Alice crouched low, preparing to leap as soon as the wall was down. Robert had retreated to the corner, his useless pistol aimed at the spark of the arc cutter.

The blinding light sputtered out. "Stand clear please."

A chunk of steel wall fell inward and banged to the floor. Through the opening Alice saw a man in a welding mask crouched over a tool bag. Behind him was a bearded gentleman in a pin-stripe vest, lounging on a couch with his arms draped wide over the back.

"Wiktor!" Robert lowered his gun. "What the hell man?"

"Greetings Robert! Alice, please relax. Is friends."

"Is it Wiktor? Who's in the mask?" Alice edged closer to the stranger. He paid her no mind.

"Dimitri, a good man." At the sound of his name the man put down his tools and took off the headgear. He looked late 20s, green eyes pale almost to grey, military cut.

"How do you do?" He asked.

"I've been better," Alice answered curtly, finally tucking away her knife. "What's going on Wik?"

"Time to change trains Alice," Wiktor replied. "Dimitri, explain."

The younger man stood. "We don't know if anyone tracked you onto your transport out of Unterwestrich. But if they did, we're going to make it hard for them. Since you've been on the convoy six other pods have docked and undocked along this wall. Another seven will do so before it reaches its destination.

"We'll change pods twice more after this. Anyone trying to follow is going to have a thousand leads to chase down."

Robert nodded appreciatively. "Clever. But why did you have to burn a hole in the wall? Couldn't you just hack it open? Security on these things can't be that good."

"That might leave a record in the logs," Dimitri explained. "Sometimes simple is best."

"Here's what I don't understand," Alice interjected, "what are you doing here Wik? Don't trust Dimitri to shuffle some passengers around?"

"I will make sure there are no misunderstandings from the Hungarians. Dimitri is my nephew. My sister will kill me if he takes a bullet."

"Wait, you think you're both coming with us?" Alice crossed her arms.

Dimitri answered: "Alice, we can get you in to customs with our connections, we can pay them to look away. That's as much of a risk as they'll take on for money. They're not going to break into the warehouse for you, or cut open the Space Core container to get at the goods. You need help on the ground."

"You're a good guy Dimitri?" Alice asked, watching his reaction. He raised his hands noncommittally.

"The best." Wiktor contributed. "Now come to our side, we undock soon."

As if on queue there was another kachunk as a latch released. Alice and Robert looked at each other then jumped across the opening as the pods began to separate.

"What about our stuff?" Alice asked.

"We have plenty," Wiktor replied. "My associates will dispose of evidence at the other end."

Dimitri reached up to the ceiling and pulled the sliding wall back down. They'd jimmied theirs open from the inside rather than cutting through it.

Something on Wiktor buzzed. "Dimitri, please give the briefing. I have business." He pulled out a computer and began typing.

"Very well. In a little over six hours we'll arrive at the customs facility. It will be night shift, minimal guards, most of them bribed."

Dimitri unrolled a map on the floor. "We will enter the cargo inspection queue here," he tapped one edge of the map. "The warehouse we need is over here," a point more toward the middle. "We'll spoof a firmware update to the security cameras that will take them offline for 2 minutes. We'll have to hustle a little but the distance is very doable in the blackout window. I'll sprint ahead to get the door open.

"Once we're inside it's going to be a seek and find game. There are about a dozen rows of containers stacked six high, in no particular order. No lights, we'll do everything with these," Dimitri held up a pair of night-vision goggles. Alice was beginning to realize just how inadequate her 'just wing it' plan had been.

"Once I cut the container open I'll keep watch. We're bringing enough battery power for a few hours of equipment operation. The rest is up to you. Any questions?"

Robert spoke: "On the phone Wiktor mentioned that Petbe is preparing to fire again. Do we know the timeline or targets?"

"Fragment carving is visible from the ground. We can see how far along they are on separating projectiles, but it doesn't tell us where they'll shoot them. It's not an exact science, but we think they will be ready late tonight or early tomorrow. With luck we can still stop the next volley."

The weight of the words settled over Alice. Millions of lives depended on tonight's operation. Even if the break in and hardware setup goes smoothly, she and Robert still need to hack an unfamiliar system, figure out how it operates, and try to shut it down. All in a matter of hours, best case.

"Time to switch trains again!" Wiktor shouted merrily. "Everybody grab a bag."

* * *

A few changes later and their cargo pod left the highway system for its final destination. Wiktor snored lightly on the couch he'd insisted they shuffle from pod to pod.

A series of starts and stops signified their arrival and passage through the customs system. Wiktor opened his eyes with a bleary smile.

Dimitri followed the pod's progress via GPS on a tablet. "Okay, we've been re-routed to the inspections queue. Everything's on track."

Robert jumped as someone outside rapped twice on one of the walls.

"That's the signal that we're clear to run. I'm going to take the camera's offline. Get ready." Dimitri did something on the tablet as the others shouldered their packs. Then he pocketed the device and gave a hand-signal countdown. 3... 2... 1...

Dimitri killed the lights and opened up the pod. Outside was dark and empty. Whoever had knocked on the wall was gone. In the distance a floodlight formed a halo in the rain.

"That's our door," Dimitri whispered, pointing at the light. "Time to go." He hopped down and sprinted away.

The others followed at their own pace, Alice out in front, Wiktor next, Robert taking up the rear. When Alice reached the warehouse door Dimitri was busy doing something with his tablet and the keypad.

"There we go!" The latch clicked and he pushed the door open. As predicted it was pitch-black inside. Alice pulled on her night-vision goggles.

The cavernous room stretched off to the distance, filled with massive steel racks stacked high with shipping containers. Alice sighed, there were hundreds to sift through.

Dimitri closed the door after Robert. "Okay, everybody has three aisles to check. We're looking for the box marked AHX327. Don't rush the search, if we come up empty we all have to start over. Keep quiet and only use the walkie when you find it. Questions?"

Robert's hand shot up.

"Yes Robert?"

"These goggles are extensible right?"

"They can run add-ons, yes."

"Give me five minutes and I'll load an OCR package on them. Sweep your vision over the containers, software will take care of the rest. Kid stuff."

Dimitri smiled. "Do it."

Robert's 'five minutes' turned out to be more like ten, but in short order they all were running with his upgrade.

Alice jogged over to her section, footsteps echoing down the aisles. Her goggles snagged identifiers off the containers as fast as she could turn her head. 144 boxes went by with no hit.

Toward the end of the second aisle her goggles flashed as they picked out her quarry: a nondescript box on the top row with 'SPACE CORE' stenciled on the side.

"Found it. Eighth row, back wall" she broadcast.

Dimitri got to her first. He dropped his backpack and unloaded everything except a cordless angle grinder and a coil of rope. He slipped a climbing harness over his clothes and headed to the end of the aisle, where steel crossbeams made a serviceable ladder.

Dimitri clambered up the shelving stack with relative ease. The rest of the group arrived as he was shimmying out around the front of the containers, toes hooked on a narrow ledge never designed for walking. He stopped in front of the Space Core box and anchored himself to the frame.

Incandescent sparks arced across Alice's goggles as Dimitri's angle grinder ate through the lock that held the container shut. She worried the sound might attract attention, but it was over almost as soon as it started. Dimitri swung one half of the door open and poked his head inside, then turned back with a grin and a big thumbs up.

He lowered a rope and Wiktor attached the rest of the gear for hoisting. Alice donned her own harness and climbed up to assist, tying off on the anchors Dimitri had left behind. It was easier than the newbie route at the climbing gym.

Alice maneuvered inside to inspect the gear. Space Core built all its terrestrial hardware as rapidly deployable shipping containers. Quick setup and teardown was a must in an era of rapidly shifting governments.

Everything looked to be in place. A fine layer of dust covered the controls, but nothing looked damaged or otherwise disturbed. The equipment was designed to run in-situ. Alice hooked up a battery pack to the main line and kicked off the diagnostic routine.

The next challenge was establishing the link to Petbe. The antenna assembly was stored near the door, but they would need to set it up somewhere with line-of-sight to the asteroid. Hard to do in the middle of a warehouse.

"Problem. We need the antenna outside," Alice told Dimitri. "They only stocked twenty feet of cable, and we're fifty feet from the nearest wall. Did you bring anything we can use?"

Dimitri shook his head. "No, we did not anticipate this. Maybe we can use the warehouse lift to reposition the container. It'll take time though - I don't know how to operate it, or where the controls are."

Alice sighed. To be this close but stymied by a few inches of steel. From the top of the container she could reach out and punch the damn ceiling.

"Can you put a hole in that?" Alice pointed up.

"Why? Oh! Yes, no problem."

Alice and Dimitri maneuvered the antenna assembly up on top of the container, then Dimitri used the arc cutter to open a path to the roof. He disappeared through it and got to work setting up the equipment outside.

Robert was still on the ground. He didn't have any climbing experience, and a fall from the top of the stack was probably fatal. Alice threw down an ethernet cable so he could hack from the safety of the ground.

Wiktor watched over his shoulder, tsking at Robert's use of Emacs. "Real hackers use Vim." From Robert's friendly shoulder punch it appeared to be an old ritual.

A chirp from the console in front of her told Alice the diagnostic was done. No errors detected. Not a surprise, but the kit had been mothballed for years; you never know when a cosmic ray will flip the wrong bit.

Dimitri returned from the roof with one end of a coax cable. "I followed the setup instructions, the dish is ready to transmit."

Alice plugged it in and kicked off calibration with growing anticipation. The plan had sounded crazy, but amazingly it was all coming together. She stifled a shout as the display changed from 'Waiting for Connection' to 'Beacon Acquired.'

"Robert," she radioed over the walkie, "it's negotiating the connection now... We're in! It looks like the original mining systems have all been taken offline, replaced with the weapon system code. There's some kind of diagnostic service running, but it's not letting me connect. See if you can get in with your credentials."

Robert began typing. "I see it, trying now... Okay, yikes. We've got a little under an hour before the next launch, or you can forget about your weekend getaway to Berlin. Or Delhi. Or New York. Or–"

"I get it, we've got to work fast. Robert, see if you can break into the weapon systems. I'm going to try to bring mining back online - our credentials should still be valid there and I might be able to re-task the bots they're using to carve fragments."

"Sounds good. Wait, the data just updated – oh shit."

"What now?"

"The targets changed Alice. Berlin's out."

"Well what's in?"

"A customs warehouse in northern Hungary. I think we've been noticed."