The
steam from the shower flooded the living room. She never liked wearing
envirosuits. After only a few minutes of activity they left anyone hot and
sweaty. Veronica emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her
torso and her hair wrapped in another.
She
sat on the hard couch in her executive suite and grabbed her phone. She flipped
through the recent news articles, many of them on the recent upcoming CST
senate elections or on KyotoTech's upcoming launch of the subspace gates. She
sipped on a glass of imported wine that she had poured hours earlier. It's
grape flavors now soured by vinegary oxidation. She continued to sip on the
wine despite its new flavors, for the bottle was too expensive for her
conscience to leave any of it undrunk.
She
had been working for JADE Propulsion Industries as a security and intellectual
property protection director for the past nine years, of which the last three
have been here on Amalthea. Most of this work entailed dealing with corporate
hackers or spies. She had been transferred from JADE's headquarters on Earth to
the Amalthea facility after the company decided to move production of its new
jump drives here. But now, if the news on her phone was indication, was going
to be out of a job very soon. She didn't worry too much. Many companies would
relish in acquiring the security director of a competitor, but JADE, or what
would be left of it, would stop at nothing to see that an acquisition never
happened.
All
of the large companies in the solar system had and hand or two in the pockets
of many of the elected officials part of the Collective Senate of Territories.
If so inclined, they could easily have a black mark put on her record,
effectively barring her from any future employment opportunities in a position
as luxurious as she currently held. So for now, she would continue to do her
best until the bitter end, where she hopes she is let go from a company no
longer big enough to have their hands in the politicians bank accounts.
Veronica
gulped down the last bit of wine and sat back on the couch with the glass still
in her hand. Maybe I could find some work
on Enceladus. She delivered a small smile to no one. Maybe find a nice rancher and retire there. Who knows, maybe I'm not
too old to have kids. She laughed at the notion and immediately dismissed
it as she leant forward to set the empty wine glass on to the small coffee
table.
As
if on cue, when the wine glass lightly clinked onto the table, Veronica's phone
next to it lit up with a stark red alert. "SECURITY ALERT: BUILDING 37,
FLOOR 11" Veronica popped the alert and a hologram began to generate a
conference screen.
"Voice
only!" She quickly said, just re-membering she had nothing but the towel
from the shower on.
"Security
Station eleven here." a gruff voice from the other end of the connection
called.
"It's
Veronica what's the problem?" she said standing up with the phone in her
hand. She moved into her bedroom, threw the towel on the bed and started
hurriedly to put on clothes.
"Ma'am,
we caught on security footage two people who look to be in an argument. One of
them looks like to be Dr. Manelski. We're not sure who the other girl is
though."
"Damn
it." She exhaled loudly under her breath. "Is she wearing a red
envirosuit?"
"Affirmative."
Veronica
pulled up the pair of security pants and began to buckle the belt. "Get
two men down there at the door to the shop. Don't let them go in without me,
but don't let the others out of the machine shop either. I'll be there in five
minutes." She ordered.
"Yes,
Ma'am."
"Anything
else I should know?"
The
man at the security terminal paused. "Uh, well when we noticed this
developing we started to go through some of our logs of data. They're in a
corner of the room that our mics can't pick them up, but we did find something
odd."
"What
was it?" she said as she started tying her shoes.
"Well,
it looks like we had a data breach in the past two hours. It found a back door
to our systems and looks like it accessed our network and took some information.
We're not sure what yet, but we tracked the breach to a device in the machine
shop. Nobody else was in there except those two when it happened."
"Damn
it." she said, this time much more audibly. The background check said I could trust her. Veronica grabbed the
bolt pistol and holster from on top of the wardrobe and slung it over her
shoulder and around her waist. "Do not let any one out of that room, do
you hear me?" she said sternly at the phone.
"Yes,
Ma'am." The voice replied and she swiped the conversation away.
She
pulled the bolt pistol out of the holster and slid a magazine into it and
loaded the weapon. She slid the pistol back into its home and grabbed a jacket
to conceal it as she walked out of her suite. Once in the hallway she made her
way towards Building 39, her still wet black hair clinging to her face and
whipping the back of her neck as she ran. This
is not going to help me get out of this place.
After
a run and an elevator ride, Veronica was in the hallway just outside the
machine shop. Two guards in their silver and green uniforms stood outside the
door. One of them had his ear pressed against the door trying to listen to what
was happening on the other side.
"What
do you have to report." Veronica said quietly to the guard listening.
"It's
hard to tell, I can't hear much through the sound proofing. You think there
wasn't any with the racket the machines normally make." His joke fell flat
as Veronica delivered him a serious look. He shook his head to recompose
himself before continuing. "The only thing that I can say for sure is that
one of them wants to take something out of here, and the other doesn't want
them too."
"They've
started to move in the last minute or two, sounds like they're getting closer
to the door." the other guard said as she held her bolt pistol in her
hand.
Veronica
straightened out her jacket that was wrinkled up on her run. "Ok, I'm
going to go in there. I want you to stay here just in case. I don't want
anything rash to happen. JADE already has enough bad press at the moment, we
don't want to add a dead GUTS technician to the fire." She attempted to do
something with her still damp hair, but
quickly gave up. She motioned the guards over to their positions out of sight
and opened up the machine shop door.
The
dialog inside the machine shop stopped when the door slid open. James turned to
his head while still keeping the hammer above it. Sophia stood there with her
arms outstretched in front of her preparing to repel and attack.
Veronica
slowly walked into the room with her hands at her sides. Her footsteps were the
only think that spoke, saying that she was very unhappy.
Obviously
it was James who broke the silence first. "She... she has somethi-"
"Oh
shut the hell up James." Veronica barked. "What the hell is the
meaning of all of this?"
"She
has an AI! She found it in the bot!"
"What
does that have to do with all of this then?" Veronica questioned.
"It's
in her phone. She connected it to the network and stole our data."
Sophia
finally stepped in. "That's not true!" she said loudly.
"But
I saw it! It hacked in and now she's trying to leave with it!"
"Liar!
I only did what I came here to do."
"Quiet
you two." Veronica sternly ordered. She put a hand on her head and rubbed
her temples. "Sophia, let's just make this easy. Just come with me. We
have the evidence that a breech occurred and we tracked it to your phone."
"What?"
Sophia replied in shock.
"Just
leave your things and come with me. The sooner we get this started the sooner
it'll be over." She politely pleaded. "If we start now, you'll
probably be able to go in the next few days."
Sophia
had a look of disgust towards the two. "I never did anything. I never
would do anything."
"It's
all on her phone! If you get her phone you'll find the stolen data!" James
interrupted.
Sophia
took a step back and put a hand on her bag where her phone was.
"Just
hand over the phone and we can get this all over with." Veronica put out
her hand, hoping it would be that easy but not expecting it.
"No."
Sophia said as she took another step back. "I'm not a criminal. I didn't
do anything!"
Veronica
sighed and shook her head. She reached in under the jacket and produced the
bolt pistol. "Come on, just hand it over." All the politeness from
before now replaced by anger and demand.
What
happened next nobody had expected. All the lights on the eleventh floor
suddenly shut off and they were left in nearly complete darkness. A second
later there was the sound of feet shuffling and moving. From the darkness there
was a small crash followed by a great noise was made which sounded like two
giant rocks colliding. That noise was immediately greeted by another immense
sound, a loud pop and sizzle of a bolt pistol discharging accompanied by the
bright blue flash of the plasma bullet. A beat later, the few emergency lights
flicked on.
The
machine shop was now just barely lit. The dull light revealed Veronica with the
bolt pistol in her outstretch arm and a presumably dead Dr. Manelski on the floor
next to the mass reactor hammer he had
been holding, which was now firmly stuck to the floor. She moved her finger to
a switch forward of the trigger on the gun and flip it up, producing a cone of
light from the attached tactical flashlight. Veronica's eyes scanned the dim
room. There was no sight of Sophia to be seen anywhere.
She
moved slowly around the shop with her pistol elevated, her eyes darting to
every shadow checking for Sophia. She heard a noise over her shoulder and
turned a half revolution to be pointed towards the noise. In the doorway to the
machine shop stood the two guards from before.
"She's
in here somewhere! Find her!" Veronica ordered. The two guards switched on
the flashlights attached to their pistols and began to move through the machine
shop. The cones of light from the three of them slid and bounced around the
room as they moved through it.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
"Keep
moving. She's hiding someplace."
They
moved quickly towards the back of the room until they were left at the foot of
the broken bot Sophia was called to this place to repair. Veronica looked down
and saw that there was nobody there. Veronica relaxed her grip on the pistol
and stood up straight from her slightly crouched tactical position. Where could she have gone? She scanned
the room. There were two ways out of shop, one was through the door at the
front and the other was through the levilift canal. The two guards regrouped on
her to and reported they also found nothing.
"She
must have sneaked by us. You two, make sure she didn't get out through the
canal. I'll back track through the front door and make sure she didn't get out
that way."
The
two guards began running towards the canal when she turned and started her run
towards the machine shop entrance. Damn.
And to think I felt bad for you in the car earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment