"Virus Attack" by Frances Monro

Virus Attack

by

Che Monro 2003

Patricia McVeigh was in the starboard gym on level twelve of the Hudson Bay when the virus attack began. She was the junior scan tech on Delta shift and she was tired from a long day spent battling the computer manual and learning the interface of the system interface on her terminal.

The system wasn’t new, it was three and a half years old, an age as such things are reckoned. It was reinstalled on the orders the new Captain because the system that they had been using before - which was in fact more up date – was still awaiting official approved by the Admiralty for Fleet use. That hadn't bothered the old Captain, an experienced officer who understood how things worked, but it apparently bothered the new one. Of course Patricia had never met the Captain in person, she’d only heard the scuttlebutt reporting that he was an Admiral's nephew who couldn't tell his ass from his elbow.

Unknown to Patricia, at 1017 while she was in the gym for her regulation daily exercise period David Wong, an accountant attached to the audit team aboard the Hudson Bay opened an email that he had received from an individual identified only as "Monkee Monger". Although the shipboard computer systems contained a firewall and standard virus protection hardware and software, by re-installing an old version of the Operating System the Chief System's Officer had re-introduced vulnerabilities into the system which were well known to virus creators.

When David Wong opened the bogus email message the virus entered the Hudson Bay's systems and began to replicate itself, spreading from system to system throughout the ship. Soon, whether intentionally or as a result of a programming error, the virus software began to interfere with the operation of the ship management software, consuming processing resources, slowing response times and causing errors. One by one the ship's systems became slow to respod, and to crash or lock up despite the increasingly frantic efforts of the engineers and systems officers to regain control of their terminals.

In the course of the attack the virus was transmitted to 19 other vessels using the Hudson Bay's communications array. All of these ships had more up to date software which defeated the virus.

At 1036 Ensign McVeigh was using an exercise machine when there was a sound of a great engine running down. In fact the engines of the Hudson Bay had not failed - they were not in use or the results of the virus attack could have been much worse - the sound was that of the ventilation fans of the ship's air circulation system running down to a halt, one by one. The ship's life support system had failed. A minute later the lights went out, replaced by emergency lighting, turning the gym into a dim, twilight space.

Patricia ended her exercise session early and stepped out into the corridor, which was full of other off duty crew members who congregated in the corridors speculating about what was happening. Through this milling crowd those on duty strode or ran as they tried to cope with increasingly urgent problems. There was no announcement over the ship's internal communication system – It had been one of the first systems to brought down by the virus.

At 1043, feeling increasingly anxious, Ensign McVeigh made her way to her cabin, a tiny two bunk cubicle that she shared with another ensign who was on duty. She took a shower, but at 1051 the emergency lights failed - Not because the generators or batteries were inoperable, but because the virus had brought down the power control system. The power for the automatic doors failed with the backup power system. Patricia got out of the shower and located a hand torch to provide light in the  pitch blackness of the tiny cabin. It may be that she attempted to open the door or that she shouted to attract the attention of those outside, but if so she failed to do so because the airtight hatch - designed to hold against explosive decompression if the hull was breached - was practically soundproof.

She did not attempt to use the emergency controls to open the door, she may not have have known how since she had only been on the ship for three months and the drills that she had taken part in had not included such a complete power failure. In theory she had read about the emergency systems in the cabin’s manual when she was first assigned aboard the ship.

By 1100 hours a scratch communications system was more or less in place, runners with hand torches carrying messages to the most critical command locations scattered around the giant ship. The decision was taken to evacuate the ship using shuttles and life pods to ferry crewmembers across to L5 Station while a skeleton crew attempted to restart the ship's life support and power systems. By about 1130 crew members began directing those in the corridors to their evacuation stations and some time after 1200 a chamber-by-chamber search was begun for crew members unaccounted for aboard the Hudson Bay.

At some point Ensign McVeigh gave up trying to leave her cabin and lay down on her bunk to rest. Tired from a long duty shift and her exercise session and perhaps groggy from the increasingly stuffy atmosphere in the small cubical she fell asleep while she waited for power to be restored of for rescuers to come. This might seem like a mistake on her part, but it should be remembered that a person at rest uses less oxygen than one in action, and those trapped crew-members who gave in to panic used up their air that much faster.

As the air became increasingly oxygen depleted the cabin's combination smoke, pressure and oxygen alarm should have gone off. This self contained unit was unaffected by the virus because it's only connection to the ship's network was a simple write only interface designed to alert the alarm monitoring software of an emergency. However, the alarm failed because there was no power and it's backup battery was dead, as were the batteries in around ten percent of all the alarms on board the Hudson Bay. Later investigation revealed that the weekly inspections mandated in the ship's operating procedures manual had not been carried out.

At some time between 1400 to 1500 hours Patricia McVeigh died of asphyxiation. 

It took until nearly 1800 hours for the evacuation and search of the Hudson Bay to be completed. By the end of the search all crew members involved were wearing space suits which hampered their movements and made using controls difficult. Of 1836 crew members aboard the Hudson Bay, 1821 were evacuated safely. 12 died, and 3 sustained injuries. It took 17 hours to bring the ships essential systems back online and 3 days for all trace of the virus to be eliminated from the  systems and a more up to date operating system to be reinstalled.

In the aftermath of the virus attack a Captains Board of Enquiry stripped Captain Mitchell of his rank and gave him a dishonourable discharge from the Space Service. The Chief Systems officer, the Occupational Health and Safety Officer and Chief Engineer were also demoted. David Wong was reprimanded, but by this time he had already left the service. An Internal investigation into the attack recommended further disciplinary actions, and mandated changes to the ship's Operations Manual, increasing this document's length to well over 900 pages. The conclusion to the investigation board's report stated that "the culture of the Space Service must change if vessels are to be operated safely."

In response to public pressure an independent inquiry found that criminal charges should be laid against Captain Mitchell and other senior officers of the Hudson Bay. To date this has not taken place. The Judge Advocate General's department investigated the incident and the possibility of laying charges against David Wong and "Monkee Monger", but in the end the action was dropped because of the difficulty in establishing negligence or deliberate transmission of the virus had occurred. The report noted that because of the minor status of Ms Monger no prosecution was likely to succeed even if it could be shown that she had knowingly sent the message containing the viral software, or that it had come from her email account at all. To date the creator of the virus that struck the Hudson Bay remains unknown.

President Murtagh of the Earth Federation stated that "Although the tragic loss of life aboard the Hudson Bay was regrettable, still the actions of the crew in facilitating a safe and speedy evacuation of the vessel was in the highest tradition of the Federation Space Service. Without their dutiful actions the death toll might have been much higher."

None of which helped Ensign Patricia McVeigh, or the 11 other men and women who died as a result of the virus attack on the Hudson Bay.