“Intelligence community?”
“The CIA, NSA, DIA, all of the intelligence agencies, together they make the intelligence community, or IC,” DePresti continued. “All of their activities fall under U.S. Code Title 50, the military is under Title 10, which makes a mess sometimes but we deal with it.
“Anyways, I never thought of looking on JWICS. It’s not a SAP network, it contains SCI information, which is kind of a SAP, but more importantly, the entire network is searchable. If you’re looking for information on some random Russian military officer or an obscure telephone technology you just type it in like you search on Google and go.”
He finished his second beer and went to get a third. Parkowski thought about saying something, but decided against it. She’d just buy her roommate another six-pack.
“So I searched for Bronze Knot, and as expected found next to nothing,” DePresti said as he sat back down. “But I remembered you gave me the trigraph.”
“That what?”
“The three letters that represent the SAP in shorthand,” the Space Force captain said. “Don’t worry too much about it. Your error message said TS//SAR-BKT, the BKT refers to Bronze Knot. They’re almost always three letters.”
DePresti took another sip of his beer. “So then I searched for the trigraph. And Bronze Knot, or more specifically its trigraph, is an intelligence community program.”
Her jaw was on the floor. “No way.”
“Yes,” her boyfriend said. “I found a document, a memorandum of understanding, between the CIA and USSF, signed way back in 2020, promising to share data on deep space sensor feeds. Much of the document was redacted, even at the Top Secret level, and more information could be found in an appendix classified TS//SAR-BKT.”
“But the ILIAD mission is a NASA program, run through Aering as the prime contractor,” Parkowski said, almost in disbelief. “Why would the CIA or Space Force data be in the environment?”
“I have no clue,” DePresti said. “But I’m not finished. Well, almost finished.” He drained his third beer. “There was another hit for BKT — a “BKT Read-In, which was attended by my boss’ boss from back when I was working launch, Colonel Hawke.”
“A read-in?”
“Yeah, where you are formally briefed into a SAP. This seemed like a fairly large one, they were reading a bunch of people into the program at one time, rather than the one-on-ones that I normally get. From what I could gather from the Outlook meeting invite, it was a pretty big meeting. The CIA and FBI were there, along with the Space Force, Navy, and NASA.”
“That’s an odd group,” Parkowski said. The CIA again. That agency kept on popping up in this whole mess.
“It is,” the Space Force captain agreed. “But I couldn’t get an agenda or anything. Just some invitees.”
“You know,” she said quietly. “Dr. Pham was here yesterday, checking in on me.”
DePresti smiled. “I thought he might.”
“Yeah, and he told me in a lot nicer way than you did to stop looking into Bronze Knot,” Parkowski continued. “And told me a really interesting piece of his background.”
“And what would that be?” DePresti asked. He put his beer bottle down and looked at the fridge, but decided against it. He seemed to be having a rough day.
“He used to work for the CIA.”
“No shit.”
“Yup. He was an engineer there before coming out to work for Aering.”
“Like at the NRO? That’s jointly manned, DOD and CIA.”
“Yeah. He said he worked on stuff there, and at the CIA headquarters in Langley. But he got tired of working in a classified environment so he took on an unclassified program out here.”
DePresti laughed loudly. “Grace, I was told something once when I got my Top Secret and was read into SCI. No one ever stops working for the CIA.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, have you ever read the Tom Clancy books? Jack Ryan does one little consulting job for the Agency way back in the early part of the timeline, and then keeps getting pulled back in, until he’s finally a full-time employee working his way up the ranks.”
“No, but that makes sense,” Parkowski said. “In a weird way. They want to keep the people who know all of that classified stuff close in a metaphorical way in case they need them again.”
DePresti nodded. “Or to make sure they don’t spill the beans on what the CIA is actually doing.”
He stood up and stretched. “Grace, you need to confront him.”
“I already have, and he’s told me that he doesn’t know.”
“He knows,” DePresti argued. “At least he knows more than he’s telling you. Grace, I know what Aering does in El Segundo in the classified realm,” he went on. “I know because like I said, I’m read into everything, or at least what I thought was everything. And there’s no SAPs being built at your facility.”
He paused. “Grace, you were right, I was wrong.”
“I forgive you.”
And she meant it.
“I thought you would,” he said with a smile.
“And I’m sorry too,” she said, for all of the overreactions the last few weeks.
He just smiled.
“So what now?”
“Listen, every single thing I’ve been told tells me to let it go, that it’s not worth it,” DePresti said. “But, Grace, believe me when I tell you this. I’m read into fucking everything that has to deal with space. Everything. Because I have to be. Because if I’m not aware of everything going on, I’m making decisions without every piece of information available to me and that could be deadly. I know you joke about my importance at work, but I’m working on the architecture that the country will be fighting space wars with in the future,” he continued. “And if I don’t know what sensors and weapons we have, I could make the wrong decision.
“And, on top of that, I’m just as curious as you are. I want to know what’s going on, especially since it seems like at least some part of it seems to be underhanded.”
“Does that mean you’re in it with me to get to the bottom of this?”
DePresti nodded.
“What do you think our next move should be?” Parkowski asked, in better spirits than she’d been in days. “I’ve been doing this by myself for weeks; it’d be nice to have a fresh set of eyes on it.”
“Agreed,” DePresti said. “Let’s lay it all out.”
They went back to the very beginning, to Parkowski’s first mission in the VR environment, and slowly put the pieces together on a piece of computer paper DePresti took from the apartment’s shared printer.
The two engineers ended up with so many notes and pieces of information that they ended up needing three more pieces after a few hours of brainstorming.
“So what do we have?” DePresti said, rubbing his eyes.
“There exists a special access program called Bronze Knot,” Parkowski responded as she sat up straight on the couch. “It appears to be controlled by the CIA or the Space Force, but we have no hard evidence that is the case.”
“Parts of the network packet on both the narrowband and wideband command pathways are protected by Bronze Knot, but the rest of the telemetry data is unclassified,” DePresti added. “The script trigger that made the dragon appear and attack you is likely connected to that data.”
“Then, there appears to be some kind of data leak,” he said, “or spillage, into the Venus environment that is protected at the same TS//SAP level. That appeared in your second and fourth missions. What caused that, I’m not sure, but likely it’s part of the network guard that filters data between the Top Secret enclave and the unclassified ILIAD one.”
“That network guard, or whatever it is, is located in the secure room that is protected by the cipher lock in the hallway,” she continued. “Along with a whole bunch of other SAP ones and one that is SCI.”