It wouldn’t open for her.
She was locked in her room, with no way of communicating with the rest of the crew. She didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what had happened, even if she didn’t know the details.
All right, then.
She put on her NWUs and clipped the kill trigger stylus to the side of her slate. Then she retrieved her personal sidearm from a locker, pulled her chair around to face the door from the far side of the room, and cradled the firearm in her lap. It was turned on, unlocked and loaded. Eventually, someone would be coming for her. She could wait.
Crow woke up a few minutes after Fang-Castro. No wake-up call, no comm, and no exit. The good news was that nobody had come for him, yet. They would, sooner rather than later.
Okay, priority one: making sure that he wasn’t transferred to the lockup. He had useful tools in his quarters, ones the Chinese wouldn’t know about. They wouldn’t find out from the rest of the crew, because they didn’t know about them, either. He needed an excuse for staying where he was.
He pulled out the data-hardened slate he used for communicating with the White House. It was set up so he could establish a secure connection to Santeros from anywhere in the ship. Useful previously, but now that worked against him. He drilled down into the slate’s network protocols, as deep as he could go quickly. If he was lucky, the Chinese wouldn’t have anyone who could dig that far down into an unfamiliar operating system. He hard-linked the slate to his quarters’ intranet.
Next, work the same trick the other way around. He hacked into his room’s net and changed its low-level protocols so that it would not establish secure outbound connections with anything except his presidential slate.
The slate? That was designed to work only for him, at least in the most-secure mode that was needed to connect to the White House. The log-in was biometrically linked to him. Nothing suspicious or unusual about that; every high-level diplomat’s slate worked the same way.
If he was lucky, the Chinese would buy it. It shouldn’t take a lot of luck; it was entirely reasonable that the man who had the direct ear of the President of the United States would be provided well-controlled and restricted ways of grabbing that ear.
He had to hope that whoever had masterminded this little coup was security-minded enough to appreciate how sensible this all was. Then all he’d have to do would be to continue to play relatively dumb, and they’d likely leave him where he was. Probably even let him link to the White House as much as he wanted, because they’d be wanting the ear of the President and they’d be wanting her to know just how bad, for the Americans, the situation was.
There was a lot more he could do from his quarters. Without checking, because his checks might be detected, he was pretty confident they’d be controlling the Nixon at the most superficial level. Unless the Chinese happened to have a serious cyber-expert among their survivors, it would be easy to circumvent blocks on the network and door lockdowns. Easy, at least, when you had the equipment he had to work with, plus some carefully placed back doors.
But there was nothing more he was going to do. Not at this time. He wasn’t a superspy from a badly written vid. He couldn’t single-handedly wrest control of the ship from eighteen Chinese hijackers, at least not without them noticing and eventually figuring out who was doing it and where he was, and then he’d either be dead or find himself working from the naked-in-the-bare-cell scenario.
His tech prep done, it was time to clean up, to look the part he was playing. He shaved, trimmed a few errant hairs from his head, and took his best suit from the closet. Appropriately matching socks and a quick buff to the shoes. He contemplated ties, found one that complemented the suit and his eyes and gave himself a critical once-over in the mirror. He would do: he looked the part of a president’s representative about to meet with the very highest level dignitaries of a foreign government. He hoped the Chinese would appreciate the gesture.
Just one last item. The kill switch. He’d picked up the stylus and slipped it into his breast pocket. It went nicely with the suit and tie. Didn’t write too badly, either.
He sat down at his desk, pulled up some innocuous presidential briefings on his slate, and let his brain run overtime on the situation, while he waited for his captors to show up.
All over the Nixon, crew members were waking up, or coming down. On the bridge, Cui took stock: there were three unarmed Americans against three armed Chinese; five, including herself and Lieutenant Sun. The three Americans were coming to their senses. She could tell from their expressions that they’d rather be in dreamland. Sorry, she thought, but this is reality and this is the new order.
And, for the time being, the Nixon was her ship.
She didn’t expect that status to hold indefinitely. Once an accommodation was reached over the disposition of the alien information, she’d be happy to share the command with Fang-Castro. She would even consider handing it back to her entirely, as long as the Chinese retained control of the weapons.
It could work. It would be like one of those countries back on Earth whose civilian government was supported by a strong and independent military. As long as principles and goals were agreed upon, everything was fine, and if there was a disagreement, well… The real power did not lie with the government.
She turned to the American at the communications station who was by now sufficiently un-addled to be both alert and fearful. “Lieutenant, what is your name?”
She consciously copied Zhang’s command voice—low and soothing, but authoritative. “Don’t worry. Despite appearances, you are in no danger as long as you cooperate, and I will not ask you to do anything that puts your compatriots or your ship at risk.”
“Summerhill, ma’am, Albi Summerhill.”
Ma’am, that was good. He appreciated the situation he was in. “Thank you. Mr. Summerhill, I’m going to need you to operate the communications console according to my instructions. My people understand your systems well enough to engage simple operations, such as temporarily shutting down internal communications, but not how to operate it fully. You understand what I’m asking of you?”
He nodded.
“Very good. Open a ship-wide channel, so that I can make an announcement to your entire crew. Signal me when you’ve done that.”
Summerhill looked over the status board, pressed a few keys, and nodded to Cui. She nodded back in acknowledgment, and took a deep breath. The deepest one of her career; it felt like standing on the edge of a precipice, more exhilarating than terrifying, but some of both. Well, no turning back.
She leaped.
“Your attention, please. And good morning. I am Commander Cui Zhuo, of the People’s Republic of China, and former first officer of the Deep Space Vessel Celestial Odyssey. I and my fellow yuhanguan… astronauts… are in command of the Richard M. Nixon. We expect to return command to you as soon as some concerns are resolved. At present we have locked your quarters and blocked internal communications for security reasons.
“We expect to restore normal functioning shortly. Please be patient, and I personally apologize for any inconveniences we are causing you.”
She made a slicing motion with her hand, and then Summerhill killed the microphone. She nodded at him: “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Sun turned to the American sitting near the security station. “And you, what is your name? I’d like you to bring up some security information for me.”
“Uh, Langers, ma’am, Ferris Langers. I’m usually at Navigation. I’m a navigation officer. I don’t know a lot about this station.”