Bypass Gemini (33 page)

Two more messages were delivered in the same way. Then came the part he was hoping he would have been able to avoid. He pulled up his star maps and his calendar. The VectorCorp State of the Company speech would be taking place on their corporate homeworld in just over four days. If he was right, then he had at least until then to do what he had to do, but probably not much longer. In that time, he would need to make it to their headquarters, break in, find ironclad evidence of their intentions regarding the Gemini project, and find some way to broadcast that information far and wide without them being able to sensor it. The task had been plotted out, and he had some fairly impressive toys to help him, but at this point in his life Lex could count on one hand the number of things that worked in reality as well as they’d worked on paper.

After crunching the numbers, he worked out that if he pushed the new ship as hard as he could, and took as straight a path as was possible without effectively guaranteeing a collision, then he could get there with about twelve hours to spare... Good God was this ship fast. Twelve hours wasn’t going to leave him much wiggle room to be careful and subtle in his infiltration, but it was the best he was going to get, so he entered the waypoints into his machine, crossed his fingers, and shifted to FTL. He fully expected to start running into difficulties within the first thirty seconds.

To his surprise, it ended up taking nearly an hour.

That was when, during a routine slowdown to check for emergency broadcasts and other warnings, he discovered that security and law enforcement were on high alert. He knew they would be, but he’d never imagined what a difference it would make. Sensors were canvasing areas that should have been completely devoid of life. Radio channels were alive with chatter, relaying warnings, reports, and tips. The narrow areas around VC routes where patrols usually ran had swollen like the banks of a river during monsoon season, spreading a thin but visible security presence over huge swaths of the sky. What little snippets of communication he was able to hear over his universal receiver were all obviously, but not explicitly, about him and his VectorCorp problems. He heard himself described a dozen times, for the first time making him thankful that he wasn’t particularly distinctive looking. All around the galaxy they must have been arresting lanky brown-haired twenty-somethings on suspicion of being him. They also described the ships he’d been seen in, which included the now deceased Betsy, and the DAR he’d been loaned. Neither even remotely resembled his current ship, which was virtually his only stroke of good luck. And he needed it, because if the transmissions were to be believed, he was wanted for a laundry list of charges.

The crimes he was suspected of ran the gamut from disturbing the public peace and vandalism to breaking and entering, reckless use of a space vessel, and of course, intellectual property theft. VectorCorp was never listed as the victim of this threat, but they were repeatedly cited as being “fully cooperative in the assisted apprehension and identification of the culprit.” As far as the public knew, VC was just doing their civic duty, lending manpower to help lock up this mastermind in the ways of espionage. Notably absent was any mention of a disturbance on Operlo, or of an Asteroid Wrecker being destroyed. It was truly disturbing how tightly VC controlled the news and communication. Mysteriously, there was likewise no mention of his name, at least on the official bands. Lex had a sneaky suspicion that VectorCorp didn’t actually want the police such to catch him. No, they just wanted him chased into a corner, where they could sweep him up, get their data back, and make him disappear without pesky things like paperwork or a trial.

The anti-detection countermeasures that Karter had included were doing their job, but Lex didn’t want to press his luck any harder than he had to, so portions of his trip that should have been straight runs became gentle curves in and out, nudging just a bit wider and moving just a bit more carefully to minimize time spent in the widened patrol zones. Day long sections that he should have been able to at least TRY to sleep through instead required that he constantly ease and adjust his trajectory, hands always on the controls. As his destination grew nearer, the patrol density grew thicker. Finally, there were no two ways about it, he would have to slip into an official transit lane. He simply couldn’t risk getting stopped this close to VectorCorp HQ doing something that looked even remotely suspicious. It would mean that he was closed in, and subject to whatever security sweeps they might have set up, but he also would be in the center of a congested flow of ships funneling through one of the galaxy’s main arteries. Even with the manpower that VC had, they couldn’t check every one of the ships passing through, and he wasn’t carrying anything that would show up on their scanners as suspicious. That was because the stuff he’d brought along hadn’t existed long enough to make it onto their watch lists yet.

As he maneuvered his ship into a trade lane and secured a travel window, he caught himself grinning. They were going to have to update those lists.

By the time he was dropping back out of FTL outside the destination star system, his narrow 12 hour buffer had been shaved to a sliver. The smattering of side conferences and news reports had already started, the business equivalent to a pregame show. In less than two hours the CEO would speak. When he was through, the broadcasters and bloggers would run his words through the meat grinder, form the resulting mush into their news bites, and pack up and head home. The stock would spike or dip, depending on whether the investors liked what they heard, and the public interest would wander. The streamlined flow of information afforded by the net meant that news cycles had shrunk from days to hours. Realistically, it might be as little as two days before enough time had passed that the disaster could safely occur with no financial impact on the company. Lex didn’t have that long, though. If what he had in mind was going to work, he would need as many cameras on hand as possible. He had to get this done DURING the press event. That was the plan at least.

Ah, yes, the plan. He settled the ship into an automated holding pattern and began to work through what he and the AI had managed to put together. He remembered reading somewhere that if you were working with a plan with many possible points of failure, the best thing to do was to work backwards from your intended goal until you reached your current point. Reformulating it at every step of the way ensured that, no matter what had gone wrong thus far, you had a clear path to victory. It had made plenty of sense when he was reading it, and he’d decided that if he ever had some epic undertaking, he would do that. Now that he was staring down the barrel of a task that would give a special ops team a hard time, he found the fatal flaw in that line of reasoning. Specifically, you would have to be some sort of super genius to throw together a full plan at every step of the way. After losing his train of thought seven or eight times, he decided that he was better off starting at the beginning.

“
First step, get to the planet’s surface,” he said out loud, flipping his receiver to the guidance frequency, “That shouldn’t be too tough. How many times have I done it when delivering a package? Plenty. Just breathe easy, stick to the old reliable methods, and everything will be fine.”

“
Hello, my name is Jeannette Morray, and I would like to welcome you to Verna Coronet,” purred a voice over his radio.

Lex recognized the voice and name. She was a famous actress, the sort who demands enough money to build a stadium for fifteen minutes of screen time. The idea that VC had enough money to hire her for their holding pattern announcements managed to make him even more nervous. Briefly he wondered how much the small fleet of voice over artists who provided Ma’s piecemeal voice charged. If any of them were still working, it might be nice to hire her to read the dictionary or something, to give Ma a more consistent persona.

Verna Coronet Western Hemisphere Port Station came into view, a silver thread of a space station stretching impossibly far in all directions. As he drew closer, it began to resemble a long thin strip of metallic netting, the brilliant specks of starship engines slowly organizing themselves into orderly rows, creeping along like the tail lights of cars on an old fashioned freeway. Steadily the details of the station became visible, a deep framework of personways, narrow pressurized tubes leading to authorization stations that stuck like thorns out into space. Each station had its own line of ships. The network of tubes and stations must have continued for miles to the left and right, and was easily half a mile from top to bottom, and nearly as deep. It was a huge piece of fragile infrastructure, designed to efficiently monitor and record the entry and exit of every ship looking to access this half of the planet. The voice continued.

“
Discovered and colonized in the early years of wide scale space exploration, Verna Coronet was developed quickly, one of the few planets to require almost no terraforming. It became an indispensable port of call for trade and transportation within years of its settlement. A small company that shared the planet’s initials, then called The Vector Corporation, was founded to map and regulate local trade routes. Today, VectorCorp is responsible for more than seventy percent of all intersystem communication and transit. Verna Coronet remains the central headquarters of VectorCorp, which is now the only significant corporate presence on the planet. Please enjoy your stay, and await further instruction regarding your landing. Thank you. Current wait time is: Forty. Three. Minutes.”

Lex swallowed hard. The preliminary festivities would be nearly over by the time he made it to the surface at this rate. He didn’t know how long it was going to take to do what needed to be done, but he had a feeling that it would take longer than he expected. This was time he couldn’t afford to lose. Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t make things move any faster.

The minutes ticked by painfully slowly. To keep himself busy, he decided he would work on setting the record for world’s fastest ulcer by watching patrol ships work their way systematically down the lines awaiting processing. They were checking everyone in a given line, starting at the front and sliding along quickly and efficiently. They weren’t being thorough, just stopping briefly at each ship, long enough to take a quick look. They were checking faces. Sweat ran down his neck. He may have underestimated them. They were clearly looking for him, but there shouldn’t be any reason for that. It wasn’t like they knew his plan. It would have taken an idiot to come directly to their headquarters when the company wanted him dead. Were they really that smart, anticipating his moves so well? Or were they just that paranoid? At this point, they may as well be the same thing.

His heart started to pound. Plan A wasn’t looking good, but it could still work if he made it through the check before the patrols started on his line. Three more to go. Now two, now one.

“
Hello, and welcome to Verna Coronet, corporate headquarters of VectorCorp. Please transmit your landing authorization,” said an alarmingly chipper sounding young man over the com link.

“
I’m sorry, I’m having transmitter problems,” Lex said, trying desperately to avoid sounding as desperate as he was. It was a losing battle. “I’m going to have to ask for a vocal code submission.”

“
That will not be a problem sir. Will you please provide the five hundred and twelve digit alphanumeric landing code found on your authorization screen?”

“
Wha-wha-” Lex stuttered, feeling for a moment as though the ground had been yanked from underneath him, “How many digits?”

“
Five hundred and twelve. You can find them-”

“
Oh, yeah, I know. It’s just that, uh, most of the time people only ask for the last sixty-four.”

“
Mmm. Yes, that is a common shortcut, but I’m afraid standard policy calls for the full code. Also, if you would, please shift to the manual check-in queue to your left as you authorize, so that fully functional ships can continue through on the automated system.”

Lex looked to the manual line. There wasn’t a security ship waiting there. There didn’t have to be. The line had its own security checkpoint. Plan A had officially failed.

“
Sure thing, just a minute,” said the pilot, mopping his head, “Do you mind if I ask your name, sir?”

“
Not at all. I am Orbital Check-in Agent Lionel Sanders.”

“
Well, Lionel, I just want to congratulate you on doing an excellent job. This was a surprise security audit, and I’m pleased to say that you passed. I’ll just get out of line and head back to the audit firm.”

“
Well, thank you very much, sir, but you are still in Verna Coronet orbital space, so I will need your official authorization, and if you don’t mind, your audit license number as well, for our records.”

“
...”

“
Sir?”

Lex punched a few buttons on his console, his engine beginning to rev and shudder. As he entered various codes and secret combinations, he spoke.

“
I would like to apologize in advance for this.” The engine was beginning to interfere with the radio now, a deep, throaty growl overlaying the transmission. “You’re doing an excellent job, and I have nothing against you.” Now the building power was beginning to produce an unsettling glow in his engine cowling. “Hopefully your superiors don’t hold you responsible for what is about to happen.”

“
Sir, please power down your engine,” Sanders said, trying to sound stern. A sizable dose of panic slipped through along with it, “There are security personnel en route. What exactly do you think you are going to do?”

“
Plan B.” Lex said, cramming his mouth full of gum.

He punched the engine for all it was worth and activated the radio scrambling mode that Karter had installed. The result was immediate, swallowing the signal of everyone around him in a sea of distortion and white noise. With no way to coordinate, chaos reigned. Lex wove through the lanes of waiting ships, wringing every ounce of speed and agility out of the SOB. Behind him, at least a dozen security ships narrowly avoided colliding with each other as they chased after him. All around, screens and indicators began to light up, alerting the ships waiting to be processed that a police activity was occurring and directing them to clear the area through indicated routes.