Chapter 294: Kordula’s Integration

"Are you a mind reader, Commander?" Kordula questioned from the other side.

She did want to join Hans. She wanted to stand on nearly the same ground as Tyrus was now.

She wanted to be more than just an Overseer of the Automated Weaponry Program.

It had always been her ambition to be among the highest officials, to be recognized as someone important in DAEDALUS.

Otherwise, why would she have—

Her thoughts were cut off when Hans replied.

"I’m not a mind reader, Overseer, but I know desperation when I see it... or hear it."

He knew what Kordula had been up to.

His people at the station had been reporting on her for weeks. Most of it was ordinary. Recalibration work, meetings with the plant personnel, arguments with Tyrus back when he was still there.

But some reports kept coming back to the same thing. Kordula spent long hours at the ASS-116 terminals after everyone else had left, trying to recover the access the system had taken from her.

She never tried to restart it. Hans would have heard about that much sooner. She only wanted her name back inside it.

Someone who only cared about keeping a power plant running didn’t do that.

Hans had lived two lives already. He had met plenty of people who said they didn’t want something while working very hard to get it.

"You’ve been trying to get your credentials back."

The line went quiet for a moment.

"Your soldiers talk too much."

"They report. That’s different."

Both lines went quiet.

"I’m not asking you to fix Pylow, Overseer. You already told me it’s not your field. But there are things I’d like your opinion on, and I can’t send them over a line to someone who’s not one of mine."

"So that’s what this is. A recruitment call."

"Perhaps you forgot that it was you who called me?"

Kordula didn’t have an answer for that.

"What are the terms?"

"Come to Main Base and I’ll tell you in person. Same as I did with Tyrus."

"And if I say no?"

"You wouldn’t, or at least, the rational part of you would not say no."

Another pause, longer this time.

"ASS-116’s security bots must remain where they are," she said.

"You’ll change your mind about them soon enough, Overseer. But a deal is a deal."

"I’ll leave by tomorrow."

The call ended.

Hans glanced at Dianne. She looked far too pleased with herself.

...

Kordula arrived at Main Base the next day. The first thing she looked at was the security.

Cameras covered every approach to the Tech Center. Sensor strips ran along the entrances, reinforced barriers separated the outer paths from the deeper sections, and there were more controlled doors than regular ones.

Whoever designed this place knew what they were doing.

Hans was waiting near the main entrance with Dianne.

"Overseer. Welcome to Main Base."

"You could’ve sent a smaller aircraft."

"I’ll remember that for next time."

He led her inside. The lobby was busy with personnel moving between workstations, and Kordula caught herself watching them longer than she meant to.

They moved as if they had years of practice behind them. Before anyone could direct them, they were already moving toward whatever came next.

They passed the observation section above the Research Core.

Tyrus was below with his assistants, several Radar simulations running across the larger displays. He looked up at the glass, and his expression changed the moment he saw who was standing beside Hans.

Tyrus said something to himself that Kordula couldn’t hear through the glass. Then he went back to his simulations as if nobody was standing there.

He looked like a child who had been handed the entire toy store and told nobody would ever take it away.

"Your man has become even busier," Kordula said. "He’s not even greeting you at all."

She glanced toward Hans, yet found no dissatisfaction on his face.

"Tyrus is busy, and I have no plans to disturb him with this visit. So, what do you think, Overseer?"

"You haven’t even told me the conditions, Commander."

"No, but I can show you what you’d get out of them."

Hans pointed to the Research Core below.

Kordula looked down.

The Research Core took up most of the floor beneath the observation section, wider than it had looked from the corridor. Workstations formed a loose ring around the center, each with its own set of displays, and every one of them was occupied.

In the middle stood a tall column of dark, hardened casing sunk into the floor. Thick cable trunks ran out from its base toward the rest of the building, and lines of light passed along its surface whenever the displays around the room changed.

"Everything goes through that thing before it counts," Hans said.

Display walls curved around the far side of the room. Most of them showed the Radar project. A terrain model filled the widest one, ridges and valleys and city blocks, with signal paths spreading across it in layers. Every few seconds something changed.

A ridge was added, the weather shifted, a patch of interference appeared over one sector, and the paths redrew themselves around it.

Tyrus stood in front of it with two assistants, pointing at one corner of the map.

Behind a glass wall at the back were the simulation racks.

Kordula could only see the front of them, tall black cabinets in long rows, their status lights blinking too fast to follow. None of their noise reached the observation section.

Another wall of glass on the right looked into a fabrication shop. Robotic arms worked inside sealed cells. One of them set a small component under a scanner while thin lines of light swept across it, and a moment later the finished part slid out on a tray.

An assistant picked it up and carried it straight into a test bay without waiting for anyone to sign for it.

The test bay was lined with pale, spiked panels from floor to ceiling. A small antenna array sat on a mount in the middle, turning slowly while the instruments around it recorded everything it did.

Kordula recognized most of it. An anechoic chamber, a metrology line, simulation hardware. DAEDALUS had all of those.

What DAEDALUS didn’t have was all of it in one building, answering to one person.

"Everything we recover comes through here," Hans said. "Drives, terminals, hardware. There’s an intake section on the other side of the building for it."

"And the locked ones?"

"Easily bypassed."

"Even biometric authentication?"

Hans only smiled. "Seeing is believing."

"I believe you." Kordula didn’t hesitate. "Is that why the drives from the VULCAN site below the plant were taken away?"

"With care, of course. A locked drive can be accessed. A destroyed one, we can only forget about."

"How about partially damaged ones?"

"Partially?"

Hans frowned. The Tech Center could recover damaged media, but he had no idea how far that went before a drive was simply scrap.

"DAEDALUS has some partially damaged drives. Perhaps you can make use of them?"

"We’ll talk about that once you’ve accepted the offer."

"Then lead me to where I should accept it."

She sounded more eager than Hans did.

The Integration section was farther inside, past two more controlled doors.

Reechard and several Tech Center personnel were already waiting beside one of the pods. Kordula looked it over the same way she had looked over the building’s security, and seemed to find nothing to complain about.

She stepped inside when they were ready and gave her consent when she was asked.

The intake went faster than Hans expected.

The cover closed not long after.

Hans watched the first readings settle before he left the section.

On the way out, he glanced toward the Research Core. Tyrus was looking up at the observation glass again, pretending he wasn’t looking at anything in particular.