Van eased one of the chairs to a point just outside the independent scanning perimeter. After setting down the datacase, he seated himself, taking out the analyzer once more. He pointed it at the portal to the inner office and let it work.
After almost ten minutes, it pulsed, Analysis complete.
Van took a deep breath and began to study what the analyzer had reported, and that was very little. There was a detection field, and three stunners were inset in the portal. Still, the actual clearance procedure had to be simple. No sub-marshal wanted to have to remember much of anything nonessential. That meant, Van suspected, either some variation on biometrics for the secretary or a direct pulse-code, and possibly a more involved manual overcode for emergencies.
Van studied the portal area. There were no counterplates for hand-prints, and no scanners for retinals. Voiceprinting was unlikely because an allergy or a cold could change a voice too easily. There didn’t seem to be temperature sensors.
He looked over the portal area again, then used his implant to begin tracing power and comm lines of the regular office systems. They registered the portal as a “black” area, except for the single fiberline coming out.
Van smiled, focusing the analyzer on the fiberline.
When he checked the results, he smiled—for a moment. From what he could tell, all he had to do was replicate the twined signal, and there would be no alert signal to the main security system for the building.
All? It took almost an hour before he had duplicated the signal on one of the “spare” datacards. He gave the commands to the office system to block off the signal from the portal and to substitute the one from the datacard. Then he held his breath—figuratively, monitoring everything. There was only the faintest flicker in the status signals, but no alarms went off.
He turned his attention to the portal.
The stunners flared a dozen times in the next fifteen minutes, before Van and the analyzer finally broke the codes. The portal had sent out alarm after alarm—but they’d gone nowhere, thanks to Van’s makeshift block.
He stepped through the portal, checking the inner office beyond. Despite the coolness in the office, Van was sweating heavily under the uniform. So far as he could tell, there were no more alarms, but he still had to figure out how to get into the intelligence system.
He and Eri had already figured out the likely structure of entry protocols and set up the analyzer to run through Van’s implant. Before Van tackled that problem, he wanted to check Vickry’s spaces and drawers for clues and for anything that might make the job easier.
He didn’t find much of anything. The drawers in the left side of the antique desk held only personal items, and few of those—a marble stylus holder engraved to Commander Jon D. Vickry, several packages of mints, a small framed holo image of a young woman, several styli of various shapes, a laser pointer, two blank infocards, and a third infocard with the label SCHEDULE on it.
Van shrugged and looked around the office.
Then he took another deep breath, using his implant to unfreeze the point terminal in the inner office but leaving the connection beyond closed. Slowly, he let the analyzer probe the point terminal.
Protocols retrieved.
Van offered a tight smile. The RSF had been careful to keep the reports on the Scandyan “incident” out of the main databases, which meant that, if such reports existed, they had to be in the secure files. But those files had to be open to Vickry.
After entering the secure system, using Vickry’s access, Van immediately ordered a search, entering his own name. Three files flashed up, holo-displayed before him. He didn’t try to read them, but transferred copies through the implant to one of the datacards with him. Then he searched for the Collyns and the Fergus. There were dozens of files, but Van only transferred those dated from three months before he’d been commanded to take the Fergus to Scandya.
Then he left the system. Either the files had what he wanted, or they didn’t, and if what he wanted was in a deeper or more secure system, he was out of luck, because he’d run to the limits of his implant and analyzer capabilities—and he was getting worried about time.
He slipped back through the portal, restoring it to normal function after he did.
Then he froze against the wall as the door of the outer office began to open. Quickly, he triggered the nanite bodyshield to full protection.
“Lights are out…” hissed a voice.
“Heat sensors said…” returned another voice.
Heat sensors? Van hadn’t found them.
“Probably just some officer working in the back.”
Van decided to bluff it out—or try to—even as he moved closer to the Marine who entered the office.
“You’re right,” he called out loudly. “I was just leaving. I’d turned out the lights and was headed out.”
The first Marine turned and looked at Van, taking in the uniform.
“I had a project for the sub-marshal.”
The second Marine stopped in the doorway, shaking his head. “Wish someone would tell us sometime.”
“I logged in with security,” Van replied.
“That’s not your problem, ser.” The second Marine looked at the first. “You log it in. I’m headed back to give Gorel a word.”
He vanished, but the door remained ajar—only for a moment before a second figure appeared, closing the door behind him.
Sub-marshal Vickry stood there, smiling. “What sort of project, Commodore?”
“Research,” Van replied, smiling easily, and gesturing toward the sealed portal into Vickry’s private office.
“Now!” snapped the sub-marshal.
Van was already moving. Despite the nanite bodyshield, the impact of the slug fired by the Marine spun him around, and his entire body felt as though he’d been struck from shoulder to knee. Rather than fight the impact, Van let it carry him around in a full circle that he forced right up to the young Marine.
The Marine’s eyes widened, and he hesitated for just a moment.
That moment was
