Lag Delay полностью

“See you later, boss,” she said in a scratchy voice as she opened the door and left.

Parkowski was furious.

Now, she had to do what she was dreading all weekend — coming clean to her boyfriend about what she had done the previous week.

"You did what?" DePresti cried out when she finally fessed up that evening at her apartment.

“I got into the locked room using the code,” she said quietly.

“Grace, that is a huge security violation,” the Space Force officer said. He stood up from the table where they were eating pizza. “You weren’t cleared for what was in there!”

“So?”

“If they find out they’re going to pull your clearance.”

“So what?” she said, a little annoyed. This was why she hadn’t wanted to have the conversation.

“Grace, in this industry, not being able to hold a security clearance is a death sentence,” DePresti explained. “Even if your job, like your current one, doesn’t require one, the company you work for wants the flexibility to move you to one that does. If you can’t hold a clearance, you’re going to have a hard time finding work.”

“But I need to know what’s going on,” Parkowski replied.

“Why? Why do you need to know?”

“Because I’ve spent the last two years of my life thinking I was doing this one thing, to advance science, to use my engineering skills, to be among the first people to explore Venus,” she said angrily. “And now I’m learning that there’s some stupid black project, special access program bullshit behind all of this, connected to my ILIAD mission I’ve busted my ass for. Which makes no sense. And now, you think I’m crazy. That I’m either seeing things that aren’t there or am digging too deep into something that I don’t need to concern myself with.” Parkowski took a deep breath. “And now they’ve taken me off of the schedule. I’m not crazy, Mike, I know I’m fixated on this, but it’s eating me up inside. My promotion, my future at the company, relies on me having successful trips in the VR gear.”

He nodded, but let her talk and get it all out.

“We should be having a nice dinner right now but I’ve been trying to figure out why the military cares so much about my mission to create a special access program for it,” she finished.

“Hey, it might not be the military,” DePresti said as he took her hand in his. “The intelligence community has them too.”

“That’s not the point!” Parkowski said, with an emphasis on the last word.

“Then what is?”

“That the government is hiding stuff from us, specifically me, that is preventing me from doing my job. And it’s impacting my job performance. How would you like it if some black ops bullshit showed up on your performance report?”

DePresti sat back down. “Grace…”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea how many SAPs there are?”

“No.”

“I know a guy who’s been read into a thousand.”

“A thousand?” she said incredulously.

“Yep. And he knew of at least five hundred Navy ones he wasn’t read into.”

“What does that mean? There’s a lot of SAPs?”

“It means that Bronze Knot is just one piece. One amongst many others. It’s just a SAP, who cares what it’s protecting? You told me over the weekend that no one is saying that what happened during your missions is your fault. Just forget any of this ever happened. If it shows up again, Grace, I promise you, I’ll help you figure it out, but right now you need to let it go.”

They ate the rest of their meal in silence.

Finally, as they were cleaning up, still not talking to each other, DePresti spoke up. “Grace, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“I know.”

“Just be aware of the consequences,” DePresti said, “because I hope it’s worth it.”

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Parkowski’s roommate asked as the Aering engineer sat with her knees to her chest on the couch, watching a trashy reality show, at eight o’clock the next morning.

“Yes, I should be at work,” Parkowski said, a little annoyed, “but I’m here. I don’t have anything until the afternoon and I worked more than enough billable hours for the pay period last week. I’m fine.”

“Ok,” her roommate replied with a shrug. “Are you hanging out with Mike tonight or do you want me to cook?”

“I’ll figure it out myself,” Parkowski said. “Don’t worry about me.”

After her roommate left, she got up and paced the small living room.

Parkowski was scheduled for a Thursday mission with the two ACHILLES robots. She had originally been taken off of the schedule, and replaced with a “training mission” for one of the newer operators. Leadership hadn’t wanted to give her another chance. But, the new operator hadn’t been available, so Parkowski went back onto the schedule.

She was supposed to spend her week planning for her third time on the sticks, but her motivation just wasn’t there. She had debated calling in sick, but knew she had to be in the office.

The argument with DePresti last night had left her in an awful mood.

She made herself a cup of coffee and sat back on the couch.