Bypass Gemini

Chapter 11

The DAR, or at least whatever Karter had made it into, was quite a vessel. In terms of raw speed, it was a hair faster than Betsy. In terms of maneuverability and creature comforts, the DAR left Betsy in the dust. Lex had always considered a heated leather massage seat to be a ridiculous waste of money. His lower back was now urging him to reconsider. It was just as well, because the time lost on the trash heap, coupled with the renewed sense of urgency to be rid of the package, meant that there wouldn’t be many more stops. The spicy sawdust bars that were supposed to be keeping him alive right now had mercifully been destroyed in his crash, so he stopped to dump some chips on a replacement. The best value this time came in the form of tubes of protein/vitamin fortified peanut butter. He wisely picked up more than the usual complement of water, as well. Once he was stocked up, he began a series of marathon sprints that would have made a legitimate courier go on strike. It was mind-numbing, exhausting, and left him looking and smelling like a vagrant, but in just under the six day deadline, he was watching his destination pull into view.

Tessera V was, in some ways, a lot like Golana. It was a major transit and shipping hub. Unlike Golana, it was also much, much more. The average climate was famously gorgeous. So much so that most corporations kept a campus there for employee retreats. There were also no less than three highly prestigious colleges. Perhaps the most famous and respected opera house for half a galaxy made its home there. Famous beaches, iconic national parks, and all manner of vacation destinations dotted the landscape. In short, it was a center of commerce, culture, and tourism. And since that sort of place attracts an awful lot of the criminal element, there was a considerable legal presence as well.

It was that last part that he needed to deal with at the moment. The sheer amount of traffic in and out of the average planet meant that a fair amount of ships were allowed to slip through without notice. Such was not the case at Tessera V. The entry process involved the exchange of codes, verification of credentials, and if they didn’t like what they heard, a thorough ship search. Figuring out how to get through the arrival processing at planets like this was one of the hardest parts of being a freelancer, and techniques that worked were guarded jealously. Lex had come up with a procedure that usually worked, but he hated to do it. It was one of the more overtly illegal parts of his job, and if he were to get caught it would cost him a fortune in fines. However, since there wasn’t much a choice at the moment, he would have to give it a shot. He dug out the DAR transponder and fired it up, then hailed the arrivals center.

“Tessera V, northern hemisphere arrivals, please transmit landing auth code,” the voice of a young woman said with all of the enthusiasm she could be expected to muster for a phrase she’d had to say several hundred times that day.

“I’ve got an equipment malfunction. Request vocal code submission,” Lex said.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, murder in her tone, “Please provide the final sixty-four digit code following the-”

“Um, you want to try that again?” he warned.

“Please provide the sixty-four digit-”

“One more time, please. How many digits?”

“Six. Four.”

“What, may I ask, happened to the other four hundred and forty-eight digits you were supposed to be asking for?”

“… Oh no...”

“It looks like I’m going to need you to provide your employee number,” Lex said with a heavy sigh.

“Goddamn it,” she fumed.

The full landing authorization code was a five hundred and twelve digit hexadecimal monster, a mess of letters and numbers that took forever to read out correctly. Worse, once it was read, it was to be read back for confirmation. Absolutely everyone who worked the arrivals desk for more than a few days figured out that all but the last sixty-four digits were identical for every ship in a given day, so they only asked for the unique portion. It was a simple, obvious time saving measure, and without doing it, the queue of people awaiting permission to land would quickly get hours long if even a single person requested to enter their code manually. Like most simple, obvious time saving measures, though, it was utterly against protocol, and thus the only person who would actually object to the short version would be an auditor.