by Jay Posey
“Could it be a fragment? Intentionally?” he asked.
Thumper’s eyes narrowed reflexively in a way that suggested it was a stupid idea.
“I’m not sure what good that would do,” she said, diplomatically. “Probably just get treated as garbage data and ignored.”
Lincoln nodded and shrugged. “I was just thinking, you know.” He took a sip of his coffee. “If I’m trying to steal control of a protected military asset, out in deep space, and I’m not sure I can pull it off? Maybe I break the traffic up into a few chunks, send it through different channels, reassemble it at the receiving end. Especially if I know what the people I’m trying to steal it from would be watching for.”
Thumper squinted again, but this time her expression was more thoughtful. So maybe not such a stupid idea after all.
“Huh,” she said, after a few moments. The way she did when someone else thought of something first. Lincoln couldn’t quite keep himself from smiling.
“I’m going to tell everyone it was your idea anyway,” he said. “Nobody would go along with it if they thought it came from me.”
She didn’t respond. She was already interacting again with Veronica. Lincoln took another pull of his coffee, let it sit in his mouth for just a moment. It was finally at that perfect temperature; hot enough to warm the whole body without scalding the tongue. He wondered briefly how long it would be before Thumper noticed him there again. Fortunately, it wasn’t long.
“Huh,” she said again. “Well that is interesting. I guess that could make sense. Maybe running three, I don’t know, maybe four of these setups? Seems like a big risk, though. You have multiple ships out there, all doing the same thing. Ups your chances of getting caught.”
“To a degree,” Lincoln said. “But it’s distributed risk. Doesn’t matter how many of them are out there running around, if no one can tell that any of them are doing anything wrong, right? Plus, depending on your numbers, could give you redundancy in case one fails or goes missing, or moves out of range.”
The more he thought it through, the more likely it seemed. If he were running the op, that’s how he’d do it anyway. Multiple pieces to the puzzle, only posing a risk of exposure if someone could put all of them together. The way the idea fit made it seem like the right solution, the way confidence snapped into place when the answer to a riddle emerged. And that little click of satisfaction brought with it a nagging shadow of a thought just beyond his mind’s ability to reach it. A sense that he had just forgotten something he’d been about to say, something important but now vanished.
“Or lets you limit your usage of any particular one, in case it gets too hot,” Thumper said. “That could explain the low traffic off the Ava Leyla. Maybe they’re only using it intermittently… I should have thought of that.”
“You did,” Lincoln said, smiling. Maybe if he didn’t try to chase the memory, it’d come back in its own time.
“Makes it all the more impressive that NID picked it up in the first place,” she said, ignoring the comment. “Or very, very lucky…
“I guess maybe that helps us, too,” she continued after a moment. “If we hit the freighter and it goes dark, could be it doesn’t disrupt them enough to notice.”
“Anything you can do about it from here?”
“Sit and watch, I guess.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“No sir, it does not,” Thumper responded. “Not much at all.”
Lincoln got to his feet, glad he’d decided against going to bed.
“Want to go see how well all our planning holds up?”
Thumper flashed her brilliant smile.
“It won’t,” she answered. “But it ought to be fun anyway.”
NINE
“OK kids,” Will said over his shoulder, from the cockpit. “Time to put your shoes on. We’re at grandma’s.”
Next to him, Noah tapped on a screen on the console to his right. Lincoln felt the slight swim of deceleration before the grav system compensated.
“Eager Nine, this is Spooky One Seven,” Noah said. “We’re on final approach to our point of detachment, and are preparing to deploy the package.”
Lincoln wasn’t hooked into the pilots’ comms, so he didn’t hear Eager Nine’s answer. A few moments later, Noah spoke again.
“Acknowledged and understood, Eager Nine. We’ll keep our eyes open. Spooky One Seven out.”
Lincoln didn’t particularly care for the sound of that. There usually wasn’t much reason to keep your eyes open for anything out in open space, since it was mostly a whole lot of nothing.
“Trouble?” he asked.
Noah glanced back at him and shook his head. “Abundance of caution. I think she has to say it,” he said, referring to the comms officer back on the skiff. He flashed a quick grin. “Guessing she’s a mom.”
“Roger that,” Lincoln said. “We’ll go ahead and get loaded up.” He signaled to the rest of his team. They were all suited up, but had left their helmets off for the ride in. Now they each donned their armored helms as they stood and made their way towards the back of the gunship. One by one, the faces of Lincoln’s teammates disappeared behind smooth, faceless shells. And even as Lincoln placed his own helmet on and felt it seal, it gave him a chill to see those warriors ahead of him. Even with their names emblazoned in block letters across their backs in a digital ink only visible through the suits’ visors, it was hard for Lincoln’s mind to hold on to the fact that these were the same people. There was something otherworldly about them.
A hatch led down into the belly of the craft, where the Outriders’ low-signature delivery vehicle awaited them.
“It’s going to take us a couple minutes to get you a good vector,” Will called back to them. “But we’ll try to put you on target so you don’t have to make too many adjustments on the way in.”
“I have no doubt,” Lincoln said. “Just try not to put us actually on the target, yeah?”
“Hey, he’s the math guy,” Will answered, jerking a thumb at his brother, “I just drive.”
Lincoln was the last down the ladder. The delivery vehicle was fit snugly into the bay, facing backwards so that its top hatch more or less aligned with the ladder from above. It wasn’t quite a perfect fit; Lincoln had to drop down to his hands and knees and scoot backwards a couple of feet to reach the entry. Officially the vehicle was called a Lamprey, but the Outriders had given a name that seemed much more suitable; they called it the Coffin.
As Lincoln descended through the upper airlock, he couldn’t help but feel like part of a matryoshka doll, the famous Russian dolls that stacked neatly into one another. The gunship had deployed from the skiff; the Coffin would do so from the gunship; Lincoln, from the Coffin. In that particular moment, there was something almost comical to him about it, which then made him wonder if maybe the oxygen mix had been off in the gunship. He sealed the uppermost hatch, continued down into the main compartment, and sealed the secondary hatch.
The rest of the team was already strapping in. Sahil sat in the forward-most seat; he’d be the pilot for the final approach to target. Thumper, Mike, and Wright had moved towards the back, leaving room for Lincoln next to Sahil. Not that there was much room, exactly. Everything about the Coffin was designed to minimize its signature in open space, which meant there was basically precisely enough room for its capacity of eight personnel, and no more. The seats were staggered along either side, facing each other. And Sahil’s wide shoulders took up about a seat-and-a-half.
A second airlock led out through the back of the vessel; Wright was in the number one position to exit that way, with Mike next to her.
“Spooky One Seven, Easy One, check check,” Sahil said over comms.
“Spooky One Seven reads you, Easy One,” Noah answered back. “You guys comfy down there?”
“Negative,” Sahil replied. “Sooner you can get us on the way, sooner we can get out.”
“Roger that, Easy One. We’re lin
ing up the shot. Two mikes.”
“Two mikes, copy.”
Lincoln didn’t intend to keep count, but his brain did it automatically anyway. It was just about ninety seconds later when Noah spoke again.
“Easy One, you are aligned. Standing by for your call.”
“Spooky One Seven, Easy One is ready for release.”
“Easy One ready for release, copy that. On my mark… three… two… one… release.”
Initially, there was no apparent change other than a subtle vibration. But a few moments later, Lincoln’s stomach lurched around as the Coffin broke free of the gunship’s grav field before its own took over. It felt something like a drop, but only for the span of a foot or two at most. His body barely had time to register it before it was over, which almost made it worse.
“Spooky One Seven, Easy One has good release,” Sahil said. “We are clear, and clearin’ out.”
“We copy, Easy One. Stay straight, and on till dawn,” Noah answered, with what had become a traditional closing. “Call us if you need us.”
“Will do. Easy One out.”
And with that final exchange, the five of them were on their own. They settled in, each silent in their places. The trick now, in the final hours of approach, was in finding the balance of sharpening the mind without exhausting the body. The waiting could dull the senses, or burn out the adrenaline before it was useful. Everyone had their own ritual for this time between, when the operation had officially begun but all the action still lay ahead. Wright meticulously checked her gear. Mike liked to sprawl out as much as the limited space allowed and listen to music. Sahil, when he wasn’t driving the bus, slept like a baby, and Thumper usually read.
Lincoln’s particular method was to walk through each phase of the hit, and to place his hands on each piece of gear that he would use at each point. It was as much physical as mental, and worked to both verify he had everything he needed and also to remind his body where to find it all when the time came. He steadied his breathing, careful to keep a relaxed rhythm, closed his eyes.
He pictured the Ava Leyla there, dangling in space. The slow approach. Sahil at the helm, careful to match velocity. Lincoln formed the images clearly in his mind, sharpened them, forced himself to imagine carrying out each individual step of the plan no matter how small, routine, or mundane. Reminded himself to breathe. There was something deeply meditative about the practice, something reassuring about placing his hands upon the tools of his trade as if in blessing.
Not that there was any magic in any of it. The ritual didn’t confer any supernatural powers; there were no special operations secret mystic techniques. Unless you counted the months and years of grueling training and dedication to discipline and practice. The ritual didn’t prepare Lincoln for what was to come; it simply helped activate all the preparation that had come before.
As he was beginning his third mental rehearsal, Sahil came in over comms.
“Got visual on the target vessel,” he said. “Y’all wanna take a peek?”
“You bet,” Thumper said.
Sahil ran his wide fingertips lightly across the console at his left, and a few moments later the forward section of the Coffin melted away, revealing the brilliant array of stars in open space, with the Ava Leyla dangling out over the great Deep. Naturally there were no windows on the Outriders’ delivery vehicle. But the inner surface could project an image so clearly it was better than any window could ever be; if Lincoln hadn’t seen the image form, it would have been easy to believe there was really nothing between him and the vacuum.
“Type-43 all right,” Thumper said. “Looks like the B-mod to me.”
“With a couple of by-owner additions tacked on,” Mike added. “I don’t recognize that tank on top.”
Sahil had rolled the Coffin to match orientation with the Ava Leyla; after having stared at all the imaging of the vessel, it was almost hard for Lincoln to remember that was the real thing sitting out there. He agreed with Thumper’s assessment that it was a “B-mod” variation, but the lines of the craft were different enough that it set off Lincoln’s instincts. It wasn’t unusual for ship owners to make modifications, but the number of changes to the Ava Leyla were outside normal bounds.
“What’s our time-to-target?” Lincoln asked.
“‘bout eight minutes,” Sahil answered. “Those Barton boys are somethin’ else. Shot us as true as could be. I barely touched anything on the way in, ‘cept to roll us on line.” Sahil had a way of talking out of one side of his mouth and swallowing his syllables that made it sound like he constantly had a ball of chewing tobacco tucked in his lip.
Lincoln activated a display in his visor, overlaid the team’s planned entry points onto the Ava Leyla. The first two were blocked by modifications. The third was still accessible, but he didn’t like the implications. Their primary and secondary points of entry had put them directly into position for the first phase of the hit. Now they were going to have work their way forward through a narrow service tunnel, which was less than ideal. And there was something else, something nagging that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“I don’t think I like the idea of attaching anymore,” he said.
For most boarding actions, the team made use of the Lamprey’s defining feature; it was equipped with a industrial-strength hull breaching device surrounded by an environmental control mechanism. Typically, the delivery vehicle would attach directly to the outer hull of the target. Once secured, the Lamprey would cut through to make an entry point while maintaining a seal around the new opening. Hull breaches were generally detected by changes in internal atmospheric pressure, so the Lamprey’s cuts went unnoticed, and the team could infiltrate undetected.
In this particular case, though, Lincoln’s gut told him directly attaching was a bad idea. He couldn’t identify a specific reason for the unease, but he’d done the job long enough to know that it was better to live with the unresolved curiosity than to ignore your instincts and find out for sure why they’d been right.
“You wanna go grapples?” Sahil asked.
“Yeah,” Lincoln said, still unsure. Confidence came with having made the decision. “Yeah, I do.”
“Roger that.”
It wouldn’t change the plan too much. Wright and Mike would still deploy from the rear and freespace to their entry point, using the microjets on their suits to navigate. The main impact would be on Lincoln’s element, requiring them to use an alternate entry method.
“Thumper, that’s going to put you on deck for overrides,” Lincoln said. It was a contingency they’d planned for.
“Sure, no sweat,” she replied.
As the team watched, the cargo ship grew incrementally. It was almost like watching an hour hand on a clock; Lincoln couldn’t really notice the moment-to-moment change, but after a minute or two he was suddenly aware of how much closer they were.
“Mir, Mike, you’re up,” Lincoln said.
Master Sergeant Wright didn’t need any more prompting. She popped to her feet like a guard dog catching a scent and moved into the rear airlock.
Mike chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve seen her move that fast since the last time they had wings in the chow hall.”
“I wouldn’t keep her waiting,” Thumper replied. “She might go without you.”
Mike got to his feet with mock heaviness, made an overly-dramatic show of stretching his back; which took actual effort, since the low overhead of the Coffin prevented him from standing at his full height.
“Mike!” Wright barked.
Mike gave Thumper and Lincoln a look over his shoulder; his faceplate was closed, so there was no expression to read, but Lincoln could picture it perfectly anyway. Somehow the blank, faceless metal seemed almost mischievous.
“See you folks downstairs,” Mike said, as he turned and headed towards the rear compartment.
“Mikey,” Lincoln called. Mike stopped and looked back at him. Lincoln tapped his own faceplate three times with hi
s forefinger. Signaling for Mike to stay buttoned up. Beneath the faceplate, their helmets had clear visors that were rated to hold up to some small arms fire, but they didn’t offer nearly the protection that the sealed plate did. When Mike had died with his head in Lincoln’s hands, he’d had his faceplate open to investigate a mechanism. It had turned out to be boobytrapped.
“Roger that, sir,” Mike answered. He gave a curt nod, suddenly sober, and disappeared into the airlock.
“I think you sucked all the fun out of Mikey, sir,” Thumper said after he’d gone.
“I’ll make him some coffee when we get back,” Lincoln replied. “You good to go?”
“Good to go.”
“Sahil, you’ll follow us up?”
“Yessir,” Sahil said. “Soon as we’re rolled and tethered.”
“Roger. See you in a few.”
Lincoln motioned towards the ladder, which was merely a few rungs formed into the bulkhead. Thumper climbed up first, into the upper airlock. Lincoln followed behind. It was a cozy fit for the two of them. Once Sahil joined them, space was going to be tight enough to be socially awkward. Supposedly four troopers could fit in each of the airlocks for simultaneous deployment; Lincoln figured if they ever tried to squeeze that many in up top, whoever was nearest to the exit would get forcibly ejected as soon as the outer hatch opened.
“Anvil, Hammer,” Lincoln said. “Comms check, over.”
“Anvil copies, Hammer,” Wright answered over the team channel. “Commo’s clean.”
“We’re lined up,” Sahil said. “Mir, you’re good to go.”
“Roger,” Wright replied. “Anvil’s deploying.”
She and Mike were dropping out to an entry point on the port side of the Ava Leyla. They would secure the lower decks and move up. Lincoln and the others would go in through the top, starting far aft and working their way forward. Most versions of the plan had them all converging on the bridge for the final take down.
