Profiteer

Right on time, a warning light came on in her display. A too-weak neural stun field had washed by her, diminished by its expanding radius. Damn it, Mosasa was right next to it. Shane started for the landing gear and a voice near her wrist said, “What are you doing?”

 

It was Random’s briefcase.

 

“I thought you were off,” she whispered, making sure the suit’s comm was still off.

 

“You turn off your brain just because you have nothing to do at the moment?”

 

“I was going—”

 

“I know where you were going. Don’t worry about Mosasa; it was part of the calculations. A ship field control has a wide tolerance for the field diameter. He had to push the programming five meters past the skin of the ship. He’s fine.”

 

“But—”

 

“Get up the ramp!”

 

It was a choice between taking Random’s word and possibly blowing the most closely timed part of the operation.

 

Fuckup, or survivor?

 

“You better be right, Random.”

 

“Believe me. I know exactly what Mosasa’s capable of.”

 

Shane darted up the ramp and went through the security pass procedure with the computer, the same way she’d done a dozen times before. This was the first time she thought she’d get fried for her trouble.

 

After an incredibly long two-second pause, the computer accepted her as Hougland.

 

She stepped through the open air lock. At this point she was supposed to hear radio confirmation from the skeleton crew manning the Blood-Tide, who would ask why the hell Hougland was on board rather than scouting the perimeter like she was supposed to.

 

The fact that they didn’t showed that Mosasa’s stun-field jimmy had worked. The Blood-Tide crew was out of it for the next three or four hours, and if Random was patched into the security comm in time, no one in the complex would know the difference.

 

Shane went down a deck and ran half the length of the ship to get to the secondary computer core. It was deep, beyond the weapons stores. The corridor was yellow, black, and red, the colors of restricted access. Most of the doors she passed had blinking red lights—closed and locked.

 

The computer room was all the way back, at the end of the corridor. The last room before the start of the massive engine systems. The brushed-steel door was more heavily armored than the weapons lockers. Its light was blinking red.

 

Hougland’s codes didn’t work.

 

“Shit.”

 

“No problem,” said Random. A motor whirred, a panel on the side of the briefcase slid aside, and a small flexible cable snaked out. At the end of the cable was a needle-thin probe.

 

“There’s a hole next to the keypad. Insert the end of this.”

 

Shane picked up the silver probe and slid it in the hole.

 

Almost instantly, the light flashed green.

 

Shane tried the door and it slid to the side. The probe withdrew, and Shane walked into a chamber lined with screens, readouts, access panels, ports, and keypads. She set Random’s case on a small ledge, waist-high, on the opposite side of the room.

 

“Turn me over.”

 

“Oh, sorry.”

 

Shane flipped the case over. The lid popped open and a cable slithered out.

 

“We have half a minute,” Random said. “Do exactly as I say.”

 

Suddenly, Shane was frantically following Random’s orders, plugging cables that snaked from the box, punching instructions on keypads, popping access ports, and at one time killing the power for half a wall of protesting electronics.

 

When she was done, her headsup chronometer read 07:15:15.

 

“Oh, Christ, it’s over.”

 

“What?” came a voice from a speaker grille on the wall.

 

“We’re nearly thirty seconds over. The routine radio checks to the bridge—”

 

“Oh no worry—the comm circuits were the first thing I patched.”

 

Shane smiled weakly. “Of course.”

 

“That’s why they don’t call it artificial stupidity. Come to think, that’s as good a term as any for this security system. If I had some hands at the moment I’d slap the braindead hackhead who wrote up these interfaces. I’m losing sixty percent of my efficiency just talking to the rest of the complex.”

 

Shane kept looking up the hall. “Where’s Mosasa?”

 

“I keep telling you, don’t worry about Mosasa.”

 

“What do you mean, is he on board?”

 

“Look, he’s not doing anything to jeopardize this mission.”

 

“Then where is he?” Shane had a very bad picture of Mosasa crumpled in a heap by the landing gear, his cloak drained of power.

 

“We decided that it was just too close a thing for him to come through the dock before his cloak failed. He climbed up into the landing gear housing.”

 

Shane tried to stare but had no idea what to stare at. She ended up rotating in a small circle, looking up at the walls of the computer core. “Didn’t we go through that in planning? There’s no space for anyone to crawl through the structure down there.”

 

“Mosasa can.”

 

“He’s two-and-a-half meters tall!”

 

“Well, he has to partially dismantle himself to do it.”

 

“Huh?”

 

One of the grates in the floor started to move, and Shane swung her laser to cover it.

 

“Don’t worry, that’s Mosasa. I guess we’ll have to let you in on a little secret.”

 

The grate slid aside and Shane saw a dark hand appear.