Chapter 25 - The Burden of Independence

  Unsurprisingly, finding the construction company that built the Imperial garrison turned out to be the easy part.

  There were two problems that Darius would have to solve in order to retrieve the relevant records that they needed. The first was obvious – breaking into the company’s office itself.

  At first, Darius had considered trying to bluff his way in somehow. It wasn’t quite as stupid as it sounded – by coincidence, he had actually done a fair amount of maintenance work on some of this company’s larger construction vehicles. He wasn’t entirely sure how to leverage repairing a large hauler’s engines into accessing confidential records, but at least it gave him a foot in the door.

  Still, it hadn’t taken him long to discard that method. The fact of the matter was that he just wasn’t that good at talking his way into places. Unless you counted mouthing off to security guards as talking his way into prison, in which case he had plenty of experience.

  No, he would have to do this the old-fashioned way – by breaking in at night. Naturally, that came with its own set of problems. Darius actually wasn’t terribly worried about the break-in itself. An office like that wouldn’t have any credits or valuable tools stored on the premises, so they wouldn’t have invested much in security either. There would doubtlessly be an alarm system he’d like to try to bypass if only to give himself more time, and possibly a camera or two, but, well…

  He was already a known criminal anyway. What were they going to do, try to throw him in prison harder?

  No, the real problem was getting to the office in the first place.

  The construction company’s office wasn’t tucked away in the sprawling chaos of the residential sector – it was located deep in one of the industrial sectors that dotted the station. Even worse, the company was successful enough to be located fairly close to the heart of the station, where the wealthier companies, corporations, and private citizens gathered. Getting there would mean passing through two different sectors and at least three checkpoints.

  The timing was another issue. Breaking in during the day was a nonstarter. The office might not have top-tier security, but there were always enough people around to notice someone fiddling with a door or trying to bypass an alarm panel. Night, however, brought its own complications.

  Curfew meant the streets would be empty except for Imperial patrols and the occasional authorised transport. Anyone caught out after hours without the right credentials – and Darius definitely didn’t have the right credentials – would be tossed in a holding cell first, and asked questions never. Worse, the lack of crowd cover would leave him a sitting duck. He wouldn’t just be easier to spot – he’d be impossible to miss.

  Darius leaned back in his chair, sighing explosively. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m stumped,” he said aloud.

  {It may help to lay out your problems in a clear and concise manner,} Echo smoothly responded. {They say that a problem clearly identified is a problem half solved.}

  Darius raised an eyebrow. “Whose ‘they’?”

  {That particular saying is often attributed to Charles Kettering, an inventor from the 1900’s. He was a prolific—}

  “Yeah, I don’t really need the full history lesson, thanks,” Darius said hurriedly. He already knew from the AI’s lessons on building a frame that Echo would cheerfully provide incredible amounts of information on relatively useless topics.

  {Of course. We should focus on your problem,} Echo said, unoffended. {What is it you are ‘stumped’ about?}

  “Everything,” Darius complained. “I don’t know how I’m going to get to this stupid office, how I’m going to get into this stupid office, or how I’m going to get back from breaking into this stupid office. I’m not a criminal; I don’t know the first thing about this stuff!”

  {Technically speaking, you are a criminal.} Echo pointed out, quite unfairly in Darius’s opinion. {If you don’t know where to begin, you could simply ask Harlan or Lena for help.}

  “Yeah, and look like a total amateur,” scoffed Darius, neatly ignoring the fact that he was a total amateur. “If I can’t even get into this stupid office by myself, then I may as well give up on this whole ‘independent’ thing and just join the Freeholders properly.”

  {I believe you are overreacting,} Echo said after a moment.

  Darius heaved another sigh and looked forlornly at the wall of his shared bedroom. “Probably,” he admitted. “But I really do have no idea where to start.”

  {Then let us start at the beginning. What is the first problem you face in completing this task?}

  Darius considered for a moment. “Getting there in the first place, I guess. No point in worrying about how to break into the place if I can’t reach it.”

  {Very well, what obstacles are between you and the office?}

  He was starting to feel like he was back in school again, being led to an obvious answer by an exasperated teacher. It was not a good feeling.

  “The checkpoints, obviously,” he said begrudgingly. “Curfew doesn’t make it any easier, but that shouldn’t be too hard to work around. Just need to hide for a couple of minutes to let the patrols pass. Risky, maybe, but doable.”

  Presumably, it wouldn’t be any different to ducking the usual patrols after a night of drinking. Then again, the last time he’d tried that was the night before he’d met Echo – for a given value of met – and that had ended up with him spending the night in a cell.

  {Let’s start with the checkpoints, then. What are all of the possible ways to pass through the checkpoint? No matter how likely to work.}

  Darius raised an eyebrow dubiously. That sounded more like running through a list of ways to get caught than anything else. Then again, it wasn’t like he had any better ideas right now, so…

  “Well, we could always try walking straight through and hope they forget to check my ID,” he began, only a little sarcastically. “But I really wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

  {The likelihood of that is rather low,} Echo agreed, somehow managing to sound patiently amused without audibly changing his tone at all. {Are there any other options?} the AI pressed encouragingly.

  Darius rolled his eyes but obligingly began to list off every method he could think of, roughly in order from least to most insane. “Full frontal assault, causing a distraction, using a disguise to pretend to be a high ranking officer, digging a secret tunnel under their feet, hijacking an Imperial transport, or clearing my name and just walking through normally, inventing… a… teleporter—holy crap, that might just work!”

  Darius sat up as the idea hit, feeling like he’d just downed a cup of coffee. Real coffee, too, not the synth stuff.

  {…You believe you can invent a functioning teleportation device within the next few days?} Echo asked cautiously, in much the same way you might ask the random stranger talking to himself on the street what the voices are telling him to do.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “What? No, don’t be ridiculous,” Darius snapped distractedly.

  Echo waited for a long moment. {I’m afraid I cannot read your mind, Darius. If you’ve had an idea, you need to verbalise it.}

  Darius waved a hand impatiently, his mind already racing ahead. “The tunnels! The maintenance tunnels under the station. I can use those to bypass the checkpoints!”

  Exeter Station, like most Imperial designs, wasn’t built on the usual principles of burying infrastructure beneath concrete and forgetting it existed. The scale of the place made that impossible. Running utility lines piecemeal would’ve meant tearing up streets every time a new building was slapped together or a major repair needed doing. Instead, the designers had opted for efficiency over elegance.

  Beneath the city’s chaotic sprawl lay a grid of maintenance tunnels, each packed with power conduits, water lines, data cables, and ventilation systems. Everything was consolidated into one sprawling network, accessible for upkeep without disturbing the surface.

  {Tunnels?} Echo prompted curiously. {That seems.. convenient. Would these tunnels not be monitored?}

  “Nah, what’d be the point?” Darius asked dismissively. “There would have to be hundreds of miles of tunnels running under the station. Getting a camera network up and running for something like that would be way too expensive to bother with, especially ‘cause they’re not exactly high-traffic areas.”

  {Would the Freeholders not already be using these tunnels then?}

  “Maybe they are,” Darius shrugged. “Even if they did use the tunnels, it probably wouldn’t be too often. I don’t know the specifics – obviously, I’ve never been down into the tunnels – but even I know that you need security codes to get down into the tunnels, and I’m pretty sure that the codes are different for each section. Uh, speaking of, you can hack the doors, right? This whole thing sort of falls apart if I can’t get into the tunnels in the first place.”

  {I won’t know for certain until I try, but I don’t imagine it will be terribly difficult.}

  “Excellent,” Darius smiled, rubbing his hands together before pausing. “Now we just have to find an entrance to the tunnels, make sure I can dodge the patrols, and last but not least, break into the office itself. Ugh,” he groaned theatrically. “Why is life so difficult?”

  {Truly, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to survive this long,} Echo said blandly. Darius fought down a smirk. It might just be because their brains were merging or whatever, but he was finding that Echo actually wasn’t the worst company. If nothing else, he could appreciate a good dry sense of humour.

  {Now that you have an initial plan, it could be worth asking the Freeholders if they know of any tunnel entrances nearby,} the AI suggested, but Darius was already shaking his head.

  “Nah, no way. It’ll look way better if I can do this whole thing myself, start to finish. Besides, on the off chance that the Freeholders aren’t already using the tunnels, it could be useful to keep that information to myself.”

  {To use as leverage?} Echo’s managed to make the idea sound distasteful. One day, Darius would figure out how Echo managed to inflect so much emotion without sounding any different.

  “Not necessarily,” Darius said evasively. “It’s just that now that I’m working with the Freeholders instead of for them, it’s probably a good idea to have a few aces up my sleeve. Besides, even if I did tell them, it’s not like they can get into the tunnels easily without you anyway. Unless they already have their own access, in which case they don’t need me to tell them anyway!”

  {…It still feels wrong, but I cannot argue with your logic.} Echo finally said.

  “Great!” Darius said brightly. Making sure they were on the same page was important – while so far Echo hadn’t done anything like take over his augs or spill his secrets to everyone, that didn’t mean that he was willing to take that for granted.

  “Now that step one is done, I just… have to plan everything else out,” Darius thought for a second about what that would entail before sagging back with a groan. “Wonderful.”

  – – –

  The maintenance tunnels were a marvel of Imperial pragmatism: efficient, utilitarian, and utterly devoid of charm. Darius sat slouched against the rough wall, trying and failing to find a position that didn’t leave at least one part of his body aching. The floor was cold metal, ridged with grooves to prevent the condensation from forming slick puddles, and the faint, ever-present hum of power conduits running overhead was enough to set his teeth on edge. It wasn’t deafening, but it was relentless, like a song stuck in his head with no way to shut it off.

  Currently, he was a few minutes walk from the exit he’d identified as being closest to his target. The maintenance tunnels were not really designed to be used as a transport system, so the closest exit was still something like a ten-minute walk, but that was significantly better than he’d feared.

  For once, things had actually gone rather smoothly.

  That didn’t mean it had been easy to get to this point, but at least it hadn’t been particularly complicated. Finding an entrance to the maintenance tunnels had ended up being as simple as wandering around for a few hours and poking his head into the various side streets and alleys he came across.

  Having worked in the shipyards for a few years, he was at least passingly familiar with the sorts of locations access points would be. Hardly an exact science, but it wasn’t like anyone was actively trying to hide the tunnel access.

  The entrance closest to the safehouse ended up being tucked away behind a forgotten storage unit no one seemed inclined to check. The bypass kit had worked flawlessly – it had taken Echo all of ten seconds to get the door open – and everything else had followed on as planned.

  Traversing through the tunnels was also easier than he had feared, though that didn’t mean it was fun. The tunnels weren’t built with comfort in mind. They were narrow but not claustrophobic, just wide enough for a maintenance crew and their equipment to move through without squeezing past one another.

  Pipes and cables ran along the walls and ceiling, labelled in crisp, stencilled lettering that was already starting to fade in places. Every so often, a low-hanging conduit would force Darius to duck as he moved through, though he’d still managed to clip his head more than once on the trek here.

  Light strips embedded in the walls cast a harsh, sterile glow that didn’t seem to reach the corners of the tunnels, leaving them in perpetual half-shadow. The air was dry and smelled faintly metallic, with occasional whiffs of something sharper—probably coolant or grease leaking from one of the lines. He’d spotted a rat scurrying along the edge of the floor earlier, though it was thin enough to look more like a particularly scrappy skeleton than a living creature.

  Still, for all its faults, the tunnel system was straightforward to navigate. The designers had added maps and markers at regular intervals, etched directly into the walls so they couldn’t be tampered with or erased.

  How said maps got updated when changes were made to the network, Darius had no idea, but then he didn’t particularly care, either. It got him where he needed to go, and that was good enough for him.

  The plan for avoiding the patrols once he left the tunnels was as simple as it was boring. He’d entered the tunnels hours ago, well before curfew, while the streets above were still alive with the usual churn of station life. By the time the patrols were out in force, he’d already be underground and settled in.

  Once night fell, he’d slip out, hit the office, and retreat back to the tunnels before anyone realised he’d been there. Then, instead of risking another run-in with curfew enforcement, he’d hunker down and wait until morning, emerging after the restrictions lifted.

  He shifted against the wall, wincing as the ridged surface dug into his back. Maybe he should see about adding a folding chair to his kit. If he was going to be using these tunnels again, it could even be worth carting some supplies down here to establish a little fallback for himself.

  On second thought, that was probably too risky. The tunnels may not be used often, but they were still used occasionally. Better to put up with a little discomfort than risk someone stumbling onto his supplies and the Empire catching wind of his travel methods.

  The thought of sleeping down here made his skin crawl, and not just because of the rats, but he’d already resigned himself to the idea. Better to deal with a bit of discomfort than risk blowing the whole operation because he couldn’t keep his head down for one night. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anyone waiting up for him.

  Darius pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders, the dry chill of the tunnels seeping through the fabric.

  He’d already scouted the exit he’d use later that night as best he could, which was located behind some massive silos of a chemical storage facility. It wasn’t particularly well-hidden, but hopefully it wasn’t a high-traffic area either. That was the trick with the maintenance tunnels: nobody thought about them unless they had a reason to. As long as he was careful and fast, the odds of anyone spotting him as he emerged were slim.

  For now, though, all he could do was wait. He checked the time on his datapad, wincing at how slowly the hours were crawling by. Part of him regretted not bringing something to pass the time, but he hadn’t wanted to risk anything that could draw attention if he’d been stopped before entering the tunnels.

  “I don’t suppose you know any games we can use to pass the time, Echo?” he asked hopefully.

  {I believe it may be a more efficient use of time to revise some of the plans for my frame,} Echo said pleasantly. {Assuming the mission to steal materials from the garrison runs smoothly and you manage to take enough drones, it is possible we may have most of the required materials within the next fortnight. That leaves us a maximum of four weeks to assemble a usable frame. While doable, this would not leave much room for error, especially if more specialised parts are required.}

  Darius let his head thunk back against the wall. “Wonderful,” he breathed. “I’ll give you this much, I’m not bored anymore.”

  {I am glad to be of assistance,} Echo said, missing the point entirely. {Now then, let us begin with—}

  As Echo started droning on about frame components, Darius stared blankly at the maps on the wall. He wasn’t sure which would kill him first at this rate: an Imperial patrol or boredom.