“Why did they abandon it?” Parkowski asked.
He shrugged. “Those birds are processed at Astrotech down the road,” DePresti explained. “I think the facilities here are so specialized that it’d cost too much to refurbish them for another purpose or to support another mission, so they just left them in place.”
Even in the dark, Parkowski could tell that the buildings had seen better days. Part of the roof of one of the smaller office buildings was falling off, probably damaged from a hurricane, and she spotted a hole in the garage. Regardless, the vehicles, mostly small SUVs or large sedans with a pair of pickup trucks rounding out the group, were all less than a few years old.
She stood and tried to relax while DePresti started trying to open up the cars and get the keys, which he told her were always kept in the glove compartment.
He wasn’t having much luck.
“Fuck,” DePresti said after his third failure. “I was here less than a year ago, and all of these were unlocked. It was an open secret on base; you need a GOV, you take the right just before the NASA Parkway and take that road all of the way up until you come here.”
“I wonder if some policy changed,” Parkowski said, finding a seat on a concrete block and sitting down. “Or if someone got in trouble.”
DePresti didn’t respond. Instead, he kept trying to open car doors. Eventually, he ran out of options. “Well, shit,” he said. “There goes that plan.”
“Maybe they moved the keys inside one of these buildings?” Parkowski suggested.
He looked like he was going to angrily reject her idea, but then nodded. “Go look, I’ll keep trying.”
Parkowski swung herself off of the concrete block and walked over to the garage-like building.
The door was locked, but Parkowski was able to see through a small window next to it. In the darkness, she could see the building was just one room and it was completely empty. There was some serious water damage on the floor.
No keys in there.
The next closest building was one of the high bays.
Parkowski pushed her tired legs forward to the tall building.
There must have been a cloud over the moon, obscuring some of its reflected light, because as the Aering engineer walked towards the structure it was bathed in light.
She felt a pang of sadness as she saw an American flag painted on its side near the top, half of the stripes faded away and the rest hanging on by a thread. It didn’t seem like anyone had been in the high bay in years.
Her eyes skipped to some writing above the American flag. “SPACE AND MISSILES SYSTEM CENTER PROCESSING FACILITY A98.”
Parkowski’s heart skipped a beat.
A98.
The same numbering scheme they had seen on the packets in the secure room in Hangar AZ. In fact, just one number off from the building they were looking for.
This story wasn’t over yet.
“Mike,” Parkowski said.
“What?” DePresti yelled while he tried to yank a sedan door open.
“I think you need to take a look at this.”
He grunted and stepped away from the GOV. “What do I need to look at?”
Parkowski wished she had a light as she pointed a finger at the top of the building. “What do you see?”
“I see that it’s a processing facility run by SMC.”
She wanted to slap him. “Keep reading.”
“…A98. What’s so important about that?”
Parkowski did slap him. “Idiot!” she said loudly. “Don’t you remember your network decoder ring from back in Hangar AZ?”
“Yeah.”
“The Bronze Knot data was coming from A99. Maybe it’s one of the other buildings here.”
“Shit, I forgot,” DePresti said, scratching his head. “Are the other buildings numbered?”
Parkowski did a quick check of the garage. B16. “Yeah, and in the same scheme.”
DePresti walked off to check the office buildings while Parkowski strode over to the other high bay, located at the other side of the parking lot from A98.
The building was in even worse shape than the others. The paint was falling off in chunks from the humid Florida air, and the front door looked like it was barely hanging on, although Parkowski saw a second, more secure door past it.
It didn’t have an American flag, but it did have a military logo with writing at the bottom. Parkowski squinted to read it. “SPACE & MISSILES SYSTEMS CENTER.”
“That’s the old SMC logo before it became Space Systems Command,” DePresti said, walking next to her and putting an arm over her shoulders. “But that changed over about five-ish years ago. I guess no one has gotten around to updating it.”
“Mike, I don’t think anyone has been in these buildings in fifteen years,” she responded. “Look how beat up it is.”
“That’s what a dozen tropical storms and hurricanes a year will do,” the Space Force captain said. “I don’t see a building number, do you?”
Parkowski shook her head and stepped closer, almost to the front of the building. Her boyfriend followed her.
On the caved-in metal door she saw in faded letters “A99.”
“This is it,” she said, breathing heavily with excitement. “A99.”
DePresti looked confused. “There’s no way,” he said. “There were active packets coming from a machine into Hangar AZ. This building is abandoned. I don’t even know if it has power.”
“So either your ‘decoder ring’ for the IP addresses was wrong…” Parkowski’s voice trailed off.
“Or there’s something going on inside,” DePresti finished. He took another step forward. “Wait a sec.” He cupped his hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Parkowski asked, crossing her arms in front of her.
“There’s a humming sound,” DePresti said, pointing to the side of the building. “I’m going to go check it out.”
With a sliver of hope, Parkowski followed him.
About five feet from the dilapidated side of the building was a green electrical box. DePresti walked up to it. “Do you hear it now?”
She did. It was a low-frequency hum and had to be coming from the box. “I do.”
“That’s active,” her boyfriend said. “That building has power.”
Parkowski was skeptical but held her tongue.
“Let’s see if we can find a way in. Maybe they’re using a small part of it for something and decided to stash all of the keys to the GOVs there as a security measure.”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
Parkowski followed DePresti around the building, looking for an easy way in.
On the far side of the electrical box, facing a small stand of large oak trees, was a metal door. It looked newer than the doors on the front and had no peeling paint.
It also had a massive padlock that prevented them from getting into the building.
Her heart sank while DePresti snorted a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“If they’re using a low-tech lock, we can get in,” her boyfriend responded. “A padlock like that can be broken. Come on, let’s go get one of those cinder blocks from the parking lot and see if we can’t break it.”
A minute later DePresti slammed the cinder block onto the padlock.
“Oof,” he said, dropping the block with a slam. “That’s harder than it looks.”
“Can I try?” Parkowski asked.
He nodded and stepped back. “Be my guest.”
Parkowski picked it up. It had to be at least thirty or forty pounds.
She raised it to shoulder height and paused. Then, Parkowski let the force of gravity do the work, unlike her boyfriend who had tried to brute-force it and smashed the cinder block into the top of the padlock.
It fell to the ground with a metallic clang.
“Work harder, not smarter,” she said quietly to herself as her boyfriend clapped his hand on her shoulder in celebration.