His look of confusion turns into one of concern. “You said you knew about this already. The only reason I didn’t go straight to the Pilot Safety Chair is because you said—”
“Maki.”
“This is the inspector submitting the drafted report,” he says, pointing at a string of time stamps and Link IDs. “Here’s the reviewer opening the report. And here, almost an hour later, is the reviewer finalizing it. The review’s a spot check. It normally only takes a few minutes.”
“Okay? The reviewer did some extra due diligence. That’s not a bad thing.”
“There are no comments from the reviewer about why it took so long. And the version history doesn’t show any differences between what the inspector submitted and the reviewer released.”
Clarke’s head is starting to hurt again. “Help me out, here, Maki, because I can tell you’re trying to lead me somewhere but we’re almost out of time. What do you think happened?”
Maki shuffles closer. “Did you know that while the assessment is active, we get locked out of the ship’s systems? So the inspector and reviewer can have full access.”
No, Clarke did not know that. Val hadn’t mentioned it, when she was talking Clarke through parc fermé.
Maki keeps talking. “For that hour on Saturday afternoon at Wonderland, we were blind. And when you got in the ship on Sunday morning, the order of your air sources was wrong. We were never able to figure out how it happened. The user log in the ship’s controls didn’t have an entry that showed anyone touching the air source sequence.”
A cold fist clenches around Clarke’s stomach. “Becausesomeone made the change during the blind period. And edited the user log, too, probably.”
If Raff doesn’t stop fuckingyelling—
Clarke pulls up the copy of the assessment she got from Yves and motions for Maki to back out of the metadata view so they’re both looking at the report itself. She scrolls to the Analysis section; Maki does the same.
Clarke already knows what she’s going to see. The six concerns that the FIC listed as fixed in Raff’s ship but not Clarke’s. The discrepancy in their variances that isn’t mentioned in Yves’s report. It’s new to Maki, though, and he swears under his breath as he reads. “Clarke, whatisthis?”
“This is what I thought you were talking about when you tried to warn me at Wonderland. Yves and half the team have been fixing Raff’s ship, not mine, and hiding it from us.”
“No. That’s—theycan’tbe—”
“Maki, focus. Whatyoufound—that’s something different, right? It wasn’t Yves?”
“I—I don’t think so? It could’ve been him, I guess, if he was working with the reviewer, but if he was already manipulating the report like this—”
Clarke can’t look anymore. She sends the Yves version of the report to Maki so he can keep comparing while she paces in a tight circle. “Did it happen at Hanoi, too? Earlier races?”
“No. That was the first thing I checked. The extended review window was only at Wonderland.”
Clarke’s brain reaches, grasps, weaves. There’s a conclusion staring her in the face, but she can’t quite—
Raff, across the room, snarls at his support crew member again. “You can’t even—”
Clarke’s control snaps.
“Raff!” she barks, voice echoing off columns and distant ceiling. “A word?”
Heads turn. Raff, after a second’s surprise, starts sauntering in Clarke’s direction, a slow smile on his face.
“Go,” Clarke says to Maki. “Show Amira.”
Maki looks nervously at Raff’s predatory approach. “But—”
“Now, Maki.”
Maki hightails it to the stairs. With a disdainful snort, Raff watches him go. “They’re all sojumpyaround me.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Clarke leans against the side of her ship. “We’ve talked about you being an asshole to the team too many times for you to pull that shit in front of me. If you need more of my attention, you can just ask.”
“You’re the one who called me over,” Raff drawls. His tie and vest match Clarke’s dress. Clarke hates it.
