The Phoenix Conspiracy

by Richard Sanders

  ***

  Shen felt a little like a clown in the IT support uniform of Brimm Station. He wore a tie that felt too tight, slacks that were a little long, and they made him comb his hair and part it. Regulation apparently. Something he’d never do of his own free will. He felt a renewed wave of gratitude for Calvin’s relaxed policies on the Nighthawk.

  His fake ID—Sukati Yoshimo, Support Staff Technician—was clipped onto his buttoned-up shirt.

  After he checked in with Andre and picked up a datapad with reports on the ship’s systems, which had mysteriously started to fail, he made his way through the narrow corridors and elevator to the auxiliary hatch. As he passed some crew quarters, he caught Sarah coming out of her room. His heart skipped a beat, and he stopped in his tracks.

  Her hair was loosely held up by a rubber band, and she wore simple casual clothes instead of her uniform. It made sense, since she wasn’t on duty for several more hours, but also made her all the more eye-catching.

  “Hey there,” she said with a smile. Her eyes seemed to twinkle.

  “Hi.” He didn’t know what to say and just smiled back.

  “You’re looking good.” She studied his bogus IT uniform and didn’t keep back a wry, teasing grin.

  He felt embarrassed. “Long story …” he said. “Special assignment.”

  “Ah.” She nodded.

  He just stood there.

  “Well … nice talking to you,” she said.

  Only then did he realize he was in her way. He darted aside fast enough that it was almost a jump and a clumsy one at that. “Oh, sorry,” he said.

  She laughed and shook her head. “See ya later, Shen.” She walked away down the corridor to wherever she was going.

  He kept his gaze from following her and instead launched into a brisk walk in the opposite direction.

  “Stupid,” he mumbled to himself. Wondering why he could still feel uncomfortable around someone he knew so well. Like he just couldn’t be himself. His friends always told him that was the best advice: just relax and be natural. But somehow he got all tense and nervous around women he liked, and it seemed, no matter what age he was, that would always be the case.

  As arranged, a junior engineer met him at the hatch. She would be the liaison to the station’s engineering team. Shen handed her the datapad with the ship’s reports. She saluted and went ahead all the way into Brimm’s support bay. A moment later she came back and announced the coast was clear.

  “Good.” He felt anxious again as he hustled through the jetbridge, down the ladder, and onto the support bay floor of the station. Once he was a good distance from the ship, he slowed down and tried to act naturally. He knew if he stared at random things and looked busy, nobody would bother him. The only thing he couldn’t quiet was his thumping heart; but if someone heard that, he had much bigger problems—medical ones.

  He wiped a little forehead sweat onto his sleeve and strolled out of the bay toward where he expected the main access computers to be. Just before he reached the exit, someone intercepted him.

  “You there,” an engineer said waving at him. Shen swallowed, his mouth dry.

  “Yes?” he asked weakly.

  “Can you toss me that clipboard?”

  On the table to Shen’s right was a set of notes attached to an old-fashioned clipboard. He felt a sigh of relief as he picked it up and tossed them to the engineer. There was less than two meters’ distance between them, but somehow the paperwork managed to take a nosedive before reaching the engineer’s outstretched hands. As the man bent over to scoop it up, Shen slipped out the door and walked into the main concourse, perhaps a bit faster than normal.

  “Kiosk … kiosk…” he whispered as he looked around. The wide open space was surprisingly empty, but then he remembered how late it was according to Local Time.

  It didn’t take long to find a proper computer terminal. It was more exposed than he would have liked, so he positioned his body to hide what he was doing as best he could. He hastily copied over his program and executed it.

  In no time it was putting a strain on the local server, and he pulled out his drive and hustled away. It would take Brimm’s technicians at least a few minutes to figure out their new problem was rooted to this location, since by now his program had infected every other system on the intranet.

  He wandered away into an even more open cross-section where he correctly guessed he’d find a map of this deck. It wasn’t quite as specific as he would have liked, but he was able to pick out a small room that was a pretty good candidate for being the office of a local administrator—its proximity to some computer labs was the clue. Before he made his way there, however, he spotted a row on the bottom of the map advertising several small shops and novelty stores. One of them was a boutique.

  He thought of Sarah and realized—after he’d completed his mission—he could easily walk there and buy her some flowers. It wasn’t too far away, and she’d love them; wouldn’t she? But the more he thought of it, the more his feet felt glued to the floor. He could do it. Nothing was really stopping him. He could even give them to her anonymously if that’s what it took; then take credit for them later.

  “Who am I kidding?” he whispered. Somehow the thought of giving flowers to Sarah, or anyone, felt ridiculous. He just didn’t think women could take him seriously. And then he’d look like a fool. And things would be all awkward after that. No, Shen, he thought to himself, that won’t do.

  He made his way to the small office and, finding the door open, walked inside.

  “What can I do for you?” a man asked from behind a bushy mustache. He wore the blue-and-black uniform of the navy and had a very pointed angular face.

  “I’m here to service your computer,” said Shen; he unclipped his ID, handed it to the man, and continued. “IT technician from deck sixteen. We’re having some trouble with the servers, and we’ve isolated the problem to this deck.”

  The officer looked back and forth from Shen to the ID, seeming almost skeptical, and just as Shen felt the impulse to run—thinking his cover was blown, the officer handed his ID back to Shen with an approving nod. “Good. I’ve been having trouble getting onto the network—started a few minutes ago. Keeps thinking and thinking and never goes anywhere. Something’s broken.”

  Shen nodded. “I need to have your computer run a few programs to secure it from the virus.” He knew throwing out the V-word would spook the guy since he, like most people, probably had no understanding of what a computer virus actually was and probably believed its power was akin to a wrathful deity.

  “Why my computer?” the officer asked. “Why can’t you just make it work? I mean, I didn’t do anything funny on my computer to mess up your servers.”

  “I know you didn’t,” said Shen. “But your computer is at risk. I’ll need to run some defensive software to protect your data.” He held up his drive and forced a smile.

  The man frowned for a minute, and once again Shen felt his heart race, and tiny beads of sweat formed on his forehead, but eventually the officer seemed to agree that this made sense. “All right.” He waved Shen forward and stepped out of the way.

  Shen plugged his drive into the computer and discovered it wasn’t logged in. “I need you to log into your account, sir.”

  “I thought you technicians had full-computer access,” the man said, his tone suspicious.

  Of course, Shen knew, the technicians probably did. Too bad he wasn’t really one of them, otherwise he could log in as a basic administrator, and this operation would be a cinch. Fortunately, though, he was pretty sure this particular officer, despite being stationed near computer labs, knew very little of actual computing. Shen swallowed hard and came up with some more baloney.

  “In order to protect your information, I need to be logged into your account. I don’t have your log-in information specifically. So, please, if you don’t mind”—he waved toward the key prompt—”the longer we wait, the more danger your stuff is in.”

/>   The officer didn’t take the time to think this over. The urgency in Shen’s voice—made believable by his own anxiety—was convincing enough. Shen soon found himself perusing the local network. His sabotage program had been discovered and wiped out, and the server was working fine. Of course, the officer hovering over his shoulder didn’t know that. And, even though it’d been purged, it would still do the job of hiding his tracks once the technicians did a proper restore. With luck, no one should notice that any data was copied.

  Shen did a search based on a few simple parameters. The most useful mechanism for this was to check everything for its time stamp and access-modification dates. Everything that seemed to plausibly fit in the Harbinger’s window of time, when they’d boarded the station, Shen copied over. It took a while, and, as he sat waiting for the data to upload, he felt even more nervous. The image of soldiers or actual technicians scouring the corridors trying to find the saboteur who’d knocked out their servers frightened him. Seeing Shen sitting here would flag the right people’s attention if they were looking.

  “Do you mind shutting the door?” asked Shen. “I’m a little cold, and that vent is giving me goose bumps.” He was lucky that a significant amount of cool air was flowing through a large vent just outside the office.

  “All right,” the officer said, and he closed the door.

  Shen figured that bought him a little more time.

  As the last of the data copied over, he checked the maintenance logs to see what the Nighthawk’s status was. It had been refueled but wasn’t cleared for departure yet, even though the engineering liaison had returned to the ship. Apparently the chief engineer of the Nighthawk wasn’t yet satisfied that the ship’s systems had all the kinks worked out yet. No doubt Calvin was having Andre keep making bad reports until Shen was back aboard.

  The computer beeped as the data finished moving over. Shen ejected the drive and put it in his pocket. “Well, it looks like we saved your data, and now your computer is secure.” He saluted, put on a fake smile, and walked out.

  “Thanks,” the officer called behind him.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  When he knew he was out of sight, he sped up, carefully ducking to the side when he passed others in the main corridors. No one seemed to be overly alert or looking for him. But he still didn’t stop until he was back in the support bay. As he approached the Nighthawk, which was still connected to the bay via a jetbridge, someone called out to him.

  “You there, technician, what are you doing next to that ship?”

  Shen couldn’t think on his feet quite as well as he would have liked. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling his face get warm.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  Shen felt the urge to sprint onto the ship and not look back, but he knew that was foolish. Instead he faced down the man. “I mean, I don’t know why, but I have orders from deck sixteen to deliver this report to the ship’s liaison.” He held up his drive.

  “Oh, okay,” the engineer said. “But the Nighthawk’s liaison has already boarded the ship.”

  Shen knew this already. “Then I’ll have to go aboard.”

  “Do you have clearance for that?”

  “If I don’t, I’m sure their security will turn me away. But I have to at least try to follow my orders.” He stepped into the jetbridge leading to the ship’s hatch and felt an enormous wave of relief.