Li fingered her temple, where she could just feel the flat disk of the remote commsystem transmitter under her skin. She’d never gotten a direct-contact wire-to-wire jack. She’d never had to. Those were reserved for techs, like Kolodny, the people who did the real grunt work of cracking target systems—and who ran risks from which the automatic cutouts of Li’s remote interface largely protected her.
“You come up with that idea yourself?” she asked Cohen. “Or did you get help from Korchow?”
“I wouldn’t waste my time arguing about it if I were you,” Cohen said. He shot a dark stare at her over the top of his wineglass. “A jack is nothing compared to what they’re going to need to do to you to get the intraface working.”
Li bit her lip and shifted uncomfortably as her thoughts roved from semisentients to contact jacks to the several hundred meters of prototype hardware Sharifi had been carrying around in her head when she died. How had they slid into actually planning this mission without any discussion of whether or not Li was going to let Korchow test-run the intraface on her?
Had she actually made that decision herself? Or had Cohen coaxed her into it like a chess master nudging his player across the board toward the enemy? Was Nguyen right about him? And even if she wasn’t, even if his intentions were good, what did he really want from her?
“Has anyone actually tested this intraface thing?” she asked, settling on an easy, emotionally neutral question.
“I think there’s a monkey somewhere who has one.”
“Oh.” Li laughed nervously. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s crazy.”
“Cohen!”
“But there’s some indication that he was crazy to begin with. And besides, he’s a monkey.”
He pointed to the network of alleys and firewalls around the lab’s back entrance. “Right. Here’s my first brilliant idea. We do a cutout around this door that would get you past the security network.”
“Which means you have to be on-station to fiddle the main AI. Which means a second person for you to shunt through. Which means twice as much chance of getting caught.”
The more they worked through it, the shorter the list of realistic options got. Cracking Alba was like building a house of cards; each piece of the puzzle that fell into place exposed another piece, another problem, another collapse waiting to happen.
They went at it again, teasing out the problems and pitfalls until they had something that looked like a plan in front of them. At least as far as getting through the security checks and actually retrieving the data went.
But they were still left with the problem of how to get Li into Alba undetected.
“Hang on,” Li said finally, grabbing at the fleeting tail of what looked like it might just be a viable option. “Go back to that first section we looked at. Hydroponics.”
Cohen tapped back through half a dozen screens to reach it.
“What about these turrets?” She pointed to a row of ten-meter-high towers jutting through the thick pelt of guy wires, sensor lenses, and communications equipment that bristled from the outer skin of the station. “They look like vents.”
“Sure.” A look crossed Chiara’s smooth face that made Li think Cohen knew exactly where she was going with this. “Decontamination vents for the algae flats. So what?”
“So the last time I was on Alba, it was overcrowded.”
“It always is.”
“Well, what’s the daily CO2load?”
Cohen paused for a moment, searching. “Sixty thousand cubic meters. And, to anticipate your next question, they’re shipping in about 1.8 thousand of compressed oxygen every day.”
“So where’s the excess CO2going?”
“Out those turret vents, obviously.”
“Where it can get out, I can get in.”
“Not without someone inside to open the vents.”
“Korchow says he’s got an inside man.”
“Not possible,” Cohen said, scanning the plans again. “They’re using the outgoing CO2to turn the turbines that power this whole section of the solar array. And even if you get past the turbines, you’re still talking about crawling down a twenty-meter shaft in hard vacuum. And the vent diameter’s too small to take a suit and gear.” He tapped decisively on the tight print that gave the duct’s dimensions. “You can’t get in that way.”
“I could if I stashed my gear outside and went down the duct with just a pressure suit.”
“Too risky. You’re talking about crawling down an active ventilation duct in hard vacuum with no air, no heat, just a pressure suit. If anything goes wrong—even if you just run into a minor delay—you’re dead.”
Li smiled. “And you won’t have anyone to eat oysters with.”
The look Cohen gave her couldn’t have been more naked if he’d stripped his skin away. She saw fear, guilt, anger flash across his face. Then she looked away; whatever else was there, she couldn’t deal with it. Not now, anyway. She pushed her beer away from her. It left a ring on the table, but for once Cohen didn’t seem to care about the punishment her bad habits were inflicting on his furniture.
“What if I say I won’t do it?” he asked.
“We go forward with another AI,” she said, pushing down the thought that it might not be true.
“You’d be insane to try it without me.”
“It’ll be harder without you,” Li admitted, but that was as far as she was willing to go.
“Have you thought about what happens if you get caught?”
Li looked at the dark night beyond the tall windows. If she got caught, it would be treason. And treason had been a firing-squad crime since the outbreak of the Syndicate Wars. That was assuming that the Corps would let the hero of Gilead come up on treason charges. A quick shot to the head and a cover story about a “regrettable training accident” seemed more likely. It was what Li herself would do faced with such a betrayal.
“You could at least tell me why,” Cohen said.
“What do you care? You want the intraface. I’m showing you how to get it.”
“I don’t want it that much. And I doubt you’re helping me get it out of the goodness of your heart. What did Nguyen suck you into?”
“Nguyen has nothing to do with it.”
“Really, Catherine.” Someone who knew Cohen less well would have seen only the bemused smile on his face, but Li could hear the angry bite in his voice. “If you’re going to lie, at least have the respect to lie about things I can’t check up on.”
Li kicked at the table leg and was pleased to see she’d put a dent in it. “You’re in no position to accuse me of lying. Or anything else.”
“I think,” Cohen said slowly, “the time has come to discuss Metz.” A dark flame flickered behind Chiara’s eyes, and there was a rehearsed quality to the words that made Li wonder how long Cohen had been working his nerve up for this conversation.
“I’ve said everything I have to say about it,” Li told him.
Chiara’s long-lashed eyes narrowed. “You shelved it, didn’t you?”
It wasn’t a question. And even if it had been, it wasn’t one Li planned to answer. After a moment he shrugged and tried another line of attack.
“All right, then. This run. It’s too dangerous. And you’re not a traitor. So why?”
“ Whyisn’t your business. I want a job done, and I’m paying for it. Paying with something I know you want. Let’s stick to that. Then at least I’ll know what you’re after. And when I can expect you to walk out and leave me twisting in the wind.”
“I thought we were done talking about Metz,” he said. “And anyone can make a mistake, Catherine.”
“Anyone didn’t kill Kolodny for a damn piece of circuitry.”