The Road to Hell

Chapter 27

"I can't believe I let you talk that woman into doing this to my ship," Armin said for what seemed like the billionth time.

"Would you rather your ship be blown to pieces as we tried to approach without a disguise?" Rosana asked him. Armin rolled his eyes and went back to grumbling. Everybody was crowding the cockpit, watching as the Talon guided the Spectral Hawk to Capitol Station.

Rosana's method for sneaking onto the station was elegant in its simplicity. With seventy billion people in the galaxy, one could imagine the astronomical amount of waste produced every day. Organic waste was processed and used in massive composting plants and many everyday products were fully recyclable, but there was a large amount of industrial, nuclear, toxic, and non-reusable waste that had to go somewhere. Waste management corporations took care of all of this, transporting waste off-planet to massive processing factories and taking the non-reusable waste to be incinerated in stars.

Capitol Station had a population hovering near the ten thousand mark, and like all ships and space stations, had an onboard processing plant that purified liquid waste and replenished the water supply. The small population produced comparatively little garbage. However, they still had to outsource the bulk of the waste management to a centuries old corporation called WasteCo. WasteCo, being one of the major corporations in the human systems, had swallowed up hundreds of smaller companies and had spawned several sister corporations.

During her rise to power in the gigantic company, the current CEO of WasteCo had made a few enemies, and she'd turned to Rosana Blake for her specialized waste management services. Ever grateful, the CEO established something of an agreement with the assassin, and the two women parted ways, corresponding with each other only twice after: once for another job, and then again for a favour.

Rosana arranged for the Spectral Hawk to be hidden inside of the WasteCo barge scheduled to visit the Capitol that week. Now they were waiting as the barge made its rounds from Earth to Luna and then finally to the Capitol. Rosana, who was in contact with the barge crew, informed David of their progress as time wore on.

When they got to the security checkpoint for the Capitol, David and the others left the cockpit and started getting ready. The bomb was loaded into the back of a service truck they'd stolen and painted to match the maintenance trucks used on the station. The maintenance uniforms were going to be harder. With the limited amount of prep time they had, David had decided it would be easier to steal them once they'd docked.

The barge was cleared through security, as everyone knew it would, and in no time it had backed itself up, fitting its bay doors to one of the large maintenance airlocks on the underside of the station. After a short cycle time the doors opened and the garbage crews started working.

Just like the garbage crews going about their routine around them, the team worked quickly, executing the plan they'd all went over until it was branded into their brains.

First, Fisher and Wendy went ahead of the team to one of the maintenance worker locker rooms to borrow some uniforms. The uniforms would help them blend in, but that was only half the battle. On the Capitol, workers were tagged with subdermal identity chips that were implanted in their forearms. Those chips were passively tracked at all times and actively scanned at automated security checkpoints entering into new areas. The workers had strict schedules to follow and extremely limited clearance. They only had authorization to be in the area they were assigned to on any given shift, and if they were caught in an area they shouldn't be in, they'd be treated as harshly as if they were intruding terrorists intent on blowing up a building.

This is where Fisher proved invaluable. Using her intel, she'd identified a security officer named Herman Kane with suitable clearance and arranged for him to start his shift at the same hour that they'd be arriving on the station. So after suiting up in maintenance uniforms, Fisher and Wendy paid the officer a visit while he was waiting in the locker room for his shift to start.