According to the map, the depot sat in the center of six interconnected buildings. Trying to approach it directly from the outside would expose her to more surveillance and drone coverage and more heavily guarded entrances. Passing through the other departments on her way to the depot was the best compromise of security and speed.

  Mia reached into her pocket and ran her finger over a datachip. Abigail had downplayed her earlier contribution. The datachip was covered with official military and government markings that made it look official. She reached into another pocket to retrieve a small plastic sleeve with similar markings.

  She stuffed the chip into the sleeve. In theory, anyone who spotted Mia outside a restricted zone would see the sleeve and think she was a cadet on an errand. The chip itself contained nothing but news files on supply line issues curated by Debbie. A blank datachip would have raised more suspicion if taken. Her other fake chip, her single-use door key was hidden in a boot, along with a thin audio projection rod that would help with her eventual distraction.

  Mia walked around the warehouse, walking quickly, with purpose as her father had taught her, but not jogging or running. She kept the sleeve in hand, her fingers spread to not block the labels.

  She found a street and hurried to an intersection. Her path to the depot was roundabout because of drone patrol patterns and a desire to not appear obvious when approaching.

  Mia’s heart pounded as the minutes passed. The occasional vehicle zoomed by or a person in the distance wandered near her, but no one looked her way or confronted her. Her camouflage was working.

  Her neck stiffened with each encounter. Previous infiltration training had focused on the avoidance of all enemy personnel, and barring that, their immediate and brutal suppression. Simply walking by targets went against her training.

  Mia kept reminding herself that the base personnel were obstacles, not enemies, but that could only do so much to fight against years of conditioning.

  Her winding course brought her to the entrance of a logistics company. Soldiers and staff walked in and out of the building, chatting away. No one gave any indication that they noticed her.

  Mia crossed the street and strode toward the entrance. Though an MP in a shack guarded the door, he wasn’t inspecting anyone’s credentials.

  As she approached the entrance, an officer looked her up and down, his gaze fixed on the chip sleeve. Mia fought a grimace before saluting. He saluted back.

  “Military protocol doesn’t go away because you have a job, Cadet…” He stared at her nametape. “…Johansen.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “As long as you keep that in mind.” The officer left.

  Mia appreciated that Abigail had recognized the need for a fake nametape before committing to the mission. For all the researcher’s complaints about not thinking through the variables, she’d considered far more than Mia.

  Abigail’s work had made a daytime infiltration possible. A nighttime raid where Mia couldn’t kill people would have been doomed.

  Mia hurried to the door, saluting when necessary. Everyone else responded on instinct, and no one bothered to take in any details about a cadet intern on an obvious errand in logistics.

  That didn’t keep her heart from thundering once she passed through the exit. The MP depot was close. She hadn’t been forced to use her key, and no one cared that she was there. The mission would succeed.

  A successful infiltration of the external buildings wasn’t enough. She needed to get into the depot, and that meant getting into a restricted zone where no cadet intern would be allowed.

  Mia slowed, taking in uniform details of passing administrative staff. Her best target was a civilian uniform. It would free her of the saluting requirements and lower the chance that someone would focus on her.

  Without knowledge of unit schedules and internal patrol routes, it was too risky to knock someone out. That meant she needed to grab a uniform from someone without any violence and not give them any reason to go looking for a stolen uniform.

  Time marched on, along with Abigail’s guarantees of holes in the electronic security net. Mia couldn’t stand around trying to come up with a plan and simply hope her first option worked.

  She moved down a hallway, surveying the signage until she found what she wanted: an arrow pointing to a gym. She picked up the pace, keeping herself slower than a jog until she arrived at the gym.

  After tucking the sleeve into her pocket, she crept into the gym. Like an evil metal multi-limbed monster, an impressive array of workout machines filled the sprawling room, though only a handful of people in exercise gear made use of the machines.

  Mia edged toward the wall, disappointed. She wanted more choices. With so few people in the room, mostly men, her plan was at risk. Though the male and female uniforms were the same, other than size, somebody would take notice if she tried to march into the men’s locker room.

  Staying close to the walls, she made her way over to the curving hallway leading into the women’s locker room. She glanced toward two women around her size who were chatting away while doing reps on a quad machine.

  One of the women frowned at her friend. “You can’t quit. We just started. I already got permission for a two-hour break, so I can do this with you in the middle of the day. You should be happy the captain likes me so much he’ll let me get away with that.”

  “Just because we’re working in a military base doesn’t mean we need to be military fit,” the other woman complained. She grunted and raised the weights with her leg. “We’re civilian contractors doing administrative support.”

  “We have all this equipment available for free! It’s one hour. You’ll live.”

  Mia ignored the rest of the conversation and headed straight toward the locker room. The universe had presented her with a tactical advantage. One hour of the women working out gave her more than enough time.

  She stepped into the locker room. No one else was inside. That was helpful, though it didn’t solve the issue of locating the uniforms.

  Mia scanned the area, looking for any cameras. Satisfied there was nothing there, she headed to the closest locker and tugged it open. It was empty. So was the next one.

  Her jaw tightened as footsteps approached from outside. Mia opened a locker and began unfastening the buttons on her uniform.

  A woman in an administrative staff uniform came in, sparing barely a glance for Mia. She hurried to another locker and opened it.

  Mia leaned forward, pulling a datapad from her pocket to feign reading something and kill time. Excruciating minutes passed as the other woman changed and headed out.

  Once the woman cleared the door, Mia made short work of the lockers, pulling them open until she found a civilian administrative staff uniform. The lack of a nametape made the administrative uniform even more useful. She wouldn’t have to remember to react to someone else’s name.

  Not wasting any time, she changed into the new uniform. After placing her devices in her pockets, she stowed her cadet uniform with false nametape in a different locker and hurried from the locker room with a brisk walk back into the hallway.

  Mia moved quicker now, less concerned about standing out in a non-cadet’s uniform. Several long hallways and intersections later, she came to a secured checkpoint for the MP depot with a private and a sergeant manning the checkpoint.

  Everything had been going smoothly. Almost too smoothly. For a moment, Mia wondered if they were letting her infiltrate the depot as a trap.

  She crushed the idea. No logic supported the conclusion and no one had any reason to suspect she’d be sneaking into the base to steal a piece of tech to modify her DT.

  Mia turned the corner, looking for a good target for her distraction. A supply closet offered her best bet.

  She looked both ways before opening the closet and stepping inside, pulling the audio projector from her boot. She ran her finger along the side before shoving it behind a basket of unused datapads.

  Mia backed away and exited the room, putting her hands to her face. She hadn’t spotted any cameras in the hallway, but it never hurt to be sure. And her plan gave her a reason to hide her face.

  Loud, muffled moans filled the air, along with rhythmic thumping. Mia left the hallway at a steady jog toward the checkpoint. The moans were loud enough now they could be heard even there.

  She hoped her jogging would give her face a red cast. That would help sell the distraction. Her device would also disrupt the lock, making it harder for anyone to get inside. Abigail had suggested that part, after suggesting Mia’s plan of disabling the lock with a caustic agent would be too obvious. The projector itself would blank its data within minutes, leaving nothing for anyone to investigate.

  The MPs eyed her for a second before the private glanced down the hallway with a confused look.

  Mia feigned a look of concern as she recalled Abigail’s suggestion of the feigned sex plan the night before.

  “Is sex nothing but a distraction?” Mia had asked.

  “For some, it is more,” Abigail had responded. “But for almost everyone else, it certainly is diverting.”

  The MP exchanged a glance with the sergeant before turning toward Mia. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  Mia didn’t have any problem memorizing her lines for this part of the mission. What she did have a problem with was forcing any real emotion into them. She hoped the MPs would come to their own conclusions about shock.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah, I can hear that,” the private responded, grimacing.

  “What I heard coming from that room made me blush, and they’re only getting louder.” Mia bit her lip and inclined her head down the hallway. “That has to be against regulations. Someone needs to do something about it.”

  The private shrugged. “Maybe it’s not what we think?”

  A loud shout of pleasure echoed down the hallway. It occurred to Mia to wonder why Abigail had something like that on hand, or if she’d asked Debbie to put together the audio, which made the situation stranger still.

  “I didn’t volunteer to transfer to this base for that lack of discipline,” complained Mia. Her heart rate kicked up over how wooden her tone was.

  The sergeant glared at her. “I thought you were new here. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “So?” Mia gestured down the hallway. “What does that have to do with that?”

  “It’s probably some bigwig and his administrative aide getting it on.” The sergeant shrugged. “You trying to get your boss in trouble?”

  Mia glared at him, true annoyance surfacing. Between this and the officer on the station she’d flared, she wondered if the KCAP military had a sex discipline problem they needed to crack down on.

  Abigail had told her the plan would work, though Mia had her doubts the night before. Now things were failing right before her eyes.

  A nearby door slid open, and a red-faced major stormed out. “What the hell is going on?”

  The private replied, “Sir, some bigwig and his administrative aide are having fun is all.”

  The major scoffed. “Last time I checked, this was a base, not a damned brothel. You two—with me.” He gestured to the MPs. “Unless it’s the colonel in there, somebody’s getting my boot up their ass.”

  “Yes, sir,” the MPs answered in unison. They opened the door to the checkpoint and hurried out, securing it behind them.

  The major stomped down the hallway, the MPs on either side. They exchanged nervous looks until they turned the corner.

  Mia reached into her pocket to activate her single-use key. The door clicked, and she slipped inside, pulling out her datapad and shoving it into an I/O port.

  “Debbie, do it,” Mia ordered.

  “Initiating DT adjustment,” Debbie replied. “Please wait.”

  Mia licked her lips. She was depending on the AI and Abigail now. Abigail had the coordinates for the dark sector. The idea was to map the coordinates to other internal coordinates. Her tracking device would tell anyone watching that Mia was exactly where she should be.

  Abigail had also set up internal dynamic coordinate mapping to cover other areas Mia might be sent to, including higher-security zones, “just in case.” It wasn’t complete spoofing, but it would be close enough to get her where she needed to go.

  “Get this damned door open now!” bellowed the major from around the corner. “And whoever is in there, you better damned well put your clothes on and come out here before I kick your asses into orbit. Keep me waiting too much longer, I’ll boot you to the next system!”

  “Come on, Debbie,” Mia murmured. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Direct access is required to continue this process in an efficient manner,” Debbie replied. “Please stand by.”

  “I’m going count down from ten, and if you’re not out right away, you’ll be lucky if I don’t send your asses to Ice for this embarrassment,” the major yelled.

  Mia glanced around. She’d gotten rid of the MPs, and Abigail’s device was handling the surveillance equipment. That didn’t make her safe. All it would take was one person walking up to the checkpoint to realize something was wrong.

  “…Six…five…four…”

  Doors opened down the hallway as military and civilian staff stepped out to see what was going on. Mia ducked into the MP station.

  The moaning and thumping grew louder. A low din of overlapping chatter echoed through the hallway. Red-faced men and women stood next to chuckling soldiers gesturing down the hallway.

  “There are too many people,” whispered Mia. “We need to finish this.”

  “Adjustment complete,” Debbie announced.

  Mia stayed low when she opened the door and scuttled from the checkpoint. She straightened up and strode down the hallway, weaving in and out of the burgeoning crowd.

  “We should start a pool,” one soldier suggested, elbowing a friend. “I bet you it’s the colonel.”

  “No way it’s the colonel,” the other soldier insisted. “I’m telling you, it’s the captain from finance. I told you he was eyeing that blonde the other day.”

  “I will have this door blown open, if necessary,” the major ranted. “Now get your asses out here!” Scattered laughter filled the area and the major glared at the bystanders. “This isn’t a damned peepshow. Get back to duty, or I’ll have you all written up, and we can spend a week licking these hallways clean.”

  That sent most of the crowd scrambling, making it easier for Mia to slip away in the crowd without being noticed. All she needed to do was retrieve her uniform to ensure she left no DNA evidence behind and get back to her escape fence.

  Mia’s tension flowed away and a smile bloomed on her face. Mission successful.

  A passing soldier smirked at her. “Just another day at the office, am I right?”

  “You could say that,” Mia replied.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The delicious herbaceous aroma of roasted chicken wafted into Mia’s nostrils, making her stomach rumble. There was nothing like a home-cooked meal prepared by her own hands to satisfy her hunger. The only thing better was sharing it with Abigail.

  After the successful mission and extraction, they’d monitored the news and specific contacts Abigail had for any sign of trouble or indications Mia was being hunted or marked for immediate arrest to be remanded to Ice for a longer sentence.

  A brief mention was made of a prank at the base, but no sign of mobilization or reaction. As far as they could tell, the mission had been a massive success. To celebrate, they’d decided to have a special meal together, something more involved than the quick treats Mia had thrown together on previous visits.

  Mia had missed cooking her own meals during her academy training. It was a necessary sacrifice given her living situation. None of the mess hall meals tasted as satisfying as the ones she made for herself and nowhere near as good as the meals she made for those she cared about. Eating was about more than simple nutrition.

  Mia smiled at Abigail. When her father had died, she’d believed she would never be able to fill the void in her, that she would always be empty and alone. Her shared meals with Abigail had been the start of what she believed impossible.

  It was almost as if she had a family again. Presumption or not, Mia enjoyed the feeling.

  She set the tray holding the chicken down and took her seat across from Abigail. As she offered the woman a smile, a pang of disappointment shot through Mia. Having a family brought both joy and pain.

  It had been hard for Mia after her father had died. Abigail had been there for her, had helped her and supported her, both emotionally and with her mission. Abigail was the only person Mia trusted completely. Even her friends at the academy weren’t privy to all her secrets.

  But Mia and Abigail had barely seen each other since the initiation of the Top Gun plan. Soon Mia would be sent off to a prison planet and then the program. This was both a celebration of the mission’s success and a goodbye dinner. Months, perhaps a year, might pass before they saw each other again in person.

  Abigail carved off a piece of chicken and placed it on her plate. “It’ll be a long time before we see each other.”

  Mia blinked, surprised by Abigail’s insight and synchronicity. “Yes, it will be. I was just thinking that.”

  “I know. I could see it on your face.”

  Mia touched her cheek. “You could?”

  “I’m more observant than you think.” Abigail smiled. “Tomorrow is your last day of freedom before you spend a lot of time in the cold drudgery of Ice. Have you thought much about how you want to spend your final day of freedom?”

  Mia considered the question. She did want to spend more time with Abigail before they left, and not just because she trusted her as a close confidante about Mia’s father. Abigail would never replace her father, but it was good to have someone older who cared about her.

  Spending time together with one’s family made sense. Neither Mia nor her upbringing was normal, but she understood that much. The only thing left was figuring out something other than eating together.