The Vela: The Complete Season 1

by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, SL Huang

  Niko had managed to access the arrest report. But like all bureaucracy on Hypatia, it was little more than a scribble in a file. Asala had applied for a formal permit to visit the prison, but it had been ignored, which was more or less what she’d expected. Criminals went to Kleidaria to rot, and Hypatian authorities cared little about what visitors might want with them.

  They might have cared more if they’d known it was an official request from the president of Khayyam. But if Ekrem had wanted that to be common knowledge, he wouldn’t have sent Asala.

  “I’ve got a few people working with me on trying to access Kleidaria’s internal network, but we haven’t made any headway,” Niko said.

  Neither had Asala. She’d interviewed almost everyone in Almagest, and the only crumbs of information she’d gained pointed right back at their fuel scalper. She discovered his name was Teak av Fintus, someone from Khayyam who’d been an escort to the refugees on the Vela. Their lead had gone from promising to definite. But nobody could tell Asala anything more than that.

  At least she’d managed to get her and Niko warmer outerwear. The deadly cold wasn’t as biting through a better coat. Or maybe she was just getting used to it.

  If they didn’t make progress soon, they were going to run out of time. The orbital window to leave the planet for Gan-De had begun to crack open, but it wouldn’t be open long. The true scramble would be a few weeks from now, when the journey was shortest. But a few weeks after that, it would begin stretching to impossible for any but the fastest and richest of ships. Even the Altair wasn’t a match for what the distance would become.

  Orbital mechanics was asymmetrical and worked in four dimensions. Getting to Hypatia from the Inner Ring was almost always easy, but if Asala and Niko didn’t solve this within the next few weeks, they would have to leave. Asala had no intention of winding up stranded. Especially not here.

  She and Niko were holed up in the room considering their next moves when Asala’s comm alerted her to a call.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “I’ll do it,” said the voice on the line. It was Simya. “But there’s a price.”

  Whatever it was, Asala would pay. She didn’t fail missions.

  She and Niko met with Simya at a hole-in-the-wall café, where they didn’t bother to exchange pleasantries. “I’ll do what you need me to do, but only if you do something for me,” she said. “You’ve got a ship, right?”

  Niko nodded, and Asala rolled her eyes. She’d have preferred to keep their hand secret. “Then you can get someone off the planet in it, right?” the nurse asked.

  It wouldn’t be easy. The shuttleport would be a nightmare, reentering Khayyam space even worse so.

  “We can get you out,” said Niko.

  Niko’s bleeding heart was all overconfidence when it came to saving people. “We can try to get you off-planet,” Asala amended.

  Simya shook her head. “No, no, no. It’s not for me. I need to stay here. There aren’t many people left with medical training. It’s for my sister.”

  My sister. Dayo’s face crashed unbidden through Asala’s mind. “What?”

  “My sister,” said Simya.

  Asala inhaled deeply to calm herself, then took a sip of tea, letting the heat fill her body. Her fingers were numb, and the heat from the mug burnt against them pleasantly.

  Simya leaned forward, her body tense. “Can you do it?”

  “We can,” said Niko.

  Asala wasn’t sure how she felt about having another sister on her conscience, especially someone else’s. But they didn’t have any other option.

  • • •

  After Simya gave Niko all they needed, she was instructed to return to her normal routine. Aside from the occasional message to Asala, she did.

  For her part, Asala studied. Niko had given her precisely annotated blueprints to go over. When it was time for her to infiltrate, there wouldn’t be time for her to second-guess or stumble over which way to go. And the only time in the upcoming weeks Niko could get Simya through was five days later, when the staff rotated.

  Asala wouldn’t know what block or specific cell their lead was in until Niko was able to access the prison’s computer system, which they wouldn’t be able to do until they executed the plan. She memorized information quickly, but she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. She pored over the blueprints over and over and over, using lines from poems, from novels, from sayings, from essays to build mnemonics to better commit the hallways, doors, gates, and passageways to instant recall.

  It was now just one day before the planned prison break-in. “Would I be too much of an ass nugget if I asked you to get me some caffeine?” said Niko as they typed away at multiple computers. They had several programs running, each machine running different protocols and routines.

  Simya had given them the name of the private medical company she worked for and information about its security. It wasn’t enough for a full-on assault, but Niko believed they could get what they needed in time.

  “Of course.” Asala hadn’t got much sleep herself, but at this juncture, her role was much less intellectually demanding than theirs.

  She left their room and went out onto the street, layered to the hilt, her hat pulled down over her ears. The cold air burned her lungs. The smell of smoke was pleasant and familiar. Already after a short time her eyes had grown used to the sting of it.

  Walking down Orestes Street was almost nice. The smell of breakfast cooking: meat stewing, fish frying. Bustling people. She smelled teas and root coffees. Herbs. Spices. There was a little bit of stink in the air, but few of the more foul smells lingered with the cold and the wind.

  Asala had rarely ventured here as a child. Like she’d told Simya, she was a country girl from a clan of mountain hags. But she still remembered it from the few times, maybe three in total, she’d passed through. It hadn’t changed that much in thirty-four years. A few more abandoned shops. More Hypatians addicted to flash. More beggars. Lots more beggars.

  But the feel was the same. Asala expected her home mother to come out of a shop carrying a bag before rushing Asala along back to a train station, a now defunct line.

  Almagest, as bad as it was, wasn’t a place Asala necessarily had the urge to flee. It was just a city, a city under siege by the cold. Like all of Hypatia, it was people’s home. Beloved.

  Asala bought Niko a couple of energy drinks from a machine and picked them up some breakfast, too, a large container of meatball soup, egg pancakes, yogurt, cheese. They’d both need to load up if they were going to survive today without crashing.

  No one smiled at Asala as she made her way back to the inn. It was a refreshing change from Khayyam, with all its fake pleasantness, where people thought you were some kind of demon incarnate if you didn’t look up to exchange a hello.

  Asala walked up the short flight of stairs back to the room. She tossed a can of Six-Shot energy drink to Niko and they caught it without looking up from their work.

  “Made some breakthroughs,” Niko said. “Was able to get past most of Simya’s company’s firewalls. The password system isn’t that secure because they’re made to change it every month. You’d think that’d make things more difficult to hack, but it just means people are more likely to have variations on the same password over and over again. Dog1234 one month, for example; then the next, Dog2345; then Dog3456; and so on. It also means people tend to write their passwords down or store them electronically in messages, computer notepads, etc. Those things are on people’s personal devices, less secure, and easy for me to hack almost instantly. I’ve got a program running through emails people sent to themselves looking for specific sorts of combinations of numbers, symbols, and letters. Got some hits, but none for administrators yet. It’ll come though. Another couple of hours, tops.”

  Asala nodded and patted them on the back. They’d done good work. She thought back to the mechanic’s words at the Yard, insinuating Niko wasn’t someone Asala could trust. But Niko w
as working diligently. They were clearly committed to this mission as much as or more than Asala herself.

  “Come on. Take a break. You need to eat and so do I. Don’t feel like having breakfast alone,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah, just let me finish this one thing,” said Niko.

  They ate together then took turns in the tiny shower. Tomorrow would be go time, but they still had lots of work for today. Simya was currently at a shift at a triage site for an ice-mining accident, an hour outside of Almagest. Tomorrow, she’d be at Kleidaria, a tomb in the outskirts, deep in the tundra.

  • • •

  HealthPlus did supply the medical personnel for Kleidaria—one on-call physician and three on-site nurses for a population of 2,400 inmates. It was a massive facility, a hexagon built into a mountain basin with a domed courtyard in the middle where prisoners had leisure time. Each side of the hex was a cell block, guarded from one another heavily, further subdivided into a maze of twenty wings. Their lead, Teak av Fintus, was somewhere in the labyrinth of it all.

  Asala hadn’t decided whether it was lucky or unlucky that very little of the security was actual human staff. It was fewer people to evade, but it made for an increased artificial intelligence presence. More bioscanners. More cameras. An automated system.

  “Ready?” Asala asked Simya. They had met in the room at the inn, but for Simya’s safety would be parting ways after this point, traveling a few minutes apart, taking different routes. It wasn’t much of a precaution—if someone were trying, they’d easily be able to connect the two of them, but no one was trying.

  “I’m ready. I mean, I don’t actually have to do anything, do I? Just carry in the transmitter. Plug it into a hardline. Go about my nursing duties with no one the wiser, right? I’m just pretending to charge my cellular device. No big deal. No reason to arouse anyone’s suspicions.” She looked up at them then, her brown eyes wide. “And then you get my sister out? Right? You promise? She’s ready to go. She’s already in Almagest. She traveled far to get here, and you can’t let her down.”

  Asala grabbed each of Simya’s shoulders. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Simya looked away. “You can’t know that, Asala.”

  “I can. After thirty years of doing what I’ve been doing, I absolutely can,” she said.

  “Right,” said Simya. “How do I look?”

  Asala took in her loose-fitting white scrubs, her braided hair pulled up into a tight bun.

  “Good. You look like a nurse. You look reasonably calm. It’s your first day at Kleidaria, so that’ll explain any anxiousness when they do a bioscan of you to check your identity,” said Asala. “You need to get your train. It’s a three-mile walk. I’ll be getting on at a different stop, five miles in the other direction. I’ll be arriving about ten or fifteen minutes after you. Niko’s already there on the ground, setting up at a location not far from the perimeter of the prison. All our comm lines are open, and we’ll have eyes on you. You’ve got your bugs set up?”

  “Check,” Simya said, patting herself, as if to confirm the near-microscopic devices by feel.

  “They’ll give us eyes and ears. Don’t activate them until after you’ve passed through all the scanners. One or two at a time at the most. Remember, almost every gate or entryway between wings and sections have scanners that will pick up your bugs if they’re on, so deactivate before you approach any one of those. Hopefully you’ll just be stationed in the infirmary and won’t have to go anywhere else on the site,” said Asala, zipping on a tight, thick black hoodie insulated with kinetilon. It would keep her warm in temperatures below -40℃. She put on another one over it, then put on a coat over that. Gloves. Hat. Truthfully, she didn’t know what would happen after they got to Teak, or how long she and Niko would be out in the cold tonight. They’d make contact with Simya’s sister when they were clear of the authorities, then rendezvous before heading back to the Altair.

  She strapped on her sidearm and checked the backups at her ankle and in her coat. “Let’s go.”

  The skyrail link connecting Almagest to Kleidaria and a few other major centers was one of the few lines that was still maintained and something like functional. Delays were frequent, but that was why they were getting such an early start.

  The skyrail was suspended on thick wires in the sky with a little less than a hundred meters altitude. Asala could see everything. Mountains, endless mountains, and sloping hills that beckoned. Deep valleys. Snow-streaked plains. Despite all that had befallen Hypatia since this crisis had begun, the planet entranced, and captivated. Asala had spent more time off this planet than on it, but there was no doubt as she looked at the harsh landscape that it had made her.

  The train rattled, a wrenching, high-pitched whistle emanating from above. They were traveling at decently high speeds—if this kept up, they would complete the thirty-five mile journey in about twenty minutes.

  She sat with her head bowed down, hoodie drawn over to obscure her face. Niko said they would disable all the cameras that they could, but Asala was old-school and liked to make sure her bases were covered.

  Today she was thankful for the tattoos she’d had such an uneasy relationship with all her life. If anyone saw her, they wouldn’t recognize her as someone sent from Khayyam.

  After the train pulled in, Asala got into position in one of the blind spots she and Niko had identified from the blueprints, plans, and topographical maps. Her radio was on. Her guns, all three, were holstered. If everything was going according to plan, Simya was already in, probably just about through the security checks. Once inside, she would plug in the device Niko had given her to connect to the prison’s hardline, so Niko could hack into their network and open the passages that needed opening for Asala to infiltrate.

  “Gamma, you copy?” asked Asala, making sure she was tuned to the right frequency.

  “Aye, copy, Alpha,” Niko said. “Just got eyes and ears on our girl. All is a go. I’ll let you know once we’re ready for phase two. Beta is now headed to where the package will be delivered.”

  The vague codes they used were far from indecipherable, but sometimes all that was needed was a small layer of concealment to blur reality and buy time. Not that anyone would be able to hear them. Niko promised to take care of that.

  “All right. Package is in. Let me work my magic. First order of business, smash out their eyes.”

  This was Asala’s time to go. The cameras surrounding the perimeter would only be disabled for a short amount of time. Two minutes. Enough for her to get to a utility door at a side entrance but hopefully not long enough that the prison’s AI would recognize the looped video Niko was feeding it in the live feed’s stead.

  “And . . . go,” said Niko.

  “Copy.”

  Asala sprinted. In many ways, Kleidaria was as deserted as the shuttleport had been. She didn’t have to attempt to blend in. Any guards were inside. Most of the security was computer-based.

  “Cameras are going to go back on in ten, nine, eight,” Niko began to count down. Several meters from the door, Asala pumped it up a notch, pushing herself to move harder and faster. “Four, three, two.”

  Asala was at the thick, heavy utility door, but she knew it wouldn’t be open yet. Niko could only enter one system at a time. “Your girl is good, by the way,” said Niko. “Going about her business, hasn’t raised any suspicions. Doing a check of the systems now and it looks like the AI did notice the camera anomalies with the looped feed and are sending two guards to do a sweep of the perimeter.”

  “Tell me you’ll have that door open for me before that.”

  “I’m trying.” Niko’s voice was tight. Asala could imagine them typing away furiously. “Each door has a separate set of protocols; it’s taking longer than I thought,” they said. “One second, let me try something . . . Okay. Got the password. Just a couple more . . . and okay. Open.”

  Asala heard the magnetic latches give and slid into the doorway just as she heard guards approach
ing on their patrol from the main entrance.

  “You in?” asked Niko.

  “In.”

  Asala heard Niko lock the door behind her. Even though it took more time, they had to cover up their tracks as instantly as possible, as the AI did regular sweeps of the system to check for breaks in pattern. A door quickly unlocked and relocked meant a guard or maintenance member was accessing a side door. A door left unlocked meant trouble.

  Asala followed the route she’d memorized from the blueprint, trusting that Niko was disabling the bioscanners and cameras one by one as she followed the complicated maze through the basement level to access the main levels where Teak would be.

  Niko’s voice came over her earpiece. “All right. He’s in F Block. Cell 104. There’s still a half an hour before they’ll be let out for breakfast, at which time their cell doors will automatically open and a bioscan sweep will log them in for the day. I don’t think I’m going to be able to override that system because there’s zero manual access, so you need to be out before then. Period.”

  Asala was in A Block. She was going to have to run, hard, if she was going to make that window. “I’m going to be moving fast. You got all the security checks covered?”

  “Going to turn all the scanners and camera off at once. That’s the only way I can keep up. Go,” said Niko.

  Asala ran as fast as she could, sprinting down corridors, making the turns she knew she needed to make. It wasn’t easy to translate the lines and squares from the blueprints to real life on the move, but it also wasn’t Asala’s first break-in. She didn’t make wrong turns.

  F Block was quiet and dark, but Asala could feel that most of the inmates were already awake. Their breaths weren’t long, slow, and even, like sleepers would be. There were no husky snores. Eyes scanned here from the cells, but no one spoke.