Tilly rolled up the window and drove forward.

“Tyler Perry must have opened up a strip club,” Rick joked. “The security here is better than ours.”

Tilly laughed, extending their stop at the first intersection to regain her composure. “If that were true, we wouldn’t be here,” she eventually said, easing the car into the first right turn.

The parking lot was empty except for a single unmarked vehicle and a golf cart. Their destination, a solitary brick building, was also unmarked, Tilly noted. No sign or marquee or placard. Maybe it was a movie set. Casually, they strolled into the building. A balding white man sat at a bare reception desk, his face alert.

“Erickson and Herrington?” he asked, jolting to a stand.

Tilly nodded. The man darted from behind the desk and led them down a short hallway, pivoting into an open doorway in one easy motion. Walking past empty offices, Tilly and Rick shuffled in behind him. The room was windowless and bare, lightly furnished with a giant wooden table and far too many office chairs bunched around it, like pups fighting for their mother’s teats. The man closed the door and immediately began speaking.

“Sorry for the rush, but I’ve only got this conference room for ten minutes. Space is really limited around here.”

Discreetly, Tilly kicked one of the empty chairs between them.

“As you know, I’m with Space Command. We protect, deploy, and maintain US government satellite equipment. During last month’s incident, Satellite ZX9874 was hijacked and used for unauthorized purposes. Within certain limitations, I have been tasked with helping you find out the means of that breach as well as the perpetrators. Please direct any questions about this satellite toward me, and I will be happy to oblige. Within certain limitations.”

Tilly spoke first. “Fantastic. First off, this is embarrassing, but what’s your name? Our director tends to be brief in emails, so he didn’t mention it.”

“Unfortunately, it’s classified.”

Tilly kicked another chair.

“So, how is this even possible?” Rick asked. “How does a satellite that’s so strategically important get hacked?”

“I can’t speak to whether it is strategically important or not, but this happened solely due to the nature of this satellite. When this former base was decommissioned and sold, some of the infrastructure was left intact due to security reasons that I’m not at liberty to discuss. Moving or rebuilding that infrastructure would have been extremely costly.”

“More costly than a national monument and surrounding neighborhoods being destroyed?” Tilly bristled.

“Terrorism is not a line item on the Space Command budget,” he dryly replied. “And monuments and neighborhoods can be rebuilt. The kind of infrastructure that enables a satellite of this caliber isn’t a matter of just unplugging some computers and uploading data to the cloud.”