“Start with what’s new,” she says. “You got a look at something different and something cracked open?”
“The rosters.”
“Rosters?”
“First we were looking at the rosters and maintenance schedules. Who was supposed to be touching the grid, physically, in the walls, on which day, doing what. I’d built a map of everyone who ever wished my family harm and it never once occurred to me to ask who wassupposedto be down there.” I look at her. “A facilities tech isn’t a suspect. A work schedule isn’t a weapon. I never thought to look.”
She shrugs. “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t think of that either. So, what changed?”
“Checking the maintenance logs was Mara’s idea.”
Ines makes a sound low in her throat, pure professional appreciation. “Sheisuseful.”
“Exactly.”
“I like her already. Keep going.” She waves a hand. “So you pulled the rosters. What’s in them?”
“Gaps.” I lean forward. “Access that shouldn’t exist and beings who logged into sections they had no business in. And the failures themselves, Mara has pointed out that when the grid went down — both times, eight years apart — it didn’t fail the way a system fails. There was no cascade. No stagger. The primary died, and the backup died, and the comms died, and the emergency channel died, all in the same breath. The same instant. No sound, no warning, no sparks.” I spread my hands flat on the table. “And then hours later it was back, everything at once.”
“Like a switch,” Ines says slowly.
“Mara believes someone reached in and turned it off and then turned it on again. She’s going through everything, to prove there was nothing wrong with the new grid and even the old grid. And now we’re going through the maintenance log too.”
“So you’re finding out who had access when these things went down?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And where does the backup channel actually run? Could it be automated, could it be remote, could it be someone…off world running this?”
“That’s what we’re going to discover. And there’s more,” I say. “And I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Andrew?”
I look at her, startled.
“Scar.” She almost smiles. “Of course I’ve already got questions about the brother. Tell me. What is he like?”
“He’s charming,” I explain. “Every crew adopts him inside a day. Beings like him.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No. But Mara told me he went through a phase where he couldn’t hold a job and every time it was somebody else’s fault. Finally, she stopped asking why and just brought him on as her assistant, to keep him employed.”
“And?”
“He’s been steady ever since. Eight years. Not one missed day. He couldn’t hold work anywhere, Ines, right up until the exact moment he attached himself to a sister with security clearances and access to restricted systems in every sector he’d care to reach. And then, suddenly, he could.”
Ines’s eyes narrow. “Hmm. I’ll look into him.”
“You’re on maternity leave.”
“I’m on leave, I’m not dead.” She waves a hand. “I’ve got a newborn who sleeps four hours at a stretch, a tablet, and every contact I ever made on New Earth.” Her eyes sharpen. “I’ll just look and if it’s nothing, I’ll be the first one to say so.”
“Good, thank you. Your contacts on New Earth will be helpful. And there’s something else I noticed today, while I was going through all those lists. I believe there’s a witness to the old grid and who was there for both of the cascades.”
“Really? Who?”
“His name is Ordek of Six. He was on the maintenance schedule the fortnight before the first cascade, and again two moons ago before the second, and he’s the only being still alive and still on this rock who was down in the guts of that grid on both days. Everyone else is dead or off-world.”
