The clip on the wire, seeking to relay the signal coursing through the cables in its grasp, needed only to affect a sphere large enough to encompass the bag below, and accordingly, its subspace tweeter was only a centimeter long. The black bag’s hammer, however, was much larger, nearly three feet long and a foot wide. Large enough that three hundred miles above it, the proverbial thud of the bag’s hammer as it relayed the smaller device’s signal was felt by the exponentially larger subspace tweeter at the core of the black pyramid satellites orbiting stealthily above.

Because of the medium through which the signal travelled, the connection was not party to the limits and delays of normal three-dimensional communications, a benefit not even light waves enjoyed. The connection established was instantaneous, and in real-time. It was the same as if the entire fifty-ton supercomputer floating in space was somehow hanging off the small telephone wire itself.

Using this new connection, the artificial mind in orbit went to work executing a series of complex programs designed to hack the networks of several Chinese government agencies. It was able to monitor their progress in real-time, and make adjustments to the programs as they encountered firewalls and barriers. With its vast computational brute force the machine could easily have hacked our relatively primitive firewalls, but this would have set off an abundance of alarms in these heavily monitored networks. Though not nearly as advanced as the machine probing them, the firewalls and other defenses surrounding the databases were far from simplistic. So the virtual tendrils the supercomputer was sending out gently probed each barrier. They were seeking, with infinite patience, subtle and unobtrusive ways into the halls of power, for their whole purpose was centered, above all, on remaining unnoticed for as long as was necessary.

Finding the keys it sought, the computer deftly opened the locks to the People’s Liberation Army’s vast personnel database, and planted a record within. In an organization as leviathan as the million-strong Chinese army, no one could possibly notice the appearance of the somehow preapproved application of Pei Leong-Lam to enter Officer Training School. An administrator at the 26th Group Army Base at Weifang would briefly, but very quietly curse his superiors for adding a late entry to their cadre of new trainees. But the administrator in question would not be so foolish as to question a senior officer’s wisdom out loud as he set up Pei’s base record and assigned him a bunk and a standard-issue equipment docket.