Orbital Disruption Read online

  “I’m expecting a friend, you can send her in when she gets here,” Ruben said to the guard.

  “I believe she’s already arrived, sir,” the guard said. Ruben thought he caught the hint of a smile on the man’s lips.

  “Ah... that’s fine,” Ruben replied.

  The guard had already pressed the button and the gate swung open freely when Ruben pushed through it.

  “Have a nice evening, sir,” the guard said to Ruben as he passed through.

  Ruben just nodded and walked toward pier A. The sun hadn’t yet set but the shadows were getting longer. A cool breeze was still blowing in off the Pacific but it would likely stop soon and switch to a land breeze. He didn’t notice the sun or the breeze, though - he had more interesting plans ahead of him.

  Ruben stepped carefully from the wooden planks of the floating dock to the polished teak stern deck of the Intrepid. He walked up the steps to the main deck and found the sliding glass door that entered the dining room to be half open. Apparently tonight’s escort had indeed arrived early but how had she opened the door? The marina had a set of keys to allow them to perform maintenance but they shouldn’t have let a stranger onto his yacht. He’d need to speak to them in the morning, he thought as he strode through the dining room.

  He didn’t see anyone in the dining room but an elegant black evening jacket with sequins and a matching purse were on a couch in the adjoining lounge. Ruben could feel his pulse racing as he crossed the lounge and pushed open the door to the master stateroom. The first thing he noticed was an open bottle of wine on the side table. The second thing he noticed was her.

  A woman was sitting on the bed, holding a glass of wine, leaning back against the double row of pillows and mirrored headboard. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black dress that terminated midway down her thighs. Her legs were wrapped in patterned black stockings that tapered to black stiletto heels. The light from the setting sun streamed through the round portals on the starboard side, just enough to highlight the jewels on her necklace, a deeply plunging neckline and...

  “Oh, fuck me,” Ruben spat.

  “No thank you,” the woman replied with a chuckle. “That is a job for another girl.”

  “Jesus, Anna. What the hell are you doing on my yacht?” Ruben demanded.

  Anna Ivanov, Chief of Security for Excelsior, swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. She took a sip of wine and then set the glass down next to the bottle.

  “I think the bedroom makes you uncomfortable, no? Let us go out and have a little talk.”

  Ruben said nothing but followed Anna as she left the stateroom and returned to the lounge. He noticed that she was wearing a strong perfume. He also noticed that with her high heels she stood nearly as tall as he did. And even in a revealing dress she projected a vague sense of threat.

  “How did you get in, Anna?”

  Anna turned to face Ruben and then sat down in one of the plush upholstered chairs. She crossed her legs and looked up at him. Ruben sat down as well.

  “People make assumptions, Mr. St. James. They see a woman dressed as a whore. Sorry, no. An ‘escort’ is what you say. A whore is for a poor man. They see an escort, the plaything of a wealthy man and they say nothing. They simply open the gate.”

  “And the yacht door?”

  “Ah, Mr. St. James… I have my ways.” Anna smiled and recrossed her legs.

  “Alright, fine. But why are you here?”

  Anna’s smile faded.

  “The problem we had with Mr. Morton has been… taken care of.”

  “Yes,” Ruben nodded and fought the urge to swallow.

  “But there is a bigger problem,” she continued.

  Anna leaned forward.

  “Before Eddie died, we believe he sent a package. And we know he made a phone call. And we think both the package and the phone call were to Dennis Li.”

  “Oh crap,” Ruben said. His blood ran cold. “That means he knows.”

  “Not necessarily. We don’t think they had a long conversation. And it will take time for Dennis and the others at Jovian to reverse engineer the code if they don’t know exactly what to look for.”

  “Dennis is a smart son of a bitch,” Ruben grumbled. “Don’t underestimate his ability to figure stuff out, especially if he thinks it can screw with us.”

  “I agree. That is why I think we need to remove the evidence.”

  “Ah, I see. Yes, that makes sense,” Ruben nodded.

  “But this will be much more complex than killing Eddie Morton, Mr. St. James.”

  Ruben’s gut tightened.

  “What are you asking for, Anna.”

  “You and I have an agreement, Mr. St. James. When I take on… complicated work, I get some extra reward, as compensation for my risks.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. We’ve discussed this already.”

  “Yes, we have. But this is going to be extra complicated. So I think it is fair to have extra reward, no?”

  Ruben sighed. “I’ve already wired two million dollars to your account. What more do you want?”

  “I think five would be fair, don’t you?” Anna smiled and uncrossed her legs. She leaned forward and looked directly at Ruben. He noticed a certain predatory quality to that smile.

  “Fine. You can have five million for this job,” Ruben answered. “But you need to clean this up once and for all. We do not have time for loose threads. Do you understand?”

  “Oh yes, I certainly do, Mr. St. James.” Anna stood up. She picked up her jacket and purse before extending her hand. “I will leave for New York tonight.”

  “Good,” Ruben answered and shook her hand. “And you will get paid when the mission is complete.”

  “Of course, of course. You need not worry.”

  As Anna turned to go they both heard the sound of someone coming up the steps to the main deck. A tall woman with red hair, fair skin and freckles knocked on the half-open glass door of the dining room.

  “Hello?” she called, tentatively.

  She stepped into the dining room and saw Ruben and Anna.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I must be in the wrong place.”

  “No, you’re in the right place, darling,” Anna laughed. “I was just leaving.”

  Ruben was at a loss for words. The red-haired woman looked nervous.

  Anna walked past the other woman and as she was about to step through the door she turned around and added, “Please show him an extra good time, he’s had a rough day!”

  Fifteen

  Tony Vincent stared out across a sea of faces. Tired faces, mostly. Some angry. A few curious and confused. And there - the one he was looking for. Jessica Stewart looked in his direction as she came to the top of the stairs to track 14 and then strode across the hallway to meet him. Tony met her halfway and embraced her. He ignored the muttered curses of the other commuters who had to walk around them.

  “It’s so good to see you,” he whispered into her hair.

  She leaned back, looked up and gave him a quick kiss.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” she replied.

  Tony took the handle of Jessica’s small rollaboard suitcase in his left hand and held her hand with his right as they merged back into the dense flow of commuters.

  Wearing dark slacks and a dress shirt without a tie, Tony’s clothing didn’t stand out from the crowd around him. But his smile did. Penn Station was always awful and today’s developments were serious - terrifying even - but Tony simply didn’t feel their weight. A short man in an ill-fitting navy blue suit scowled as he made his way around Tony. Another taller man, with a scruffy beard, torn jeans and a large backpack bumped against him but Tony hardly noticed. Instead he looked over at Jessica and caught her eyes. She smiled and he sighed. Yes, this was different.

  They didn’t speak during the short cab ride to Jessica’s midtown hotel but they continued to hold hands. The line at reception was mercifully short and Tony managed to hold his composure i
n the elevator ride to the 21st floor and for the inexplicably long delay between the keycard swipe and the click of Jessica’s hotel room door. Once the door was closed, though, he pulled Jessica to him, kissing her passionately as they fell to the bed. He didn’t remember much else after that.

  An hour and a shower later, Tony and Jessica were at one of the diners that catered to tourists near Times Square. Tony still felt a warm afterglow as he nibbled his club sandwich. Jessica was making rapid progress with her salad when she paused and looked at him.

  “How did Dennis and Molly take the news?” Jessica asked.

  Tony swallowed and set his sandwich down. He sighed.

  “Hard. They both knew Eddie pretty well and liked him.”

  “Yeah,” Jessica agreed. “They worked together for quite a while, right?”

  “Three or four years, I think,” Tony replied. “I got involved with Excelsior just before Ruben axed the old Starlight team so I never got to know most of them very well. But they all seemed friendly and Eddie was just such a nice guy. Jesus, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill him.”

  Jessica looked down at her salad and poked at it with her fork. “Yeah, hard to believe.”

  Tony opened his mouth but then closed it. He wanted to tell her more but… she wouldn’t understand and he didn’t want to drag her in further. At least not until he better understood it himself.

  He took another bite of his sandwich.

  “Who could possibly have wanted Eddie dead?” Jessica asked.

  Tony wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical but Jessica was looking at him expectantly.

  “Well, Excelsior has competitors - including us - but I can’t imagine any firm being willing to go so far as to kill someone to gain an advantage. At least not any of the firms I know.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “I also can’t imagine anyone having a personal grudge against Eddie. And besides, personal grudges get settled with fists in bars or a knife in an alley - not with a hacked car bomb in broad daylight.”

  Jessica nodded again but didn’t say anything.

  “So my only guess is that Eddie got caught up in something really dangerous,” Tony continued. “I mean, I can’t imagine what that would be - asteroid mining isn’t like running drugs or illegal implants or anything like that. That kind of assassination seems like something a terrorist would do, not a rival company or criminal gang.”

  Jessica nodded and replied, “I agree. He had to have been involved in something illegal. Seriously illegal.”

  “Yeah, but Eddie? Sorry, it just doesn’t fit.” Tony stared at his sandwich. “Maybe he found out about something illegal, though? Something big enough that he could get killed for it?”

  Jessica nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s plausible, I suppose.”

  “It’s the only thing I can think of,” Tony said, more adamantly now. “I can’t imagine what it was but it must have been something he stumbled across by accident. There’s no way he would go looking for trouble.”

  “Jesus, I hope the police figure this out soon,” Tony concluded.

  “Yes, me too,” Jessica agreed.

  She poked at her salad a few more times with her folk before sighing. “I don’t think I’m very hungry tonight, Tony. Shall we just go to bed early?”

  Tony reached across the table, took the fork out of her hand, set it down on the side of her plate and then held her hand. He looked into her eyes and smiled.

  “Yes, that would be just fine.”

  They made love again after returning to Jessica’s room. Slower this time. The urgency that had driven their first bout was spent but both still felt a strong need for connection and a desire for the other.

  When they were done, they lay still together, Tony’s arms wrapped around Jessica, her head on his chest. As she was drifting off, her head slowly rising and falling with Tony’s breathing, a conflict that had been gnawing at Jessica finally felt resolved. She felt her body relax in a way it hadn’t in a long time and she slept.

  In the early morning hours, before dawn fought the lights of Broadway for dominance over the streets below, Jessica woke up. She gently disengaged from Tony’s embrace, plucked her phone from the desk next to the bed and padded softly to the bathroom. She and Tony had been intimate with each other for months and she felt no awkwardness in her nudity but the bathroom was still a private space for each of them and she knew she would not be disturbed.

  Jessica looked at herself in the mirror and then ran some water in the sink. She rinsed her face and the cold liquid woke her up further. She had a decision to make and it was a weighty one. Her career would depend on it. And possibly the lives of a lot of people. She couldn’t afford to get this wrong but… she realized she’d already made the decision. Deep down, she knew what it meant and it simply felt inevitable to her.

  Jessica sat down on the toilet, relieved herself and began to compose an email.

  Sixteen

  “You look like shit, Tab.”

  Tabitha glanced up at Dennis and looked back at her screen. Her eyes were red and her hair was unkempt. She continued typing.

  “Uh huh.”

  “You didn’t go home last night, did you,” Dennis stated rather than asked. It was just after seven in the morning and Dennis hadn’t expected to find anyone in Jovian’s office so early.

  “Nope.”

  Dennis sighed. “Ok, did you learn anything?”

  “Yep.”

  Dennis waited. A few moments later Tabitha finished typing and looked up.

  “Eddie said something about their lost ships, right? Tabitha asked.

  “Yes,” Dennis replied. “Eddie said they weren’t lost.”

  “No, they weren’t lost,” Tabitha agreed. “They’ve been communicating with them.”

  “How do you know? I thought you needed physical access to one of their ships in order to see the unencrypted text?”

  “I do. But even without seeing the cleartext I can see that their ships at asteroid 207302 are being used as relays. A large part of the encrypted data that they received was retransmitted - but not back to Earth.”

  “Where was it transmitted, Tabitha?”

  “I can’t tell yet. I’m hoping that when I get access to the local copies of the data that I’ll find more clues.”

  “When can that happen?” Dennis asked.

  “I transmitted code updates a few hours ago,” Tabitha explained, “and got confirmation of receipt just before you walked in. But I still need Mike and Molly to help me plan the actual rendezvous where we plug in to their ship. It’s going to be tricky and we haven’t had time to practice like we did for the initial capture.”

  “Thank you, Tabitha. I’ll text Molly and Mike and ask them to come in right away.”

  “Uh huh,” Tabitha replied.

  Dennis sent two texts and then walked to the kitchen to make himself a coffee. He hadn’t slept well last night and today was already looking like it would be a long day.

  Jovian’s small black box-shaped spacecraft stirred. It released its grip on the carbon fiber mesh that surrounded asteroid 207302 and drifted ever so gently away. Using tiny bursts of compressed gas, the spacecraft adjusted course toward the side of the asteroid that faced away from Earth. On that side, a dozen sleek white spacecraft emblazoned with the Excelsior Launch Systems logo were anchored. Faint plumes of ionized gas emanating from their drive cones and racing away into the vastness of space were the only sign that the asteroid was being accelerated toward Earth.

  The small, black spacecraft drifted closer to one of the Excelsior drive ships, making occasional course corrections with invisible puffs of gas. Over the course of twelve minutes it travelled a mere one hundred meters across the surface of the asteroid. It was exceptionally cautious because this rendezvous was delicate. Colliding with the asteroid or a drive ship could damage the small craft beyond repair, while inadvertently crossing through a drive plume would fry its electronics and cast it off into the
void.

  Eventually, the small spacecraft found its target - an Excelsior drive ship with a gap in its hull. The same ship that had been compromised during the original hijacking of the asteroid was once again violated. The Jovian spacecraft grasped the exposed edges of the service access panel with an articulated claw on the end of one arm and extended a small USB plug on the end of a second. The arm rotated slightly to properly align the plug and then pressed forward until it mated with a corresponding socket. The small craft uploaded a new set of instructions to the larger one and waited. Moments later it received a reply - the larger craft was now running in diagnostic mode and had transmitted a list of files available for download.

  “Gotcha!” Tabitha exclaimed with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

  The sun was low over the Manhattan skyline in the window behind her but Tabitha ignored it. She was grinning as lines of text scrolled by in her window.

  Dennis heard Tabitha and came over to her desk. Molly, Mike and Ricky joined them as well.

  “Success?” Molly asked.

  “Yes,” Tabitha replied. “We’ve got access to the Excelsior communications module and I successfully switched it to debug mode. I can access the local files used by the embedded processor on that module, including the privileged ones. I just got a full file listing. Let me see…”

  Tabitha scrolled back through the text until she spotted what she was looking for.

  “Got it. It looks like they’re using PGP to manage their keys. By default the private keys are in a file called secring.skr. And there it is. Let’s pull that one down.”

  Tabitha typed a few quick commands.

  “And?” Dennis asked.

  “Now we wait another two hours for my command to reach the asteroid and for the private keyring file to be transmitted back to us,” Tabitha explained. “In the meantime, I’ll look around and see if there’s anything else of interest.”

  “Got it,” Dennis replied.