“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 bi
t 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
Natalya followed the captain down to the brow where two uniformed orbital security officers waited with Lyons just inside the lock. Lyons stood steadily enough but kept his head down, looking at his boots as nearly as Natalya could tell. The man’s hair had a few cowlicks, but his uniform seemed clean enough, if rumpled. The alcohol sting in the air fairly watered her eyes.
“I’m Captain Trask. How can I help you?”
The female officer jerked a thumb at Lyons. “Morning shift found him sacked out in a shipping crate down on oh-six with a couple of empty hooch bottles. Won’t say how he got there or how long he’d been there.”
“Any charges?” Trask asked.
The male officer shook his head. “Nope. We kinda hoped he’d talk to you since he wouldn’t talk to us.”
“I dunno how I got there,” Lyons said. His speech had a bit of a slur, like he didn’t have complete control of his tongue. He bit his lips together, his head turning this way and that, looking anywhere but at Trask or Natalya.
Natalya stepped forward and touched his arm. “Are you being a mope?”
The frantic head movements stopped and he looked up at her. His face had a heavy stubble, and his eyes looked pouchy but clear. His lips tried for a smile and almost made it. “I don’t remember. Last thing I remember was going ashore. Headed down the docks.”
“That’s the story he’s been giving us all morning, Captain,” the female officer said. “Nobody’s pressing charges. Nobody’s said boo about him. When we got him, he was a lot more confused. Rambling about cargo and spare parts. When we got his ident and found out he was your cargo master, we figured we might as well bring him along. He can sober up here as well as in our lockup.”
“Not drunk,” Lyons said.
The two officers rolled their eyes.
“Thank you, officers,” Trask said. “I appreciate the consideration.”
The male officer gave a jaunty wave. “You’re more than welcome, Captain. Saves us a ton of reporting.”
Trask chuckled at that. “I know how that works.”
The officers left and the spacer behind the desk keyed the lock closed.
“Thank you, Mr. Lamparty,” the captain said. He turned to Lyons. “Let’s head up, shall we?”
Lyons nodded, his head moving in an exaggerated arc up and down. “Coffee?”
“I’ll grab a mug on the way past the mess deck, if that’s all right, Mr. Lyons,” Natalya said.
Lyons looked around, one eye slightly squinting like the eyeball hurt. “Not drunk,” he said again.
The captain looped an arm through Lyons’s. “Come on, old son. Let’s find someplace comfy and dark to chat, shall we?” He gave Natalya a nod and she scooted ahead.
Scuttlebutt traveled faster than Natalya. By the time she got to the mess deck, Chef Marah already had a tray ready with a carafe of coffee and a small plate of pastries. She thrust it into Natalya’s hands almost before Natalya got into the galley. “Here you go, sar.”
“Thanks, Ms. Marah. Appreciated.”
The captain and Mr. Lyons had only barely cleared the ladder from the brow, so Natalya scooted up the ladder to the cabin and pushed through the door, balancing the tray precariously as she navigated the doorknob.
By the time she got the tray settled on Trask’s desk, the two of them loomed through the doorway, Lyons all but stumbling and the captain’s bulk turned sideways to get them both through the door. Natalya took Lyons’s arm and helped him to a chair.
The captain closed the door behind him and blocked the curious glances of too many spacers walking past. He crossed to his desk and took a seat while Natalya poured half a cup of coffee from the carafe, handing it to Lyons, who took it in two rather shaky hands.
“Thank you,” Lyons said with a jerky nod. “Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you, Ms. Regyri,” Trask said. “I think we can handle it from here.”
Natalya felt a stab of frustration but nodded. “Of course, Captain.” She started for the door when Lyons spoke again.
“Stay. Please.” Lyons looked at the captain. “She can stay.”
The captain glanced at Natalya and shrugged before nodding at the empty chair. She sat.
“When you’re ready, Mr. Lyons,” the captain said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands over his chest.
Lyons gave another jerky nod and took a sip of the coffee. “I’m not drunk.” He opened his eyes wide and then closed them tightly as if trying to exercise his face muscles. “Somebody slipped me something.” He took another, longer, sip, then worked his nose and lips back and forth. “Feeling’s coming back.”
“What do you remember?” Trask asked.
“I signed off the ship and headed down the dock.”
“Do you remember where you were going?”
Lyons squinted. “Burger,” he said. “I wanted a burger. With onions.”
Natalya watched the amusement flit across the captain’s face. She felt herself grinning.
“Did you have any place in mind?”
“No. Figured I’d find one on the oh-two
.”
“Lots of bars on the oh-two,” Trask said. His words carried no more weight than your average observation about a pleasant day.
Lyons stiffened as if he’d been stabbed. “No,” he said, staring into his mug. He glanced sideways at Natalya. “No,” he said again, quieter this time. “I wanted a burger. No booze. No beer. I hate beer.” He shuddered. He stretched his mouth open and closed. “It’s wearing off.” He lifted the mug a bit. “This helps.”
“You’re not drunk,” Natalya said. “I’ve seen you drunk.”
“You’ve smelled me drunk,” Lyons said with a crooked grin. “Do I smell drunk?”
She laughed and leaned over to give him a good sniff. She sat back, and frowned. “No, you don’t smell drunk,” she said, looking at the captain. “He smells like somebody spilled booze on him and left him. There’s something else there, too. A mouthwash smell.” The scent tickled her memory. “Pritchard. He smells like Pritchard.”
“Pritchard?” Trask asked, his face slack. “Are you sure?”
“He uses that god-awful aftershave or cologne or whatever it is. Seems like he must bathe in it some days.”
Trask stood and crossed to Lyons. “Nothing personal.”
Lyons gave a short laugh that sounded more like a cough. “No problem, Captain.”
Trask leaned over and took a snootful. “That fruity smell?” he asked, looking at Natalya.
“Yeah. That’s not Mr. Lyons,” she said. “He’s got a milder, musky smell.” She realized what she had said and felt the heat rising over her face. “Sorry, Mr. Lyons.”
He laughed again. “It’s all right,” he said. “I do smell funny, even to me.”
Trask took his seat again. “The officers said you were talking about spare parts and cargo when they found you.”
Lyons frowned, his gaze centered on his coffee mug but his focus somewhere else. “Feels like a dream. Funny dream. Walking down the docks. There’s a cargo train. Tug and a few wagons full of stuff.”
“That’s not unusual on the docks,” Trask said.
“It’s slippery. Like the harder I try to remember, the more it slips away.” Lyons shook his head and closed his eyes. “It stops at our lock. Somebody comes out. I keep walking. Why did I keep walking?” He sighed and opened his eyes. “It’s like I’m not really there. It’s something happening to somebody else. Not real.”
Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 31
