On the High Frontier

2. Just One More Thing (part 3/5)

The concealed hatch closes again behind her as she descends. She finds the pad and types in the code. Whatever else he is James is always straight with her. She puts the ring on and dismisses the Sayoko sheath. The shock of the cold in the unheated access is intense. Forget the skin suit, maybe she should wear socks under the sheath. She touches the ring. "Chloe, Deploy Full Sheath." The tingle of the field survey is almost painful against her cold skin, but then she is in the warmth of the Chloe costume sheath. Light grey skin with deep red and blue hair and long dark clothes. The ring has been supplemented by many pieces of jewelry and spikes. Rather that heels she is wearing platform heavy boots.

The advantage of the Chloe costume sheath is that it's a fully featured stealth suit. Highly responsive mimetic camouflage, thermal control to provide ambient emission only, and high resolution passive and active detectors for systems and people. The hacking capabilities are limited and focused on security system subversion but all in all it is a slick infiltration unit.

At the end of the passage is a concealed access hatch. The door slides open and she is in a maintenance storage locker. It is an indication of how deep into the spindle she is that she is next to Diamond, the fourth of the station's balance ringsets. After checking for anyone she opens the door and exits into a pressurised but unheated maintenance way.

The surface of the sheath shimmers as it takes the colours of the surrounding area. The suit shows nobody nor any active detector systems in the immediate vicinity. It is so sensitive she can see the power conduits behind the walls. She does not start the thermal system as that can only run for about 20 minutes in this temperature before the thermal dump will be full.

As she starts walking to Emerald the paperwork arrives. The work orders for the maintenance decommissioning makes interesting reading. From her knowledge of the individuals the composition is a bit off, too many supervisors and not enough technicians. "James, you there?"

"Where else, without a mesh core I'm a bit focused."

"I'm looking at the paperwork for Trevor here. He was on his own in a security zone in the ringset, and he had testing and comms kit that isn't needed for simple shutdown and decommissioning. There is something screwy here." Looking further down she noticed something else was off. "Also, turns out he was not first choice. Someone called Martin Stoor was meant to do it but he was ill and Trevor was brought in at the last minute."

"Interesting." That is James, always a master of understatement.

As she continues she reviews what she remembers about the balance ringsets. They are actually four sets of concentric rails side by side with trains of wheeled weights distributed around the circumference on a chain. Complex control systems linked to spin displacement sensors around the inside of the central core rotate the chain-trains to keep the centre of mass close enough to the centre of the spindle to avoid interference with the rotation. There are several concentric sets of these rails comprising the entire ringset.

The entire area is an open chamber with walkways and ladders providing access to the mechanisms. Generally it will be dark as the lights are only on when needed. Chloe's Light Intensifier and Infra-Red systems will mean she does not need them. When the ringset is active the area is open to the void, but as Emerald is shut down for maintenance it is pressurised to allow the work crews easy access. This means she won't need a breath mask.. The ringset is penetrated by tunnels through the empty gaps between some of the concentric rail sets which allow traffic in the pressurised zones to move through the barrier of the ringset. The maintenance way she is in is just such a tunnel. She reaches Emerald and uses a maintenance lock to enter.

The security station is just round the ring and slightly light (towards the centre of the spindle) of her current location. That's getting close. "Coming up on the security hub. It has sentinels so I'm going silent." The security sentinel systems are the reason she needs Chloe, it is the only suit she has that can evade active monitoring of this level. But she has to use the therm-optic camouflage and turn off all active signals. It is unlikely they would pick up the faint glow from Chloe for the LI, but as the lights seem to be on at the station she can kill that as well.