“Do you want to give up and go back up to the surface?” DePresti asked.
She shook her head. “No, let’s try the other way, and if that doesn’t work we’ll go back up.”
They took the other way at the fork. It took them on a winding path with another fork that they took the left hand at. Thankfully, it led them back in the direction of Hangar AZ.
At its terminus, instead of a dead end, there was another ladder. At its top was a gunmetal gray door with the letters “AZ” on it in faded red paint.
“Ladies first,” DePresti said with a grin.
Parkowski carefully climbed the ladder and opened the unlocked door. Beyond it, the room was pitch black.
She stepped forward so DePresti had space to get in, and started fumbling around for a light switch. She stopped when she realized how futile it was.
A few moments later she heard her boyfriend, huffing and puffing, pass through the door. “Shit, it’s dark,” DePresti said.
“Shh,” she warned as her eyes continued to adjust to the absolute lack of light.
Eventually, Parkowski felt comfortable enough to start feeling around again. She walked forward slowly and after a couple of steps came to what felt like a wall or a door.
She ran her hand along the wall at roughly the height of where she thought a light switch would be. Parkowski found a corner and continued her search. Finally, she found a lone switch, then flipped it up, and immediately shielded her eyes.
They were in a small utility room lit by a pair of naked light bulbs. There was an additional, decrepit wooden door on the far wall. She walked to it, DePresti closely behind her, opened it, and stepped through.
Parkowski was in a Spartan, featureless hallway with doors on either side. The only light was from the room behind her.
DePresti got his flashlight out of his satchel and shone it down the hallway. It made a right turn at the end. The other end of the hallway made a left.
It was a fairly standard design for government buildings. The majority of the offices were spread in a loop around the exterior of the structure. On the inside were either more offices, likely for lower-ranking individuals or support contractors, or for the building’s SCIF or secure area.
That was where they wanted to go.
They walked softly around the hallway, looking for a way in.
There was only one door into Hangar AZ’s interior. It was like the one at the rear exterior of the building and the one in the secure room at Aering El Segundo, a large, metal bank vault-style door with a cipher lock.
DePresti and Parkowski paused in front of it.
“Any idea what the code is?” the Space Force captain asked her.
“I only know one code,” Parkowski said, “and they changed it after I got in the first time at Aering. But it worked that one time.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” DePresti asked. “Go ahead and try it.”
The code was burned into her memory.
One.
Five.
Three and two together.
Four.
Parkowski heard the satisfying
“No fucking way,” DePresti breathed.
She grabbed the handle and turned the door inwards. “Yes fucking way,” Parkowski said with a big, dumb grin on her face.
That room was dark too.
DePresti shone his flashlight around to reveal a room that was nearly a carbon copy of the secure room in El Segundo.
Parkowski saw a lot of differences, but the overall theme was the same. Server racks in the back, workstations around the edge of the room, a large conference table in the middle, and a projection screen at the front.
“Are all classified rooms like this?” she asked her boyfriend.
He shrugged. “No, but I’ve seen plenty that look like it.” DePresti walked back to the server rack. He opened it and scanned the rack up and down. “There are stickers on the different server blades here for a whole range of SAPs, a bunch of which are old and the programs have been closed. There’s one I don’t recognize…” his voice trailed off, “and there’s one that says BKT.”
Bronze Knot.
Parkowski grabbed the laptop they had brought out of the waterproof satchel and walked it over to DePresti.
He fiddled around in the back and came out with a network cable.
“Plug it in,” he said.
She did and booted the laptop up.
The computer that Chang had given them connected to the network for the special access program that they had worked for so long to get access to.
She quickly learned that all that the server in the room was doing was taking data from the NASA MICS network and passing it along to the ILIAD virtual environment hosted at the Air Force facility in Orlando. The data was the sensor feed from the ILIAD mission on Venus, with the same BKT identifiers that she had seen while she was troubleshooting the dragon from her first mission.
It was a huge disappointment.
Parkowski checked and double-checked. There were no huge file directories, no security classification guides, and no documents that would help shed a light on the mystery.
It was yet another dead end.
She groaned and looked up at the ceiling.
“Let me try,” DePresti said.
Parkowski gave him the laptop. “Because you’re so much smarter than me?”
