The day of the heist: Olly Turner woke up anxious for a day of excitement and fury, to get it started he checked his bank accounts auto post from midnight to verify they had been drained and attempted to use the internet, he smiled happy to see that the internet was having a dreadful fit today, money well spent as he wont have use for a dollar bill after today and the distraction will surely occupy some peoples attention today, the hired army of hackers will relent after the day is up.

  He drove to the launch site of the latest pet PR stunt, an impressive 385 Feet tall monster, with 12 Meter diameter it easily out classed the ancient SLS. But even more impressive was the Space ship already in orbit around Earth, The love of Neptune, Salacia floated above Earth ready for her journey into space she was equipped with rovers, and lander is ready to set down on Triton, A combined world wide effort flush with the latest toys and fantastic technology of the times, minus a few last minute additions that Olly planned to include. He checked on the five hundred pound drone hidden in the empty lot, ironically the lot was one of his, a last successful business, successful until it went belly up when funding pulled out, now it was one of his own personal launch pads, He didn’t mind checking this drone out as he would have to return anyways and he was personally reliant on the successful flight of this drone. The other two identical drones were on autopilot counting down to the launch window. He checked on Clara, she was excited and nervous. She went on about her last-minute addition of Louisiana strawberries to her collection of seeds and DNA samples she was sure would survive the trip. “I’m on my way, five minutes at most.”

  Her job was the most important, she had to freeze samples of various foods, plants and insects, ideally even animal embryos although the bio printer stood an excellent chance of replacing any lost samples that was the back up plan, Plan A was to grow things the old fashioned natural way, or at least as naturally as possible. Her other job was to make sure they remained healthy and fed for the trip. Although healthy and fed, didn’t mean fulfilled. He waited for Clara to arrive and helped load the drone with the last batch of freeze dried seeds.

  With Clara on site to prep the drones and secure the site Olly picked up the small tin used to hold mints and headed out to complete his mission.

  He arrived at the launch site, well the viewing area as close as public members were allowed to view. Olly parked, He was very early the launch wasn’t scheduled for another 8 hours, but the parking lot was nearly full. The news crews sweated over their cameras and vans, all the crews scratched their heads and fumed about the vans. One crew member attempted to fix his dish but lost his footing and fell from the top of his van. His new crew attempted to catch him and they all ended up in a pile on the parking lot.

  Olly ignored them and walked up to the viewing platform, reached into his pocket for the mint tin. He pulled it out, glanced around and opened container. A dragonfly lay resting in the container, upon closer inspection it was apparent that the dragon fly was a robot.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The dragonfly stretched its wings and fluttered them briefly before it launched into the sky, headed to the control center the dragonfly flew swiftly to its destination. Olly returned to his car to observe the mission status. Inside his car he watched the dragonfly make rapid progress to the control center. The dragonfly was too large to go unnoticed inside the center, but this was planned for the dragonfly was a radio repeater and long distance flyer, the real bug was a small wasp riding on the dragonfly’s back. Once the dragonfly landed near the center the wasp unfolded and took flight. It searched for an open door, open window or if it became needed a back to ride on.

  Once inside the wasps job was simple, fly into one of the main flight computers and deploy the computer virus. The computer virus was sophisticated but was only the worm, the actual virus would be downloaded from a nearby computer already on site but until now had been turned off and waiting for the chance to infect the network. The wasp was needed because the network was closed off from the rest of the internet and physical access was required. The virus sent back network configuration data and the computers identity. The onsite computer went to work reconfiguring itself to assume the identity of the infected computer.

  The wasp landed on the employees back, moved under a fold in the shirt and waited for its pressure sensors to register the change from entering the room. Once inside it took off towards the computers, landed at the first unused station and crawled into the servers air vent. It found the correct chip on the motherboard and started transferring data.

  Olly watched the flight OS boot screen appear on his cars monitor, success, he was now in the network and was ready to upload new flight commands to the rocket waiting on the launch pad. He succeeded at infiltrating the local command center and retrieved the credentials he needed for spoofing the Houston center to the rest of the world, in particular he need the spoofed an identity to fool the military. A missile too early into the launch would truly be catastrophic, he wanted to repurpose the spaceship not blow it up. By calculation he needed to exceed the missiles top speed of 2,500mph and needed six minutes of flight time to be in the clear incase anyone was interested in chasing after the rocket. It seemed like an easy goal to misdirect the military for six minutes, especially when communication has been spotty for the day and they are busy tracking down a few hackers misadventures and its not like they aren’t expecting the rocket to launch, they are just expecting to be in control of the rocket.

  Olly’s fingers buzzed across the keyboard, he worked his magic to elevate his privileges in the control center. With his disguise complete he decide it was best if he called in first to make friends. He picked up the phone and called into report his status with the overwatch.

  Annie Saxe picked up the phone, “Hello, this is Miss Saxe at launch review.”

  Olly spoke into the voice changer, “Hey this is Jerome Stuart at Houston Flight Center, I wanted to verify comms check, seems my internet is acting up today and we can’t miss this launch window”.

  Annie said, “Yes, I can hear you fine, why didn’t you call the monitoring station?”.

  Olly said, “Ooh, did I get the wrong extension, I must of wrote down the wrong number, seems comms are fine, could I get the correct extension sorry to bother you”.

  Annie said, “Do your job better, you’re about to launch a rocket over my head, the extension is 008 not 080”. She logged in the comm check with Houston Flight Center on the system log and hung up the phone.

  Olly looked into the phone, well I guess I’m not making friends with her. He checked the system log he sighed in relief to see the comm report added to the log.