“Orders from an Analyst. Not from my CO.”
Luscombe shook his head. “I'm not about to have a debate about protocol. The Analysts advised full retreat. You ignored them. After that there was no way you would be given command of a Space Corps fighter unit again, no matter how successful the outcome. The Service cannot have heroes. We need to be united. We serve. We follow. We obey.”
Hugo took another drink, looking at the wall. “Even if we know better?”
“Captain, I hope to have a long and profitable relationship with you but you are not going to win my admiration by arguing with me.”
“My apologies, Colonel.”
Luscombe looked at him a moment longer. For one minute Hugo wondered what would happen if he told the colonel to shove it. Shove it all. Shove the Zero and shove the Service. But the moment and the feeling passed, leaving in its wake a flush of shame.
“Against orders or not, however,” Luscombe continued. “Your actions caught the eye of Admiral Pharos. She is deeply committed to the Zero project. She leaves the running of it to me, but this is her ethos. Her plan. You may not to be able to show it but you should be proud.”
Hugo nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good lad.” Luscombe rose and went back to the sideboard, replacing the glasses. “We won't be able to meet in person often. Hudson will be able to come up with some sort of explanation for your presence here today but by and large, unless it's an emergency, it's best if you report via secure channel from the Zero. Lieutenant Rami knows how to program it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don't underestimate this task, Hugo,” Luscombe said. “Others before you have. It did not end well for them.”
Hugo rose, stiffly. “Just one question, sir...”
“Just one?” Luscombe's mouth twitched up at one corner.
“One main question, sir,” Hugo said, forcing his hands not to clench. “Why not make Webb captain?”
Luscombe's smile widened. “You don't like him, do you?” Hugo didn't comment but felt his cheeks flush. Luscombe waved a hand. “It's okay, Hugo. Webb has a way of rubbing Service officers up the wrong way. But trust me on this. I have never known a better soldier or a more loyal commander. If you win him over, you will go far. But he'd be the first person to tell you he is not captain material.”
“How so?”
Luscombe shrugged. “He can't handle being the middle man. He can't make the hard decisions. He will do anything and everything for his mission and his crew. But those are his first priorities. The Zero needs a captain that can implement the Service's agenda. It's not an easy task. You have to be of both worlds, Hugo. Under and overground. Official and unofficial. Service and...”
“Scum?”
Luscombe's gaze hardened. “Some might see it that way. You are more likely to succeed if you learn to broaden your thinking, however.”
Hugo ducked his head. His face still felt hot. He ground his teeth to stop himself blurting the hundred angry things that rose to his lips and only raised his head again when he trusted his face to be blank and his tongue to be still.
“Are you ready for your first Red-Level assignment then, Captain?” Luscombe asked.
Hugo straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Here.” Luscombe handed over a disk. “Rami will be able to decode it. I'm curious about Albion Integrated's revenue stream of late. There appears to be...discrepancies. It's probably nothing, but I need to be sure.”
“AI?” Hugo asked, taking the disk. “They're a very powerful organisation, sir.”
“Indeed they are, Captain,” Luscombe said. “All the more reason to make sure we know where their money's going. Now go. All the details are on the disk. I expect a report when you have the data. You have a week.”
ɵ
“The sort of data he's after will not be on any system I can get into remotely, Captain,” Rami said.
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“We have to get it from their grounded system,” Webb said as he sat with his feet up on the galley table, cleaning his fingernails with his knife.
“In their command centre?” Hugo said.
Webb nodded. “Fun, huh?”
Hugo flicked again through the mission data on the galley wall display. There were official listings of AI's office, warehouse and factory locations, lists of its stock holdings and official credit standing, reports on inter-Orbit relations and the names of the CEOs. Hugo felt himself pale.
“They make weapons and equipment for the Service,” he muttered. “How can Luscombe want us to spy on them?”
“Keep your enemies close and your friends closer, Captain,” Webb said, dropping his feet down and leaning on the table. “Spinn?”
“Commander?”
“Rami’s digging up official and unofficial schematics of AI's Earth-based command centre. Will you go through them with her and come back to us with some ideas?”
“Yes sir.”
“Kinjo?”
The young girl perked up. “Yes, Commander?”
“You, Sub and Bolt put together what we need for a two-man infiltration mission. We'll need guns, high-memory wrist panels, bolt cutters, mobile spyware... Sub and Bolt will know what else.”
“Yes, Commander,” Kinjo said and then was up and scurrying out the galley towards the hold.
“This is impossible,” Hugo murmured, still leafing through the data on the display.
“More and I will handle it, Captain,” Webb said, standing. “You put your feet up. We'll be done before you know it.”
“Commander,” Hugo grated, turning to him as he moved to leave. “I have already explained that I do not intend to sit out missions.”
“Sir,” Webb said, visibly gathering his patience. “This isn't just finalising a deal with a low-security point. This is front-line, Red-Level infiltration and extraction. I'd strongly recommend you take a back seat for this one.”
“Doctor. Lieutenant.”
“Sir?” the two remaining crew responded.
“Could you give us a moment?”
Rami and Spinn looked at each other, then at Webb, before rising and leaving the galley. Webb stood with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed.
“Captain, you're going to have to learn to trust my judgement.”
“And you, Commander, are going to have to learn some respect. I am not a greengun. Neither am I stupid. I was made captain for a reason. You will listen to my input and you will formulate your plan involving me.”
“You have no idea how to play this game yet, Captain,” Webb said, infuriatingly cool. “You nearly made Jaeger into an enemy yesterday. By the time you learn how quickly short fuses burn out around here, you'll be too dead to appreciate it.”
Hugo clenched his fists.
“You have your orders, Commander Webb,” he ground out. “Consult with Rami and Spinn. Gather more data. We meet back here in two hours when we will formulate the plan. Under my supervision.”
“Very well,” Webb said eventually.
“'Very well, sir'.”
Hugo saw Webb grind his own teeth. There was a dangerous flicker in the commander's eyes.
“Very well, sir.”
Hugo took himself off to the bridge and spent time going through the Albion Integrated data provided by Luscombe, memorising what there was. It wasn't nearly enough to plan anything. The Service would never launch an official campaign on so little. He gripped his hair in frustration and got up and paced over to the viewscreen.
The Zero was on a nowhere-course, drifting in a remote spaceway. More was at the controls but he just kept a cursory eye on their course, working mainly on a technical manifest for the mission. Hugo couldn't make much out of what he could read on the sub-lieutenant’s display so he paced back along the bridge and dropped himself again into the new command chair. He fiddled with the controls on the arm display, then used it to go through the Zero's vitals and camera feeds.
/> Hugo couldn't quite ignore the slight chill that began to rise under his belly. Every member of the crew was bent to some task that was being executed with the ease of something done a thousand times. When he switched to the feed from the hold he saw that Sub and Bolt were actually laughing as they checked over the contents of the weapons locker. A bitterness underpinned by uncertainty bubbled up inside him and he had to grip the chair arms to restrain himself from once again running his hands nervously through his hair.
“It's alright sir,” More's voice was quiet, but it still startled Hugo. The older man was looking at him. Hugo eased his scowl and More smiled. “You're not the first, is all sir. We've been told that the Zero's learning curve is like jumping off a cliff.”
“Is that how you found it?”
More frowned slightly. “It wasn't for me sir, but that's because I was trained especially for this.”
“How long ago was that?”
More looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Coming up on twenty years now, captain. Just after the revolution.”
Hugo raised an eyebrow. “How old were you when you were recruited?”
“Twelve, sir. I was sent for training on the Endeavour then assigned to the Zero.”
“You were recruited into undercover-ops training at twelve?”
More nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“No schooling?”
More gave a small shrug as he went back to his work. “There wasn't much point, sir. Formal education is of little use in this game. The youth unit had taught me all I needed to know.”
Hugo looked up. “You were recruited from a youth unit?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “We all were.”
“All of you?”
More turned in his chair, scratching his stubble. “Well, we picked up Kinjo on Haven and Sub and Bolt were recruited older. But none of us have any family.”
“No one has any ties to exploit, then? And nothing to divide their loyalty?”
“I think that was the admiral's thinking sir, yes,” More replied. Hugo drummed his fingers on the command chair, watching his sub-lieutenant skim his way through fuel inventories and tech checks on the display. More tapped a couple more keys and the display went blank. He turned in his chair to face Hugo. “That's two hours, Captain,” he said.
Hugo nodded, blinked up at the overhead bulkhead for a moment, then rose.
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
More just looked at him for a moment, eyes unreadable. “No matter how the commander acts...we all know that the Zero needs a Service-trained captain.”
“You think so?”
“There's no medals, no credit. No thanks. But it’s dark out there. And messy. We need someone to lead us, even if it means dragging us onto the right course by our teeth. Without that... we're just another rudderless pirate ship, scraping an existence off the underside of humanity.”
Hugo held the other man's look for a moment, feeling that chill creep once again along the underside of his stomach. More stood, paused, then moved past him and off the bridge. Hugo stood for a moment longer, gazing out into the darkness beyond the viewscreen before following.
ɵ
“Okay, what do we have?”
The whole crew were crowded into the galley, sat on the benches or leaning against the wall. Hugo did not miss the heavy look Webb was giving him, but he ignored it, turning first to Spinn and Rami who were stood either side of the wall display.
“Lieutenant? What do we have?”
“AI's central command centre is in this range of mountains in Old Europe,” Rami began, queuing up visuals of the mountain range and the surrounding area. “There is nothing up there except some old battlegrounds, hiking trails and a couple of fuelling stations.”
“That's a strange place for a base.”
Rami nodded. “Officially, it's because it has cheaper labour and licence taxes.”
“Any fallout?”
“Not here, sir,” Rami said. “The histories say there were munitions-only land battles in this area during the Whole World War.”
“Civilian habitation?”
Rami pulled the map out wider. “The nearest town is forty miles away. Not large, but big enough to have local monitoring systems. AI have a lot of remote monitoring of their own spread out all through the area as well.” She keyed in a couple of commands, and a web of sensor-lines laid itself over the map.
“Christ, that's a lot of surveillance,” Webb said.
Rami nodded. “This command centre houses their primary research labs, but even so. It doesn't look like they want anyone sneaking around. There's no harbour or docking port nearby, either.”
“How close can the Zero get?” Webb asked.
Rami looked to Spinn. The doctor scratched his head with one hand and zoomed the map out further with the other. “There is a little less surveillance further west... in the foothills. There is a clearing in the woods not far from this groundway. Well, it's a road really. Old, but well maintained according to the scans. It should be possible to manoeuvre the Zero between the local long-range sensors long enough to drop a ground team, but we'd have to retreat to orbit immediately.”
“How far is that from the command centre?” Hugo asked.
“About twenty miles, Captain,” Spinn said. “The ground team will have to take land transports.”
“Any chance we could bullshit our way in at the front gate?” Webb asked.
Rami shook her head. “It's a completely closed base. Shift rotas, worker profiles, maintenance schedules – everything is stored on their grounded system. We can't even hack you onto a shift, let alone set you up with fake swipe badges.”
“Guess we wouldn't want it to be too easy,” Webb mumbled. “Fine, in that case, we'll take the bikes. We can stay off-road and come up to the boundary wall under cover. Do we do this day or night?”
“Day,” said Spinn. “They lock the data systems down at night. We cannot afford the extra time it would take to get in.”
“How close can the bikes get to the base before being detected?” Hugo asked.
“Use your eyes, Captain,” Webb said, keying in some commands into the panel laid into the galley table. A contour grid laid itself over the command centre map and sensor-read plan. “We come in from the north. There's a dip in the land, there.” He pointed. “We can stash the bikes there.”
“That's two miles north of the wall.”
“So we'll hike.”
“Unacceptable,” Hugo shook his head, stepping up to the display. He zoomed the image back in and leaned in close. “That will take too much time and increase the chances of being detected.”
“Captain, look at the scope on those sensors. They'd pick up the bike's heat signature when they got within a mile of the goddamned wall.”
“Commander, I have put up with about all I will take from you,” Hugo kept his face still as he looked as his commander. “Don't make me ground you.”
“You -”
“Zeek,” More said, laying a hand on the commander's shoulder. “Let's just hear him out, okay?”
Webb slouched back on the bench, arms folded. Hugo pointed at the readings on the display.
“Spinn, from this sight pattern I assume these are the same spec as Service ground sensors – sensitive to heat, light, movement?”
“Yes, sir,” the researcher said. “AI make them for the Service.”
Hugo nodded. “They are unbeatable across open ground, but the woodland will lessen their range and muddy their readings. Spinn, do you have a display marker?” The professor pulled a blunt length of plastic from his breast pocket. Hugo took the marker to the map, drawing two ragged lines from north to south, in and out of the trees and perfectly slipping between the read-lines of the sensors. “I assume you are capable of manoeuvring those bikes with some level of competency? Load the co-ordinates of these routes onto your wrist panels. If you can stick to them you can get yourselves to within twenty feet of the wall... here.�
� Hugo circled the spot with the marker then looked back at his crew. He felt a flicker of satisfaction when Webb said nothing, just took a deep drink from his coffee mug. “Now,” he continued, “since AI designed these sensors, I'm assuming they probably know their weaknesses in woodland?”
Rami nodded. “The satellite monitoring shows regular foot patrols, Captain.”
“Bad day to be on patrol,” Webb murmured into his mug.
“What's next?” Hugo said as he took his seat again.
“The security system is grounded like everything else,” Spinn said. “Neither Rami or I will be able to get in to scramble any of the sensors or camera feeds. The first part of the mission will have to be disabling or getting interference into the security system. There is one place near that arrival point that should give you the access to the security systems...a motor pool security booth... here.” Spinn used the display marker to ring a square on the display.
“That's inside the boundary wall...” Hugo frowned.
Spinn blinked his watery eyes at him. “Yes, Captain.”
Hugo frowned. “What about the wall?”
“We climb the wall, Hugo,” Webb said.
“How high is it?”
“Spinn?” Webb asked, sounding infuriatingly amused.
“About thirty feet, Commander.”
“Piece of cake,”
Hugo glared at him. “You cannot be serious.”
Webb grinned.
“Ignore him, Captain,” Rami said, glowering at her commander. “He's winding you up. We have grips. The ground team can climb the wall.”
“And the sensor web strung over the top?” Hugo asked, pointing at the red lines on the display.
“We jump,” Webb said.
Hugo sighed, rubbed his temples. “We'll go through that later. What happens at the guard booth?”
“The ground team should be able to disable the alarms and misdirect the camera feeds from there,” Spinn said.
“Don't suppose that booth is connected to the central data system?” Webb asked.
Spinn shook his head. “Only to the security net.”
“Figures,” Webb mumbled and drained his coffee.
“The central system that we’re after is accessible throughout the main building,” Spinn said. “But Rami and I have analysed the schematics and we think that you'll have the least trouble if you try and access the data we need from the smaller research lab. It's here...” Spinn used his marker to ring another part of the diagram. “It's on the third floor and looks to be a relatively quiet section.”
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