“Okay, no! No, not like that!” Rudy shouted over comms.
Steve turned and looked toward the Osprey parked fifty meters from them. Rudy was barely visible in the transparent titanium windows of the flight deck. He was gesticulating about something.
Kori looked at the half meter square contraption between her and Steve, then looked over to the ship. “What’s the problem?”
“If you don’t get it set in just the right place, you may not get full coverage,” the droid insisted.
Kori had her hands on her hips. “It’s almost noon. So, maybe, you know, we go for mostly covered versus perfectly covered.” In the distance, the engines of the searching shuttle whined.
Steve looked at her, smiling. Rudy said, “Fine, fine. Who needs perfect when humans are involved?” The droid vanished from sight.
Steve leaned over and pressed a button on the device between them. A countdown started. He looked at it, then Kori. “We’re sure it’s pointed the right way?”
Kori was already moving toward the end of the module and the ladder there. Over her shoulder, she said, “Little late to worry about that.” She vanished over the side of the module.
The younger Delphino looked at the device again. He reached down and quickly rotated the device ninety degrees. He backed away, then rushed back. The timer was at ten seconds. He turned again and ran to the device, turning it back to its original orientation. Five seconds. He looked at the end of the ore module, then turned and ran to the edge and leapt off. There was a pop followed by the sound of unspooling wire and ruffling fabric.
Steve had bought the devices back on Kelso Station. During the trip out, he had tinkered with them to see how they worked, at least as best he could without activating one. They contained a compressed gas canister and several dozen meters of memory metal wire. There was also a small power cell and several hundred square meters of fabric that, when charged, absorbed most conventional sensor radiation. The memory metal had been shaped to the specifications of the ore modules, courtesy of schematics provided by Mr. Ichiko. The older man couldn’t be certain of the exact model of the modules, but he was fairly certain. The gas propelled the fabric and its wire frame out in all directions. It almost caught up to Steve before he hit the ground and rolled with a not at all dignified grunt.
Seconds later, the power cell engaged and the memory metal snapped into shape, wrapping the ore module completely.
Steve got back to his feet and said, “See, it was set up correctly.”
Kori was already following behind Baxter, who was carrying the final device toward the other ore module.
“If you could hurry it up a little, that’d be excellent,” Skip said. “Those shuttles look like they’re working a pattern, and I’m guessing we’ll be at the edge of their sensor range in another half hour or so.”
Baxter, sensor mesh device in hand, leapt to the top of the ore module. As Kori climbed the ladder built into the end, she said, “You think they’ll get close enough for visual?”
Rudy answered, “Probably not. We’ve been watching their pattern as best we can with the passive arrays. We’re pretty far from the train line, and this valley isn’t very big. They’re probably assuming that they’re looking for freighters.”
Steve chimed in as he climbed up the module, “Still a good idea to make sure large metallic objects don’t show up on their scopes where none should be.”
* * *
“Go, now!” Jax hissed, watching a pair of shock troopers turn and head away from the train toward a small tent that they’d watched officers come and go from for almost an hour.
Naomi crawled out from under the car and took off in a running crouch. She covered the distance between the train car and an unattended ground cart quickly.
While they waited for an opportunity, they had settled on a plan that both felt had the best chance of them not being captured, arrested, and killed by Imperial forces. Neither thought it was a particularly good plan, but with nothing but their phones and a pistol each between them, it was their best bet.
Jax bolted from their hiding spot as soon as Naomi reached the cart. In seconds, she had the cart’s systems overridden and they were moving at what they hoped was a casual-looking pace towards the main administration building.
As the cart neared the building, a garage door automatically opened. Jax drove into the garage and parked the cart next to a half dozen similar carts. There was no one in the garage. By their best guess, the morning shift had already started and the night shift looked to have been kept on to help with the train heist investigation. “Let’s find the locker room.” He headed toward the personnel door, Naomi in tow. She placed her hand on the access card reader. Her blue tattoos lit up from fingertip to elbow, then faded as the small light on the device turned green and the door slid open.
The administration building was two stories, almost entirely empty. Occasionally they heard voices, usually near staircases up to the second floor, likely where managers were overseeing things from. Jax and Naomi split up to raid the men’s and women’s locker rooms.
After a rushed shower and a few looted lockers, Jax walked out of the men’s locker room. “Orange is your color,” Naomi said as she joined Jax in the anteroom outside the two locker rooms. Both were in bright orange jumpsuits with reflective strips on the arms and legs. Jax did a slow spin. She looked around, ignoring him. “What now?”
Jax shrugged. “Well, I’m hoping we can walk right out the front gate.” He checked his gPhone. “Breakfast?” Naomi nodded.