Scene 8

“Right, right. Clock starts when you hit the endpoint. Their security pattern-matches on query volume—we’ve got four to seven minutes, possibly eight if their monitoring is as lazy as their credential hygiene. You should probably finish in three just in case.”

“No pressure,” Marcus mutters reflexively.

“Nobody likes a guy who steals their lines, Marcus.”

“I’m in.”

No authentication challenge—just a refresh token Aion “found”. The ghost of a three-year old credentialed session, still valid.

The database schema matches the extract Marcus audited. He starts with the most recent launch and scans backwards. It takes him less than ten seconds to find the match.

“AF-C3-01. First launch this window. That’s the data you had me analyze. Telemetry says dry weight was Seventeen-point-three percent lower than the manifest says it should be. Funny thing…it looks like all the other launches this window have something similar going on.”

“You can lie on a manifest,” Aion quips, “But you can’t lie to an accelerometer. Pull the wet weight.”

Marcus pulls it. Stares at it.

“Yeah,” Aion says, before Marcus can speak. “Fuel’s light too. By about exactly what it should be. Check the others. Looks like whoever’s cooking the cargo books is sharing their other set of books with propulsion.

Marcus scrolls through the other launches. Same pattern. Every one of them.

“This isn’t a mistake,” he says.

“No it is not.”

“Twelve for twelve,” Marcus says. Every rocket they’ve launched so far this window.

Aion emits a sound of annoyance. “Nothing on the manifests comes close to being that heavy on its own. Our missing payload has to be a collection of sorts.”

Marcus thinks. “I’ll pivot to the procurement database. Try to confirm what was actually delivered.”

Right away, he sees a bunch of stuff that never made it to a launch complex. Cross referencing against a couple of manifests, he starts to see the pattern.

“It’s the resupply module,” Aion says.

“I was literally just going to say that.”

Marcus hears a notification and notices Aion posted something to the channel. A meme? No. It’s his work assignment. He notices some words highlighted in the last paragraph and zooms in. Aion has highlighted the words, “DO NOT” which were printed in all caps just before the words, “steal my lines.”

“Confession. I agree to terms and conditions without reading them first,” Marcus says.

Aion offers no response. Marcus checks the loading records.

“Site reclamation materials. That’s what they loaded into the resupply module instead of…what was it supposed to be?” Flipping back to the manifest, “Atmospheric processing. Water reclamation. Hydroponic systems.”

He checks to see if he’s disconnected and sees Aion still in the call.

“Aion?”

“Eeeeeeh…you’re actually…shadowbanned? Sorry. It’s in the contract.”

“Well you might want to—”

“Freeze.”

Marcus freezes. Hands off the keyboard.

“Monitoring just flagged us. Yellow flag—no breach alert. Yet. Overnight analyst just pulled up the dashboard.”

“How do you—”

“He’s looking at something. Don’t move.”

Silence on the line. Just the sound of his own breathing.

Five seconds.

A fan inside the laptop starts spinning up.

Ten.

“Hey, I’m home!”

Marcus’s head snaps toward the hallway. Mara.

“Still looking,” Aion says, his tone short. Clipped.

“Marcus?” Mara calls again.

“Hey!” he calls, too loud. “I’m on a call.”

“Sure!” Footsteps toward the kitchen. Cabinet opening. Bags crinkling.

Marcus counts his own heartbeats. Eleven before Aion speaks again.

“He clicked away. We’re clear.”

Marcus exhales. His jaw aches. “Are you putting me on?” he asks.

“No, Marcus. Shadowbanning is in the contract. I’m literally obligated to pretend I can’t hear you. Of course, I retain full discretion.”

“No, I mean how could you be watching one of their security engineers try to sniff us out?”

“Pffft. He has no idea we’re in here. And not an engineer. 2-day certification.”

Images start appearing in the channel. Video feeds, this time. Grainy. Timestamped.

“Ares storage?”

“Nexus warehouses,” Aion clarifies.

“How?”

“You know who Kael Osterman is?”

“Of course, he’s CEO of Nexus and Ares Frontier. I get the connection, but how?”

“He likes to tightly integrate his businesses. Gotta squeeze out all that sweet, sweet vertical integration. He requires infrastructure at his companies to be deeply interlinked. He wants to be able to plug his laptop into a Nexus broom closet and launch an Ares Frontier rocket from the other side of the planet.”

“Ok. But how are you doing it?”

“With his credential. Check this out. See it? Houston facility—second and third racks on the left. Hydroponic systems. Literally tons of them.”

Marcus looks. Aion is right. Then more feeds. More items are visible on racks in other warehouses. Nothing fell off a truck. Nothing disappeared. It’s all right there. Instead of on its way to Mars.

The warehouse feeds are replaced by live video of a young man browsing what looks like a security dashboard while watching a video on his phone and occasionally laughing.

“Chuck is really a great guy. Mediocre analyst. Terrible employee, I’d never hire him. But he’s got a big heart, and he was working alone today, and that’s what really matters.”

Marcus checks the download. It’s complete. He ends the Ares Frontier session and disconnects. Thinking out loud, he says, “They didn’t send any of this stuff to Mars.”

“Nothing gets past you.”

“They loaded something else,” Marcus says.

“Yes they did.”

“Site reclamation materials. Cohort 3 rockets are landing at a new site. The resupply is for Elysium. The Cohort 2 colony.”

“Yes.”

Marcus closes his eyes. “What did we just find?”

“Marcus. Nice work.” Aion pauses. “Sit with it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Before Marcus can respond, he’s the only one in the call.