Together, they pointed to a military involvement in the ILIAD mission, hidden under the program Bronze Knot, potentially run out of Orlando since the Venus environment was hosted there.
Parkowski remembered that there were some letters before the word “Orlando” in the configuration file she had pulled up on the SAP server — letters she had never looked into further.
She typed “AFAMS” into a search engine. According to the results, AFAMS stood for the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation.
It was located in Orlando — confirming what the configuration file said.
Why was the Air Force involved at all in the ILIAD mission? The only military link was the launch through the Space Force, not the Air Force.
A knock on the door startled her as she absorbed this new piece of information.
Parkowski jumped, knocking her laptop to the floor. She quickly picked it up and checked it for damage — there was none.
She placed it down on the coffee table in the center of her living room and silently crept to the door. Parkowski looked out of the peephole and didn’t see anyone.
“Look down,” a muffled voice from the other side of the door said.
Parkowski did just that and smiled when she saw the person outside of her apartment.
It was Dr. Pham.
She opened the door and smiled. “Hey, boss.”
He gave a smile back. “Grace, you’re not sick, are you?”
“Not physically,” Parkowski explained. “But I’m not in the right mental state to go to work today. I hope you understand.”
Pham nodded. “I do, I’ve been there. When Rachel told me that you had called her and told her you weren’t coming in I got worried. So I cleared my calendar and drove up.”
“You drove up to see me?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Because there’s definitely something wrong, Grace,” the older man said. “A normal person doesn’t leave work in a huff after a successful mission.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Can I come in and we can chat?” Pham asked.
Parkowski nodded and let him into her apartment.
She made herself and Pham cups of coffee and they sat down on the couch and easy chair in the living room to talk.
It was nice to feel like there were people out there who cared about her, despite the funk she was in. DePresti cared too, he had blown up her phone all weekend but she had ignored him. Parkowski wasn’t ready to deal with him yet.
She didn’t start at the beginning; there were details of her investigation that she wanted to keep secret from her boss. Instead, Parkowski started with the mission yesterday, going more-or-less through the mission in detail. Pham asked a few questions but mostly let her talk.
“Grace, you did a great job on your last mission,” the senior Aering engineer said. “What you were able to do with the leg actuator control system, I’m not sure any of our other engineers could have pulled off.”
“Thanks,” Parkowski said with a slight smile — all she could manage that morning.
“To be honest, you’ve done a great job overall with all of your missions,” he continued. “You’ve had to deal with the dragon nonsense and multiple communications upsets. Most of the operators haven’t dealt with a fraction of that. I have nothing but good things to say, and so does the management team.”
“About that,” she said, slightly changing the subject. “Dr. Rosen was acting odd yesterday.”
“I noticed that,” he said in agreement. “But then again, so were you.”
Parkowski put her head in her hands. “It’s that stupid Bronze Knot crap,” she told her boss, finally admitting the source of her issues to him. “And then I got in a fight with Mike last night and I don’t know how to fix it and—”
“Grace, this probably isn’t what you want to hear,” Pham said carefully, “but in this business, there are just things that might not be explained.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because in the space world, so much of what we do, even on the unclassified side, is connected to the classified world,” he explained to her. “And that side is a web of lies and deceit and cover stories, and any time you think you have a handle on it, you learn a new piece of information that will throw you for a loop.”
He leaned forward. “Did I ever tell you what I did before I worked for Aering?”
“No.”
“I worked for the CIA.”
“You did?” she asked in disbelief.
Pham nodded. “Not as a secret agent or anything like that. I was an engineer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, working on classified space systems both at the NRO and back at headquarters in Langley. Not what you think of when you think ‘CIA,’ but it was a great job.”
“What got you out here?” Parkowski asked.
