"You want them to feel superior," Tor'van said.
"I want them to feel confident enough to make a mistake. Arrogance is exploitable."
Silence fell across the bridge while command staff processed the proposal. Finally, Tor'van nodded. "Implement it. But Er'dox, I want multiple fail-safes. If this goes wrong and they gain deeper system access?—"
"They won't. I'll personally monitor every access point." I pulled up Engineering's duty roster. "And I'm bringing in Dana. She caught the original sabotage. She knows what to look for."
"She's been on field operation for eight hours. She should be resting."
"She should be. But she won't be. Not when there's a problem that needs solving." I opened a communication channel. "Dana. Engineering. How quickly can you get here?"
Her response was immediate: "Five minutes. What's happening?"
"Saboteur's trying to cover their tracks. Need your analysis on the variance patterns."
"On my way."
I closed the channel and looked at Tor'van. "Six hours to implementation. We'll catch whoever did this."
"You sound confident."
"I have good engineers. And Dana's proven she sees patterns others miss."
"Dana again." Tor'van's expression was unreadable. "You're relying heavily on a very new crew member."
"I'm relying on demonstrated capability. Her tenure is irrelevant if her analysis is superior."
"Capability. Right." Something almost like amusement crossed Tor'van's scarred face. "Dismissed, Engineer. Build your trap. And try not to get too distracted by your capable two-week crew member."
I left the bridge before that comment required a response.
Dana arrived in Engineering exactly four minutes and thirty seconds after my summons, still wearing her field gear, moving with purpose despite obvious exhaustion. The rest of my team noticed her entrance, hard not to, given the attention her rescue mission had generated, but they maintained professional focus.
"Show me the pattern," she said without preamble.
I pulled up the variance data, watched her eyes track the information with that intense focus she brought to complex problems. Her fingers moved across the interface, pulling additional data streams, cross-referencing against known baseline parameters.
"This is elegant," she said after two minutes of analysis. "More sophisticated than the original sabotage. They're using multi-phase distribution to mask the variance across dozens of nodes simultaneously. By the time our automated systems detect it, the redistribution is complete and the evidence is gone."
"Can we trace it?"
"Maybe. They're using the same power modulation technique Bail developed, but refined. Better integration, more efficient distribution, harder to detect." She zoomed in on a specific variance spike. "But here, see this microsecond delaybetween node activation? That's processing lag. They're not running this locally. They're controlling it remotely through some kind of interface."
I saw it immediately once she pointed it out. "Which means there's a command signal. If we can isolate that signal?—"
"We can trace it back to its source." Dana pulled up a detection algorithm. "Give me three hours. I can build something that'll identify the command signature without alerting whoever's sending it."
"You've been awake for eighteen hours."
"I've been awake for longer with less sleep. This is important."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to order her to quarters, to rest, to take care of herself the way she took care of everyone else. But I recognized that stubborn determination—it was the same drive that had kept her alive on the burning planet that had made her insist on searching for Bail when logic said stop.
"Three hours," I agreed. "But you're working from my office where I can monitor your status. If you start showing signs of exhaustion that compromise your analysis?—"
"You'll force me to rest. I know the drill." She was already moving toward my office, pulling up additional data streams on her portable interface. "Er'dox? Thank you. For trusting me with this."
"You earned the trust. Keep earning it."
