“Hello! Mavis, yes, it’s Michella.”
A white-haired older woman with the general demeanor of someone who had been repressing an angry outburst for the last forty years glanced furtively aside before speaking. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t contact me anymore. I can’t keep doing this.”
“This has the potential to be very important.”
“It’s always important with you.”
“Please. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“How?”
She glanced at the information associated with the contact. As she’d done for most of her people inside the major corporations, Michella had curated a comprehensive list of relevant bribes for her VectorCorp Contacts. In the case of Mavis, there was a single note: Good taste. Likes new music.
“You know GolanaNet’s handling the three Golana gigs Death Zone Dumpster is doing in a few months. I can slide you some of my comp tickets.”
Mavis didn’t even pause. “What do you need to know?”
“Have there been any major security breaches?”
“Let me run through the database. … Nothing above level-four alert. Run-of-the-mill stuff.”
“What I’m looking for could certainly be buried in that run-of-the-mill stuff.”
“Then you’ll need to narrow it down for me. There’s seventeen thousand hits.”
“Can you just send me the raw data?”
“Not if I want to keep my job.”
Michella ran the possibilities through her head. Commander Purcell was back in the spotlight. As far as Michella knew, she’d not had any additional contact with VectorCorp, but as of their last encounter, Purcell was the main contact within the Neo-Luddites. It was reasonable she would have started by reaching out to the same contacts to see if they were still valid. And she still had her notes from that investigation.
“I’m going to forward you a list of users. Let me know if any of the security hits began with attempted access to their accounts.”
Mavis glanced down at the string of text Michella sent. “Let’s see… Filtering… Uh, yes. Fifteen of them. All of them were attempted accesses to disabled accounts except for… Oh, that’s strange.”
Michella got her pen ready again. “What’s strange Mavis? We’re looking for strange.”
“One of the security hits was a successful access after two malformed data-validation attempts. That should have been a higher alert. … But it looks like this account has special privileges. All of the associated data is blank. It looks like the account is associated with… a level of access privilege that’s not in my notes.”
“Did anything happen during that connection?”
“There was a data transfer from a server that also isn’t in any of my lists. This is starting to look like something covert.”
“Any idea what they got?”
“I don’t even know where they got it from.”
“What data do you have on that server and file?”
“Not much. Last access date, some storage-size stuff, the system info on the attempted connection. The rest is masked.”
“Can you do a search to see if that system that tried to connect made any more connection attempts?”
“Running that now… Nothing but those fifteen on the systems I oversee.”
“Okay. Worth a shot. Give me the connection info and the last access date on any of the servers that got touched. Once I get those, the backstage tickets are as good as yours, Mavis.”
“I don’t think that’s against company policy. At least, no more than any of this other stuff. Here you go.”
The info popped across.
“Great! I’m sending you the name of the back-end guy at our event promotion branch. Just use my name, he’ll hook you up.”
“Pleasure doing business with you!”
She ended the call and quickly scanned down the list of access dates and times.
“Every single one, Squee,” she said, scratching the funk’s head. “The access before the security hit on each of these servers was shortly before Security Chief William Trent was locked up. And some of them were on servers so secret the IT people don’t know about them. We have to assume all those accesses were by him before we got him locked up, and everything since was probably Purcell or the person who grabbed her. Looks like I’ve got a man to get in touch with.”
Chapter 6
Lex’s anxiety during the trip to Big Sigma had been almost completely erased by what had turned into a multiday discussion on the nature of pastries with someone who lacked both the senses of taste and touch.
“That does not explain why cheesecake is considered cake instead of pie,” Coal said.
“I don’t know. It’s a food thing with a weird language quirk. I typically blame the French in situations like that.” He glanced at the navigation screen. “We’re coming up on Big Sigma. According to Ma’s message, things are going to be really interesting once we get there.”
“Orbital and land-based defenses will be active.”
“So that means mass drivers heaving pieces of the moat at us, probably some Karter-made missiles, and the laboratory lasers. Am I missing anything?”
“I don’t know. The portion of memory that contained information regarding high-level planetary defenses was among the corrupted sections that were purged in my transition from Ma-subset to Coal.”
“Just as well. I’d hate to spoil the surprise. I know there’s no way you’ve got the oomph to do a full moat calculation like Ma does.”
“And I do not have the data history necessary to attempt it.”
“But how much of a lead can you give me on visualizing the voids in the moat big enough to slip through?”
“Approximately one point six eight seconds to zero point eight nine seconds.”
“Plenty. And what about the mass drivers?”
“They accelerate debris to a significant fraction of the speed of light. I can offer you charge state and current trajectory. Any prediction involving the actual firing would be a rounding error above zero.”
“We can avoid the lasers by just not coming down directly above the lab, right?”
“There are three other surface locations with debris maintenance lasers, but they are spaced such that I can provide a safe range of atmospheric entry points.”
“Great. So once I’m down past the mass drivers, all I have to worry about is finding my way through a cloud of debris that is purposely groomed to be almost impossible to slip through.”
“Yes.”
“We’re gonna take a lot of hits, Coal.”
“I am confident in your piloting skills, and I will make use of the tractor beams to help open voids along the way.”
“That’ll help. At what point do you think they’ll just stop shooting at us?”
“The recording says communication is shut down. That will include transponder readers. Assuming Ma is still monitoring rather than running on autotarget and autofire, she will assume enemy incursion until positive visual identification. Nineteen kilometers from the laboratory or any of the surface monitoring positions.”
“Nineteen kilometers?! Surely she can see farther than that.”
“There are numerous sensors available to her that can see well past that range, but the possibility of burst transmission via optical sensor is considered a security risk by Karter’s standards, so in maximum blackout, they would be disabled. Nineteen kilometers is the maximum visual identification distance.”
He took a breath. “So that’s all the way through the moat and like another eighty kilometers of atmosphere, all the while dodging whatever nonsense Karter’s cooked up.”
“Indeed.”
“If I hadn’t met my future self, this’d be enough to make me nervous.”
He’d taken the liberty of putting on his emergency EVA suit already. Before he snapped the helmet in place, he brought up the internal cameras and looked himself over.
“That last race tried real hard, but it looks like it didn’t give me a neck scar like the one on Future Me, so I’ve still got that one coming to me. And then, what do you think? Maybe I’ll get the ones on my cheek? After that it’s just a fresh broken nose, the ring, and the tattoo and I’m the spitting image of Future Lex.”
“I didn’t see Future Lex. I am based on the backup taken on Big Sigma prior to that portion of the mission. I am only aware of your verbal assessment of that portion.”
“Right, right. Well, Coal, I’m going to do my best to make sure you don’t have to be restored from backup again. I’m breaking out the good gum for this one.”
He popped open the appropriate compartment and pulled out the Fruit Punch-in-the-Gut–flavored gum.
“The luckiest of lucky gums,” he said. “This is the stuff I was chewing when I passed my history final exam in my senior year.”
“Why did you require luck to pass an exam?”
“Because I skipped all but the second-to-last class and crammed with the wrong edition of the syllabus. Multiple choice, all guesses, and I got a seventy-eight.”
“That is certainly a statistically aberrant outcome.”
“In gum we trust,” he said, stuffing his mouth full.
He secured the helmet. The ship slid from FTL to conventional speeds at the edge of a familiar star system. The fuzzy, ill-defined ball of junk that fortified the planet Big Sigma was just barely visible in the distance.
“Incoming transmission,” Coal said.
Ma’s voice buzzed through the internal speakers. It was lightly distorted, as if it had taken significant signal processing to decode it at this range.
“Attention unknown vessel. Big Sigma is currently in lockdown. Do not approach orbital range of the planet or you will be considered a security risk and will be dealt with accordingly. This message is prerecorded. Any attempts to negotiate or threaten will not be received or interpreted,” she said.
“How are we looking, Coal? Weapons trained on us yet?”
“There are multiple areas of high-energy density in the upper levels of the debris field. Best estimate suggests there are five mass drivers charged and ready to fire. Resolving potential trajectories now.”
The cockpit HUD produced multiple cones of illumination, beginning at the approaching planet and converging on the SOB. With each passing kilometer, the cones sharpened into a more precise shaft.
Another announcement played. This one was much crisper.
“Attention unknown vessel. You have passed the secondary defense perimeter. You have five hundred thousand kilometers remaining before reaching the primary security perimeter. Leave the system or be destroyed.”
“Three more mass drivers are powering up,” Coal said.
Their targeting visualizations joined the cockpit view, as well as a distance indicator counting down. Lex continued forward, hands tight on the ship’s controls.
The debris field was anything but natural. Even now, faint red flickers from the surface were filtering through the dense cloud of space junk. Great care was taken to map and maintain the orbiting cloud so that it would remain implausibly dense and consistent. But nature still had its say, and the outer edge of the field wasn’t perfectly sharp. Though they were still quite far away, they were near enough for the wispy edge of the field to start flickering and sparkling against the SOBs shields. Lex let the retrothrusters start easing them down to a safer speed.
“Visualizing debris density,” Coal said.
The vague gray cloud of sparkling chunks turned into something that looked like a tie-dye sponge. Areas of green were few and far between, constantly shifting among fields of yellow and red. Combined with the now almost laser-thin target indicators from the mass drivers, it was making for a very crowded heads-up display.
With precious little distance remaining on the indicator, a new transmission came through.
“You are about to pass the primary security perimeter. All weapons engaged. Depart immediately or be destroyed.”
“Here we go,” Lex said, keying up a cluster of thrusters.
The distance indicator hit zero. Lex tapped the burst mode for the thrusters on the belly of the ship. At that precise moment, half of the mass drivers fired. They missed the ship itself, but passed near enough to shave through the shields, knocking them out. Instantly Lex was awash in the hiss of high-velocity dust peppering the hull of the ship directly.
“Shield restoration in thirty seconds,” Coal said.
Lex punched another thruster burst, this one for the left. He was a bit early. Only three of the remaining mass drivers fired. The remaining two began retargeting.
Lex glanced at the field of status indicators on his control panel. None of his maneuvering thrusters were ready for another dodge like that, and nothing else would give him sudden enough movement to outpace the targeting speed of the remaining mass drivers. Nothing except increasing his main thrust to something that would make navigating the thickening debris field just short of impossible. He watched the target indicators sweep toward him.
“When in doubt, just go faster,” he said.
He poured on the speed. The mass-drivers’ targeting started to trail behind. The hiss of debris collisions got louder.
“Minor hull damage,” Coal said. “If you do not decrease impact frequency and intensity, I will not be able to restore shields.
“It’s not like they would have lasted very long anyway.”
“Hull damage does not regenerate.”
“Damage from dust is better than a hole punched through us by a mass driver.”
“Hull penetration is hull penetrat—missiles inbound.”
Two bright red threat indicators joined the rest of the mess on the HUD. Lex heaved the ship through the thinnest concentration of debris available to him. The missiles were approaching from behind.
“Missiles are mimicking our flight path,” Coal said.
“Of course they are.” He adjusted and Coal’s tractor beams cleared away some major threats. “Of course Karter would design a missile that would follow the path of a ship. How else would he be able to kill someone good enough to navigate the moat?”
“Karter is very clever,” Coal said. “Hull integrity at eighty-three percent.”
Lex chomped on his gum and slid his eyes across the flood of information. Despite the madness around him, he could feel his mind sinking into the old, comfortable state. It was like he was being split into two. His arms and legs were moving on their own, teasing the ship out of range of this cloud of debris or that. Deeper in his mind, decisions were snapping by one after the other like falling dominoes. A flickering view of the approaching missiles showed that they had shields of their own, and unlike his, theirs were still entirely operational. A still deeper part of his brain started to put a plan together. His burst thrusters were charged again. He grinned.
“We are approaching the trajectory of a charged mass driver,” Coal said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Missiles are accelerating along our flight path.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hull integrity seventy-eight percent.”
“Yep.”
“Mass driver—”
Lex slapped the burst thrusters. The mass driver discharged. The hunk of metal streaked through where he had been, and thus where the missiles were following. It tore through both of them. The resulting blast rocked the SOB, but with a fraction of the intended impact.
“If you don’t want me to blow up your missiles, don’t put me in control of them.”
“The debris field has been substantially disturbed. Recalculating.”
A particularly dense cloud of debris splashed against the belly of the ship. The HUD went dark.
“Sensors off-line.”
Lex took a breath. “Well, that’ll make things a lot less distracting at least.”
“I suspect this adventure is very sh
ortly going to no longer fulfill the requirements for ‘fun.’”
“Are you crazy?” Lex said, angling for the most likely path forward. “I’m having a blast.”
#
Seventeen of the most harrowing minutes of his life later, Lex guided Coal into the atmosphere. The ship was angled upward because nearly all the belly thrusters were destroyed. It had been a wise decision for him to don his emergency suit, because the damage to his cockpit windows had caused most of the ship’s atmosphere to leak out. But the ship was still in one piece, and so was he. The TymFlex safety hadn’t even flipped on.
“Which way to the lab, Coal?”
“My long-range sensors are entirely ruined. I do not know,” she replied.
“Ah…”
He looked out the side of the cockpit hatch. The expanse stretching out before him was identical to pretty much any other section of the planet. Crater-pocked gray rubble as far as the eye could see. It seemed insane that he could have made it across the gulf of space and through the blanket of junk and now find himself unable to navigate the comparatively infinitesimal speck of dust called Big Sigma.
“Any guesses?” he asked.
“Are we currently being blasted with high-intensity lasers?”
“No.”
“Then I would speculate that we are outside of laser range of the laboratory or other debris repositioning sites.”
“Well… At least we know where we aren’t,” he said. “Any idea what sort of land defenses we’re looking at?”
“Outside of the lasers, there is the possibility that Karter will deploy one or more of his significant collection of military vehicles in autonomous mode.”
Lex flashed back to his last tour of Karter’s hangar. “So we’re potentially looking at a historic armory, all fully commissioned, and we’ve got—”
“One-third rear propulsion, one-quarter maneuvering thrusters, and a single half-capacity tractor beam,” Coal said.
“And we don’t know which way to go.”
“Correct.”
Lex gazed at the horizon to what he guessed was the east. “Incorrect,” he said. “Because we’ve got company coming, and presumably they’re coming from the laboratory complex.”
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