Sneak Peek: The Hungry Stars, Chapter 27 (Patreon)

I know, I know - sneak peeks usually go up on Wednesdays, but I've been really busy this week getting the rough draft done and it slipped my mind. Plus, this month I've had stuff so near completion during the times I think of doing sneak peeks I go 'hmm... better just post it when it's done'.

Anyways, I have the rough draft of this chapter complete and once the re-drafting/editing is complete, I'll post it - probably early or mid next week. In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from the upcoming chapter.

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“Accessing,” Echo whispered and then, with seemingly no hesitation at all. “Access granted. We’re in.” Her eyes opened. “Let’s go.”

“How long do we have?” Allyria asked. Echo had briefed them on the kind of defences the planetary net possessed. Even this small part of her could cut through the most advanced computer defences the Compact or Principality had, but she was worried about the League’s capabilities and thatmade Allyria and Grace nervous.

“It depends on how many flags we send up,” Echo said as she rose to her feet. “I don’t have complete control. The VI here thinks I’m a secondary security protocol and it won’t push too hard. At first. The more I have to tweak camera and sensor records, override door controls or anything else we’ll need, the more it will challenge what I’m doing. I can’t trust the tranq dart will work a second time. Even with its primary memory erased, the Nibiru systems have...” she paused, trying to think up a comparative term. “Muscle memory. Its autonomic processes were already adapting to my attack the first time.” She glanced across the cloning facility’s open grounds. If she’d been human, she’d pause to take a nervous breath before she stepped into the cameras’ field of view.

Instead, she didn’t hesitate and she was ready to scrub their presence, instant by instant from the feed and prevent the custodian’s monitoring subroutines from taking note of unauthorized personnel. The custodian itself noticed its new security protocol running diagnostics on the external hardpoints and sent an immediate query and request for activity log. Echo provided it and that was enough to satisfy it. For now. “We have a maximum of two hours before it realizes I’m not what I’m supposed to be. The more problems we cause, the less time that will take. If the staff see us...”

“Then we don’t let them,” Grace said as the trio arrived on the loading dock. She paused in front of the personnel door. “Have you found anything on Lydia?”

“Nothing other than what I described earlier,” Echo replied. “There are sections of the facility’s network that are locked. There doesn’t seem to be any way to access them without a physical connection being made from inside the facility. I can put a request in to open those hardlines, but that will raise a lot of flags. A ‘security protocol’ shouldn’t be trying to access classified data and any request is logged.” She cocked her head, her fingers hovering above the keypad. “Would you like me to?”

Grace bit her lip, then shook her head. “No. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll stick to your plan.”

“Our plan,” Echo corrected as she entered the day’s passcode and the door unlocked. The VI noticed that too. Echo tilted her head, but she didn’t hear anyone inside. Allyria shook her head, confirming the AI’s impression. The dock was open, clean and ready for the next day’s worth of onloading and offloading bulk goods, laundry and supplies. “We need to go down,” she announced, keeping her voice low.

Allyria’s tintas flicked. Her response was just as soft. “Down?”

“There’s a high-security section in the below-ground levels. The schematics here don’t match what’s in the public archives and Director Spencer didn’t mention it during our visit. I want to know what a cloning facility considers high security.”

“That’s easy,” Grace answered. “Recycling and waste processing.”

Echo nodded slowly and she smiled her lopsided grin. This time, it wasn’t all that friendly. “Then let’s see what they’re recycling.”