Bridgebuilder

"Before you go to bed, Alex, I must ask something of you." Carbon had adopted a quiet voice when they were at the bunk-end of their room whenever it was something she wanted to keep private, like their relationship.

Both of them had, actually. Alex followed her lead. He wasn't sure if she actually had any more experience with intelligence related things, but Carbon sure acted like she did so he went with it. Being willing to tap into a veteran's experience was a skill that was considered essential in the Scoutship program, and he had picked that up.

There was something in her tone this time, though. "Yeah, what's up?"

She reached into her robe and pulled a folded up sheet of paper from her Tsla'o made sports bra, and held it out to him. "Williams noticed some strange items included in the most recent equipment shipment to the depot that were not on the manifest. We agree that there are too many things here that appear related for this to be accidental, particularly on an expedition with such a high level of security attached."

Alex perused it and did not think about how warm the paper felt or where it had been hidden. Not for very long, anyway. "That is a lot of beryllium. It'd have to be used as an alloy though?"

"Correct, most applications I have ever seen have been as alloys. Usually in reactor parts or plasma handling systems. Sometimes tools." Carbon took a seat on her bed and laid down, hands folded over her stomach, as she did when she was thinking about something that was bothering her. "We have plenty of other metals to produce those alloys with. We even have a small amount of beryllium as an additive specifically for that purpose, a 250 gram cylinder. What was sent today could potentially produce hundreds of kilograms in an alloy, which is an amount that almost does not make sense."

"What's the usual percentage?" Alex knew almost nothing about metallurgy.

A little shrug. "Four is the highest I have seen."

"Well, that would be hundreds of kilos. Presumably they want less than that, though, or have some high percentage use in mind. What the fuck would they do with a hundred kilos of metal? With ten, for that matter? It'd take hours to print a single kilogram object out of metal with the setup we have, right?" It wouldn't be very subtle. Someone would have to load the bag into the machine, too.

He hated this spy shit so much. There was some distant whisper in his head that said this could all just be a little oopsy on Logistics end of things, but the rest of him was mad about it because there was no way they fucked up that much. He resented ONI for dragging him into this, again, even if he was to blame for falling in love. Alex gritted his teeth and his jaw worked silently as he resented them yet more for making him think that.

Carbon reached out and set a gentle hand on his leg, the only part of him she could reach from where she was laying. "Yes, I would say five to six hours per kilogram printed, on each machine. There are too many possible paths to go down at the moment. Which is why we are initially going to restrict their potential uses by making them disappear."

Alex took a deep breath and calmed himself down, as difficult as that felt to do. "Put them in the lake? I'm sure the marines would love the chance to blow a hole in the ice. Yeah, they don't have explosives, but I'm sure one of them knows some MacGyver shit for just such a situation."

"Wh- no, that would be very obvious." Carbon seemed alarmed by that suggestion, sitting up on her elbow, bright blue eyes wide. "We are going to hide them in the Hoku- The Hokule'a's... The space frame of the Hokule'a. There is plenty of excess padding in the depot that has not been recycled yet, so nothing will move around in the frame. Items can be brought up and hidden away with none but us knowing."

"Okay, that is less fun but much more stealthy." Alex chewed on the plan. They'd have the wings on tomorrow, and he would finally get to work on something he was actually qualified for. "I can probably extend the systems checks and shakedown for a day, day and a half, maybe. Think that'll be enough?"

"Between that and my commitment to ensuring that the only large craft we have is as close to functionally perfect as possible, that will do." She smiled and patted his leg. "We will start once the hangar has fewer people in it. Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest."

Alex took a seat beside her. "Guess I should switch to clothes as well. Not many places to hide things in the e-suits."

"Yes. Williams and Zenshen fared well today, I will be switching over tomorrow as well. As long as the weather remains just cold." Carbon smiled and laughed softly, sliding an arm around his side and pulling herself over to snuggle against his back.

"Speaking of Williams... Am I supposed to know about what we're talking about here?" He slipped her hand into his, their fingers laced together.

"I asked if I could bring you in and she agreed. It is the three of us that know about this plan, no more." Carbon gave his hand a squeeze.

If they were somewhere with a public wireless network, Alex would be concerned about his wetware uploading logs and all of this becoming ONI knowledge, which could then be communicated back to whoever on this side of the portal. But they weren't, and the ONI team that set his system up was sufficiently paranoid as to not allow it to upload on any military networks. There was no workaround for when he was here hiding in the code, according to the Empire Intel team that had pored over a copy of the software. Alex didn't know what part of the Navy owned the comms running back through the portal, but it was currently fully isolated from the Solanet, which meant no less-secure access points. The r_probe system would have nowhere to upload the data to.

It made sense, to an extent. Civilians are welcome to transmit as much as they want on civilian networks. Military personnel and civilian contractors such as himself were actively told not to upload anything while they were on duty unless it was work related. A massive data package routed to a site on the Solanet - meaning that it was leaving secured military networks - would be highly suspicious. Sure, eventually ONI would say it was theirs and to leave it alone. But the likelihood is that IT would capture a big chunk of the data as evidence and some already overworked sergeant would have tracked Alex down and read him the riot act well before that happened, and then a big pile of unsecured people would know that something was amiss with the computer lodged in his head.

But all of that made it look like ONI wanted to keep it secret from the rest of the Navy. Otherwise they could just slap a header on it that said 'this belongs to ONI: no girls allowed' and let nature take its course. Then the Empire would have uploaded their possibly self-aware intrusion package onto an obviously ONI-owned network, not whatever KOM was.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Alex really hated all this spy shit. He was not that guy.

"Well, I'm on board. Anything else you want to talk about? I feel like I've got a big day ahead tomorrow, finally getting to flex what I was sent back to do." Alex said, and then got no response. He looked down, Carbon already snoozing. "Guess it can wait until the morning, then."

He got her tucked into bed and really thought hard about joining her for the night. Even if it didn't include any other activities, it would be nice to enjoy her presence again. Alex closed her privacy shutters, despite the handful of reasons he was inventing to prove why it'd be OK to secretly snuggle with his wife when they were supposed to not be doing that, then climbed into his bunk and let anxiety about this new information gnaw on his guts for a while before slipping into a restless unconsciousness.

Alex hauled himself out of bed too early, still tired despite having gotten a solid seven hours of sleep. Stopped at the beverage dispenser for a coffee before going to the bathroom, and started his day with the unpleasant flavor combination of spearmint toothpaste and black coffee.

Everybody liked his winter gear, at least. Carbon in particular approved of the vibrant red lining in the jacket though she was less a fan of the ceramic white outer shell. The system was polychromatic, he could change it later. With a thermal base layer and technical fleece under the latest in insulation and self-heating systems, the system was good to -40 for 48 hours, and he still looked like he had just walked off the street on a chilly day.

Of course, everyone else was still wearing equipment issued by their respective militaries, except for Abbot. He had an anorak fit for an arctic expedition a hundred years ago and still seemed a bit chilled.

After breakfast, Alex parked himself at the hangar and waited for them to give him the go ahead to start working on the shuttle's systems. It was much faster than he had expected, and more interesting to watch as well. Attaching the wings was semi-automatic, a pair of forearm-thick screws pulling the wing assembly into the box on the fuselage, though manual work was required to finish the job properly.

Carbon let him go after the second wing was on, with the caveat he not do anything involving the wings or drives until he was told they were cleared. He knew not to do that, she knew that he did too, but it was a defensible thing to be heard saying. Don't light anybody on fire or slap them in the head with a moving part, OK?

He burned up almost three hours with a basic sensor config test and recalibrations on a few individual sensors. Maybe he could stretch this out for two days.

After lunch - and a good-natured warning not to take the shuttle out without clearance from Williams - he was alone in the hangar fiddling with the control surfaces and their related wiring when there was a knock at the door.

That was weird, he didn't think there was any expectation of privacy in a shuttle that seats eight. Except in the head, but the tight confines somewhat precluded actual privacy in there anyway. He glanced out the window, Zheng and Amalu standing there, both with several hardsided cases. Probably not the first delivery of parts to stash, unless the conspiracy had gotten bigger without anyone letting him know.

"Come on in!" He hollered over his shoulder. It was already unlocked.

Zheng pulled the door down and came up halfway, just sticking her head through the entry. "We're going to set up some inspection drones to check the shuttle's structure post-construction, just to get a deeper look at the material integrity. I'm pretty sure nothing was damaged and Carbon is too, she just wants to be sure - it is our only shuttle, after all."

That sounded familiar.

"Sure, go ahead. I don't think I'll be getting around to the engines until tomorrow. Trying to track down some lag in the pilot's stick right now and it's not too clear where the issue is." It was 'only' a half of a second, and 'only' on the port side, but it wasn't present on the copilot's stick at all. "And since it is our only shuttle, I better have all the kinks worked out."

"If you think it's a hardware problem, I'll be glad to take a look at it." Zheng said before disappearing to set up the drones with Amalu, the door slowly closing on its hydraulics.

Alex was starting to think it was a hardware problem. There'd be a real simple way to test that out, though, and it started with shutting the controls down all the way to the breakers and getting the little tool kit stashed in the overhead storage. He'd just swap the sticks. The entire flight control system and instrumentation were modular, after all.

He'd do that after he checked the manual to make sure that it was modular, anyway. He was not about to rip apart a system he couldn't just snap back together, because his wife or her Human co-worker would be the one fixing it and he'd never hear the end of that.

The alarm he set on his comm marking the end of the day buzzed some hours later, letting him know that it was time to stop doing something he knew he would get lost in... although cramming himself into the footwell under the console to get at that last bolt tightened up was not something he was eager to keep doing, but it was finally done. The testing could wait for the morning.

Since everything was powered off, there wasn't much left to secure and he pulled his jacket back on before leaving. It was comfortable in the shuttle, and merely chilly in the hangar, so there was plenty of time to get his gloves on and hood up before returning to the real cold of the outdoors.

In addition to the drones hovering slowly over the fuselage, humming and beeping as they scanned, Amalu was still here. Leaning on the wall and staring out of the small window on the pedestrian door, arms crossed over his chest and looking somewhat pensive.

"Specialist. Keeping watching?" Alex enquired as he approached the younger Tsla'o.

He jumped like Alex had just popped out of a ventilation duct to eat his brain. "N-no, k-" He coughed, catching himself before he said something inappropriate. "Just- I have a question to ask, and I think you are..."

He paused here, squinting and looking off into the snow again, thinking very hard about what he was about to say. "I think you are the most likely to answer me honestly and not make fun of me for asking."

That felt kind of good and also made him feel bad for Amalu. Crenshaw did strike Alex as a guy who would take a joke a little too far, and those two had been hanging out a lot. Hopefully it was just Crenshaw. "Hey, if it's an earnest question, I will always act in confidence."

Amalu grimaced and gave him a sidelong glance, nodding slowly. "I have heard some people talking about a particular set of credentials that I am not familiar with. Do you know what the Harkness exam is? Where would I take that?"

Alex stared at him, momentarily losing track of the expression his face was making. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "All right, that's not- That- the translation... Who did you hear that from?"