“It is about the assignment of value,” Kruse said disdainfully. “If something people want or need is limited, if it becomes rare, consequently it acquires value. That’s the foundation of old-era economics. Giving a thing value is the end of equality and sharing. That is how so-called Universal culture maintains its status quo, by monetary force, controlled by the unelected elites. By taking our ideas from us and using them to enhance their wealth, they are inflicting a double violation upon us.”

“Sure, I get that,” Kandara said with careful neutrality. “But what we’re dealing with here sounds like standard-issue industrial espionage. That’s been around as long as industry itself.”

“Data theft is just the first crack in the dam,” Tyle said. “It has been an annoyance for decades, but what else can you expect from Universal-culture corporations, right? So we didn’t put as much effort into preventing it as we should. There always has to be a balance between freedom and restriction; that is fundamental to any society. Without law there is anarchy. But too much law, applied rigorously, becomes oppression. Here on Akitha, of course, we favor as little restriction as possible—something that has been exploited ruthlessly by the corporations. Our mistake.”

“Hindsight is always the clearest vision,” Kandara told hir.

“It means our networks are not as secure as they should be, and they’re susceptible to black routing. We’re working to rectify that, of course, but fortifying an entire planetary network is no small task.”

“And the activity of these Universal agents has changed,” Kruse said. “They no longer simply steal our work for their own profit. More recently they have begun launching acts of sabotage.”

“On what?” Kandara asked.

“Industrial facilities,” Oistad said. “It’s relatively subtle. Refineries lose efficiency; component failure in manufacturing facilities increases due to glitched management routines, decreasing productivity. The rate of these attacks has been gradually increasing. We’re upgrading our electronic countermeasures, but we’re behind on security development. Even our G8Turings have trouble defending themselves against the more sophisticated intrusion attempts.”

“Your G8Turings are vulnerable?” Kandara asked in surprise. G8Turings had only been coming online in the last six months, almost in accordance with the Robson law of progression, which said the rate of development would double between each generation. Though they’d taken slightly longer than expected to develop, the G8Turings should have been utterly secure.

“They can’t be cracked, obviously, but defense absorbs more of their processing capacity than I’d like. The G8Turings produced by commercial companies are more evolved in that regard.”

“And this is why you brought me in?” Kandara asked skeptically. “A few items in short supply?”

“No,” Jessika said firmly. “There’s been a tipping point. Three weeks ago, the public biolife center here in Naima was subject to an intense digital assault. The entire production facility was taken offline. Black routing opened a clean channel into the network. They penetrated the management routines so deeply, they even overrode safety limiters; the machines suffered actual physical damage from overloads. That all had to be repaired. And sleeper bugs were left behind. The entire network architecture has to be wiped and rebooted. And even that doesn’t guarantee the bugs are eliminated; they’re highly adaptive.”