Ensign, Unmoored

by Mary Salome

Ensign Aran Broder fought the urge to throw her terra­com across the room.

“Just one more time, that’s all we’re asking,” Jordan said, his voice breaking over the distance between them. His video was breaking up, too, stopping and starting in little jolts that distorted his moving image. Even so, she was so moved by his beauty that she could barely look at him.

 “That’s what you said last time,” she said. She couldn’t throw the device, so she gripped it more tightly. Terracom was her tether to home, and as much as she hated the weight, home was her anchor.

“We need you,” Jordan said. His voice, bright eyes, and a wide smile were, for that moment, perfectly clear. “This time we have what we need and –” He broke up again.

Fuck you, Jordan, Aran thought. “I left for a reason,” she said, adjusting her ear pods. He had insisted he didn’t want her. Now that she was 300 miles above sea level, she couldn’t get rid of him.

“Just because you’re in orbit doesn’t mean you’re not con­nected to us anymore,” Jordan said. “It’s really bad here. With­out the Chartis data we’re all going to die. We’re already—”

“If I get caught, I’ll be the dead one,” Aran said.

“You won’t get caught,” Jordan said, his smile breaking her heart. “You never get caught.”

“What is it this time?” Aran asked, pretending to be unmoved.

“It’s called brim2050.”

“A virus?” Aran asked, laughing. “You want me to dock a virus?”

“It captures subterranean water data points. And—” Jor­dan’s video and audio stuttered, and he was frozen for a few seconds with his black hair flopped over his face.

“Jordan?” Aran checked her connection.

“All you have to do is let it dock,” Jordan said, flickering back to life.

“What else does it do?” Aran asked.

“Nothing,” Jordan said insistently. “Just data access.”

“Who else is working on it?” Aran asked.

“Everyone,” Jordan said. “Let’s say that.”

“Say hello,” Aran said.  

“Ha! We miss you,” Jordan said.

“We?” Aran mumbled.

“I miss you.”

 Aran hesitated, wrestling with her mistrust. As much as she wanted to believe him, she knew manipulation when she heard it. “I have to go,” she said. Her quick swipe cut the cord with home. She clenched her jaw as she purged the exchange, then locked her terracom in the cabinet beside her bunk.

Aran made the climb out of the full-gravity residential zone slowly, to minimize vertigo. She gripped each rung of the metal ladder like it could save her, if only from the feeling that she was simultaneously going down and sideways. Her body couldn’t tell which way was up, and in some ways it didn’t matter. More than anything else she needed a chance to mull. People back home had been so proud when she’d been pro­moted to work on International Space Station Chartis. She’d been excited to do something to help alleviate global drought. After a while, though, the project lost its gleam. Groundwater imaging could have saved everyone, but political reality wasn’t organized that way. Data only mattered if someone did some­thing with them.

Jordan and organizers back home wanted systemic change. With Aran on the inside and available on encrypted chat, they reached out each time they wanted access to Chartis data for their own use. Each time, she wondered if she only did it for Jordan. His affection was the weightiest anchor of all.

Aran knew the consequences if she got caught docking the virus. Court-martial leading to conviction would likely mean execution. She climbed past the observational cupola, with its perspective-shifting view of Earth against the endless backdrop of space, but the distance between her and the glittering blue Earth only made her feel more lonesome. If she didn’t help Jordan, she’d lose him. She’d lose all of them. She’d really be as alone as she always claimed she wanted to be. Now she had all the entanglement with none of the reward of feeling truly con­nected.

Aran swiped her badge at the main portal, and the door to the low-gravity work area whooshed open. The high, ever-present thrum of the station grew louder as she floated into the cramped space she shared with Lieutenant Kaufman, trying to tuck her rumination away. Kaufman was already strapped into her chair and hard at work, soundless video of her young daughter playing on the wall display above her monitor. Once, over a pint while they were off duty, she’d told Aran that she didn’t care what the chain of command was. She worked only for her daughter. Every time Aran saw the images, she longed for that kind of uncomplicated purpose.

“How you doing?”  Kaufman asked, not glancing over.

Aran considered a reply as she adjusted the chair belt and settled in behind her terminal. “Fine,” she said, tucking her short red hair behind one ear, only to have it spring back out again. She caught her reflection in the darkened monitor as the machine booted. At her workstation she always looked like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket, and it hadn’t yet lost its novelty.

“That good?” Kaufman passed a small packet of warm cof­fee to Aran.

Before she could poke her straw into the packet, Captain Ivory crowded the doorway of the small office. Ensign and Lieutenant swiveled to face him and began unbuckling from their chairs.

“At ease,” the captain said. “Kaufman, we need you on the bridge. Terrestrial Hydrology can’t access the Drought Center, and Lieutenant Brown had to go to urgent care. Can you han­dle it here, Broder?”

“Yes, sir,” she and Kaufman said simultaneously.

Kaufman released herself from the chair straps, logged off her machine, and turned to Aran. “You’ve done this landing a hundred times. I’ll be on Comm if you need me.” 

Aran settled in front of her screen and sipped her coffee. Security logs from the Scion IT-29 scrolled upward on her screen. She opened another terminal window and accessed the ship’s manifest. It was routine but, like all dockings, critical. If one thing about life on Chartis were true, it was that she had an essential role to play. Jordan had added a spin to the question of how to play it. A virus on the cargo ship would infect the sta­tion when it docked. That was exactly what Jordan wanted.

Still keeping an eye on the security logs, she opened another window, signed into TerraNews on Comm, and did a keyword search for brim2050. There was no news about the virus, and transmission from the ship scrolled without incident in the main window. She touched back to Comm and navigated out of news and into local chat.

As she scrolled through the feed looking for anything related to brim2050 that she might’ve missed on news, trans­mission from the Scion IT-29 abruptly stopped. Aran tapped fruitlessly on the keyboard hoping the terminal would show signs of life. When it didn’t she toggled back to messages.

“Lieutenant,” she typed, fingers racing a private message to Kaufman in Comm. “Transmission from Scion IT-29 ceased. I’m troubleshooting.” She touched back to her terminal window and began furiously trying to reconnect.

“It’s a gateway problem,” Kaufman replied. “Same thing that’s making the drought data inaccessible. Terra is repairing remotely. The ship is intact and en route. Stand by.”

A bright pinging sound and flash on the screen pulled her back to Comm chat.

“What’s up, ishka?” 

Aran grimaced. It was Dave, screen name DDAWG, a contractor who worked in Systems Administration and liked to get under her skin.

“It’s spelled Uisce. What do you want?”

“Why did you choose the name of an

indigenous water rights group as

your screen name? Are you one of

those Water Rights Formation

radicals? A regenerator?”

“I think they call themselves activists, Dave.”

“Regeneration is a myth.

You need water to be able to soften it.

Why so testy, anyway?

SCPS-TP gateway got you down?”

“Regeneration is real. How did you know about the gateway?”

“Who do you think figured it out?

The WRF? They’re too busy

writing viruses.”

Aran swallowed. He was just trying to provoke her, but he hit awfully close to home.

“Try now.” Lieutenant Kaufman’s short directive blinked in their private thread.

She touched back to her terminal window and re-ran the command that would connect her to the Scion IT-29.

“It worked”

“Great. I was logging the previous

feed on S1. I’ll give you temporary

access. I need you to log the new

transmission there.”

“Affirmative.”

Aran configured her terminal to start the new back-up. As the logs from the Scion IT-29 rolled quickly up the terminal window, a line of code grabbed her attention. Virus detection software had been disabled on the incoming ship. A quick sta­tus check confirmed that though no warning was thrown, part of the ship’s anti-virus package had been disabled hours earlier. This was it. All she had to do was let it dock.

Aran touched back onto Comm, heart racing.  

               “Hey, DDAWG”

“What’s up?

“Have you heard anything new about brim2050?”

“Yes, why?”

“What have you heard?”

“Supposedly written by a hacker by

the name of Victorious Waterhouse.

Also responsible for breaches on terra.

Isolated a pumping system in Canada

by masking the grid IPs. If it landed here,

we’d be off the grid. Floating in space.”

“We are, in fact, floating in space.

That's what being in orbit means.”

“Duh. I mean grid-wise,

we’d be floating. Unreachable.

No terracom. No gateway.

But it’s all hearsay. You know me.

I love gossip.”

A message from Kaufman pinged her away from the exchange.

“Looks like you got the

back-up going on S1.”

“Affirmative”   

“Great, good work. Let me know

if anything comes up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jordan had said it only gave them data access. Aran weighed the trust she had in Jordan against DDAWG’s assess­ment of the impact the virus would have. She settled, in an unsettled way, with Jordan’s assurances that the virus was benign. To cover her tracks in giving it access, she was going to need to create a different back-up log, one that showed intact virus protection software. She opened a new window and navi­gated to the S1 instance. Permission denied, the terminal reported.

“I can’t access S1,” she typed to Kaufman, hitting send in a panic.

“The ship’s transmission has access. That’s all we need.”

Aran felt sick to her stomach and her skin grew clammy. This wouldn’t do. She needed a doctored back-up to cover her tracks if she was going to let the infected ship dock. She re-opened chat with Dave.

“Dave, can you access S1?”

“Is my name DDAWG?”

“I need access to check the logs.

The network dropped my access

when the gateway re-opened.

Can you restore my permissions?”                         

“Aren’t you an Admin?”

“No, not yet.”

“Seriously?”

“Can you do it or not, Dave?”

“Of course I can.”

Aran’s hands shook. She hated being dependent on him, especially now. Even with logs that looked clean and legiti­mate, even without proof of any error on her part, everyone would blame her if the compromise were discovered. On the other hand, she might go through all of this only for the virus to fail, and the risk would be for nothing. Worse than either possibility, though, was the reality that she’d let herself get caught up in an ego competition with a guy who called himself DDAWG.

Aran swallowed her pride, rejecting the idea that petty rivalry would be her compass. The stakes were too high for that. She could be good at her job, or she could save the world. She couldn’t do both.

DDAWG’s message lit up Comm.

“You’re in. You’re welcome.”

Aran mentally flicked his arrogance aside, focusing instead on confirming her access to S1 until transmission from the ship lit up a terminal window.

“Permission to dock?”

Willingness flooded Aran’s body, anxiety dispersing like particles in a void. There wasn’t a decision, simply an under­standing that she didn’t have to be at home to know where her loyalty lay.

“Video security check,” she typed back. If there were an investigation, her security protocol would appear pristine.

A second window opened and filled with video transmis­sion from the incoming vessel. Though the image was grainy, there was no mistaking Jordan’s dark hair and bright eyes. He was in uniform. The willingness that had flooded her body wavered as she looked at him. She didn’t know which she trusted less, Jordan or the virus.

They’re all I have, Aran thought, releasing her doubt. She typed Y and hit the return key hard. For Kaufman and her daughter. For her family back home. For the day she’d have to land on Earth again.

Whatever Jordan was bringing, she was ready for it.