The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  “I was a founding member of the Mumbai Chaos Computer Club, remember? The tech I’ve got is way better than whatever nummer little virus might be on this chip.” He sat down on the floor with his legs crossed and opened up the screen. “But just in case, I’ll disconnect from the ship’s network so we’ll be air gapped.”

  Rahul tapped the screen, and a light on the side of the computer went dark. Lucas knelt down behind him, torn between wanting to find out what was on the chip and worrying about what would happen if Rahul plugged it in. “You’re sure this is safe?”

  “Totally safe,” Rahul said, plugging the chip into a port on his computer. “Now, let’s see. Lots of VR data, looks like. Most of it is encrypted. But otherwise, nothing super interesting.”

  He typed a few commands and screenfuls of text scrolled by quickly. “Bingo. A hidden executable. Pretty lame, really. I’d hoped for something a little more advanced.”

  Rahul’s computer trilled. “What was that?” Lucas asked.

  “Okay, looks like that first file was just a decoy. Whoever did this was more advanced than I’d thought. Looks like . . .”

  He trailed off and frowned. “Looks like what?” Elena prompted.

  “There’s multiple levels to this thing. I’ve found three so far, and I think there’s more.” There was a nervous tone in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He typed quickly, hammering the keyboard with his fingers. “It’s looking for an ID badge.”

  “Like, one of ours?” Elena asked. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Lucas was starting to think that this whole idea was a big mistake. “If it infected the badge—and then we used it on the ship’s network . . .”

  “That would be bad,” Rahul said. He stared at his screen. “I take back everything I said. This thing is smart. Looks like it’s trying to reach out to our sensor grid. But I’ve got it contained.”

  A small green light on the side of his screen flickered on. “Did you connect to the network again?” Lucas asked nervously. “I thought you were going to keep it disconnected.”

  “Wait, what?” Rahul said, glancing at the light. “How did that happen?”

  “Did the virus reactivate the connection?” Elena asked.

  “There’s no way it could do that,” Rahul said, typing another command. “Except that yeah, I think it did.”

  “Shut it down,” Elena said. “Now.”

  “I’m trying!” he said. “But something is blocking me. Maybe—”

  Elena jerked the computer out of his hands. In one smooth motion, she lifted it up and swung it against the wall. The screen split from the keyboard with a splintering crack and it went dark. She examined it for a moment and then handed the pieces to Rahul, who stared at them mutely for a moment.

  “I was going to say that maybe I could just unplug the power supply,” he said accusingly.

  “Well, maybe you should have done that sooner,” Elena said.

  “That was a really expensive computer!”

  “Emphasis on was,” Lucas said, looking at the mangled wreckage in Rahul’s hands. “Do you think the virus managed to do anything?”

  “Other than to my computer, via Miss Judo Expert here?” Rahul said. “No. It was still trying to get through my outbound firewalls when she did her karate-chop maneuver.”

  “Are you sure?” Lucas pressed.

  “I’m sure,” Rahul said crossly.

  He stuffed the remains of his computer into a drawer and slammed it shut. Elena picked up a few shattered pieces of plastic and handed them to him. “Here you go.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “We should tell Sanchez about this,” Elena said, oblivious to Rahul’s sarcastic tone. “What if someone else got one of these?”

  “I’ll do it,” Lucas said, grabbing the chip from her hand. “I was the one who brought it.”

  “I could come,” Elena offered.

  “That’s okay,” Lucas said, backing out of the room. “No need.”

  He climbed up the ladderway toward the front of the ship. His arms and legs were still sore from Palmer’s class, and it was achingly slow going compared with just floating along under zero gee. As he passed deck four, he saw McKinley standing in front of an open panel filled with circuits and wires. Lucas hurried upward, hoping McKinley wouldn’t notice him.

  “Lucas, there,” McKinley called. “Wait a minute.”

  Lucas paused on the ladder. “Oh . . . hi.”

  “Where are you hurrying off to?” McKinley asked, putting his hand on the ladder.

  “Nowhere,” Lucas said. “I mean, I just need to talk to the captain.”

  McKinley gave Lucas his usual toothy smile, but this time there didn’t seem to be any humor behind it. “Now, talking to the captain isn’t nowhere, is it? The way you’re hurrying, someone might think that you were doing something stupid, like getting ready to tell Sanchez a few things that you’d best be keeping to yourself.”

  Lucas blanched. “No—of course not.”

  “Mmm,” McKinley said. “I’m sure I can trust you. After all, we’re friends, aren’t we? But just to be sure, let me explain a few things that would happen if you did go talking to Sanchez.”

  He pulled Lucas over to the far corner of the deck and dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “First there would be an investigation. And that would find out quite a few things, wouldn’t it? Do you really want those officers poking around in your business?”

  “I don’t—” Lucas began.

  “Now, maybe you were thinking that you could just tell the captain a little bit, eh? Just the parts you want her to know? Except it doesn’t work like that. You tell her anything, and she’ll start asking questions. Soon she’ll know everything.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” Lucas insisted.

  McKinley chuckled. “Everyone has something to hide, son. But I wasn’t talking about just you. If you talk to the captain, it won’t be long before she knows everything about your sister too. And Tali, bless her heart, has lots to hide.”

  Lucas froze. McKinley knew about his sister? Suddenly several pieces of this puzzle clicked into place. How had he not seen it before? Lucas had been trying to figure out what Tali was hiding, but the answer had been right in front of him the entire time.

  “You gave her that device to plant on the hull.”

  “Might have been,” McKinley said. “And you were the one who removed it, weren’t you?”

  Lucas shrugged. “Might have been.”

  “Either way, Tali is the one that’s going to suffer. If you go talking to the captain, she’ll be lucky if all they do is expel her. Me, I’d put my money on prison—at the very least.”

  “All she did—”

  “You don’t know the half of what she’s done. Have you ever wondered how she came here in the first place? How she’s managed to convince the Navy that she grew up on Mars?”

  “You helped her,” Lucas said, remembering what Tali had told him about needing to pay off a debt. “And then you blackmailed her.”

  McKinley held up his hands. “Oh, not me. None of this is my style. I’m more of a facilitator.”

  “Stockton and Willis, then.”

  “Now you’re seeing it a little more clearly. Which brings me to my second point. If you go talking about what you know, my business partners will be extremely angry. They’ll find people to hurt, and they won’t stop at just you. There’s your sister, for one. And those friends of yours back in your cabin. And of course your father, all alone out on his ship.”

  Lucas stared at him. Would McKinley and his friends really hurt his dad?

  “Like I said, none of this is my style,” McKinley said, reading his expression. “I’m just trying to make sure you understand exactly who you’re dealing with. And that brings me to my third point, which is what happens if you don’t say anything.”

  McKinley’s genial smile returned and he spread his arms wide. “Nothing at all. Or at least,
nothing worth worrying about. Some tariffs don’t get paid. Some rich Earthers don’t get any richer. Some Belters—people a lot like your father—are a little less under the thumb of the planetsiders. Now, what’s the harm in that?”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the honest truth. You know what that program they gave you does? It lets certain ships hide from the Navy’s sensors. That’s it.”

  Lucas remembered what Rahul had said—that the virus had been trying to connect to the Orpheus’s sensor grid. Maybe McKinley was telling the truth?

  “Now, I’m not telling you to go plugging that thing in. That’s outright sabotage, isn’t it? But turning a bit of a blind eye and letting bygones be bygones—well, that’s just doing what’s right for you and the people you care about.”

  McKinley patted him on the shoulder. “It’s your decision, and it isn’t an easy one. I’ll leave you to it.”

  He climbed onto the ladder and descended toward the back of the ship, humming a weird little tune under his breath. Lucas leaned his head against the bulkhead and looked up at the ceiling.

  As much as he didn’t like it, McKinley was right. Lucas wasn’t sure how much he trusted McKinley’s story, but one thing he did believe was that Stockton and Willis would hurt people who got in their way. People like his friends and his family. How could he risk that just to stop some smuggling that would probably happen anyway?

  Slowly he went up to deck two, just outside the captain’s cabin and below the bridge. He floated there for a long time, looking out the window at the glow of the Milky Way. If Captain Sanchez came out of her cabin, he told himself, then he’d talk to her. If someone came down from the bridge and asked him what he was doing here, he’d go inside.

  But nobody came out, and nobody asked him what he was doing. The ship was silent except for the laughter of some cadets down in the rec room. Finally Lucas headed back down to alpha section’s deck, feeling sick to his stomach. Instead of going into his own cabin, though, he knocked on the door to the fourth-years’ bunkroom.

  Tali opened the door and regarded him with a carefully neutral expression. “Yes?”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Lucas asked. “It’s important.”

  Clearly irritated, she moved aside so he could come in and then closed the door behind him quickly. “So what’s so important?”

  He showed her the data chip. “Someone down on Vesta gave me this.”

  “Someone?” she asked, taking the chip from him and inspecting it.

  “Actually, I think you know him. His name is Stockton.”

  At the mention of Stockton’s name, she looked up, startled. “He gave this to you?”

  “Well, his friend, anyway. Willis.”

  “Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to plug it in,” she said sharply.

  Lucas shook his head. “No.”

  “What are you planning to do with it?” she asked. Was it his imagination, or was she trying hard to sound casual and disinterested?

  “They’re the ones who were blackmailing you, weren’t they?” he asked. “Stockton and his friends. They’re the ones who helped you get into this school.”

  “I told you—I’m finished with them.”

  “You’re sure?” he pressed. “Because—”

  “I’m sure,” she said, putting the data chip in her pocket. “But listen to me, Lucas. Don’t trust them. Don’t talk to them. And whatever happens, don’t do anything they ask you to do. Understand?”

  She was telling him what he wanted to hear. But was she being honest, or just trying to push him away? “I can’t tell the captain, can I?”

  Tali was silent for a long moment. “No,” she said finally. “You don’t want Stockton as your friend, but you absolutely do not want him as your enemy. Just tell him you lost it or something.”

  “What are you going to do with the chip?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, opening the door and ushering him through. “It’s all under control.”

  He crossed the deck toward his own cabin, wishing that he could believe her. He wanted there to be some way to make everything turn out all right. But the more he learned, the more he was sure that there weren’t going to be any easy answers. When he opened the door to his cabin, Rahul and Elena looked up expectantly.

  “You told the captain?” Elena asked. “Is everything okay?”

  Lucas closed the door and looked at his friends for a moment. He really, really didn’t want to do this. But he didn’t have a choice. People might get hurt—they might get hurt—if he didn’t.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s all under control.”

  16

  BY THE NEXT afternoon, Lucas had decided ten different times that he’d done the wrong thing by agreeing to not tell Sanchez. But every time, he came back around to one thought: that if he did the right thing, people he loved would suffer. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t weigh anything against the possibility of Tali going to prison and his dad getting hurt.

  He didn’t even know what would happen if he kept quiet. What were Stockton and Willis trying to do? For all he knew, their plan was just going to involve smuggling soy milk without paying any import taxes. What was the harm in that?

  After lunch, Chief Engineer Moskowitz and two of her assistants led all the first-year cadets out onto the hull to demonstrate how to check for and repair micrometeroid impacts. On any other day, this would have intrigued Lucas, because he’d never been on a ship where the hull was repairable mid-flight. But today he found himself just staring out at the stars, unable to concentrate on Jones’s demonstration.

  “All right,” Moskowitz said. “That’s the process. Now fan out and see if you can find any impact spots.”

  Lucas headed out along the sunward side of the ship, looking down at the hull with unfocused eyes. It was good to be outside, at least. He always felt better when he could see the stars.

  “Hey,” Elena said over a private link, catching up to him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

  She pointed at a small circular dent in the hull just below him. “If it had been a snake, it would have bit you.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  They used one of Jones’s repair kits to fill in the hole with a gray metallic goop and used a heat lamp to activate it. The patch slowly melded into the hull, and soon it was hard to tell there had been any damage at all.

  “Are you worried about that virus?” Elena asked. “Did Captain Sanchez say what she was going to do about it?”

  “No, not really,” Lucas said. “Just that they would take care of it.”

  Elena nodded and looked at him silently. He knew her well enough by this point to know that there was something she wanted to ask him. “Go ahead,” he said wearily. “What is it?”

  “You said you’re protecting someone.”

  He nodded.

  “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “I’m not even a little bit sure,” he said. “I don’t think I know what the right thing is anymore.”

  “My grandmother used to say that knowing the right thing is the easy part. The hard part is ignoring all of the voices that are shouting at you to do something else.”

  Lucas looked out at the outstretched arm of Orion, glittering blue and white and yellow. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was making it harder than it needed to be. If he stopped paying attention to all the voices that were trying to tell him how to feel, then maybe he knew what he ought to do.

  They worked together for almost an hour, searching out and patching as many impact craters as they could find. It was relaxing work, in a way. Each little hole was a tiny, solvable problem. There was no question about what needed to be done. Just make the repairs and move on.

  “All right, head back in,” Moskowitz finally called out. “Whoever had the most patches gets to sit out next time we clean hydraulic feeds.”

  “I wish she’d told us that
beforehand,” Rahul said as the three of them cycled through the waist airlock. “I would have patched a hundred.”

  “Well, we’ve got bridge training next,” Elena said. She looked at her wrist screen. “In less than ten minutes. With Hofstra, even. So let’s hurry up and get inside.”

  They ended up being six minutes late getting to the backup bridge, but Lieutenant-Commander Hofstra wasn’t very interested in their excuses. “Sit down and get ready,” he said, waving his hand. “We’re short on time.”

  They took their seats behind the consoles. “Today will be an exercise in fast decision-making,” Hofstra said in his booming voice. “You’re all getting used to your responsibilities in each area. But in the heat of a situation, you may not have much time to react.”

  “Bridge to the captain,” Weber called over the intercom. “I’m seeing some odd activity on the secure network.”

  Hofstra cocked his head to one side and listened. “Odd?” Sanchez called back.

  “I’m not sure what it is. It doesn’t look like any of our normal traffic. Are we running a simulation on the backup bridge?”

  Hofstra tapped the intercom button on the commander’s console. “This is Hofstra. We were about to start a simulation run.”

  “Bridge, this is engineering,” Moskowitz said. “Weber is right. Something is trying to get into the main sensor grid.”

  Lucas’s skin went cold. Sensor grid? Elena and Rahul looked back at him with worried expressions. He knew what they were thinking—that this sounded just like the virus they’d found on the data chip.

  “Can you block it?” Sanchez asked.

  “Trying,” Moskowitz said, sounding like she was about two steps from being completely frantic. “But it’s already past our strongest firewalls. If we can’t get it contained quickly we’re going to have to start physically unplugging our server core.”

  “Lieutenant-Commander Hofstra—is there anything unusual on your end?” Weber said. “This is looking like it’s coming from your part of the ship.”

  Hofstra frowned. He peered at each of the computer consoles, though it wasn’t clear what he thought he might see. Elena and Rahul exchanged a look and leaned back to help him see better. “Nothing,” Hofstra said. “Everything looks—”