by Jay Posey
“And we can shut her down?”
“Theoretically,” Thumper said. “No one’s ever done this before. But the NID folks seemed optimistic.”
“Sounds like you guys got this all under control,” Lincoln said. “Not sure why you bothered to come get me.”
“Sahil’s idea,” Wright said. “Wouldn’t leave me alone about it.”
“What’d you find out about potential bad actors?”
“Positive ID on one, at least. Gregor Petrescu, of the Republic’s Internal Security Service. He was definitely using Internal Security’s infrastructure… secure comms, surveillance, all kinds of stuff. That’s actually how we were able to locate SUNGRAZER, using his setup, paired with Elliot’s rig. But based on how he was using it, I’m going to guess it wasn’t sanctioned. Seems like he went to a lot of trouble to hide it.”
“I agree with that assessment,” Lincoln said. “I don’t think his own partner even knew what he was up to.”
The others looked at him. “I get stuck in a cell for a few days, you think I’m just going to sit around feeling sorry for myself?” He shrugged. “Speaking of Elliot, we need to make sure we get him out of the Republic. Internal Security knows he’s NID.”
Wright and Thumper exchanged a look.
“I missed something,” Lincoln said.
Wright nodded. “Couple of things. We’ll get you debriefed later, when we have more time.”
“And beer,” Mike added.
“So what do you need from me?” Lincoln asked. “Anything I can do?”
“Not much we can do until we reach SUNGRAZER,” Wright said.
“And even then, well,” Thumper said. “Probably most of it’s going to be on me. Figured you’d want to be here for the big moment, at least.”
“That I do. Until then, though…” he said.
“Need to go have a good cry in the shower?” Wright asked.
“Dunno about the cry,” Lincoln said.
“Definitely need the shower, though,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you to the head.”
She escorted him out of the compartment and down the passageway. When they were out of earshot of the others, she stopped and turned to him.
“How you doing, Lincoln?” she asked.
“Wrecked,” Lincoln said. “Glad to have something to do, though. Got bored with all that sitting around back there.”
“Serious question, sir,” she replied. “I don’t know what they put you through, so I don’t know whether I should consider you operational or not. I need to know, just in case.”
He knew he was pushing it. He’d seen it plenty of times before; prisoners, hostages, anyone coming out of captivity had to deal with the emotional whiplash at some point. Some of them felt it immediately, others weeks later. And he knew he wasn’t as sharp as usual. The lack of sleep, the psychological stress, he couldn’t ignore it completely. But he was functional. Being back with the team was already burning away the effects of his utter isolation; knowing they still had a mission gave him something to focus on. He’d deal with the baggage when it came, as inevitably it would. But until then, there was work to do, and for now, at least, he could detach himself enough from what he’d been through.
“I’m good, Mir,” he said. “I know it’ll all crash down at some point. But not right now. I think I’m still trying to figure out how you pulled that off. Seems like everything happened all at once… guess I know how it feels from the other side now.”
She watched him for a moment, evaluating. The intensity of her eyes reminded him of the first time he’d met the master sergeant, when he’d walked into the team facility unannounced. He’d thought she was going to throw him right back out.
“All right,” she said.
“Not that I’m upset at the call,” Lincoln said. “But I have to admit, Mir… with time so short, I’m surprised you came to get me.”
“That’s what I tried to tell them,” Wright replied. “But I got overruled.” She said it deadpan, but after a moment the corner of her mouth pulled back in a smile. “Turned out we needed time to track SUNGRAZER down, and the hop they were holding you on wasn’t too far out of the way. Figured there was no reason to sit around twiddling. Plus… well, I wasn’t sure what they’d do to you once we got her back. None of us were. Figured we better get you out while we knew where you were.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” he said. “You did a good job holding it all together. A great job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He felt like there was more he should say, but the words just didn’t come.
“You really ought to get that shower,” Wright said.
Lincoln chuckled. It was good to be back. Wright turned and led him the rest of the way, then left him on his own. Lincoln took a long, hot shower, and let the water wash away the last vestiges of his captivity.
Lincoln had enough time to get cleaned up and even got a couple of hours sleep before the big moment. Between Thumper’s technical prowess, Noah’s insane gift for complicated navigation, and Will’s piloting skills, they got lucky enough to match trajectories with SUNGRAZER.
But that, apparently, was as far as luck and skill could take them.
The team was all gathered once more in Thumper’s makeshift mad-scientist laboratory.
“So according to NID,” she said, working with both Veronica and whatever device the techs had helped her cobble together, “we send this packet to her, wait for her reply, and once that comes back, we issue the abort command.”
“No need to wait for fanfare, Thumper,” Lincoln said. “Get it done.”
“Roger that,” she said. A few gestures, and the initial request for connection went on its way. Several tense seconds ticked by before Lincoln realized he didn’t know what kind of response he should be expecting, or how quickly it should come.
“How long until we know if it worked?” he asked.
Thumper sat forward. Gestured again.
“Thumper? How long do we wait?”
“We don’t have to wait,” she said, grim. “I can tell you right now, it didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?” Wright asked.
“The connection request,” she said. “Rejected.”
“So NID’s trick didn’t work?” Lincoln said, clarifying.
“It did,” Thumper said. “Connection request went through. It just came back rejected. Invalid.”
She turned and looked at him. “They changed the command-and-control encryption again. They must have done it after…” She trailed off, and then pounded her fist on the table. “That’s what he meant. That’s what Gregor meant when he said we couldn’t stop it. That not even he could stop it.”
The team stood in shocked silence. If they could have stuck their heads out of the ship, they could have seen SUNGRAZER from there. Their objective was that close, and there was nothing they could do about it.
“We should have burned him alive after all,” Mike said, but even he didn’t seem to be able to find any humor in the moment.
“Can you crack the new scheme?” Wright asked.
Thumper shook her head. “It took Veronica days to get the last one, and that was only because she had samples of both the old and new to compare. This would be starting over from scratch… worse than that.”
She swept her eyes around the room, looking at all of the gear she’d set up, all of the effort they’d put in to get this far. And then slammed both fists down hard on the table. So hard, some unidentified bit of gear bounced off and rolled away.
“Let’s look at our options,” Lincoln said. “We’re this close. We’ve got to have a few.”
“We shoot her down?” Mike said.
“Not with this ship,” Wright answered. “It’s a civilian vessel. Got some defensive capabilities, but nothing that could do much more than scratch her paint.”
“What if we ram her?” Mike said.
Everyone thought that over for a moment. It might be possible, but it woul
d almost certainly spell death for them all. Thumper was the first to respond.
“If we just try to nudge her, I don’t think our engines are enough to redirect her. And if we come in hot enough to pose a threat, she’ll obliterate us before we reach her. That’s if we could even hit her which, at the velocities we’re talking isn’t a sure thing at all.”
“I got a bunch of charges in my kit,” Sahil said. “If I freespace over, you think I could blow her up from the inside?”
There seemed to be something to that. SUNGRAZER had self-destruction capabilities; charges at key points might not destroy all of the critical components, but there was a good chance it would be enough to stop her from carrying out the strike at least.
“Depends on how much heat you’re packing,” Thumper said. “But even that might not help. The munitions she’s carrying, they’re designed to penetrate atmosphere.” She brought up the trajectory display and pointed at it. “She’s already on vector to impact Mars. We blow the ship, we would end up scattering those munitions, and at least some of them are going to continue on to target. We’d just be taking a city-killing sniper rifle and turning it into a nation-killing shotgun.”
The team fell silent again, each silently taking inventory of what they had at their disposal, working the problem in their own way.
“Unless,” Thumper said. “Unless… if we stage it right. If we could adjust her angle enough, and then detonate her, we might be able to make her miss. Send it all skipping off the atmosphere.”
“So what…” Mike said. “Ram her, then detonate her?”
“Something like that I guess…” Thumper said.
“You got a schematic of SUNGRAZER?” Sahil asked, walking over to Thumper.
“Sure,” she said. She gestured and Veronica produced the requested images.
“Can I?” Sahil said.
“Of course,” Thumper replied, and she scooted over so Sahil could manipulate the imagery. He was the team’s demolitions and explosives expert. As he spun the three-dimensional image around, zoomed in and out, he talked them through the points of vulnerability he saw, and asked for Thumper’s input on what they’d have to do to make it all work. After about twenty minutes of discussion, they had the rough sketch of an idea.
“Gonna have to time the detonation sequence pretty tight,” Sahil said. “You can run those numbers?”
Thumper shook her head. “It’s not going to be predictable enough for timers. We’ll have to hook up some kind of remote detonators, monitor the ship’s reaction, adjust on the fly. I can set Veronica up to run it, but you’re going to have to help me with the detonator part.”
“How much time do we have until she launches?” Lincoln asked.
“She could have already,” Thumper said. “She’s in the window. Could be three minutes, could be three hours.”
“Any way for us to know?” Wright said.
“Well, I have a monitor set up. We’ll be able to tell when she arms and starts going through her launch protocol.”
“How much warning will that give us?”
“About five minutes,” Thumper answered. “She’s an AI. She doesn’t take long.”
“So whatever we’re going to do,” Lincoln said, “we better do it now. That star-hook we rode in on, how much does it have left in the tank?”
“Should be enough to get over and back, with some to spare,” Sahil replied. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“It is. I’ll suit up, and handle planting the charges,” Lincoln said. “While you work it from this end.”
“That’s a negative, sir,” Sahil said. “My job, I’ll handle it.”
But Lincoln shook his head. “None of us can handle the detonator side, Sahil. If we plant the charges and they don’t go off, the whole thing’s a waste. You can direct me on placement, but I want you here working with Thumper to make sure we get that part right.”
It was obvious Sahil didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue. There was no point in sending him over, and having to wait until he got back to verify the detonation protocols were all proper. Not when timing was of such essence. And not when there was no guarantee he’d have time to make it over and back.
“It’s a lot of ground to cover, Lincoln,” Thumper said. “And you got to remember, SUNGRAZER isn’t made for people. It’s going to be zero-g, working in maintenance tunnels. Just getting around is going to be a chore.”
Thumper was right. Looking at that schematic and the points that they’d identified as vulnerabilities, the work wasn’t going to be quick. Several points were within the central portion, deepest into the vessel.
“It’s fine, I’ll go with,” Mike said.
None of them had mentioned it explicitly, but Lincoln knew they were all thinking it. There was a chance that whoever went over might not have time to make it back.
“And I’ll go instead,” Wright said. “Mike and I will handle it, Lincoln. Ranking officer, you need to stay here and coordinate.”
“No,” Lincoln said. “I’m not going to sit here and watch, not when I can do the work. I’m going over.”
“Captain,” Wright said.
“Not a discussion, master sergeant,” Lincoln said, loudly. “But I will take some help.”
Wright and Mike both looked at him expectantly. It was risky, going himself, to take Wright along with him. If it went wrong, that was the ranking officer and senior-most enlisted wiped out. But Mike. Mike was suffering some unknown effects from his last brush with the Process. Lincoln couldn’t put him through that again. Not knowing what he knew.
“Wright,” Lincoln said. “Suit up.”
“Roger that,” she said.
“Thumper,” said Lincoln, “keep working C&C. Maybe there’s something else there we missed.”
“Yes sir,” she replied.
“Sahil, come help get us loaded up. I’ll need you on the line in case we have questions about placement.”
“‘Course,” he said.
“Let’s get to it,” Lincoln said.
“Sir,” Mike said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well,” Lincoln said. “If you’re the praying sort, now’s a good time.”
Mike held his gaze for a moment, then gave a little nod. Lincoln couldn’t help but feel Mike knew why he’d made the decision he had, and resented him for it.
“Be back in a few,” Lincoln said, nodding back. He exited, and went to the rear of the vessel to get armored up.
Getting on board hadn’t been difficult, but it had been nerve-racking. Without a grav field, moving around on the surface of SUNGRAZER required Lincoln and Wright to use the magnetic capabilities of their suits, which made movement stiff and unnatural. And there was the constant fear of falling off. At the velocity they were traveling, and with SUNGRAZER continuing to make her microadjustments, Lincoln knew if he became detached from the vessel, there was a very real chance that he wouldn’t be able to get back on board.
Once they made it inside the first access, movement wasn’t much easier, and the fear of falling was replaced with the fear of getting hopelessly lost. When Thumper had said SUNGRAZER hadn’t been made for people, she hadn’t been kidding. There were indeed service and maintenance tunnels running all through her, but none of them afforded much room to work. It was, of course, pitch black, but his sensor suite absorbed electromagnetic radiation and heat and converted it all into useful imaging. He and Wright split up, each laden with demo charges. Lincoln headed forward to his targets; guidance, navigation, fire control, and forward and port steering thrusters. Wright would handle aft and starboard steering, the main engines, and the reactor core. If everything went according to plan, they’d meet in the middle, work their way back up to the surface, and star-hook their way back to the rest of the team before they detonated the charges.
Unfortunately, their targets weren’t neatly aligned. Instead of being able to plant charges in a nice row and get out, they both had to weave their way in and out through th
e ship’s infrastructure. Lincoln kept a wireframe schematic up on his display to help guide him to his targets. Sahil had marked the locations for the charges precisely on the schematic, and his positioning was reflected in the display such that when Lincoln had one set, it appeared highlighted by Sahil’s markings.
Lincoln moved through the ship by pulling himself along, with the occasional boost or stabilization from the microthrusters on his suit.
“Starboard one in place,” Wright reported over comms, while Lincoln was placing his first portside charge.
“Copy that,” he said. “Port one, in place.”
He double-checked the settings on the first charge, then set a second right below it. Once the backup was in place, he checked the first charge again, just to be sure. Time was of the essence, but so was getting it right the first time.
Those charges in place, Lincoln moved on to his subsequent targets; three additional port thruster placements, then fire control, then navigation. He was actually moving a little slower than Wright, though her work at the main reactor would be more complicated than anything he had to deal with. If they both held pace, they’d finish up at practically the same moment.
But as Lincoln was placing the back-up charge on the guidance system, he felt a strange sensation that he could immediately place. A dragging sort of feeling, as if he were slowly sliding towards the rear of the ship. His first thought was that he was suffering vertigo from the zero-g. Then he realized he wasn’t in zero-g anymore. That sensation was fractional gravity.
They were accelerating.
“Lincoln,” Thumper said over comms. “SUNGRAZER’s picking up speed.”
“Yeah, I can feel it,” he responded. He activated his microthrusters to counteract the force and finished setting the back-up charge. “What’s it mean?”
“Crossing the approach threshold,” Thumper said. “I think it means she’s less concerned about detectability now, and is moving up to strike velocity.”
“Understood,” he said. “You guys set?”
“We’re ready to go,” she answered. “If you can move any faster, it’d be good.”
“I know. I’ve got three more points on forward steering, and I’ll be wrapped. Wright, how’re you doing?”
