The woman obediently tapped on her screen, and colorful dots appeared, indicating the location of each access hatch.
“You have monitors on those?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes darted to her manager, and the man nodded imperceptibly.
“We do. There are sensors on each location.”
“Pull up the records.”
She did as he asked, and Katie could see the man’s shoulders relax as he scanned the data.
He stepped back, waving a hand to his lieutenant. “Stand down. We’ll take their word for it.” He leveled a glare at the manager. “For now.”
Back inside the auxiliary enviro room, Katie blew out a relieved breath. “That was entirely too close.”
One good thing had come of this, though. Now that they’d assured themselves the maintenance tunnels were empty, Katie wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into anyone as she traversed them—and she planned to do a lot of traversing.
“Y’all ever hear the phrase ‘home field advantage’?” she murmured. “Well, suckers, I’m about to go all ‘home field’ on your ass.”
Her fingers danced over the controls as she backed out of the control room, though she kept the console running. Setting it aside, she reached back inside the cubby, and pulled out a bag of particulate colloids.
She would use these to simulate a layer of dust after she left the room. Brownian motion would scatter the colloids for some time; they would move about and then slowly settle onto surfaces, making the room appear unused.
Transferring Fred’s magnetic leash to the belt of her EVA suit, she grabbed her console in one hand, and her ‘bag of dust’ in the other. Shooing Fred out into the tunnel, she took one last look around and then released the colloids.
A second skim coating of ActiveFiber rimmed the door. She activated it, and the material released fine threads that mimicked cobwebs, completing the impression the room had fallen into disuse.
As the door slid shut, she snapped her fingers at the puppy with a small smile. “C’mon, Fred, let’s go see Doc.”
TEN
Sierra Twelve
Maintenance tunnels
As Katie exited the auxiliary room, Team Five was a kilometer away, moving down a perpendicular tunnel toward the central hub. Thad was on point, gliding forward on silent feet, P-SCAR in hand. The rifle’s barrel inscribed slow arcs as he advanced to the target. Ell mimicked his actions from the rear as she walked backward, covering their six.
They were headed inward, in search of a network node Jack could use to insinuate himself into the system and spy on those who held Sierra Twelve hostage.
{Up ahead, on your right, five meters.} Jack pointed over Thad’s shoulder from his position just behind him.
Thad nodded, and his gaze flicked to the feed on his HUD, imagery from the stealth microdrones Jack had unleashed serving as a vanguard.
Everything still read green. The tunnels appeared deserted.
He came to a stop at the bulkhead seam Jack had indicated. {Looks like you’re clear. I’ll move on ahead half a klick to the next intersection.}
Jack slipped past with a nod and began working on the panel he needed to remove, to access the node.
Thad used a sticky command to attach one of the microdrones to the tunnel’s overhead so he could keep an eye on the intel officer, just in case, and then called back to the team. {Asha, with me.}
The medic moved forward, her own P-SCAR in hand, and Thad moved over so that they could walk abreast. Mike hung back with Ell, half a klick in the other direction.
He knew Lane would be standing alongside Jack, waiting to receive the intel officer’s data dump. From there, the team lead would decide how they would proceed.
As he and Asha kept watch at the intersection, Thad split his time between monitoring the drones up ahead and the one he’d left behind.
As always, watching Jack in information-gathering mode was a curious thing. The Marine stood in a casual slump, arms crossed and head down, as if in deep contemplation.
Thad knew from past experience that the man was not unaware of his surroundings. Though he might seem oblivious, Jack could snap into a state of readiness faster than anyone Thad had ever seen.
He tensed when he saw Jack do just that.
Lane did the same. {Campbell?} Her voice demanded answers.
{Ten in the control center, two patrols, and a trio at the docks.} Jack answered her one-word query in a staccato tone. {Good news is that we won’t have to maintain radio silence on this op. They’ve blocked all external communications, but the platform residents are free to communicate with each other.}
{Why’d the hell they allow that?} wondered Mike.
Jack sent a mental shrug. {Cocky, maybe. Confident that they have this thing sewn up and no one can interfere. With two exceptions, everyone’s locked inside their quarters.}
{What two exceptions?} Lane asked sharply.
{Main control center and Medical, but….}
{But?} Lane prompted.
{Someone else has managed to hack into the system and is spying on the SS, too. They got here before I did.}
{Our intruder?}
Jack nodded. {That’s my best guess. I think I can track him, but I’ll need help.}
Through the drone’s camera, Thad saw Lane’s eyes narrow thoughtfully.
{Contact the ship and ask Rafe to loan you someone,} she instructed. {The last thing we need is for some well-intentioned, untrained civvy going vigilante on us.}
{Copy that. But that’s one message I’ll have to deliver in person.}
At Lane’s lifted brow, the intel officer explained, {Internal comms are allowed, but external comms are blocked. Scimitar’s external.}
{Go. Find the vigilante and shut him down before he interferes with the op.}
Jack straightened. {I assume you’ll be concentrating on taking out the ones in the control room first?}
At Lane’s ‘Yes’, an icon appeared on Thad’s HUD.
Jack gave a single nod. {That icon will give you access to the cameras in that room. I’ll contact you once our rogue is neutralized.}
* * *
Back inside Scimitar, the flight crew had fallen into a pattern of watchful vigilance, the quiet of the cockpit punctuated only by periodic updates.
Cass’s voice cut suddenly into that silence. “Doesn’t this bother any of you?”
“Doesn’t what bother us?” asked Rafe, not turning from his console.
His disinterest earned a shove to his seat from Cass’s boot.
“Some unknown person got here before we did.”
Micah saw Cass shoot an annoyed glare at the back of Rafe’s head. At some point, those two really need to get a room, he thought privately.
The sexual tension between the captain and the flight engineer was so apparent, even he’d picked up on it, and he’d been told by old girlfriends he wasn’t exactly the most observant where things like that were concerned.
“Felt to me like the team just kind of shrugged and went with it,” he heard Cass complain. “Don’t you want to know who it was, and how in the hell they got here?”
“Sure,” agreed Rafe, “but they’re in the best position to discover that, not us.”
“Not… entirely true,” Cass’s voice turned sly.
That got the pilot’s attention.
Swiveling to pin her with a warning look, Rafe said, “You have a job to do, Chief. Don’t go nosing into team business.”
The expression on Cass’s face was smug. “All I did was tap into the platform’s network—like I always do on a mission,” she hastily added when his eyes narrowed.
The captain’s expression eased, and after a moment’s thought, he nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did you find?”
She pushed her console’s screen to the main holo for them all to see.
“Look here.” She gestured, and part of the image lit up. “That’s an artificially-introduced bit of RF interference on the band that stat
ions use to host their networks. It’s random, but seems to coincide with one of the enviro plants. I did a search, and this is an ongoing problem the platform’s had for the past five years. They chalk it up to poorly shielded equipment that Cobalt refuses to replace. Since it’s low-intensity, they’ve pretty much had to live with it, so they ignore it for the most part.”
“And you’re telling us this because….?”
“Because there’s an active band buried in all that interference. And it’s awfully coincidental that the frequency of that band is FINGERS.”
Rafe’s hands stilled. He slid a glance Micah’s way and then turned to face Cass. “That’s an old Navy trick,” he said slowly.
She grinned. “Thought that’d catch your eye. Still want me to keep my nose out of it, Cap?”
Rafe scraped his palm across the side of his jaw, expression thoughtful. “Jack might connect the dots, since he’s a licensed pilot,” he mused, “but I doubt anyone else on the team would.”
“And his job doesn’t call on him to do a whole lot of flying, so it might not be top of mind for him,” supplied Micah.
Dana’s voice sounded confused. “I don’t get it. If someone’s already fingered the interference, doesn’t that mean they’ve identified it already?”
Micah shook his head. “Not fingered, as in tagged or IDed it. FINGERS is a frequency pilots use to communicate with each other.” He held up his hand, folding a finger down as he reeled off the numbers. “One, two, three… four, five.”
He nodded toward the front screen, where Cass had pulled up the EHF 123.45 frequency label, and Dana’s expression cleared.
“That suggests we’re dealing with a pilot, then.”
Cass nodded. “It fits. And it’s got to be someone local to the platform. My cred’s on whoever’s running the gray market here.”
Rafe’s brows rose. “You think so?”
Cass scoffed. “Aw, c’mon, Cap. You know as well as I do that there’s always a market for hard-to-get, low-risk stuff that everyone wants but can’t obtain legally. A copy of the latest bootlegged tri-D release. Maybe some premium liquor or stim sticks, without paying duty taxes. Betcha the pilot’s set up FINGERS as a listening post, a way he can pick up instructions from this contact.”
Rafe shot her a knowing look. “Figured that out awfully quick, didn’t you? Almost like you have experience with it yourself.”
Cass smacked her hand against her chest, her face the picture of innocence. “I’m wounded, Cap. Truly.” Nodding to the display, she added, “I just keep my ear to the ground, is all—and my nose clean.”
Micah’s cough hid a laugh, and if Cass’s glare was any indication, he would have received a boot to the back of his cradle if he’d been in reach.
“Regardless,” she continued, turning back to Rafe to press her point, “don’t you think it’s worth looking into? I’ve traced the origin of the signal. It’s not too far from the hatch.”
Rafe rubbed at his chin once more, his eyes resting thoughtfully on Cass. Abruptly, he nodded.
“Okay, it’s worth checking out.” He looked over at Micah. “You go. I’ll man the drones—”
“Hold up,” Cass called out. “Someone’s at the hatch.”
Micah heard a rustling sound and looked back to see Dana had taken a knee, her P-SCAR rifle in hand, trained on the open umbilical.
An IFF ping appeared on the ship’s overlay, identifying the intruder as Jack.
The Marine’s head appeared in the hatch. “Need your help. Lane’s decided we need to corral our unknown before he interferes with the op.”
Micah looked over at Rafe, who nodded. Unwebbing from his co-pilot’s cradle, he brushed past Dana and headed aft.
Jack nodded and retreated back into the airlock.
ELEVEN
Sierra Twelve
Maintenance tunnels
Katie had plenty of time to think and remember as she made the five-kilometer trek to Medical.
On the rare occasions she could get Doc Slater to talk about his time in the Navy, he’d shared with her some of the things he’d learned. She pulled up a conversation in her memory now.
“If you ever find yourself in a life-or-death situation, remember the OODA Loop.” Slater’s voice rang in her head, his words as clear as if he was walking alongside her. “Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. These steps may save your life one day.”
Katie blinked rapidly as she turned the concept over in her head.
“Observation is vital in decision-making. What affects you immediately? What could impact you later on?”
“Observe. Okay, I’ve done some of that already,” she murmured softly. “Ten people in the control center. Let’s see where else they are….”
She walked through the various feeds using the console she carried, looking for other incursions. She found two roaming pairs, and a trio standing guard at the dock, but no others.
Her eyes narrowed in thought as her mentor’s voice continued to play in her head.
“Orient. Learn to recognize the barriers that interfere with your goal. This gives you an edge over your opponent.”
She returned her attention to the control center, flipping between various angles. She took note of the number and type of weapons, and tried to identify weaknesses she could exploit.
None immediately came to mind, and her frustration grew as she came up with and discarded a few different ideas.
Anything she could think to do to incapacitate the intruders would equally harm her own people.
At least the Cobalt employees’ overall condition seemed stable. A few appeared to be favoring injured limbs, and Jeremy sported a black eye and a busted lip, but that was about it.
Lockdown had been initiated platform-wide. That was good; it meant most of the six thousand workers and their family members were safely tucked away in their personal quarters. The public spaces were now fair game for any plan she could think to implement.
She decided to focus first on those who weren’t inside the control room. She’d whittle down their numbers, wage a war of attrition before tackling the main group.
Medical was just ahead, down a branching passageway. As she neared, Katie accessed the security holorecorder mounted just above the doorway.
The image resolved on the console’s 2-D screen, and she saw Doc was not alone; a patient lay on one of the diagnostic beds. Slater was leaning over the man, examining him. Additionally, a woman stood guard at the entrance, her weapon trained on them.
Doc was being very deliberate with his movements, and explaining everything he was about to do before he did it. Katie realized he was doing this to make sure the woman would find no reason to discharge the weapon she held.
“I don’t need a play-by-play, Doc,” the woman sneered. “Just get this idiot patched up so I can get you both back in lockdown. No one’s allowed outside their quarters; no exceptions.”
Katie studied the injured man, trying to identify which Cobalt employee had been hurt, but Doc was blocking him. When he shifted far enough to reveal the patient’s face, Katie nearly groaned aloud.
Why did it have to be Old Jerry?
The guy was the biggest gossip she knew; he couldn't keep a secret to save his soul. There was no help for it. She’d just have to wait him out.
She moved to the maintenance closet that provided service access to Medical’s equipment, jimmied the lock, and opened the door. Fred darted inside, and she followed after, sealing the door shut behind her. She leaned her console against a nearby wall and then turned to study her surroundings.
The closet was long and narrow, with barely enough room for her to maneuver. To her right, modules lined the inner wall, each unit powering one of the heavy diagnostic beds in the main bay. To her left was the platform’s lone surgical unit. A large panel, almost as tall as she was, provided access to the back of the machine.
She’d watched Doc make an adjustment to the device once from the front side, and knew its interior was roo
my enough for Fred to squeeze through. Once Old Jerry left, she’d hand the pup over and be on her way.
On second thought….
Katie frowned as it occurred to her that the doctor might try and stop her from doing something he considered foolish.
Sometimes he still sees me as the kid he was saddled with when my dad was killed.
As quietly as she could, she began working the screws loose on the back of the surgical unit. When she had the last one undone, she lifted the panel clear of the unit and set it aside gently, being careful not to make any noise.
She’d wait until Old Jerry left, lift Fred through to the other side, and then scoot back out before Doc had a chance to stop her.
Fred had other ideas. Eager to see one of his favorite humans, the basset puppy whined, scratching against the plating.
Katie spun around, grabbed his paw, and shook her head sternly. “No,” she whispered.
Fred responded with a loud, deep woof that reverberated through the small closet and off the metal sides of the surgical unit.
“Shit!” Katie hissed, her eyes flying to the console’s 2-D screen. She saw the woman holding the gun whip her head around in the direction of the surgical suite.
“What was that? I thought you said you were alone in here.” The woman’s voice was threaded with suspicion.
Old Jerry lifted his head and looked blearily around. “Sounded like Fred, but it can’t be. Katie was out hauling ore today.”
Doc’s hand jerked in reaction to Old Jerry’s words, and the grizzled dockhand shot the doctor an apologetic look. Katie realized at that moment that the news of Goblin’s demise must have reached him.
“Sorry for your loss, Doc,” muttered Jerry with an awkward pat of his hand.
“Who’s Fred?” the woman demanded, stepping toward them.
Katie saw Slater’s eyes dart up to the security feed, and then over toward the surgical suite. “Fred’s my foster daughter’s dog.”
“I thought she always took Fred with her when she flew,” Old Jerry protested.
Operation Cobalt – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: The Biogenesis War Files Page 6