Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(29)
“Sounds like a plan,” Hugh said.
“Keep me updated.”
Elise watched him head toward the communications room to make the request. She had a bad nagging feeling about all this. A person disappearing like that was nearly impossible. It could be espionage, but who would want to do that to the Nutris Platform? They were a nonprofit and one of the most open-sourced projects in the world. It made no sense.
Elise needed something to take her mind off the long meeting and the news about the ghost guard. Her nice day had taken a turn for the worse and had put a damper on her good mood. She exited the Head Repository and made a beeline toward the nearest bar.
She looked to her right and her face brightened. “Just what the doctor ordered, Elise Kim. Ask and you shall receive,” she quipped. She walked toward a figure lounging against the wall. “First day and already sleeping on the job, huh?”
ELEVEN
THREE MARKS
The morning after James arrived on the Nutris Platform, he got lost again, and this time Elise wasn’t around to bail him out. Time was short. Nutris was coming online tomorrow morning and would burn down into the ocean by the afternoon. He had spent the entire night wandering around the sectors, mapping the areas and pathing his objectives. It took him until well past dawn before he was able to verify all three targets and formulate a plan.
His AI band would be able to identify the marks once he got inside, but until then, he had to do all the legwork himself. He had originally thought it’d take just a few hours to trace his steps and have his AI band build a functioning map. Unfortunately, the floating city was even more confusing by night than during the day. Not all the lights on the walkways were fully operational yet. James got lost often and ended up wandering in circles. By the time dawn rolled around, he was exhausted and just wanted to get some sleep. Unfortunately, he had to report for his first day of work.
This had been one of his initial concerns with tying himself to the network, but in the end, the advantages outweighed the risks. That was why he had put himself on a security team. Security work was still security work after four hundred years. Sure, a late-twenty-first-century gun was completely different from an early-twenty-sixth-century wrist beam, but it was still patrol, take cover, aim, and shoot. The philosophy of it hadn’t changed since these primitive times.
Scratch that. “Primitive” wasn’t the right word. This time period was considered the zenith of humanity’s achievements before the Great Decay began. While the present certainly boasted some advances in space travel, the military, and colonization, many more technologies were lost from four centuries of war and famine.
The sector commander decided in the first five minutes that he hated James, which really wasn’t a big deal since the guy was going to be dead in a day anyway. Until then, though, the doughy commander, a nearly unheard-of adjective in the present day, put him on patrol on the western blocks of Sector Two. That suited James just fine. It gave him the chance to review the layout in his head.
By his estimate, it would take at least an hour to hit all three facilities. He wasn’t sure how much time he had before the entire city sunk, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Two of the marks were in this area and patrolling gave him the opportunity to enter all the buildings and pinpoint his intended targets. By the time his shift ended, he had mapped his entire retrieval route for the first two marks.
The only thing left was the data core housed in the Head Repository. He would have to go in on that one blind. Access to that building required the highest clearance level, one that James had not given himself. He had initially been tempted to grab the access he needed, but had decided against it. The only people with access to the Head Repository were senior leadership. They probably all knew each other, and a stranger’s name mysteriously appearing on the access control list would raise questions.
James did the next best thing and scouted around the building, looking for someone with access his AI could duplicate onto his band. With his shift over, he leaned against the wall opposite the Head Repository and watched the people coming in and out. All of them had their access to the building imprinted on their badges. He’d need to tail one of them and get close enough for his AI to swipe and imprint the access codes onto his own badge. It was that, hack the access control lists, or break the door down as the city sunk into the ocean. The first option was the quickest and most elegant. He’d need those precious seconds.
“Smitt,” he thought. “What’s the distress call time stamps on the morning the platform sunk?”
“Three hours forty-six minutes between the initial distress call and when the first craft reached their location. By that time, there were only massive oil fires on the surface of the water and high radiation signatures in the entire region.”
Not a lot of room for error; none, actually. His initial assessment had been right. This was a difficult mission. It would be a miracle if he got all three marks out. Still, he had to try. This was his ticket out of ChronoCom.
“First day and already sleeping on the job, huh?”
James turned toward the voice and saw Elise walking out of the Head Repository.
A genuine smile appeared on his face and he waved. It felt strange. Then he noticed her uniform. Now that she was out of her control suit, he could see that Elise was corporate military and a colonel to boot. He stopped midwave and saluted.
She gave him a lazy salute back. “Only when we’re on the job and in the presence of officers, pal. I’m just a civilian they slapped a pretty badge on. It’s hard enough to make friends around here as it is.”