I often did this when brainstorming, asking the same base question to myself, repeatedly, whenever it seemed like my thoughts were straying from the core issue. This time I was on the open channel, and I'd probably been babbling for at least an hour. In that regard, Chris showed great patience and restraint.
"Oh! Sorry. I'm trying to get at it from a different angle without losing the thread."
"I hear that," he replied, with what sounded like a touch of frustration after all -- though for the problem, rather than the problem solvers. "I just don't see how we can possibly get in and out of an airlock without repeating the same gag. Even a variation would be a pattern someone could notice."
"We need more than the freedom to walk around," I stated, feeling trapped. We'd hit this wall hard, and couldn't seem to get away from it. "Someone has to be on the roster in there, with full authorization to accept delivery of our fabricated engine parts. That's a whole other problem."
"I told you I can manage that," Stinna injected, and I was shocked to hear some testiness in her voice.
"We can't simply plop on to their personnel lists," John piped in, parrot-like, because he'd been saying this for a while. "We need complete identities in place. There have to be records behind the authorization request, or it won't clear the background check. And, personally, I won't clear it at all."
"Okay, fine," I replied, "so how do we create verifiable legends if these guys can just call for confirmation from out-system?"
"We can't," Stinna replied for him.
"Whoever goes in will have to use their real name and IDent," SS1 clarified.
To Stinna, I said, "You went to school over here, right?"
"Yes."
"Did you get a degree or a cert?"
"No. I got arrested."
Everyone stopped and looked at her. She was the very last person you'd peg as a trouble maker.
"What happened?" Chris asked, because she clearly wasn't going to tell without prompting.
"I used the university's secure systems for penetration testing. They failed. Some post-graduates were doing restricted research for Team at the time. They were really mad. I was deported."
"How did you get this mission then, with a criminal record in Corporatespace?" the ML asked, curiously.
"I was twelve. Juvenile. It was sealed."
The rest of us looked at each other with the kind of expressions you'd expect upon hearing that.
"That information might not have made its way back to the Alliance," I stated, "but if these guys do a background check on you over here, they'll definitely find it. System infiltration? They wouldn't let you anywhere near this project, even if you were just a kid when it happened."
She shrugged.
"Well, if it's confession time," Chris offered with a mischievous tone, "I was once part of an operation on this side of the border that fell apart. Don't ask for details, but we were all detained by some yokel security force. They didn't have an IDent scanner on them at the time, and we all gave fake names. They did, however, take pics, vid, DNA, and fingerprints. We, uh...managed to get away, but that information must still be kicking around in some database or other -- maybe not in-system, but a call outside for background info could easily bring it up."
Dieter cleared his throat, politely.
"For what it's worth," he offered, "I've never been in Corporatespace before. I have no history here."
"Neither have I," the captain added, "though, I think it's unlikely they'll trust someone from over the border with neural enhancements around this place."
That made sense to me, and the others agreed as well.
"I've been in Corporatespace many times," I put in at last. "Different ships and jobs, but all of it legal. I've never had any trouble."
So, we turned it over, again and again...
How do we get someone in?
Who should go?
What kind of approach should they take, once inside?
"This is getting tedious," Mavis pronounced, after a while. Maybe she was picking up on the growing mood, because I, for one, was feeling punchy. "Take a break, everyone. It will come to us, but not if we keep banging our heads on the bulkhead. Find something different to do, each of you, and do it for a few hours. We'll converge at nineteen-hundred for dinner, and try again."
That was a good idea, and everyone seemed to appreciate the captain's fluid approach to problem solving. It might even have worked, if the graviton alarm hadn't tripped at fifteen-hundred hours, indicating that a huge number of exit cones had just appeared on the edge of the system.
"I have ten...fifteen...twenty-two and counting!" John cried, reading from a datapad as he dashed from his bunk, back to his station in the Common Room. Stinna had never left her seat, and now used the Tri-D overhead to cross-reference the cone sigs for known vessels or vessel types on record.
Graviton cones for many ship designs, commercial and military alike, had to be highly attuned to the structural mass of the vessels. This level of micro-control was consistent across starship models. Recorded, collected, and made generally available, this information was comparable to a registry database. It could be used to identify particular vessels, or at the least, a general class of ship, whenever extra-dimensional transit, coming or going, was performed.
A stealthship like Shady Lady had built-in randomizing factors to its jump cone. This way, the exact opposite effect could be achieved: it made the ship's graviton wake (were it to be detected at all, considering it's extreme truncation and subtlety) impossible to identify -- not only from a database of other registered cones, but from one jump to the next. This was a highly specialized thing, though, and not at all in-keeping with the needs of Corporate Security Space Branch, which had just dropped in with an entire sub-fleet of spacecraft.
"Oh man, oh man..." I spoke aloud, still in Gunnery, as I ran down the list Stinna was creating. "A jump-capable battlebase, two big gunships, and a crap-tonne of support craft! This is not good...!"
"That's a Category Ten Armored Highdock!" Chris exclaimed, looking at the details. "Name of...uh, Caesar's Palace. Cute. Library records say it has twenty-two Heavy Strike Fighter-Bombers aboard, one hundred seventeen Mediums, and upwards of a thousand self-directed combat drones!"
"Whoa!" SS1 put in. "And now we just got eight Deep Action gunboats appearing, and thirty-seven close cutters, all towed in by jumptugs."
"Those two gunships that came in with the battlebase are Industrious Class Heavy Coasters," I put in, as I read ahead. "They're like AIN Fleet's Superboats, only with jump capability. You could nuke those things broadside, and they'd still be smiling!"
That was an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. Heavy Coasters and Superboats alike were some of the hardiest vessels, anywhere, ever designed.
The Great Interstellar War had been waged with earlier versions of these things by the hundreds, fending off all comers from key star systems. After that, the Empire split itself in two, with Papal and Noble Heavy Coasters tearing into each other mercilessly. This was a class of space vehicle specifically designed to take, keep, and defend a nation's property -- and now we all knew just how badly Corporate wanted to do that with the freejump tech.
"They had their cones set to trigger an emergency call on the system nav buoys," John said, adjusting frequencies, and trying to grab the automated announcement with clarity. "They must not know that most of them are down."
Long minutes passed until actual radio signals from the new ships crawled in at light speed.
"Is it a full system interdiction?" Mavis asked after a time, sounding cool and focused.
"I don't know...it's a crummy signal. Looks like Caesar's Palace is taking the flag from Liquidator, though."
"That won't sit well with somebody," I commented.
"Hopefully not," the captain expanded. "If it's resented, the command transition will be a rough one, and take more time. We may have a couple of shifts here before anybody is comfortable with the new CoC."
"Agreed," Mavis said. "Let's do it."
Chris and John sat together, formulating an approach for the order.
By now, the supply ship had communications and data hardwired to the station via the access tube. That meant we had to plant a fake parts order into Mylag Vernier's backups, and then file a verbal complaint with the factory chief on the ship via comm, about how our order was late. This would spark a back-and-forth with the chief, who would look it up and inform us there was no record of any such order. This would prompt more complaints from the imaginary repair service we were pretending to be, which would then force the chief to verify the ship's records with the station's. Then there'd be confused apologies, confused explanations, and a promise of alacrity in (finally) filling the order.
Stinna made the fabrication request again, and injected it into the compromised backup line, while John and Chris discussed the finer points of the ruse. That went on for at least an hour.
Eventually, our ML put a call through to General Store's switchboard, using a real officer's name and IDent code from Liquidator. He followed a script cribbed from older parts orders that we had intercepted and studied, and he navigated through the automated ordering process until he got a human on the line.
"Oh, the little propagators," a shift supervisor, who identified herself as Mel, confirmed. "Yeah, sorry about that, but you never put in shipping instructions, and I needed the iridium for another order. Can't provide replacements now -- I'm short on the raws, and we just got that hold notice from Team on all imports. You saw that, right?"
"I just got on shift," the ML muttered, dismissively.
"Oh. Well, if you have any repairs pinned on out-system materials sourcing, you're stuck, brother. Just like us. Call me again when supplies are shipping in, and I'll put you at the head of the queue."
Chris thanked her with honest disappointment, then closed the call.
"All right, then," he stated morosely. "Plan B."
"Which is?"
"Which is yet to be determined, Ejoq!"
And we all hunkered back down in front of the drawing board.
* * *
John came up with the idea of searching through the inventories of the various fleet pools and maintenance units in-system for a junk courier being stripped for parts, or maybe one that was just sort-of forgotten about, but he and Stinna could find nothing. That had been a long shot anyway, but it represented the last new idea we had for a quite a while.
We all sat around at our stations, thinking...thinking.
We sat around the table in the Common Room during meals, thinking...thinking.
We lay in our bunks, took longer showers, took turns with the small fold-down gym unit amidships, (actually, I passed on that).
And each shift that went by showed the new Team players further from the jump point at system's edge, and closer to our doorstep.
"We'll have to abandon the ship," I said to Mavis, after three days of this, and over a private channel from Gunnery.
"Well, I think you can imagine how I feel about that," she responded forlornly, revealing she'd come to the same conclusion already. "If we surrender, we'll be disappeared, or detained for life. The Handshake has too much riding on this."
"Then we sneak away, somehow, without Shady Lady. I agree the hobo thing is out. There are too many of us to manage it, and basic security is going to be tighter than ever now. We need new identities, and job placements in-system, so we can be seen as normal. We give ourselves whatever fake certs and licenses we need, and take on regular duties here. Then we go through normal channels and get ourselves transferred out as real employees with other fish to fry. Once we're in the clear, we make for the border on standard commercial flights, and go through customs just like everybody else."
"That might work for you guys," she replied heavily, "but fifty-two percent of my biomass has been replaced with inorganic materials. I'll draw attention the moment I'm in public. And even if no one calls me out on that, when we go to leave, you better believe they'll insist on taking a look at my cyber-neuro hardware -- if only to make sure I'm not smuggling out classified data. Most of my longterm memory is stored on integrated miniblocks. This whole mission is on there. If they plug into my head, we're sunk."
I sighed in frustration at that.
"Tell me again how that makes you a better person?"
"Oh, don't go there, all right?! Just don't! I get it from my parents, I get it from my rabbi -- I even hear it from my ex when I run into him. It's my body, my choice, my life! And, remember...I wasn't hired as a spy, Ejoq! We were never supposed to be in this position."
I felt bad immediately -- ashamed, really. That kind of offhand bigotry wasn't going to change our situation.
"Ahhh...crap. I didn't mean...Mavis, I'm sorry. None of this is your fault. We'll just have to come up with something else. Something that gets us all out safely."
She said nothing for a long time, with only her preternaturally-regular breathing audible over the channel.
"No," she said quietly, at last, "You're right. I'm a liability here. We should pursue that normal employee transfer idea. For you guys, I mean. The crew needs to get clear of this."
"And when Team finally spots you up here, what then?" I countered. "They'll still get at your memories."
"I was first approached about this job on Day 22 of last year," she pronounced. "I'll have Stinna do a head-shred on me for all data since that time. Then you guys put me under ice, power down the ship to minimal levels, and walk away. I'll just sleep until they find me."
"That's pretty harsh. Do you have external backups of that stuff?"
"Some of it," she confirmed. "At home. Nothing classified, just personal memories. When they let me go, I'll restore what I can."
"They will never let you go, Captain. If you stay behind, they'll execute you, or drop you in prison for the rest of your life. And you can expect a vivisection, at the least, just so they can be sure you aren't hiding anything."
"The proper term is active disassembly," she replied, flippantly.
"Mavis, this is no joke! You can't stay here. We all have to get out. Any option that deviates from that is no option at all."
"It's not your call. If we come up with something better, I'll be the first to celebrate. Otherwise, this is the fallback plan."
That sounded final, so I redoubled my efforts.
I looked at data streams, watched for exploitable policy changes, and continued thinking...thinking.
||||||||||
No face!
Wait, he had a face, but it wasn't on his face. It was raised up off his head like a visor. There was just galenic grayness, somber and glittering, where cheeks and a nose should be.
String or lines led from that darkness, like nightmare whiskers, long and wild.
Two shocked, brown eyes rolled at me.
His mouth and chin were normal. Only his upper face was unattached, save for those desperate eyes, shining out from glistering darkness.
Soundlessly, he mouthed shouts, curses, I don't know what. He pantomimed closing the hatch./p>
I pulled myself up and inside with a jerk. It was very tight in here. There was a handle set flush to the deck. I pulled and turned it, feeling it latch.
Within seconds, sounds came through my deflating bubble: engine noises hissing from the mini atmo-exchange, guttural gasping from the pilot's seat. They all increased as the pressure inside did, though air was still almost nonexistent.
I wedged forward to help him don his helmet -- a standard full-suit one clipped to a stow ring overhead. But there were all these cables and wires in the way. I pushed at a few of them to get through, and the man swung at me, trying to block my hands.
"Don't!" he choked out, flailing, punc
hing. I punched back, connecting with a forehead that wasn't there, and a line plugged into a cranial socket above his left eye popped loose, whipping out of reach.
What?!
Cables were attached to dataports all over his faceless face, leading directly to the ship's controls!
He was cyborg!
||||||||||
thirteen
* * *
It was during the preparations for abandoning Shady Lady, and smuggling ourselves out-system somehow, that we hit upon a real plan.
It was a collaboration, with everyone chipping in from our various stations, and then later, from around the table, speculating, brainstorming, refining, until we had something we thought might work -- if we were very careful.
No one would be on this station if they didn't have a job, or if they couldn't be trusted. Even the smallest, least important positions must have required extensive background checks on all applicants, and a demonstrative need to exist in the first place.
Since spy-type undercover legends were out of our reach, only Dieter and I could safely use our own identities in there. Chris felt he could walk around safely enough if his IDent data was injected into the station's systems, but anything that required a look into his past, such as getting a job, or having a run-in with Station Security (also known as StaSec -- a civilian police force), would be disastrous.
John disqualified himself out-of-hand, certain he, unlike the ML, would actually be in a localized database of Territory-wide undesirables -- though he still wouldn't say why. Assuming he was right, it seemed logical that Stinna might be in there as well, simply because of the classified research they were doing here, and the nature of her crime. If that were the case, they'd both be flagged by StaSec watchdog programs monitoring IDent calls to the database just as soon as they were added to the list of on-station employees.
Mavis' modifications meant that she would have been specially registered and vetted long before ever getting to Mylag Vernier, and such information would definitely have been sent on ahead of her arrival, waiting in one of those inaccessible security databases. She might or might not draw attention visually, but the watchdog would get her digitally, which was much worse.
Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script) Page 15
