Spruance Del Curtin was sitting in the module lounge, struggling with the latest problem for statistics class. Now that Dr. Doorne had selected him as a research assistant for her special project, he was leery of asking her for help. Not just because she might think he wasn’t up to the job, but because the rest of the class might think she was giving him special help.
He was concentrating so hard he only halfway heard someone calling his name. Just another distraction to shut out, like the daughter of one of the other Expulsees sitting on the far side of the lounge and pretending to study on her laptop while she watched a video on her phone.
And then a hand interposed itself between Sprue’s eyes and his laptop screen. Sprue looked up, straight into the bright blue eyes of Juss Forsythe. “Uh, hi.”
Juss’s lips curled upward, not the big grin of a Shep in Smilin’ Al mode, but still a real, friendly smile, not that forced thing some people used when they were putting a good face on something unpleasant. “Spence tells me I should talk to you about the network problems.”
“Yup.” Sprue’s cheeks grew warm and he hoped that his face wasn’t betraying him. “Is IT still proceeding on the assumption that we’re dealing with a DDOS attack?”
“As far as I know. I don’t work that closely with the software side of things. I’m mostly a hardware troubleshooter, but the last I heard when I was down there, that’s still their primary thrust.”
“I think they’re mistaken.” Sprue explained his theory, that there was some other kind of malware making it look as if Shepardsport were under a DDOS attack. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s right here on one of our own servers. Someone was careless about their passwords, or loaded a piece of software from a shady site, and that was all it took. As long as everyone keeps looking for an attack from without, they’ll never find it.”
Juss took a moment to process it all. “That’s pretty sneaky. But why didn’t you just go down to IT and tell them?”
“Because I don’t have any background in IT, for starters. I go down there, and they’re going to act like I’m just wasting their time.”
“Sprue, you’ve got lineage rights to go straight to the head of IT herself. I think it’s time you use them.” Juss paused to let those words sink in, then continued, “Or would you rather I tell her you’re too scared to talk to her?”
“Don’t call me chicken.” Sprue retrieved his phone and started hunting through the directory for the IT numbers. He wasn’t sure he had Steffi Roderick’s direct number, but he figured he could find it. He’d be damned if he let that goody-two-shoes clone of Ed White make him look like a coward.