At 11:47 PM, Noah sat in his car outside OrionX's main facility, watching security guards patrol between buildings while Eli's voice crackled through his earpiece with final instructions for the most reckless thing either of them had ever attempted.
"Remember, you're not breaking in," Eli said through the encrypted communication channel. "You're exercising your clearance as a contracted consultant for the psychological evaluation program. Dr. Vale authorized your access to the facility for stress assessment purposes."
"Except Dr. Vale doesn't know I'm coming, and my 'psychological evaluation' is actually industrial espionage."
"It's not espionage if you're preventing sabotage."
Noah checked his watch and gathered the forged documents that Emory had provided—falsified consultation orders that would explain his presence in the building if questioned. The documents were sophisticated enough to pass casual inspection, but they wouldn't survive serious scrutiny.
"How long do I have?"
"The navigation correction window closes in forty-three minutes. After that, the probe will be too far off course for remote trajectory adjustments."
Noah activated the signal jammer that would prevent the building's security systems from recording his entry, then walked toward the employee entrance with the confident stride of someone who belonged there. The night security guard barely glanced at his fake credentials before waving him through.
OrionX's interior at midnight was a maze of dimly lit corridors and humming electronic systems. Noah navigated toward the mission control center using the building schematics that Eli had memorized during his years working there, avoiding areas with heavy security presence while moving quickly enough to complete his mission within the time window.
The mission control center was still staffed with a skeleton crew monitoring the pathfinder probe's increasingly erratic trajectory. Through the observation windows, Noah could see technicians working frantically at their stations while supervisors held urgent conversations in hushed tones.
Noah slipped into an adjacent computer lab that had direct access to the mission systems network. The room was empty except for workstations that provided exactly the kind of access he needed to implement Eli's navigation corrections.
"I'm in," he whispered into his communication device.
"Excellent. Connect to workstation seven—that should give you access to the navigation subsystems."
Noah powered up the designated computer and began executing the infiltration protocol that Eli had designed. The system requested authorization codes, which he entered using credentials that Emory had extracted from archived personnel files.
"Access granted. I can see the navigation algorithms."
"Perfect. Now, you need to locate the gravitational reference parameters and upload the correction file I prepared."
Noah's fingers moved across the keyboard with the precision of someone who had spent years training for high-stakes technical operations. His pilot background had taught him to operate complex systems under pressure, and those skills translated surprisingly well to computer infiltration.
"Upload complete. The correction file is integrating with the existing algorithms."
"Good. Now check the probe's telemetry feed—you should see the trajectory beginning to stabilize."
Noah pulled up the real-time mission data and watched as the pathfinder probe's course gradually corrected itself, the navigation anomalies resolving as Eli's fixes took effect. The probe's trajectory began converging with the planned path toward Jupiter, its systems responding to the corrected reference parameters.
"It's working," Noah said, feeling a surge of adrenaline and accomplishment. "The probe is back on course."
But his celebration was premature. As he watched the mission data, he noticed something that made his blood run cold: the corrections weren't just fixing the current navigation problems—they were revealing the true extent of the sabotage that had been embedded in the original systems.
"Eli," Noah whispered urgently, "your corrections are working too well. The probe's trajectory is now more accurate than the original mission plan projected. That means the navigation errors weren't random—they were systematically introduced to degrade performance."
Through his earpiece, Noah heard Eli cursing softly as the implications became clear. "Someone deliberately corrupted the navigation algorithms before launch, but they did it subtly enough that the sabotage only became apparent under operational conditions."
"Which means?"
"Which means the pathfinder mission was sabotaged, just like Meridian. And the people responsible now know that someone has the ability to detect and counter their sabotage."
Noah quickly saved copies of the mission data that documented both the sabotage and the corrections, understanding that this evidence might be their only proof of the larger conspiracy. But as he prepared to leave the computer lab, he heard footsteps in the corridor outside.
"Company coming," he whispered to Eli.
"Get out of there. Now."
Noah shut down the workstation and moved toward the emergency exit, but the footsteps were getting closer. Through the lab's glass door, he could see security guards conducting what appeared to be a systematic search of the building.
"They know someone's here," he told Eli. "The building's in lockdown."
"Can you reach your car?"
"Not without being seen." Noah looked around the computer lab, calculating his options. The room had no windows and only one exit, which was now blocked by security personnel.
"Noah, listen carefully. There's a maintenance shaft in the northwest corner of that room. It connects to the building's ventilation system and should give you access to the parking garage."
Noah found the maintenance panel and pried it open, revealing a narrow shaft that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. He squeezed inside just as the security guards reached the computer lab door.
Crawling through the ventilation system was claustrophobic and exhausting, but it allowed him to bypass the security sweep and reach the parking garage undetected. Twenty minutes later, he was driving away from OrionX with evidence of sabotage and a corrected trajectory that might save the pathfinder mission.
"Did we just commit multiple felonies?" he asked Eli over the radio.
"Probably. But we also just proved that the Saturn mission is under attack by people with the resources and access to sabotage space missions while making it look like technical failures."
"So what happens now?"
"Now we document everything and prepare for them to escalate their efforts. Because if they're willing to sabotage the pathfinder probe, they won't hesitate to destroy the main Saturn mission when it launches."
As Noah drove through the empty California streets, he realized that their investigation had crossed a line from academic inquiry to active resistance. They were no longer just seeking truth about past disasters—they were actively preventing future ones, regardless of the personal and legal consequences.
The pathfinder probe continued its journey toward Jupiter, its course now true and stable thanks to their intervention. But in corporate boardrooms and defense industry offices, powerful people were recalculating their strategies and preparing to ensure that the main Saturn mission would not be so easily corrected.