by Dan Moren
“The best option is probably one of the four maintenance skiffs,” said Brody. “Both the tenders we came in on and the lifeboats are slower than a snail riding a turtle, and neither can break atmosphere. The personal passenger vessels docked in the Queen Amina’s cold storage are better ships, but they’re not easily accessible: they just get loaded in one after another by an automated system. And the hangar doors will be sealed during wormhole transit.”
“Well that’s easy enough,” said Tapper. “We blow the doors.”
Brody looked at him in horror. “That’d decompress the entire compartment and eject everything in there into the wormho… Have you ever met a problem you haven’t tried to fix with explosives?”
“So far I haven’t met one they couldn’t fix.”
“Anyway, no matter which ship we use, we can’t launch until we clear the wormhole.”
“So what I’m hearing,” said Kovalic, “is that we can’t start the op until we’re in the wormhole but we can’t finish it until we’re out.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Right, no problem. They had their work cut out for themselves, that was for damn sure. “We’re going to need to figure out how to crack that lockbox without destroying the tablet. Which means we’re going to need access to Xi herself: face scan, access code, cloned sleeve, the works. Sayers, you think you can handle that?”
A mix of hesitation and pride warred on the young woman’s face, as though she wanted to say something, but eventually she nodded. “I should be able to record her biometrics and clone her sleeve – getting her to give up her access code is going to be harder. Can we override it? There must be a failsafe, just in case someone forgets their code.”
“Maybe,” said Nat. “But any override or code reset would likely require Xi provide proof of her identity. And since it’s her ship and everybody knows her, any sort of impersonation play is going to be incredibly risky.”
“Sayers, work any angle you need to,” said Kovalic. “We’ll look for some sort of vulnerability in the system to exploit as a backup, but if we can get legitimate access to the system easily, I’d rather do that.”
“Aw, you’re getting soft in your middle age, boss,” said Tapper.
“What about the Illyricans?” said Nat. “We might not be the only belles at the ball on this one.”
They were the wild card here, for sure. Mirza was smart – maybe smarter than they were – but he’d lay odds that she definitely wasn’t as crazy. “Nat, if you can find them on the internal security systems, we can keep tabs on them, but until then we can’t predict their actions. So the best thing we can do is have our contingencies and be ready for anything.”
“That seems… vague,” said Brody. “How can you have contingencies for everything?”
“Don’t worry, kid,” said Tapper, slapping the younger man on the back. “I’ve seen just about everything by this point.”
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better. Look, I know I was going on about extraterrestrial life and advance civilizations, but this seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a piece of rock that might be total garbage.”
“Much as it pains me, I have to agree with Brody on this one,” said Nat. “I’d feel a lot better if we could figure out whether or not this is the genuine article before we try to steal it.”
“If there even is a genuine article where tablets created by ancient alien civilizations are concerned,” said Tapper.
“Actually,” said Sayers, “I might know somebody who could help us with that.”
Some part of Addy hadn’t wanted to share her encounter with Xi – and, by extension, Dr al-Kitab – with the rest of the team. Mostly because she’d wanted to provide it with a bow on top, delivered as a fait accompli. But a deeper part of her had felt weirdly possessive. After all, she’d been the one to make contact. This was her asset. She and Xi had developed a rapport, and she didn’t want Kovalic or Taylor taking that away from her.
But after she’d related most of what had transpired, she started to realize that had been a tactical error. “So this Dr al-Kitab must be here to authenticate the tablet, right?”
Taylor’s gaze was less appraising than hostile. “When exactly were you going to share this information, specialist?”
Addy flared. “I shared it when it was relevant, which is now.” She could feel Tapper and even Brody eyeing her from either side, and it seemed like the temperature in the storage compartment had dropped a few degrees.
But this is what I was supposed to do.
“OK,” said Kovalic finally. “I’ll take the professor, see if there’s any more information he can give us on the tablet. Nat, see if you can dig up anything on the guy. Maybe there’s something we can use as leverage. Turn him to our side.”
“I’ll see what the ship databanks have, but there’s no guarantee he’d be in the local cache. And I won’t be able to get a real-time query back from any on-planet systems before we need to move on this.”
Tapper was leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed, and pointedly avoiding looking at Sayers. “Now that we have this vital information, shouldn’t we just wait and grab it from the egghead when he’s studying it? Would save us cracking the uncrackable vault.”
Addy bit back a rejoinder that without her, the team would never have known about al-Kitab in the first place. Not like that would particularly help my case. She glanced at Brody, but the pilot was uncharacteristically quiet, eyes on the deck.
Kovalic hesitated. “We’ll keep eyes on him once we’ve made contact, but there are too many unknowns: we don’t know when or where he might get access to the tablet. I don’t like the idea of sitting on our hands; it leaves Mirza and her team an open field. We’ve established that there’s a window of opportunity while we’re in the wormhole – we need to make our move while we can.” He turned to Addy. “Specialist, you keep working Xi. We’re going to need that security information if we have any hope of cracking the lockbox.”
Addy swallowed. Cloning a sleeve was one thing; getting close enough to steal biometrics or convincing Xi to give her an access code was another entirely. It had been a long time since she’d pulled that kind of con, and back on Nova she’d had a crew she’d trusted. Or, more importantly, a crew who had trusted her. Right now, it didn’t seem like her stock with the rest of the team was particularly high.
But “I’ve got it,” was all she said.
Kovalic didn’t say anything to that, just nodded, then turned back to the rest of the team, doling out responsibilities. “Brody, go with Tapper and scrounge up the rest of what we’ll need. Try to keep it quiet.”
“Quiet’s my middle name. Well, I mean, legally it’s Hamish, but I think you’ll find that…” The rest of whatever the pilot was going to say was lost as the sergeant dragged him bodily out of the room, leaving Sayers alone with Kovalic and Taylor.
Something unspoken passed between the two of them, that ended with Taylor rolling her eyes.
Addy sighed. Time for the mom and dad talk. Or so she figured – not like she’d remember firsthand. She slipped into parade rest, hands behind her back, ready for the dressing down.
Kovalic sat on the edge of the conference table. “Specialist, I want you to know I don’t doubt your capability in this matter. And though this isn’t the infantry and I value your initiative, you still need to keep us in the loop when you have intel – especially when it’s this critical.
“More to the point, though,” he continued, without waiting for her to respond. “I want to make sure you’re being careful. Xi is dangerous, even if she likes to play coy. And we know she’s smart and manipulative.”
This time Addy did jump in, one hand clenching the other behind her back. “Due respect, sir, but I can handle myself. I know when somebody’s playing me.”
Taylor threw up her hands. “God forbid anybody try to express concern or tell you anything.”
“We don’t all have the luxury of growi
ng up someplace where safety is an assumption. Ma’am.”
“I can see why that mouth has gotten you into trouble,” Taylor snapped.
“That’s enough,” said Kovalic. What his voice lacked in volume it more than made up for in firmness. “We’re on the job, which means putting aside our differences for the moment and getting this done. The mission comes first, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Addy, resisting the urge to click her heels together.
“Understood,” said Taylor, though a part of Addy was relieved that her glare was turned for once on Kovalic.
“Good,” said Kovalic, ignoring the icy look. “Sayers, you’ll make contact with Xi at the appointed time. If anything seems wrong, I want you to get out of there as fast as you can – signal the abort code on your sleeve, and we’ll get you out. Got it?”
Abort code. Of course. For when I can’t hack it. Addy’s mouth set in a line. She wasn’t going to give anybody – not Xi, not Taylor, and not Kovalic – the satisfaction of seeing her turn tail and run. But she nodded all the same. “Yes, sir,” she repeated, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“In that case, good luck,” said Kovalic. “See you on the other side.”
CHAPTER 16
“I can’t believe she held out on us,” Nat said as they made their way to the esplanade. “What the hell is that about?”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think she was trying to mislead us,” said Kovalic. “She just seems to like keeping her cards close to her chest.”
“Oh, come on, Simon. This is a mission, not a poker game. She needs to know how to work with a team.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Teamwork had, so far, not been Sayers’ strong suit. She’d proved her ability to do the work, her reported contact with Xi had proved that much. Everything that he’d seen in her jacket back at the School had been true – the bad and the good. She just needed to learn that there were some situations you couldn’t just fight your way out of.
“There’s only so much we can do about it right now,” Kovalic pointed out. “You go in the field with the team you have.”
“I can’t believe you’re OK with this,” she said with a sidelong glance. “A year or two ago, you would have cut her loose after that incident on Tseng-Tao’s Divide. Now you’re all in for fifth chances?”
Kovalic’s shrug was carefully constructed, but something about Nat’s words went sub-dermal, resonating with what Tapper had said to him. I know what happened with Page threw you, boss. He’d sniped it down quick, but it was still lying in wait there, like a tripmine. Page had been a team player… until he hadn’t. If even the perfect operative had proven to be untrustworthy, then maybe what you needed was someone who was decidedly imperfect.
“I guess I’m embracing forgiveness. I’d have thought you’d be all in favor of that.”
“I’m not about to take that bait.”
Kovalic smiled. “Back to the issue at hand, then. What’d you pull on our doctor friend?”
For a moment, Nat looked like she was about to push back on the change of subject, but she seemed to decide better of it. “I ran a quick query, but the shipboard database didn’t have anything beyond what Sayers already turned up. Dr Seku Al-Kitab, PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology from Magdalen College, which apparently he decided to put to good use by researching aliens.”
“He wouldn’t be the first person with bona fides to buy into conspiracy theories,” said Kovalic. “How do we find him?”
“I’ve only got limited access to the security system, and his profile is above the clearance I’ve wrangled. I’m running my own facial recognition search now, but it’s going to take a while.”
“What about our other friends?”
“Haven’t cracked the executive level,” said Nat as they stepped on to the esplanade. “So I can’t find the guy Sayers ran into – assuming he was an Illyrican agent, anyway. As for your attackers, it looks like there was a ‘fault’ in the security cameras in your hallway right around the time they jumped you.” Her tone of voice suggested exactly what she thought of that coincidence.
Kovalic scratched his chin. “Some sort of signal jammer, probably. Though Mirza did use my baffle for our little chat. Is it possible that they’ve compromised the Queen Amina’s systems as well?”
“I assume their playbook’s not that different from ours.”
“Well, in that case, what if we stop looking for them and start looking for their footprints? Maybe we can figure out how they compromised the system and backtrack the hack to them.”
Nat’s eyes swept back and forth rapidly. “If they’re smart, they’ll have covered their tracks. But I might be able to narrow it down a bit.”
“I’ll take any edge we can get. If we can figure out where they’re holed up, we might be able to get the jump on them.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Late afternoon was a sparse time on the esplanade, as people took in the shows and other entertainments before dinner rolled around. There were still plenty of folks about, but it wasn’t the madding crush that Kovalic had seen earlier in the day. That cut both ways: the smaller crowd made it harder to hide, but also made it harder for anybody following you to stay unseen.
Spotting the people following them proved to be even easier, because they were all wearing the black uniforms of White Star employees.
Kovalic glanced in a shop window as they passed, catching the reflection of two White Star security personnel, hands on sidearms, trailing about fifteen feet behind them.
“Two on our six,” he murmured.
“And that’s not all,” said Nat, taking his arm and tapping three fingers against it. “Two ahead and one to our three o’clock.”
That was a whole lot of muscle for two people, especially in a public place. He felt confident he and Nat could hold their own in a fight, should it come to that, but taking on the shipboard security was going to make a lot of problems for them in the long run.
“This is less than great.”
“How do you want to play it?” she asked.
Kovalic scanned the route in front of them. It was easily a hundred meters to the next bank of lift tubes, and the cordon was tightening as the two behind quickened their pace.
“We need more information. And better ground.”
Ahead, the esplanade branched into two smaller passages, one leading to the main level’s theater, the other to more shops. Kovalic veered left towards the former, glancing at the holoscreen floating by the fork. The current show was approaching its end, the area empty aside from a few custodial workers and cleaning drones, sweeping up the detritus from the showgoers.
The doors ahead were closed and sealed – no admittance during the performance – funneling them to a dead end.
“I hope I know what you’re doing,” Nat said under her breath.
“So do I, most days.”
As they strolled up towards the doors, Kovalic’s peripheral vision picked up the guards fanning out around them. There were five, as they’d counted, and each seemed to have a weapon at their side; none drawn yet, so it was hard to tell if they were simple knockout guns or something more lethal.
“Mr Godwin,” called a voice. “Please stop where you are and turn around slowly.”
Kovalic exchanged a look with Nat and they dropped their hands to their sides and did as requested.
The group’s leader, an older man with a curly mop of dark hair shot through with gray and a few days of gray stubble, stood with the stiff formality that came with a higher pay grade.
“I’m Chief of Security Cortez. May we have a word?”
The other four officers had split into two pairs and taken up spots on either side of the room, each about twenty feet away from where Kovalic and Nat stood. That was a hefty advantage for them with their ranged weapons. No way he and Nat could even close half that distance before getting shot from at least one direction.
Kovalic made a point
of taking in each of the guards in turn. “Looks like you have me at a disadvantage, Mr Cortez. In more ways than one. What can I do for you?”
Cortez stepped closer and though his face was neutral, his eyes were pure steel. “Your account has been flagged for potential fraud, something we take very seriously. Would you mind handing over your sleeve, please?”
“I would, actually. Do you have anything more than a vague allegation?”
“I’m afraid I must insist.”
Nat jumped in. “I believe we’re still in the Badr system, which is not under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth, Imperium, or any other government entity. But intersystem law – which does apply here – holds that we don’t need to surrender any property without a warrant.”
Kovalic pushed back his smile. Cortez seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t respond well to smugness. “If you have a warrant, Chief Cortez, I’ll be more than happy to comply. But until then, I think we will be on our way.” He took a step forward towards the security personnel, then stopped as he heard the whine of KO guns charging from either side of him.
Cortez came closer, his own hand draped loosely on the pistol on his belt. “You are a guest on the Queen Amina, Mr Godwin. If you had closely read our passenger agreement, you would see that it requires you to comply with all White Star security procedures while you are aboard the ship. That includes confiscation of any personal property that may violate the policies of this ship or its parent company.”
Ah yes, the fine print. “I think you and I both know that won’t hold water.”
“You’re welcome to appeal it to an intersystem magistrate when you reach Hamza. I believe their queue time is only a matter of weeks. For now, though, I’ll need your sleeve.” He put out his hand.
Kovalic could feel Nat tensing beside him. He glanced up at the holoscreen floating behind Cortez’s head. Too much time. He needed to stall. “May I ask where you came by this information?” As though he needed to ask.