The Price of Peace (30 page)

It took them the better part of fifteen minutes to establish themselves in the compartment and determine the next compartment over had a cable run and was not under observation. They cut a big hole in the wall and moved over.

"Place stinks," the private muttered.

"It's a paint locker, Joe," the corporal informed him... and
Tru
. "None too smart to run fiber optics through a fire hazard." That was the first dumb move
Tru
had found these puppies in. Nice to know they aren't perfect.

They might as well have been, for all the good it did
Tru
.
Skelly
, her technician, jacked
Tru
into the fiber-optic run, then grinned as she finished. "It's all yours, boss."

Tru
returned the grin as she went to work ... and scowled as she hit a concrete wall. "It's encrypted. Every damn package is encrypted like it's a bleeding bank."

"How bad?"
Skelly
asked.

"Give me a minute."
Tru
suspected she already knew the answer, but she had to prove it to herself. As she thought, these folks didn't do anything in halfway measures. "They're using the latest bank encryption. Two-fifty-six bit encryption with a double key." With sinking heart, she tried the code the developer swore would let anyone in. It had been disabled.

"Damn. Don't these guys trust anyone?"

"Would you, if you were the bloody bastards doing unto everyone else?" the sergeant reminded her.

"No."

"We got to report something."
Skelly
reminded
Tru
of practical matters.
Tru
searched for public nodes. There had to be a map of the station that wasn't encrypted. She found one, transmitted it back to the command post.

"Got anything without all these blanks?" was her thank-you. The map showed public corridors, rest rooms and restaurants, and not much more.

"This whole station is encrypted like a rock," she answered.

"Well, in one hour, we start taking this rock apart, one atom at a time. Let us know if you've got any suggestions in the meantime."

Tru
didn't like failing. Failed relationships were one thing. Failed hacks were another. Given three weeks, she could crack this encryption system. They didn't have three weeks, and the bad guys would probably change codes in the meantime. "Damn, these guys are good." "Too bad we don't have them working for us, instead of her," the private whispered to the corporal, loud enough for
Tru
to hear. The sergeant scowled at the private, and he shrank back to his place.
Tru
wondered if any of the folks causing her so much trouble had ever worked for her. She'd lost a few people recently to better job offers farther out on the rim. Unusual, since normally Wardhaven paid a lot better than the rim.

Whom had she lost lately? Kim. Fred. Did any of them have pet codes? She tried a few of her office favorites. Nothing.

Damn! Of course these codes were tough; they were designed to be tough. It took time to crack them, and by then, you changed the code.
Tru
stared at the ceiling; she wasn't getting anywhere. What do you do when your nose is hard up against a wall you can't get through? Go over it. She'd tried. Go around it. She'd tried. She'd tried everything in her bag of tricks, and it wasn't working. "Damn, these guys are good." "You said that before,"
Skelly
reminded her.

Her unit beeped. She'd been running a search on the system, hunting for anything she could read. Her pet computer proudly pointed to a file on some maintenance unit. With nothing better to do, she opened it.

"What is it?"
Tru
asked.

"Some repair tech has his own layout of the station," the corporal opined. "What's it show?" the sergeant asked.

"Air flow, I think,"
Skelly
tossed in as she pointed at the layout. "Though why would these sections be venting to space?"

"Firefighting. That's what this is,"
Tru
crowed. "This guy doesn't want to be fighting a fire with no blueprints because somebody changed the codes. I like this guy." She passed it along to the command post.

"Got anything that shows the locations of automatic weapons?" was her thank-you. "Few folks we let out on the station report lots of surveillance cameras and something extra. Things that look like remote machine guns. Sure would like to have something on them before we start shooting up the place."

"Why do I not think we'll find that in an unencrypted file?"
Skelly
laughed. While the others enjoyed his joke,
Tru
studied the map, letting her fingers rove the layout. "We know where the power plant is. That accounts for one venting to space. There are two others. Yep, both are using Halon-3000. That means computers. I bet one is security, the other data central." "Assault teams will be happy to hear that, but which one?"

Tru
grinned; the original map showed, among other things, the personnel office. One of the two unknowns was close to the power station. The other was close to personnel. "I think I know where the Admin Division is," she chortled.

"So what?" the private tossed her off.

"So, Sergeant, get the assault team ready. I'll want the entire specialist team to follow me in five minutes. If you don't hear from me by then, come in shooting there." She stabbed her preferred site. There were no locked doors between here and there. None except the one that mattered.
Tru
stripped off her armored space suit, retrieved a scarf from her kit bag while she printed out a dozen of the right forms, and headed for the door.

"What are you doing?" There was actually worry in the sergeant's question. "Following the private's orders." She curtsied, and closed the door behind her.

Trouble was having trouble staying awake; maybe it was the gas fumes. Certainly it had been a long day. The racket from the warehouse was down to a dull roar. Then the
comm
link finally contributed something worthwhile.

"We found their hideout," said a man. "You sure?" That was pure Zylon.

'There was a tarp hid among the barrels." "What makes you think they were there?"

"We found two halves of pain pods. They took them apart." "But they're not there anymore." That was pure Zylon venom. "No, ma'am."

"Bring all the field hands and vat girls back to our end of the compound. Then start them walking for the other end. Tell them the one that spots those two runners gets food, real food, for the next month. If none of them raise a holler, I'll use the pods every night for the next month. You make sure they listen good. Nobody's escaped a farm. I'm not
gonna
be the first."

"Ruth." Trouble gently shook the sleeping form beside him. She came awake with a start. "Honey, it's time we start moving."

"You say the nicest things to me, dear."

Tru's
humor didn't last much past the first turn. If her guess was wrong, she was headed for security goons. Unlike the fabled dilemma of the tiger and the woman,
Tru
was making her own call. Besides, if I guessed wrong, I'll just keep on walking.

Unfortunately, the other potential location for the computer center was several locked bulkheads away. Keeping one eye on the corridor and the other on her wrist unit, she navigated herself to ... a familiar glass window, complete with buzzer to call for attention. She buzzed.

"May I help you?" a young woman asked. She wore a bored look and a tee-shirt from the latest band craze. Swing shifts if I ever saw one.

Tru
smiled. "Yes. I'm recruiting for network specialist vacancies on Wardhaven. I wonder if I might talk to your boss."

That brought the music lover up short.
Tru
was betting there wasn't a standard operating procedure for personnel raiders. The length of the wait while the young woman sorted out
Tru's
request was long enough to start her worrying. "Karin, can you handle this?" the woman finally said.

"Hey, we're working as hard as we can to get the D server back up. Give us another hour." "No, K, it's not about the network."

"What is it?"

"I think she wants to offer some of us a job." "Who?"

"Who?" the band follower asked.

"I've got quite a few vacancies to fill,"
Tru
said in her most suggestive voice. "May I come in?"

"I don't know." The woman worried her lower lip, but the door was buzzing.
Tru
opened it and walked right in. The center had over a dozen people in it, half gathered around one large unit with its cover off and boards scattered around it, and the rest around a system showing a black screen and code. Yep, server's down. And I had nothing to do with it.

"What
d'ya
want?" came from a short man in a green checkered shirt and a tie that screamed it didn't match. Since he was the only one not in a tee-shirt,
Tru
took him for the shift supervisor.

"I'm Trudy
Seyd
, IT manager for a large corporate entity on Wardhaven. I need to staff up a major new unit."

"How'd she get in here?" came from someone around the dead server.
Tru
ignored the question.

"We are quite competitive in both salary and benefits. We expect this unit to have a long run and are willing to make a lengthy commitment to its staff,"
Tru
finished, tossing the bait out. Now she waited.

"We're all on two-year contracts here, and you don't walk out on our management," an older man pointed out.

"Two weeks' notice is all it ever takes to terminate a contract," a young optimist put in. From the shaking of heads around him,
Tru
saw few held his view.

"I want to hire you right now. Tonight. Wardhaven will provide transport off-station tomorrow morning."
Tru
tossed that card on the table. When frowns showed that had sunk in, she played her last card. "I will triple whatever salary you are presently receiving." She handed an employment contract to the foreman, then started passing around copies to anyone in reach.

"Right now?" the foreman said slowly.

"I've worked on Wardhaven. Great place" came from someone around the server. "And at this pay. Wow."

"Right now!"
Tru
answered, glancing at her wrist unit. "I can give you thirty seconds to consider. I need the papers signed by then."

"It's not as if we owe management anything. You saw the way they fired Borden last week. Anyone heard from him since they took him
dirtside
?"

"Yeah, but do you really want to piss them off?"

"For triple pay on Wardhaven with a ten-year contract, I'd piss off the devil himself."

"You got to get to Wardhaven to spend that money. Lady, how you
gonna
get us out of here without the boss man knowing?"

"I have a ship docked at the moment. Accommodations are rather
spartan
, no better than those on a troopship, but the food is plentiful, and its next stop is Wardhaven." Well, maybe not. Next stop after a bit of a space battle, but no need to worry the new recruits. "Troopship?" the shift foreman echoed.

"I need signatures,"
Tru
emphasized. Around the server and station, pens were out, poised to sign, waiting for the first one to break the ice.

The supervisor pulled out a pen and signed with a flourish. "Okay, boss. What do you want?"

Tru
docked her wrist unit with a workstation and brought up the map of the station. "Any security cameras between here and there?" She pointed to the assault teams' compartment.

"Three of them," the supervisor said, calling up a different schematic. "However, since no one is in those corridors, we ought to power down the lights and save electricity. Right, Randy?"

"Lights off."

Tru
tapped her
comm
unit. "Friends, Goldilocks has the porridge warming. Breakfast time." "On our way" was her answer.

The woman from the window handed
Tru
her employment agreement. "I hope I can get some training. I want to be an analyst."

"Trust me, friend,"
Tru
assured her. The woman got over to the door and opened it just in time for the sergeant to lead a stampede through it, gunners followed by specialists and more gunners pulling up the rear. There was little consternation among
Tru's
new hires. "Folks, we've got a little hostile takeover going on here. Consider yourselves the first people to benefit from picking the right side. Now, we need to open up some parts of this station, and close down others. You probably have a pretty good idea of what we have in mind. Enthusiastic improvisation will be duly noted and rewarded."

The supervisor attacked his keyboard. Without looking up, he asked
Tru
, "Those the only employment contracts you got? I know a dozen more folks that have been looking at vacancies and would come in quite handy for what you have in mind."

"I can print them out as fast as you can make the job offers,"
Tru
answered.