The OrionX archival facility occupied a climate-controlled warehouse ten miles from the main campus, filled with rows of servers containing every piece of documentation from the company's fifteen-year history of space exploration. At 11:30 PM, Eli walked between the server racks with the methodical determination of someone who had finally decided to uncover truths that others preferred to keep buried.
His official access to the archives was legitimate—senior engineers were granted research privileges for historical mission data that might inform current projects. But his actual purpose was decidedly unofficial: finding evidence to support or refute Milo's claims about the Meridian disaster and its connection to the Saturn probe's navigation systems.
The Meridian files were stored in a section of the archives that required additional clearance levels, but Eli's emergency access codes from the cybersecurity investigation still functioned. As he navigated through directories of technical specifications, crew evaluations, and post-disaster investigations, he began to understand why Milo had been so certain about the similarities between past and present navigation algorithms.
The core mathematical structures were indeed nearly identical.
But what Milo hadn't mentioned—what perhaps he didn't know—was the reason for those similarities. The Meridian algorithms had been based on earlier work by Dr. Elena Vasquez, one of the most brilliant navigation specialists in aerospace history. Her mathematical models for multi-body gravitational calculations were considered foundational to modern space navigation, used by NASA, ESA, and every major space agency in the world.
The problem wasn't with Dr. Vasquez's mathematics. The problem was with the implementation.
Eli pulled up the detailed technical review of the Meridian disaster, reading through hundreds of pages of engineering analysis that painted a picture of systematic implementation failures masked by institutional pressure to launch on schedule. The navigation algorithms had been mathematically correct, but the software implementation had contained subtle errors in variable handling that only manifested under the extreme conditions near Jupiter's gravitational field.
But as Eli continued reading, he discovered something that made his blood run cold.
The implementation errors hadn't been accidental.
Buried in the technical appendices, hidden among thousands of pages of routine engineering documentation, was evidence that someone had deliberately introduced the calculation errors that destroyed the Meridian mission. The modifications were subtle enough to pass casual review, sophisticated enough to suggest someone with expert knowledge of the systems, and timed to activate only during the mission's most critical phase.
The Meridian disaster hadn't been caused by engineering incompetence or institutional pressure. It had been sabotage.
Eli's hands shook as he copied the relevant files to a secure drive, understanding that he'd stumbled across evidence of murder disguised as technical failure. Three astronauts had died because someone with access to navigation systems had deliberately caused their spacecraft to fail at the moment when failure meant death.
But who? And why?
He continued searching through the archives, looking for personnel records, access logs, and security reviews that might identify who had been in a position to modify the Meridian's navigation systems. The list of suspects was depressingly familiar—many of the same engineers who now worked on the Saturn probe, including several who had been promoted based on their analysis of the Meridian disaster.
Including Dr. Santos, who had signed off on the investigation report that declared the disaster to be the result of systematic implementation errors rather than deliberate sabotage.
Eli's phone buzzed with a text from Noah: Everything okay? You've been gone for hours.
He stared at the message, trying to process the intersection of personal concern and professional crisis. Noah was dealing with his own problems—medical episodes, media attention, the stress of hiding his condition while supporting Eli through workplace chaos. The last thing he needed was to know that Eli had discovered evidence of murder within the company that was supposed to launch them toward Saturn in three weeks.
Found some interesting historical data. Be home soon, Eli typed back.
It was true without being complete, the kind of partial honesty that he was becoming too comfortable with. But the full truth—that someone had killed three astronauts six years ago and might be planning to kill again—was too dangerous to share over text messages that could be monitored by people with access to OrionX communication systems.
As Eli prepared to leave the archives, he discovered one final piece of information that changed everything he thought he understood about the Meridian disaster.
The mission had indeed carried a fourth crew member—someone who wasn't on the official manifest, someone who had been evacuated to an escape pod before the navigation failure triggered the spacecraft's destruction. And that someone was listed in the classified personnel records as E. Thorne, Systems Maintenance Specialist, with a security clearance that granted access to navigation systems and a psychological profile that noted "exceptional stress response under crisis conditions."
Emory Thorne. The same Emory Thorne who now worked at OrionX, who had access to the Saturn probe's navigation systems, who had been providing increasingly erratic psychological evaluations to Dr. Vale.
Emory Thorne, who had survived the Meridian disaster and was now in a position to either prevent its repetition or ensure that it happened again.
Eli left the archives carrying evidence of past murders and present danger, understanding that the next three weeks would determine whether the Saturn mission represented humanity's greatest achievement or its most expensive disaster. The navigation systems were sound, the mission planning was thorough, and the technical challenges were manageable.
But the human element—the intersection of grief, revenge, and the kind of institutional loyalty that covered up inconvenient truths—remained as unpredictable and dangerous as the gravitational forces that could tear apart worlds at Saturn's Roche limit.