Chapter 1: The Phantom Login The air recyclers hummed a low C-sharp. Lena noticed things like that – the specific pitch of machinery working correctly. Right now, it was the only thing on Ark-1 that sounded right. Everything else had been out of tune since they found Captain Hansen’s body on that damn mountain. She sat in her maintenance cubby, a narrow space tucked between environmental control and the main data conduit trunk. It wasn't an official office, but it had a terminal with higher access permissions than most, because she needed them to keep the ship from falling apart around three thousand sleeping souls. The tribunal for Kaelen started in forty-eight hours. The official report, which she’d read three times, was a neat, airtight package. His weapon discharged near the scene. Stressed junior officer. Political disagreements with the Captain. Motive, opportunity, evidence. Too neat. Life on the Ark was never that simple. Systems failed, connections frayed, people hid their real intentions behind regulation smiles. A perfect case felt like a system override – someone forcing a conclusion the hardware didn't naturally support. She pulled up the master maintenance log. It was a sprawling database that tracked every system interaction, from a waste reclaimer cycle to a coffee dispenser request. Most of it was automatic pings, the ship talking to itself. She filtered for manual entries around the time of Hansen’s death, focusing on Engineering sectors. The first search came back with nothing out of place. Standard diagnostics, a few work orders filed after the fact. It was exactly what someone would expect to see if everything was functioning as reported. But Lena had spent years listening to machines, and the silence here was wrong. An event as disruptive as a captain's murder should have created ripples in the system. A misplaced access request, a paused routine, something. The total absence of digital friction was its own kind of anomaly. She tried a different approach, running a cross-reference of all login attempts against physical door access logs for secure areas. The system processed the query. A list populated. Most entries matched up perfectly – Officer A entered Secure Storage Alpha at 14:00 and logged into the terminal inside at 14:01. Then she saw it. An entry flagged the automated system itself for review. A login attempt had been registered for Terminal E-7, a high-clearance engineering station in a locked-down sector near the primary reactor control. The timestamp placed it seventeen minutes after Hansen’s estimated time of death. The attempt failed. Bad biometrics. The log listed the user as “Unrecognized.” But the door log for that sector showed zero authorized entries for a six-hour window around the incident. Someone had either spoofed a remote login attempt or they had gotten into that room without triggering the door sensor, which was supposed to be impossible. Her terminal chimed with an incoming comms request. The ID was J. Corbin – Kaelen’s appointed defender. She’d agreed to a briefing an hour ago, though she hadn't found anything to brief him about then. She accepted the call. Corbin’s face filled the screen. He had the tired eyes of a man who spent more time with legal precedent files than with people. “Engineer Martin. Any progress?” he asked, not bothering with a greeting. “I think so,” Lena said. “There’s a data ghost in the maintenance logs.” Corbin’s expression didn't change. “A what?” “A failed login attempt. For a restricted engineering terminal. It happened after the murder, but the location was sealed.” “And this helps my client how? The prosecution’s evidence is all from the mountain, not from inside the ship.” “The terminal in question has the clearance to access and alter planetary survey data,” Lena explained, pulling up the schematics on a side screen. “Including the geologic stability readouts from the expedition site.” She watched Corbin process this. He was a procedure man. He lived in the world of witness testimony and chain-of-custody forms. A phantom in the machine was abstract. “You’re suggesting someone tampered with the environmental data *after* the fact?” he asked slowly. “It’s a possibility the investigation ignored. They focused on Kaelen and his weapon. They didn’t look for someone cleaning up digital loose ends.” “It’s a single log entry, Engineer. A systems glitch.” “Ark-1 doesn’t have glitches like that,” Lena countered. “Not without a cause. A faulty sensor would trigger a maintenance alert. This was just… absorbed. It only shows up if you go looking for cross-referenced anomalies.” Corbin sighed, a soft sound of escaping air. “Even if I grant your theory, it’s circumstantial at best. It doesn’t place anyone else on that mountain. It doesn’t disprove the physical evidence they have.” “The physical evidence is too clean,” Lena insisted. “Kaelen’s weapon was found nearby, but the forensics report lists perfect primer residue distribution on his glove. Have you ever serviced a plasma rifle? They vent gas from three different points unless you’re using a brand-new sealed unit, which his wasn’t. The residue pattern should be asymmetrical. Their own evidence doesn't match their own hardware specifications.” This got a slight reaction. One of Corbin’s eyebrows twitched upward a millimeter. “You’ve read the forensic analysis?” “I read everything.” Lena minimized her screens. “The point is, their case is built on evidence that looks manufactured to fit a conclusion, not evidence that led to one. This login attempt is another thread of the same pattern.” “So what do you propose? I can’t walk into the tribunal and present ‘a feeling’ that the evidence is too neat.” “I need to see it,” Lena said. “The evidence locker. I need to inspect Kaelen’s gear, the rifle, everything they collected.” Corbin shook his head immediately. “Out of the question. That evidence is under military seal. I have view-only access under supervision. You’re a civilian engineer.” “And you’re not an engineer at all,” Lena shot back, then immediately tried to dial it back. She needed him. “Look, you can supervise. You’ll be right there. But you won’t know what to look for. I will. I can tell you if a component was swapped or if the wear patterns are consistent with use or with staging.” She could see him weighing it. His job was to defend Kaelen, but his career was tied to not making powerful enemies on the command staff, who seemed very invested in a swift and tidy conviction. “Why do you care so much about this?” Corbin asked, his gaze sharpening. “You barely knew Kaelen.” Lena considered the question. It wasn’t about Kaelen, not really. It was about the ship. The Ark was a closed system. If someone could fabricate evidence and get away with it, if they could kill a captain and derail the Genesis mission without consequence, then every system on board was compromised. The life support, the navigation, the cryo-bays holding thousands of people – all of it relied on trust in the underlying data and the people who managed it. This wasn’t just a murder case; it was a fundamental breach of protocol that threatened their entire reason for being here. But she couldn’t say all that to Corbin. “The Captain believed in this mission,” she said instead, which was true, if incomplete. “He thought we could actually fix this planet. If he was killed to stop that from happening, then we’re all just flying a giant tomb. I fix things that are broken. This looks broken.” Corbin was quiet for a long moment, studying her through the screen. "My authority only extends so far," he said finally. "I can get you into the evidence room for thirty minutes tomorrow morning before the pre-trial motions begin. You'll be my technical consultant. But you touch nothing without my explicit say-so, and if you find anything—anything at all—you report it to me, not to your engineering buddies, not to your friends in Logistics. Is that clear?" It was more of a concession than she'd expected. "Clear," Lena said. "Good." He leaned forward to terminate the call, but paused."Don't make me regret this; Martin."Then his face vanished fromhe screen leaving her alone with;) pending ArriendmeJinetily fascinating”“ SSL Έреш