The connector seated with a dull, firm snap.
Instantly, the miniature blue transceiver LED on the adapter began to strobe at a blinding, furious rate, reflecting off the damp steel floor like a tiny spark of static electricity.
"What is that?" one of the contractors shouted from the roll-up door. "Colonel! There’s a light on the crate!"
"Freeze!" Vance roared. A heavy beam of light from a high-power halogen lantern tore through the darkness, slicing across the concrete floor and locking directly onto my boots.
I didn't try to pull the drive loose. The transfer handshake required sixty uninterrupted seconds to write the sector allocation table, or the entire file system would corrupt into unreadable hexadecimal noise.
"Step away from that container, Miller," Vance said. The beam pinned me in place as his heavy military-soled shoes hammered across the floor. In his right hand, the yellow crowbar gleamed wetly; his left held the heavy lantern steady at eye level. Behind him, Ellis emerged from the shadow of the office partition, clutching an unlit emergency flare, his face pale and slack.
"You're committing a federal felony on civilian property, Colonel," I said, staying low, keeping my back between Vance’s lantern and the pulsing blue diode at the base of the crate. "This isn't an army maintenance apron. You don't have jurisdiction here, and you don't have depot clearance to destroy flight telemetry."
"You lost your badge three hours ago, Private," Vance sneered, stopping five paces away, just out of arm's reach. He gestured with the crowbar toward the yellow-jacketed workers near the wall. "Pick him up and throw him through the exterior siding. If he fights, hold him for the county sheriff. A discharged specialist breaking into private logistics property during salvage operations will do five years in state custody before anyone asks about a missing sensor core."
The two men stepped forward, their work gloves raised, their expressions hardened by the steady cash Vance was paying them off the books.
"Ellis," I said, raising my voice to cut through the heavy drumming of the rain. "Tell him what's on that telemetry bus."
Ellis stopped two paces behind Vance. His fingers twisted the plastic cap of the flare until the red safety seal split. "Marcus," Ellis said softly. "The tail number on that platform wasn't an operational training drone. It was the experimental guidance testbed from the civilian contract line. If the flight core logs show an engine command override before the burn, the black-box archive will prove the telemetry didn't fail from bench fire. It'll prove ground control sent a remote self-destruct command when the guidance system drifted toward the civilian approach path."
Vance didn't turn around. His shoulder muscles bunched under his service greens. "Shut up, Ellis."
"You logged the bird as lost in bad weather over the restricted test zone," Ellis continued, his voice trembling now, but gaining volume against the cavernous ceiling. "Then you had the debris brought into Maintenance Bay Three before dawn so you could incinerate the interface before the regional NTSB liaison arrived. You didn't just frame Miller to cover an equipment loss. You framed him because he was the only technician on shift who knew the secondary diagnostic buffer had an independent battery bridge."
"I told you to shut your mouth, Captain," Vance growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low grating register. "Your signature is on the scrap release form. You signed the transit ticket that brought this van past the south gate. If this crate goes to a division tribunal, you are sitting in the defense chair right beside him."
Between my boots, the pulsing blue diode clicked twice, held steady for one full second, and went dark.
The sector transfer was complete.
I clamped my fingers around the steel body of the jump drive, snapped it free from the ten-pin interface, and jammed it deep into the heavy canvas watch pocket of my field trousers.
"Take it from him," Vance ordered, stepping aside to give the two contractors a clear lane. "Take the drive, take his phone, and lock him in the office until the rail car is loaded."