Shattered Legacy by Shane R. Daley

Tony,” he told her.
    “I can read the badge.”
    “Wit and beauty.” His smile broadened. “I take it you're the gatekeeper around here.”
    “Hmm, perceptive and charming,” she replied dryly. “May I help you?”
    “I'd like to check some records.”
    “This is a restricted area.”
    “I was hoping someone would let me in.”
    “You need authorization.”
    “I thought I could get that from you .” With that, Kanavos beamed his most ingratiating smile.
    The woman raised her eyebrows. “What do you want to see?”
    “Just some hard copy maintenance logs on the Naiad .” He shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “The boss wants to run some status comparisons, but a few of the old schedules aren’t coming up on the computers. We know we did the work. I have a bet with the guys as to whether someone forgot to input the logs properly.”
    “A bet, huh?”
    “Yeah. A bet.”
    As the woman gazed at him, as if trying to read his true intentions, she slipped her hand under the desk to press the entry button. A buzzer sounded and the door beside her unlocked with a metallic crunch.
    “You are most kind,” Kanavos said as he pushed open the door.
    The woman slid off her stool. “I have to scan your badge in,” she said. “You also have to sign for any materials you want to copy. Nothing leaves here without authorization.” Before Kanavos could say another word, she added, “And I can't give you that authorization.”
    Kanavos nodded graciously and handed her his badge, which she swiped through a reader and returned. Then the woman led him into the Records Retention Room. The place was as long as a football field and nearly as wide. Bars of fluorescent lights dangled from the low ceiling, casting harsh shadows between the long aisles of metal cabinets. Halfway down the center row, they turned and marched down another long aisle of file drawers. Then they turned again. By the time they had reached their destination, Kanavos was completely lost.
    “Here we go.” The woman stopped before a computer terminal.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “You wanted maintenance work assignments on the Naiad . You can search through this.”
    Kanavos gazed down at the computer with a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “How do I work it?”
    She smiled. “You ever use the internet? Search for stuff?”
    “Sure.”
    “This works the same way.” She reached down and tapped the keyboard. A browser window appeared. She tapped in a username and password. The screen cleared and she typed in a few more commands. “There you are. You can do your document retrieval by keyword and date. Related documents are hyperlinked. I’ve limited your queries to only the orbiter maintenance records.”
    Kanavos sat down and rubbed his hands.
    “Do you have the work order numbers?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” Kanavos replied, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket.
    The Naiad's engine systems had undergone extensive testing and refitting after each shakedown flight. A problem had been discovered with the engine cowlings after the first two flights.
    Noah Gettleman had asked Kanavos to find the original repair orders and any related problem tickets on the cowlings. Normally, that would have been a simple request. Only when Kanavos went to check on the jobs in the digital archives did he realize why Gettleman was concerned. Apparently, the tracking records did not exist anymore. Worse than that, there was no record of there ever having been a problem with the engine cowlings in the first place.
    That struck Kanavos as odd, because he remembered that his team had helped refit the cowlings at least once.
    So what happened? Had the repairs been purged from the computer systems?
    That was unlikely. Virtually everything that happened at the Thomas Dorian Space Center was tracked one way or another. Templar Enterprises also made extensive use of imaging systems to convert all hard-copy documents to digital form. All incoming mail,