Page 16 of Starlight, Starbright
The divide is forming. Some people still treat me normally. Others avoid eye contact. Conversations pause when I approach, resume after I pass.
Walsh makes another note on his tablet. Diana Moss does the same at her station, both of them documenting something they're not sharing.
“Jian,” I say quietly. “I need you to pull all plasma torch access logs for the past week. Don't tell anyone you're doing it.”
Her eyes widen slightly, but she nods. “Yes, Chief.”
A few minutes later, Jian comes to my console. “Chief, there's something weird here.” She pulls up the plasma torch accesslogs. “Three entries are missing timestamps—just blank fields. But the sequence numbers show gaps.”
“Can you recover the data?”
“I tried. The logs were accessed from Communications fifteen minutes after each gap. Diana Moss's credentials.” Jian pulls up the access record. “She viewed them, then they were corrupted. Could be coincidence. Could be someone using her login.”
Or it could be Diana covering tracks.
“Jian? Be careful who you talk to. I mean it.”
“Understood.” She moves away, her expression troubled.
I force myself to walk through the department like everything's fine. Check systems. Review logs. Approve maintenance schedules. Normal chief engineer activities.
But I feel Walsh's eyes on me the entire time. Feel the weight of suspicion settling over my department like a shroud. See the lines forming between those who trust me and those who don't.
Someone here tried to kill us. And until I know who, everyone needs to be a suspect.
ZORIC
The solar radiation warning arrives without preamble.
“Captain, we're detecting a Class M solar flare from the nearby star system.” Morris turns from his navigation console, and I can see the tension in his shoulders. “Radiation front will reach us in approximately six minutes.”
I pull up the sensor data on my command screen. The flare erupts from the star's surface in a cascade of charged particles and electromagnetic radiation. Beautiful. Deadly. And headed directly for our position.
“Shields to maximum. All non-essential personnel to interior sections.” I run trajectory calculations. “Can we alter course to avoid the radiation front?”
“Negative, sir.” Fletcher inputs new parameters. “We'd need at least twelve minutes to change vector sufficiently. The front will hit us in minutes.”
“Radiation impact in five minutes,” Tanaka confirms. “Shield generators are at full capacity, but we'll still experience significant interference with external systems.”
The calculations are clear. The shields will protect the crew and ship's interior, but any equipment on the hull will sustain damage. Including our primary communications array.
“Communications.” I turn to Lieutenant Morris. “Status on external arrays?”
“Primary array is exposed on the dorsal hull, Captain. Secondary is retracted for maintenance. If the flare hits the primary array directly, we'll lose all subspace communications until we can repair it.”
“Time to retract primary array?”
“Seven minutes, sir.” Morris's expression tells me he's already done that calculation. “We don't have enough time.”
The radiation front appears on the viewscreen. A wall of charged particles racing toward us at a significant fraction of light speed. Soon, it will wash over the ship like a wave breaking against rock.
“Damage assessment?” I ask.
Tanaka pulls up projected models. “The array will survive, but connection points will likely fuse from the radiation surge. We'll need an EVA to manually disconnect and reconnect the primary couplings before we can restore function.”
An EVA. Extravehicular activity. Someone will need to go outside the ship, vulnerable to the residual radiation and the raw vacuum of space, to repair systems that should not have been damaged if we'd had adequate warning.
“How long until radiation levels drop to safe EVA parameters?” I'm already running the calculations, but I need Tanaka's confirmation.
