The Yanthus Prime Job: A Pepper Melange Novella (Starship Grifters)

by Robert Kroese

  “Ethel, please,” said Ethel.

  Dr. Harmigen nodded. He seemed to have adjusted with aplomb to his wife’s new role as the metaswarm’s representative. “That gives Ethel almost six point seven million credits. And I sure don’t need that much. I’d be willing to give her three million of mine. Ten million credits will buy a lot of swampland.”

  “Works for me,” said Pepper.

  “Okay,” said Ethel. “Then we just need to have a contract drawn up and notarized.”

  Pepper and Dr. Harmigen glanced uncertainly at each other.

  “Although now that I think about it,” Ethel said, “we’re engaged in a highly illegal enterprise and I don’t exist as a legal entity, so maybe that’s not a good idea. Handshake?”

  The three co-conspirators shook hands.

  “All right,” Ethel said, rubbing her tiny hands together. “What exactly do you need me to do?”

  Chapter 7

  Pepper stood stock still, waiting for the last of the museum’s patrons to leave. She wore a ruffled dress and a flowery bonnet, the costume of a wealthy lady during the Yanthus Prime Civil War. The dress was reversible; the other side looked like the drab sort of dress women currently wore on Yanthus Prime. Pepper had ducked into a corner of the museum to get into costume and then inserted herself into a crowd of animatronic aristocrats listening to a speech by Yanthus Prime’s thirteenth president, Tolliver Oilskin. There were no cameras in this part of the museum—there wasn’t anything of note to steal in the Civil War wing—so it was no trouble to creep into the display without being seen.

  The museum closed just after dark, but she waited for the guard to make his first rounds before leaving the display. Then she removed the ridiculous dress, under which she wore a holographic camouflage bodysuit. The suit didn’t quite make her invisible, and it wouldn’t fool motion detectors or heat sensors, but it would suffice to make her difficult to see that with a little luck—and a compelling diversion—she could get past the cameras between her and the main exhibit room without being spotted. She tapped her comm, sending a signal that would trigger an incendiary device in a trashcan in the museum’s southern wing. She’d made a visit to the museum earlier that day to place it, as well as a few other surprises. If things went as expected, one of the guards would investigate the smoke, find a fire smoldering in the trash can, and put it out with the fire extinguisher across the hall. Meanwhile, Pepper would cross the hall between the Civil War exhibit and the gem exhibit.

  Pepper waited until the distant fire alarm sounded, and then got on her hands and knees. She’d tried this trick at the bar, using the camera and similar low lighting, and had found that if she crawled very slowly, keeping her movements rhythmic and uniform, she was nearly invisible. This trick wouldn’t work in the exhibit room where the Emerald was housed, though. Even if it weren’t for the motion detectors and infrared sensors, the room was too well lit and there were too many cameras. But for an empty hallway that presumably wasn’t being watched very closely, it worked just fine. Pepper made it across without any other alarms sounding.

  The fire alarm stopped, which was another good sign: the fire had evidently been put out, and there was no indication the fire department had been called. She had a contingency plan in case the fire department showed up, but it would have complicated things. So far, so good.

  Pepper got to her feet, ensconcing herself in a small dead zone between two cameras. She withdrew a metal case and a small plastic box from her pocket. She opened the box, revealing a toggle switch with a small light next to it. Pepper flipped the switch and the light went on.

  The little box was an EMP canary, which Pepper had built herself the previous night. It was simply an LED light connected to a battery, with a picocircuit fuse in between. When the museum’s EMP fired, it would fry any picocircuitry in the area, including the fuse, and the light would go out. That would be Pepper’s signal that she had ten minutes until the next EMP surge. The EMP would short out the picocircuitry in the lenses she’d had made to fit over the cameras, so she needed to keep them shielded in their case until the next surge.

  The light would also function as a signal to the metaswarm, which had hidden dozens of its members throughout the museum. That was the plan, anyway. So far Pepper hadn’t seen any of the little flies, but she had to trust they were nearby. She had tested the EMP canary the previous night and Ethel had claimed that the flies could actually hear the subsonic frequencies emitted by the device when the circuit was closed. When Pepper flipped the switch, a fly hidden somewhere nearby would transmit the message to another fly farther away, and that one would transmit it to another fly, etc., until the message was received by the metaswarm itself, like a sensation being transmitted through nerves to a central brain. The metaswarm would then send a group of flies to assist Pepper with the heist.

  The light went out less than two minutes after Pepper turned it on. Looking around, she saw no sign of the insects. Damn it, she thought. She had considered using a separate signal to summon the flies before the canary was triggered, but Ethel had convinced her it would be a needless complication. So now here she sat, with the clock ticking, and the damned bugs were nowhere to be seen. It occurred to her that maybe something in the museum was emitting noise at the same frequency as the canary, masking the sound. If that were the case, the flies were waiting for a signal they would never hear. And Pepper couldn’t reactivate the device even if she wanted to; it was a one-shot deal. She had no other way of communicating with the swarm; they had deemed it too dangerous to attempt contact by radio. If the flies didn’t show up soon, she was going to have to abort. But just as she was plotting her escape, one of the flies buzzed past her face, landing on the wall next to her.

  “It’s about time,” Pepper said. “Where are the rest of you?” She knew the fly couldn’t understand her, but her words would be transmitted along the line back to the metaswarm.

  After a few seconds, another fly landed on the wall. And then another, and another. Soon there were hundreds of them on the wall. Pepper realized they were arranging themselves in a deliberate configuration. They had formed letters. Pepper read aloud:

  Sorry! Traffic. :)

  “Hilarious,” said Pepper. “We’re wasting time. Let’s get to work.” She opened the metal case, revealing the ten custom lenses. “You know what to do,” she said. I hope.

  Several of the flies left the wall and flew toward the case. One fly landed on each lens. These flies were some of the larger specimens Pepper had seen; they had been hand-picked by the metaswarm for this job. One by one, the flies took off, each of them carrying one of the lenses. She watched as they slowly buzzed toward the exhibit room next door, where the Emerald of Sobalt Prime was housed. The lenses were so heavy that several of them seemed to be having trouble maintaining altitude.

  “What the hell is wrong with them?” Pepper asked. “They didn’t look like this last night.”

  She didn’t really expect an answer, but she saw that the flies on the wall were rearranging themselves again.

  Tired. Long trip here.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Pepper said. “I risked everything for this job, and you guys can barely stay above the floor.”

  The flies rearranged themselves again.

  Relax. Watch.

  As she watched, several more flies left the wall, buzzing down the hall to the exhibit room. Pepper couldn’t see very well at this distance, but it looked like most of the first wave was on the floor. The second wave of flies buzzed in, and after a moment Pepper realized they were taking over for the first wave. One by one, the replacement flies lifted off, each carrying one of the lenses. The first wave of flies remained on the floor, largely motionless.

  “So those first flies…” Pepper stared.

  The flies on the wall moved again.

  Dead.

  Pepper nodded. She realized that the metaswarm losing ten flies was probably the equivalent of Pepper getting a haircut. Still, she t
ook a moment to reflect solemnly on their sacrifice.

  The second wave of flies was now buzzing around the room, carrying their lenses. This part was not an exact science. As Pepper understood it, the metaswarm had essentially reprogrammed the flies’ firmware, replacing their reproductive drive with a desire to place the lenses over the camera apertures. This was necessary because the operation was too precise for it to be completely directed by the intelligence of the metaswarm. By the time one of the flies communicated its position to the metaswarm and the metaswarm sent it a course correction, the fly could be several millimeters off course. The metaswarm could direct the flies’ actions on a broad scale, but for the actual process of applying the lenses, it had to rely on the flies’ instincts.

  Pepper was skeptical when Ethel had explained the concept to her, but Dr. Harmigen had convinced her it was the only way their plan would work. Seeing it in practice did little to reassure her. The flies seemed to be buzzing around the room at random. Checking her watch, she saw that they had less than five minutes until the next EMP. When it went off, it would fry the circuitry in the lenses, rendering them useless. Not only that, but the longer the flies buzzed around the room, the more likely it would be that someone watching the camera monitors would notice something was amiss. If security got suspicious at the flurry of insects in the exhibit room, they’d send someone to the room and the jig would be up.

  But so far there was no sign anyone had noticed, and one by one, the flies began to approach their targets. The cameras panned back and forth at random and the flies struggled to land. Pepper watched as the first one slipped its lens into place and then promptly fell to the floor, dead. Still no alarms went up. Presumably that meant the lens was working as intended, transmitting the prerecorded image of the room to the camera. Either that, or whoever was supposed to be watching the cameras was asleep.

  There were only four cameras in the room, and ten lenses. That gave the flies a pretty good margin of error. But already three of the second-string flies were flagging; it seemed unlikely that they would reach their targets. That left six flies for three targets. Pepper had wanted to assign only one fly to a camera, Dr. Harmigen had convinced her that redundancy was better. “Nature loves redundancy,” Harmigen had said. “That’s why you get a hundred million sperm fighting over a single egg. Increases the odds of success.”

  The downside of this strategy was what Pepper was now witnessing. Two of the remaining flies had reached one of the cameras at the same time, and were now engaged in a sort of slow motion dogfight, angrily bumping into each other. The two flies were literally fighting to the death over the chance to mate with a camera.

  “Can you do something about this?” Pepper asked, turning to the flies on the wall.

  The flies responded:

  Patience.

  Pepper sighed. She now had less than three minutes to get into the exhibit room, grab the emerald, and get out before the cameras went black. That was cutting it way too close.

  Looking back into the exhibit room, she saw that two more flies had reached their target and were working their lenses into place. Four more had fallen to the ground. That left only one camera, with two flies fighting over it. Three out of four wasn’t going to cut it: even with the holographic suit, she’d be plainly visible to whoever was watching the monitors.

  Finally, one of the two remaining flies plummeted to the floor. For several seconds, the last fly buzzed around the camera, struggling to retain altitude, before finally settling on the camera’s aperture. Pepper breathed a sigh of relief as it maneuvered the lens into place. The fly fell to the floor, dead.

  Chapter 8

  Pepper took a deep breath, trying to prepare herself for the next step of the plan. Assuming the lenses were functioning correctly, the cameras would now show the Emerald in its case, in the middle of a completely empty exhibit room—and hopefully they would continue to show that scene while Pepper walked into the room and absconded with the Emerald.

  It wasn’t safe to enter the room quite yet, though. She still needed a little more help from the swarm to overcome the exhibit room’s motion detectors and heat sensors. Turning her attention back to the wall where the flies had congregated, she saw that many thousands more flies had arrived to join the original group. Thousands more filled the air in the hall behind her. She had been so intent on the flies battling to mate with the cameras that she had barely noticed the increasingly loud buzzing. She could only hope there were enough of them.

  Pepper checked her watch. The EMP would go off in less than two minutes. “Ready?” she asked the wall of flies.

  The swarm replied:

  Almost.

  It was now forming letters by creating negative space between the flies.

  “Well, hurry up!” Pepper said. “If you’re not ready in ten seconds, I’m going to have to just run in and hope for…”

  But as she spoke, the mass of flies left the wall, joining those in the air around her. They were so thick that she could barely see across the room. The swarm gradually coalesced around her, creating a vaguely Pepper-shaped cloud. At least, that was the idea. Pepper couldn’t see well enough to determine whether the camouflage was working. She had no way of communicating with the swarm in this state, but she was out of time. All she could do is head toward the exhibit room and hope for the best.

  Pepper walked slowly toward the exhibit room and the swarm came with her. She walked with her eyes closed, hands held out in front of her, relying on her memory to get her to the emerald. Forcing herself not to hurry, she kept her movements slow and smooth. The theory was that the swarm’s presence would sufficiently confuse the room’s motion detectors and heat sensors that Pepper’s presence would go undetected. Dr. Harmigen had confirmed that the theory was sound, but they’d been unable to test it. So Pepper was relieved when her fingers brushed against the glass display case that housed the diamond. No alarms sounded.

  Pepper crouched in front of the case, pulling a small plasma cutter and an adhesive cup with a handle from her pocket. She waved at the flies in front of her face, hoping they would take it as a signal that she needed to see. The swarm thinned slightly in front of her, and she fastened the cup to the case and then cut a grapefruit-sized hole with the plasma cutter. She pulled the glass disc toward her and set it on the floor, then reached into the case and grabbed the emerald. It was the size of a golf ball. She slipped it into her pocket and stood up, then slowly turned and began to walk back the way she had come. In less than a minute, the EMP would fire and the lenses would go black. The initial confusion would probably buy her another minute or two; the security guards would most likely suspect a technical malfunction. When they were unable to bring the cameras back online, they would send someone to investigate and trigger the alarm, summoning the Yanthus Prime City Police. If Pepper wasn’t out of the museum by then, she was as good as caught.

  After several steps, the swarm suddenly began to dissipate, and Pepper realized she was back in the hall. She checked her watch: twenty-three seconds.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be,” Pepper said, as the flies disappeared into various vents. “Every sentient being for itself.”

  A group of a few hundred flies settled on the wall to her right and crawled into formation. They spelled:

  Good luck!

  “Thanks a lot,” Pepper grumbled. She got on her hands and knees again and moved as fast as she dared down the hall. It would have been nice to have another incendiary device to set off as a distraction, but two incidents like that in one night would have been suspicious. She had to rely on stealth, the holographic suit, and the inattentiveness of whoever was monitoring the camera feeds. Once out of camera range, she stood up and began to walk briskly. By now the lenses would have gone dark; the security guard monitoring the feed would be running diagnostics to try to pinpoint the problem. Those tests would indicate that the cameras and lights in the exhibit room were both functioning normally—which could only mean that somet
hing was blocking the cameras.

  She’d made it to the Civil War exhibit, where she could avoid the wall cameras by moving in a zig-zag pattern she had memorized. She was halfway through when an alarm sounded. Behind her, plasteel gates slammed shut to protect the emerald. The jig was up; the cops had been alerted. She had maybe another five minutes to get out of the museum—while avoiding the museum’s security guards. Subtlety no longer being an option, Pepper pulled another small device from her pocket: a nondescript plastic box. She opened the box and flipped the switch inside. Immediately, deafening bangs began to echo through the museum. Around corners ahead of her and behind, multicolored lights flashed and smoke began to fill the building. This was Pepper’s Hail Mary escape plan. The incendiary device that had provided cover for her entry wasn’t the only surprise she’d planted. She’d placed pyrotechnics and smoke bombs in trash cans throughout the museum. The smoke would help cover her movement and the pyrotechnics would set off sensors throughout the building, making it impossible to pinpoint her location.

  She fought her instincts, which told her to make a beeline for the nearest exit. The security guards would have figured out by now that someone was after the emerald, and they’d be covering all the nearby exits. Her best bet was to go where they wouldn’t expect: deeper into the museum. Moving quickly and smoothly, she ran down the route she had memorized, banking on the holographic suit and the smoke to hide her from the cameras. She caught a glimpse of a security guard rounding a corner in front of her and slipped momentarily into a shadowy alcove as they passed. Then she continued on, turning when she reached the domed greenhouse at the center of the museum. The greenhouse was maybe fifty meters across, and filled with hundreds of species of plants. With the room dark and the stars visible through the glass above, Pepper could easily imagine that she was deep in a jungle on a planet far from Yanthus Prime.