Quoted By:
Rewind to just after the sword broke into the chamber. Play again.
Rewind. Play.
Fast forwards. Watch pilot vitals while doing so. There’s the characteristic spike and erratic squiggles from syncing, then the slow descent down, down, down. Stabilizing weakly. Pilot wakes, vitals go up. Pilot’s out, vitals go down. Vitals go up, and down again. He checks the cockpit feed again. No movement. She should be awake at that time.
Stop. Rewind. Play.
He swears.
Another half-dozen examinations, comparing timestamps and feeds, and he comes to the only plausible conclusion.
The recordings have been edited.
These are directly from the Core itself. Either it’s changing its own logs- a slim possibility, considering how adaptable the things are, or someone is playing games with his command.
But if the recordings are edited, what is being covered up? And what else could be wrong? Location data? Health records? Did he send the girl out in a deathtrap? For how long had it been getting changed? Were the rest of the safeguards still in place?
Taking a deep breath, he focuses on the here and now. Speculation is useless. Focus on what you could get done.
Well, he can try to cross off at least one of those options before the replacement candidate arrives.
And hope that it was the easier of the two to correct.
He copied all he could onto a set of portable drives, then grabbed his recently-added cane, setting off for the hangar.
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A/N
Still in interlude mode tonight.
