15th October 1984
ARC Resource and Extraction Facility
Lagrange 5
"KP! Middleton just called in with intelligence files of all the people on-station! They've beamed them up so we can access them on the station terminal!"
"Seriously? How'd they get all the files together so quickly? The people on-station are from at least sixty provinces!"
Kim's mind boggled at the effort it would have taken to transcribe the files onto SECNET, USS's private corner of the ARPANET supercomputer network.
"We're at war! Sabotage is a big deal!"
"It must have been if ARC let them use the company computer network."
"ARC is cutting-edge! They linked their company net to ARPANET!"
Kim and Ron floated into the station's computing room. In front of them, a huge Babbage-Lovelace supercomputer (running on "software" from Turing Thinkomatics) silently monitored the functions of every part of the station, intelligently identifying the most pressing problems and sending them to the main operations room. Kim floated to a cutting-edge computerized workbench with integral teleprinter, and Ron joined her.
The black-and-white cathode ray tube flicked to life, and Kim, reading off the attached manual, typed in commands for the unit to retrieve recent data packages from ARPANET. She found the megabyte-sized text file and typed in commands to read it and decrypt it. The large file had been quickly transmitted by high-bandwidth communications lasers and fiber-optics designed for radio interferometry work, and was easily stored on the station's magnetic disks.
The text reports began with a short list of suspects, produced by a team of analysts on Earth. Intensive interrogation would be warranted with each.
"So, Mr. Chu. You had access to the stolen key?"
The spindly, heavily-tanned Han Chinese man spoke with a distinctive Cantonese accent.
"Yes. All senior staff on the EVA repair team did too."
"You used the stolen access key often?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you use your own?"
"It would have been logged by the system. I would have been reported. The stolen key was an emergency drill training key. Emergency drills are low on the computer system's priority. Airlock use with the key is not flagged to main ops."
Kim raised an eyebrow, and the spindly man crossed his arms.
"Main Ops has five people. They are too busy to watch the many airlocks here. Airlocks are left unlocked for safety reasons, but opening without keys flags alarms. The emergency drill key does not."
"Safety reasons?"
"Accidents happen on EVAs, and people need to be able to get back in quickly, through the nearest airlock. We also train to abandon the station without docking tubes. There's nobody outside for four hundred thousand klicks!"
"Okay. What did you use unauthorized EVAs for? Drugs? Stolen equipment?"
"I like walking on the sunlit side of the station. I like EVAs, but most of our time is spent behind the mirrors and big solar array. It's completely dark where we work except for floodlights. All that empty space – and no sun. It wasn't just me. Adrena Lynn and Chloe Jain also did spacewalks for fun."
Ron stared at the blond woman across the table, her arms folded across the front of her jumpsuit.
"Mrs. Lynn, you are senior repairman on shift 3, are you not?"
"Yes."
"I've heard that you like EVAs, and took a few unauthorized leisure spacewalks. Personally, I hate freefalling. I hate parachute drops and null-gee EVAs. Moonwalks are fine, but spacewalks freak me out."
Lynn tilted her head. "What on earth are you doing out here, then?"
"Trying to get to know you better. Did you steal equipment and deal drugs on the side?"
"Heck no. All I did was admire the sunshine and give a go at free-climbing in space. Freaky!"
"Free-climbing in space?"
"Oh yeah. Most mining ops take place as close to the station as possible. We don't get to go all the way up to the "top" of the big rocks on EVAs. Me and Chloe free-climbed every asteroid on this place. It's a 200-m climb from mounting point to tip. No tethers, no thrusters. Freaky! The view from the top blows you away."
Ron shuddered inwardly as he remembered the feeling of crawling beneath a giant, meatball-shaped asteroid, and Lynn chuckled.
"That feeling of vertigo when you're still near the bottom section is awesome."
Ron turned somewhat green, and Lynn laughed.
"Okay. I'm better now. How the heck did you free-climb in those bulky orange suitports?"
"Oh, I have my own suit. Skintight and fully certified. Not illegal or forbidden under corporate rules – which is silly since you're only supposed to use company suits."
"Well, sounds normal to me. What isn't forbidden is permitted and all that. Did Chloe have a suit?"
"Once she found out how much more awesome it was to free-climb in a skinsuit, she got one for herself."
Corporal Adyson Sweetwater floated into the room. "Excuse me, Agent Stoppable?"
Ron turned around, and two other people drifted into the room – one somewhat unsteadily, and one with confidence. The first was a dark-haired Caucasian man in a blue trench-coat with a small ponytail, a scar on his face, and a sheaf of papers in his hands. The other was a striking raven-haired woman, also Caucasian, in a green-and-black business pantsuit.
Nobody wears skirts in zero-gee, where there is no downward force to keep skirts in modest positions.
The Marine, clad in fatigues and an orange beret, continued. "They came up here on a fast shuttle from Earth. Their paperwork checks out. They want to see Agent Possible. I thought I'd run it through you first."
Ron turned back to Lynn, who appeared somewhat surprised by the intrusion.
"Thank you for your time, Mrs. Lynn."
"So Chloe, was it your idea to use the stolen key?"
The Indian grimaced. "No, it was Adrena's. She wanted to bask in the sunshine and freeclimb the rocks, and she needed a partner for both those things. I was interested, so I signed up. Is this going to get me fired?"
Kim smiled. "It won't go on your criminal record, but I don't know how corporate…"
Ron floated into the room, and motioned for Kim to leave. Kim frowned, but promptly unstrapped herself from her chair. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Jain."
Kim and Ron floated facing the new arrivals as Chloe left the makeshift brig/interrogation center. The man in the trenchcoat spoke first.
"Ms. Possible. I'm Dr. Lipsky. This is my associate, Shego. I'm here for my cousin, Edward Lipsky."
"Mr. Lipsky, I have not received any instructions regarding the release of your cousin."
"But you let all your other suspects go! Surely my cousin is no more a threat to state security than…"
The raven-haired woman – Shego (which couldn't be a real name) – cut him off. "Bup, bup, bup, I'll do the talking. Listen here, princess. I don't care what USS found in Ed Lipsky's finances or background or politics, or what Ed did in college. All I know is that I have a piece of bureaucrat paper which orders you to let Ed go."
Shego waved a document, emblazoned with the logo of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), in Kim's face. Kim grabbed it, reading through it carefully.
"I'll have to call my boss."
Ron and Dr. Lipsky looked at each other uncomfortably as Kim floated away to talk on her boxy satphone.
"My boss says the codeword ECHO BABYKINS is legit. But since he has no idea what Intelligence is doing on Security turf, I'm going to have to ask you to tell me what the heck you're up to."
Dr. Lipsky's face grew into a broad grin, and he began. "Well it's very simple really; I'm here to oversee…"
Shego slapped a gloved hand across the doctor's mouth. "We're Intelligence. We don't take orders from Security."
Kim's eyes narrowed.
"Shego, don't pick fights with Security! They can wiretap your phone, or break into your house and steal all your research notes!"
"Well so can I!"
"Shego! I spent years working on this and I finally have authorization to gloat about my scheme to someone who hasn't already read the report!"
Kim tilted her head.
"Well, err… Ah, yes! My name is Andrew Lipsky, and I work for the Applied Scientific Corporation's defense division, Applied Defense. We sell nuclear bombs, particle-beam weapons, and missiles."
Ron spoke. "I thought Applied Scientific sold thermostats, Large Hadron Colliders and nuclear reactors."
Dr. Lipsky nodded. "We sell those too."
Shego elbowed Dr. Lipsky. "Oh yes, my scheme! As you are all aware, over the past five years, the Asteroid Recovery Consortium has moved more than forty million metric tons of material into L-5. You should also know that from this altitude, a tonne of rock nudged to impact Earth possess kinetic energy equivalent to ten tonnes of TNT."
Ron nodded. "The Belgium-killing rocks were one of the justifications we made for getting a squad of Marines out here, yeah."
Dr. Lipsky grinned, and continued. "I, with the assistance of a covert team of machine operators…"
Kim raised an eyebrow. "Your cousin Ed and his crew?"
"…a covert team of machine operators, drilled precise holes in each of the asteroids here. In times of crisis, small nuclear explosives can be emplaced into each hole, and detonated to gently move the asteroids away from the station. At that point, larger shaped nuclear charges stored clandestinely on this station can be detonated from precise directions. This will drop the asteroids into orbits that intersect Earth's surface! KABOOM!"
Kim frowned as Lipsky threw his hands in the air. "What are the advantages of rocks over nukes?"
"A huge Belgium-killing rock is much harder to stop than a Belgium-killing nuke, at least using the laser and kinetic kill systems popular today. Imagine the Soviet Politburo, cowering in the Kremlin, hopeless to divert the course of a ten-million-ton asteroid as it streaks through the sky on a blinding plume of fire! The world will be ours, and there's nothing the Soviets can do within a five-year timeframe to stop us! YA-HA-HA-HA! AH-HA-HA-HA! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"
Ron raised his hand. "Uhh… Dr. Lipsky? Didn't the Legislature resolve to forbid the use of ARC's asteroids as weapons of mass destruction?"
Kim, Shego, and Drakken all stared quizzically at Ron.
Kim put her hands on her hips. "Ron, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard."
Shego rolled her eyes. "Never stopped me from training those Venezuelan anticommunist terrorists."
Dr. Lipsky began waving his hands in the air, and began talking in a mocking high-pitched voice. "Oh, no, you can't develop cold stealthy nuclear lances! They're destabilizing! The Soviets probably have them, but they're evil! We aren't evil! Bah! Those bobble-headed popularity-contestants couldn't build a device to assure mutual destruction if they had the entire staff of Lawrence Livermore!"
Kim put her hands on her chin. "Dr. Lipsky, how did you conceal your covertly-drilled holes?"
Dr. Lipsky shrugged. "Ed told everyone they were for geological surveys, which was partially true. A more seasoned eye might discover that they were wider than necessary for surveys. A person with measuring instruments might have been able to conclude that the holes were drilled to fit a nuke but were in the wrong places for mining charges. But nobody ever clambers onto the asteroids except during busy mining operations or geological surveys, and spy satellites can't get close enough for proper measurements."
Kim and Ron looked at each other with alarm, and flew out of the room. Correctly assessing the situation, Shego followed suit. Dr. Lipsky looked blankly at the door. "Uhh… where's everybody going?"
"Stay here, Doc!"
"Oh. Err… I'll go get cousin Eddie, then."