Race Toward the Truth
Outpost 23
Despite the look on Wesic’s face when Luna tossed his ship, building a case against him would be harder than making him jump at the accusation. She paced the lift on the return trip to the command center. Thus far, the evidence she’d collected was circumstantial, little better than the case some asshole could build against Astor. Her gut told her she was right, though; she hoped it was genuine intuition and not wishful thinking.
The doors opened, revealing a dozen morons watching her expectantly. Captain Mathers beamed with glowing anticipation. Dunnagan’s open-mouthed stare resembled a hectamere paralyzed by the sight of an attacking promboline. The various other officers fell somewhere in between.
She shook her head and waved them away. “Nothing yet,” she called, sliding into her chair.
Keying in a few experimental commands yielded no immediate results. He wasn’t quite stupid enough to try the hack from onboard his own ship, which would have created an interface trail so strong she could have followed it from Polaris, and he didn’t have a massive public storage file suspiciously named “Outpost 23 Secrets.” She would need probable cause to dig further into his computer, but setting up a program to monitor all his communications was well within her purview. Dangling out there like a fish on a hook, he’d be desperate to call his coconspirators. Hopefully, she’d catch him in the act.
The flash of an alert drew her attention. Her decryption sequence had finished running. She brought up the information. Her breath caught in her chest. Her access codes weren’t involved in the breach; Dunnagan’s were.
Unable to resist, she cast a backward glance in his direction. He was still glaring at her, an intensity in his eyes beyond their normal hatred. Of course, a criminal might have stolen his codes like anyone else’s, but his behavior raised her suspicions.
Next, she zeroed in on the location of the infiltration. It returned with the exact terminal utilized in the unauthorized access- a random, unattended kiosk down an unused corridor in the middle of the sanitation department, tucked in the depths of the lower decks. She shot out of her seat again.
“Knolls is on fire today,” the captain cheered as she headed for the lifts.
“You gonna let the rest of us in on what you’re doing?” Dunnagan challenged.
She spun to face him. His practiced expression was as hard as stone. She worked to set hers the same. “Once I have something solid.” She didn’t want to tip him off to what she’d discovered until she had more information.
Smirking, he crossed his arms. “She’s probably running off to see her little girlfriend.”
Mathers raised an eyebrow. “Is she cute? New rule: when you fool around on the clock, bring your girls up here where we can watch.”
Luna flipped both middle fingers at the men. “I’m ass-deep in the investigation. You’ll know more when I do.”
Her cheeks red, she stomped off, but in the lift’s privacy, the unsettling implications permeated her thoughts. Dunnagan had made a play, bringing up Astor. He was trying something, which meant she must be nulking up the right orcanthus. He didn’t yet realize how vulnerable a spot he’d found, but he could figure it out at any minute. The race was on.
She arrived on deck three and started picking her way through the bulky equipment. At first, she passed some other personnel, but after taking a few twists and turns, she was alone in the aisles between the sanitation tanks. Whoever selected this as an access point knew the station well. Few crew members had navigated these winding passageways or realized the computers were located here.
She followed a corridor along a gigantic silver water tank that seemed to stretch for meters across the deck. Then the pipes directed her to veer left. Beyond the next bend, the hall widened into a maintenance room, complete with the computer she was searching for.
The camera wasn’t functioning, no doubt disabled by the culprit. She downloaded the video, anyway, in case its final frames contained any clues. Examining the keyboard for fingerprints would likely prove useless, but she scanned the surface. Her instrument read only smudges. She reset it to search for traces of DNA. It didn’t pick up enough genetic material to make a definitive match, but it detected Antarian epithelials, where only human nucleotides should be present.
Then she began reviewing the history. A few keystrokes later, she could see all the commands the hacker gave. She noted infractions on a pad. They stole station logs, ship manifests, personnel information, and mission reports. It looked like nearly every record kept about operations for the past six months. She checked the login data. Whoever had been typing entered Dunnagan’s info on the first attempt. If it was someone else, they hadn’t had to guess.
She loaded the video and skipped to the end of the playback. The last frames showed static as the equipment malfunctioned, probably the result of some kind of jamming device. She played the penultimate moments in slow motion, looking for hidden clues to explain the blackout. Although the perpetrator wasn’t visible in the shot, their shadow appeared behind the corner right before the recording cut out. She walked to the hallway and studied the overhead light. Given its height and distance from the solid figure, calculating the body’s size shouldn’t have posed a problem for the computer. She input the data, but the analysis balked. She suggested an estimation of six feet and two hundred pounds. The program had a fit trying to reconcile the shape a human form of that size should cast with the shadow it saw projected. Then she tried a five-foot-three Antarian body structure. Suddenly, the outlines matched.
Armed with this new information, she raced through the crooked labyrinth of pipes back to the bridge. She had plenty of evidence to charge Wesic and initiate a deep search of his ship’s system. Now she simply had to suss out how Dunnagan connected.
This time, she charged into the command center, ready to declare her victory, but a very different reaction greeted her. Twelve confrontational gazes bored into her as soon as she set foot off the lift. Dunnagan sat back with a smug look of satisfaction on his face. Mathers snapped his fingers and pointed at the deck at his feet, demanding her immediate presence.
“What the hell are you doing sleeping with suspects?” he bellowed directly at her.
Shit. The grinter had escaped the box.
“Sir, Astor had nothing to do with this,” she protested.
He wheeled around, threw his hands over his head, and paced the floor. “The girl came here straight from a damn penal colony! How long was she there?”
At least Dunnagan hadn’t dug into the particulars. She could count on him to tattle immediately when he discovered the slightest connection.
“Four months,” she admitted.
“That’s enough time to make unsavory friends,” he shook his finger.
“Captain, it was Wesic,” she declared, to stop his tirade.
He spun on his heel toward her. “What do you mean? Are you certain?”
As evidence, she held out the pad and copy of the video. “I haven’t found the files in his possession yet, but I have the terminal he used to hack into our system, and it has Anterian genetic material on it that shouldn’t be there. The camera also captured a shadow matching his description in the hall before he knocked it out.”
The captain’s face turned beet red. He barked at the nearest security officer, “Get his slimy ass in a holding cell.” He nodded to her. “Good work, Knolls.”
She glanced at Dunnagan. He gave the distinct impression that a comet had just traveled down his spine. He glared at her, daring her to bring his name up. Fuck it. She’d gone all in at this point. “I also uncovered whose codes he used. They were Dunnagan’s. And our perp didn’t need to guess about them.”
For a moment, Mathers only blinked at him, considering events. Then he snarled, “You have any more proof of his direct involvement?”
“No, sir,” she answered honestly.
“Alright.” His jaw worked like it was crushing asteroids. “Dunnagan, you’re relieved of duty and confined to quarters until Knolls gets me more shit to yell at you.”
Dunnagan went as white as the light from a pulsar. “But sir, someone must’ve stolen my codes!”
“That better be what this investigation reveals, boy.” Mathers’ eyes narrowed to steely slits. “Because your new friends won’t be able to save your ass where it’s headed.”
***
Luna practically skipped all the way to Astor’s quarters. After pressing the chime, she rubbed her hands together and rocked back and forth, unable to hold still for the thirty seconds it took to answer. The moment the door slid aside, she rushed in, gathered Astor up in her arms, and swept her off her feet. “Sweetheart, I just had the best day.”
Giggling daintily in a knee-length dress covered with stars, she planted the sweetest kiss on her mouth. “What happened?”
“We finally caught the hacker who breached station security two nights ago!” Luna cheered, hanging onto her hips. “That’s the project I’ve been working on that I couldn’t tell you about. It turns out it was one of the regular Antarian traders who comes through here. And Dunnagan may be involved!”
“The creep we saw in the restaurant?” she asked.
“Yeah, that asshole! As I got closer to Wesic, he even tried to implicate you.” She gestured in her direction.
“Me?” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Why would he bring me up?”
“As a distraction. Because up until this point, your conviction made you the prime suspect,” Luna supplied without thinking.
“Wait, what?” Astor pulled away, confusion blossoming on her face.
“Well,” she tried to backpedal, “we had no suspects, and your criminal record was the only thing that stood out-”
“You used information I gave you in a romantic encounter as fodder for an investigation? And told other people?” Her mouth formed an O of shock.
“No,” Luna waved like she could drive away the accusation. “I had to investigate everyone who’d recently come on board. I’d dug up that much about you going through ship manifests and Procyon A’s files, but I kept everything I’d discovered to myself. Because I never believed there was a connection. But then Dunnagan got hold of the information and now-”
“Now everyone is privy to my criminal history?” she shrieked.
“He announced it in front of the bridge crew,” Luna confirmed.
“That’s fabulous.” Astor crossed her arms. “And did you jump in and describe what we were doing on the night in question? How’s that not an iron-clad alibi?”
“I’d left the monitor in the bedroom on.” Luna’s gaze fell. “You could have accessed it.”
“Great,” she flipped her head back, “you screw up and suddenly even fucking you isn’t good enough.”
She bit her lip. “I’m so sorry.”
“So before I confessed my darkest, most shameful secrets to you, you already knew what I was going to say!”
“Well,” she stammered, “I may have previewed the public records version of events, but it’s not like I knew exactly what you’d say about them.”
“You had a pretty good idea,” she accused, throwing her hands in the air. “That’s why you listened so compassionately!”
“I swear it’s not!” Luna reached for her.
She pulled away. “I slept with you because of the way you reacted.”
What could she say to that? “I-”
Astor stared at the ground. “I think you should go.”
“Baby-”
“I mean it, Luna.” When she forced herself to look up, her beautiful face was a cold ceramic mask on the verge of tears. “Get the hell out.”
Editor: Michelle Naragon
