Chapter 06: Drs. Kim and Tsukishima fulfil their obligation to the ISAF in the civil war of the Jezebel system - part 4

From then on until the end of the day, Lauren worked on restoring the document. At some point, Susan came in and checked in on everyone. Before leaving, she pinned a piece of paper to the wall that read “3 days remain.” A while later, Lauren had restored most of the document. She skimmed over it to see how well it was restored. The document was continuing a thorough explanation of the automatic defensive systems of the radar complex. Her eye was caught by a section that stated that the building that generated the access keys was protected by automatic defenses. Lauren made a note in her notebook and dog-eared the page.

“Okay everyone,” said Linas, “it’s just about time we wrapped up today. But before we do that, I think we should go around the room and share anything relevant to the investigations we’ve learned today, since today is the first day that we’ve had access to full documents instead of scraps of paper” Giannis stood ready next to the whiteboard.

“I can start,” said Indah, “this radar system is very sensitive to solar flares, hence there is a space weather station to calibrate the data or at least call it into question if the sun is acting up.”

“That makes sense,” said Claire, “the ionosphere, which the radar system bounces against, may change how much it can absorb radio waves if, say, a solar flare occurs.”

“Alright, so now we have a good idea of what the space weather station does now,” said Linas, “Giannis, write that down for the space weather station column.”

“If I may build on that,” said Giannis, standing on his toes as he wrote the first fact in the space weather station column, “the radar system works by embedding bioenergy in radio waves, which is done at the beam scheduler.”

“Great, write that down too,” said Linas.

“You’re killing me Linas,” said Giannis, garnering some laughs from the room.

“How about the Archivists?” asked Linas, “did you find out anything while restoring documents?”.

“So this isn’t on the same train, but the building that generates the access keys had automatic defenses,” said Lauren.

“Actually, I can add to this,” said Temmie.

“Did you finish translating the manual?” asked Linas.

“Almost, I am on the last page, you’ll see it tomorrow morning,” said Temmie, “all buildings except for the space weather station and the communication hub had automatic defenses.”

“Write that down,” said Linas to Giannis. He turned to Indah, “you’re copying this to the master doc on the server right?”

“Of course,” said Indah.

“Okay, this is good,” said Hira, “if we just find out a few more facts about the other five buildings, we stand a good chance of finding out which building holds the keys.”

“Indeed,” said Linas, “but we should keep our eyes open for other leads. It seems we have a great logic puzzle before us if we can expect to get the same quality of information we have been getting so far.”

The team left in high spirits, buoyed by the pool of information on the whiteboard. Temmie was sitting in front of her computer while Hira stood next to her, wrapping his charger cable around his hand, “you staying in tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Temmie, “I want to finish translating this manual so that I can have all day tomorrow to find my book.”

“Your book?”

“Yeah. No one else seems to care about it,” grumbled Temmie.

“Hey Lauren,” Ashley tapped Lauren’s shoulder, “I think I’ve figured out how to automate the file recovery process but it’s more work than I can finish on my own.”

“I’m down to make this,” said Lauren, “do you have some pseudo code or something?”

“Yeah, I’m sending it to you right now,” said Ashley.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Lauren cracked her knuckles, “so much for the sleep medications.” She shook her hand, “ow.”

Over the next few hours Ashley and Lauren methodically worked through the function list, writing a testing script, building each function, and testing the function with the script. By the time they finished, Temmie had long since packed her bag and left.

“Alright, I’m going to test it on the files we’ve already recovered and see how well they match” said Ashley. She ran the program. Two red lines and one green line of text appeared in the console.

“Okay so it sometimes works,” said Ashley, yawning, she looked at the debugger output, “I think we need to expand our error correction code library.”

“I think I know what we’re missing, give me a second,” said Lauren. It took her twice as long as she expected to find the missing error codes. “I copied the wrong codes twice,” said Lauren to herself, “nothing works the first time after midnight. Especially when there are 26 hours in a day.”

Lauren ran the program for a third time. Three green lines of text appeared on her console.

“Ashley, it’s ready,” said Lauren.

“Awesome, I’m going to copy all of the unprocessed files into the program directory,” said Ashley. She typed for a bit. “Hey, 34 files successfully recovered and 12 files failed to process. Do you want to try and make it better?” asked Ashley, “or do you want to, well, sleep and just manually process—”

“The one where we sleep and don’t introduce bugs into our code,” said Lauren. Ashley gave a thumbs up and covered her mouth with her other hand as she yawned.

Full steam ahead

“Amazing, just outstanding,” said Susan, opening dozens of recovered document files on her computer. “You guys are really carrying this investigation forward.”

“Thank you,” said Ashley and Lauren.

“With all these documents processed and with the fully translated manual, we’re sure to find our key building by the end of today,” said Linas, “speaking of which, where is she? The translator.”

“She’s out looking for that book,” said Hira from behind his computer.

“You can tell her that likely won’t be necessary,” said Indah.

“True, but she wouldn’t listen,” said Hira.

“So our plan is for one of us to read the recovered documents looking for mentions of access keys while the other continues recovering the files that couldn’t be automatically recovered,” said Lauren.

“Do as you see fit,” said Susan, “alright, Nas, I leave you in charge of the historical WOs and the grad students.” Susan placed a call on her phone and walked to the door, “hello, Eric? Sorry, hello General Albritton, the investigation is proceeding at full speed. Yessir. No, still no word on the reporter. I understand they pose a security risk. Yes. Believe me that I am doing everything I can with regards to that,” she turned around at the door, shot Linas with a finger gun, and left.

With Susan gone, the room was silent save for the sound of keys clacking, pencil and pen strokes on paper, and the occasional sweep of the hand on paper, clearing eraser shavings. And yet the air was charged by the occupants’ combined focus, so much so that conversation seemed impossible. Around lunchtime, nobody, aside from Atid, expressed any interest in the fine Altarian casserole, compliments of Susan, which was relegated to one of the side tables in the room.

“Everyone,” said Linas, after the casserole had long gotten cold, “it’s time we compare notes. Ready Giannis?”

Giannis got up with a handful of dry erase markers and stood next to the whiteboard and started writing.

“I guess I’ll go first,” he said, “this will no doubt be useful for us: tunnels connected both sensor arrays, the generator station, the beam scheduler, the barracks, and the communication hub.”

“Excellent,” said Linas, “write that… um, good.” Giannis smiled.

“Well, I have something pretty relevant to that,” said Hira, “both sensor arrays, the beam scheduler, and the generator station are also connected by caves.”

“Weren’t the caves filled with cement?” asked Lauren.

“Only the ones under the generator station,” said Hira.

“Okay, write that down,” said Linas to Giannis.

“The generator station seems pretty well connected,” said Ashley, “do we know anything else about it?”

“Yeah,” said Indah, flipping through her notes, “I saw something about it somewhere. Ah, it’s a geothermal plant. That explains why it’s been running all this time.”

“Should I make that information slightly more permanent and visible?” said Giannis while looking at Linas.

“Okay, I’ll stop saying that,” said Linas. Giannis scribbled on the board.

“I actually have something to add,” said Linas, looking at his notebook, “the control building, both sensor arrays, the barracks, and the beam scheduler had short range bio-radars to make up for the blind spot of the sensor arrays.”

“How big is this blindspot?” asked Ashley.

“I’m not sure,” said Linas, “the short range radar has a detection radius of around 100 km, though.”

“The blindspot size depends on the minimum refraction angle of the radio waves against the ionosphere,” said Claire, leaning back in her chair, “unfortunately that is usually around 900 km.”

“Hey, that’s pretty big,” said Hira.

“So the system as a whole has a pretty big blindspot,” said Linas.

“While on this train, I have something you all would like to hear,” said Ashley, “the building that generates the access keys has a short range bio-radar system. In other words, it’s one of those buildings Linas listed.”

Giannis scribbled on the whiteboard and put a star next to Transmitter Array, Receiver Array, Beam Scheduler, and Barracks. “We’re starting to run out of room,” said Giannis looking at the board after he finished writing.

“Abundance problems are good to have,” said Linas.

“Well, allow me to add then,” said Lauren, she pulled up a notebook, “we’ve seen the words ‘primary building’ thrown around a lot. It turns out there are only three primary buildings.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ashley, rummaging through her notes, “I think I saw something about primary buildings. Yeah, the building that generates the access keys is a primary building. Wait, and so is the building that converts energy.”

Giannis partitioned off an unused part of the whiteboard and made a list of facts about the primary buildings.

“Anybody have anything else to add?” asked Linas. Everyone was silent. “Alright, this was a great deal of progress, excellent work everyone.”

The conference room had been silent for a few hours by the time Susan entered.

“Woah, you guys have been cooking,” she said looking at the whiteboard, “how is the document recovery going?” She walked up to Lauren and Ashley.

“38 out of 46 documents have been restored to the fullest extent possible,” said Lauren.

“So what are the other eight?” asked Susan, leaning forward to get a better look at Lauren’s screen.

“They are blueprints for the underground floors of each building. Our script was made specifically for restoring vector graphic documents while these blueprints are probably in some design software file format,” said Lauren.

“So why not just make your script convert those too?” asked Susan.

“I wish we could,” said Lauren, “the problem is that there are so many design software file formats, like the same company makes a new program with new features every year.” Lauren thought for a while. “Our best bet is probably to try and find the design software they used in the building 0 network. We could then use the software to find out what error correcting codes to use for the extra files.”

“What if the software itself is corrupted?” asked Ashley, lifting her laptop and putting her hand near its vent.

“Well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it,” said Lauren.

Susan clasped her hands onto Lauren’s shoulders, “well, sounds like you’ve got some driving to do.” Susan then left the two Archival Officers to check in on the other members of the room. Lauren opened up a session on the building 0 network, she looked back at the 8 file names.

“Any idea what program would make a .dwgx file?” said Lauren to Ashley.

“I don’t know, maybe ‘Drawing Xtreme’? What time is it at the Citadel?” said Ashley, her keyboard clacked under the rapid action of her fingers, “it’s midday. Try asking Jethro, I think he has a huge list of file extensions and their associated programs.”

“Alright, seems like you guys are really close to cracking this nut,” declared Susan, standing at the door, “message me when you guys figure it out and I’ll come straight on down.” The door silently slid closed after she left.

“Where are you going?” asked Ashley to Lauren.

“To the communication center for the faster messaging speeds,” said Lauren.

Lauren took a seat at one of the rows of desks, plugged her computer into the labelled cable, and opened up the Knowledge Corps chat client.

“Hey Jethro, I hear that you have a list of file extensions”

“Ashley is correct”

“Can I have it?”

“No”

“It’s too large to send across systems”

“Tell me the extension and I’ll tell you the programs it matches up with”

“It’s .dwgx”

“Some files that are supposedly blueprints have that extension”

Jethro sent an attachment

“There are a lot of programs associated with that extension”

“Seems like they all have pretty much the same name

but I’m sending you all of those names

just in case you need them”

“Thanks! I owe you one”

“Just don’t get hurt and we’ll call it even”

“Will do!

I need to go”

“Bye”

“Bye”

Lauren opened the newly received file. “Seems like they’re all from a program called Super CAD something something,” she said to herself. On her way out she saw that there were communication pins behind the desk. With one of those she wouldn’t have to come back here every time she needed high speed cross system communication.

“Any chance I can borrow one of those communication pins?” said Lauren to the clerk.

“No,” said the clerk, “unless, that is, you have the proper clearance.”

“Let’s find out,” said Lauren, she pressed the PING button on her badge.

The clerk looked at the notification on their screen and pulled a communication pin out of the dispenser and handed it to Lauren, “it seems you have it by default. You have three days until you have to return it.”

“Thank you,” said Lauren, pocketing the pin.

Lauren logged into the building 0 network and searched for Super CAD, the search returned a single program: “Super CAD X6”. She launched the application and was greeted with the error “PROGRAM FAILED TO LAUNCH PLEASE CONTACT YOUR ADMINISTRATOR.”

“Aw,” said Lauren.

“DId you get the program?” asked Ashley.

“No,” said Lauren, looking at her screen, “but I do have its name now. I might be able to make that work.”

Lauren pushed the communication pin into her computer and messaged Jethro

“Do you have a library of programs you’ve found over the years?”

“Some of the programs I’ve encountered, yes”

“Do you have Super CAD X6?”

“Haha, no”

“That program was Super prone to crashing”

“I have Super CAD X9”

“It’s much more stable and can open all older files made with the same platform”

“It’s on the HTG server in the ‘Program Zoo’”

“Thanks again!”

“Bye”

“Bye”

Lauren logged into the Historical Technologies Group server and downloaded the program. After about an hour of work, she had the program installed on a virtual machine on her laptop, saved a simple file, and obtained the keys she needed to restore the old files. Fortunately it was straightforward to shoehorn the capability to restore .dwgx files into the script she and Ashley made although at the back of her mind Lauren knew that she would be making the script harder to work with in the future. At last, she was able to open the blueprints and was panning through the sprawling floorplans. She looked for any mentions of access keys but also jotted down in her notebook details of rooms that had interesting names.

Linas nodded to Giannis who grabbed a handful of markers and then walked up to the whiteboard.

“Alright everybody,” said Linas, “time to figure out which building holds the keys to peace on this planet. Who would like to start?”

“I can start,” said Hira, “well, according to a protocol document referenced by the manual, both sensor array buildings were meant to be unmanned. Or at least very low occupancy.”

“Good data,” said Linas, “who’s next?”

“Well,” said Indah, “I don’t think this is going to help us get closer to finding the access keys, but there is a duplicate set of buildings on the secondary continent with the addition of an extra pair of sensor arrays to cover the larger landmass.”

“Up to you whether you write that,” said Linas to Giannis.

“Yeah, I’ll write it,” said Giannis, scribbling on the board.

“You don’t need to read a book to find that out,” muttered Claire, leaning back while balancing her chair on two legs.

“I have something to add,” said Lauren, “we now have floor maps for the subterranean sections of each building. Unfortunately, nothing identifying them as access key granters is in the basement. On the upside, we now know that we can access the building network from maintenance panels in the middle of most basement hallways.”

“Oh, just like with building 0,” said Claire.

“That will be useful for you two, no doubt,” said Linas, looking at Ashley and Lauren.

“So, anyone else?” said Linas, looking around the room. The room was silent save for the squeaking of a dry erase marker as Giannis scribbled on the board. Everyone in the room looked in a random direction, avoiding eye contact with Linas.

“Come on now, not all at once,” said Lauren.

“How is this possible?,” asked Linas, “we made so much progress this morning. We’ve had double that time for this meeting.”

“Well, what have you found?” asked Indah.

“Not much,” said Linas, “a lot of granular details about the operation of the Potesta system that assume you already know the basics, which we don’t.”

“Exactly,” said Indah, “our well is running dry.”

“Don’t say that,” said Linas, grimacing, “we still have about 12 documents we haven’t touched yet. We’ll go over those tomorrow and then take stock of what we have.”

Outside the room, footsteps raced towards the doorway of the conference room. The door slid open but not fast enough for Temmie who squeezed through carrying a sealed bag.

“Guys, I got it!” shouted Temmie between breaths.

“Got what?” asked Linas, turning around in his seat.

“That book I was telling you about,” Temmie held up the sealed bag within which was a pink book with gold trim. She slowly made her way to her seat.

“Did you get anything good from it?” asked Giannis.

“Not yet. I haven’t started translating it. But, just look at it,” Temmie turned the book to show its wide spine, “although, I’m going to start translating it tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I crisscrossed this city five times looking for this book.”

“Here with us is a commander from the ISAF to answer some of our questions.”

“Please, I’m a Major actually.”

“The most popular question from our viewers is why haven’t we set up a blockade? You know, starve the enemy out?”

“That is a good question. The fact of the matter is that we have set up an orbital blockade. However, the Separatists already control so much territory, which includes resources and facilities, that they are practically self sufficient. Our analysts project that only a really long war of attrition, on the order of years, could cause them to surrender.”

“So what is the ISAF’s plan for defeating the Separatists?”

“We are entertaining multiple strategies. I am not at liberty to describe any of them, but you can rest assured that they all aim to minimize casualties, collateral damage, and war time.”

“Well that brings us to our next question: why is it taking so long—”

Lauren turned off the hotel room TV and fell back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling. She thought about what she and the team would do if they weren’t able to turn up more pieces to the access key puzzle. Finding new information from building 0’s network was a matter of finding the right file names. They could try to modify the file names they already had on the assumption that a sequential naming scheme was used. The operating system of building 0 was search based, files could only be accessed by entering their name or something close to it. On this line of reasoning, they could try entering single characters and scraping the names of all the files returned by the search. Failing that, they could also reread all 46 documents with different eyes, but that would take more than the two days they had left and it would probably take even longer to grant security clearances for extra people.

Lauren filled a glass with water, poured a sachet of the sleep extending medicine into it, and stirred. She sat in her bed, drank the concoction, placed the glass on the nightstand, and fell onto her pillow, completely knocked out.

At wit’s end

Lauren took off her ill-fitting overwarm Waverton University sweater as soon as she got into the conference room. Most of the other officers were taking their seats as well. Even Temmie was on time. The projectors at both ends of the room flickered on, displaying everyone’s names and their respective tasks.

“Okay, does everyone know what to read?” said Linas, “let’s finish reading all the material within the next hour and before Sue comes down.”

Over the next hour, each of the investigator’s names became greyed out on the projector screen as each person marked themself as done until only Temmie’s and Atid’s names remained next to the tasks “translate book thing” and “research political climate.”

“Okay,” said Linas, somewhat dreading what his next words would bring, “who would like to start?”

He looked at each person in turn who either shook their head or gave a thumbs down. He sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose, “alright, let’s review the facts we have and figure out what information we need. That will inform our next actions in this investigation. Let’s start with what we know about the access key building.”

“Well,” said Ashley, standing up, “the building that generates the access keys was a manned building, had automatic defenses, had short range bio-radar, and was a primary building.”

Lauren listed what Ashley was saying on the unused whiteboard on her side of the table.

“Good idea Lauren,” said Linas.

“I recommend writing more densely,” said Giannis, “you never know how much you’ll end up having to write.”

“On the subject of primary buildings,” said Hira, pushing his chair back, “we know that there are three primary buildings and that one of the primary buildings is responsible for converting electricity to bio-energy. Still don’t know why they’re called primary though.”

“Riding on the train of buildings sharing something in common,” said Indah, “the control building, both sensor arrays, the barracks, and the beam scheduler all had short range bio-radars. Additionally, the control building, the beam scheduler, barracks, both sensor arrays, and the generator station had automatic defenses.”

Lauren raced to keep up with the flow of information, opting to erase with her sleeve instead of reaching for the eraser. Perhaps by design, the black cloth of her blazer absorbed the dry erase ink without a trace.

“Regarding more physical connections between buildings,” said Linas, “both sensor arrays, the generator station, the beam scheduler, the barracks, and the communication hub were connected by tunnels. The generator station, both sensor arrays, and the beam scheduler are connected by caves.”

“Except the caves under the generator station have been filled with cement,” said Hira.

“While we’re on the topic of things underground,” said Lauren haltingly as she juggled writing and speaking two different sentences, “there are mainframe access panels in the middle of all basement hallways of all buildings.” Marker caps squeaked as she switched colors.

“I’d like to shift our focus to facts about individual buildings,” said Giannis, “the generator station runs on geothermal power.”

“The purpose of the space weather station was to detect solar flares,” said Indah.

“Which can scramble the Potesta system’s signal since bio-energy is embedded into the radar signal at the beam scheduler,” added Claire.

“Speaking of signals and sensors,” said Hira, “the sensor arrays were classified as unmanned buildings.”

“Also, we know that a duplicate set of buildings exists on the secondary continent with the addition of an extra set of receiving and transmitting sensor arrays,” said Ashley.

“I think that’s all of the most concrete facts,” said Lauren, finishing up the last bullet point.

“Hmm, focusing our efforts on finding out which buildings are primary buildings seems promising since we know there are only three of them,” said Ashley.

“Yeah, but we will need other categories to narrow down which building generates the access keys, like whether they were manned or not,” said Linas, “we know the key building was manned while the sensor arrays were not.”

“Or whether a building has short range bio-radar,” said Indah, “we know that the ‘key building’ had aforementioned radar, and according to Linas, only the control building, both sensors, the barracks, and the beam scheduler had this radar.”

“So our choices are already narrowed down to the control building, the barracks, and the beam scheduler, since the sensor arrays don’t share the manned trait of the key building,” said Giannis. Lauren began crossing off building names.

“We can also strike out the control building since we’ve heavily searched it,” said Claire.

“What about the automatic defenses trait?” asked Hira, "we know that the only buildings with automatic defenses were the control building, both sensor arrays, the generator station, barracks, and beam scheduler.”

“That doesn’t narrow the search at all,” said Temmie, looking back and forth between her book and computer.

Hira shrugged, “I tried.”

The door suddenly slid open and Susan strode into the room, “okay kids, what do you have for me?”

“Hi Sue, I don’t think any of us messaged you to come down yet,” said Linas.

“You haven’t,” said Susan, “that’s why I came down. Do you still not know which building holds the keys?”

“We’ve read all the relevant material available to us,” said Linas, “we’ve narrowed it down to the barracks and the beam scheduler.”

“Do you know that with certainty?” asked Susan.

“Yes ma’am,” said Linas.

“Linas, my main man,” said Susan warmly. She put her hands on his shoulders and then, with a sudden burst of violence, dug her fingers into the joint spaces between his humerus and scapula causing LInas to shrink into his seat in pain, “that’s not good enough!”

Just as fast as it came, the hostility in her voice vanished and she continued in her normal, amicable tone slowly walking around the room, “General Eric specified that we needed to know the access key building with absolute certainty. The good reason for this being that we don’t want the enemy to know that we are trying to become virtually omniscient or else they’ll just blow up the sensors. And trust me they’re not going to miss a target that’s a kilometer wide. It’s great that you narrowed it down to two buildings, I won’t deny your hard effort, but the barracks are way closer to enemy territory than the beam scheduler. You say you’ve gone over all of the good information to get to this point, you all have about a day to pull together some more information or draw more conclusions from the data you have. Any ideas on how to do that?”

Linas was rubbing his shoulders, “well we could find more files by modifying the file names we already have since they seem to be sequentially named.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Susan, “what else?” She looked around the room.

“We could enter individual characters into the search-based operating system and note the document names returned,” said Claire, sitting upright in her seat for once but otherwise seeming unperturbed.

“Also good,” said Susan, hand to her chin.

“There is always the option to reread all of the material we do have with new eyes,” said Giannis.

“I like that idea less,” said Susan, pointing to Giannis, “but I won’t deny that that is an option and one that reliably turns up new information.” She stopped in front of Giannis’s board and stared at it for a bit while everyone watched her tensely.

Temmie unwittingly broke the silence, “the sensor arrays are primary buildings.”

“What was that?” said Susan wheeling around to face Temmie.

“Oh, uh, the transmitting and receiving sensor arrays. They’re both primary buildings,” said Temmie, averting her eyes after noticing Susan for the first time.

“Something tells me this is important information,” said Susan to Linas, “why?”

“The access key granting building is one of three primary buildings,” said Lauren, “we already know that neither sensor array is the access key granting building. This means we only need to find out whether the barracks or the beam scheduler is a primary building to find out which grants access keys.”

“She’s doing your job better than you, Linas,” said Susan. Linas started.

“But that’s okay because that is her job,” continued Susan, amused with herself.

“Okay, special orders,” said Susan, “historical warrant officers and Hira, reread the 46 documents we already have. Make sure that they’re being read by new eyes. Claire, get the rest of the technical warrant officer team in here and try and dig up new documents using the two methods we just discussed and whatever other methods you can devise. Temmie, translate whatever anyone sends your way immediately. You can translate your little book when you’re done with all requests. Atid, just keep doing what you’re doing. And Lauren and Ashley, you two are going to try and draw new conclusions with the data that we already have. Rummage around your magician’s hat and pull another rabbit out. Impress me, because I do love a good magic trick.”

Susan checked her watch and shrugged, “unfortunately I don’t have any lunch for you all. You’ll have to eat at the mess hall today.”

After lunch, the conference room was busier than usual, what with the return of the technical warrant officers who were crowded around the building 0 access terminal. Temmie was zoned in on her computer. The historical warrant officers and Hira were trading notes and delegating reading material. Atid was sending emails while Lauren and Ashley were talking to each other.

“Okay, so here’s what I think we should do,” said Ashley, “you should try and find a way to figure out what the third primary building is. I’m going to reason about the other categories: automated defenses, manned or unmanned, short range bio-radars; I have a few ideas about those. Unless you'd like to work on something else?”

“I have no preference so I’m good with whatever works for you,” said Lauren.

A few hours later and the conference room was as quiet as a library. People took turns running their hand through their hair and occasionally someone would lean back in their chair and let out a deep sign.

Except for Lauren. She was already in full recline so she could only sigh as she scrolled through random documents on the building 0 network, trying to stumble across something that would give her some insight. She was starting to wonder if she should have told Ashley that she wanted to investigate something else. Lauren closed the document she was reading and double clicked on another document. Nothing happened. She double clicked on it again. And again. Then her screen froze. Then the message “CONNECTION LOST. RETRYING…” Lauren signed and disconnected from the network. She looked around to try and find out if someone bumped her off the connection but found nothing.

Lauren thought of taking a break but opted instead to look through her locally stored files. After losing herself in the myriad documents on the server, what with documents encoded in an ancient format talking about things that no longer exist save as digital memories, she had forgotten about the scant files she brought with her. She looked through her files with the vague sense that there was something useful for her there. Not the mission briefing, not Morgan’s dense historical documents, not the summons. The Jezebel system travel guide? no. Not Atid’s notes of the recent history of the Jezebel system either. Deeper in her document history she went. “Sanmachi Science Festival - Wielding: An Advanced Introduction - FINAL v2,” Neil’s document on wielding that he gave her before she left. Lauren opened it and started prereading through it: overview, seven types of wielding, electromagnetic wielding, kinetic wielding, thermal wielding, material wielding, biological wielding. Lauren slowed down to normal speed reading both to give her eyes a rest and to pay extra attention to the section, however she didn’t find anything immediately useful. Lauren closed her eyes and shook her head as she switched back to prereading: positive wielding, negative wielding, seven respective energies, wielding in nature. Lauren stopped. She went back and looked at the table in the middle of the page. It was a table on energy conversion efficiencies. She saw that the conversion efficiency from electricity to bio-energy was very low, then she saw that the lost energy in inefficient energy conversion takes the form of waste heat. Quite a few of the buildings use bio-energy on a small scale for their short range radars thought Lauren. Only the two radar arrays and whatever building converted electricity to bio-energy used it at a significant scale. Instantly, Lauren realized that the third primary building, the building that must be the one that grants access keys, that they have all spent the last four days looking for, had to be a hot building. There had to be a way for them to find out how hot each building was. Lauren thought for a second.

“Do we have satellite imagery of the radar complex?” asked Lauren to the room. Everyone looked her way.

“We do,” said Claire, leaning back in her chair.

“Do we also have pictures taken in the infrared spectrum?” asked Lauren.

Claire thought for a bit, “yeah, we have those too.”

“I need to see them,” said Lauren, “can you put them on the big screen?”

Claire let her chair fall forward and propel her into a typing position.

“Have you found the keys?” asked Ashley.

“Maybe,” said Lauren, “if only the barracks or the beam scheduler is hot, then I can say which generates access keys.”

The map appeared on the screen. The barracks was in a sea of deep blue while the beam scheduler and geothermal station were surrounded by orange halos.

“Red is hot right?” asked Lauren, looking at the screen.

“That’s right,” said Claire.

“Then the beam scheduler is the key building,” said Lauren.

5: Sortie

Planning

“Okay, explain this to me one more time,” said Susan, looking back and forth between the projector screen and the two whiteboards.

“So we’re good with the fact that either the barracks or the beam scheduler is the key building and that the key building is also a primary building, right?” said Lauren.

“Yeah, I’m good up to that point,” said Susan.

“Great, the next fact we need to consider is that electricity to bio-energy conversion, which is what the third primary building, and thus the key building, does is a very inefficient process.”

“Okay with you so far.”

“Next, the energy lost in this conversion takes the form of waste heat. This waste heat can be detected by our satellites. And that is what you’re seeing on the projector right now. The beam scheduler is much hotter than the barracks. Thus the beam scheduler is the third primary building and by extension also generates access keys,” said Lauren.

Susan sat down, “wow, you really pulled the rabbit out of the hat.”

“Well, it’s worth remembering that this finding is just one part of a larger set of findings each just as important as the next. It just so happens that this connection was found last,” said Lauren scratching the back of her head.

“Nonsense, the last rabbit you find is the best at hiding,” said Susan. She turned to Stoyan, “see? Aren’t Archival Officers the best? They just plow through all of your walls.”

“They have worked quickly,” admitted Stoyan, arms crossed.

“Alright,” said Susan getting up, “I’m going to get General Eric on the line. Get Cole and tell him to assemble his squad. Start preparing one of our birds for a stealth mission.”

Stoyan nodded and left the room.

“University kiddies, you can’t stay here anymore, I’m sending you to another room. You are to leave at your normal time, however,” said Susan, she turned to Claire, “take them to the visitor’s lounge and then come back here.”

Over the next half hour, Susan talked on the phone while the historical warrant officers cleared the middle of the table and made neat stacks of material at the edges and corners of the room. At the end of that, Stoyan returned with Cole and four other soldiers. Susan gestured to them to take their seats while she talked on the phone. Eventually, she hung up and spoke to the gathered personnel from the head of the table.

“Okay everybody,”said Susan, “General Eric has approved our mission into no-man’s land. Predictably, the general wants it done tonight. Cole, when’s the earliest you can get your crew ready?”

“My squad can be ready in as soon as 10 minutes,” said Cole matter of factly, “however it is currently light out, I recommend that we wait until at least midnight by which time most of the volunteer militias that make up the bulk of the Seperatist forces will have gone home.”

“Alright, we’ll leave at midnight then,” said Susan, “Cole, you’ve done infiltration missions before, how do you suggest we approach this?”

Cole looked at the map for a while before speaking, “The beam scheduler is located at the top of a mountain,” he said, placing his finger at the peak of the holographic map floating on the table. “I suggest we fly in low from our side. Have the Sigma craft drop us off on this plateau then have it fly back to friendly territory and then come back to us when we call it in.”

“You can’t use radios there,” said Nia.

“What?” said Cole.

“This area is too close to the transmitter array,” said the technical warrant officer, “it puts too much noise on all frequencies. Normal over the horizon radar shouldn’t do that but this one does for some reason.”

“The weather is set to be clear,” said Linas, “you could signal each other with lights or something.”

“No, no the enemy could see it in that case. We’re going to have to time the extraction then. Hm so the hike up to the entrance looks like it would take 45 minutes on the safe side, going down would be probably 30 minutes. How long would it take you nerds to get the access keys?”

Lauren and Ashley shrugged. “We don’t know,” said Ashley, “we got in pretty quick with building 0 but it could be totally different this time.”

“Just give me a number and a unit of time,” said Cole.

“I don’t know, three hours?” guessed Lauren.

“Why did I even bother?” said Cole, “that’s too long. We’ll allot two hours for finding the access panel and then the keys since that’s the longest I’m comfortable putting ourselves out there. That means we should have the Sigma craft come back to the insertion point three and a half hours after dropping us off to factor in some leeway for mistakes. Ideally we would have it just land there but this plateau is too small but also too close to the building entrance for us to choose another one.”

“Do we know where the panels are?” asked Susan.

“We know where several are,” said Lauren, “all in the basement floors.”

“That’s good,” said Cole.

“We don’t know which ones would still be working though,” said Lauren.

“That’s not good,” said Cole, “why can’t you experts ever give a definite answer?”

“Because at the edge of understanding, very little is known for certain. It’s completely different from the mundane world everyone else lives in,” said Nia hotly.

“Hey!” started Cole.

“Settle down kids,” said Susan calmly, “now’s not the time. Now let’s talk about squad composition.”

“Well,” said Cole, looking at the other soldiers, “we’ve got two general soldiers, a scout, and a powered exoskeleton user. All we need now is one field expert.”

“Why not two?” said Ashley.

“Yeah, we work better as a team,” seconded Lauren.

Absolutely not,” said Cole.

“Cole is right,” said Susan.

“Wait what?” said Lauren, “what was the point of requesting two front line experts, and endangering them, instead of one front line expert and a normal subject expert if you’re not going to use both of them?”

Cole put his hand over his face and laughed, “You don’t get it, do you? Susan requested two front line experts so that we could have a second attempt in case the first one dies.”

Takeoff

Ashley and Lauren looked at Susan in disbelief.

“He’s right,” said Susan with a sigh, “when mission completion is critical, we request double the minimum number of Knowledge Corps officers needed to complete the mission. Hey, don’t worry, it’s just a precaution. That being said, would either of you like to volunteer?”

“I—” began Ashley hesitantly.

“I’ll go,” said Lauren.

“Are you sure?” said Ashley, concerned.

“It’s okay,” said Lauren, “I have a good feeling about this strangely enough.”

“Okay,” said Ashley, “well, I guess you’ll be needing this more than me.” Ashley took her sidearm.

“Oh right, the aim assister,” said Lauren, “hopefully I won’t need it at all. Do you remember how to dismount it?”

“Um,” said Ashley.

“Gimme that,” said Cole, hand extended across the table, “give me your sidearm too, Lauren.”

Cole took both sidearms, checking that the safeties were on. He held them next to each other and then slid one until it clicked and locked itself to the other sidearm. He then proceeded to remove the focusing lenses and the aim assister, all the while, keeping all the parts in his hands so that he didn’t need to use the table.

As he did this he mumbled to himself, “they get a laser pistol that’s as powerful as a rifle that they’ll probably miss with. Oh but they get an aim assister which they don’t even know how to mount.”

“Here you go,” said Cole. He returned Ashley and Lauren’s sidearms. Lauren noticed that her sidearm was a little more front heavy and had a tendency to point downward.

“Alright Cole,” said Susan, “the mission is now entirely under your control.”

“Thank you ma’am,” said Cole, he turned to Lauren, “report to the armory at 2530.” Cole nodded to the other soldiers, then they all got up and left the room.

“How about we plan out getting the access keys?” suggested Ashley.

“Sure,” said Lauren.

* * *

“I guess in the worst case scenario, you should just save the binary code of the access keys,” said Ashley looking at the flowchart she had drawn in her notebook, “we could then figure out it’s encoding in the safety of this building.”

“I can definitely do that,” said Lauren, “I feel weird saying this, but it feels like I’m about to take an exam.”

“Do you feel like you’ve studied for it?” asked Ashley.

“Totally, but it feels like one of those exams where you’re not told what will be on it,” said Lauren.

“I always hated those,” said Ashley.

“Really?” said Lauren, “they always felt exciting for me.” Lauren looked at her watch, “shoot, I should get down to the armory.” She checked her hard case: laptop, spare battery, her beloved Benji microcontroller, Jethro’s decrypting microcomputer, about thirty different cables and adapters, a universal driver, and a roll of duct tape.

“Good luck,” said Ashley and the warrant officers.

Lauren turned around as she left the room, “thanks.”

Even though Lauren was three minutes early to the armory, Cole and the four other soldiers were already there.

“Dineo, get the archivist set up with a helmet and a jacket,” said Cole upon her entrance.

“Yes sir,” said Dineo. She turned to Lauren, “come this way.” The soldier looked at Lauren from head to toe and then pulled out a jacket from a nearby closet.

“Here,” she said, “this is a dual climate jacket. When it’s cold, such as when we leave the dropship, you’ll open this valve to let air into the jacket so that it puffs up. When it gets too hot, you squeeze this pouch a bunch of times to pump out the air, making the jacket thin again.”

As Lauren listened, she noted the similarities between the jacket and her regulator vest.

Dineo took out a helmet, checked the battery, and handed it to Lauren, “how does that fit?”

“It’s tight,” said Lauren.

“Perfect,” said Dineo, “that way you can be protected from shock events and gas attacks.” She turned to Cole, “we’re all good here!”

“Alright,” said Cole, “our scout Malaya will generally lead the way. Lauren, you’re going to stick with Michah, Dineo, and I in the middle. Jay will bring up the rear in his exo-suit. Now Lauren, would you care to explain what your goal for this expedition will be and how you plan for us to do it?”

“Okay, the goal is to get the access keys to allow us to tap into a planet wide radar,” said Lauren, “to do that I need access to the building’s network cables. We know there are maintenance panels in the middle of all of the basement hallways. So we just need to get to the basement floors and explore until we find an intact set of cables.”

“And then get out,” added Cole, “otherwise that was a very good statement of objectives.”

“Let’s go?” asked Malaya, impatiently.

In the midst of the roar of the Sigma craft’s thrusters, Lauren became acutely aware that she hadn’t had dinner.

“Too late for that I guess,” she thought as she saw the roof of the defense headquarters fall away through the closing door of the dropship.

After about thirty minutes of coaxing and encouragement, Lauren had finally gotten Cole to talk about anything other than the mission.

“This is a force bracer, or more specifically, a wrist-mounted targeted linear kinetic wielder,” said Cole holding up his left arm and showing the sleek box attached to the top of his forearm. He flipped his arm over and showed the side of his index finger and the three buttons at its joints.

“You push this button to turn on the laser pointer for targeting,” he said, pressing the lowest button and slightly moving his arm to make the red dot dance above Lauren’s head, “and you press the other two to push or pull what you’re pointing at. This knob controls how strongly it pulls and this knob controls how strongly it pushes.”

“Aren’t you worried it might go off accidentally?” asked Lauren.

“Yes,” said Cole, reservedly, “but you have to make a fist with your fingers which makes misfires less likely.”

“Cole loves toys like these,” said Dineo, playfully.

“Hold up,” checked Cole.

“It’s why he joined the military,“ said Jay, smiling.

“Look, I’m going to cut our free talking time short if this keeps up,” said Cole.

“Why did you join the military?” asked Lauren, curious.

“Actually this is worth explaining,” said Cole, straightening his posture, “I grew up in the Conhispa system which was a resource colony up until I was an adult. My parents moved there in pursuit of a simpler lifestyle, but I couldn’t stand the idea that I was only seeing an infinitesimal sliver of the world. Let me put it this way, there are about a hundred inhabited systems in the Combined Galaxies, many of them more rich and varied than this sad little half-empty-glass-of-milk planet that the ISAF is worried will get spilt, and I had spent my entire youth living in a small town save for a few visits to the nearest city. I mean, did you get to go on a field trip to a developed system as a kid?”

Lauren paused for a second, unprepared for the sudden end of his monologue, “well, yes, I went to Altaria in primary school, then Nycena in secondary school.”

“See resource colonies don’t have their education determined by Intersyst so we don’t get foreign system trips, let alone trips to other federations,” said Cole, “anyways, it has always been my dream to escape my home system. Now you may not realize this but that is hard to do if you grow up on a fringe system. Practically speaking you need an organization to sponsor moving to another system. Most people do this by getting admitted to another system’s university or college or getting hired by a company on another system.”

“Now, I did well in school, one of the top students actually,” said Cole, “but Conhispa’s school standards are so low that I didn’t get in anywhere, which is bullshit and a discussion for another time. Unfortunately, there weren’t any companies recruiting on my home system either. I ended up going with the military as an alternative since it’s basically like moving to a different system every few months thanks to ISAF’s endless deployment tuning. Well, what do you say to that?”

“I probably would have done the same in your situation,” said Lauren.

“Really?” said Cole, shocked.

“Yeah,” said Lauren, “the Knowledge Corps provides basically the same travel benefits, the only difference is that you need a PhD.”

“In other words, heavily gatekept,” said Cole.

“Yeah,” said Lauren, “although…”

“Although what?”

“You don’t actually need a PhD to join the Knowledge Corps. A few officers each year come from the military rather than academia. It’s possible, you just need a lot of experience in a specific area.”

“That’s huge,” said Cole, “you’ll have to tell me more about this later because we’ll be reaching the landing zone in five. Get ready everyone.”

The scout, Malaya, put on her helmet with its three embedded cameras permitting near panoramic vision. Jay lowered the visor of his exo-suit.

“You should puff up your coat now,” said Dineo.

“‘Kay,” said Lauren. She loosened the valve on her coat and heard a faint hissing as the down expanded.