Day Six
(age twenty-four)
They disembarked in front of the main Inspiration Ganymede building.
Ting came up behind them in the next pod, pretending to be someone Rowan and Kelli didn’t know at all.
They’d dressed like a tradesperson: dark-blue slacks in a durable fabric, matching jacket, flexible boots, fingerless gloves.
They’d tied their ponytail through the back of a baseball cap to keep it out of the way.
The building looked just like Inspiration Callisto’s main building, except even bigger and stone-faced and gray. Big glass doors looked in on a spotless lobby, with benches and beds of flowers out in front, drawing the eye.
Kelli didn’t see a security team. In her head, with the part of her attention not devoted to being Orlando, she couldn’t help but game out all the different points where Baz’s team might lie in wait.
Maybe they were going to nab them in the lobby.
Maybe farther in the building, away from prying eyes.
Maybe in the data center, once they’d incontrovertibly accessed a thing that they shouldn’t.
Maybe on the way out. Or maybe on the ship itself.
Once they got back on the Wildfire, a security team who coordinated with ground control could simply refuse them permission to launch, and then surround the ship, and the whole heist team would be easy pickings.
She felt jumpy.
Rowan sauntered around, pretending to admire the flowers. Kelli checked her watch; they were on time. They had about three minutes left until Zhaleh did her magic, back on the Wildfire, and jammed Inspiration’s comms.
Zhaleh’s magic, so-called, had to do with all the radiation that was everywhere in the Jovian system.
It disrupted radio and wireless signals, which was why everybody had to do things the old-fashioned way with landline phones and physical connections.
Usually, with all the radiation shielding around everyone’s equipment, the physical connections were strong enough to still work.
But occasionally, and without much warning, Jupiter’s angry magnetosphere would happen to whip itself up into an ion storm around one area in particular. In a time like that, even physical connections would get patchy and strange.
What Zhaleh could do—using very secret Brimstone Syndicate technology—was to fake the effect of an ion storm on command.
Kelli hadn’t totally understood her explanation back on the Wildfire: something to do with people on the inside who’d sabotaged particular satellites.
A basic storm, faked in this manner, would wreak havoc even in the physical phone lines and fiber optics that underlay Inspiration’s networks on Ganymede.
It would stop people in the building from using the phone lines to call for help.
Or to coordinate with a team like Baz’s.
Kelli would have to hope that Baz had already gotten all her messages, which already explained the heist plan in as much detail as she knew how to give, and that he already had all his people in place.
In three minutes, Zhaleh would start that fake storm with a big burst, one that knocked out Inspiration’s essential networks completely—including, most crucially, the security cameras.
After that, it would fade into a milder, more basic storm that would last exactly forty more minutes.
The basic storm would keep communications patchy and unreliable, but it wouldn’t stop Rowan and Kelli from being seen.
For most of this job, they were going to have to avoid detection through other means: look like they belonged there, act natural, use Kelli’s credentials, raise no fuss.
The big glass double doors parted for Rowan and Kelli as they walked into the lobby.
Ting, for the moment, loitered outside. The lobby of this building was open for visitors, with plush seats spread out at each side of the room.
A pair of video walls silently cycled through displays of proud moments and factoids about Inspiration’s media achievements.
There were no human guards, just an AI reception desk—and heavily locked doors, preventing unauthorized egress past the lobby, as well as cameras pointing down from the ceiling.
The reception desk stood proudly in the room’s very center.
Kelli and Rowan walked up to it, and Kelli tapped the touchscreen.
A brightly colored interface swam into view.
“Welcome to Inspiration Ganymede,” said the AI receptionist, “media content division, proud to serve as the center of Inspiration’s media operations for the entire Jovian system. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Kelli Reynolds,” said Kelli, “script supervisor for—”
But then the receptionist’s screen winked out. It had been three minutes. They were exactly on time.
This was Ting’s cue. They strode into the room, quick and confident, without sparing a glance at Kelli or Rowan.
They made a beeline straight for a side wall, out of line of sight of the front doors.
There, they flicked four hidden devices into operation—one on the palm of each glove; one on the sole of each boot—and began to climb.
Kelli couldn’t help but gawk. Ting had tried to explain how this technology worked: something about capillary forces and contact electrification.
Something about how it wouldn’t have worked as well on a higher-grav world, like Earth or Venus.
But the end result was that Ting’s scrawny body scrambled up the perfectly smooth gray wall with all the speed and ease of an Earth gecko.
It put her and Am’s youthful climbing experiments to shame.
They didn’t stop until they were literally on the ceiling, upside down, fifteen feet up, out of range of any of the cameras, which were all mounted in the ceiling, pointing down.
Then they paused, detached one hand—which made Kelli startle—looked down, and gave a jaunty wave.
Rowan cleared his throat, and Kelli forced her gaze back down to the blank receptionist screen. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring at the ceiling open-mouthed, as if there were something important there, when the cameras turned back on.
“Really annoying,” he said, “when all the equipment stops working because of an ion storm. Hate when this happens.”
He wasn’t saying it for the benefit of the cameras; they couldn’t hear him.
He was reminding her that they were in character.
Not as Orlando and Gabriel, or even as a pair of Ting’s glamorous thieves, but as professionals who had a right to be here, and who were doing something perfectly ordinary, thanks.
“It’s just the weather,” Kelli said reasonably. “I’m sure everyone’s doing the best job they can.”
She wondered how far away Baz was, with his security team. Surely not far.
After only half a second more, with a low, soothing chime, the receptionist flickered back to life.
“Reloading,” it said. “One moment, please.”
Up on the ceiling, Ting had gotten out a couple of small tools. Kelli tried very hard not to look up at them. They worked at the cover to the air vent, quietly unfastening it from its place.
“Welcome to Inspiration Ganymede, media content division, proud to serve as the center of Inspiration’s media operations for the entire Jovian system. Apologies; we are currently experiencing some signal degradation. . . .”
When the receptionist finished its spiel, Kelli said, “Hi, I’m Kelli Reynolds, script supervisor for Ship of Fools. I normally work in the Callisto division, but I’m stopping by to check something in the records.”
“Hello, Kelli. Please enter your password and biometric identifier.”
Kelli flicked her thumb across the scanner and entered her password, heart in her throat.
She felt very exposed. Anyone who passed by could see all of this through the glass doors.
She wouldn’t look like she was doing anything untoward, but that didn’t help as much as it should have.
She wasn’t sure how people like Rowan and Ting, who did heists like this all the time, managed to stand the excitement.
The receptionist chimed. “Credentials confirmed. Welcome to Ganymede, Kelli Reynolds. As a script supervisor in your first year of employment, you have entrant-level clearance for records access. Which records would you like to check today?”
On impulse, Kelli blurted: “I want to manually inspect the Ship of Fools character kernels.”
It wasn’t what she was supposed to say. She didn’t have clearance; that was why she needed Rowan’s help.
But it was what she would say if she wanted to look at the kernels for some legitimate reason, and she couldn’t help but imagine a scenario where the receptionist did let her in, just on her say-so.
Maybe the ion storm would mix it up. Or maybe an out-of-line request like this would cause the receptionist to alert Baz’s team, wherever they were.
Kelli Reynolds is here, boss, she imagined someone saying in some security room, somewhere. And she’s asking for the kernels.
That was part of Kelli’s purpose here, after all. She had to look like she was playing along, look like she was doing the heist, while secretly alerting everyone to exactly what was going on.
Rowan apparently wasn’t thinking along those lines, because all he gave her was a warning look. “Careful,” he murmured, too soft for the receptionist to hear.
“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist, “persons with entrant-level clearance are not authorized to manually inspect the character kernels. Should I ask an administrator for assistance?”
In her peripheral vision, the cover of the air vent swung loose. For half a second, Kelli thought it was going to fall, and she tensed; but Ting caught it with barely a sound.
She blinked at the receptionist, trying to remember the next part of the plan.
“N-no, that’s all right,” said Kelli, sweating. “Um—my assistant and I would like to spend a few minutes cross-referencing some numbers from the viewership and the polls. Is there an office free? I need a private one, on account of my disability—it should have the accommodation in my file.”
“Of course, Kelli. I’ll assign you a spare office for the day.”
If the AI on Ganymede had been able to access personnel files, it would have seen that Kelli didn’t have an assistant.
If the AI had been intelligent, it would have known that script supervisors at Kelli’s level didn’t have assistants.
Kelli hoped vainly that someone else would realize this was fishy.
Maybe a security person, watching the staticky cameras that were pointed at the lobby, saying, That’s Kelli all right, but I don’t recognize that man with her.
All she could do was drop as many of these breadcrumbs as she could, and hope some of them were found.
Above her, Ting eased themselves up into the vents, pulled the vent cover back up behind them. Fastened it temporarily back in place. Ting would need to get to the main data center before Rowan and Kelli did—but they were making excellent time.
“I’m setting permissions accordingly,” said the receptionist. “Floor eight, room 805-B. Can I do anything else for you?”
“No, that’s great, thank you,” said Kelli, barely believing it had worked. “I’ll go right to the room.”
“Have a pleasant day, Kelli Reynolds,” said the receptionist.