Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

25 - Suspicions

"How have you got on with the damage?" Ria asked as soon as Stephen returned to the Control Room.

"It's not as bad as it looked," he replied, getting back onto his feet and dropping the floor hatch back into its closed position. "As far as I can tell, Foxy has coped with the damage and she's running fine. She's lost a few processors, but the automatic diagnostics and load-balancing system isolated the correct damaged boards and I think she'll be okay. What's worrying me is the explosive."

"You think there might be more?" she replied, not entirely sure what he was getting at.

"Impossible to say," he shrugged. "But look at it this way: Chief found an extra circuit box attached to spare ports on Foxy. There's no debate on whether it should've been there. No-one fits a legitimate circuit and then rigs it to explode if tampered with."

"So, it was something dodgy..."

"Obviously, but what's more worrying is what it was doing there. What was it for?"

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"Was it stealing data? Controlling Foxy? Or something else? Those ports could only be used for either taking information out of Foxy or feeding information into her."

"I don't see the point of stealing data. Where would they send it? As to controlling Foxy, is that even possible?"

"Not without detection." He shook his head. "It would have to be incredibly sophisticated to control Foxy without her alerting us to a problem. And to do that, you'd need a detailed knowledge of her programming. Also, I don't reckon the ports it was connected to would allow that sort of operation."

"Okay then, what's the 'something else'?" Ria asked, still non-the-wiser.

"To feed information in, fake sensor reporting etcetera. The only reason I can think of to have something like that self-destruct is to hide what it was. If being tampered with was the trigger, then it must be important that we don't find out its purpose. Therefore, I think it's vital that we work out that purpose."

"How? Can we be sure it wasn't designed to take out Foxy at some critical moment in our voyage?"

"Not a big enough charge," he shrugged again. "Where it was placed, it wouldn't have taken much to wipe out Foxy completely, but I'm sure that wasn't its intent. Someone just didn't want us to get a look at it."

"We only found it because we were defrosted early," she replied. "What would it have done if we'd still all been asleep until the last couple of days, as per the flight plan?"

"Think about it," he urged. "What happened to the Elysian in the last couple of days of its voyage?"

"She collided... with... er... are you saying the collision was in some way... deliberate?"

"Or faked! Maybe it didn't happen at all. Maybe Elysian was fitted with an identical extra circuit which made her computer see a comet that wasn't there. The circuit might fake the required sensor data to cover its tracks."

"That makes sense, but Elysian was still damaged for real. What caused..."

"Another explosive, presumably," he interrupted. "If they're willing to plant an explosive in our main computer, I don't see why they wouldn't plant an explosive in another part of the ship too."

"And an explosive in the drive section of the ship could fake impact damage from a collision! But surely they'd realise everyone would be suspicious if several ships got hit in the same way?"

"It doesn't have to be the same for each ship. For example, put the explosives in different places in each vessel and you get very different results. The similar timing could easily be explained as a comet cloud passing through the area that arrived long after the survey probes passed through."

"I agree that finding the explosive is a good plan, but aren't we safe now if the control circuit has been destroyed?" she asked.

"I'm not willing to bet my life on that assumption. If I was designing such a system, I'd have the explosive on a timer circuit of its own and then use the brief radio transmission to synchronise that with the circuit hidden in Foxy. That would increase its chance of success."

"In that case, we need to find it immediately. Where do we begin?" she asked.

He replied with a question, "How long until our fellow crew members are defrosted?"

"Just over half-an-hour."

* * *

Ria met the newly defrosted crew members in Seating Area 2 as it was where the connection tubes from the supply modules linked with the Command Module. Seated around her, barely having had a chance to begin their recovery from over a decade in cryonic storage were Susan Tanaka, the twenty-eight-year-old Chief Engineering Officer, Phil Casey, a twenty-six-year-old electronic engineer, and Skylar Kristeva, the thirty-three-year-old Senior L.E.O. (Law Enforcement Officer).

Ria had done her best to pick the most useful crewmembers for the task ahead; Susan because she knew more about the Hesperian than anyone else on the crew, Phil because he was their top electronic expert and Skylar because she figured their top L.E.O. would be well-suited to lead any investigation.

"You already know that we suspect there may be an explosive device hidden somewhere onboard Hesperian. Our task now is to locate it, quickly, and disarm it."

"How long have we got before it goes off?" asked Skylar.

"All we've got to go on is the possibility that a similar explosive went off on the Elysian less than two days before they made orbit around Proxima C. If there is a device on our ship, we have no way of knowing when it might go off, but I'm hoping we have over a week before then."

"I thought my biggest worry, when I woke up, would be getting safely down to the surface. I never expected an exciting bomb hunt!" Skylar laughed sarcastically.

"I've already got one crewmember in a body bag, I don't want any more," Ria replied.

"Where do we start?" asked Susan Tanaka.

"I was hoping that the three of you could isolate the most likely places to plant an explosive on this ship and we could start there, "Ria replied.

"That's exactly where I wouldn't hide it," said Skylar. "Because that's exactly where we would look for it."

"So, that doesn't narrow it down much then?" Ria sighed.

"Let's look at it a different way," said Susan. "There are three main places to hide a bomb. Those are: areas we can get to, those we can get to in E.V.A. suits and places we can't get to."

"If it's in an area we can't get to, we're screwed," Phil laughed derisively.

"Isn't that most of this ship?" Ria asked.

Susan shook her head. "We can't get into some areas of the ship because they are full of payload. The supply modules, for example, they're stacked with crates or seven-eighths full of water. The nosecones on all the modules are sealed. We can't open those in-flight. Other than that, it's hard to do anything near the fusion reactors due to the low-level radiation risk.

"We can check the water tanks," Skylar corrected. "We did our E.V.A. suit training underwater. Is there any reason why our E.V.A. suits won't function underwater here?"

"The only differences were counterweights and a winch cable were added for training back on Earth," Ria replied. "I wouldn't fancy climbing through the link tubes in a suit, but there's nothing to stop you suiting up on the platform at the top of the water modules."

"I can do that," Skylar nodded confidently. "It would only take a small explosive to poke a hole in the water tanks. Losing that water would end our mission."

"Assuming we have a week or so, Susan," Ria asked, "Is that enough time to search the ship from top to bottom?"

Susan thought for a second before replying. "We could do that. If we're meticulous and efficient. With five of us awake, I'd expect we could do it in three or four days at most."

"Good. It's the only way to be sure," Ria shrugged.

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