Read Chapter 35: Payoff: The Cause

The airlock cycled open with a hiss that still smelled faintly of scorched polymer, even after all these months. Elena stepped into what remained of Copernicus's old geology wing, her booted feet crunching over debris that had been left where it fell. The reconstruction crews had cleared the habitable zones first. This section was still a tomb.

She'd asked for this assignment personally. Cataloguing what survived, what could be salvaged from the wreckage of her old life. It was penance, maybe. Or just the need to see it with her own eyes before she could move forward.

The lab bench where she'd spent countless hours was twisted, its surface buckled from the heat. She ran a gloved hand over the scarred metal, remembering the day she'd first arrived, so sure of herself, so certain she could fix everything with enough data.

Her comm crackled. "Elena. You've been in there two hours. You're supposed to be taking breaks."

Jack's voice was warm but laced with that edge of concern he'd developed since they'd landed together three days ago. He'd been hovering ever since, finding excuses to check on her between his shuttle fleet orientation sessions.

"I'm fine. Just thorough."

"Thorough is your word for obsessive."

She almost smiled. "You're learning."

A low cabinet in the corner had partially collapsed, its door wedged open. Something metallic glinted inside. She crossed to it, careful of the uneven floor, and knelt to pry the door loose. Inside was a jumble of tangled cables, cracked sample cases, and—her breath caught—a sealed storage drive, its casing blackened but intact.

Her hands trembled as she lifted it. The label was still legible: ACCIDENT LOG — ORIGINAL, DAY 01. This wasn't the backup she'd reviewed in the debriefings. This was the raw feed, the source data that had been scrubbed and rewritten before anyone else saw it.

The comm crackled again. "Elena? You've gone quiet. That's worse than the talking."

"I need you down here. Now."

He didn't ask why. Just a clipped "On my way" and the sound of his boots moving through the corridor.

By the time he ducked through the damaged doorframe, she'd found a portable reader in one of the salvage crates and was pulling open the drive's files. Jack stood behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through their suits.

"What did you find?"

"The truth, maybe." She pointed at the screen. "Look. The official report said the core breach caused the explosion. That Liang's diagnosis was wrong, that the pressure readings he logged were fabricated."

Jack leaned in. "But?"

"But this drive has the uncorrected telemetry." She scrolled through lines of data, her eyes stinging. "The explosion happened in the cable junction room, twelve minutes before the core ever registered an anomaly. It was a wiring fire. A component was installed wrong—hastily, at the last inspection before launch. Manufacturing defect."

She looked up at him, the weight of it settling into her bones. "The core was never compromised. They blamed the core to cover the defect. To avoid the liability."

"Kessler knew." Jack's voice was flat. "He spread the lie. Made Liang look like the one who screwed up."

"Kessler was a pawn." Elena's throat tightened. "He was covering for TerraCore. For whoever supplied that component. He didn't cause this. He just buried it."

The silence stretched between them, heavy with the ghosts of everyone they'd lost. Marcus, who'd been her friend and so much more before she'd pushed him away. The crew who'd trusted their lives to faulty equipment and a company that valued profit over people.

"There were families." Jack's voice was rough. "People who spent years thinking their loved ones died because of an error, a mistake in the readings. They never knew it was someone else's corner-cutting that killed them."

Elena nodded slowly. "We can fix that. We have the evidence. We can make TerraCore answer for this too—not just the corruption, but the deaths."

Jack's hand found hers, fingers interlacing through the gloves. "We should tell the families. Personally, if we can. Give them the real story."

"Closure." The word felt strange on her tongue, like something she'd forgotten how to say. "For them. And for us."

She looked at the drive in her hand, then back at Jack. The anger was still there, hot and bright. But underneath it, something else was taking root. Not forgiveness—that would take longer. But a kind of release, a door finally opening that she'd thought was sealed forever.

Kessler had been a pawn. TerraCore had been the hand moving him. And now, for the first time since the explosion had torn through her world, Elena had the whole truth.

She pocketed the drive. "I'm going to make sure everyone knows what really happened. Starting with the families of every person on that crew."

Jack squeezed her hand. "I'll be right there with you."