The Mission Control simulation room had been designed to replicate every sight, sound, and psychological pressure of an actual deep space mission, down to the coffee stains on the workstation surfaces and the particular quality of fluorescent lighting that made everyone look slightly ill. At 10:30 AM on a Tuesday that should have been routine, it was filled with the controlled chaos of a full mission simulation—two dozen technicians monitoring systems, calling out status reports, and executing the choreographed procedures that would, in thirty-seven days, guide humanity's most ambitious probe into the gravitational maelstrom surrounding Saturn.
Eli sat at the Mission Commander station, watching telemetry data stream across three monitors while wearing a headset that connected him to every critical system. Beside him, Milo Harlan occupied the Backup Systems Console, his fingers dancing across interfaces with the kind of precision that came from years of redundancy planning.
"Guidance system nominal," called Maria Santos from Navigation. "Trajectory holding steady for Saturn approach vector."
"Thermal management operating within parameters," added Jake Morrison from Environmental. "All heat shields reading green."
On the main display, a real-time graphic showed their virtual probe approaching Saturn's outer ring system, where gravitational forces would begin the delicate dance that would either carry them safely to the Roche limit or tear their three-billion-dollar investment into expensive debris.
"Coming up on Ring D encounter," Eli announced. "All stations prepare for gravitational transition."
This was the moment they'd practiced a hundred times, the critical juncture where the probe would use Saturn's own gravity to adjust its trajectory for the final approach. The mathematics were beautiful: instead of fighting the planet's massive gravitational field, they would surf it like a wave, letting physics do most of the work while making tiny course corrections to maintain optimal position.
"Gravitational data incoming," Maria reported. "Processing trajectory adjustments... processing... wait."
The word 'wait' in Mission Control was like hearing air rushing out of a spacecraft—immediate, urgent, and indicative of problems that could spiral beyond control in seconds.
"Define 'wait,'" Eli said, his attention shifting to the navigation displays.
"I'm seeing anomalous readings from the gravitational sensors. The data doesn't match our predicted gravitational gradients for this position."
Eli's console lit up with warning indicators as the simulation registered their virtual probe encountering gravitational forces that shouldn't exist according to every model they'd developed. Around the room, other technicians began reporting secondary failures as systems designed to work within specific parameters suddenly found themselves operating outside known physics.
"Backup guidance systems," Eli ordered. "Milo, I need alternative navigation."
"Already on it," Milo replied, but his voice carried a tension that hadn't been there moments before. "Backup systems are reading the same anomalous data. It's like Saturn suddenly got thirty percent more massive."
Which was impossible. Saturn's mass didn't change, gravitational constants were among the most reliable measurements in physics, and their models had been verified by three independent teams of astrophysicists.
"Simulation abort," Eli called. "All stations, hold current status."
The room fell silent except for the hum of cooling systems and the soft clicking of keyboards as technicians froze their workstations. On the main display, their virtual probe continued its approach to Saturn, but the trajectory line had turned from green to amber to red as the simulation registered a mission profile that was now officially outside acceptable parameters.
"Jake, run diagnostics on the simulation software," Eli ordered. "Maria, verify our gravitational models against the latest JPL data. Everyone else, hold position while we figure out what just happened."
Dr. Sienna Vale entered the simulation room, tablet in hand and wearing the expression of someone who'd been monitoring the exercise from Medical and didn't like what she was seeing.
"How bad?" she asked Eli directly.
"We don't know yet. Could be a software glitch, could be a modeling error, could be we missed something fundamental about Saturn's gravitational environment." Eli rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of a headache that had nothing to do with the fluorescent lighting. "In a real mission, that anomaly would have sent the probe into an unrecoverable trajectory."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we would have just lost three billion dollars and three years of work in about thirty seconds."
Around the room, technicians continued their diagnostic work with the kind of focused intensity that came from knowing that whatever went wrong in simulation had to be fixed before it happened for real. Eli found himself thinking about Noah's comment from yesterday evening: Sometimes the only way to prove something is strong enough to survive is to send it to the place that might destroy it.
The problem was that proving strength through destruction only worked if you survived the testing.
"Eli," Milo's voice cut through his thoughts. "I think I found something."
Milo's workstation displayed lines of code that looked like digital DNA—complex, interconnected, and incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't spent years learning to read the language computers used to describe reality.
"What am I looking at?"
"The gravitational modeling subroutine. Someone's been making modifications." Milo highlighted several sections of code with cursor movements that were almost surgical in their precision. "These algorithms have been altered to introduce variability into our gravitational calculations."
Eli felt his blood pressure spike. "What kind of variability?"
"Random fluctuations that would make Saturn's gravitational field appear unstable. Small enough to pass initial testing, large enough to cause exactly the kind of failure we just experienced."
The implications hit like a cascade failure in orbital mechanics: someone had deliberately sabotaged their mission simulation. Not with explosives or dramatic acts of destruction, but with the kind of subtle mathematical manipulation that could only be detected by someone who understood both the physics involved and the programming architecture.
"Who has access to modify those subroutines?" Dr. Vale asked.
"Mission Commander level clearance," Milo replied. "Which means it's either Eli, me, or someone who gained unauthorized access to our systems."
All eyes turned to Eli, who found himself in the surreal position of being the primary suspect in sabotaging his own mission. Around the room, technicians watched with the kind of nervous attention that came from realizing that workplace drama had suddenly escalated to potential criminal activity.
"It wasn't me," Eli said, which was both true and exactly what someone who had sabotaged the system would say.
"And it wasn't me," Milo added, though his tone suggested he found Eli's denial less than convincing.
"Then we have a security breach," Dr. Vale said. "Which means this becomes a matter for corporate security and potentially federal investigation."
Eli thought about Jonas Mercer's visit the night before, about security risks and national defense contractors and the warning that other people would make decisions if he didn't. The timing felt too convenient to be coincidental, but he couldn't figure out how Noah's brother could have gained access to OrionX's systems or why he would want to sabotage the mission he'd claimed was a matter of national security.
"I need to speak with Isabel Crowe," Eli said. "And we need to isolate our entire codebase until we can verify it hasn't been compromised elsewhere."
"What about the mission timeline?" Maria asked. "If we have to rebuild and verify all our navigational algorithms..."
"Then we rebuild them," Eli replied, though the words felt like swallowing broken glass. Thirty-seven days until launch, and they had just discovered that someone wanted them to fail badly enough to risk federal criminal charges.
The question was who, and whether they could be stopped before they found more creative ways to ensure that humanity's reach toward Saturn ended in very expensive failure.
His phone buzzed with a text from Noah: How's the simulation going? Hoping for boring success rather than exciting failure.
Eli stared at the message for a long moment before typing back: Definitely exciting. Will call you later.
Around him, the Mission Control room buzzed with the kind of urgent activity that came from discovering that someone was playing a very dangerous game with very high stakes. And somewhere in the back of his mind, Eli couldn't shake the feeling that the sabotage was just the beginning of problems that would test more than their technical capabilities.