Podolski seemed uneasy. "I assure you, Mr. Jukes. No one on this ship can access your personal terminal except for you and me, and I would never play a joke like that, sir."
Lem believed him. It wasn't a joke. It couldn't be a joke. Very few people even knew that someone had been injured in the bump.
"I thought our firewall was impenetrable," said Lem.
"It is, sir. Best design in the company. We're carrying proprietary tech on this vessel, sir. Every layer of security was employed. Nobody can get in here."
"Well they did. And I want to know how."
Podolski moved to Lem's holodisplay. "May I see this file, sir?"
"It played automatically. I don't know where it is."
Podolski tapped at Lem's display. Lem felt a momentary panic. He didn't want Podolski seeing the file. He didn't want anyone seeing the file. It was incriminating.
"I see where there was something," said Podolski, "but it had a track-backer program on it, which means it self-erased after playing."
"You see? They accessed our system."
Podolski squinted at the display and moved very quickly after that, windows opened and closed in quick succession. He entered passwords, accessed screens and icons that Lem had never seen before. He scrolled through long lists of what appeared to be random numbers and code. He worked for several minutes in silence, his eyes racing up and down through the holospace. Lem tried to keep up but couldn't.
Lem's first thought was for the gravity laser. Had the free miners seen it? Had they accessed its schematics? Were they after those files? If so, if they had seen them, if the secrecy of the glaser had been compromised, Lem would be ruined. His father and the Board would never forgive him. It would be devastating to the company. And what about the videos of the bump? The files he had erased. Had El Cavador seen those?
Podolski stopped typing suddenly and stared at the dozens of different windows and lines of code in the holospace. "Oh," he said.
"What?" said Lem. "What does 'oh' mean? What are you oh-ing about?"
"The system does a backup every forty-five minutes, sir. It's procedural. But it looks as if the system did an unscheduled backup recently."
"What does that mean? 'An unscheduled backup.' What are you saying?"
"I can't be certain, sir," said Podolski, turning to Lem, "but I think it means some of our files were copied to a foreign target."
"Foreign target? What? Like a snifferstick? When? When did this happen exactly?"
Podolski tapped the keys again to find the answer. "Exactly twenty-three minutes after we bumped El Cavador, sir."
CHAPTER 9
Scout
One week after the corporate attack, Victor was in the engine room making needed repairs to the generator when Father came for him. "How close are you to getting this thing back online?" Father asked.
"A day," said Victor. "Maybe less. Mono's in the workshop now fixing the last of the circuits. I'm putting in some new rotors. Barring another breakdown, we should be good to go. Why? What's wrong?"
"You better come with me."
Father didn't even wait for Victor to follow. He simply turned and left the engine room. Victor, sensing Father's urgency, quickly put his tools aside and caught up with him in the corridor. They both were wearing greaves, and they moved down the corridor in long, leaping strides.
"Have we detected the Italians?" Victor guessed. "Is that what this is about?"
The ship was speeding toward the Italians' position--or rather, what everyone hoped would be the Italians' position. With communication still down, El Cavador couldn't send a message ahead to confirm that the Italians were still at the location. There was a good chance they'd get there and find nothing but empty space.
"No idea," said Father. "But I don't think it's good. Concepcion called a few minutes ago to ask if the PKs were ready."
"Why should that alarm you?" asked Victor. "We've got two working PKs out of six. That's hardly an adequate collision-avoidance system. Maybe we've got a debris field ahead. Maybe Concepcion wants to be certain we don't hit anything."
"Maybe," said Father. "But I don't think so. It was the way she asked. She sounded concerned. Afraid even."