Star Wars_ X-Wing 05_ Wraith Squadron - Aaron Allston [128]
Kell kept a bored expression on his face and brought the skimmer to a stop about a meter from the point at which he was sure the guards would bring their weapons to bear.
The senior human guard stepped forward. “Orders.”
Kell handed him his forged datacard. “That’s work orders, not orders. We don’t take orders. Not like spaceport security boys.” He gave Tyria a grin he knew to be irritating and cocksure.
“These shuttles aren’t due to be serviced until the morning,” the guard said. “They depart tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s a slack period,” Kell said. It was true; otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to find and temporarily steal a maintenance skimmer. There had been others lined up, unused. “Control wants us to get a little ahead before the work piles up tomorrow.”
The guard gave him a sour look and stepped back to slip the card into the door reader.
Now, their first test. It would have been far too much work to forge a proper set of work orders allowing them to work on the Hawkbat’s shuttles—a set that would get proper authorization from the spaceport’s main computer. It would have been a mission all by itself to get through that computer’s defenses; security on that system was extremely tight to keep malicious code-slicers from doing things like rerouting cargo craft to pirates’ landing zones or causing craft to crash.
So Grinder had tried to run completely around the wall of defenses. Just after nightfall this evening, he had climbed to the hangar’s roof and sliced into the little retransmitter there. Now, the module he’d planted in that comm device would be intercepting the request for authorization of Kell’s codes, waiting an appropriate amount of time, and sending back the authorization … all without bothering the spaceport computer. The Wraiths had no plans to retrieve the module; it would interfere with no other requests and would let the retransmitter operate normally. It would probably not be found until the next time the transmitter was serviced, whether days, weeks, or months from now.
The guard returned. “You’re clear to work. Under the eye of a spaceport guard.”
Kell gestured toward Piggy. “I thought that was what Smiley there was for.”
“Right.” The guard waved at the two remaining at the hangar doors, and a moment later those doors were rolling open. Maintaining his air of boredom, Kell moved the skimmer through and Piggy paced them in. The Gamorrean guard said something in its own language as they passed and Piggy grunted a reply.
As the doors shut behind them, Kell maneuvered the skimmer to be directly beside the cockpit of one of the shuttles. When it was in place, he lowered the landing struts and shut off the repulsors. Now, the craft would be braced for its mechanical duties. He and Tyria clambered out of the cab and into the aft machinery, Kell swinging a diagnostic module up against the hull of the Hawkbat’s Perch.
The others didn’t emerge from hiding, but Grinder’s voice did. “I’m reading one visual-only scanner, up somewhere in the northwest corner.”
Kell resisted the urge to look. “Can you disable it?”
“From here? Don’t be stupid. Wait a second. Unless I miss my guess …”
Kell and Tyria chimed in together, “Which never happens …”
“Shut up. Unless I miss my guess, it’s piping its data straight through that same retransmitter … Yes! Give me a second. Everybody hold still. I’m recording a few seconds of its transmission … looping it … blending the seam. Now all I have to do is transmit it constantly to my module on the retransmitter and have the module hold the real feed … Done!” Grinder emerged, looking sweaty but triumphant.
Janson and Phanan came out from beneath their respective hiding places. Janson gestured to the side of Hawkbat’s Perch. “Why isn’t that panel open yet?”
“Because we don’t actually have authorization, remember?” Kell felt, once more, the faint