Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  “Yes sir.”

  “It shows.”

  “Not sure if I should take that as a compliment, sir.”

  “That makes two of us.” Wicklund ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “There aren’t many good things about being detached from my ship, but one is that I hold just enough rank to make myself a pain in the ass to the right people down here.” He returned her tablet. “But all I’d be doing with this is restating your argument for you. I need more evidence.”

  Roberta’s eyes darted between him and Ivey. “I have an idea.”

  30

  Roberta McCall checked herself in a full-length mirror behind a ladies’ restroom door inside Schriever’s base hospital. She didn’t typically care this much about her appearance—she certainly didn’t typically wear so much makeup—but this would be a unique case. For the first time in her intel career, she was going on a field op. Not sanctioned, of course: No one in Group S-2 knew what she was up to. But after some background work and a few casual conversations with the medics and nurses on his floor, she didn’t expect the target to respond to straight-ahead questions.

  With this being a freelanced op, she had to be especially careful. Throwing on a pair of scrubs with a falsified ID to impersonate medical staff would be a quick route to a bad-conduct discharge, the “big chicken dinner.” And she couldn’t just sashay into his room in civilian clothes, that would raise too many questions among the others who’d be certain to recognize her.

  So she’d visited a seamstress in town, one she remembered from last year after struggling into a dress for a friend’s wedding. The little old lady had been an artist with fabrics, nipping and tucking until Roberta had come out the other side looking curvaceous enough that the bride barely recognized her and groomsmen were hitting on her. Glamming herself up had been fun at the time, but entirely too much work for her to make a habit of it. She didn’t know how other girls tolerated it. Life was busy enough without adding more work.

  This had managed to be even more so. The genius lady had managed to tweak a standard-issue women’s flight suit into, well, she wasn’t sure what to call it. It was still regulation, but when she tried it on . . . damn. It revealed curves she didn’t know she had.

  Roberta turned to one side and ran a hand along her hip, admiring herself. Maybe her friends were right, maybe she needed to get out more. But not in this—and as soon as she got what she needed, this was going straight back to the seamstress. She couldn’t afford this look at work; nobody would ever take her seriously again.

  She leaned into the mirror, checking her hair and makeup one last time, and tweaked the zipper of her jumpsuit down another half an inch. Just enough, she thought. This had better work.

  She finished the look by donning her regulation brown leather flight crew jacket, which would serve to cover her up just long enough to keep from embarrassing the hell out of herself in front of anyone who might recognize her.

  Satisfied with the final product, she slipped back out onto the nuclear medicine floor and headed for the isolation ward.

  Nick Lesko numbly flipped through the channels on his room’s TV for what felt like the hundredth time just this morning. No internet connectivity, so he couldn’t even surf his favorite content sites. It was the usual collection of local news, mindless talk, cop show reruns, and obscure old movies that deserved to remain that way.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a young woman in a tight-fitting charcoal gray jumpsuit as she flounced through the isolation ward door. He’d seen a few pretty nurses here, all of them strictly business. This one seemed different. She wore a mop of brown curls in a loose ponytail that bounced in synch with the rest of her body as she made her way through the ward and in . . . his direction? He couldn’t be that lucky.

  And yet, there she was, beaming a smile as she slid the glass door open. “Mr. Lesko?”

  He sat upright and smoothed down his hospital gown, doing his best to look presentable. “That’s me.”

  Her smile grew wider. “Awesome. Mind if I come in? I mean, if this isn’t a bad time?”

  He swept his hand in a welcoming gesture. Like I have anything better to do.

  The bouncy young lady pulled a chair alongside his bed and sat close. “I’m Roberta,” she said, extending her hand. He gladly took it, enjoying the touch of her handshake as it lingered just a second. “I’m a liaison officer from Group staff. We haven’t had the opportunity to check on you and so I wanted to see if there’s anything we can do for you.”

  He fought the urge to chuckle at that. Yeah, there’s a lot you can do for me. He pointed at the TV hung on the opposite wall. “You could improve the entertainment selection, for starters. Only one sports channel?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Roberta said. She reached for the remote, brushing his arm and making the hair stand up. “May I?”

  “Go for it,” he said. “You won’t find much.”

  She scrolled through the channel menu and leaned in close. “I never knew that our selection was so limited. Everybody’s so used to streaming that nobody uses cable anymore except hospitals and military bases.”

  “I wouldn’t care, except that even my laptop’s useless here.”

  A quizzical look crossed her exquisitely made-up face—she wore just enough to make things interesting without being trashy. Where did the military keep these women? Did they only roll them out for recruiting ads? “I don’t understand,” she said. “You can’t use your laptop?”

  “No internet access,” he explained. “I’m cut off from the outside world.”

  Her lips glistened as she pursed them in thought. “I think I can help.” She flitted her hands in a gesture of bewilderment. “This floor has a lot of crazy equipment and shielding in the walls that I don’t begin to understand. They didn’t offer you a portable hot spot?”

  “Never mentioned it,” he said. “You’re the first person to explain that to me the whole time I’ve been here.”

  She touched his arm again, this time leaning forward for emphasis. It did not escape his notice. “Again, I am so sorry. It’s a good thing I came down here to check on you, because we can certainly do something about that.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a small white cube. “Here, you can use mine for now.” She wrote down the passcode on a notepad and tore it off for him.

  “I can’t—” he began.

  “Sure you can,” she said lightly. “You said it yourself, we’ve had you isolated for over a week. They wouldn’t even let me come up here until they were sure you were safe for visitors.”

  “They think I’m radioactive,” he grumbled. “I told them I’m not.”

  “You’re not,” she giggled. “But you do have to be careful, Mr. Lesko. I haven’t been to space yet myself, but I know it can be dangerous.”

  “You have no idea,” he said, feeling braggadocious. “Once is enough for me.”

  She leaned forward again, her hand on her chest. “I can only imagine, Mr. Lesko. They told me about what happened. You are lucky to be alive.”

  “Lucky.” He laughed darkly. “Yeah. That was some luck.” He opened up his laptop and typed in the code she’d given him. “That’s it,” he said, his mood improving as soon as he saw he was back online. “I’m part of the world again.” He met her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” she said, and collected her things. She handed him another note. “This is my cell number. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “I’ll do that.” Lesko smiled. He’d definitely be calling.

  “Great,” Roberta beamed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Lesko. It was a pleasure meeting you but I do have more rounds to make.”

  She bounced out of the room just as she’d come in, but with an extra spring in her step as she checked her phone on the way out. Sure enough, Lesko had wasted no time using the hot spot she’d set up for him. She tapped an icon on her phone and activated the keystroke logger embedded in the small whi
te cube now connecting him to the internet.

  Having fresh access to the outside world after being removed from it for so long left Nick Lesko feeling giddy, like the first time he’d discovered the myriad treasures of the internet. It was too tempting to follow those rabbit trails, and likewise too important that he maintain his focus. He needed to know what was happening with their little project in orbit, what had those repurposed satellites been up to?

  He reflexively looked over his shoulder, though there was of course no one to see what he was doing. Nothing but supply cabinets and monitoring equipment. The only window into his room was the sliding glass door. It’s supposed to be an “isolation ward,” dumbass, he reminded himself, and logged into the VPN his sponsors had created for their project. He watched as it synched itself to an encryption key running separately on his phone. It used to annoy him, how much memory their overcomplicated code ate up, but now he was relieved to have it. Who would have thought that he might someday need access from inside a military base?

  In what was perhaps an unnecessary level of safety, the status monitoring program itself was disguised to look like an old PC game. But then, games had become so realistic that one would be hard pressed to find the difference unless they involved firing actual guns. Fortunately, Lesko didn’t need fancy VR gear to manipulate this. It was a simple world map depicting coverage from each satellite they’d modified and used to hijack other satellites.

  He was taken aback, now able to see the scope of their project illustrated so unambiguously. He let out a low whistle in appreciation—they hadn’t been screwing around. No wonder they’d ridden him so hard.

  A large portion of the world’s geosynchronous communications and surveillance satellites had been either disabled or were effectively working for someone else. He wasn’t sure who yet, and didn’t really care, but turning a couple of old birds into roaming maintenance bots had been like unleashing a virus in orbit.

  He scrolled through the roster of satellites, looking for the ones he was familiar with, and grew impatient. It was easier to just type in their names in the search bar. The first spacecraft he looked up was Stardust, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was gone, deorbited. Good move, whoever had done it. What was that one he’d just heard about . . . Indo-something? He did a search and was rewarded with reams of data.

  Roberta slid her tablet PC across the desk to Ivey. “He’s in,” she said, “partitioned behind a private network, which isn’t surprising.”

  “So we can’t see exactly what he’s doing,” Ivey said, disappointed.

  “Except the keylogger tells us how to access his VPN and his encryption key for whatever he’s running now.” She smiled with satisfaction. “And it shows what he’s searching for.” She tapped on the screen, drawing his attention to the scrolling text being relayed to them from Lesko’s computer inside the base hospital.

  His eyes popped. “Those look familiar all right. INDOSAT, GULFSAT, NSTAR . . . it’s like a who’s who of disabled birds.”

  “I don’t think they’re disabled,” Roberta said. “Their operators just can’t see them anymore.”

  Ivey nodded and pushed the tablet back to her. “We’ve got to let the brass know. Come on.”

  “They’ve resurrected dormant comsats, modified them into maintenance drones, and turned them loose to hijack and repurpose other satellites. KH-13 was their grand prize. And they’re using some high-grade encryption to cover their tracks,” Roberta told her captain, Wicklund and Ivey at her side. She handed over a stack of transcripts. “The keylogger I left in Lesko’s room recorded everything he’s done since yesterday morning.”

  The senior intel officer flipped through the pages. “You figured all that out from this?”

  Roberta nodded at the transcripts. “Not all of it, sir. A lot of that is outside of my expertise. But he’s got a key generator running on his laptop, that’s for certain.”

  “He’s been busy,” the captain agreed. “Hell, looking at the time stamps I don’t know if he’s even sleeping.”

  “Making up for lost time, sir,” Roberta agreed. “We just can’t see on what.”

  The captain eyed them each before landing back at her. “But you have your suspicions.”

  “He was working up in GEO at the same time we started seeing satellites go dark all over the place, sir. His crewmates are dead. And as soon as Borman broke orbit, we lost a Keyhole bird. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies but Lesko comes off as some kind of mob goon.”

  “What, like the Mafia? Everybody knows there is no Mafia,” the captain deadpanned. “Especially in the casino business.”

  “That’s what bugs me about this guy, sir. How does a casino fixer end up running a satellite repair team? What interest do they have?”

  “His employer’s listed in Macau,” the captain said. “That right there raises all sorts of red flags for me.” He put down the transcripts. “So now we can read at least some of their mail. What we don’t know is who’s on the other end. In the meantime, maybe you can get us in a position to look over their shoulders.”

  * * *

  The X-37 had taken two days to sneak up on Necromancer and its KH-13 prisoner. The spaceplane hovered above the repurposed comsat, passively monitoring the electronic traffic passing between it and what Roberta assumed to be its operator. She couldn’t determine direction, but the increasing delay between signals suggested it wasn’t being controlled by a ground station on Earth. Its signals were being relayed from something much farther away.

  That didn’t leave many candidates, she knew, but that was something she had to keep between herself and her pilot. Jacob Ivey was deftly keeping their drone on station within a few meters of Keyhole and its metallic parasite. And from the drone’s video feed, that’s exactly what it looked like: an origami virus, its skeletal legs wrapped around the big spysat.

  An alert flashed on her screen, and she pushed a new tasking order across the console to him. “New frag order. The one we’ve been waiting for.”

  Ivey read the order. “Cleared hot. About damned time,” he said, flexing his hands around the controls. “You ready?”

  “Born ready,” she said, doing the same. “Let’s take our bird back.”

  This close to their target, Ivey only dared use the slightest pulse of control jets to bring the X-37 almost on top of it. He stopped the drone within a meter of Necromancer. “You’re up, Roboto.”

  Wearing a pair of 3-D goggles, Roberta carefully guided the drone’s manipulator arm with a pair of hand controllers. She watched as the arm unfolded itself from the X-37’s open cargo bay and reached for the first of Necromancer’s four spindly legs.

  She pressed a thumbwheel and a grappling claw opened up. “Okay. Be ready to move, this thing may not like it.”

  She pushed on the hand controllers. In orbit, the arm extended and its claw found the first leg. When she closed her fist, it in turn closed around the leg, severing it. “One down.”

  They waited for a reaction, expecting the satellite to try and evade. Either it wasn’t that sophisticated, it was out of propellant (which she thought likely), or its controllers were at a disadvantage from light delay (which was just as likely).

  “It’s quiet,” Ivey said. “I think you’re good to go.”

  “Hell yes,” Roberta said, and reached for the next leg.

  By the time she made it to the last remaining leg, the parasite satellite’s grip on KH-13 was tenuous enough that it took only minimal force to release. This time, she kept her grappler wrapped around it and turned to Ivey. “Now what?”

  “Just got an update to the tasking order,” he said. “Ready for some target practice?”

  Her eyes widened. “Thought you’d never ask,” she said. “Laser’s charged.”

  “You’re clear to release. Weapons free.”

  “Weapons free,” Roberta repeated, and cut their captured satellite loose. “Separation point three meters per second.” When it had drifted to a safe dista
nce away from both their drone and the freshly liberated Keyhole, she thumbed a selector wheel atop her control stick. “Targeting the RCS tanks.”

  In orbit, an optical turret inside the X-37’s cargo bay swiveled and locked onto Necromancer. There was a flash of green light from inside the turret, and soon after the parasite satellite’s remaining propellant exploded.

  She smiled with satisfaction. “Splash one.”

  31

  It seemed to be a day for lost contacts. First the quantum datalink with their satellite controlling the American KH-13 had gone silent, and now the Borman was unresponsive as well. Lieutenant Zhou had been calling repeatedly and had so far received no answer. He confirmed once more that he was on the correct channel, the universal emergency frequency, and began repeating his mantra in precisely measured English. “Attention Borman, this is the People’s Republic Spacecraft Peng Fei—”

  Liu held up a hand. “You may cease, Lieutenant,” he said. “What does our control center report?”

  Major Wu answered for the command crew. He seemed hesitant. “They have no new information from the American control center in Colorado.”

  “That seems unlikely.” Liu stared at the situation display above the flight station. “Our arrival is no surprise to them, and no doubt they’ve seen our drive plume. They know we’re here.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “Wu, did Beijing confirm our new orbit parameters?”

  “They did, Colonel. Main engine cutoff confirmed with no residuals. We are twenty kilometers from Borman’s keep-out sphere, closing at six meters per second.”

  That left them perhaps thirty minutes until they crossed the American’s approach threshold; another hour and they’d be on top of them. This was no time to be out of communication. “That is enough to conduct terminal maneuvers with RCS thrusters,” he decided. “Major Wu, bring us about, x-axis normal.”