The man who had gone to get the tablet returned only seconds later and placed the device on the table.
"This device came with a security scanner. I have set it to look for anything that is not in our coding language and then locked the device to read-only memory, so nothing on it can be altered without destroying the device." He explained.
Nico placed a plain holographic emitter, the sort used for watching movies, on top of the device, and Max again sensed confusion from everyone in the room.
"I am going to guess that Flat Space technology is not part of your developmental path. Don't worry about it. It's a storage solution and nearly impossible to explain in the time that we have available." Nico told them while the device beeped rapidly as it scanned her emitter.
[0 Percent Compliant. Alien device detected. Scanning cancelled.] The device informed them, and Nico put the emitter away.
"Alright, we know it works now. Who has a communicator on them or something similar with the ability to send data back and forth between devices or receive messages from the ship?" Nico asked.
The leader of the group confidently placed his personal tablet on the device, thinking that this was a good way to show their sincerity and assure others they met that they were not a threat.
He had hope right up until the device began to beep in the same negative tone that it used on Nico's projector.
[4 Percent Foreign Code detected. Unknown Origin. Suspected Alien technology intrusion.]
The man stared at his tablet as if it was a poisonous snake, and moved it to the side, then gestured for another member to place theirs on top.
"Perhaps it is from an application?" He asked hopefully while the device scanned another communicator.
[4 Percent Foreign Code detected. Attempt to alter Data not permitted in Read Only mode. Please Manually deactivate security protections.]
"Did my communicator just try to hack the scanner?" The team member asked in horror while a technician from the Co-Operative ship scanned the offending device.
"There, I found it. I set the scanner to detect all changes to its code and lock them out. Even friendly changes should be detected but look here. That isn't our code." The technician informed the leader.
"I don't know what to say. It seems that we are indeed a cursed vessel and have been infecting everyone that we meet." The Co-Operative leader admitted, close to tears, as he realized that they would not find any refuge here and would be lucky to leave with their lives.
It was even their own scanning that did them in.
"It's not hopeless. Now that you have isolated the virus, you should be able to detect and eliminate it from all your devices. You just need to prevent them from communicating with each other until everything is clean, so the virus doesn't spread back to the cleaned systems." Nico informed them.
"Even after learning that we are infected, you will still help us?" The leader asked in shock.
"I won't lie to you. We knew you were infected before we ever set foot on the ship. The moment your ship's computer made contact with the shuttle to give navigation data for the docking, your computer attempted to infect our systems. We identified and isolated it before we left the ship, but you had to see it for yourselves and not take our words as an accusation of intentionally marking targets for the Arisen." Max agreed.
That thought was even more horrifying for them all, and Max began to relax. There wasn't anyone on this ship who had any thoughts of working with the Arisen, not even a hint of guilt when Max informed them of the status of their ship.
The technicians began to scramble to come up with a method to cleanse everything. The obvious answer was a factory reset, but that might not clean the devices, and some of the data they had was irreplaceable now that their homeworlds were gone.r
The problem was that while they had identified the alien code, they didn't have an antivirus program that would work against it yet, and neither did anyone else, as far as they knew.
There might be some species that could defend against it, and that might be why they were never attacked, because the Arisen Army couldn't gather data about their military capabilities from compromised computer systems, but the Co-Operative hadn't been in contact with them.
They passed the message to the other ships using a brand new device with reception turned off, and then everyone with the technical knowledge on the small vessel got to work together on fixing the issue.
"I'm sorry about this. Maybe we should put off our talks for a while?" The leader suggested to Max.
"That's fine. We can wait here until your systems are cleansed. Subcommander Nico is a genius with that sort of thing, and she is also working on the issue, so I have hope that it shouldn't take more than a day or two.
It's better that we don't make multiple trips and risk accidentally spreading the virus back to other computer systems, so I do hope that you aren't too put out by having guests." Max replied nonchalantly.
He would let them sweat for a while before he offered them the deal that he had intended from the start. To discard their vessels now that he had confirmed that there were no traitors in their midst, at least on this ship, and send them to live aboard Absolution, where they could start over and share their culture with dozens of other species that they had never met before.
They could be rid of the stigma that had followed them all over this region of space, and Absolution could gain a few more members of advanced species who might have unique ideas which could help the World Ship.
Their vessels were small, but they had put a lot of effort into the sustainability of their lifestyles, and even with their inefficient replication technology, they were getting by quite well as a group.
The next few hours passed in relative silence as the Koleska and the Co-Operative members discussed how things had been going in the war, current events, and general news from around the region.
Then finally, there was good news.
"Boss, I have reverse-engineered the virus. If I spread it in this form, it should destroy and convert the old virus, stopping transmission of coordinates to the Arisen and automatically purging any infected system that it comes across." Nico informed the room.
"So, basically a retrovirus, as you would use on a living being?" One of the software specialists asked.
"More or less. It's much easier than just purging the systems in question, and this version can be erased at will, so you can remove it entirely from various systems but still keep it active on your main system so that you won't be reinfected by interacting with others." Nico agreed.
"How long will it take to spread it through our computers?" The group leader asked.
"One infected navigation confirmation message from our shuttle should do it. And then you would just have to message the ship computers with every device onboard to finish the process." Nico confirmed.
"That should be easy. We have a wireless network. Usually, everything is connected to that, so we can connect to the data network." The Commander replied with a smile.
Max resisted the urge to facepalm as he looked through their networks using Nico's skill. They were using a wireless technology that was at least a millennia outdated by Human standards, and all of the networks were open, with no authentication or passwords needed. Forget firewalls, they had zero defences against anything, and Max wondered how Nico had avoided laughing at them as she had searched through their computer systems earlier in the day.
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