“I know that pattern.” She’d seen it before. Not on a space station, but on a server farm in New Stambridge three years ago, when a botched update caused the cooling systems to war with the processing load balancers.
She leaned in toward the hologram. Yeah, it was definitely a similar pattern. "It’s not a virus."
The engineers kept talking, their voices rising as they debated shutting down the main power core… a move that would leave them on emergency batteries with minutes of air.
"It's repeating," she said, louder. "That jump—Seven to four—then Six—same interval."
No one listened
"Force a cold restart on the routing protocols," one engineer yelled.
"Do that and it draanths up life support!"
She grabbed Kirr’s sleeve. He looked down, his eyebrows drawing together.
"It’s a cascading feedback loop," she said. "The algorithms aren't fighting. They're echoing and the echoes are confusing the system."
Kirr didn't blink. He didn't pat her head. He didn't tell her to hush. He turned back to the room, and bellowed, "Silence!"
The room went quiet. One engineer opened his mouth to continue. Kirr's gaze snapped to him, and the words died unspoken. Every gaze in the room swiveled to Kirr, then tracked down to her standing at his elbow.
"Go on, Harper," Kirr said.
She swallowed hard.
"The pattern," she said, gesturing to the display. "It only looks scattered. See how the red hits Sector Seven, then jumps to Four, then Six? And then to different sectors next time? Watch it. It’s the same timing each cycle."
The lead tech scoffed. "She's misreading correlation as causation. None of those sectors handshake."
"Not physically," she said. She knew what she was on about, dammit. She just had to make them see. "Not logically. But look, they share the same power bus for non-critical updates. You have a cascade echo. One system sends a 'power up' signal, another reads it as a surge and sends a 'power down,' and the first system reads that as a failure and tries harder. It's bouncing through the nodes."
"Impossible." He looked at Kirr. "My lord, with respect… what could a human possibly know about Latharian architecture?"
She cut off Kirr before he could answer. "I worked in data analysis," she snapped. "I tracked systemic failures in networks bigger than this fucking station."
"Our technology is far more advanced than anything you may have monitored," the second engineer argued, crossing his massive arms as he glared at her. "You are female to boot. You are wasting time we do not have."
Harper bristled. Soft? She'd kept a roof over two heads on a salary that barely covered one, managed panic attacks, and navigated a city that wanted to chew her up and spit her out. She wasn't soft. She was exhausted, yes. Traumatized, maybe. But she knew data.
"Give me a window into the command log," she ordered Kirr, looking straight at the engineer. "Read-only if you need to… just let me trace the origin."
"Absolutely not," the lead engineer said. "Security protocols forbid?—"
"Overridden," Kirr said. “Give her access.”
The room froze again.
"Commander?" the engineer sputtered. "Give a human access to the core architecture? If she makes a mistake, she could… do anything! Overload the power core, vent the atmosphere even!"
"She saw the pattern. You did not," Kirr said. He stepped back, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Give her access. Now."
"But protocol?—"
"My authorization stands," Kirr snarled. He leaned in, looming over the table. "The station is dying. My—" He stopped hard. "—the female under my protection is in danger. If she says she can fix it, she fixes it. Give her the access she needs. Now. Or face me in trial combat if you wish to challenge my authority."
The engineer turned a shade of gray she’d never seen before. He glanced from Kirr's furious face to Harper's determined one.
"Read-only," the engineer hissed. "She doesn't touch actuator commands."
