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When Leia woke up, Radmer was gone, back on Upper Andal. While eating breakfast in a nearly deserted dining hall, Leia accessed the table's screen for the larger display. She ate slowly, while working through some additional language input/translation screens. When she got bored with that, she queried ship-mind for the current status on Upper Andal.
Looking at the description of the shielding, Leia realized it wasn't material. She thought it might be a plasma window, but on a really massive scale, implying truly impressive available energy to keep it up and running. She skimmed the technical summary, which she probably wouldn't have understood even if the translation had been perfect. The translation was so imperfect there were large chunks of it ship-mind had left in Target Language. The problem with the shielding had turned out to be, surprise, surprise, fluctuations in the energy supply that were wider than whatever generated the plasma window could tolerate, if Leia understood it correctly. The solution to the problem was expected shortly; the technical teams were tracking down a number of installation errors that cumulatively resulted in the wide fluctuations that were causing the shielding to malfunction.
The active meteor defense system on Upper Andal looked a lot like directed energy weapons to Leia. Like the shielding, the guns needed shitloads of power. Also like the shielding, they were suffering from excessive fluctuations in the energy supplied to them. Unfortunately, the technical team working on that project was making much slower progress.
Leia looked around for any indication that the power problems were of long-standing or new. The shielding and the guns had been upgraded during the recent security retrofit, but looking over the old inspection data that someone had helpfully uploaded to ship-mind from Upper Andal, she suspected they had never worked, and replacing the old systems with upgrades had merely aggravated an existing problem. You would think a planet might bother to get this stuff right. The shielding was for the station; the active defense was for the planet as well. In the event of an inbound comet or meteor that might strike Andal, the station could be used to destroy or at least reduce the inbound object to a size that the atmosphere would further reduce to below a biosphere destroying level. On the other hand, the New Yorker had a long-standing tradition of running failed restaurant health inspection reports, and every little bit Boston had a scandal associated with deadly fires that were at least indirectly the result of inadequate fire inspection. It was pretty easy to grow accustomed to serious health and safety issues and ignore them. It was even easier to just not notice there was a problem until after it had killed someone, or in the case of things like meteor defense, everyone.
Who was she to complain about failure to install, inspect and maintain health and safety equipment? Earth didn't have any meteor defense, and she, personally, had scoffed at people who suggested one should be developed. It always seemed to her that the money would be better spent elsewhere.
The team working on the encryption, password and access problems had a forum set up that they had left open to anyone to read. For some reason, that cracked Leia up. There wasn't any particular reason to limit access to it, which of course was the point. They had split themselves up into a small team that was trying to drag out of the Andalese what kind of policy they wanted to enforce, and a technical group that was implementing it. The problems were incredibly varied: doors that didn't shut properly, systems that had passwords that didn't need them. That second was one of Leia's pet peeves. People tended to reuse access codes, thus, every system that didn't need to have tight security that nevertheless had security tended not to be maintained very well and could easily be compromised. You could then take the access codes over to the system you really wanted access to and try them there. Leia had exploited this weakness on the job more than once, but it was virtually impossible to stamp the practice out. Further problems included access codes for ex-employees that were still active, no policy on access code selection or regular changes to access codes. There was one person on the team assessing each known problem and assigning a rating for sabotage vs. stupidity. A non-technical team was assigned to investigate the probably responsible parties for anything rated sabotage. Leia was initially surprised to see how many instances were rated sabotage, until she dug down into the status report from the investigators. They had turned up a couple of smuggling operations and a people trafficking operation.
Creepy.
The smugglers were turned over to the Andalese; Hazard had called in external law enforcement for the tracking operation. The head of Upper Andal security, and the contractor on the security refit were both extradicted. Well, probably now ex-head of Upper Andal security. This was a really fun planet they were visiting.
The team Leia started thinking of as the bomb squad had covered about ten percent of Upper Andal and had found four explosive devices, which shocked Leia. But they weren't explosive devices of the kind or size necessary to cause Hazard's crew any concern, or cause much damage to Upper Andal, wherever they were deployed. What they could do, however, was really mess with the shuttle-ways – the connectors people and cargo traveled through to embark and debark from a shuttle connected to the station. One of the devices had been found in a mechanical closet. It wasn't ticking away or anything; it was being stored there. The other three were in lockers for passengers laying over on station. Given the amount of station left for the bomb squad to cover, and what was in the rest of the station, the bomb squad expected to find at least a dozen more explosive devices, but probably less than a hundred.
Leia looked for the cross that Radmer had mentioned, that connected all the functional controls and sensors on the station to the main command and control center and the secondary. In this particular case, the designer had created an n-ary switch, rather than the simple two-way cross that had been specified in the design. As Radmer had mentioned, this was a Known Problem, and eventually had put the designer out of business. Ship-mind provided a historical summary of the problem. The designer had initially built stations with the specified redundant systems. Then customers had requested, after a number of years, additional command and control functionality in a third or nth location either on or off station. Those customers had, understandably, been unhappy at the massive cost of the refit required to make the upgrade. The designer had taken to anticipating the requested refit and inserting three-way or n-ary switches, some of which allowed for off-station or remote operation. Initially, this had been a popular choice, but while the longevity drug calmed humans down a lot, it didn't put an end to their trouble-making ways. Between people siphoning off information and energy, and using stealth C&C posts to subvert security to cover up a smuggling operation or other illegal activities, those stations had all been forced to put the switch under heavy security, and the designer had ultimately gotten into a different line of business.
More recently, the problem had been solved by a much more expensive system that replaced the long runs of not-wiring, not-fiber-optic with systems that were wire-equivalent locally, but then disappeared into what Leia thought of as a magic hole, but was probably quantum something, and came out again elsewhere. While the Andalese could not possibly afford this kind of equipment, Hazard was installing it anyway, because it was going to take tens of days to track down everywhere the n-ary switch was receiving control information from. So they were just isolating the cross entirely, monitoring all the inputs, and replacing the actual control connections with the new system.
By the time Leia had finished skimming the status of Upper Andal, the shielding was passing its tests consistently, and the active meteor defense was believed to be within a day of working correctly. The controls on the guns had been declared clean, thus eliminating the primary concern that they might be turned against Hazard or Andal. Unless someone showed up and started attacking the station, the guns would not be needed any time soon anyway, and Hazard could probably cover the station if need be. The access and security policy team would likely still be working a month from now, but they'd already gotten through the high-priority systems and only newly installed access codes for Hazard's personnel were operational anyway. With the bomb squad estimating another 12 hours to finish securing the station, and prepared to guarantee the safety of the shuttle-ways, the flood off Hazard to the station was well underway, and teams were already dropping to the planet. Hazard had the minimum crew remaining to defend itself with the newly deployed automated systems. The political teams already on station had already landed on Andal.
No wonder the dining room had been empty for breakfast.
Leia poked her way through another language section, and went off to exercise and shower. When she was done, it was time for lunch. She returned to the still-deserted dining room and checked for an update from the political teams on Andal. Apparently about 2500 crew had landed and inhaled every database on the planet and interviewed a lot of the possible suspects identified in Esifwu's initial strategy dossier. While they were able to connect an assortment of their interviewees to the bombs located on Upper Andal (and turned them over to the relevant authorities), the developing consensus was that none of these people had the capacity or the connections to be involved in either the crop failures or the epidemics. The databases did confirm the presence of known agents of Ubiquitous Humanity and Universal Friends on Andal during the appropriate time frames.
Leia got a call from Radmer as she was about to return to the language program. "Want something to do?" he asked.
"Sure. There is no one over here; I've had two meals in an almost completely deserted dining room, worked out, showered, and am mostly up-to-date on the status reports. Other than working on crew-intake forms and language learning, I've got nothing to do."
"Am I correct in assuming that you had some kind of physical combat training and possibly experience on your home planet?"
That was an unexpected question. "Yes. I started martial arts when I was fifteen, and the longest break I took before I was kidnapped was two months while I was traveling, which was unusual. Usually I looked someone up to train with."
"Martial arts are a form of physical combat training?"
"Yes. They are primarily hand to hand with a little weapons training. I've also trained with a variety of projectile weapons and know a very little about explosives."
"Is this all classroom or have you actually used some of it?"
She had expected that one.
"I have had occasion to use it, although not frequently."
"We do not have a lot of people with that skill set, and all of them are currently down planet with the security teams, or working with the bomb squad because that is their primary skill. I think I might need someone, and I'd rather not call in any of the local cops."
"After reading about the security chief, I endorse your reluctance wholeheartedly. What do you want me to do?"
A shuttle was standing by to take her to Upper Andal. Radmer had a list of supplies he wanted her to pick up from his room. She cleared her lunch dishes and went to his room to pick up the equipment, and change into a suit.
The shuttle trip was interesting, in that she hadn't been off Hazard since her arrival, and she'd been unconscious when she arrived. It wouldn't be interesting more than once, she suspected, unless, like public transportation back home, it provided people watching and listening opportunities. She had this shuttle to herself, which said a lot about where everyone else was. There wasn't even a pilot, which was weird and initially creepy, but then kind of cool in a I'm-a-heroine-in-a-space-opera kind of way.
No one was waiting for her in the shuttle way, which was deserted, and there were very few people in the corridors of her route to where Radmer was. She hadn't fully processed the fact that the station comfortably housed about the same number as Hazard, and could handle 10-20 times that in people passing through. Once the keys had been handed over to Hazard, however, everyone had been shuttled down planet or left the system entirely, which meant there were about 2500 people occupying a space ordinarily occupied by 50-100K+. It felt hollow and empty, which was partly because everything non-essential was closed down.
She was inclined to hurry for a variety of reasons: being alone in a strange place wasn't somewhere she ever dawdled; she was curious to see what Radmer had in store for her and of course she wanted to see Radmer. This wasn't exactly a dark alley, and she had a lot of reasons to think it was very, very safe at this point, but she didn't make a serious effort to slow her pace.
Once she arrived where her directions sent her, she looked around for Radmer. He poked his head up from behind a desk and smiled at her. He took a moment to kiss and hug her in his usual, leisurely manner, but immediately returned to the business at hand. There were a variety of displays up and running, some installed, some jury-rigged in place. He showed her a diagram on her screen that explained where the spaces were that were shown on the monitors. Each display gave a visual camera view, a heat sensor view, and something that Leia thought translated as a radiation monitor. She wasn't sure she understood either what that one was showing, or under what circumstances it would be a cause for concern. One of the displays showed the n-ary cross which even to Leia's untrained, unfamiliar eye looked like a mess of wiring going every which way. Leia asked what Radmer wanted her there for. It couldn't be to watch the displays, because ship-mind was capable of that if Radmer didn't trust the systems on-station to do an acceptable job.
"We've seen a small burst of activity on the n-ary cross. It's just a communication confirmation, the kind of thing that might be sent automatically to make sure the connection is still there, but might be someone checking before using the connection. It's impossible to tell."
"Where did it come from?" asked Leia.
"The line it came in on terminates on the other end at a receiver."
"And the person with the remote could be anywhere?"
"Not anywhere. We've got an EM monitor by that receiver, and EM monitors in stages roughly spherically arranged at two separate levels out. Triangulation says the sender should have been here," Radmer pointed at one of the displays. No one and nothing was visible there.
On a separate display, he showed her what the recorders had for the time the ping came in: still no one and nothing. Fast forwarding showed some Hazard techs milling about testing equipment and then exiting again.
"What happened?"
Radmer shrugged. "Hard to say. Our best guess is we're up against some good stealth equipment – good enough to fool normal vision, infrared. We did not have a radiation monitor in that location but we do now; that may or may not help us out. What I'd like to do is have you come with me the next time we get some activity and we'll try to do a physical sweep of the space; try to pin whoever it is down ourselves."
Leia said, "Let me repeat this back to you to make sure I understand what you want me to do. You want me,"
"With me. Us."
"You want us to go into a room where we expect one or more Bad Guys to be doing Bad Guy things, where we cannot see or otherwise detect the Bad Guys, and attempt to capture and disarm them."
"Yes."
"Can we feel them?"
"Yes."
"But we can't use sonar or sound waves or something to detect them?"
"Maybe. That's this one," he said, indicating the radiation monitor. "But we only have a few of these, and we can't guarantee one will be located where this person or persons show up next."
"Radmer, this sounds like joining a fight in a dark alley. The lights may be on, but otherwise, it's got all the same characteristics."
"That's why I don't want to involve anyone who doesn't have some amount of physical combat training or experience."
"We can't just sleepy gas the space they show up in?"
"There aren't sleepy gas lines everywhere and they would probably be gone before we got there with sleepy gas grenades or flash-bangs or anything else. And they almost certainly have independent air supply. You saw the specs on the suits; assume an armored version of same."
"Can you get a knife through the suit?"
"A special knife, yes."
"Do you have a special knife?"
Radmer grinned, and handed her one in a sheath. "The sheath for the special knife is also special. Once it's out of the sheath, it'll cut anything."
"Anything?"
"Anything I know about."
"Oh boy." She very carefully extracted the special knife, the blade of which was visible on the flat, but invisible on the edge. She started with a hair from her head; it floated down, split over the edge without even bending, the two pieces continuing to the floor. Then she looked around for something else to try it on. Radmer indicated the edge of the desk. She sliced into the edge as if it wasn't there, going a couple of inches in when she'd intended a tiny notch. Then she tried the point, and the blade sank in after it. "That's a very special knife," she commented, sliding it back into the sheath very, very carefully. "And we're now joining a knife fight in a dark alley."
"Hopefully, we'll be the only ones with the knives."
"I think I left my optimism back on Earth sometime before I was born." She paused, then asked, "What do we do now?"
"We wait."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
Radmer shrugged and pointed her at a chair. Leia pulled out her screen and busied herself trying to understand the layout of the station around the n-ary cross, their current location, the place where the remote was used, and locus defined by the EM monitors. It seemed possible that they could be called nearly anywhere in the station, judging by that rat's nest of wiring, but she had to start somewhere. When Radmer saw what she was doing, he insisted she switch to using the glasses.
After more than an hour of waiting, an alarm sounded, and Radmer took her hand and started running. Her heads-up clearly displayed where they were going, and overlaid on her vision heat-sensor and radiation monitor views of her surroundings as they ran. When they got to a lift, Radmer took the moment they waited to arrive at the correct level to adjust her suit so her head was fully enclosed. She was now on independent air, and would hopefully not be knocked out if someone shot her in the head, or come up from behind with a baseball bad. She was, however, a little worried about anyone carrying a knife like the ones they had.
Her display popped up an inset display showing the location they were approaching. There was no radiation monitor there, and there was nothing on the visual or heat-sensor in that location. When they rounded the corner, Radmer paused briefly at the door to make sure she was ready, then they entered quickly and he closed it behind them, locking it with his access code. Nothing on their radiation monitor, now that they were here, which might or might no mean they were in this room alone. There was a second door to the room; it was also closed. She saw on her display when Radmer locked it. It was the other door that had opened just before the second transmission.
"Do we know if anyone ever came into the room, or if they transmitted through the open door?" asked Leia.
"No," answered Radmer. "Shall we each take a door?"
"Yes," answered Leia, and started walking to the other door. When she was halfway to the other door, her legs buckled under her. Someone had tackled her at the knees.
She rolled, and closed her eyes, thinking she might as well pretend this was one of her black-belt tests in a pitch-black room with multiple assailants. Trying to think that way with all this light was virtually impossible. Between working through the suit she was wearing, not being able to see, and working through the stealth gear her opponent was wearing, it was hard getting a grip on anything. She doubted anything as subtle as a finger lock had a chance of working, but an arm bar, ankle lock or foot bar might. She had to resist the impulse to punch or bugi; those weren't going to work at all, and would leave her midsection open.
They rolled around on the floor for a full minute, which told her whoever she was dealing with had no mortal clue what he or she was doing. They could see her and she couldn't see them and she wasn't having any trouble keeping them away from her knife. Radmer was standing by his door, which made sense. He wouldn't want to risk using a knife when he couldn't see her assailant and he might hit her; they were moving too quickly still. It took her another thirty seconds to establish side control, and she had him completely immobilized underneath her by the end of the second minute. She wasn't winded, either, which meant the exercise gear here was adequate for maintaining her fitness level, although she'd had no opportunity to train with anyone since being kidnapped.
When Radmer saw her stopped, kneeling on what was apparently air in the middle of the room, he approached. She maintained her hold on her assailant while he felt around for the face of his head-protection. He said, "Open up, or I'll open you up." They got no response, other than further futile wiggling under Leia. True to his threat, Radmer's knife descended and the thrashing under Leia increased frantically.
Leia said, "It's possible he can't turn the stealth gear off."
"Hard to believe he's got no voice control," said Radmer, continuing his knife's inexorable if slow descent. Another centimeter, and the stealth gear flashed off. Radmer paused, and they could see the knife was about to pierce the face of the head protection. Through the now transparent face, they could see the person in the suit was not human, but was bilaterally symmetric and bipedal. The implications for grappling technique rattled around in Leia's head while her heads-up display popped up an inset identifying the alien and in really hard to ignore blinking red letters, said not to compromise it's atmosphere as it would kill the alien and wouldn't be particularly good for any unprotected humans in the vicinity, where the vicinity was defined as sharing a ventilation system. Good to know.
Radmer started making calls to bring in a variety of people as backup. They still didn't know if there was anyone else in the room with them, but they really needed someone to immobilize their prisoner and see if it was willing to talk.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2012.
Created: July 9, 2012 Updated: July 9, 2012