Chapter 21
“Idiscovered the code not too long after we started doing runs in the ship,” I told Lark.
Her eyes were wide with interest. “Thing is, the part of the network where I found the coding can only be accessed directly from the ship.” She hadn’t expected there to be more; Darren hadn’t told her much, after all.
“That was when I first reached out to Darren to see if he could help. Even he admitted he’d never seen such an advanced encryption cipher. ”
“How did you find it?”
“I was running regular diagnostics, and one of them showed an error, but when I went to go find it, it had disappeared. The same thing happened a couple more times, and then I started looking through the code myself and finding odd strings that appeared harmless, but were useless for the ship itself. And they would appear and disappear at will. In the early days, whoever was doing it was a lot sloppier. I can still find the coding now, but it’s much more difficult to isolate, and if I hadn’t found it back then, I never would have known what to look for,” I explained.
“It’s been maddening knowing that my ship is somehow aiding in the destruction Meridian has caused, but if I do anything about it, I risk spooking them, and losing the trail,” I admitted.
“Xavier was always the one who loved encryption—he actually specialized in it at university.” She shook her head, seemingly disappointed she couldn’t offer more help in the moment.
“He would know exactly what to do. At least we can close the book on having to consider past crew members as suspects, if it’s impossible to send the code without physically being on the Radiant. ”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “While Darren and I monitored the ephemeral coding, he was the one who pointed out that there seemed to be an increase in frequency and volume around larger operations or attacks linked to Meridian. And I knew the moment he told me that one of their operatives had infiltrated my ship.” I sighed in discontent.
“Why is Darren so convinced it’s the Phoenix themself?” Lark asked.
“He recognized the cipher,” I told her. “He’s been following the Phoenix since before they even had a name.”
“I remember him mentioning that.”
“In the early days, he was just trying to track the financials of Meridian when they started to expand, and quickly found rumors circling around a new up-and-comer who was responsible for putting Elysian on the market,” I parroted what he’d told me himself.
“If I remember correctly, Darren was the one who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for linking the Elysian boom to Meridian.” Lark looked to me for confirmation.
I nodded. “When I sent him the code to see if he could help me with the encryption, he was shocked he recognized the signature. It was crude, but effective, low frequency, and like nothing he’d ever seen before—except for when he first started chasing the Phoenix.”
“But I still don’t understand why they chose the Radiant.
There are so many hidden places the Phoenix could operate in the lap of luxury.
Why do all of this, only to have to go to work every day?
Working on small ships like this isn’t some cushy vacation.
It doesn’t make sense.” She shook her head, trying to assign reason to something that was so obvious to me.
“But most of those places are stationary. And even though Meridian clearly has the capability to utilize far advanced encryption to hide their location, no cipher is impenetrable, given enough time. There are hundreds of thousands of ships floating around the system. Even if someone figured out the signals were coming from a ship, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack, hiding in plain sight.”
“I want to see the code,” she stated suddenly, swinging one leg over me to remove herself from my lap, much to my dismay.
“What? Now?” I scrambled after her.
“Why not?”
“It’s on an offline comm hidden in my office. Jordan’s on duty upstairs. She’ll ask questions.”
“Oh.” Lark’s shoulders slumped, and her lips pushed out in a pout.
“Come back to bed and let’s strategize on what to do next.” I held out a hand for her.
“You really know how to turn a girl on.” She chuckled, but took my hand nonetheless, climbing back into the bed and curling onto her side, facing me. The dim reading light still engaged overhead allowed us to see just enough of each other to make out facial expressions.
“You said your brother was into encryption,” I asked tentatively.
She nodded.
“What would he have done if he’d found invasive code?”
She thought for a moment, pulling her lip between her teeth. I desperately wanted to reach out and force her to release it, but refrained.
“Well, if it wasn’t so high-risk, he might plant disruptive coding to see if our hacker noticed and did anything about it, but like you said, we do that and spook the Phoenix, then they’re in the wind and our lead is gone.
” She settled back into the pillows, burrowing under the covers so only her face was visible.
Under the blanket, her hand found mine, and I gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“If you’d let me look at the code, maybe I’d see something. I mean, I picked up a little from Xavier over the years.”
“Anything is worth a shot at this point,” I replied honestly.
She smiled softly, her eyes fluttering closed, the day having finally caught up to her.
“We’ll work on it in the morning.” I reached over, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear.
“Fine,” she said through a yawn. “I wanted to mess around more.” She scooted closer to me, closing the gap enough that her body was just touching mine. She reached a hand between us, but I snagged it in my own before she had a chance to find what she was looking for.
“Tomorrow,” I told her. “But I’ll hold you until you fall asleep, okay?”
“Okay,” She agreed, snuggling into my arms. It didn’t take long for either of us to drift off.