“For internet, I have two sources: OuterTek’s StarServe service, and a Brazilian GEO communication satellite that I’ve been able to hack, their security is atrocious. I use the StarServe IP address for my day-to-day job, looking for vulnerabilities in Rayleigh ground station software and reporting back to my government point-of-contact what I find. For more… esoteric activities, I use the satellite dish and go through my Brazilian ‘ISP’.”
Parkowski shook her head. “This is crazy.”
“No, it’s not,” Chang argued. “The government is watching everything and everyone at all times. The only way to be truly free, to be independent of the feds, is to live like this, away from the connected world.”
She didn’t respond to his comment.
“How is your arm feeling?” DePresti asked.
“A little better,” she replied. “I think we should probably change the bandage though.”
“Agreed,” Chang broke in. “I think all of the medical supplies are upstairs. Let’s go check on your wound and then we can talk down here in my office.”
They did just that. Parkowski had another white-hot burst of pain shoot through her shoulder when it was exposed to the air and another, even more painful jolt when DePresti cleaned it out with the antiseptic. They wrapped it up again and Chang gave her a choice of pills. “One is ibuprofen, the other is oxycontin,” he told her. “Take your pick.”
She chose the ibuprofen pill and swallowed it.
Chang shrugged. “You sure you don’t want the good stuff?”
“Nope.”
“Fine,” he said, leading DePresti and Parkowski back to the hidden concrete entryway to his basement. “Let’s go back down.”
He led them, snacks and water in hand, into the dimly-lit office space, turned the LED lights on, and then excused himself to get a couple of extra chairs.
Parkowski turned to her boyfriend. “Your friend is nuts, you know that, right?”
“I know he’s nuts, and I think he knows it too,” DePresti replied. “But he’s our best chance at making it out of the situation we are in alive.”
She sighed.
Chang came back with a pair of folding chairs which he set up in the virtual reality area. He then sat down behind his computer console and broke out a vape pen. “You guys don’t mind, right?” he asked.
DePresti and Parkowski both shook their heads.
He inhaled and then put his feet up on his desk. “Ok, so since you’ve experienced my warm hospitality, and since it seems like you haven’t been followed.” He turned briefly to his computer and pulled up a GUI with a map, then sent it away. “And we haven’t had any unwelcome visitors,” he continued. “The least the two of you can do is fill me in on how you went from your boring, lame, safe lives in El Segundo to being shot at and your car trashed and ending up out here with a burnout like me.”
Parkowski and DePresti looked at each other. “Where to even begin?” he asked.
Parkowski smiled. “I’ll start at the very beginning.” She started with an outline of the ILIAD mission, including her selection to be an operator, and how she met DePresti during a Ground Operations Working Group (GOWG). “I actually got frustrated with him,” Parkowski said with a smile. “He wasn’t letting any of the Aering engineers go into the OuterTek hangar at LC-39a after encapsulation. I had a side conversation with him after one of the GOWG sessions and that led to getting dinner together to continue it, and we’re still together a year and a half later.”
Chang laughed. “How come I never met any cute girls while I was on active duty? I feel like I worked with nothing but old white and Asian dudes the whole time.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess,” DePresti said with a chuckle. He then told Chang about the launch.“Was there anything odd about the processing campaign or launch sequence?” the former Space Force officer asked.
“Nope,” DePresti said. “Some minor anomalies and whatnot during the launch but they all quickly resolved and adjudicated. We hit the insertion accuracy within three-sigma and everything was nominal on the coast to Venus.”
“And when did you stop working the program?”
“After the launch service contract closed out,” DePresti answered. “As soon as we paid out the last progress payment I PCA’ed across the street.”
“And then you took over once they reached Venus,” Chang said as he turned to Parkowski.
She took a sip from her water bottle. “Not exactly. When the ILIAD probe reached Venus’ orbit I was still in training. There was a separate team, I believe the same team who built the spacecraft, but not the robotic probes, who did the separation of the relay satellite from the rest of the probe and then landed it on Venus. I stayed out of that as much as I could.”
