Gods Dogs, Book 3

Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.

Sun Tzu

The stealth system on the Satya was Galactic Congress state-of-the-art. Heat was stored. EM was shielded, and sensor probe signals flowed around the textured hull.

The Satya stood off from the space station at a nearby asteroid, nonetheless, and the stealth shuttle made the final approach to the station. It hovered above a maintenance hatch, and the team dropped onto the hull.

All the external hatches, by safety convention, were unlocked. However, the control room would register when one was opened.

River took care of that. “Hacking the door control…. Override is set. We’re good to go.”

They piled into the airlock, closed the outer door, and cycled the inner door. River exited first into a dimly lit hallway.

“Clear,” she told them over tac-net.

Becky, her implant A.I., then reported on tac-net, [I’m into the mainframe. Station schematics are available on your HUDs.]

“Well, that’s convenient,” Moss replied.

Quinn was studying the station layout and said, “We’re in an auxiliary storage area. We each take a spoke of the wheel and meet up at the hub. Gather intel, set explosives where you can, and we meet in twelve hours.”

They hustled around the donut to the spokes assigned and began their infiltration. The stealth systems incorporated into their light armor wasn’t as good as a ship-based system, but it did bend light well enough so that when they moved slowly, and kept to the shadows, they were hard to detect.

The connecting spokes were mainly used for transporting goods from the central hub to the outer donut, or to storage areas in the donut. Ships dropping off cargo did so at the hub. Ships departing with cargo did so at the donut’s outer rim. This took advantage of the centrifugal pseudo-gravity. The freighters, therefore, docked at the donut. The smaller ships that transported purloined goods from the big manufacturers docked at the hub.

The main activity today was on the other side of the donut; hence, the team’s choice for their entry point. As they neared the loading areas, the hallway began to bustle with activity.

Forklifts, droids, pallets stacked high, and stevedores loading the docked freighters came into view.

There was a few hundred yards between each docking port, which created separation between the loading operations. The space around each spoke connection was also clear to allow the in-coming pallets and the operators that moved them room to work.

The spoke Jian took was inactive. She climbed aboard a caged elevator and ascended to the second of the six levels of the torus. Exiting the cage, she explored the second level. Stacks of pallets supporting boxed merchandise lined the fifty-yard wide corridors both ways.

The same was true for the next level. The fourth level was housing. Apartments and dormitories lined the corridors. The next level was food production and, she suspected, cafeterias, greenhouses, and life support.

The top level was machinery, piping, and conduits, all in a jumble. She spent time exploring here. There were a few maintenance workers she avoided, and she placed charges at critical electrical junctions when she spotted them. She found that amusing, in that the whole station was rigged with a self-destruct.

As yet, she didn’t have a sentient A.I. implant. The implant was non-sentient but useful in locating the sabotage points, alerting her to the whereabouts of the workers, and keeping track of her teammates and their progress.

Pax was assigned the most heavily traveled section of the station. That was so because he was an empath. He would pick up the emotional tone of the workers, the guards, and any supervisors.

After a couple of hours of exploration, Pax reported, “The workers have obedience collars around their necks. Security doesn’t, nor do the supervisors.”

“Slave labor,” Moss replied on the tac-net.

“Jian,” Quinn sent, “how far are you from the hub?”

“I’m at the inner level of the torus – two stops to the hub.”

Quinn checked the schematic and Jian’s location on his HUD (heads-up display). There was an inner ring, where the smaller freighters dropped off goods, which would be her next stop, and then the hub.

“Try to get to the hub. If not, then find a computer node and figure out where the control for the obedience collars is located. You’ve got the computer skills to do that and not get caught.

“River, isolate a worker and see how the collar works. The rest of us will find out where the workers are housed.”

Jian sent, “The fourth level up is housing.”

“Good,” Quinn replied. “Let’s locate where on that level they keep the workers.”

A plan was forming in Quinn’s mind. If they freed the workers, they would have an entry point for the marines – probably multiple entry points depending on how far around the torus the housing stretched. If it was only a third of the way, that was still a good sized beachhead.

With their own sabotage to create distractions, they could open up other entry points. But what he liked at this stage was they could protect the workers behind a wall of marines.

River made it to the barracks-like section where the workers were housed. Beds and footlockers lined the corridors. Partitions grouped ten beds together in a long line of these groupings. She figured two thousand beds, half on one side of a spoke connection, and half on the other side.

Since there were some sleeping workers, she found one that was snoring and dropped a nano-string to hack his collar. She got a read on how it was constructed.

Once she had the diagnostic, she retreated behind a partition to report.

“It’s old tech,” she said, “but effective. Becky identified it as a neural override model that co-ops a person’s implant. It can cause pain or pleasure or even death. It was used to condition slaves, and it’s been banned for over a hundred years.”

Quinn asked, “Can you release the collar?”

“Not yet. We’re working on it. Becky said there would be a release option on the controllers the supervisors have, but probably only for their working group. The main computer would have a general release code.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Looks like everything we need will be at the hub.”

Moss broke in, “There’s bound to be a backup control center. Probably on a ship.”

“I’m done,” Pax sent. “I’ll go outside to see if there’s an escape ship at the hub.”

“You sure?” Quinn asked.

“I’ve got the schematic, and it looks like there’s a secure flight deck a few levels under the command center.”

“Good catch,” Moss quipped.

“Jian,” Quinn went on, “how are you doing?”

“I’m hanging from a transport cage. I should be at the hub level soon.”

The cage jolted to a stop, and the four men aboard exited to a zero gravity environment. They proceeded to a hatch that allowed access to the hub proper.

The station revolved as a function of maneuvering jets that kept a constant rotation that produced the equivalent of almost one gravity along the torus. Here at the hub, the rotation was more pronounced; hence the need to isolate the hub proper. It was pinned in place at the radius point, top and bottom, with magnetic arms.

Traversing from the spinning station to the stationary hub included an anti-spinward walkway that met up with an over-sized sliding hatch.

Once the group was inside the hub, Jian climbed out from under the cage-lift to look for computer nodes. They had to be here because hard wiring was impossible between the stationary hub and the spinning station.

Unless, she reasoned, they ran from the arms that pinned the hub at the radius point. She checked the schematic and saw that the pin arms were listed as backup. That made sense, since they were pretty vulnerable where they were. The primary, then, had to be in the corridor. She began her search.

Finding a node, she plugged in with a hacking stick. She was hoping to just identify the different networks and their connection types. She calculated there were at least three: 1) the NSAI-controlled station maintenance network; 2) the network for the shipping operation; and 3) the internal pirate network where, she figured, the code for the collars as well as the codes for the self-destruct were stored.

Her implant A.I. did the heavy lifting and did find the three networks Jian figured were there. Now she figured the one with the heavy encryption was the one they were after. Between her NSAI and River’s much more powerful sentient A.I., they should be able to brute-force their way into control of all three networks, but that would leave time to sound an alarm.

She unplugged and retreated to their designated rendezvous point in an alcove away from the entrance to the hub. Then she waited for the others.

Jian was a high achiever that had to overcome the identity problems inherent in that personality trait. Since high achievers were rewarded in all cultures, which reinforced the trait, their identities became entangled with achievement. In other words, if I’m not the best, then who am I; or when I’m not, what’s the point? Relaxing the achiever-self so the fullness of her identity could emerge was a constant battle during her training. Being around the team gave her role models on how to be good at something while not having to be the best at everything. She knew what that looked like now. It wasn’t just an argument that made sense logically.

“Coming in,” River sent her.

Jian noticed the blue dot on her HUD that showed River’s position. Then she was in the alcove, retracting her helmet.

“Ready to rock this place?”

Jian grinned. “Can we take over the network without the bad guys knowing about it?”

“I set up a connection to Satya on the hull of this thing.”

“Oh.”

“You, me, and Satya ought to have no trouble.”

“You have the bandwidth for that?”

River chuckled. “I guess they didn’t tell you all we can do.”

“I guess not,” Jian groaned. “What else did they leave out of my training?”

“Just all the super-classified stuff.”

Quinn and Moss were next to arrive. Pax was still looking for the escape ship they figured was the backup command center. He reported that he found the bay at the bottom of the hub, but was still searching for a way inside.

As they waited, Quinn outlined his plan.

“When we control the network, we free the workers and see what kind of shape they’re in. We also disable the self-destruct and find out what it is. If it’s an energy core overload, they may have a manual destruct option, which we’ll have to disable.

“Once that’s accomplished, we call in the marines. Hopefully, there will be no incoming or out-going ships. If we have clear space, they can shuttle over because we can spoof the sensors here. There would be no need for the two-man assault craft, which makes me happy. Then the fun begins.” He sighed and ran a hand through his short hair. They had all retracted their helmets to let the suits replenish their air supply.

Quinn continued, “We couldn’t find an armory, but there has to be one. That will be our task when the marines breach – secure the armory. Half the marines will sweep from the workers barracks inward. A quarter of them will flank from either side. After we secure the armory, we hold the rear.”

“Right,” Moss said. “What could go wrong with this plan?”

Quinn smiled. “Let’s tear it apart.”

They brainstormed the plan looking for flaws and found some, but eventually felt some confidence in the overall scheme.

Pax finally checked in, “It’s a corvette, and I rigged it to blow when it’s powered up.”

Moss snickered. “Don’t like pirates, Pax?”

“Well, I couldn’t get into it without risking an alarm.”

Quinn cut in, “Good work. We’ll meet up at RV Delta and get some sleep. Tomorrow during their night cycle, we’ll take over the station network.”