped the message in a OGJ encryption code and send out a wide beam data package into the sky above Ganymede. The Midnight would be somewhere up there and would hopefully reply soon.
The next 30 seconds were the hardest waiting time Cortana had ever experienced.
“Midnight to Cortana... result of scan attached on message. Will do a quick flyby of the satellite. Expect another message in three minutes” said the response from the Blackbird.
“If in need for recon data, ask a spy plane” murmured Cortana with a smile and opened the attachment to correlate the two sets of data... and nearly froze in shock.
She stared on the data for nearly a second, then ran everything through her calculations a second time... and a third time, but the results stayed the same.
She could hear 15 sensor satellites above the Stargazer in the sky, happily sending small updates on the gathered data. But when she combined her data with the package from the Magnificent Midnight there were only five point sources in the sky, each of them sending the data of three sensor satellites... and each of them in a totally wrong position.
Cortanas ‘view’ focused back into the sky as she thought about the implications what she had discovered in the last minute.
“Either some joker managed to draw fifteen sensor satellites to different places, glued them together in groups of three and made sure neither he was seen by the satellites nor they noticed the change in position.... or someone has replaced these fifteen satellites. Which means someone can control what Ganymede orbital watch can see on its screens... or what it cannot see.”
Which meant that anything could be up there... from a Professor sponsored weapon of mass amusement to a fast asteroid style kinetic weapon. For another second she thought about sending out a clear alarm message to anyone in range, but then decided otherwise. Starting a mass panic would be more counterproductive than anything else.
She slowed herself down to realtime speed and connected to the local Operation Great Justice office, demanding a priority line to the head officer. If this one would decide that she abused her OGJ access codewords she and maybe Cathy would be in trouble... but better in trouble than being wrong about this.
“OGJ office, head officer. What can I do for you.... Cortana” a bored voice acknowledged her request.
‘Ahh, the poor guy who has to stay in the office while the rest of Fenspace is partying’ she thought.
“Here is Cortana from the Stargazer... I just discovered together with the Magnificent Midnight that someone seems to have replaced parts of the Ganymede sensor network with their own system. Someone else is controlling what we see or NOT see in the sky above the Convention.”
On a subchannel she was sending some 3D pictures showing the results of measurement of Magnificent Midnight and herself and the resulting positions of the sensor sources... and their proposed positions.
“Oh...” she heard through her radio connection, but nothing else was coming out of it for a perceived eternity. After ten seconds she decided to grab the initiative again.
“Yes I know, maybe its nothing, maybe we have hours of time until something happens... and maybe IN THIS MOMENT there is a kinetic kill vehicle incoming on your office... and the first thing you will know about it is the knocking on your damned roof!”
Finally she heard some hectic action on the other side of the connection.
“I understand, we are raising an alarm... stay in this radio connection and inform us about new results... we will...”
The second radio began signaling an incoming burst transmission from the Magnificent Midnight.
“Midnight to Cortana... bad news attached... more data soon.”
Cortana looked into the attached data and sighed. “OGJ office... I have more bad news for you from the Magnificent Midnight...”
Deception
Like most Fenspace conventions before SerenityCon was present in two different universes.
In the physical world a huge number of Fen of all kinds were running around, having a good time and discussion more or less important things.
The second part of SerenityCon was happening in cyberspace. Even network specialists from Earth would never have been able to comprehend the amount and complexity of communication between the hundreds and hundreds of AI equipped crafts, the adhoc networks, virtual servers and remote controlled avatars. Some of it were running with the same speed as the physical world, other parts were running at an accelerated timeframe to keep the participants from being bored.
Cortana was enjoying her time and listening to the local traffic. On the right two groups of AIs were playing a large game of tower defense with some of the webservers of the convention, while others were discussing, categorizing and analyzing the most recent discussions of the other Fen. There was even a small gambling place where AIs were betting cpu power on things like important discussion results, number of biomods per minute on a certain cafeteria and harmonic resonance frequencies of large groups of Fen having a party.
It was the fifth day of the Convention and the proportion of work to partying was slowly sliding more and more to the parties. Not everyone was happy with the things happening in the last year, but at least most Fen were having a good time. Later this hour there was an announcement about a large scale core war hacking contest and Cortana was already looking forward to see it. Hacking was not really her area of interest, but it was always fun to watch.
Suddenly Cortanas virtual avatar blinked and looked around, she had the feeling something strange was going on.
Concentrating on the input from the Stargazers radios, Cortana finally found the source of her strange ‘feeling’.
“Hey you little guy, what is wrong with you” she murmured and looked more closely to the weak signal of one of the sensor satellites of the Ganymede network.
“Perfect encoding, all checksums right, frequency as expected, nothing alarming on your data... but why do I think you are a little drunk today?” she whispered while accelerating her timeframe as much as she could.
All analyzer subroutines told her that the signal was perfect as ever, but Cortana was sure that her standard software was wrong this time. She began comparing it carefully with the data she recorded when getting into Ganymede orbit and frowned slightly.
The signal had gained some minor features it had not some days ago, and Cortana was pretty sure that changes like this were not just a matter of wear.
“I need some insight from someone with a different perspective” she thought and browsed through the attendance list of the convention.
“Ah, yes” she acknowledged, “you are perfect...” when she finally found the entry she was looking for. If there was one ship you could bet on that it was NOT parking on the ground, it was the Blackbird call Magnificent Midnight.
“Cortana of the Stargazer to Magnificent Midnight, I think we are in trouble and I need your help.” With a few short sentences she described her the funny features of one of the sensor satellites of Ganymede. “Please do a passive scan on the frequency of the sensor network and send me all results you got in an encrypted reply... and please hurry, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Cortana wrapped the message in a OGJ encryption code and send out a wide beam data package into the sky above Ganymede. The Midnight would be somewhere up there and would hopefully reply soon.
The next 30 seconds were the hardest waiting time Cortana had ever experienced.
“Midnight to Cortana... result of scan attached on message. Will do a quick flyby of the satellite. Expect another message in three minutes” said the response from the Blackbird.
“If in need for recon data, ask a spy plane” murmured Cortana with a smile and opened the attachment to correlate the two sets of data... and nearly froze in shock.
She stared on the data for nearly a second, then ran everything through her calculations a second time... and a third time, but the results stayed the same.
She could hear 15 sensor satellites above the Stargazer in the sky, happily sending small updates on the gathered data. But when she combined her data with the package from the Magnificent Midnight there were only five point sources in the sky, each of them sending the data of three sensor satellites... and each of them in a totally wrong position.
Cortanas ‘view’ focused back into the sky as she thought about the implications what she had discovered in the last minute.
“Either some joker managed to draw fifteen sensor satellites to different places, glued them together in groups of three and made sure neither he was seen by the satellites nor they noticed the change in position.... or someone has replaced these fifteen satellites. Which means someone can control what Ganymede orbital watch can see on its screens... or what it cannot see.”
Which meant that anything could be up there... from a Professor sponsored weapon of mass amusement to a fast asteroid style kinetic weapon. For another second she thought about sending out a clear alarm message to anyone in range, but then decided otherwise. Starting a mass panic would be more counterproductive than anything else.
She slowed herself down to realtime speed and connected to the local Operation Great Justice office, demanding a priority line to the head officer. If this one would decide that she abused her OGJ access codewords she and maybe Cathy would be in trouble... but better in trouble than being wrong about this.
“OGJ office, head officer. What can I do for you.... Cortana” a bored voice acknowledged her request.
‘Ahh, the poor guy who has to stay in the office while the rest of Fenspace is partying’ she thought.
“Here is Cortana from the Stargazer... I just discovered together with the Magnificent Midnight that someone seems to have replaced parts of the Ganymede sensor network with their own system. Someone else is controlling what we see or NOT see in the sky above the Convention.”
On a subchannel she was sending some 3D pictures showing the results of measurement of Magnificent Midnight and herself and the resulting positions of the sensor sources... and their proposed positions.
“Oh...” she heard through her radio connection, but nothing else was coming out of it for a perceived eternity. After ten seconds she decided to grab the initiative again.
“Yes I know, maybe its nothing, maybe we have hours of time until something happens... and maybe IN THIS MOMENT there is a kinetic kill vehicle incoming on your office... and the first thing you will know about it is the knocking on your damned roof!”
Finally she heard some hectic action on the other side of the connection.
“I understand, we are raising an alarm... stay in this radio connection and inform us about new results... we will...”
The second radio began signaling an incoming burst transmission from the Magnificent Midnight.
“Midnight to Cortana... bad news attached... more data soon.”
Cortana looked into the attached data and sighed. “OGJ office... I have more bad news for you from the Magnificent Midnight...”