Chapter 36: Check Energy Light

"You're sleek as a thoroughbred; your seats are a featherbed

You'll turn everybody's head today

We'll glide on our motor trip with pride in our ownership,

The envy of all we survey!"

-Robert & Richard Sherman

Being in a strange cockpit was just outright peculiar. Everything wasn't where I was used to. If I was honest with myself—more so than usual—I'd spent way too much time in a Pyro. If Jenny transferred herself into something else tomorrow, then it'd take me YEARS to unlearn all the muscle memory. Of course, since it was human nature to chase benchmarks whether wrong or right, I'd always be comparing myself to her own flesh at the controls in the moldy days of yore, and I was fairly sure that qualitatively I was better than an inexperienced teenager, no matter how fast she'd been. Then again…she was still faster than me, and still backstopping me. Which spiraled right back around to this. Sitting in a cockpit emphatically not my own just felt like being an intruder. I didn't even know how to fly the damn thing, while I was generally rated it was more or less a cheat.

"Caldwell. Can't this wait?"

And I was running behind mentally. The face on the video window didn't look like she had a lot of time for much of anything. Like Dravis, she was behind a desk, but unlike Dravis the desk seemed like a working one. Stacks of papers littered it and I could see several other opened portable systems perched precariously across the desk. The vista behind her was red girders against brown dust, no doubt breathtaking when the yard was working to specs. And no doubt whatever Jenny had said would have been geared to get fastest response, not necessarily full information.

"Jerome Corbell, PTMC merc. I'm heading your way from MN0012, Tycho Base, the insystem relay, and just now by way of McQuarrie. If you can spare a few minutes, I may be able to get local control back for you within the next half-hour or so."

That made an appropriate dent in her brusque stress-mask and I saw her eyes widen as she dropped a pencil that had been making the high-speed round through her fingers and over her knuckles.

"You're the one I've been hearing about…although that's a roundabout path to get here."

"Tell me about it, I've been under five internal G for most of it. Prototyped the recovery procedure at Tycho, tested it in the relay, and McQuarrie was the first test running the recovery from standard PTMC hardware. You've got a two-stage problem here…your controller is scrambled, which I can fix, but there's an external backup that needs to be fried because there's no way to fix it."

Different people, different communication styles. Unlike Dravis, she wasn't conversationally raking me over the coals, unlike Tawny she wasn't interested in a personal connection, unlike Jenny she didn't love the minutiae. I could play succinct too, and it was a lot easier. Thanks to my own briefings from Her Blueness at least I could pretend I understood what was going on.

"Scrambled is a hell of a way to put it, Mr. Corbell, the spaceframe damage alone has been….considerable. In addition to our rescue efforts for the UEG base."

*Hope nobody got killed here…might make the reception a little chilly.*

"All right, then…"

This was the UEG. If Dravis hadn't wanted me to mention anything about the encryption, he would've said so. Right? It wasn't like I was going to burst out with 'your facility's been sabotaged by telepathic aliens! But nothing personal!'

"…Your controller was erroneously encrypted by a faulty software update. The update also removed some of the important safety lockouts…"

*Like 'don't try to weld the squishy things, keep your speed down to single-digit meters per second in the following coordinates, this is how you lift shit safely…'*

Below the level of the camera's view—I hoped—I made shooing motions with my fingers. Not that her badinage was ever out of place but this contact was important and I couldn't handle the distraction.

"….and can be easily enough recovered. The backup just needs to be eradicated first or else your facility drones may go into intruder-defense mode. With the safeties not operable, there could be…"

I paused. Aileen frowned and finished my thought less delicately than I was fumbling for.

"Worse trouble than I've already got. All right. You say 'fried', you say 'eliminated', what exactly are we talking about here?"

My line of work, when things were going slightly better than this kooky op.

"Whether you call it 'ordinance interdiction' or 'blown the hell up', it needs to be eradicated definitively. Explosives, beams, hardware physically destroyed."

"If you need something hit with a cutting torch, you came to about the right place. What is this, where is it, and how many volunteers in worker bees will I need?"

For once I was left at a bit of a loss. Obviously she meant some sort of manned pod, but I was left with the utterly fantastical image of space-suited roughnecks riding gigantic metal bees. So that was how the UEG built its ships…Jenny flashed up an image of the pod in question, little more than a vaguely trapezoidal armor-and-glass coffin for the occupant inside. Manipulator arms held a variety of tool attachments, allowing the workers to cut, weld, rivet, who knew what else. Unasked, she echoed down the image of the secondary controller and a data sideband—indicated by a scrolling transmission indicator across the bottom of the video window—that must've been the EM signature and all relevant specifications.

"As far as volunteers, I was rather more thinking you could give your temporary pilot contingent something to do. The secondary itself is armored well, but unarmed."

I hoped. There was no reason to suspect that'd changed until we got out to the unpleasant-surprise Belt.

Aileen glanced down for a moment, reading the specs Jenny had apparently sent over and I took a moment that I hadn't really had yet to appraise her. She was a fairly charming woman of a certain age—the traitor logic in the back of my head reminded me that I wasn't too far off that certain age myself!—and while she was dressed in a fancy enough blouse, it nevertheless bore a few coffee stains and looked rumpled as if she'd been sleeping in it for a while. I sympathized. There was a furrow between her manicured eyebrows that deepened as she finished and looked back my way.

"So this controller just meanders around aimlessly? I can stretch an administrative authority point and get a couple of the stranded pilots airborne…lord knows I've got the propellant stores…but it's crowded down here and nothing manned-scale can turn on a dime in this so-called air. Unless you've got a dog whistle for this evil snow globe, they'll have to loiter on station for a clean shot."

That was a damned good question. If Dravis had come through with the maintenance access Jenny hadn't mentioned it. He'd fucking spammed our EM profile across the entire system, but naturally the infected facilities where it would have been USEFUL hadn't gotten it. We hadn't seen any communication between facilities, but every choice whisker of paranoia balked at the idea of deliberately updating the internal database with our directive, then using it while everything was still corrupt. Just because we hadn't SEEN any kind of retention mechanism for incoming crap during the affected period didn't mean there wasn't one.

Turning my head to the side, I arched my eyebrows in the direction of secretary-outfit Jenny, sitting behind her projected desk. With a mischievous look she blew into a large red dog whistle, conjuring a floppy-eared be-tailed secondary controller bounding across my field of view. While it sat—tail wagging—Jenny leaned to one side of her desk, twirled an imaginary set of mustachios, and with a truly melodramatic sneer leaned on a cliched explosives plunger. An animated explosion propelled pizza-slice shaped fragments of the controller radially outward and out of my view with a fading yip. I had to look away and choke down a laugh before I could face Aileen again.

"Hah, never heard it called that before..."

Cover my ass, cover my ass, any attempts to explain Jenny or her sense of humor was violating the cardinal rule of being in a hole…

"…best I got was 'armored basketball'. Yes, if I can link through to one of the yard's wideband transmitters I can send a signal that should summon it to whatever coordinates you'd prefer."

"That's not bad either..."

For the first time a smile cracked her serious face. Smiling, she looked a hell of a lot better.

"…You can't just send us the waveform and parameters directly?"

I shook my head. At least this was a softball question.

"Right now this is all experimental. I run a damned good electronic warfare suite…"

Jenny batted her eyelashes at me, leaning forward over the desk to display a hint of cleavage.

*You're so sweet to me, Mr. Corbell…*

"…and this is the first attempt to talk to a secondary controller. If it doesn't go as planned I'd like to keep the flexibility of a live connection."

"Explain to me, if you'd be so kind, why a critical UEG facility is entertaining experimental procedures?"

And now the smile was gone. Still, she was still softballing me. Comparatively.

"That was about what I was asking myself at the Mercury relay. The fallback procedures are considerably worse. Ground-level eradication of all drones, which will put them into intruder-defense mode. Local pilots can't, as you say, maneuver well in the yard's confines and there's a lot down there to risk. Alternatively, you could shut down all power….including your hardline to the contaminated base….until the drones shut down from lack of propellant and energy. Then you still have a cleanup problem except nothing is moving to make it easier to pick out. I could send you the controller fix or do it remotely, we know that works and PTMC is rolling it out right now to every facility and station that doesn't have a secondary. Problem is, when the broken basketball realizes the controller isn't broken like it, it assumes the controller is dead and reprograms the drones. Depending on local settings, that may result in being back to intruder-defense mode. That happened on the Tycho outpost and how I discovered there even WAS a secondary. Nearly didn't survive the learning experience and it took the Potemkin's primaries to seal off that rat's nest."

There was a somewhat thoughtful silence on both ends. Me as I admired how calm I'd managed to stay and hers as she considered the alternatives. In the background, Jenny gave off the particularly toned ping that meant somebody had pulled our Io file. Mrs. Caldwell's eyes dropped as she scanned past something or other and I had a few shrewd guesses as to what she was perusing cursorily.

"Mr. Corbell. Your background says you've done a significant amount of prior work for the UEG…"

Which was all still very classified, hopefully higher than her level. It was part of the reason I'd walked away from Io with one of their Pyros free and clear, and part of the mention that I tried to avoid hearing anything about what the fragments of Humans First were getting up to.

"…and you seem to be the most up to date of anybody I've been able to reach…"

Being out on the cutting edge did that.

"…if this was your facility, what would you do?"

Another easy question that I answered reflexively, a wry note creeping into my voice and expression.

"Ma'am, I guarantee I'd be using a lot more profanity. I admire your restraint."

The image fuzzed a bit as I heard Jenny's familiar cackle inside my brain and Aileen touched two fingers to her forehead before she started laughing, tiredly but honestly.

"After you finished swearing, then. And you'd better believe I got that out of my system in the first couple hours."

"I'd go for it. If the dog whistle fails, you'd have pilots standing by to hopefully take it out before it could put the drones into self-defense. It's the least bad alternative that doesn't require you to compromise what you're doing to help the base."

"All right, Jerome, let me talk to some people and we'll find out the best place to slam-dunk this basketball of yours into our red sands. Two things first, though. There's a PTMC board-level crash-priority maintenance request that hit my desk not long ago…"

Dravis came through! The faint glow of happiness that sprang to life I ruthlessly squashed. He wasn't by any stretch of the imagination my friend, he was just the enemy of my enemy and had a vested interest in making sure I succeeded with the immediate problem.

"…and I wanted to see if you knew anything about it. Specifies what looks like an entire set of segmented armor plating, installation services, rearming, refueling, further services at pilot's discretion, overtime and bonuses authorized, for an unspecified craft. I don't have the people to spare right now, so either it got misfiled or it's something to do with you."

Jenny's desk disappeared and she reverted her projected image to a girl of perhaps ten, bouncing up and down in glee.

*Shopping trip! Shopping trip! Daddy, take me to the military mall, I NEEEEEED a new armored dress…*

"Ah, yes, it's mine..."

I managed, trying to eyebrow-wave Jenny away without looking ridiculous. How did you say it without sounding like you were bragging? Hell with it.

"…I wound up tangling with the geothermal borer on Mercury and took some damage. Let me send you my condition report."

*I fell down but it's not bleeding as much anymore. Lady, look at my scabs!*

Yet another in a long series of unsettling moments with her. Aileen looked down once more as Jenny's sideband data popped up on her terminal and pursed her lips before giving me a frankly appraising look.

"Hate to see the other guy. I'll send this down to Fabrication. We can fuel you, hopefully rearm you, spare the rations, and lift you back to orbit when you come in but unless this all works I don't have the people to swap the armor or strut. You'll have to take it as cargo."

That posed its own set of problems, naturally, but with the reactor full we could make it to the Belt and visit one of the PTMC outposts for the refit. Just like Dad would have done…

"Understood, all I really need is food, water, reactor fuel, a rocket tug and some mild sedatives for the rest of the outsystem run if you've got 'em."

"I'll make that happen regardless. As for the other thing…"

From the way her visage changed, I had a feeling I wasn't going to enjoy it. She had one of those stormfront-oncoming scowls on her uncomplicated face.

"…Understand this…I am completely incapable of expressing just how upset I am with PTMC over this entire disaster, and when the dust settles I will be mobilizing every resource at my disposal to hold everybody involved personally responsible for the losses here and elsewhere. You're a piece of sand in these gears and I understand that…if this gets my yard back under my control, I will vent my spleen on PTMC and be happy with you. If you're blowing smoke up my ass or if this puts me in a worse place than I am right now, this gear of mine will personally grind you into disassociated subatomic ?"

As threats went, it was the threat of an honest person to an honest person. Somebody highly placed with the UEG, even if she was a civilian, could complicate my life quite directly. Jenny was apparently less impressed and—reverting to her usual uniformed self-held up a square placard with "6.7" on it.

*Take a fucking NUMBER, lady.*

"You, PTMC, and everybody affected by this will be holding me responsible as the nearest scapegoat, ma'am. I understood that when I took the job—because my folks were at ground zero but more importantly because this matters more than I do."

Jenny held up a placard to me with "0.01" and muttered something about speaking for myself but I could tell her heart wasn't really in it. Best way to deal with a straight-shooter? Shoot straight back. The director's expression changed slightly from 'you insignificant bastard' to 'you poor, magnificent, insignificant bastard' which counted as an improvement and also took some of the wind out of her sails. Nevertheless she rallied well.

"Then we both have reasons to hope this works. I'll get back to you with those coordinates as soon as I have them. Caldwell out."

The video window vanished and Jenny enlarged herself to take its place.

*Don't you just want to sic her and Hamster on each other?*

I hadn't much thought of it. I hadn't much thought of Hamster other than with a vague sense of relief in the sense of a memory of a removed splinter.

"What I really want are those sedatives. And a real meal. Something with lots of carbohydrates and some real bulk. Angel hair pasta, white sauce, lemon juice, a little balsamic vinegar, barbeque-grilled chicken breast pieces with a nice honey glaze…"

My stomach rumbled, and Jenny sighed.

*Rations won't be so bad, will they? I have nothing against fibrous bulky foods, and it's YOUR flightsuit to stress-shit in, I suppose."

"You have a unique way of reminding me of certain cruel realities."

*No, no, indulge at Utopia while you can…you can just befoul the bath when you need to. I can't smell you, so what do I care?*

My turn to sigh in exasperation.

"You'd damn well better give me one gee to hit the can. I can't believe we're seriously discussing this."

*You think we're strapped for light conversation NOW, wait until we're heading past the Belt.*

Wasn't often I got to score the game-winning point but…

"Little miss pessimist, now who's assuming we'll survive?"

It actually shut her up for a moment while she gaped at me, raising her hand and opening her mouth to say something but emitting an incongruous beep and fading away into the video window again. Aileen waved off a gaggle of concerned-looking office workers and smirked at me.

"Caldwell here. Got some coordinates for you, Mr. Corbell, and the system-level access to one of our local wide-spectrum emitters. Jet jockeys are up and with a targeting solution on the snow globe…I'd just better not have to tell them to shoot through the heavy cruiser hull that it's currently wandering. Patching them in now. Fellows, you reading little old me down here? I've got Jerome from PTMC on this channel, he'll be fetching you out your target today…then maybe you can even go home."

"Read you, five by five."

"Bangin'. Hey Jerome, where are you? C'mon down and get some!"

Came the overlapping voices, if audio only. Youthful, informal, full of aggressive adrenaline like I knew so well. Ignoring Jenny and her exaggerated pelvic-thrusting by way of comment I gave a reasonable answer.

"Heading your way from McQuarrie at 25 gee once I smoke this bastard into the open and don't need my lungs for anything petty like talking. Stand by…"

And did…exactly nothing. Jenny paced a couple times behind the video, nonchalantly whistling into the back of my brain, then giggled and took mercy on me.

*All right, all right, I'm on it. Into the transmitter…configuring it for the nonstandard parameters.*

I looked down and pretended to manipulate controls, feeling a bit of a fraud.

*Maintenance access from he who must not be named, translating my list of demands, saving it as a raw bitstream so nothing tries to fix it before it gets sent…and…broadcasting.*

Theatrically, I flipped up an imaginary guard, turned an imaginary key, and mashed an imaginary button, glancing back up again.

"It thinks it's working."

"Hey I got movement, confirm?"

"Check, but the coordinates are the other way…hang on, it reversed again…"

Aileen waited, as did I, but not without a question.

"You said it was inside a hull? Can you give them the schematics to overlay on their sensor views?"

"Ah, yeah, hold one."

A fusillade of tapping from her, accompanied with chewing thoughtfully on a slightly protruded tongue, and it wasn't long before we heard the acknowledgements come back.

"Yeah, yeah, got it I think…"

"…Sec six, look at bravo one…two..three…one of those. I track vertical motion, that look like a turbolift to you?…"

"…Try and keep up Johns, yeah, it's dropping down some kind of bigass shaft…."

"…Hey Brian? Shut yo' mouth!"

"I was just talking about the sh…."

There was a certain pregnant pause. Aileen looked puzzled and the voice link clearly transmitted the slap of a palm hitting a helmet. I was trying not to crack up.

"…Johns, swear to god, gonna kick your ass when we get back for that. Uh. We copy vertical movement and…"

"…there it goes, there it GOES!.."

Aileen was starting to smile and I'm sure my own expression was looking a little feral as well. Jenny ostentatiously blew imaginary smoke from her fingertips and went back to whistling. I recognized the new song, so recently referenced, and bit my lip HARD to keep my composure.

"…in the open, progressing to coordinates…got a clear shot, clearance?..."

"…locked, clear to fire?"

The director looked at me. I looked at Jenny…who was holding both thumbs up, standing with one foot on another dynamite plunger. Well, if it was my call.

"Fire!"

Overlapping calls of 'fox four' resounded and duplicated but without seeing what was downrange neither Mrs. Caldwell or I had much of an idea what was going on.

"Splash one snow globe!"

"Copy, no signature on sensors. Transmitting visual."

The big gear of Utopia Planetia looked down at her screen and whooped fullthroatedly like a rioting soccer fan. In the brief silence that followed I heard a few startled curses and the shattering of a distant coffee mug.

"Jerome, you've got to see this…I mean, in your professional opinion is this sufficient…"

The sound of mental machinery reaching high RPM as she searched for how I'd phrased it earlier.

"…ordinance interdiction?"

Her window fuzzed for a moment and I saw a giant thumb. She must've completely dismounted the standard camera and carried it over to view her screen directly, because the slightly shaky image I saw had a coffee ring in the lower corner. Butterscotch-colored rockscapes unfolded beneath a madly puffing purplish sphere and just as it switched off its thrusters and tried to use the ones on the other side of braking—not that it would accomplish that without overshooting—it vanished in a four-strobe orange flash and reappeared as a mass of wreckage tumbling and bounding slowly across the plains, residual velocity added to by the impact of the warheads. There weren't many contiguous pieces. It looked like a fly that had been smashed by a dictionary and thoroughly splattered. The image looped back and I nodded in satisfaction, forgetting she couldn't see me.

"Oh yeah, that's blown the hell up. Brian, Johns, thanks for the fire support. We can get the yards cleaned up now and let you go back to base."

"Just when I was on a first-name basis with the popcorn machine in the lounge…"

Lamented one of them before they signed off the channel and I was looking at Aileen from a somewhat canted view once again. Jenny rotated the window just before the director fixed the tilt herself, leaving me a bit seasick for a moment. She beat me to the first words.

"Now what?"

"Now comes the easy part...if you have anything with PTMC commo gear, like a shuttle."

*It's all the easy part.*

"I've got a dinky little console here in my office that does nothing but talk to the drone controller…would that work?"

It wasn't all the easy part.

"Can you find any kind of model number or serial number? Hang on."

Jenny cut the video and I gave her the hairy eyeball for a moment.

"It just occurred to me…we're doing this the slow and stupid way. With the relay up again, why don't we just send out a transmission to all facilities without secondaries? Tell them to run this program, which is your decryption program, on their own hardware instead of going through a local shuttle? We could undo most of the whole fucking Solar System with one broadcast."