In the end it had only taken them about an hour and a half to load the four stacks of pallets into the ship. Afterward, John Hunt had thanked the various guards and waved to the master chief as he walked off into the night. In the bowels of the ship, John now stood amongst crates and scanned them. Sensing the one that was notably lighter than the rest, he stepped up to it and pried it open. Inside, a disheveled and slightly disconcerted Major Jack Toranssen sat, holding onto some tools and a weak smile as light shone in on him for the first time in nearly two hours. He was wearing Bill Shadley’s uniform, which should help facilitate his departure from the ship once they were done, but getting an unknown man onto a naval vessel without the captain’s express permission would have been next to impossible.

Climbing out of the crate, Jack smiled at John and surveyed his surroundings. The hold was large and smelled of grease and diesel, an almost inescapable smell aboard a navy ship. It was a wide rectangular space, ten feet deep, with walls of steel. The now closed bay doors took up the bulk of the ceiling, but under his feet Jack knew the floor could also be opened up, either in sections, or all at once, to give loading access to the lower decks of the ship. In port these more sensitive areas of the vessel were essentially sealed, with only the captain or chief engineer having access rights.

But John was no ordinary junior officer and he had been preparing for this day for several months. Stepping over to a stout-looking metal box on one wall, John placed his forefinger on the fat keyhole and allowed the microfibers that lay hidden inside it to snake out into the complex lock. With practiced ease, they found the necessary purchase and the lock opened with a dull clunk, to reveal a small keyboard and screen beneath.

John had long since hacked into the ship’s central control systems and planted a virus that gave him access even the captain did not enjoy, and he had also supplemented this with a second program that allowed him to erase the evidence of his activities should he need them to remain secret. His fingers worked the keypad at whisper speed, his hands communing with the machine as he accessed his dormant programs and activated them, essentially opening up the sealed vaults of the ship to his control, at least until the captain returned or the chief engineer woke up.