"Now, show me the surveillance cameras."
A pause, then Rand indicated them on the schematic in blue.
"Whew," Joat sighed. "They have pretty good coverage. Any chance you can hack into the surveillance network and simply run a tape of empty space while I'm out there?"
"Doubtful. With so many suspect elements sharing the station's amenities, New Destinies has a fairly sophisticated security system. Something of that complexity would probably activate an alarm."
"Fardles." She drummed her fingers on the console. "What can you tell me about the lock?"
Rand threw up another schematic. "It's a standard design. Nothing complicated, with the usual tell-tales in place." As it spoke small arrows blinked on indicating the areas spoken of. "There are cameras in the corridor outside the service hatch."
Joat brushed her hair back. Time for another trim, she thought inconsequentially. She went to a locker at the rear of the bridge compartment and palmed the sensor. It opened, and she began to take out various useful items and slot them into pockets and less obvious hiding places in her taupe overall; also in her belt, in the heels of her boots, and one or two in special cavities in her molars.
"Is there any time when the route I'll have to traverse and the lock itself isn't under observation?"
That came out as a mumble, since her fingers were in the back of her mouth, but Rand had excellent voiceprint filters.
"For approximately ten seconds the route and the lock are clear. As it won't alter their function, I may be able to slow the sweep of the cameras so that you have forty seconds," Rand told her. "I can do nothing about the telltales, though, and the cameras inside are stationary."
She considered the diagram before her.
"It'll take me twelve seconds to get from Wyal to the lock," she murmured.
"Optimistically."
"Twelve seconds." She grinned. "And if I can't silence a tell-tale in twenty-eight seconds I deserve whatever happens to me. Can you take out the camera in the corridor?"
"I believe so. But it will surely be considered suspicious."
"Feh!" Joat made a contemptuous face and a dismissive gesture. "It probably happens all the time."
Then she rose and laced her fingers together, cracking her knuckles briskly. "Let's do it. You're in charge of the Wyal until I return. Don't accumulate too much time on the station's virtual reality net-we can't afford it."
"It's research," Rand said indignantly. "My interactions with humans increase my versatility."
"You can research Alvec and me for free," Joat said firmly, running a mental checklist of the devices she was carrying. A few more? No, the only really useful item would be a laser welder-you could do really astonishing things with a laser welder, if you knew how-but it was a bit conspicuous.
Useful, though. It was a pity. She and a couple of other students at Vega Central Institute-Simeon had sent her there for six months-had cut down a bronze statue of the Founder, cut it in half, and rewelded it around a shower fixture in the quarters of the Dean of Cybernetics. And she hadn't had to use anything but a hand-cutter and a floater platform to do it, either.
Actually Simeon had sent her to Vega Central for a year. They'd sent her back after six months.
Bureaucrats, she thought. No sense of humor at all.
Joat tied her hair back in a ponytail and paused to study herself in the screen set to mirror beside the airlock; large, gray-blue eyes stared solemnly back, examining delicate features in a sharp-boned face. Not much trace of the feral child she'd been when Simeon and Channa found her hiding in the ventilation ducts of SSS-900-C; she'd been living in a nest of stolen blankets and cobbled-together computer parts. Good training to be a high-tech guerrilla during the Kolnari occupation of the Station, but not so hot as a preparation for life.
She pursed her lips and looked at the package she was to deliver. I must have grown up. I haven't opened it.
CenSec would have all sorts of cyberdog guardians built in, but that just increased the itch. Her fingers twitched as if they held micromanipulators and a datacode bar. She sighed and shook her head. No, it wasn't worth the hassle. She'd made up her mind to that the first time she'd agreed to take on a CenSec shipment at Simeon's request.
The less she knew, she'd told herself, the better. Because CenSec was the kind of organization that considered you were in their debt if you did them a favor. They started out owing you and ended up owning you. That might appeal to straight-arrow types brought up in boring rectitude, who fell down on their knees in thanks at getting to play Galactic Spy.
Not me, Joat thought defiantly. Nobody's gonna get a piece of my soul. She'd gotten far more adventure than she wanted by the age of twelve. And she knew that, for preference, adventure was somebody else in deep doodly, far, far away.
She gave herself one last appraising look, then picked up the CenSec package and zipped it into one of her pockets before heading for the suit-storage locker.
Joat suited up quickly. It was a process she'd always handled well, winning a fair number of credits in Brawn school betting on just how fast she could do it.
No gruddy sense of humor there either, she thought. Her knack for separating her fellow students from their disposable income was just one of many reasons she'd finally been asked to leave. By the time they finally got around to asking her, though, she was already half packed. I don't understand how Channa ever got through without freezing into an icicle. Then again, a lot of people thought she had.
The fact was she and her teachers and fellow students were fundamentally incompatible. She regarded them as too stiff-necked, they saw her as far too flexible.
Her only concern in leaving Brawn training had been the possibility that she might be disappointing her adoptive parents. She grinned reminiscently, remembering their words as she stepped out of the Station airlock-Simeon had waited, "standing" beside Channa in his favorite vid persona, a big blond bruiser with a dueling scar and a Centauri Jets cap turned backwards.
"Toldja," he'd said blithely.
"I knew they'd never hammer you into a straight arrow," Channa said with a warm smile. "You were born to be independent."
"Or to hang," Simeon added.
Joat tapped the lock controls. Air bled out; the telltales in the rim of the helmet below her chin showed hard vac. She crouched in the open door of the lock, studying the surface of the station, pronged and spiked with various sensors and antennae. This close even a modest station loomed immense, a metallic god-sized lathe twirling forever against the orange glow of its planet. It turned with a slow ponderous inevitability; at this range your gut refused to see it as an artifact. She turned her head, looking for the flashing red light that indicated the location of the service hatch.
Joat sighed. This little excursion would be so much easier if she'd never revealed the secret of the device that had rendered her invisible to virtually all sensors and recording devices. Simeon had insisted on letting everyone know how to counter it. Of course the patent had accounted for a big part of the down-payment on her ship. Create the problem, solve the problem, collect the money, she thought.
Ah, well, New Destinies was one of the few windowless stations. They'd spun it up from the nickel-iron of a single asteroid, and nobody had bothered putting in luxuries. So at least she didn't have to worry about some tourist catching her in the act with their holo camera and immortalizing this exploit for the delight of station security.