"Down to the Wire"

[STSF Seiben 0]

“Down to the Wire”

 

Unknown Location, Central Florida

15 July 1969 – 01:00 EST

 

 

“Ready?” a lean but muscular man peeked his head inside of a door to check on his accomplice. The tall woman in black packed the last of their things inside of a crate and nodded. “Yeah, we’re good to go here” she replied. The man nodded again. “Okay, let’s get this thing in the car and get going”

 

 

 

15 minutes later…

 

Under the cover of darkness, the man carried a large box into the back of a non-descript white cargo van with the help of the tall woman. It was fairly large, about the size of one of those wooden TV sets they used in this era and was just as heavy, but the two powerfully built people loaded into the back of the van with little effort. The two then got into the van and drove off into the night.

 

The drive was silent. He wasn’t much of a talker anyway, but he was still upset about the setbacks they experienced recently. For one thing, was the nosy reporter that had to be taken care of, but of more importance was the death of their colleague most likely by Federation operatives sent by Starfleet. This was of course something they expected, and even planned for, but sometimes don’t go as planned and the stupid young idiot got sloppy and paid for it.

 

At least he had the fortitude to swallow his cyanide pill before they could interrogate him, but now Starfleet was onto them and he knew they had to work fast if they wanted to succeed in their mission. Dressed in maintenance uniforms, the man turns into the main gates of the Kennedy Space Centre compound. Rolling down the window, the two hand over their ID, which of course looked genuine thanks to 23^rd century technology.

 

Posing as maintenance workers delivering some last minute parts, the pair had no trouble getting to the VAB unhindered. At this area, the place was quiet save for a few guards on patrol, just like they expected. Quietly, the two got out, and went to the back of the van, and removed the crate. Looking like simple maintenance workers, the two received little to no attention from the guards who were expecting a delivery at this time anyway.

 

Inside the massive building, the Saturn V rocket was loaded onto the crawler-transporter ready to be moved to the launch platform later that day. Removing the crate, they carefully extracted a square device from the crate and gingerly moved it over to the massive rocket. With surgical precision, they opened a panel, quickly bolted it inside and replaced the panel. All told, it took less than fifteen minutes by the time they headed back to the van. Job done, the pair left the same way they did, nodding to the guards as they drove out of Cape Kennedy wondering if anyone would expect the events that would transpire the next day…