The building was in even worse shape than the others. The paint was falling off in chunks from the humid Florida air, and the front door looked like it was barely hanging on, although Parkowski saw a second, more secure door past it.
It didn’t have an American flag, but it did have a military logo with writing at the bottom. Parkowski squinted to read it. “SPACE & MISSILES SYSTEMS CENTER.”
“That’s the old SMC logo before it became Space Systems Command,” DePresti said, walking next to her and putting an arm over her shoulders. “But that changed over about five-ish years ago. I guess no one has gotten around to updating it.”
“Mike, I don’t think anyone has been in these buildings in
“That’s what a dozen tropical storms and hurricanes a year will do,” the Space Force captain said. “I don’t see a building number, do you?”
Parkowski shook her head and stepped closer, almost to the front of the building. Her boyfriend followed her.
On the caved-in metal door she saw in faded letters “A99.”
“This is it,” she said, breathing heavily with excitement. “A99.”
DePresti looked confused. “There’s no way,” he said. “There were active packets coming from a machine into Hangar AZ. This building is abandoned. I don’t even know if it has power.”
“So either your ‘decoder ring’ for the IP addresses was wrong…” Parkowski’s voice trailed off.
“Or there’s something going on inside,” DePresti finished. He took another step forward. “Wait a sec.” He cupped his hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Parkowski asked, crossing her arms in front of her.
“There’s a humming sound,” DePresti said, pointing to the side of the building. “I’m going to go check it out.”
With a sliver of hope, Parkowski followed him.
About five feet from the dilapidated side of the building was a green electrical box. DePresti walked up to it. “Do you hear it now?”
She did. It was a low-frequency hum and had to be coming from the box. “I do.”
“That’s active,” her boyfriend said. “That building has power.”
Parkowski was skeptical but held her tongue.
“Let’s see if we can find a way in. Maybe they’re using a small part of it for something and decided to stash all of the keys to the GOVs there as a security measure.”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
Parkowski followed DePresti around the building, looking for an easy way in.
On the far side of the electrical box, facing a small stand of large oak trees, was a metal door. It looked newer than the doors on the front and had no peeling paint.
It also had a massive padlock that prevented them from getting into the building.
Her heart sank while DePresti snorted a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“If they’re using a low-tech lock, we can get in,” her boyfriend responded. “A padlock like that can be broken. Come on, let’s go get one of those cinder blocks from the parking lot and see if we can’t break it.”
A minute later DePresti slammed the cinder block onto the padlock.
“Oof,” he said, dropping the block with a slam. “That’s harder than it looks.”
“Can I try?” Parkowski asked.
He nodded and stepped back. “Be my guest.”
Parkowski picked it up. It had to be at least thirty or forty pounds.
She raised it to shoulder height and paused. Then, Parkowski let the force of gravity do the work, unlike her boyfriend who had tried to brute-force it and smashed the cinder block into the top of the padlock.
It fell to the ground with a metallic clang.
“Work harder, not smarter,” she said quietly to herself as her boyfriend clapped his hand on her shoulder in celebration.
“Shall we?” DePresti asked.
She nodded.
He swung the door open and stepped inside.
They stood in another dimly lit hallway, similar to that in Hangar AZ. Only a single naked bulb at the top provided any light.
DePresti was right. The building
They walked to it together. “I’ll let you have the honors,” DePresti said.
Parkowski grabbed the handle and opened the door.
After her eyes adjusted to the bright light of the cavernous room beyond she stopped in a state of shock.
She didn’t believe what she was seeing.
Beyond the door was a massive high bay, easily twice both the height and square footage of the former satellite processing facility that the ILIAD mission had used at the Aering plant in El Segundo. It was just as clean and well-kept — someone had spent a great deal of time, money, and effort renovating the place.
There were no windows. It looked to Parkowski like a former clean room that had been converted for another purpose. The walls were beige and the floor was a shiny white tile that reflected the incandescent lights suspended on beams just below the ceiling, creating a glare that blinded Parkowski and DePresti.
