Pidge doesn't wait on niceties when she meets up with Keith the next day.
"What was that? With the Knell yesterday."
He shakes his head, frustrated. "I don't know. It's never done that before." His hands work open and closed like he wants to take something apart. "It's back to normal now. Went back out the gully after and it's no different. I still can't find it," he says bitterly, and pauses, scowling. "Who was that guy?"
She frowns, and after a second, thumps herself down on the porch to start downloading the receiver's data. "Lance. He's supposed to be the pilot for my flight team." She pauses to look sideways up at him. "You were on the pilot track. You don't know him?"
"I don't… think so?" There's more than a hint of uncertainty about that thought. He shakes his head. "Maybe he was in another section or something. Did he notice it?"
"I think he was mostly focused on me crushing his hand."
He snorts, but quickly sobers, crouching down on the porch beside her. "I don't get it. What's special about this guy?"
"Beats me." She frowns, thinking back on it. She'd been so intent on the shock of the Knell that she hadn't noticed much else, but then again she doesn't have the same sense of it that Keith does. Would have picked up on anything different if he'd been there?
Some of that thought must leak through. Keith tilts his head and she gets a vague sense of curiosity. "Nothing. Just wondering if you would have noticed anything else."
He raises an eyebrow. "Doubt it. You were there and you didn't catch anything."
"You're better at picking up on the Knell than I am."
He shifts in place a little in the way he does when he's uncomfortable, and his end of the link goes quiet. "Not saying much," he says curtly, and blows out a frustrated breath.
"You said it feels like it wants something."
"Yeah." He considers, and revises. "Or like it wants us to do something."
"Like it wants us to do something about Lance?"
"…Huh." He's quiet for a few seconds. She lets him think it over while she transfers the files onto her computer. At last, he shakes his head. "I don't know. I mean, there was definitely a reaction there, but I don't know what we're supposed to do about it, short of dragging him out here and seeing what happens."
There's a considering silence.
At last she puffs out a breath. "What would we do with him, though? Just… play hot or cold? 'Hey, are you hearing anything weird right now? No? What about now?'"
Keith pushes out a short, sharp hiss through his teeth. "I don't know." He gives a quick shake of his head. "Hate this," he mutters. "Feels like we're close. Like we're supposed to be doing something more."
Pidge makes a face, but she can't think of anything else to do about it either, and they lapse into silence while she pages through the receiver data. She lets out a low whistle as she comes to the end. "Not a lot in here that looks like a false positive."
Keith looks over to her. "Can you-"
"Yeah. Give me a second." He leans over her shoulder to watch as she exports the dataset she's looking at and opens it up.
Like the first transmission, it's a clipped conversation between two speakers. It might even be the same two people. She plays the original transmission again for comparison, but it's hard to tell how much tonal difference is due to audio quality or inflection or just the language. Slowly, she weeds through the rest of the data the receiver has logged, throwing out anything that looks like just noise, or singular glitchy events. She plays the files that remain one-by-one, Keith watching over her shoulder with quiet, focused interest. All of them contain a similar exchange. With a larger sample size, it's easier to pick up on the character of the language and its strangeness. A lot of the sounds are familiar. There's definitely a 't' and an 's' and a rolled 'r' and a glottal 'g' sound. But there's also that rasping noise, and some kind of trill that trails out in a buzz, and a complex of throaty clicking sounds. It's both fascinating to listen to and convincingly alien.
They go through all of them and she saves them to the encrypted secondary drive, backs them up twice to be sure, the weight in her chest growing heavier with each file. The quantity and clarity of the transmissions is damning.
"There's no way the Garrison doesn't know about this," she says in the quiet after they've reached the end of the directory. "Not this many transmissions, not when they're so consistent. There's nothing else anywhere near those coordinates that's supposed to be transmitting on that frequency. I checked." She takes a breath and spits out the thought that's been slowly sinking its roots into her over the last week. "I'm going to try and get back into the Kerberos server."
Keith frowns and something runs through the link like the invisible current under a calm sea. "You got caught before."
"Yeah. But that was different. It'll be easier now that I'm at the Garrison." He's staring at her, fingers starting to tap against his elbows, and she glances away. "I was going to wait until I could get close to an actual mission, but…"
"If they're hiding this…" he says slowly.
She lets out a hard breath. "Yeah. This is so much bigger than I thought it was. If… if they let Dad and Matt die for this and covered it up, I can't let them keep doing it. I know it's a risk, but…"
Keith watches her steadily, eyes dark against the glare reflecting off the porch. In the back of her mind, she can feel his thoughts ticking down some track, taut and laser-focused. "Maybe you don't have to take the risk," he says.
"What?" she says.
He frowns and works his fingers. "I can't do what you do with computers, but if you just need to get into an office, I can do that." His shoulders hitch up uncomfortably. "I'm pretty good with locks. If I got to the right computer, could you tell me what to do?"
She stares, the gears in her mind turning. "I… maybe. That doesn't really remove the risk, though. It just puts it all on you."
His chin juts and he gives a jerky shrug. "Better me than you."
"Don't be stupid," she snaps. "If I get caught, I'll be charged as a minor, but you're like eighteen, right?"
"If you get caught, it'll be your second offense. They could charge you as adult too," he retorts. Her mouth snaps shut. Keith glares at her for a second, an echo of the tension in his shoulders leaching through to her. His gaze wanders off somewhere into the desert again. "Look, I can't just… stay out here chasing strange noises and not doing anything. If you do it and you get caught, we're stuck. We're never going to figure out what happened. If I do it and things go wrong, you've still got a shot at figuring out what happened to Kerberos. You could stay at the Garrison and go to space if you wanted, or you could go home, or just… you've got choices." He pauses for a moment and something bitter twists through the connection. "I already fucking blew my chances at the Garrison," he mumbles, so low she's not sure she's supposed to hear it.
There's a shadow under the words - an ache and an absence and an anger so old it's started eating its own tail. The cramped, dusty interior of the shack, and the bright, empty expanse of the desert stretching out forever, still as a tomb.
Keith is like her in a lot of ways - sharp and focused and driven. It's never occurred to her that he's not driving towards anything.
"Stop that," he hisses, back stiff.
She starts, and jerks back from the link. "Shit. Sorry. I didn't mean to do that." A chill goes down her spine, followed immediately by guilt - she hadn't even noticed the connection kick in. "Sorry," she repeats more quietly. He inspects her for a long moment before finally giving a small, sharp nod. She lets out a slow breath in the silence and swallows, keeping her thoughts focused away from that back corner of her mind.
"Okay," she says. "Then we have to plan it so we don't get caught."
They keep the plan simple - the fewer things that can go wrong, the better. Pidge will load the script she used the last time onto a portable drive. Keith will get onto campus, get to a computer with server access, and run it while Pidge keeps watch. He'll leave as soon as it's done, she'll go about her day, and no one will be the wiser. If things start to go wrong at any point, they cut and run. If they keep their heads down and don't take unnecessary chances, they'll be in and out.
That all sounds simple in theory, but the details take some working out.
Pidge's original target had been the server room itself, but (she can attest from personal experience), security actually pays attention to who goes in and out. They eventually settle on Commander Iverson's office computer instead. Iverson had been on the Kerberos mission ground team. It's a good bet that he has the permissions to access the mission files. There's still a risk that the information they really want will be locked down more tightly that Iverson's rank allows, but there's not much they can do about that, and there are other factors that make him a good target. Crucially, Iverson proctors Pidge's sim lab. She's had a chance to watch him and she knows that he doesn't habitually lock his computer when he leaves it. Equally important, his schedule is posted on his office door for anyone to see. They can pick a time when he has a block of meetings lined up and be assured of a relatively clear window.
She's a little worried about how they'll actually gain access to the office, but Keith is insistent that a locked door won't be a problem for him. That sounds like the kind of thing Matt and his friends might brag about without any real expertise, but he's utterly serious about it and mildly uncomfortable, without any hint of pride. She doesn't think he's lying or exaggerating, and has to sit down hard on her own curiosity. She's rewarded with a faint breath of relief, and is guiltily glad of her restraint.
The other problem is getting Keith onto campus in the first place. The visitor lot gate isn't a possibility - she'd have to call him into security, which will immediately implicate her if anything does go wrong. The student entrance is a better option - it has an automated gate, without any personnel staffing it. Keith knows the campus and he still has his old uniform. So long as he keeps his distance from anyone who might recognize him, he should pass for a cadet. He'll just need a current student ID to get through the gate check. That's something she can take care of, though it'll need some hardware. She places the order for the electronics as soon as she gets back to the Garrison, and from then it's just waiting.
In the meantime, the days tick by slowly. She puts enough effort into her classes not to attract attention, but it's hard to focus on homework and lectures when she might be so close to learning some part of the truth. Maybe that's part of why it takes her so much by surprise when Lance and Hunk flag her down in the cafeteria. She hadn't really thought anything more about the fact that she's been assigned to a flight team. At most, she'd expected her teammates to be casually polite outside of their shared lab. It hadn't occurred to her that they might want to socialize. But they're both seated at the end of a table in the room's far corner, Lance waving his arms exaggeratedly over his head. She hesitates a beat - she's kind of counting on being unmemorable to most of the student body. But there's still that spooky thing with the Knell and Lance to figure out, and it'll probably look weird to ignore them in any case. She heads over and slides into the seat next to Hunk.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," she responds cautiously. Lance, in the middle of a bite, makes an indecipherable noise and waves again. She tries to eyeball him without making it obvious. He seems like a completely regular guy, but there's a faint, maybe-imaginary echo of the Knell ringing in her ears whenever she looks at him. He gives no sign of noticing.
He gulps down his mouthful. "So you're new here, right? I don't remember seeing you around last year."
"Yeah. Transferred in from Platt City Tech." That's what her school administration records say, at least.
"Yeah?" He perks up. "I've got a couple of cousins who go there." She tenses up a little, hoping he's not about to ask anything that'll reveal that she's never set foot in Platt City Tech in her life. Hunk rescues her.
"Whoa, that gotta be a pretty big change."
"Though you gotta be doing pretty well for yourself if you're on the fighter track with us," Lance puts in with a grin and gestures at the three of them. "Top ten percent, right here."
"Why'd you switch? If you don't mind my asking," Hunk asks.
She pushes her glasses higher on her nose and digs her fork into the cafeteria enchiladas on her tray. "One of my uncles is a tech on the lunar ferry." She shrugs. "I stayed with him last summer and it seemed cool." It's true enough, even though Uncle Ed doesn't really have much to do with her presence in the Garrison.
"Nice. You like it so far?"
The question gives her pause. The Garrison's the means to an end, a step on the way to figuring out what happened to her dad and Matt. Liking it hasn't really entered into the equation. She hesitates, and settles on the easy answer. "Yeah, I guess." She stabs at the enchiladas again. They're still staring at her expectantly, so she scrounges through her class experience. "Exogeology homework might actually kill me, though," she offers.
Lance groans dramatically, and Hunk winces. "Oh man, you've got Hutchins for that, right?"
"Yeah."
"It's too bad you didn't come in a year earlier - Commander Holt was teaching it last year. Way more interesting and less grindy."
Her breath catches in her throat, and she freezes a second, winded like something's punched into her stomach, before she finds her voice to cough up a vague response. There's a tap at the edge of her awareness and a flicker of concern from Keith. I'm fine, she shoves at him. He backs off and she shovels as much of the enchilada into her mouth as will fit to discourage further questions.
Hunk and Lance thankfully sidetrack into a discussion on the worst and best instructors this year. She contributes occasional perfunctory agreements where required and speed-eats her way through the rest of her lunch. She leaves as soon as she's done, with a mumbled excuse about needing to drop off an assignment.
By the time she's made the trek across campus to her next class, she feels kind of stupid about it. Her dad was an instructor here. Plenty of people at the Garrison know him and Matt. She should have expected to hear people talk about them - it's not Lance and Hunk's fault that it took her by surprise.
It still feels like a mistake and she winds up kind of avoiding them for the next few days. She tells herself that the fewer questions she answers, the less likely it is that anyone will realize she's lying. Deep down though, she's honest enough to know that the real reason she's dodging them in the halls has very little to do with maintaining her cover and everything to do with a superstitious dread of hearing her father and brother's names in the past tense.
It doesn't last, of course. She can't avoid them during sim lab.
Up until now, the instructors have been holding their hands through the exercises, getting them acclimated to the simulators with easy orbital passes and guided space station dockings. But this time, they've been given a mission and it's up to them to get there, with no assistance from the instructor.
It's nothing they haven't done before with their temporary teams. By now some of the glamour has worn off and it's routine enough to be a little bit boring. It's another space station rendezvous - no docking required, just get up there, make a quick orbit, and make it back. Pidge settles into her station and ticks through her pre-flight checks one-by-one. They get their launch target and she plots out an escape path for them and bumps it off to Lance. In the very back of her mind, there's a wistful breath of interest from Keith at the glow of the instrument panels.
"All right, guys, you ready?" Lance twists partway around in his seat to see her and Hunk, which is technically a no-no, but they're still on the tarmac.
"All set, looking good," chimes in Hunk.
"Pidge?"
She examines her trajectory one last time and she nods. "Clear to proceed."
"All right. Here we go!"
He flips the subsystems on one-by-one, Hunk calling out their status as they power up. Around them, the simulator rumbles and the interior lights dim.
"Ready to launch. Call it in, Pidge."
"Control, we are launching in 5…4…3…2…1."
Lance hits the ignition. The cockpit shudders deep enough to rattle her teeth, and she's pressed into her seat as they accelerate into the launch.
At first, things seem to be going well. But as they ascend, their angle of attack steepens, trailing right at the edge of their trajectory window.
"Hey," she calls up to Lance. "You maybe want to back off on the pitch there? Cutting it pretty close."
"Relax, we're still in window. Top ten percent of the class, right? We can handle it." She can just make out a tense grin on his face from where she sits. "Besides, it'll get us up there faster."
"It's not a race."
"Lance, buddy, I don't like these control surface loads," Hunk interjects.
"Come on, it'll be-" They all yelp as the simulator bounces and abruptly rolls right.
"Oh yeah, that's done it," mutters Hunk queasily.
"It's okay, we can pull out of it! I'm correcting!"
"Well correct faster!" she snaps.
The simulator's nose pitches down in a sudden swooping motion that shoves Pidge forward into her harness and feels like it leaves her stomach somewhere a few feet above and behind her.
"Too fast!" Hunk moans before being noisily sick into the compartment next to him.
Somehow, they actually do manage to make it back down to the ground without a disastrous crash, but the mission is a definite failure. When they power down and troop out of the simulator, Commander Iverson is waiting for them. They line up at attention without having to be told.
"Disappointing, cadets." He frowns down at Lance. "McClain, you've been warned before. Buckle down and stop trying to show off. You're not impressing anyone."
"Yes, sir," mutters Lance, eyes downcast. Iverson eyes him for a moment before turning to Pidge.
"Gunderson, when your pilot deviates from the trajectory you've plotted, you don't wait until it's too late to tell them."
"Yes, sir."
"Garrett." Iverson pauses and sighs. "You're cleaning that up."
"Yes, sir."
They stand there in an unhappy line for another few seconds while he inspects them. "You're in this section because your scores said you could handle it. If you want to keep that position, you'd better start living up to it. I expect better next time, cadets. Dismissed." They mumble out a final, dispirited "yes, sir," and he turns away. By now, the rest of the class is filing out the door on their way to the cafeteria.
"Jerk," mumbles Lance once Iverson is at a safe distance.
Pidge side-eyes him hard. Lance catches it. "Don't look at me like that. He's always riding me. 'Fly better, McClain, you're on the fighter track now. You want to drop under the cutoff again?' Yeah, thanks for reminding me."
There's an awkward silence, and then Hunk sighs. "Yeah, he does kind of seem like he has it in for you." He waves vaguely in the direction of the door. "You guys might as well go on ahead. I've got to clean up here. Don't think I'm going to be feeling up to food for a while anyways."
Lance turns to look at him. "What? No, dude, come on. I'll help you." He seems to wilt a little, slumping in on himself. "Kind of my fault you got sick. Sorry, guys."
Pidge hesitates. It's a more sincere apology than she was expecting. Cleaning barf out of the simulator is just about the last thing she wants to do, but Iverson might have had a point in her role in the failure. It seems like a jerk move to just walk away. "I'll help," she says, before she can think better of it.
Hunk blinks a little and turns his head to look at her. "You sure? You definitely don't have to. This one's one-hundred percent on me and maybe Lance."
"It'll go faster with three of us, right?" She straightens up and shoves her glasses up onto her nose. "I'm not touching it, though."
Hunk looks genuinely moved. Lance rallies and fingerguns at her. "Hey, see? Told you we'd be a great team."
Lance and Hunk (who she's starting to realize come as a set) somehow worm their way into her routine after that. They rope her into their chatter while they're waiting for sim lab to start. Lance starts waving to her when they pass in the halls. Hunk sits next to her in their combined electronics lab. It's the kind of easy, casual interaction that never seemed to work for her when she was going to the school she's supposed to be going to, and part of her's a little mad that somehow it's working out here. Keith is no help - he just seems kind of wary and baffled.
They both pay careful attention to Lance. The faint, persistent ringing in her head around him doesn't go away, and Keith confirms that he's picking it up as well. If Lance notices it at all, he gives no sign of it. The Knell does sound once again while she's waiting for sim lab to start. Again, it catapults Keith into her mental arena, but this time they're both braced for it when it swings itself around to arrow itself at Lance. They both watch, holding their breaths. Lance pauses in the middle of his sentence, eyes going vague for a moment, and shakes his head before continuing on.
It's not much, but it's something, at least. It sparks another half-serious texted debate over whether they should somehow try to get Lance out to the desert, but neither of them has the first clue what they'd do with him if they did somehow manage it. The argument is quickly abandoned when her electronics order finally comes in.
The parts are nothing special - an RFID reader and a handful of blank key fobs. The kind of thing you might order for an electronics DIY project. She unboxes them with a sense of profound relief - a technical solution is something she knows how to do, something she can make work. A step forward instead of more useless waiting around. She spends most of a night tinkering with the reader, figuring out how to get it to read and store an image, and how to flash one onto a blank ID. Keith dips in and out of her awareness while she works. He's out in the desert again, but it feels like he might just be watching the stars. He's mildly curious about what she's doing, but never to the point of it being intrusive, and it's a pleasant sort of tacitly shared company. Once she thinks she's got it figured out, she swipes her student ID across the reader and flashes its information onto one of the key fobs. She sneaks out to the back entrance of the dormitory to try it out, and can't quite contain a spike of smug satisfaction when the door opens for her.
It's a good first step, but giving Keith a copy of her ID is obviously not an option if she wants to avoid suspicion. Getting an image of someone else's ID involves a little bit of subterfuge and a lot of luck and persistence. She writes a quick script to trigger a read and store an image, and tucks the reader into the front pocket of her bag, its cable trailing inconspicuously (she hopes) out to her computer. She heads to the student lounge during one of its busy periods, and parks herself next to a tired-looking senior cadet whose ID is on a lanyard wrapped around the strap of his shoulder bag. She passes the next hour picking away at her homework and intermittently nudging her bag into his with her foot, trying to get a capture of his card.
She does get a couple of partial reads, but they're disappointingly garbled and non-functional. It's frustrating and haphazard, but the partial data is a hopeful sign and she keeps trying. In the end, it takes another three sessions in the lounge and increasing bold positioning of the reader in her bag before she gets something that looks usable. That night, she flashes it onto one of the key fobs and tries it out on the dormitory entrance again. It works without a hitch, and she steals back up to her dorm to flop backwards onto her bunk, spinning the key fob around her finger triumphantly. After a moment, she reaches for her phone.
I got you your ticket in
ez
The key fob spins to a halt in the palm of her hand. She clutches it tight and holds it up to inspect in the yellowy light of the dorm lamp. It looks perfectly ordinary. Like it opens up a supply closet or somebody's bike lock. She sobers, hesitates a little before sending the next message.
you still sure about this?
It takes a little bit for Keith to respond, but eventually, he does. His presence drifts into line with hers, and she catches a faint impression of night chill and the cool, smooth planks of the shack's porch under his fingers.
yeah
you?
She thinks about it. There's something jittery and unstable lodged in the pit of her stomach. It feels like they're standing on the edge of a precipice. Like one more step forward will crack open all the Garrison's secrets and lies. Her hand clenches around the key fob until its rounded corner digs into her palm. Matt would have liked it - all the intrigue and ridiculous spy games to spoof an ID would have been right up his alley. He would have conspired with her over some convoluted scheme to sniff ID contents remotely and it would have been way more complicated than it needed to be, but it would probably have worked. Her dad would have officially disapproved and then quietly bribed them to anonymously report the vulnerability. She swallows and forces herself to relax her grip.
yeah
I'm sure
we're going to figure it out
There's a blurred glimpse of blocky, unwelcoming buildings in Keith's thoughts, and a half-heard echo of a voice and presence at his side like an anchor. The Garrison. Shiro, maybe. She pries her thoughts back from the link until the only thing she can sense from him is the sharp, steady pulse of his mood, constant as a star. She breathes in and lets that certainty moor her.
yeah
we will