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  “Stand up, if you please,” Garotte said, his accent once more in full display.

  “How the heck do you always find your way into the crew of limousine companies and starports so easy?” she asked.

  “I can’t very well tell you all the trade secrets, my dear. A man must do something to ensure job security.”

  He flipped up the seat she’d been sitting on to reveal a small compartment stuffed with a security uniform, a pair of boots, a few empty duffel bags, and some generic-looking maintenance equipment. He grabbed the bags and started to stuff her own bags inside them.

  “Put those on,” he instructed, gesturing to the uniform and boots.

  “… Now?”

  “Waiting until we leave the maintenance corridor would rather defeat the purpose, Silo. You’ve got seven minutes before the rolling reset on the security monitors ends, at which point we’ll need to be suited up, ready for our departure, and with our cover identities firmly in place. Don’t dawdle.”

  She gritted her teeth and grabbed the outfit. “Turn around,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse. “There is something seriously wrong with me, you know.”

  “The devil you say.”

  “I was thinking about it, when I should have been sleeping. A man steps out of my history for the first time after he helped me make the worst mistake of my life, and instead of sending him off with a bloody nose for his trouble, I let him convince me to jeopardize another career as well as my freedom by going on an unsanctioned military campaign. And now he’s got me stripping in what’s practically a public place.”

  “Bah. It just illustrates now deeply rooted your sense of duty is.”

  “But I shouldn’t—”

  “Forgive me for the interruption, but if you’d hoped for me to psychoanalyze you, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I’ve accumulated a fair number of skills over the years, but my only psychological expertise focuses upon manipulation and interrogation.”

  “So I’ve noticed…” She stepped out of her trousers and into the legs of the uniform trousers. “Why exactly do we need a cover story for travel anyway?”

  “There are a few stops we’ll need to make, and I wouldn’t want the good name of Jessica Winters to be further sullied by such places.”

  “You could have at least gotten me a jumpsuit like yours that I could have slipped on over my clothes.”

  “I am afraid not, for two very good reasons. First, our covert transportation has been arranged under the auspices of a maintenance man and his supervisor traveling to a sister facility. The credentials I was able to acquire listed the supervisor as female.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “I would have had to forgo this delightful little moment of team bonding.”

  “We’re awful early in this partnership for you to be trying my patience, hon. Any other surprises planned?”

  “As it happens, I have very few plans at all. Nearly the entire time since our last meeting has been spent arranging our funding and equipment. I’m not overly fond of the solution I’ve found, but if we are lucky, it will work to our benefit.”

  “Did you find sources for everything?”

  “Our supplier, whom we shall be meeting in six days, should be able to satisfy our requirements with either the exact items or superior counterparts.”

  “I spent six hours picking out the absolute perfect ammo assortment and accompanying sidearm. There are no superior counterparts.”

  “If memory serves, this fellow may prove you wrong. Now, for the next six days, we’ll have to run through the intelligence available and work out what exactly we are going to do.”

  Winters fastened the final button on her new blouse and looked herself over. It was a crisp, professional-looking outfit, complete with a name tag and assorted credentials listing her as Silvia Lowell.

  “Silvia Lowell. So I suppose the hint here is that I’m supposed to be back to Silo for this mission.”

  “Just like old times.”

  “What old times? We’ve only worked together three times, and I was only Silo for the last one, which is the one I’d rather forget.”

  “But also the one that motivated this reunion, and thus the one I dare not forget.”

  She shrugged and adjusted her disguise. “Spies and their silly little games… I’ve got to say, hon, you found an outfit that doesn’t fit half bad.”

  He turned. “When one of the phases of a plan involves incapacitating someone to steal their clothes for infiltration purposes, one quickly learns how to properly size up an individual. An ill-fitting uniform is a sure giveaway, and having to drug a second guard because the first one has the wrong-size inseam is a rather embarrassing setback, to say nothing of a potentially ruinous security risk.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re able to pick out lady’s clothes.”

  “The full width and breadth of my experiences in the world of espionage would surprise you, my dear.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “We’re going to have to dig into that a bit more. But until then, sounds like you got an equipment source. How about money?”

  “That will be provided by the same fellow. We shall be providing a service for him during the mission.”

  “Just what sort of service can someone do during a covert mission?”

  “That, my dear, is what we shall soon find out.”

  #

  Five days and three vehicle changes later, Silo and Garotte were finally on one of a handful of ships associated with one of a handful of identities associated with Garotte. The identity in question was a botanist named Tam Grenko. Thanks to the aggressive expansion into environments formerly inhospitable to human life, the planets on the edge of human civilization were constantly in need of scientists to study and report on the growth and development of plants introduced to help convert atmosphere. This made botany a profession that could more often than not fast-track one through the security process and gain access privileges to otherwise locked-down planets. Add to that the very understandable need to bring one’s own equipment or even one’s own laboratory, and a fairly large and well-equipped ship could find itself authorized for landing on a planet most other living creatures wouldn’t even be allowed to orbit.

  This left them in the belly of a midsized utility spacecraft called Barbara Belle. It was loaded down with equipment that could plausibly be used for plant analysis but was actually used for everything from long-range visual observation to signal jamming. The living quarters, such as they were, amounted to little more than some elastic bands to hold sleepers to the wall in the weightless interior. A flip-down contraption on the wall and a deployable curtain took the place of the many roles of a bathroom. The operation of the contraption was as undignified as it was uncomfortable, involving suction, sonic waves, and shame. It proved a literal and figurative sore spot for much of the trip. As if this wasn’t enough to cause friction between the recently reunited partners, they spent a fair amount of time arguing about the primary purpose of their mission. Figuring out how best to solve the issue of a power imbalance on a developing planet was difficult enough among like-minded individuals. Between a spy and a demolitions expert, it was nearly impossible. Garotte was, predictably, in favor of a method that relied heavily on infiltrating and directing the various forces involved until crippling weaknesses could be installed. Silo was fonder of the direct approach of administering those crippling weaknesses with a few well-targeted strikes. Discussions became heated more than a few times, but Garotte always seemed to diffuse the situation when it went too far astray. Presently, the subject had drifted to the relative benefits of their respective proposed methods of disabling communications.

  “No one’s saying disrupting communication for the enemy isn’t essential. I’m merely suggesting that cracking their security protocol and manipulating the system in software is preferable. We can access both here and here, if we are lucky,” Garotte insisted.

  He drifted above a galaxy of devices
and equipment he’d been able to liberate from the planet during his previous trip. With each point, he gestured to one of them or at a thin holographic projection in front of the flatscreen display on the wall beside the door to the rest of the ship.

  “Listen, hon. I know you’re all about listening in, but what exactly does it take to do that?” Silo asked, staving off muscle atrophy with some resistance-band exercises.

  “It is really quite simple. If we can get our hands on log-in credentials, which is trivial if they’ve not trained up their staff on proper data security, then it’s a matter of installing a few subversive subroutines. That’ll give us access to all communications and, at the press of a button, the capacity to silence them.”

  “Uh-huh. It’ll also give them a whole lot of chances to find and fix the issue with the same click of a button. I say we blow the com tower. Problem solved.”

  “The days of centralized, isolated communication are well and truly behind us. They are using the same communication infrastructure as the rest of the planet. You can’t very well knock out communication for the entire planet.”

  “You wanna bet? If this is a war zone, I say we treat it like a war zone. Cut global communications.”

  “Don’t you think that is a trifle obvious?”

  “Most effective tactics are pretty obvious, hon. From what you said, the infrastructure is standard colonial trash, held together with chewing gum and rubber bands. We pop a few terrestrial boosters, pop a couple of satellites, silence the whole planet. As far as they know, it’ll just be the inevitable wide-scale failure that’s been coming for years.”

  “That illusion goes out the window when they send crews to repair the systems and find the debris. They’ll know they are under attack and our cover will be blown.”

  “If your enemies don’t know they’re under attack, you’re doing something wrong. And they ought to be expecting an attack, what with the whole point of this mission being to tip the scales against them in the conflict you started.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Very well, granted. Your method is not without the capacity for success. But my method offers additional opportunities. It gives us the capacity for disinformation. Installing chaos into the enemy communication chain will make defeating them trivial.”

  “You know what else will make defeating them trivial? Defeating them! You said time was short, so no time like the present to start punching holes in their defenses. We hit them fast and hard enough, they’re liable to rethink the whole combat thing in the first place. And let’s not forget, if they do have decent data security, you’re going to need some pretty specialty tech to get into their systems without them noticing, which puts you right back where you’d be if they figured out we were blowing up their stuff, except in my version, that wouldn’t matter, because their stuff would be blown up already, and I haven’t met an encryption scheme that’d stand up to a good old-fashioned plasma charge.”

  “If we get into their systems, victory becomes trivial.”

  “See, hon, that’s the difference between the two of us right there. You put together plans with ifs in them. I put together plans with whens in them. When beats if.”

  “Ifs pay off better than whens. And you can’t always have a when, but you can always have an if.”

  “You’re about as lousy with tactics as you are with grammar. I think you’re just trying to avoid combat because this thing’s barely got any shields on it. Another oversight of yours.”

  “It isn’t an oversight. This ship is intended for transportation and surveillance, not combat. A botanist can’t very well justify having a high-density energy shield on a research craft. For our purposes the navigational shields should be more than adequate.”

  Further argument was postponed by an indicator sound from the ship.

  “Ah, we are approaching the system,” he said, tapping open the door and drifting through the cramped hallway.

  Silo sent the assorted items he’d left floating about back into the case he’d pulled them from and latched it in place on the floor, then followed him.

  In the traditional two-seat cockpit, the windshield displayed the dazzling sight of a ship shifting down from faster-than-light speed. The scattered starlight, having shifted blue, then ultraviolet, then further into the dangerous radiation spectrum, made the reverse trip and resolved into points of light again. The largest of them was a rather weak sun. Almost invisible, save for the bright green navigational overlay, was their target planet.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ve dealt with this ‘organization’ before, and they can be temperamental to outsiders. I’ll be doing most of the talking.”

  “Suits me.”

  He swiped and tapped his fingers through a rather complex sequence of access codes and commands, then switched to full audio and waited.

  “Negotiating connection… Boosting power… Negotiating connection…” announced an oddly disjointed set of female voices, an old-fashioned computerized voice system.

  The first announcement was extremely distorted, but each subsequent one became more coherent until it was entirely clear.

  “Attention spacecraft designated ECS-121124, Barbara Belle, please state the purpose of this communication,” the voice requested.

  “I had an appointment with the chief engineer.”

  “Processing… This facility has only one engineer. Confirming identity. Are you attempting to contact Dr. Karteroketraskin Oneserioriendi Dee?”

  “Yes,” Garotte stated with exaggerated clarity.

  “Please state your full name and the purpose of the visit.”

  “The appointment should be made under the name Garotte.”

  “Processing… Spacecraft designated ECS-121124 is registered to a Dr. Tam—”

  “Yes, I am aware, but the appointment should be Garotte.”

  “Please hold all responses until the present statement is completed. The scheduled appointment is under the name Garotte, and includes one additional guest. Is this guest Dr. Tam Grenko?”

  “No, her name is Silo.”

  “Processing… Please wait while I deliver this information to Dr. Dee.”

  “Thank you,” Garotte said. He turned to Silo. “I had to deal with this same bloody voice system when I set up the appointment.”

  “Seems like an engineering firm would have a better system than that,” she said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Please be aware that communication is still open. It is advisable that you speak carefully, particularly when criticizing devices and systems designed by Dr. Dee,” said the voice system.

  “Noted,” Garotte said with a roll of his eyes.

  A few moments passed, then a video feed connected. Garotte moved it to the main display.

  “You’re the one looking for a testing job, right?” Dee said.

  He was a gruff, unfit-looking man with some bizarre aspects to his face and hair that made him seem at least partially artificial. The most glaring was the silver iris on his left eye.

  “Among other things, yes,” Garotte said.

  “Ma, load up a path through the moat and bring them down.”

  “Acknowledged. Accessing autonavigation now.”

  The control panel of the ship flickered, then began to load a fairly complex set of intermediate coordinates. Silo looked uncertainly to Garotte.

  “Isn’t that the sort of thing you usually have to authorize?”

  “I very much doubt this will be the last questionable act we are likely to witness during our visit. Dr. Dee isn’t one to adhere tightly to protocol. His capacity to circumvent security measures is in no small part the reason I came to him,” Garotte explained.

  “Yeah. Sounds like your kind of guy,” she said.

  The ship accelerated toward the fuzzy ball of orbiting junk that largely obscured their target. As they moved, the voice system read off a laundry list of warnings and instructions.

  “You are about to be guided automatically through a precalculat
ed void in the orbiting debris field of Big Sigma. Based upon the theoretical capacity of your ship’s shields and its cross-sectional area, the number of debris strikes should cause minimal damage. Probability of safe entry, 99.99999 percent. Do not be alarmed by the scattered debris strikes. To maximize your chance of safe entry, avoid attempting manual control of your craft, forgo any activities that may decrease energy flow to the shields or engines, and physically secure yourself in the event of inertial dampener failure. Entering debris field now.”

  Garotte’s ship dipped down into the dense cloud of orbiting junk and immediately began shifting and pivoting seemingly at random. Fortunately, the same inertial dampeners that made acceleration to high sublight velocities achievable without converting any passengers to a thick paste made the violent maneuvering seem more like a poorly shot movie displayed on the main screen than something that was really happening. As they descended, however, the danger of their descent became apparent. Bits of junk grew steadily in size and density. Soon bits of ship and trash became recognizable. Fins and thrusters clashed and rebounded ahead of them. What seemed like it might have been a washing machine pivoted gracefully beside them until crunching into the side of an unidentified support strut. Smaller bits of metal and plastic struck their shields, sparking and flaring into plasma in a dazzling light show. This light show became a steady twinkle as clouds of small particles became unavoidable. They watched the shield values tick downward and the internal temperature tick upward as the shields plowed through progressively larger clumps of space trash.

  Silo looked to Garotte. “Have you done this before?”