“Please get started on that. Let me know if you find anything. And let me know if you need any help with that incredibly terrible thing you are working on.”
“I shall do so. Until then, I advise you to go to sleep. Your vocal patterns are indicative of extreme anxiety and fatigue.”
“I’ll give it a shot, but I’m not making any promises.”
He closed the connection and tapped at the navigation software to plot a route home. Like the rest of the network, it was down.
“Eh… Something tells me I wasn’t done with my driving therapy anyway.”
He pushed the hovercar to full throttle and sped off across the landscape.
#
The engineer tapped her way through the settings on the console. “I don’t understand. Why do we need to know this?” she said.
“Because it needs doing. You in the habit of questioning the company brass?” Milliner said.
“It is a profoundly vague order. ‘Prepare a procedure to activate the array,’” she said.
“Look, maybe if the people up in the station would get on their game and quit messing with the communication network, things would be different. But as it is, we’ve got little snippets to go on, you saw the orders. Now get to problem-solving.”
“But all we need is the authorization code from Preethy Misra. That would fully commission the array, and there wouldn’t have to be any problem-solving.”
“But we don’t have the code. So we need to figure it out, or we’ll probably have Patel breathing down our necks.”
His tone was becoming sterner.
“Well… I suppose… Anand, you’re the tech on duty. You’ve got the maintenance authorization, right?”
“Uh. Yeah,” Anand said, with an uninspiring lack of conviction.
“Enter it in,” she said.
He nodded and dug through his documentation on his slidepad until he found a lengthy alphanumeric code. He entered it.
“Let me see about this…” She tapped through a new set of menus.
“What are you working on?” Milliner asked.
“We can’t do a full activation without the authorization codes, but we’ve been doing low-level test activations of the subsystems. I don’t think there’s anything to stop us from doing multiple simultaneous tests. I’ll start alignment test mode.”
She tapped a few options, and a potent whine started to permeate the building. Enormous motors were powering up and activating.
“Okay. That’s a test alignment. Now let’s try a zero point zero one percent broadcast test. Activating.”
A very subtle hum joined the whining motors.
“Well?” Milliner said.
“We’re not getting any alerts. Tests last a maximum of six hours with a fifty percent cooldown cycle.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we can get this thing into a pseudo operational state without full authorization, but it can only stay in operation for six hours, after which it would have to shut down for at least three hours before another suite of tests could be run.”
“I think we can make that work.”
“Fine. Then that’s the procedure.”
“Do it.”
“What? No.”
“We’ve got our orders.”
“Our orders are to prepare a procedure. The procedure is prepared. It is a foolish and pointless procedure, but so long as it’s academic, I don’t mind jotting it down. Maybe it’ll help the tech crew identify a flaw in their system. But I’m not going to actually activate the array under these circumstances unless directly ordered.”
“But we can’t get direct orders, because the communication system is down.”
“That’s just as well, since we aren’t scheduled to fully commission yet anyway. I’m not activating this ridiculous, bodged-together circumvention of the protocol unless I get an order from someone in the top level of the technical or executive branches of the company. And if that happens, I won’t need to, because anyone at that level can just give us the authorization code and we won’t need this procedure.”
Milliner heaved a heavy sigh. “Fine.”
“Do you need me for anything else?”
“I don’t think—” Anand began.
“Is there a way to manually deactivate the nodes in the array?” Milliner said.
“Manually deactivate? Certainly. There are a dozen ways,” the engineer said.
“Are there any that don’t require the same codes it would take to activate this place?”
“Dozens.”
“Good, pick one and run us through it.”
“Why?”
“Because if the bosses are dumb enough to have us hotwire this array to get it running, maybe it’d be handy to know how to un-hotwire it.”
“The easiest way is just to cut power. There are software controls, but there are also isolated power lines running to most of the subsystems. They’re underground, but they all surface in the utility room of each node. Oh, except the motor line. That’s external. Now are we done? I’d rather not be away from my assigned post when the communication network comes back up.”
“Almost. Go outside and give the guy out there a rundown on that. He’s a trainee.”
She shook her head in frustration but marched outside to do as she was told.
“What did I tell you? I told you she’d be able to get this thing running regardless,” Anand said.
“Yeah. But she’s not exactly flexible when it comes to the rules.”
“She’s an engineer. They only know how to do things by the book.”
He reached into his bag and retrieved a pistol. “Let’s hope she can do the job with a gun in her back, then. Because I’m just about ready for plan B.”
Chapter 9
Preethy and Michella huddled around the maintenance console, watching as the limited number of thugs roving about in the station made very efficient use of their time.
“I don’t like this,” Michella said. “They’re clustering around the transmitters.”
“It stands to reason,” Preethy said. “With at least one former hostage loose on the station, the transmitters would be a natural target.”
“That’s why I don’t like it. It means they aren’t idiots. You’d be surprised how often the sort of people who plan an operation like this end up sending expendable idiots to do the dirty work.”
“That is because a reliable and well-trained member of an organization is often far more valuable to the organization than the success of any specific caper. Planning well and sending lower-level operatives is a far better policy when working at a high volume.”
Michella looked to Preethy.
“I said I was in administration.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t do that this time. Either we’re going to need a plan they don’t see coming, or we’re going to have to go on the offensive.”
“Considering how outnumbered we are, I really don’t think violence is the proper course of action. In my opinion, violence is exclusively the result of inferior planning. Most of my successes are through artful use of bureaucracy. There is very little a gun can do that can’t be done more effectively with a pen.”
“We don’t need to be violent to go on the offensive. Take it from me, you can win some serious battles with nothing but a heap of misdirection and just enough truth to hold it all together.”
“That would certainly explain some of your reporting of late.”
Michella gritted her teeth. “Just tell me if you know how to get on to the PA system without giving away where we are.”
#
Hatch drifted about in a seemingly random hallway, impatiently tapping his brass knuckles on the wall. An underling with a small plasma torch was gingerly cutting open a panel.
“What is taking so long?” he asked. “We know where all of their fail-safes are. Just bypass them.”
“I know where y
our head is, that doesn’t make brain surgery any easier. If we trip one of these alarms, the control module will nuke itself and this whole station is useless until they fab up a new one,” said Crick.
“Yeah?” He thumped the knuckles into the metal panel beside him a little harder, leaving a dent behind. “I guess that explains why you’re going so slow.” He dented the wall again. “But now I’m wondering what makes you think you can sass me like that?”
“I’m the who knows how to get around the fail-safes. That’s why. You failed to beat the right numbers out of that woman, so now you’ve got no option but to wait for me to clean up after your mess.”
Hatch bashed the wall again, completely dislodging the panel. “And what do you think’ll happen after you get things rolling?”
“I’ll get a reward for making sure your temper didn’t cost us the mission, jackass. Go punch something else, I need to concentrate.” He shook his head. “How you wound up in charge of this, I’ll never know.”
The PA system squawked and activated.
“Ramses Hatch,” echoed Michella’s voice.
“That isn’t one of ours,” Hatch said quickly.
“If you want to survive this ordeal, you’d better get yourself to a PA and start talking to me,” she continued.
He tightened his grip on his knuckles. “I already don’t like her.”
The nearest PA panel was nearby. He drifted over and tapped it. “Who are you and what makes you think you’ve got any say in who lives and who dies?” he asked.
“My name is Michella Modane, and the fact that you didn’t know I was here is a pretty good indication of how many steps behind you are.”
He turned aside and snapped his fingers. “Michella Modane. That one of Patel’s crew?”
“Hardly,” called Crick. “She’s the one who cracked open the security hole we snuck through.”
“So she’s one of ours?”
“She’s a newscaster. She’s the reason they had to hire on TIS. You know, the people who make the uniform you’re wearing?”
Hatch tapped the button. “My boys here tell me you’re a newscaster. We’re not looking to do any interviews, so what do you say you just run along.”
“Considering you don’t want anyone to know what you’re up to, I’d say having a newscaster aboard is pretty much your worst nightmare.”
“We’ve done what we have to do to keep word from getting out. I’m not worried.”
“You don’t know how I got here, so it seems to me there are holes in your plan.”
He slipped the knuckles from his hand and spun them around a finger idly as he signaled his lackey. “Get the boys searching out where all the PA panels are. We’ll find her that way.” He poked the PA and addressed her again. “Do you really think you know something that could hurt us at this point?”
“I know there are four hundred PA panels on this ship, so searching them one by one will take a while. And I know if you keep spinning that toy of yours, you’re going to lose it.”
He snatched the knuckles in his palm and turned to his tech-savvy lackey. “She’s got eyes on us. She’s in the system.”
“We sort of already knew that since she’s on the PA,” the lackey replied.
Hatch tapped again. “I take it you had a reason for blowing your cover, beyond just patting yourself on the back?”
“I want answers.”
“Hah! Of course you do. Well, it just so happens that we’re at the stage where none of it matters, so if you think you’re scoring points by wringing this stuff out of me, think again.” He pulled the chunky dedicated radio from his belt and started punching in a text-only message. “If you’re good enough to get aboard, I take it you know what this station is for?”
“Weather control.”
“That’s right. And I take it you know who’s making all the money off the league they’re just about ready to start.”
“Nick Patel.”
“Say, you are a reporter. If you’ve got Preethy there with you, you probably know who I am, too. So you’ve got all the pieces already.”
He tapped a button on the radio. The rest of the radios chimed with a notification and displayed the message. One by one, in order of team number, report where you are, over text, then make a racket. Wait for a signal here first.
“My boss wants in,” Hatch continued. “It’s simple as that. He wants a piece of the action. A cut of the profits. He’s already a part of every other sports concern in half the populated galaxy, in one way or another. Letting Nick have this one all to himself just wasn’t sitting right with him.”
He sent a signal. As Michella replied, he heard a nearby group of searchers rattle at the walls.
“What’s the matter, negotiations between mobsters broke down?” she said.
“Word has it there’s no piece of the action to be had. He’s just a shareholder, or so he says.”
He signaled the next team.
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“Of course not! But when he put out a call for contractors, word got out about what sort of a station he was putting together. It’s real easy to get the ins and outs of what a system might be designed to do when they’re expecting you to work on it.”
“And you thought you could use the station as leverage.”
“The station and his niece. Once we got both, there wasn’t any way this wouldn’t turn out our way. Preethy gives in, we’ve got the station, and we tear up his infrastructure with a couple of well-placed storms. She doesn’t give in, we can crack the system and do it anyway. We fail to crack the system, we’ve still got Preethy and we can lean on him that way. We lose Preethy, we’ve still got the station under our control and we can lean on him that way, since it has cost him a bundle and he needs it to keep his investment safe. Even if he sends someone up here to stop us, there’s no stopping us from doing enough damage to cost him his money and put the whole season at risk from these storms.”
“That seems like a weak point for you. If you don’t control the storms, there’s nothing to guarantee they’ll actually cause him a problem.”
Hatch grinned. The signaled team had bashed at the walls during her speech, and he’d faintly heard it over the PA. He snatched up his radio again and instructed that team to do a room-by-room search of the area. Others nearby should lend a hand.
“He wouldn’t have built this expensive station if he wasn’t sure it would be a problem.” He shrugged. “It’s not my favorite outcome, but it’ll still cost him money. He’s depending on this station to handle all the data traffic and broadcast stuff for the big grand opening of the league. The guy’s a businessman. He knows the sort of damage a reputation can get from just a few broken windows on your nice new headquarters. If they can’t get any bets in or viewers to log on during their opening weekend? May as well flush the whole thing down the drain.”
Messages popped up. Two groups of his thugs were closing in. Just a few rooms left to search.
“That’s not going to be what goes down, though. Because Preethy is going to be back in our hands in no time.”
There was no reply.
“What’s the matter? You feel the noose around your neck?”
Still no answer. His radio chirped with a voice request.
“Tell me you’ve got her.”
“We’ve got a utility room with a recently accessed console. It’s empty.”
“How the hell could you miss her?”
“There are access conduit hatches. Two of them are out of place. Do you want us to search them?”
Hatch’s eyes darted about as he ran the situation through his mind. Searching conduits would take forever. They led all through the station, and they’d be a hell of a way to get the drop on someone. He already barely had enough people on the station to get this plan to work if things went well. He couldn’t afford to lose many if Michella or Preethy decided to fight back with the stolen gun he kne
w they had.
“Sir?”
“Shut it for a minute, I’m thinking!” he snapped.
He turned to Crick, who hadn’t stopped working.
“They’re smart enough to realize we’d be able to find them. So what if they expected us to catch them. What’d I just do that could help them…”
“Are you asking me, or—”
“I’m thinking out loud, stupid. Keep working.” He snapped his fingers. “Keep working. That’s it. They were distracting the boys from their jobs. Teams three and two are away from their stations. That’s two transmitters without eyes on them.”
He barked into the radio.
“Forget the search. Get back to your stations! Now! Report back on what you find.”
Hatch gripped his brass knuckles tightly and scraped them along the wall, leaving long shiny gouges in the metal as he angrily awaited what was very likely to be bad news.
“Hey,” he snapped to his lackey. “You knew about this Michella Modane character. Anything else I need to know?”
“I’m not in her fan club, Hatch,” he said.
“Well you know more than I do, so speak up.”
“I don’t know. She covered some big story on Tessera a while ago, I think. Terrorists. And she’s dating one of the racers.”
“Which one?”
“Lex Something.”
“Lex… The guy from the commercials they’ve been putting out? Wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of hotshot hero?”
“I don’t know, I guess. Probably from the same thing on Tessera. Look, you want me working, or you want me answering your questions?”
His radio bleeped again. “What’ve you got?” Hatch barked.
“One of the transmitters was active.”
“Tell me they didn’t get a message out.”
“Doesn’t look like it. It was a short-range one. Looks like all they managed to do was open a data link, but they didn’t send anything through.”
“Is the link still open?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then close it, stupid!”
“Closed.”
“Does it say what the connection was to?”
“An unidentified ship in the area.”
Indra Station Page 15
