Cold, Hard Facts
Outpost 23
Luna paced the deck in her quarters until the hunter-green carpet turned a dusty shade of moss. The argument with Astor flickered in her mind like the light of a pulsar, its intensity re-surging as soon as it subsided. Her eyes stung with bitter tears that refused to fall. The memory of the pain plastered on Astor’s face burned in her brain. Deep down, she knew all the points she made about her being insensitive were right. She fucked up-she wasn’t sure how she should fix it, but she knew that much.
She plopped onto the couch and yanked her ponytail holder out. The tension of not crying had grown into a massive headache. While she sorted through her ideas, she rubbed her temples furiously. Astor needed space, and she needed a distraction; she’d endured enough mental flagellation for one night. More wouldn’t assuage her sense of wrongdoing.
With her hair pulled back tightly, she walked to the desk. Work: that was her answer to everything. The giddiness and elation might not return as she contemplated her next steps in proving Wesic’s guilt, but it’d give her an interesting puzzle to focus on.
The clock ticked up on twenty-one hundred. A strange hour to launch a major investigation, but Luna dove into his computer anyway. His memory core was a total mess – the hard drive was fragmented, and program folders were out of order. He had deleted half of his system files to cover his tracks. She checked the analysis. In the span between her tossing his cargo hold and the captain imprisoning him, Wesic had purged forty-something percent of the data it contained. She slammed her fist on the desk. It still wouldn’t be as easy as finding a folder labeled “Outpost 23 secrets,” but he hadn’t completed the job; with the right programs, she would recover whatever he was trying to hide. She started the interface between the station and the ship. With some luck, it’d uncover her answers before she got to work in the morning.
***
Sleep did not improve Luna’s mood. She jabbed at the keys at her workstation as though brutalizing the bridge terminal would yield the desired results.
“Lighten up, Knolls,” Mathers called out from the command center. “I can hear you typing from here.”
“That an order, sir?”
“You break that keyboard, and I’m taking it out of your ass,” he promised.
Even the station computer had trouble deciphering Wesic’s hard drive. It took six hours to separate the program folders from the other data. Still, once the operating system had been reconstructed, it isolated several items that might interest her.
She opened the first on the list, proceeding in a methodical pattern. A video played on her screen, a close-up shot of fleshy female Antarian genitalia. A male member entered the frame, and copulation began. Luna turned it off as quickly as possible but not without seeing enough to realize it was, regrettably, Wesic himself.
Disgusted, she clamped her eyes shut to open the second file. No similar noises issued forth, so she dared to peek. She discovered a star map detailing a path through one of the more unsavory corridors of the galaxy. It highlighted stopping locations known for their piracy instead of avoiding them. Luna marked this as suspicious and wondered if it could provide details of potential buyers for the stolen information.
The third wound up being an aborted attempt to write a memoir based on his own antics. Her cursory examination did not reveal any incriminating material within its pages. Still, given the subpar, overindulgent writing, Luna understood why he deleted the text before anyone rummaged around in his system.
Then, she finally struck gold. The next file, although partially reconstructed, contained the Discovery crew manifest and the personal logs of high-ranking officers. Two entries later, she found the station’s detailed personnel records. He downloaded classified blueprints, which explained his ability to identify an unattended workstation. She could also locate details about the Omarites’ flight history and current mission in the unlikely event they’d want to press charges.
Unfortunately, the only thing she couldn’t produce was a connection to Dunnagan. Luna didn’t detect a trail that suggested Wesic hacked his login before the heist, but she also uncovered no evidence of Dunnagan’s direct involvement. While he dangled on the line, he’d nearly destroyed his computer, but he’d contacted no co-conspirators. How he came upon the codes remained a mystery. She slammed her fist on the panel beside her.
“Knolls!” the captain barked.
“Sorry,” she grumbled.
The next step would be to search his ship thoroughly, bring more people, and go through it with a fine-toothed comb. She only examined the cargo hold previously, with him standing directly over her.
She stood and stomped up to Mathers. “Sir, I’ve completed my search and found the evidence on Wesic’s hard drive, files from the station, and some of the other ships currently docked. Can I have your permission to lead an in-depth physical search of his craft?”
He nodded. “Take a security team and investigate. See what you can find. I want to know how Dunnagan’s connected, one way or the other.”
***
Luna charged out of the airlock, up to the wall, and kicked it with as much force as she dared with her heavy-soled boot. She’d been trapped in that flying pigsty for hours, sorting out bits of junk and personal effects, most of it trash, all of it strewn around in a disorderly fashion. Her head ached from the smell of rotten food and unclean bedsheets. She passed, ready for a break.
“C-commander…” She heard a timid voice behind her.
She sighed and fought to regain emotional control. When Luna turned, she hoped her face showed neutrality. There, she found a shrinking ensign. “Yes?”
He twisted his toe into the deck plate. “It’s just that…”
“Go ahead,” she prompted.
“I might know how Wesic got ahold of Commander Dunnagan’s access code.” He flashed her the top of his crew cut as he spoke.
Her mouth fell open. She could have hugged this guy if she wasn’t worried it’d scare away this amazing windfall. “Are you serious, Ensign…?”
“Yost, ma’am,” he supplied.
“Nice to meet you.” She nodded. “Now, tell me what you know.”
He crossed his arms, drawing himself into a tight ball. “Well, it’s just that sometimes I rotate duty shifts with the dock master down here. Last week, Wesic was running behind with his docking procedures. Commander Dunnagan was supposed to wait for him to finish hooking up and then enter him into the central processor, but we were forty-five minutes late to lunch. The second Wesic slithered off the airlock, the commander yelled something and ordered him to log on himself because he wanted to go eat.”
“Dunnagan just publicly announced his code?” Luna clamped her hands on the top of her head.
“Y-yes, ma’am,” he stammered. “I didn’t realize he gave out his access information or that Wesic would remember it. He clamored up to the keyboard and took three tries to input the sequence.”
“Well, by the time it mattered, he had it figured out.” Luna thrust her fists onto her hips.
“I know.” He dropped his gaze back to the floor. “Ma’am? Am I about to be fired?”
“No,” she answered. Then she reconsidered the captain’s temper. “At least, I don’t think so. But if anything like this ever happens again, please report it right away.”
His head bobbed as if it were full of helium. “Thank you. Of course, I will.”
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Now get in there and tell my team the truth about what happened so they’ll know what they’re searching for. And prepare yourself to enlighten the captain later, too.”
As soon as he boarded, she took off down the hallway toward Dunnagan’s quarters. She smashed the buttons for the lift and paced on the ride to the crew level, her anger building with each step. When it opened again, it may as well have released a tocar from a cage. By the time she got to his door, what started out as a half-baked idea to kick his ass developed into a beautiful plan to dislocate every joint in his body while delivering her a prepared lecture about the exact nature of his improprieties at high volume.
He answered the chime in a shirt with the sleeves ripped off. “Oh, great. It’s you, Knolls. Get out of my-”
Without a word, she threw her balled fist into the apple of his cheek.
His hands flew up into a defensive position, and he cowered. “God damn. What the fuck?”
“You told Wesic your executive command code so you could go to lunch?” she bellowed.
From behind his makeshift rampart, he stammered, “I did what? No-”
“Nice try, asshole, but the dockmaster on duty already filled me in.” She crossed her arms.
With her fists contained, he relaxed his posture. “You mean the guy that pisses himself whenever he has to speak up?”
“Yost,” she supplied.
“You think anyone will believe Ensign Pissy Pants over me?” His voice rose incredulously.
Her eyes widened, and she nodded. “Considering that Wesic had your login, I’d say yes.”
The tension in him snapped, and he deflated. He sighed deeply and shriveled up, like an asteroid disintegrating as it flew into the atmosphere of a planet. “I shudder to think what Mathers is going to do to me when he finds out.”
“At the very least, he’ll fire you,” she told him, her hands on her hips.
Dunnagan’s face sagged, and his shoulders slumped. Layers of bravado fell onto the deck at his feet until Luna wasn’t sure who she was looking at anymore. “I royally fucked up this time.”
Towering above the commander, his pathetic expression elicited her sympathy. But only momentarily, and then memories of the years of torment and smart-ass behavior, culminating with him framing Astor, flooded back, and her contempt returned.
She left Dunnagan broken and on the precipice of his ultimate downfall. Her rage gone, she headed to the bridge to report to Mathers and seal his fate.
As she wound her way through the halls, she passed Astor’s apartment. The door exerted all the gravitational force of a black hole, but she willed herself not to ring the chime. She’d made no small insistence on space, and Luna owed it to her. Besides, unplanned recaps of her day hardly seemed to win her any affection. She definitely needed to start with an apology.
Editor: Lucy Cafiero
