She saw it as limiting her options. Parkowski was now more than ever convinced that everything was not on the up-and-up on the ILIAD mission and she felt like she had to protect herself somehow in case it went sideways. Having all of her options open would help her do that.
“Young lady,” Everson said, “you are going to sign it if you want to continue working here.”
“What are you going to do if I don’t?”
“I’ll get your clearance pulled faster than you can say A-F-O-S-I,” the agent said. “And I’ll have you put on an ITAR-restricted list that will prevent you from coming into the building. This is a matter of national security, and I’ll be damned if I let you threaten that.”
But how, Parkowski wondered, how would knowing about a SAP attached to the ILIAD mission impact the country’s security?
This guy wasn’t going to give her the answer to that, though.
And it was just a piece of paper, right?
“Fine,” she said. “Give me a pen.”
“Are you ready, Grace?” Dr. Pham asked.
She nodded. “I guess so.”
“Cheer up.” He smiled weakly. “This time, everything is going to go smoothly!”
If you say so, she thought.
It was Friday, the day of her third mission on Venus. Parkowski had gotten a good night of sleep and was ready to put the stress of the last few days behind her. It had been a trying week, and she wanted to end it on a good note.
The skies were clear, the communications pathway to and from Venus was working at near-peak efficiency, and there was a crowd in the high bay.
Dr. Rosen, the mission’s lead program manager, Anna Khoudry, and a few lower-level Aering executives were present. There were over twenty technicians, double the normal ten, and Parkowski had two backups compared to the normal one.
Her mentor seemed particularly nervous when he had rolled into the office about five minutes after Parkowski’s arrival, and his anxiety had increased with every step of the pre-mission walkthrough. Dr. Pham was worried about something specific, but Parkowski hadn’t the foggiest idea what it was.
She put her helmet on and waited for one of the technicians to plug it into the VR environment.
Moments later, she returned to the surface of Venus.
Parkowski made some small movements to check the responsiveness of the integrated system and was pleased to see that the ACHILLES unit she was operating, ACHILLES 1, tracked her movement fluidly.
She was pleasantly surprised to see that the graphics settings for the VR environment were turned up to the max, a pleasant side benefit of the clear communications pathway. She could see every nook and cranny on the cracked surface, the detailed starfield overhead, and even the robot’s now damaged and dirty exterior. Whatever they were paying the texture artists at Panspermia, it was worth it.
The first leg of the trip was short. ACHILLES 1 was only a few kilometers from its final waypoint. Parkowski covered that distance in about twenty minutes without breaking a sweat.
There were some alarms on the UI so she pulled them up. The ACHILLES unit was getting a strange magnetometer reading, which made sense with the context of the mission.
Parkowski had gotten an earful on the relevant science history from Pham and Khoudry before she had suited up. The Russians had never realized the importance of their probe’s discovery; the data from
The readings made no sense to her, she was an engineer, not a geologist or planetary scientist. There was a lot of excited chatter on the net from the experts.
Parkowski shrugged — would the ACHILLES unit do the same millions of miles away? So far, everything was going according to plan.
She had just switched to the second unit when a new voice broke in on the mission net. “Miss Parkowski, how is everything going?”
It was Dr. Rosen.
“Hey, sir,” Parkowski replied. This was odd. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” the Aering Ph.D. told her. “I’ve been reading your after-action reports, Grace, and you have had some interesting experiences in the Venus environment.”
She didn’t say anything. Where was he going with this?
“Dr. Khoudry and I are here to see if anything… exciting happens on your mission today,” Rosen continued.
Were they expecting something, Parkowski wondered? She wasn’t sure how to respond.
The senior engineer kept talking. “Great job so far. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Thanks,” she replied.
Rosen didn’t say anything else. That whole conversation was weird.
