“I doubt our security clearance extends that far,” she mused. Not that they had ever tested it beyond the Command wing.
“Hence the break-in,” he reminded her with more patience than she would have extended to him.
Her curiosity got the best of her.
“Let’s say we do finagle our way in. What would we even look for? A recap from what was discussed when the General was here at the Academy? Present mission assignments around De Myra?”
“And if we’re lucky, some orders coming directly from General Narron. Anything we can find tying back to Segura,” Lee nodded.
As she’d already begun cementing her resolve into doing the thing, anyway… May as well do it right. “So how do we do it?”
“We’re going to need some help.”
She nodded, running the pad of her thumb along the tips of her fingernails while she thought. To break in, they’d need a hacker, someone they were sure could get them in. One already ambivalent to rules, and adjacent to rebelliousness.
“I think I know of just the one.”
CHAPTER 38: LEE
LEE WAS mostly prepared when Jed showed up outside Kat’s dorm room two days later.
Mostly.
“You sure you want him in here? We could totally use my dorm,” Lee said, when he heard the subtle knock pattern outside her door.
“I gave him the option. He was cool with setting up in here,” she said dismissively, brushing past him to let the cadet in.
“Of course he was.” Lee rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother stepping back to give Jed more space as the cadet’s tall, lanky form ducked in through the portal door after her.
Jed peered around Kat’s hurricane of a room, taking in the sweep of the blankets on her bed and her open closet, while Kat fluttered about, brushing things from her desk so that Jed could set up camp. “Whatever you need,” Kat said, motioning to her dorm room around them.
Lee restrained any commentary along the lines of, “but stay out of her stuff.” Because although he had that smug look in his eyes, the cadet had also agreed to help them, and Jed was one of few they could trust with this.
He dutifully got right to work. And by the time Lee came over to check out what he was doing, Jed had several holo-screens open and was starting work on a line of open code.
“So how’s this going to work?” Lee asked, mentally running through the various schematics they’d have to get past. “Do we walk in through the front doors there?”
“Basically,” Jed said. To which Lee actually did a double-take.
Kat flashed Lee an impressed grin. “I knew he’d be the best.”
“So your security clearance—you’ve got monster access, by the way—will get you through the Command wing doors. From there, I’ve tacked on a bit of an extension that will get you access to each of the doors beyond that—including the Commander’s own personal suites.” Here Jed paused, pulling up a schematic of the Command wing.
Kat’s eyes nearly bugged out at that as she glanced over to Lee as if to askdid you know that existed?
Lee hid his grin.
“From there, you will use what I am creating right now,” Jed continued, flicking back to the original hologram with the code. “Mocked it up last night, I am just dropping in the final touches. I trust you can find your way there alright?”
The schematics Jed had previously drawn up for them glowed in the confines of his mind. “We’ll manage.” Lee leaned in closer to better gauge the encryptions and the string of code he was working on. “It looks like it breaks through the current framework.” Lee squinted. “A key-code of sorts?”
“Exactly,” Jed nodded.
“Have you confirmed it will work with the Commander’s firewalls?”
“Don’t need to,” Jed said, leaning back in Kat’s chair. “Her mainframe is set up the same as ours and is keyed to the user. Each of us have a unique key within the system that auto-scrambles and regurgitates any outside coding—for the case of instances such as these. I could probably figure out how to makeit rehash so that it matches the fresh key-coding, but we would likely get flagged by security anyway.”
His confidence was borderline obnoxious—but Lee could also appreciate that. Kid was good and he knew it.
