It’s really sad when you’re listening to a disreputable Internet radio station just to hear your wife’s voice in one of the canned announcements. Drew Reinholt fiddled with his vTuner settings yet again, hoping yet again that it would connect with the Shepardsport Pirate Radio livestream. And it’s even sadder when you can’t.
Strictly speaking, there was no prohibition on the Slayton Field pilots listening to Shepardsport Pirate Radio, even in their offices when they were at work on their secondary astronaut specialties. But then Colonel Dyer knew better than give an order he knew would not be obeyed.
He pulled up the computer’s terminal and began doing some basic network tests. Although Drew wasn’t an IT specialist, or even an electrical engineer, he’d learned some basic network troubleshooting techniques over the years, especially back in the days when he was roaming the lunar surface with Dr. Schwartz.
He was able to ping the server, but only intermittently, which suggested that something was interfering with the transmission of packets. If there had been physical damage to the cables that ran alongside the ice train’s tracks, down to Coopersville and back north on Farside, it should’ve resulted in every IP address associated with Shepardsport simply disappearing from the Internet.
He recalled a long-ago leadership lecture about “rewarding intermittently” as a means of motivation. If someone were deliberately sabotaging Shepardsport’s connectivity, say with some kind of malware, might they allow just enough packets to go through to keep people trying to get through? Drew could think of several possible ways to create such an effect, although he knew he couldn’t describe them in sufficient detail to get IT to pay attention to him.
A tap on the door of his office brought him out of his ruminations. Drew looked up from his computer to find Peter Caudell standing there. “Hey, Drew, I know you’ve got family over at Shepardsport. Have you been having trouble making connections with them?”
“Damn skippy I have.” Drew knew he was being sharper than was politic with someone so senior, who’d done a hitch up here back in the days when the Roosa Barracks was just the moonbase. “Just this morning Brenda and I were going to FaceTime before she went on her air shift. Then it broke up and I wasn’t able to connect with her. I was hoping I could at least try to text her when we got back down, but by that time I couldn’t even get through on SMS.”
Peter nodded, concern drawing a furrow between his eyebrows. Even at his age he still had Scott Carpenter’s good looks — that was a geneset that aged well. “One of my clone-brothers over there has been having some problems. I’ve been checking in with him pretty regularly, trying to buck him up when things get particularly bad. Our last check-in should’ve been about four hours ago, and I haven’t been able to raise him at all.”
Drew nodded toward his computer with vTuner up. “Right now all I know is I can’t connect with Shepardsport Pirate Radio’s streaming service. I’ve been hesitant to contact IT about it because I don’t want to advertise that I listen to them. But I’m thinking it’s a lot more than just the digital radio stream getting cut off.” He looked straight into Peter’s eyes. “Maybe your word would have more weight than anything I could say.”