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The streets of New Boston’s lower districts took on an entirely new character after dark. It was as if sunlight somehow drove the dirtier elements underground for the span of a few hours and allowed the normal operation of the city’s economic machinery to function unmolested. With the mundane processes of commerce and infrastructure completed come sundown, an entirely different species of urbanite could creep upward and infest the streets with the bustle of trades best plied under the cover of darkness.
Uptown was immune to this metamorphosis, but Dockside was most certainly not. Two shifts of dockworkers and freight haulers owned the dirty streets from first light to sunset. Solid, blue-collar workers spent those hours driving the wealth of a hundred star systems though twelve enormous docking towers while automated shuttles rode giant beams of anti-gravitons down from freighters in low orbit. Dockside had won the economic lottery with the towers, because the massive gravitic engines in each were dangerous things to have in a city, and Dockside had been so destitute at the time that no one cared. Coupled with its proximity to the Quinzy shipyards and the industrial might of The Sprawl, the dirty slum was an obvious choice for the multi-billion-credit investment in docking towers.
All day long, goods both legal and illegal moved up and down the towers and got loaded onto trucks and trams for distribution. When the sun went down, tens of thousands of workers went home, and thousands of spacers rode down those beams to take part in the delights of Dockside’s various entertainment options. It was a stark and dramatic transformation, and it always delighted Roland to watch it happen.
Manuel Richardson was fascinated by the change as well, but for entirely different reasons. Growing up under the colony domes on Venus, and later hopping from station to station to stay ahead of his former family, Manny had never really understood how regular sunrise and sunset changed the nature of a neighborhood. He had lived his whole life in cycles of cool artificial daylight and the dimness of off-hours emergency lighting. It was the transitions, he often opined, that made a real day so strange. First, the shadows would lengthen, a subtle warning that the daytime population was nearing the end of their designated time. Then the colors would begin to wash away under the fading light, in a process that still left the young scout wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The crisp clarity of bright whites morphed into burnt yellows and then blossomed into deep reds as if the sun itself had been keeping those surfaces clean and its retreat now soiled them. When those reds shifted to purples, the people on the streets changed as well. The dingy raiment of hard-working folks would slip from all those tired and stooped shoulders, and the bright colors and gaudy bangles of human peacocks would come out for the evening’s distractions. A sea of human plumage arrayed in caustic variety, all on display for the thrill of carnal delights and the profits of illicit trade. It was as if the distant star triggered some primal change in people, suppressing primordial urges left to run amok when its light eventually faded.
Less dramatic in this evening transformation was The Sprawl. That district had been an industrial zone long before the towers, and thus the personality of those sixty-five blocks had not changed too much with their arrival. Arranged in a meandering semicircle around the uptown districts, the quantity and density of companies and factories crammed into the space had exploded when the docks went up. But the borough was still just a factory town at heart, and more of the same did nothing to alter its complexion.
Still, from his perch atop a squat gray auto-factory, Manny was surprised at how much even this street changed after dark. The Sprawl had little to offer in the manner of entertainment, so when the last office worker or foreman clocked out, the streets went ghostly quiet. Instead of streams of crooks and thrill seekers, The Sprawl became an endless swamp of deep shadow, pock-marked with the illuminated circles of street lamps scattered like orange lily pads on some inky black pond.
Mindy broke the silence of his meditations, padding up next to him on whisper-quiet feet. “You ready for a little skullduggery, Manny-boy?” The woman was wearing her blue jumpsuit. Manuel now understood it was both armor and distraction, but that knowledge did little to blunt the effectiveness of the clingy garment. He was loath to give Mindy the satisfaction of seeing him ogle, but he was also a young man and the temptation was simply too much for him. He stole a small measure of victory from the woman by refusing to hide his looks or pretending he was embarrassed. He stared boldly and without shame. If she wanted him to stop, she could zip the damn thing up.
“This is the company that registered that APC. You got a plan for getting in?” He arched an eyebrow her way, curious as to how a famed assassin might attack the problem.
“I figured the ground level will be too tight, but if we can get to a window on one of the less secure floors, I can probably carve us an entrance.” She patted the dagger at home in its thigh sheath, “Then we can figure out how to get down to the sub-basement.”
“How are we supposed to get to an unsecured window?” The question was kept light, as if there was any prayer at all of Manny scaling the wall and leaping through a window.
“Normally I’d just climb it,” Mindy mused, catching on to his tone, “But I suppose I’d have to carry you up, huh? Shit.” A tiny foot tapped an impatient tattoo against the roof, “The ground floor will have too many cameras and scanners for me to carve through there, maybe I can get in from above and shut down the alarms?”
“Oh, just follow me,” the scout said, exasperated.
“What?” the blond trotted after the younger man as he stalked across the roof to the lift doors.
Inside the elevator, Mindy’s face turned grouchy, “Where are we going?”
“Into that building’s sub-basement.”
“But the scanners! Are we going to use the tram lines?”
“Nope.”
Mindy added a whining, pleading effect to her questions, “Maaaaaaannnnnnnnnnyyyyyy! What are we doiiiinnnng??”
“Holy crap, you are annoying.” It was an honest response, Manuel was beginning to understand why Roland was so short with the blond assassin.
“But I’m pretty!” She offered as the lift door opened and the pair crossed the lobby to exit onto the sidewalk. Their target building was across the street, dark and ominous in the pale yellow street light.
“Pretty annoying,” Manuel agreed. Then he walked across the street and right up to the front door of the office building. He made no effort to dodge the scanners, causing Mindy to squeak in disbelief. From his pocket, he retrieved Tim the engineer’s ID card and swiped it through the after hours key slot. Then he looked directly into the scanner and waited.
He affected an air of calm confidence during this phase, but inside he was nervous. Pocketing Tim’s credential was child’s play for anyone who grew up under the domes of Venusian colony complexes, but spoofing the biometrics was a far more complex bit of deception. The scanner would look for a specific set of biological parameters based upon the card swipe, and if Manny had guessed wrong as to what those might be he’d get nowhere. Even worse, an alarm might sound. He had rewritten the biometric card with his own details, so the scanner should see exactly what the card said it should, but if it authenticated against stored employee profiles, he might draw a fault.
But, as Manuel suspected it would, the card worked without issue. The indicator lights flashed green, and the door clicked open. He punched up the access screen on the door controls, and using his facility engineer’s access, disabled the biometric scanners for the whole site and put the alarms in standby.
With a cocky smirk and far too much swagger, he turned to see Mindy standing in front of the building they had just exited with her mouth open and her eyes wide. He winked at her and waved her across the street as if she was some sort of idiot for standing there. She paused, not quite trusting this miracle, but when Manny shrugged and turned to go inside, she quickly followed.
In the lobby she grabbed his shoulder and spun him to look her in the eyes, “How the hell did you do that?”
“Just a trick I learned back when I was... It’s a trick I learned on Venus. You rewrite the card with your own biometrics. Most scanners won’t check against a database, so it usually works.”
“You can’t just rewrite an ID card! How did you break the encryption?”
“I didn’t. It’s still encrypted. I just overwrote the biometrics. I got access when I was here earlier and saw the receptionist make a card for a visitor.”
“So you hacked into their human resources system and used the receptionist's PIN to make an ID card for yourself from one you swiped?”
He shrugged, “No, I hacked into their HR system and changed the biometrics for an existing card key to match me. Way easier. Works like, ninety percent of the time.”
She smiled a slow, predatory smile, “You and I are going to get along really well, Manny. I can feel it.”
“Why does that make me nervous?” he asked out loud.
“Because I kill people for money?” she offered.
“Oh yeah. That’s it.” He shook his head, “Anyway, HR says the building is empty, but it doesn’t give me access to the lower floor scanners. So there might be people in the basement levels. There is a secure access door from the alley, but the layers of security on that thing go far deeper than anything I could spoof, so we have to get down there some other way. I can get us to the reactor level, but what’s below my credentials don’t have clearance for.”
“What do you suggest, my little infiltrator extraordinaire?”
Manny scowled at her, “I figure we get to the reactor room and follow any large cable that goes down. Hopefully there will be chase that we can shimmy through. If not, we may have to circumvent the lift biometrics somehow.”
Mindy smiled, and it was sincere and sweet, “Get me to the reactor room, and I’ll get us below it.”
“Fair enough,” he shrugged and led her to the lifts. When they had descended to the reactor level, she followed him to the stenciled door, and they entered the reactor room. It took a few minutes of searching to locate a set of thick cables that had been run through the floor behind the reactor. It was the only set of cables that went down, so it seemed obvious that these must lead to the sub-basement.
“Damn.” Manny grumbled, “There’s no chase going down. Just a conduit.”
I can cut the cables, Mindy suggested. “Then it won’t charge.”
“They’ll just fix them, and then they’ll know we were here.” Manuel’s mind raced, “I have a plan for the armature, but we have to get to it without them knowing we got to it.”
Mindy squinted, and bionic eyes painted a picture of what was beneath their feet. A twisted map of wires and pipes showed up as faint variations in the infrared spectrum through the metal decking of the reactor room floor. “If I cut through the floor here,” she pointed to a spot in the corner, behind a service terminal, “I can get us down there without severing any pipes or wires, I think. Then we can return the cut piece when we are done. It’s in a hidden spot and everything!”
“It’s a good spot, and no one will be down here for a couple days, I’m sure. Maybe a week. They only really come in her to do the inspections and clean up. How cleanly can you cut it? If it makes a mess, they’ll notice it quick.”
Mindy grinned and the hum of her Sasori dagger joined the thrumming vibration of the main reactor. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
A few careful strokes later, and a neat, rectangular section of the floor plate was carved out behind the service terminal. It was barely big enough for Manny to slip through, and he removed his satchel in anticipation of a tight fit. Mindy had wanted to lead, but the scout stopped her. “I don’t know if my scanner override affects the sub-basement. Your augmentations may set off an alarm down there. Wait here while I blind them.”
Manny pulled a small cylindrical canister with a rounded bottom from his bag and dropped it through the hole. It landed on its side and righted itself with a slight wobble. There was a hiss and a puff, and the air below them filled with fine metallic chaff. Manny donned a breathing mask and slipped through the gap. Hanging by his fingers to reduce the fall, he dropped the fifteen or so feet to the floor below without too much difficulty. The space was dim, but not dark. A few lighted terminals lent a blue-green sheen to the walls near his landing spot, but did not shed enough light to pierce the darkness all the way to the far walls. The echoing of his feet as they struck the floor led him to believe the space was rather large. He moved briskly to one terminal and swiped through screens, finding the security command tree. A quick trip though the command menu confirmed that biometrics on this level were disabled. He shot a thumbs-up to Mindy and the little blond killer landed on silent feet next him.
Manny found the environmental controls and hit the lights. He blinked in startled reflex as a giant warehouse space was suddenly illuminated around them. Tram line access was clearly marked on a large cargo door at one end and resting in quiet repose nearby was an AutoCat 8900-Series Quad-Pod. Manny gave a low whistle at the sheer intimidating bulk of it. Nine-thousand pounds of high-G rated construction mech was imposing even when on the charger.
“That’s big,” Mindy mused with scientific authority.
“You think?” Manny responded. “Christ, what a monster.”
“You said you have a plan?”
"Yeah,” the scout nodded. “I know how to handle these. I’m going to need a few minutes. You try to gather intel while I work. The scanners are down and the doors unlocked, try to find a command center or something.”
“On it,” she replied with a nod. Then she sped off for the other side of the warehouse.
Manny walked to the big machine and ducked below the massive yellow legs to get to the power cell housing. He opened it with a facility born of repetition, and fastidious tinkering with the blinking innards of the intimidating armature soon began.
Mindy had found a man door across from the recharging mech, and true to Manny’s words, it was unlocked. She slipped through into a plain gray hallway and sidled down it with quiet but rapid steps. The hallway was lined with doors at regular intervals, but none seemed interesting or important until she got to the end of the hall and turned the corner. In front of her was a door marked in plain stenciled letters, ‘command center.’
Well, that’s convenient, she thought and shifted her optics to infrared before attempting it. The room appeared empty, so she keyed the latch and the door hissed open at her touch. The room beyond was filled with terminals and screens. Most were off, but a few remained lit up and blinking. On cautious feet, she moved to the largest of these and swiped a tentative finger across the screen. It popped to life with a flash and she found herself staring at a list of files. She wasn’t sure what they were or if they were important until her eyes caught something in the filenames.
The word “Breach” appeared far too often to be unimportant, and she gasped when she realized what that meant. She selected one at random, and one of the larger view screens mounted to the wall flickered to life. When she looked to the big monitor, she saw Roland Tankowicz battling unknown enemies on some strange planet. He poured fire from a massive rifle of some kind at unseen foes, muzzle flashes lighting his silver death’s head helmet with satanic orange reflections. He looked like death itself, reaping souls from the unfortunate with his skull aflame. Mindy shuddered. The view was at an angle to Roland and appeared to be from a camera mounted to another person walking behind him. Data scrolled on the right side of the screen in endless blocks of coded text. Most of this Mindy found indiscernible. But the parts she recognized pertained to combat numbers including rate of fire, accuracy, vital signs, and things of that nature.
This is old combat video from before he came to Dockside! She realized this with a shiver. Oh my god. I’m watching his nightmares! The assassin was instantly uncomfortable, as if she was witnessing something private that she had no right to see. She stopped the video playback with a stabbing forefinger. Fumbling, Mindy drew a memory card from one of her pouches and inserted it into the terminal. Then she copied all the files to the card. Before yanking the card out, Mindy went to the messages folder and copied all of those, too. Then, she returned the chip to her pouch with a quick motion, since merely touching the thing felt wrong.
Another shudder rushed through her body in a wave of cold dread that started at the base of her spine and radiated to her whole body. She did not understand exactly what those files meant about the enemy, but she understood what they were, and what it meant for Roland. If what she had heard from Lucia was correct, these files were so top secret that just knowing they existed was worth a lengthy prison sentence. There were hundreds of them, and part of her soul was convinced that every memory of a history the old soldier wanted to forget was now sitting in her pocket.
I hope Manny is done because we really need to get the hell out of here.
She sprinted back to the cargo bay where Manny was just wrapping up. He had a crooked smirk on his face that disappeared the instant he saw the tight frown stretched across hers.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Long story. But it’s time to go. You finished?”
“All set,” he affirmed with a quick nod of the head.
The pair moved quickly and silently back to the hole in the ceiling, and a powerful boost from Mindy’s superhuman muscles had Manny scrambling through the opening in short order. Then, using the corner for traction, Mindy ran up the wall and leapt to the gap like a busty squirrel. With a single motion, she slipped through the narrow hole like a greased eel and alighted on her feet. Manny was impressed, but there was no talking on the way out. They retraced their steps to the lobby where Manny erased their entry logs and deleted the spoofed ID card from the building’s memory.
The pair slipped out into the pre-dawn darkness of The Sprawl and did not stop running until they were several blocks away.