“Better than last time,” she replied. “But not great.”
“Any dragons, or even worse, aliens, this time?”
She shook her head. “No, but there was a weird error I got at the end of the mission,” Parkowski explained. “They lost the connection to the ACHILLES robots for about ten minutes or so.”
“What did it say?” DePresti asked as he took a sip from his bottle.
“Error, special access program, Bronze Knot, special access required,” Parkowski repeated from memory.
DePresti spit out his beer.
“It did not,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“It did,” Parkowski insisted.
“Bullshit,” DePresti said, “there’s no way.”
“Uh, there is a way, because I saw it,” she replied. “Just like I saw the dragon.”
“I’m more apt to believe you saw a dragon than that error message.”
“Why?”
“Grace, do you know what a special access program is?”
She thought for a moment. “No.”
He took another sip of his beer and leaned on the kitchen counter. “Let me see if I can explain this without getting myself into trouble.”
Parkowski tilted her head slightly. This was getting somewhere.
DePresti took a deep breath. “So, to start, there’s three general levels of classification for government secrets. In ascending order of secrecy, they are Unclassified, Secret, and Top Secret.” He paused, then continued. “Those are a blanket level of security. Within each of those levels, there are subcompartments that you can only access if you have a need to know and have been cleared at that level.
“For some security levels, in particular Secret, everyone can see what’s held at that level, so it’s called collateral — a common level. In case information needs to be kept close-hold for whatever reason, it’s kept in a special access program, which limits the access.”
Parkowski thought for a moment. “So, I have a Secret clearance that I got when I first started at Aering. Everyone did, regardless of what program they worked on. I’ve never used it though. What does that get me?”
“It gets you access to Secret-level information,” he told her. “But nothing more. If you needed information from a special access program — which we call a SAP — you would have to be read into the program specifically.”
“Ok, got that part,” she said. “So what’s the problem? Aering has all kinds of contracts with the military and intelligence agencies in addition to NASA. Maybe Bronze Knot is a part of some other mission?”
DePresti laughed. “Oh, that might be possible, but there’s no way that it was in the environment, or even in the same network.”
“Why?”
“SAP data needs to be on its own enclosed network,” he explained. “There’s no way anyone would let it be on an unclassified network. In addition, SAP data needs to be in a SCIF or SAPF.”
“What are those?”
“SCIF is Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, SAPF is Special Access Program Facility, but a lot of SAPFs are called SCIFs,” DePresti answered. “Data classified at that level needs to be in a certified facility, it’s not stuff you can take home. It’s why you’ll never see me with anything from work like you have the VR stuff on my gaming PC. Almost everything I do in the office is classified.”
She thought for a second. “What does Bronze Knot mean?” Parkowski asked. “It was mentioned in the logs of my first mission, in particular with some of the packets traveling around the same time I saw the ‘dragon,’ but without any mention of a special access program.”
He shook his head. “That’s the program name, but it’s not one I’m familiar with. And if it’s in the logs, then in theory it would be connected to your mission somehow. But, to the best of my knowledge, NASA doesn't have any SAPs. They are a purely civilian agency.”
“Any idea as to what the name means?”
“No,” DePresti replied.
“There was another error message too,” Parkowski continued quickly, reciting from memory. “Error, Special Access Program — Bronze Knot. Special Access Required. You do not possess TS//SAR-BKT credentials.” She spelled out each of the acronyms.
DePresti frowned. “That’s worse because you don’t have a Top Secret clearance, and that’s a huge security violation if you saw anything Top Secret.”
“But what did I see that is Top Secret?”
“I have no clue. That’s why it’s hard to believe what you say you saw,” he said carefully.
“I saw what I saw,” she replied, a hint of anger in her voice.
“No, I’m not saying you didn’t see that,” he said quickly. “But, there’s no way that Top Secret and SAP data was on the VR environment’s network. It would be a huge security violation and Aering is smart enough not to do that. There has to be another explanation.”
“I saw what I saw,” Parkowski repeated. She took a breath and finally took another bite of her food. “Why would someone code an error message to display that?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
They ate, both of them deep in thought.
“Could there be a data spill?” Parkowski wondered aloud. “Could something from a higher-level network or computer get into the Venus environment?”
“Not likely,” DePresti replied. “Most SAP networks are air-gapped — they aren’t connected to any other network. And if they are connected, there are multiple security layers, protected by NSA-approved guards. Those prevent Top Secret data tagged as a SAP from going to a lower level, either Secret or Unclassified.”
He finished his beer and got up to get another one. “You know, I’ve never heard of Bronze Knot,” DePresti said as he opened the cap, “but there was a program called Bronze Crow that was run during the Cold War.”
“A special access program?”
“Yeah.”
“What was it about?”
The Space Force captain laughed. “Well, I’ve never been read into it, but from my understanding, it was a program to let U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots fly American jets against foreign-built equipment.”
Parkowski frowned. “While I get why that would be a special program, that has nothing to do with what I do at Aering or the ILIAD mission.”
DePresti took a long sip of his beer and then smiled at her. “I know, the whole thing doesn’t make sense. I’ve never worked with any program with ‘Bronze’ as part of the codename. But I will say that most of the codenames are randomly generated for security. They usually have nothing to do with the actual program information that they are protecting.”
“So, Bronze Knot is meaningless.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” DePresti said.
“You wouldn’t tell me even if you did know,” Parkowski said, teasing him.
He laughed, and then his face turned serious. “Grace, even if I did know, I’d at least give you something, anything that would help alleviate your concerns but also keep me out of trouble. But, I do like my clearance.”
She didn’t say anything. This whole thing ate away at the back of her mind. She had to know why this last mission had gone the way it did, despite her best efforts.
“Have you asked anyone at work about it?” DePresti asked.
“Nope,” Parkowski said. “I wanted to avoid that, but I think I have to. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“It does. Now, can you get me a beer?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Parkowski cracked open her energy drink and logged into the internal Aering network.
She and DePresti had had a late night.
They had gotten up at six. DePresti looked no worse for the wear, but Parkowski was exhausted. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Thankfully, it was a slow day, so she could manage.