That’s what was in the rest of the drawers — junk from the Shrike Heavy launch. Launch notebooks, remove-before-flight tags, tools and hardware, press pamphlets and scripts, it was all there. This was where the local Space Force team, who must have been in on the Bronze Knot deception, stored everything after the rocket went up.
Thankfully for Parkowski and DePresti, that included the GOV keys and the smartphones.
Parkowski took one of the phones out of its box and plugged it in. She got lucky again. Not only did the phone boot up on its first try, there was no passcode. And, to top it off, the phone had service, getting three bars from a nearby cell tower.
She waited for the phone to get about a quarter-charged and then removed it from the charging cable.
Parkowski then went to the area of the high bay that the payload and flatsat were in. She took dozens of pictures, showing the payload stack from every possible angle, as well as the flatsat and server racks
The Aering engineer then recorded a short video explaining the situation and why it was important, especially to her.
Afterward, she looked at her image on the phone’s screen and frowned. Parkowski looked like hell. Granted, she had been through the most grueling, both mentally and physically, stretch of her life in the last six hours or so. But the payoff had been worth it.
She uploaded the video and images to three different cloud locations and then shut off the phone.
“I wish we still had that waterproof pack,” Parkowski said to her boyfriend.
He shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
They then left the building.
The moon shone directly overhead and the sky was clear. Despite the lack of light, Parkowski's eyes adjusted easily to the conditions.
DePresti clicked the key’s “lock” button until they found the car he had chosen, a late-model Hyundai sedan.
Parkowski got in the passenger’s seat. Her legs felt like jelly. She was not ready for a long swim, but she didn’t have much of a choice.
There were no other cars on the Cape roads. Parkowski wasn’t sure if that was by design — was someone letting them escape — or just because it was the middle of the night. The sedan’s clock read twelve forty-five. When this was over, she needed a full day’s worth of sleep. It would probably be weeks before she recovered from all of this.
DePresti drove carefully on the side streets to the main north-south thoroughfares. They were less lit, but in theory, had fewer cars on them. They didn’t see a single one.
They came to the eastern edge of the installation. DePresti pulled over to the side of the road and got out, followed shortly after by Parkowski.
Their gear was there, and didn’t look like it had been touched. They helped each other get their scuba equipment on, then walked carefully to the edge of the water. It was low tide now, the small waves slowly lapping up against the shore. Parkowski waded out slowly in her flippers behind her boyfriend before diving into the three-foot water.
Thankfully they had brought snorkels in addition to their now-empty tanks. Parkowski swam slowly on the surface, her flippers helping slightly but also making her tired leg muscles burn.
DePresti didn’t seem as affected though, and if he was, he didn’t show it. He just kept swimming at a steady pace.
At the halfway point, they paused. Parkowski wasn’t sure she was going to make it. She gulped for air and her muscles felt like jelly. But the speedboat, their end goal, was in sight. It slowly rocked back and forth with the ocean less than a mile away.
“Are you ok?” her boyfriend asked.
Parkowski nodded. “I think so.”
“Let me know if you can’t make it,” he said. He was panting too. “I can go to the boat myself and swing back to pick you up.”
“No, I can make it,” she said defiantly. Parkowski wasn’t going to give up now when the end of the physical ordeal was so close.
Parkowski dug deep within her and pushed off swimming again. She swam in a breaststroke, save for a few pathetic attempts at an overhead freestyle stroke, and her arms were just as exhausted as her legs now.
The boat got closer and closer. Her body wouldn’t give up now.
Finally, she reached it. DePresti helped her get on deck and they removed each other’s equipment. Their clothes were soaked — they had worn them under their wetsuits — and dried slowly in the damp Florida air.
Parkowski lay down on the speedboat’s stern as DePresti pulled up and stowed the anchor.
Then, they headed back to the rental shop where they had gotten the boat from.
She finally caught her breath about two-thirds of the way there. “How can you even stand?” she asked her boyfriend.
DePresti chuckled. “If the military has taught me anything, it’s to stand for long periods of time,” he said in response. “We used to have noon meal formations at the Academy that lasted for hours. I’m just as tired as you are, just as exhausted, but I have more experience with it.”
And what an experience it had been.
If someone had told her a few months ago that she would be fleeing a secure government facility after uncovering a secret worth killing for, Parkowski would have laughed in their face. Now, she had just escaped Cape Canaveral, with evidence that would prove to the world that the ILIAD mission was a sham, a lie.
There was time for that later. Now, they needed to get back to the safety of shore and get back to Chang’s resource-rich compound in California. From there they would plan their next move.
As expected, there was no one at the dock when DePresti pulled the rented speedboat in. He tied it up with a few knots and helped Parkowski get out and onto the wooden structure.
She took a few unsteady steps before getting comfortable.
DePresti gave her a look but she waved him off. She was fine.
He shrugged and dropped the keys into a drop box, then took the Chevy’s keys out of his pocket. How he had kept that through everything they had been through Parkowski would never know, but he had them.
They got into the truck and drove back up A1A to their motel.
Parkowski and DePresti walked into their room and changed into dry clothes, then collapsed onto their respective beds.
The two of them slept until one PM the next day.
Parkowski woke up with her muscles more sore than they had ever been in her life. It was like she had played an entire season’s worth of soccer games in a twenty-four hour period.
She groaned and willed herself out of bed.
After popping a few painkillers and eating some snacks, Parkowski felt a little better.
DePresti snored away in a deep sleep. If history was any indication he wouldn’t be up for a few hours.
Parkowski grabbed a water bottle and some more snacks and turned on the TV, keeping the volume low so her boyfriend could sleep.
She tried a few different channels before settling on a cable news channel.
None of the news was good — South Africa was on its way to a civil war, an earthquake had struck Chile, and America’s internal politics were just as messed up as they always had been. Parkowski watched for a few minutes and was about to turn it off when one of the stories crossing the news ticker at the bottom of the screen caught her eye.
NASA MISSION FAILS, LOST CONTACT WITH INTERPLANETARY PROBE.
She snorted and put the remote down.
A few minutes later, after a commercial break, the cable news network had the story.
NASA had held a press conference that morning while they slept, announcing that they had lost contact with the ILIAD mission on Venus. Both of the ACHILLES units were not responding to commands sent from the ground. The prime contractor, Aering, and NASA were jointly troubleshooting the issue but had no expected response.