Page 1 of Starlight, Starbright
PAIGE
The plasma conduit hums three octaves lower than it should.
I press my palm against the access panel, feeling the vibration through my skin. Wrong. All wrong.
“Chief, you've been down here for eleven hours.” Jian Li's voice cuts through the background roar of the engine core. “Jenkins fell asleep at his station twenty minutes ago. I sent him to his bunk.”
I don't look up from the data streaming across my tablet. “Did you check the secondary coupling on Deck 9?”
“Twice. It's clean.” She crouches beside me, her small frame fitting easily into the cramped space between conduits. “Paige. When's the last time you slept?”
The answer is thirty-six hours ago, but I don't say it. Instead I pull up the full pattern analysis I've been building for two weeks. “Look at this. A recurring dip in plasma flow. It recovers within ninety seconds. No alarms trip. No safety protocols engage. The system compensates automatically.”
“So it's working as designed.”
“No.” I zoom in on the frequency graph. “A normal fluctuation would vary. Temperature changes, crew usage patterns, natural wear on the components—all of that wouldcreate irregular data. This is a metronome. Someone's testing something.”
Jian studies the graph, her dark eyes moving rapidly. She's brilliant with diagnostics, maybe better than me at the tedious analysis work. “What kind of test needs three weeks?”
“The kind that's building to something bigger.” I close the tablet and lever myself up, my knees protesting. The deck plates vibrate constantly at this depth, a rhythm I usually find soothing. Tonight it feels like a warning. “We need more monitoring equipment. I want sensors on every junction between here and the bridge.”
“Burton won't approve the requisition.” Her voice goes flat. “He'll say you're overreacting again.”
My eyes find Walsh Burton at the far end of Engineering, his focus on a diagnostic panel. He's been pulling double shifts—compensation, no doubt, for being passed over when I got the chief position. He glances up, sees me watching, and gives a brief nod before returning to his work.
I shove my tablet into my tool bag, the metal clanging against the flux wrench I forgot to put back in its slot. “Then I'll install them myself. Off the books.”
“You're going to get in trouble.”
“I'm already in trouble if I'm right and do nothing.” I squeeze her shoulder as I pass. “Go get some sleep. That's an order.”
She leaves, but I can tell from her footsteps she doesn't believe I'll follow my own advice. Smart kid. I pull out my wrench and open the next access panel, chasing the hum through the ship's arteries, trying to find the source before whatever's coming arrives.
The memory hits me hard: the Valiant , eight years ago, after the collision with debris that shouldn't have been there. I'd been junior crew then, too low-ranked to question the chief engineer's assessment that the damage was superficial. Three days later,the power core destabilized during a routine jump. Seventeen people died in the explosion. I'd been in sick bay with a broken arm, or I'd have been one of them.
Ten thousand people on this ship. Every soul aboard depending on me.
I barely manage to scrub the worst of the grease off my hands before the briefing.
The conference room feels too cold after hours in Engineering's swelter. I'm late—the wall chrono shows 0745, and the meeting started at 0730—but Captain Zoric simply nods at the empty seat across from him. The briefing room is smaller than standard, designed for efficiency rather than comfort. Six chairs around a brushed steel table, harsh overhead lighting that makes everyone look tired, and a wall display currently showing our course trajectory.
Commander Tanaka sits to Zoric's right, her regulation-perfect uniform making me acutely aware of my rumpled jumpsuit and the oil stain I missed on my sleeve. Tobias Hale, head of security, occupies the chair beside her. His pale blue eyes track my entrance, cataloging details like he's building a file.
“Chief Martin.” Zoric's voice has this quality that makes me think of deep water—dark and calm on the surface, with currents running underneath. He's been aboard two months now, long enough for me to learn he values data over intuition, evidence over hunches. Long enough to notice things like how his voice seems to resonate in the room, or how those silver markings along his temples shift when he's processing information. “Your report?”
I pull up my data on the central display, replacing the navigation chart. “We're looking at a pattern of power fluctuations across three weeks. Small enough that the automated systems compensate, but precise enough that it can't be natural degradation.”
“Precise how?” Tanaka leans forward, her attention sharp.
“The fluctuations occur every seventy-two hours, at exactly oh-two-hundred hours. Same magnitude each time—0.3% decrease in plasma flow, ninety-second duration.” I highlight the relevant sections. “This is the distribution curve for normal system variation. This is what we're seeing. The difference is statistically impossible.”
Hale frowns at the display, making a note on his tablet. “That's a serious accusation. Could be a programming error in the monitoring system, equipment failure, even user error. The data might be corrupted.”
“I physically measured the frequency at the conduit. It's real.” I meet his gaze as his questions continue, each one seemingly designed to poke holes in the theory. “Even Senior Supervisor Burton agrees. He reviewed the same data at his console and said, 'Chief's right about the frequency. That's too regular for component failure.' He pulled up a secondary analysis. 'Here—this correlates with shift changes. Someone who knows our schedules.' And someone with engineering access would need to create this pattern. It requires manual override of the automated distribution protocols.”
The room goes quiet. Zoric's markings shift in the harsh light. Silver-white lines trace his temples and disappear into his midnight hair. They've been steady since I entered, but now they brighten slightly. I've seen them do this before when he's processing complex information, though I don't know if he's aware of how much they reveal.
“Your assessment?” His eyes are dark enough that I can't distinguish iris from pupil, and I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact even though he's sitting and I'm standing.
