Sungrazer

by Jay Posey

  “It’s not a suspicion,” Elliot said. “I manage them carefully.”

  Kit nodded, and reflexively looked over one shoulder. Elliot’s admission was stronger than usual etiquette would dictate.

  “There is certain information, difficult to come by. Information that could be beneficial to a person in the Minister’s position.” Kit was always careful to refer to the Finance Minister as “a person in the Minister’s position”, as though the two were distinct. Undoubtedly a carefully cultivated practice to avoid suggesting that the actual Minister might engage in anything less than the most honorable of pursuits, while acknowledging that certainly one could understand how an individual in such a position might do so.

  “Well, there are no guarantees,” Elliot said. “But I can ask around.” He sipped his tea, and then added, “Discreetly.”

  “I think,” Kit replied, “perhaps if I were able to advise the Office of Financial Affairs on certain, specific details, a person in the Minister’s position might be more open to a new introduction.”

  “If only someone knew what questions to ask,” Elliot said. Kit smiled.

  “Perhaps you should adjust your travel arrangements,” the old man said. “There’s a show I’ve been meaning to take in. Quite popular, I understand. You’ll be my guest this evening?”

  “It’d be a pleasure. In the meantime, is there a quiet place I could make a few calls?”

  “Of course,” Kit said. “I’ll have Alanna set up one of our guest offices for you.”

  Elliot finished the last of his tea, and sat back again, returning his gaze to the cityscape stretched out before them. The kind of information that Kit was looking for most certainly wasn’t the sort you could get by just making a few calls. But Elliot had one source, one in particular that he saved for very special occasions. Emergencies only. Technically he wasn’t even supposed to know it existed. But he’d discovered it the way he usually discovered things. Listening to people hint about things they weren’t supposed to be talking about, and then flattering them enough to keep them talking.

  He’d only used it a handful of times, always to good effect. It was risky to access the source, but Elliot always took precautions. He was, in fact, more concerned about the techs at NID finding out what he was up to than he was about accidentally exposing the asset. The few times he’d resorted to pulling information from it, the quality had been so high it’d opened doors that would have been otherwise impossible to budge. And he had to oil those hinges every so often. If NID locked him out, he didn’t know how he’d be able to keep all the plates spinning.

  At least Kit understood the importance of protecting their relationship; and that meant protecting Elliot’s methods. Given the confidential nature of Kit’s legitimate financial work, and the number of competitors actively attempting to discover his methods, the “quiet place” he would provide was likely to be about as secure as any of the clean rooms the NID had for such work. And Elliot always carried a secondary encryption method, for an added layer of security.

  “This is why I come to you with such things,” Elliot said. “You have a way.”

  “As do you, Volodya,” Kit said, rising from the table, and extending his hand. “We are of the same cloth.”

  Elliot stood, shook the offered hand and added the unnecessary but always appreciated traditional bow.

  “Cut by the same tailor,” Elliot said. “You’ll let me know how I can be of service?”

  “Shortly,” Kit replied. “Have some more tea. Alanna will escort you when your office is prepared. See you this evening for dinner, at seven.”

  “See you then, my friend.”

  Kit nodded and smiled, then exited, leaving Elliot to figure out for himself what would come next. He sat back down at the small table and poured himself another cup of tea, even though he hated the stuff. You could only plan so far ahead in his line of work. Mostly, it was about having enough open options, acting decisively, and always trusting your ability to keep dancing, no matter the tune.

  SEVEN

  The firing solution was atypical; the target, unusual. Calculations produced a steep angle of attack; negligible gravitational pull from the target required a higher than standard approach velocity. Increased velocity meant increased risk of detection. But SUNGRAZER saw no indication of sensor arrays at the target site. And her directives were clear.

  She followed her protocol, transmitted her intentions back to her controller, requested final confirmation. The reply was nearly instantaneous.

  Fire.

  SUNGRAZER rolled into her attack vector, increased her velocity to match her previous calculations. On her starboard side, a launch platform irised open. The munition armed. At a moment precisely timed, SUNGRAZER reached her terminal point and released.

  The instant the projectile had left its housing, SUNGRAZER arced away from her attack vector, allowing her velocity to carry her gracefully along her escape trajectory. And while she sped away, her payload sped home.

  The projectile met its target 741.18 kilometers distant at full velocity, imparting 4.88 gigajoules of energy concentrated into a focal point less than a meter in diameter. Destruction of the target from the resulting blast was thorough; shattered fragments and dust vomited out into open space, never again to settle.

  And the yield had been but a fraction of her potential.

  The asteroid she’d fired upon posed no threat, had no strategic value that SUNGRAZER could discern. But hers was not to decide. Hers was to wait, and to watch, and when called upon, to act.

  The impact was just under two meters from the target origin; well within operationally-acceptable tolerances, but not up to SUNGRAZER’s exacting standards. To her, imprecision was the same as a miss. She assessed her calculations, ran systems diagnostics. Recalibrated.

  Next time, she would not miss.

  EIGHT

  “Cover,” Lincoln said, his voice just above a whisper. “I’m going to take Poke for a look.”

  “Covering,” Sahil responded, equally quiet. He crept cat-like past Lincoln and took position against the bulkhead, guarding forward. Thumper slid up to close the gap in the line, maintaining rearguard with Lincoln now in the middle.

  “You’re good,” Thumper said.

  Technically, keeping their voices low wasn’t necessary. The recon suits they wore were completely sealed; Lincoln could have shouted and no one would have heard him outside his helmet. But it was a tough habit to break, and one Lincoln didn’t mind leaving intact. Quiet speech encouraged quiet movement.

  And the fifth-generation suits could move like a panther.

  Most powered armor was all heavy plates and sharp angles, and left its occupant feeling cut off from the outside world. The Outriders’ recon gear, by contrast, was fluid curves flowing into one another that made its many components appear to be a single piece. Other suits were a dump truck; Lincoln’s, a racing motorcycle.

  Inside his suit, Lincoln barely registered its presence. Its liquid movement coupled with the enhanced environmental awareness it provided made it feel almost more natural than his own skin, as if the suit enabled him to finally move through and perceive the world the way humans had always been meant to.

  The heads-up display projected a view of the outside world on the solid faceplate of his helmet, overlaid with a minimal set of indicators and operational markers. If he’d wanted it, Lincoln could have dialed the resolution in so sharply that it would appear he wasn’t wearing a helmet at all. He preferred to keep a transparent representation of the faceplate in his view though, as a reminder of the level of protection it offered. It helped cut down on the flinch-factor when the unpleasantness came flying in his direction.

  Lincoln used his gaze to select the appropriate options, opened up a window in the center of his view. It took a moment for him to orient himself to the new perspective, to remember that the ceiling was the floor. Their foldable was ahead of them, attached to the ceiling, scouting out the critical corridor that l
ed to the ship’s bridge. Foldable was the common term for it, though officially it was a self-assembling bot. Technically, it was just a self-reconfiguring bot, comprised of many independently-intelligent components operating together. But the more accurate terminology deprived its creators of the clever SABOT acronym they had assigned it when presenting it to the military.

  The team had named their foldable Poke before Lincoln had joined; Thumper treated it like a pet. Poke was smart enough to run independently for the most part, but at particularly sensitive times, Lincoln liked to have a human at the helm just to be sure. He was old-fashioned that way.

  Under his direct control, Poke crept silently forward along the ceiling, flattened and reconfiguring itself as necessary to follow the contours of the ship’s overhead as closely as possible. Lincoln parked the bot at an intersection where two side-corridors joined the main. The door to the bridge was closed, and flanked by two other doors. According to the schematics, one was a supply closet and the other a planning room of sorts. Lincoln swept Poke’s camera from right to left and back again, using its composite imaging to identify and mark the individuals it detected. Each mark was passed to the rest of the team, overlaid on their view.

  There were four people on the bridge, and no one in either of the side compartments. Other corridors were clear.

  This was the tricky part. They’d made it this far with no shots fired. Lincoln wanted to close it out that way. The thing was you never had to shoot until you had to shoot, and there was usually no way to know if or when that moment was going to come until it happened.

  Lincoln closed out the view from Poke’s perspective, set the bot back to autonomous. He laid a hand on Sahil’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. Sahil responded to the signal, glided to the side and back a step, allowing Lincoln to move forward. Once he was past, Sahil slid over back into the middle position again.

  “Anvil,” Lincoln said through his suit’s comms channel. “Hammer’s at Keyframe Zulu, ready to move up and prep for entry.”

  “Copy, Hammer,” came Wright’s voice in reply. “Anvil’s already in position.”

  “Acknowledged. Hammer is moving to bridge entrance.”

  Lincoln glanced back over his shoulder to confirm his two teammates behind him were set. Sahil nodded, and as one unit the three of them glided forward into the main corridor. Lincoln kept his short-barreled rifle up and ready, aim point centered on the entrance to the bridge. Those doors at the end of the narrow hallway were his responsibility; he trusted Sahil and Thumper to take care of everything else.

  Their pace was fluidly aggressive, a fast walk with each step carefully placed. At the door, Lincoln lowered his weapon and let it lock into the panel on the front of his suit, where it clung as if by magnets. The moment it was secure, his hands continued on to the left side of his torso, where the entry tool rested. Sahil anticipated the movement, took over covering the entrance, while behind them Thumper dropped to a knee and covered the rear.

  Lincoln pulled the tool from its housing, separated the two flattened cylinders from one another, and placed them one above the other in a vertical line, following the seam of the door in its frame. The instant they were properly seated, Lincoln lifted his weapon from its perch along his chest; it came away as easily as if someone had handed it to him.

  The hatch to the bridge opened outward, which was going to make entry awkward. Lincoln took two steps back, shifted his weapon over to his left hand and shoulder, angled his body to give Sahil and Thumper as much room to get by him as possible.

  One final check. The bridge was asymmetrical, laid out in an L-shape, upside down from Lincoln’s perspective. Three of the individuals were in the long section, and one was at the far end, around the corner from the main entryway. He could track their silhouettes, thanks to Poke’s imaging data that was projected over his view of the physical world. From what he could tell, all four crew members were casually working their stations, happily ignorant of what was crouching just outside their door. Lincoln almost hated to disturb them.

  Almost.

  “Anvil,” Lincoln said. “Hammer’s in place, set to go.”

  “Anvil’s set,” Wright responded over comms. “On your count.”

  “On my count,” Lincoln replied. He drew a settling breath, held his lungs full for a five count. Easy exhale. Reminded his shoulders to relax. “Three… two… one… execute, execute, execute.”

  On the last syllable, he activated the entry tool. Its abrupt whine cut off almost as soon as it had started, followed in the next instant by a dull whump from within the bridge. Lincoln pulled the hatch open, and Sahil was through the gap in an instant, followed immediately by Thumper. Sahil went left, Thumper right, so Lincoln went left, weapon up and scanning for targets.

  “Down, down, get down!” Sahil commanded, his voice thinner and processed as it came through the external speaker of his helmet. Two of the crew members on the ship complied immediately, but a third stood frozen in a half-crouch, hands swimming near his face like he was fighting bees.

  He was closest to Lincoln, so Lincoln moved forward to control him. The man wasn’t armed; Lincoln lowered his weapon and let it secure against the suit, then stretched out his hands towards the man. To Lincoln’s surprise, the man swung a haymaker at his head. The punch bounced harmlessly off Lincoln’s helmet, the dull impact barely registering. The man did what men do when they smash their hands into very hard things; he immediately clutched it with his other hand and pressed it against his belly, doubled-over. Which made it all the easier for Lincoln to secure him and take him down to the floor. He was a big man, and he struggled against Lincoln’s control, fishing his legs around and trying to roll onto his back. Lincoln laid his shin across the base of the man’s neck, pinning him, and bore down with just enough of his body weight to take the fight out of the man.

  When he was confident his man was controlled, Lincoln snapped his eyes up, scanned the bridge; Sahil and Thumper had each secured a crewmember. Wright’s marker was visible through the bulkhead; she and Mike had come in together through a hole they’d cut. Mike had quickly subdued the fourth individual. That was four of four. The bridge was theirs.

  “We good?” Lincoln asked.

  “Good!” Wright answered, and her reply was followed by the other three sounding off.

  Mike was the last. “Good to go!”

  Twelve seconds from entry to secure. No shots fired. All that remained now was to get the crew rounded up and moved to a central point, and then let Thumper go to work pulling data off the ship. About as clean as it could go.

  “All right,” Lincoln said. “Let’s shut it down, and talk it out.”

  All around him, the environment shimmered and faded. The man under his knee went transparent and became the floor; the bridge became the large, open hangar of another ship.

  It didn’t matter how many times Lincoln ran haptic training simulations. Every time one ended, he was always surprised to see how much it had fooled his brain. It really had felt like there was a man writhing and struggling beneath him.

  He got to his feet and his team gathered around him. They were all suited up, all carrying the exact load outs they expected to run on the live op. And that was one of the great benefits of the haptic sim; it was all piped in through their standard recon armor, so it felt about as real as the real deal. No special equipment, no weird extra weight or bulk that could throw operators off when they went into the field.

  Sims weren’t perfect, of course. No training ever quite was. But they got about eighty percent of the way there, which was about as high as anyone could hope for.

  “Sahil,” Lincoln said. “Give me the count that time.”

  “Four in quarters, two in engineering, two at mess, four on the bridge,” Sahil said, rattling it off like he was reading from a checklist. “Twelve in all.” That matched Lincoln’s count of the ship’s personnel.

  “No weapons, no illicit goods,” Lincoln said. “Gave us an easy one that time
. Where’d we have trouble?”

  “Cut through,” Wright said. “Took us six minutes longer to reach our entry point on the bridge that time.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Water treatment was on the starboard side, had some big pipes in our way. Had to route around.”

  “Which wasn’t easy to do being all quiet like,” Mike added, mostly unnecessarily.

  The target ship was a nineteen year-old Marushkin long-haul freighter; the sim replicated the ship’s general structure exactly, pulled straight from factory blueprints. All the major components were the same on every Marushkin, the general placement of compartments and corridors. But there were a few minor variations how a hauler could be configured, depending on what it was used to transport. And there was no way to know for sure what kind of custom work the hauler’s skipper might have had done to it.

  The haptic sim made best guesses where it could, and no run through was ever quite the same as anything they’d trained before. Crew count changed; sometimes there were passengers, sometimes not; maybe the ship was well-maintained, maybe there were leaky pipes and garbage everywhere. The simulator did a good job of preparing the team for learning to navigate the environment, without ever repeating enough to become predictable.

  Simulated personnel were the biggest factor of unpredictability. Just like real humans. You never knew exactly how they would react. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Lincoln had been in enough situations involving civilians that had gone sideways to recognize the one thing you could know for sure was that they would never react the way you anticipated. He’d seen big burly men curl into quaking balls of fear, and spindly older women fly into rage, throwing whatever was close at hand. Bottom line was, people were the big unknown in any op, and the sim did a good job of replicating that fact.

  “Hey boss,” Mike said, chuckling. “Did I see that right? Did your man punch you in the faceplate?”