Freezing Shadows, Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Mid-flight Planning

Samoset Nighthawk was an ork from the FAN. Specifically, the Algonquian tribe. However, as Whisper, he was one of the better smugglers working North America. Assuming you didn’t need to get someplace in a hurry, that is.

See, Whisper’s MO was using a big-ass Airship Industries Skyswimmer cargo airship. The thing came standard with SunCell and Improved Economy mods, basically meaning that it could fly for damn near ever, and you’d be landing more to restock food and water than anything else. Not standard were the satellite comms, the signature masking to make the airship harder to detect, and the ECM to make the thing harder to lock on to with missiles and drones. To say nothing of the chameleon coating and spoof chips to help it pretend to be anyone else.

It sounded stupid to most people. After all, when you thought about smugglers going overland, you typically thought of one of a few things. First was crews in big, expensive LAVs (low-altitude vehicles) that were the halfway point between hovercraft and jets, tearing across the country at a thousand feet or less, using speed and guns to keep the different border agencies and cops from ruining their day, the very definition of high-risk, high-reward. The second was some guy with a four-wheel drive SUV, taking things cross-country, avoiding patrols by avoiding roads and cutting a path through the wilderness. Third was the drug mules hiding kilos of drugs inside the seats, doors, and pretty much anywhere you could fit something and driving across borders to get their product from the cartels to the local distributors.

Now, to be fair, those were the kinds of smugglers that you usually saw in the media. But Whisper? He wasn’t like them. He liked to keep things quiet. Sure, his airship wasn’t going to outrun anyone, and it didn’t have any weapons to try and shoot down an enemy plane. But an airship just cruising along, following a nice little flight plan, and avoiding anywhere that might be a security concern? One that was very obviously unarmed? That was just an eco-conscious small businessman running his light freight business. Nothing to see here. Those watcher spirits running around? Well, the captain was a shaman registered with the tribal council, with a clean record. Only made sense to keep an eye on the astral when traveling out in the wild, if you could.

That was the thing. Whisper’s whole operation was whisper-quiet. It didn’t raise any alarm bells that might cause someone to go try and make an intercept at three kilometers above the ground. Sure, sometimes a curious cop or border agent might come around to do an ‘inspection’ or just ask some questions when he landed, but that was a lot easier to handle than someone in an attack helicopter with an itchy trigger finger. If given a choice between trying to fast-talk or bribe his way out of questions, or deal with people trying to shoot him? Whisper chose the questions every time. Dodging questions was a lot easier, and a lot less damaging to his health when he failed.

But, and I couldn’t stress this enough, flying in an airship was SLOW. Especially if the weather wasn’t going your way, or you were crossing the mountains. The maximum altitude for the Skyswimmer was 3500 meters, though it wasn’t recommended to cruise above 3000 meters. Which meant we actually had to route down through what was once lower Idaho and Wyoming, rather than going straight through North Idaho and Montana, because the mountains weren’t as problematic, there.

All told, a flight that took just over four hours on a commercial jet took thirty-six for us. It almost would have been quicker to drive, except then we would have had to go through a bunch of border checkpoints, and deal with who knew how many people that might be able to identify us later, or cause shit for us before we even got to the job. Driving back was an option, if things went to hell, and we were too hot for Whisper to take us, but on the way there? It opened us up to too many problems.

Still, it wasn’t completely wasted time. Reaching out to Alisha, we got the name of a Detroit arms merchant who could get us any extra special party favors, and the location of a motel in the sprawl that could be counted on for discretion. Rooms were 100 nucred a night. I went ahead and reserved three rooms for two weeks, starting on our projected arrival in Detroit. That would give us plenty of wiggle room.

The ‘information packet’ the Dragon’s major-domo had given us was a datachip full of files. A dossier on Kenzie Lyons, the technomancer who had been abducted. Human, white skin, brown eyes, blonde hair dyed purple, tattoo of Ivaeth’s mark on her neck. Anyone who did their research would know she was under the dragon’s protection, then. And they’d taken her anyways? Some people clearly did not have a proper appreciation for the potential consequences of their actions.

A business in the area had captured a video of the abduction itself on security cameras. Corporate black bag team literally snatched her off the streets of Redmond, three blocks from the dragon’s hotel. There was also a report of the ‘interrogations’ of the corporate snatch team after the dragon’s people found them, just two days later. Unfortunately, the girl had already been shipped on to Detroit by that point. The snatch team didn’t know more than that.

Next, there were schematics of the facility. Ivaeth had other hackers than just this technomancer in her employ, obviously, because they’d gotten these plans from the corporation’s own servers. The facility was in a sub-basement, underneath a skyscraper they owned in downtown Detroit, and it was marked as extraterritorial, meaning that corp law was the only law on the premises.

Security was bad enough in the public areas, but getting into the sub-basement was going to be tough. Public areas had normal corpsec, running patrols, and all that. The labs, however, were air-gapped from the main network, and shielded to prevent transmissions in or out, except through a hardwired and isolated intercom system. The labs also had isolated atmospheric controls, and any alerts caused an automatic lockdown, sealing the lab area with physical locks which needed actual physical keys to unlock. Smart, considering the type of people they were experimenting on, there.

Beyond the physical and Matrix security, there was the issue of the guards. In the public areas, you had your normal corpsec. Good for what they were, but not too much of a problem if you were prepped for them. In the labs, however, they apparently always had a full squad of six elite corporate soldiers on guard. Actual paramilitary forces, not run-of-the-mill corpsec. They were going to be a problem.

Not an unbeatable problem, mind you, but they were going to be a problem. They would be on their home turf, with better weapons and armor than the normal grunts, and they definitely wouldn’t be shy about throwing lead downrange. We still had the anti-armor rounds, and most of us had a few clips of the Stick-n-Shock ammo. That’d help when things inevitably hit the fan.

Sexkitten shook her head as we looked over the information. “There’s no way we’re getting into the labs without raising an alarm. According to this information, the only people in or out are scientists, guards, and a few janitorial staff, all of whom have physical IDs and physical records on file inside the labs. No one is going in as a new hire to scope the place out.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “once we go into the labs, we’re going to be in for a fight, no two ways about that. However, first we have to get to them. I don’t like the look of the main elevators or the emergency stairs. Too many sensors and alarms for my liking. But look at this service elevator leading to the antechamber for those sub-basements. Goes straight to the corporate parking garage. Probably so that they can quietly bring in new test subjects, without having to go through the front doors. This is probably our best way in or out.”

“Elevator is connected to the building network,” Twilight nodded. “Same with the cameras and other sensors. Should be possible to loop the feeds, so the security office doesn’t realize it is in motion. But looks like they station a pair of guards in the parking garage, and another pair outside the lab access door. And they have biomonitors on, so if something happens to them, it’ll flag an alert in the system.”

Babydoll hummed thoughtfully. “What about redirecting them? The system has to have some way to change from one shift to the next, unless they just… pass their monitors to the next shift? Why not redirect the alarm to another set of devices, which can be giving steady signals?”

“Possible,” Twilight nodded. “If we had burner commlinks set to transmit the false feeds, then we could just plant them somewhere in the building. Someone looking at them in detail will notice that the position is being spoofed, but they aren’t likely to start asking those kinds of questions before everything goes down.”

Berzerker grinned. “Right, so we can get around that, but what about this hardwired intercom? I’m assuming there are different access points inside the labs, but what about outside?”

Shadowgirl looked up from the schematics. “Looks like the only access points are in the antechamber, and the main security office on the tenth floor. Look, here’s the piping for the cable going up.”

I looked at the area Shadowgirl was pointing at. “Looks like there’s a maintenance area there. If we could get in there, we could cut the link, yeah? Does the lab check in with the security office often?”

“Not from what I can see here,” Twilight said. “It looks to be part of the emergency systems, though. When a lockdown happens, the guards in the antechamber and in main security are notified, so they immediately try to get in touch with someone on the inside. If there’s no response with the right keywords in five minutes, a full alert gets sounded, and all the corpsec in the building begins converging on that location.”

“Five minutes? Seems a long time to wait,” Berzerker frowned.

“It is a balancing act,” I explained. “Enough time that, if it was a false alarm, someone would have time to respond before they send the whole building into chaos, and potentially lose untold thousands or millions in nucred due to the disruption, but also short enough time that any would-be escapees will still be trying to deal with the mechanical lockdown.”

Shadowgirl grinned. “But if we disable the feed to the security office and deal with the guards outside, then we basically have until the next shift change to deal with things, right?”

“Probably,” I nodded. “But we’ll want to grab the physical keys, anyways. The guard post in the antechamber and main security both have keys, and there are separate keys located inside the lab area for different doors and restraints.”

“Because trying to hold someone who can access the Matrix with their mind in a room held shut by a computer-controlled lock is a dumb idea,” Twilight chuckled. “And the things they might do to try and keep someone like me from accessing the locks? They’d definitely mess up any tests they were doing.”

“Right, we’re going to need to get with that arms dealer and see what kind of toys we can get. We’ll need that for when we’re trying to ensure that the project is thoroughly trashed. Probably get a bunch of incendiaries and explosives together. That’ll fuck pretty much everything down there, without bringing in so much collateral that we’d be blacklisted.”

“Blacklisted?” Sexkitten asked. “Really?”

“Really,” I nodded. “At a certain point, you cause too big a stir, then you’re too hot for any jobs in the area. If, for instance, we managed to take down the entire skyscraper? With all those people and all that probably billions of nucred wasted? And the hit to the corporation’s pride? A Big 10 corp, at that? We would be goddamn radioactive. The Corporate Court would probably share information to try and get us, because that kind of thing starts making people in power very anxious about their investments.”

“Aw, and I was hoping to try and send it to space!” Berzerker mock-whined.