Stolen Earth, page 27
Rajani had been vaguely aware that they had passed from the grasses and scrub of the edge of the compound and into the cultivated fields, but it still took her by surprise when Bishop came to a stop. She glanced up to see the cylinder rising before them. Now that she was right upon it, she saw it was clearly machinery. She could sense the thrum of power coursing through it. There was no sound, but as she laid one suited hand against the surface, she could feel the hum of energy.
“We’ve reached checkpoint one,” Lynch said, his voice cutting through her reverie. She glanced in his direction—the captain had moved partway around the machine, his shoulder tight against it and his weapon pointed in the general direction of the dome’s airlock. The airlock was invisible to the naked eye, but came into focus when she engaged the enhancement systems in her visor. Morales was at his back, holding the boxy shotgun that Bishop had carried when they first landed. The mechanic, on the other hand, was carrying Morales’ rifle. None of it made any sense to Rajani; to her, one gun was much the same as the next and she didn’t particularly like any of them.
“Understood,” Federov responded over the comm. “Closing on the primary objective now. No contacts.”
“All right, Doc,” Bishop said, putting the visor of his ship suit helmet nearly in contact with hers so she could hear him directly rather than speaking over the comm. “We gotta get started on our end of things. Our job is to find an access point so you can start working your magic. Okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever,” Rajani said, turning her mind to the task at hand.
Bishop had set aside his rifle and was moving around the cylinder, to a point that he had identified in his own turn at watch. His hands moved quickly, precise as any surgeon’s, as he pulled a multi-tool from his suit’s harness. A low buzz reached her ears, muted by both the helmet and the sounds of the night, as the tool whirred to life. A few moments later, Bishop was easing a panel to the floor. He waved, and Rajani crowded in beside him, so that she could get a look into the guts of the machine.
The mechanic had switched on a red pen light, providing enough illumination to see the inner workings without the strange distortions that the night vision would have created. The panel had revealed a series of fiber-optic cables and circuit boards. She couldn’t actually see into the machine—the access panel was just that: it provided some level of basic access to what she suspected were the most commonly failing parts of the system. If she had had any doubts about the provenance of the installation, they were now gone. She had built her academic career in computer and software engineering and there was no mistaking that the array of circuitry and cabling before her was SolComm standard.
“Okay,” she muttered, too low for Bishop to hear. “I might be able to work with this.” The configuration looked to be part of a processing unit for what she suspected was one of many brains of the device. As the seconds ticked by, she catalogued the visible components, trying to get an understanding of how the system was built. They hadn’t been lucky enough to pop a panel that allowed for direct interface, but as she continued to unravel the structure, her confidence that such an interface existed grew.
She started moving around the base of the cylinder, only vaguely aware of the fact that Bishop had shouldered Morales’ rifle and was shadowing her every movement. As she came around the bend of the curve, the mechanic reached out and grabbed her shoulder. She half-jumped but stopped and turned. “Easy,” he whispered, nodding his head toward the compound. “Low and slow.”
The bulk of the machine was no longer positioned between her and the compound. She’d made her way around almost a quarter of it, following the barely perceptible lines of the composite paneling that made up its exterior. But in doing so she had come almost into full view of the compound. There was more than a hundred meters between her and the outer edge of the dome and it was the middle of the night. It was extremely unlikely that anyone could see her at that distance and with the intervening terrain even if they were looking. But all the logic in the world didn’t stop her heart from skipping a beat as she realized that, if someone was looking at just the right place, at just the right time, they would see her. She dropped down into a crouch so quickly that her knees popped.
“Keep going,” Bishop encouraged, his voice barely audible. “The captain and Morales have eyes on the compound. They’ll let us know if they see anything. But we gotta do our job.”
“Right.” Rajani started moving again, this time doing her best to keep low and keep her movements slow and measured. It took her a moment to remember that she was also looking for an access hatch. They had made their way almost a hundred and eighty degrees around the cylindrical device before she found it. She was acutely aware that her back was now toward the compound.
It was her turn to lean in close to Bishop, whose eyes were focused on the dome. “Bishop,” she said. She had to say it several more times until she found the bare minimum volume that he could hear between both of their helmets. He turned his faceplate in her direction. She couldn’t see him—the lights that were built into the suits were all extinguished and she found herself looking at a featureless piece of transparent composite. She had seen it a thousand times before, but now it set her heart to racing. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak. Instead, she pointed at the panel.
Bishop nodded, letting Morales’ weapon hang from the sling. He moved to the panel, running his hands over it, fingers pausing on the hardware and stopping on the keypad. Unlike the other panel, this one was locked. That had been part of what Rajani was looking for; it was a truism in SolComm that things required for routine maintenance were seldom secured, but that which provided access to information was. It was part of what she was coming to see as one of the many hypocrisies of the system she had once fervently supported, even while pursuing interests that ran counter to its laws. Access to the infrastructure that kept them all alive in the confines of stations and domes and ships was open; access to knowledge was closely guarded.
She sensed movement and turned as a wave of panic threatened to tear her breath from her. But it was only the captain and Morales making their way around the base of the cylinder. Lynch made some arcane hand gestures in her direction and she could only look on in confusion. She tapped Bishop on the shoulder, taking him away from his work and nodded to the pair. He focused his attention in that direction and the captain once again went through the gestures. Bishop nodded and gave a thumbs-up gesture. “Cap and Morales are moving to the airlock,” he said, leaning in close so she could catch his words. “They’ll keep eyes out and comm if there’s trouble headed our way. I’m going to have to cut my way through this one. That means you and I are going to have to stand as close together as possible to try to block as much of the light as possible.”
Rajani nodded, mentally kicking herself for not paying enough attention to the tactical side of what the Arcus did. She spent so much time aboard and on the computers that she didn’t quite grasp the full nature of some of their missions. She pushed herself shoulder to shoulder with him and curled her body into a “c” to try to block as many angles of escaping light as possible. Meanwhile, Bishop had rummaged around in his rucksack and produced a thin emergency blanket. The surface was reflective, but so long as no light was hitting it from the outside, that shouldn’t be an issue. The two of them worked together to wrap it in such a way and with Rajani holding the edges to obscure the panel as much as possible while leaving Bishop’s hands free to work.
The mechanic produced a small torch from one of his voluminous pouches. Her visor polarized as the white-hot flame sparked into existence and she pulled herself tighter against Bishop, pulling the emergency blanket as close as she dared. The mechanic set about cutting, moving with what seemed like glacial slowness, though Rajani understood that care was required. They could not risk damaging whatever lay beyond the panel with the heat of the torch.
It took nearly two minutes, with Bishop moving the torch with delicate precision. Despite the cooling unit built into her ship suit, by the time the little white flame had winked out, Rajani’s face was streaming sweat. There had been no cries of alarm, no activated floodlights, no hail of gunfire. After making sure there was no residual heat glowing from the panel, she lowered the blanket and risked a look toward the compound.
Nothing.
She tried to pick out the forms of Lynch and Morales, who must be getting close to the dome, but even when she activated her night vision, she still could not see them. They knew their business. Time to prove that she knew hers as well.
She turned back to Bishop, who had used the edge of his multi-tool to pry the cover from the access panel. Beneath, Rajani saw what she had been hoping for: a simple screen with a pair of universal ports beneath it.
“Okay,” she said to Bishop, straining somewhat to get the word past the dryness in her mouth. “I don’t know how much this will light up. Maybe you should take the blanket?”
“Sorry, Doc,” Bishop replied. “I’ve got to move back around and take up an overwatch position somewhere where I can steady the rifle and see over the crops. The show’s all yours. I’ll be keeping watch, and I’ll comm if I see any activity. But you’ll have to use your body to shield any screen light as best you can.” With that, he started sliding back around the cylinder, rifle at the ready.
“All right,” she muttered to herself, too quietly to be heard outside the confines of her own helmet. She shuffled around, trying to center herself as much as possible on the revealed screen and standing as close as she could while still being able to see the readout. It was awkward and uncomfortable—she could already feel the strain building in her shoulders and at the base of her neck as she craned her head downward—but any light that managed to trickle past her body would go unnoticed by anyone who happened to glance their way.
She hoped.
Rajani dipped a hand into one of her own pouches and pulled out a somewhat-antiquated physical storage device. Wireless transmission rates were fast enough that people seldom bothered with them, but given the importance of data security, there were still institutions that required sandboxes—machines not hooked up to any kind of network. Still, despite the infrequent use, anything built in SolComm would have an input–output port that she could access. Which was good. She might have been able to hack the tower remotely; with One’s help, she was certain she could have done so. But they were trying to operate with minimal emissions, and proper hardware made that easier.
She plugged the storage cube into the receptacle and watched as the screen blossomed to life. Much to her relief, it either changed its display based on the ambient light or was already set to a darker tone, because she was not greeted with a blinding white splash screen. Instead, faint green lights glowed on a background of muted black, hearkening back to the earliest days of computing. As the screen came to life, a small keyboard unfolded. Rajani leaned in closer and got to work.
LAUREL
Laurel moved through the field, her boots sinking into the turned earth with a sensation that was simultaneously unnerving and pleasant. She couldn’t name the crop through which she moved. It stood taller than her waist and wasn’t all that dissimilar from the tall grasses that covered the terrain but that obviously weren’t cultivated crops. In the daylight of her watch, she had seen the waving golden-brown stems swaying in the breezes as the prisoners moved among them, pulling other plants from the ground and operating a variety of tools. Laurel had seen hydroponics sections of ships and domes, but those had been controlled environments. SolComm had a strict regimen for planting, but one boon of space had been the lack of destructive flora or fauna among the food supply. She understood—at least theoretically—that when you removed those artificial constraints, more work had to go into the operation; without specific nomenclature, she filed it all under the category of “farming” in her head. That was another of those pastoral, Old Earth activities that carried a lot of sentimental value among the wealthy of SolComm. From what she had seen, it was much dirtier and sweatier than those who romanticized it may have realized.
Ahead of her, Lynch came to a sudden stop, sinking into a crouch that left only the top of his head and his eyes exposed above the crops. Laurel followed suit, scanning the area in front of her. They had crossed roughly half the distance between the cylinders and the dome, maintaining strict radio discipline. She couldn’t see anything on her night-vision display, so she waited, Bishop’s shotgun tucked tight into her shoulder as she scanned. She didn’t begrudge Bishop the proper tool for the job; she just wished she had brought more of her personal weaponry with her when she’d accepted this assignment. She’d have to fix that in the future.
That thought jarred her for a moment. The future? Did she have a future with the crew of the Arcus? She shook her head. Not the time. Not the place.
Lynch was apparently satisfied that whatever had stopped his advance wasn’t a threat. He was up and moving again, and Laurel fell in a little bit behind and off to his left, spacing herself far enough away that a single burst of enemy fire was unlikely to catch them both. It wasn’t like they had seen any prepared positions—or any defenses at all, for that matter. But caution was synonymous with survival on this kind of extraction, and damned if she was going to die on Old Earth from carelessness.
They continued their trek in silence, slipping among the crops until, after just a couple of minutes, they had reached the edge of the vegetation. Lynch dropped prone, shuffling forward to the very limit of the plant life and Laurel dropped down beside him. He popped his visor and she followed suit, bringing their heads together as close as lovers.
“We wait here for Federov,” Lynch whispered. “Once the show starts, we move fast, straight for the airlock.”
“Understood.”
The conversation really wasn’t necessary; they both knew the plan. But a little human contact and communication went a long way to ease the stress and tension. There was a lot riding on the next hour or so.
They waited in silence, eyes and ears straining to pick up anything from the compound. The night was filled with sound, and she found it distracting. Laurel was accustomed to a certain level of background noise; vacuum might be silent, but within SolComm, the whir and hum of life-giving machinery was constant. The sounds here were different, though just as omnipresent. Buzzes and chirps of insects, the susurration of the crops moving in the wind, and the quiet shuffling of whatever creatures moved through the night all drifted to her ears. The sound of the machines of SolComm was the sound of life in its own way, but the sounds of Old Earth were different. The constant din of ships and stations was necessary to facilitate life; here the noise was that of life itself. It was peaceful and humbling and, it she thought too deeply about what might be out there waiting in the dark, a little frightening.
She heard rustling. It was coming from the direction from which Federov should be returning, but Laurel hadn’t gotten as far as she had by making assumptions or taking stupid chances. She tapped Lynch twice on the shoulder in quick succession then rolled to her left, moving from the prone position and into a crouch. She braced the butt of the shotgun against the chest strike plate in her ship suit and picked up the sights, keeping both eyes open as she scanned the brush. Beside her, Lynch had also moved to a kneeling position, but he kept his weapon pointed at the compound, trusting her to cover the potential threat.
Their comm squelched twice and Laurel relaxed, letting the muzzle of the shotgun drift downward. The squelch was followed a moment later by Federov, moving in a low crouch of his own, barely visible over the grain. He popped his visor and gave them a big grin as he dropped down at Laurel’s side. “Is done,” he said.
“Okay,” Lynch replied. “Then it’s time to get the party started. Going live on comm.”
Laurel dropped her visor back in place. It had been important to maintain a low chance of signal detection during the infiltration, but they were about to blow a hole in the side of the dome. The chance of radio intercept was about to drop precipitously as the people in the compound would have other matters to attend to.
“Bishop, we’re getting ready to start the party.” Lynch’s voice was bright and clear within the confines of her helmet.
“Roger that, Cap,” the mechanic replied. “I’ve got you. Everything still looks clear on our end.”
“How’s the rest of the operation going?”
“Dunno, Cap. The Doc is doing her thing. Seems real busy with it.”
“Understood. Be ready for the boom in ten.” As he spoke, a message from Federov popped into her visor—a countdown clock in big, glowing red numerals. She assumed he had sent it to all of them now that the need for radio silence was over.
“One, anything new you can tell us?” Lynch asked.
“No, Captain,” the AI said. “There has been nothing to indicate that your infiltration has been detected. Your plan is somewhat limited, but given the constraints, it should have a reasonable chance of success.”
“Thanks,” the captain said dryly. “All right, Federov, start it up.”
The red numbers began ticking down and Laurel gave her gear a final check. The ritual calmed her nerves, the routine pushing her heart rate down into a more normal range even as her mind continued to spin. This damn assignment kept presenting her with new lines, and she kept crossing them. Theft. Piracy. Violating the IZ. And now she was about to launch an attack on what had to be a SolComm facility. The monitor displayed in the corner of the visor showed her heart rate elevating once more. She ran her hands over her gear, repeating the ritual. The seconds ticked down, the numbers flashing toward zero.
Three. Two. One.
“Boom,” Federov whispered into the comm. At the same time a deep, resonating thud erupted into the night.
Her ship suit automatically dampened the noise. For a few heartbeats, everything within the compound appeared unchanged, save for the growing column of smoke and dust rising from the far side. Then sirens began sounding and lights in the various buildings began blossoming to life. And Laurel was certain that every waking eye in the place was looking in the direction of the disturbance.
