“Ok,” Chang said, turning his chair around and sitting in it backwards facing them. “Let’s go through a thought exercise. What do our opponents — whoever they might be — fear the most?”
“I think that’s fairly obvious,” Parkowski said quickly, looking over at DePresti who nodded. “They want to protect Bronze Knot at all costs.”
“Precisely,” Chang said. He turned to DePresti. “Are there more like her out there?”
DePresti ignored him. “So, they want to keep Bronze Knot and whatever is behind it a secret,” he said. “I get that part. But how does that help us?”
“It’s simple in concept, but the execution is going to be much more difficult,” Chang said. “The two of you, with help from me now that you’ve dragged me into this, need to figure out what Bronze Knot is.”
DePresti laughed. “Oh sure, we couldn’t figure it out once Grace had physical access to the ILIAD networks and I was able to get on base to get into all of the SAP stuff, what makes you think we can do it now, on the run, with limited resources?”
“Well, before, you didn’t have me,” Chang said. “And Mike, you know me well enough by now, if there’s something out there I can get my hands on it. I wouldn’t say you have limited resources, just different.”
“So what do we do, just hang out here and try to put our brains together to solve the mystery?” Parkowski asked.
“Maybe some of that,” Chang said, “but we’re going to have to move too. You can’t be a fixed target.”
“Are you sure that you want in?” DePresti asked him. “I mean, we kind of forced ourselves on you here. If you want us to leave, we can. Grace’s shoulder isn’t going to kill her.”
“No, I’m in,” Chang said firmly.
“So what is our next step?” Parkowski asked, hopeful that they might be finally taking the initiative from their mysterious enemies.
Chang held up a finger and then stepped out into the hallway. “Be right back,” he said.
Moments later he reappeared, dragging a large whiteboard on wheels behind him. “We need to get all of our data points, all of our pieces of the puzzle, down on this. I’m an engineer like the two of you, even though I went to the far superior MIT rather than your respective trade schools, and if there’s anything we like to do, it’s write stuff down on chalkboards and whiteboards.”
“Oh, man, I always wanted one,” DePresti said as he stood up. “I think I need to get one now if this ever all blows over.”
“When it all blows over,” Chang corrected. He went into his jeans pocket, fished out a dry-erase marker, and handed it to Parkowski. “Draw a line in the middle,” he told her, “then on the right side I want the architecture for the entire ILIAD mission.”
“The whole thing?” she asked as she got out of her chair.
Chang nodded. “The whole thing.”
Pointing at the left side of the whiteboard, he said, “And here we’ll put down all of the Bronze Knot data points that don’t go on there.”
Parkowski shrugged. “This sounds as good as any place to start.”
It ended up taking them all morning. The ibuprofen had worn off so Parkowski popped some more.
The whiteboard was full.
The right side of the board had a diagram of how data flowed between the ACHILLES robots, the ILIAD relay satellite, the L2 relay, and MICS, down to White Sands to the environment hosted in Orlando and back to the mission control center in Aering’s facility in El Segundo. The narrowband command path and wideband return path were both noted with arrows indicating direction.
The left side was a jumble of random notes and scribbles.
It was lunchtime. They ate quickly and went back down into Chang’s office space. Now, it was time to see if there were any weak points in the Bronze Knot chain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
An hour later, Parkowski stared at the whiteboard.
“Either they’re all weak spots, or none of them are,” she said. “I don’t know how we can get back into Aering, Orlando’s on the other side of the country, and I can’t see us gaining access to White Sands. All of them are bad options for our next step.”
She needed another ibuprofen, and not just for her shoulder anymore. All of this made her head hurt.
DePresti held up a finger. “Can I add something to the diagram?” he asked.
“Go for it,” Chang said. He had gotten another vape pen and was going to town. His eyes were red, and Parkowski figured he was pretty baked at this point.
DePresti got up and grabbed a red marker. “We’re missing part of the architecture,” he said, “or at least how I’ve been taught to understand the architecture of an integrated system.” He drew a Shrike Heavy rocket on the side of the diagram where all of the Earth-based segments were located.
“The launch segment should be represented too,” DePresti said. “It’s not a part of the current architecture, sure, but it’s necessary for the rest of the mission to happen.”
Parkowski slowly got up.
“I’m going to get some more painkillers,” she told the two men, “but first I want to add something too.”
She drew a large oval on the diagram, then connected it to the hosted VR environment in Orlando and the Aering facility.
Inside of the oval she wrote “Panspermia Game Studios.”
“They’re the ones who created the whole environment,” Parkowski told Chang and DePresti. “And they still have links to Aering. They’re in LA County, even, located in Pasadena by JPL.”
“How do you know that?” Chang asked. “The second part.”
“Because when I was figuring out the dragon bullshit, Pham had a reachback to one of their developers,” Parkowski explained. “Whoever he talked to confirmed that the dragon was accidentally compiled into the ILIAD environment and appeared by accident. Panspermia is likely still supporting the mission.”
“If there even still is a mission,” DePresti said. “I thought Rosen shut everything down.”
“He did,” Parkowski admitted. “But that doesn’t change anything for us. If we want to have the power to get them to stop them from trying to kill us, we have to figure out what Bronze Knot is protecting.” She took a short breath. “Come on, you guys are both acquisitions people. The contract with the prime isn’t going to magically end just because an Aering senior engineer says it does. It will probably run through the end of the ILIAD mission in six months, plus probably another six months after that. They might not be as invested if we’re not currently running missions in the environment, but they should still have some people supporting it.”
DePresti nodded. “Ok, makes sense.”
Chang stood up. “So, which segment do we target first?” he asked.
DePresti pointed at the rocket he had recently drawn. “I vote OuterTek. I know them intimately, I spent years working in their facility, and I think we can get some information out of them that we won’t out of any of the other players. The launch team has to know everything about the payload — RF frequencies that it’s sensitive to, shock environments, software interfaces, et cetera. OuterTek maintains all of that information in huge databases that anyone with access to their internal networks can get into.”
“And you can get into those networks?” Parkowski asked.
“Yes, but I think I can only do that from on-site,” he answered. “My VPN access is no longer valid, but I’ve heard that they keep user accounts around for far longer than they have to.”
“Not the worst idea in the world,” Chang said, “but I’ve got a different solution.”