It was Dr. Pham.
She opened the door and smiled. “Hey, boss.”
He gave a smile back. “Grace, you’re not sick, are you?”
“Not physically,” Parkowski explained. “But I’m not in the right mental state to go to work today. I hope you understand.”
Pham nodded. “I do, I’ve been there. When Rachel told me that you had called her and told her you weren’t coming in I got worried. So I cleared my calendar and drove up.”
“You drove up to see me?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Because there’s definitely something wrong, Grace,” the older man said. “A normal person doesn’t leave work in a huff after a successful mission.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Can I come in and we can chat?” Pham asked.
Parkowski nodded and let him into her apartment.
She made herself and Pham cups of coffee and they sat down on the couch and easy chair in the living room to talk.
It was nice to feel like there were people out there who cared about her, despite the funk she was in. DePresti cared too, he had blown up her phone all weekend but she had ignored him. Parkowski wasn’t ready to deal with him yet.
She didn’t start at the beginning; there were details of her investigation that she wanted to keep secret from her boss. Instead, Parkowski started with the mission yesterday, going more-or-less through the mission in detail. Pham asked a few questions but mostly let her talk.
“Grace, you did a great job on your last mission,” the senior Aering engineer said. “What you were able to do with the leg actuator control system, I’m not sure any of our other engineers could have pulled off.”
“Thanks,” Parkowski said with a slight smile — all she could manage that morning.
“To be honest, you’ve done a great job overall with all of your missions,” he continued. “You’ve had to deal with the dragon nonsense and multiple communications upsets. Most of the operators haven’t dealt with a fraction of that. I have nothing but good things to say, and so does the management team.”
“About that,” she said, slightly changing the subject. “Dr. Rosen was acting odd yesterday.”
“I noticed that,” he said in agreement. “But then again, so were you.”
Parkowski put her head in her hands. “It’s that stupid Bronze Knot crap,” she told her boss, finally admitting the source of her issues to him. “And then I got in a fight with Mike last night and I don’t know how to fix it and—”
“Grace, this probably isn’t what you want to hear,” Pham said carefully, “but in this business, there are just things that might not be explained.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because in the space world, so much of what we do, even on the unclassified side, is connected to the classified world,” he explained to her. “And that side is a web of lies and deceit and cover stories, and any time you think you have a handle on it, you learn a new piece of information that will throw you for a loop.”
He leaned forward. “Did I ever tell you what I did before I worked for Aering?”
“No.”
“I worked for the CIA.”
“You did?” she asked in disbelief.
Pham nodded. “Not as a secret agent or anything like that. I was an engineer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, working on classified space systems both at the NRO and back at headquarters in Langley. Not what you think of when you think ‘CIA,’ but it was a great job.”
“What got you out here?” Parkowski asked.
“I got tired of the secrecy,” Pham said in reply. “Without getting myself in trouble, I can tell you I was working on counterspace systems — different technologies and whatnot that protect American and allied satellites from enemy threats, mostly Russian and Chinese. Most of the intelligence that I had to work from was compartmented, held at the highest levels in the intelligence community and DOD. And to be honest, Grace, it was awful. I had to design and architect solutions without having all of the right assumptions. The only way I knew if I was doing something wrong was if the operators, most of whom were read in, told me I was wrong, or God forbid we got into a war that extended into space and we started losing on-orbit assets.”
“That does sound awful,” Parkowski agreed. “It’s an engineer’s worst nightmare, not being able to prove your answer is correct, either analytically or experimentally.”
“So I finally got fed up,” Pham continued with a nod, “and Gus is originally from the West Coast, so I reached out to my contacts out here and got a job lined up. That was over fifteen years ago. And I’ve never looked back.”
He took a deep breath. “Why am I telling you all of this? Because sometimes it’s just the way that it is. And it sucks, not knowing everything, but there’s nothing you or I can do about that, so why worry?”
She now saw why he was telling her all of this. Maybe he, and by association DePresti, was right. But then again, maybe they were both too far in to be able to see the problem holistically.
He gave her an odd look. “You’re not going to stop looking into it, are you?”
Parkowski shook her head.
“Can you at least try to not let it impact the rest of your life then?” Pham asked. “Mike is a good guy, and I’m sorry that you feel like he isn’t listening to your concerns, but maybe it’s not a topic the two of you can discuss. My husband and I have some that are off-limits, maybe this should be one for the two of you.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like he should be helping me figure this out, but he’s almost afraid to try.”
“There’s a line in the black project community, which if I understand correctly he’s a part of: don’t speculate on what you don’t know. He probably doesn’t want to get you, or him, in trouble.”
Parkowski thought back to the near-miss outside of the secure room. “I guess that makes sense.”
“And don’t let it impact your work either,” Pham continued. “Grace, I can’t say it enough, but you’re doing great. You’re one of our youngest operators but you’ve done amazing work and are lining yourself up for a promotion.”
He cleared his throat. “And, if it becomes necessary for you to be read into any special programs or for you to upgrade your clearance in order to do your job as an ACHILLES operator, I promise I will make it happen. Unfortunately, right now, I can’t justify that need-to-know.”
She nodded.
Pham sprung up from his chair. “I almost forgot,” he said, walking around her apartment, “the other reason I came.”
“What is it?”
“Mohammed had to fly home to Michigan today, his dad is in the hospital. He’s scheduled to run through a mission tomorrow at ten, the first mission of the day, but he’s not going to make it. You’re the first alternate and I decided to talk about it with you in person, to make sure you’re ready to go.”
Parkowski’s phone buzzed. It was DePresti again. She turned it face-down on the table.
Maybe the tides had turned. The last mission had gone well and without any anomalies. She might be back on track.
Parkowski turned to Pham. “Yeah, I can do it.”
“Great,” he said. “Come in early tomorrow, at around seven or seven-thirty, and we can do our planning.”
She smiled and walked her boss to the door.
“Thanks for stopping by,” Parkowski said.
“No problem, just wanted to make sure you’re ok,” said Pham.
Parkowski spent the rest of the day watching TV and relaxing on her couch. But that night, she couldn’t sleep.
She finally fell asleep at two AM and was still tired when her alarm woke her up at six.
But she didn’t have a choice.
Despite everything on her mind, it was time for her to go back to Venus.