Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (41 page)

Trask’s jaw opened and closed without making a sound. “How far could that ship jump?” he asked after more than a few heartbeats.

Natalya shook her head. “Too many dependencies. The power requirements alone beggar my imagination. It would have to be all but gutted and rebuilt—but a long, long way.” She bit her lip for a moment, then said, “All the way to Iron Mountain from Dark Knight with a full load of stolen ore, probably.”

Trask’s eyes widened just a bit. “That’s not good.”

Natalya shook her head. “I don’t know the full distribution of all the Toe-Hold operations but from the northern edge of the Western Annex, a ship like that could probably cover anything within twenty or thirty Burleson units.”

Trask laid his hands palms-down on his desk and stared at them for several long moments. “Did Ms. Usoko find anything on the maintenance logs?”

“For the glassed drive?”

“Yes.”

“She said the environmental team had drawn out stores but the inventory levels never showed the receiving records for any parts.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, she said something about Pritchard’s fingers being in it, but that would be normal for an engineering chief.” The reality of what she’d just said smacked her like a punch in the gut. “Wait.” She looked up at Trask. He had a wolfish grin on his face and his eyes were anything but amused.

“Pritchard isn’t an engineering chief,” he said. “He’s barely competent to dress himself. Did she say what kind of maintenance?”

“Only that he was moving inventory in and out. I think. I don’t really remember. It was late and I was toasted.”

“You’re still not quite tracking, Ms. Regyri. Did she say
when
Mr. Pritchard manipulated the inventory?”

“Well, it had to be after June first. No records exist from before that, including backups.”

“Not aboard,” Trask said. “But I bet there are backups in Kondur’s vaults that we can check when we get back.”

“Doesn’t help us now.”

“No, but if any of the records are dated after you came aboard, that would be a very troubling finding.”

Natalya’s brain finally connected the dots. “I locked him out of the system.”

“You did. Do you remember the date?”

“No, but Zoya should know. She created his guest account and it’ll have a date-time stamp on it.”

Trask started pounding on his keyboard. “I may be just the captain, but I think I can still find my way around the systems in my own boat,” he said, a maniacal grin on his face.

After a few moments, he said, “June seventh.”

“The glassed records are still mounted,” Natalya said. “She burned them in the data closet.”

He tapped some more, paused, and scowled. “That’s odd. There’s nothing there.”

“Nothing there?” Natalya asked. “What kind of nothing?”

“No media mounted on the drive.” Trask looked across the desk. “Would you be kind enough to go look and if there’s nothing there, wake Ms. Usoko?”

Chapter 46
Siren Orbital: 2363, August 2

Natalya took the three steps down the passageway into the data closet. The glass burner showed an empty carriage. She turned on her heel and was at Zoya’s door in a matter of heartbeats. She knocked a couple of times. “Zee. It’s Nat.”

When she got no response, she tried again. “Zee?” She knocked a bit louder.

“What?” The voice was muffled and understandably grumpy.

“We need to talk.”

Natalya heard some indistinct muttering and then the deadbolt clicked. “This better be good.”

“Sorry, Zee.” Natalya shrugged and cast a glance over her shoulder at Pritchard’s door.

“What’s wrong?”

Natalya lowered her voice and leaned in. “The glass drive is empty.”

Zoya’s eyebrows shot up. “Is it?”

“Skipper would like to see you.”

Zoya nodded. “Lemme find a shipsuit. I’ll be right there.” She closed the door and Natalya heard the deadbolt snap into place.

She returned to the cabin and found the captain staring into his console with a perplexed look.

“The drive is empty, Captain. I woke Zoya. She’ll be right along.”

He grunted and looked up. “Our order was delivered yesterday.”

“What?”

“I got a delivery notice for the new order we placed today. Apparently they delivered our old order yesterday afternoon.”

Natalya shook her head. “I didn’t receive it.”

“I’m trying to contact the chandlery now. The new order should be here midafternoon.”

“What the—?” Natalya heard a couple of quick raps on the door and opened it to see Zoya standing in the passage. “Come on in. It’s getting weird out.”

“Sorry to get you up again so soon, Ms. Usoko,” the captain said.

Zoya walked in and plunked into one of the visitors’ chairs. Natalya closed the door behind her.

“It’s all right, Skipper. Nats says the glass drive is empty?”

“I checked twice,” Natalya said. “Nothing on the tray at all.”

“I take it you tried to access it?” Zoya asked.

“We were trying to look at the date-time stamps for Pritchard’s maintenance on that database,” the captain said.

Zoya pulled a disk out of her pocket and slipped it onto Trask’s desk. “There’s the glass.”

“Whew,” Natalya said. “I was afraid somebody took it.”

“Somebody did,” Zoya said. “I was worried about it too, so I swapped it out with a blank disk.”

Trask looked up at that. “A blank?”

“Unless you know what to look for, it’s hard to tell a blank from one that’s not.” She shrugged. “Somebody took the one in the drive. I’d look to Mr. Pritchard.”

“Why him?” Trask asked.

“Deduction. I’m relatively sure it wasn’t you, Captain. I’ve known Natalya a long time and she had no motive to take it. The only other officer aboard is Mr. Pritchard.”

“Why an officer?”

“Ease of access, potential motive, and he knew we had something on the glass.”

Natalya remembered standing in the passage with Pritchard. “He did see us last night.”

The captain picked up the chip and slotted it into his desk console. “What am I looking at here?” he asked.

“There’s a copy of the spares database along with an ancillary set of tables from the maintenance database. They’re labeled. There’s also a quick-and-dirty data analyzer there. It’ll let you open the database records and scroll through them along with any maintenance activity.”

“I see it,” the captain said. “Got it.” The captain scrolled through the records for several ticks while Natalya and Zoya looked at each other and waited. “This says Pritchard was in the maintenance database on the twelfth of July.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Amazing work, Ms. Usoko. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. His fingers are in the maintenance database. The question at the moment is how?”

“Not what?” Natalya asked.

“We’ll get to that but you locked him out of the system on the eighth of June.” He scrolled down the screen and pointed to records showing Pritchard logging in, setting up Natalya’s account, and then changing his password. “I assume you did that, Ms. Regyri?”

Natalya looked at the screen and nodded. “Yeah. I had Zoya set him up with a guest account tied to his name.”

“Shoulda been about four or five stans after those entries,” Zoya said.

Trask scrolled up and found the record. “Neat job,” he said.

“Thank you, Captain,” Zoya said.

He sat back and looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’ll ask again. How?”

Zoya and Natalya returned to their chairs.

Natalya shook her head. “I don’t see how it’s possible.”

Zoya held her face in both hands and massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “Can you check to see what rights his account has now?”

Trask clicked a few keys. “Basically guest access.”

Zoya and Natalya both looked up at the same time. “Backdoor.” They spoke almost at the same time.

“How would Pritchard have a backdoor in this system?” the captain asked. “And why?” He pointed to his screen. “And what is he doing with these spares records? Checking things in as if we’ve just received them. Here’s one on July twenty-third. We were in space that day.”

“Moe’s.”

“Yes, but we got underway right after lunch mess. This is time stamped for 2150.”

“He picked something up and wanted to hide it in the spares inventory?”

“He could have just tucked it under his bunk,” the captain said. “Why the record?”

“We’d have to ask him,” Zoya said. “Maybe it’s not actually a thing. Maybe the updated record is a message to somebody.”

Natalya shook her head. “Who else can see the spares inventory?”

“Almost everybody. Certainly every engineer,” Zoya said. “Think about it. Who can check out a spare part?”

Natalya sat back. “Of course. I’ve spent too much time flying solo, I guess.”

“We have a more pressing problem,” Trask said, looking up from his screen. “Where’s that half-a-million-credit parts shipment gone?”

“Did the chandlery get back to you?” Natalya asked.

“They’ve added the bill to our account. Somebody signed for it. I’m trying to find out who.” He paused. “And how.”

Zoya looked up. “Blanchard.”

“What about him?” Trask asked.

“He signed for the order.”

Natalya felt her eyes practically bug out of her head as she stared at Zoya.

Trask’s forehead wrinkled but he didn’t explode. “Spell it out for me, Ms. Usoko.”

“Those maintenance records aren’t Pritchard,” she said.

Trask’s eyebrows jerked upward. “How do you know?”

“Hunch.” She nodded at the console. “Log in as Pritchard, Captain.”

“I don’t know his password.”

“It’s ‘welcome aboard.’ He never changed it from the default.”

He shrugged but logged in. “I’m in.”

“Try to edit something. Even grab a spare lightbulb from the spares system.”

He frowned at the system. “I don’t have anything but messages and entertainment options.”

“Can you open a command window?”

Trask punched the hot keys. “No.”

“He could have some kind of hot-key backdoor, but does he strike you as the brilliant but bumbling system geek?”

Trask pursed his lips and shook his head. “Steven’s always been a bit of a cypher, but why Blanchard?”

“He’s the only one not in this room who could spoof Pritchard’s access. He’s a system admin and can do anything. Including editing the logs after the fact to make it look like Pritchard did maintenance to files he didn’t have access to.”

Trask frowned. “Why would he do that?”

“Good question, but he wasn’t aboard yesterday afternoon.”

“Josh Lyons was off, too,” Natalya said.

Trask’s console bipped and he tapped a few keys. His face went slack. “Chandlery says Pritchard signed off on the order.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps ask him?” Zoya asked.

Trask nodded. “If you two would please wait here?”

They both nodded. “Of course, Captain,” Zoya said.

Trask rose from his chair like it hurt him to stand. He straightened and left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

They didn’t hear anything for a few moments, then a quick knock on a door, followed by a brief conversation, too low to hear—Trask and Pritchard’s voices muffled by the distance and intervening bulkheads.

The captain returned, sat heavily in his chair, and tossed a chip onto the desk. “He claims Blanchard told him to get it and keep it safe.”

“What about the spares?” Natalya asked.

“Claims he has no idea what I’m talking about.” Trask looked at Zoya. “Could Charlie have spoofed the receipt?”

Zoya’s eyes squinted for a moment. “Only if he could cross-load his thumbprint to Pritchard’s record.” She shook her head. “Depends a lot on where they pull the ident from.”

“Explain,” Trask said.

“Logically, they’d pull it from the CPJCT profile data, but sometimes these systems do stuff like pull from the ship’s database because the ships provide authorization for signoffs.”

“So you think they queried the ship and got Charlie’s thumb but Pritchard’s ident?”

Zoya shrugged. “Only explanation I could give for how Mr. Blanchard could have signed for an order with Mr. Pritchard’s thumb.”

Trask looked at Natalya. “Possible?”

Natalya thought about what would be required for a few heartbeats. “Not supposed to be possible,” she said. “But neither is jiggering the auto-doc logs.”

“So you couldn’t rule it out?”

“Not with what we believe at the moment, no,” she said. “If we can spoof ship transponders, swapping thumbprints in our own systems would seem pretty straightforward.”

The captain’s tablet bipped.

“I’m almost afraid to look,” he said with a half-smile directed at Zoya and Natalya. He pulled up his tablet and flipped through a few screens with one stabbing index finger. “Interesting. Orbital security officers at the brow.” He looked up at them. “They have Mr. Lyons.”

Chapter 47
Siren Orbital: 2363, August 2