Cress

Chapter 3

use in the holograph he was wearing a freshly

 pressed uniform with shining silver buttons and

 a confident, one-sided grin.

Seeing that smile, Cress melted.

Every. Time. "Hello again, Mr. Thorne,"

 she whispered to the holograph.

 Then, with a giddy sigh, she turned to the

 only remaining folder.

The 214 Rampion, Class 11.3. 

The military cargoship Thorne had stolen.

 Cress knew everything about the ship—from 

its floor plan to its maintenance schedule

 (both the ideal and the actual).

Everything.

Including its location.

Tapping an icon in the folder's top bar, she replaced 

Carswell Thorne's holograph with one of a galactic

 positioning grid. 

Earth shimmered into existence, the jagged edges

 of its continents as familiar to her as Little

Cress's programming. After all, she had spent half 

her life watching the planet from 26,071 kilometers 

away.

Encircling the planet flickered thousands of tiny dots

that indicated every ship and satellite from here to Mars.

 A glance told Cress that she could look out her Earth-side 

window right then and spot an unsuspecting -Common-

wealth scouting ship passing by her nondescript satellite.

 There was a time when she would have been tempted to

hail them, but what would be the point?

No Earthen would ever trust a Lunar, much less rescue one.

So Cress ignored the ship, humming to herself as she 

cleared awayall the tiny markers on the holograph until 

 the Rampion's ID remained. A single yellow dot,

disproportionate in the holograph so that she could

 analyze it in the context of the planet below.

It hovered 12,414 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean.

She called up the ID of her own orbiting satellite. 

If one were to attach a string from her satellite to the

 center of the Earth, it would cut right through the 

coast of Japan Province.

Nowhere near each other. 

They never were.

It was a huge orbiting field, after all.

Finding the coordinates of the Rampion had been 

one of the greatest challenges of Cress's hacking career.

 Even then, it had taken her only three hours and