DeRicci turned to the third report without looking at the raw data again.
So this time, she was surprised to find that the information was about power glitches in the Port of Armstrong.
The power glitches were minor, maybe two or three seconds long at their worst, just enough for a dimming of the lights and backup systems to start.
The Port had enough of those glitches that it called in outside experts to examine the system. Those experts found nothing wrong with the Port’s systems, nor any reason the glitches should have happened.
Yet they had.
And the dates of the power losses coincided with the dates that the fifteen-year-old information vanished from the system.
Or at least, that was what it seemed like when computer records got traced. No one knew for certain when the information vanished.
It could have vanished ten years ago or during the week of the power glitches.
All the data stream told the researchers was that something in that data pool—where the information had been stored—had either been accessed or removed during that period of time.
Or, as one researcher noted, someone tried to access or remove the information during that period of time.
No one knew for certain.
DeRicci put a hand to her forehead. Her stomach was in knots. Something about this series of reports bothered her, and it wasn’t just that the raw data was too technical for her to understand.
She could get someone whose expertise she trusted to look at the material.
What bothered her was that all of this seemed important, but she couldn’t tell at first glance what the importance was.
Usually security breaches were pretty clear cut. A member of a species without access to the Earth Alliance had gotten stuck in holding at the Port. A bomb threat against Gagarin Dome. A murder threat against the governor-general.
DeRicci had dealt with all of that and more, and while it might have seemed difficult while the case was ongoing, her understanding of the security breaches was easy.
She wasn’t even sure if this was important.
Although the loss of banking records and Port records was troubling.
She turned to the last three reports and saw more of the same. Those reports, written by analysts farther up the food chain, tried to put the three disparate pieces of information together, to show why there could be a threat.
These were the kinds of reports she hated. And these three reports were the kind that had caused her to examine the raw data herself before reading reports.
Sometimes she thought the midlevel analysts were hired for their imagination, not for their knowledge. They could make up a threat where none existed or they could completely miss the real threat for some imaginary threat.
She skimmed these reports, seeing very little worthwhile in them except that the three separate analysts, working without contact to each other, were as disturbed by the preceding three information reports and the raw data as she had been.
Because during the time she’d been looking at the reports, she wondered if the sense of unease that she felt had come from the resurrection of Ki Bowles’s news story or the reports themselves.
That separate analysts who had nothing to do with each other had the same sense of unease that she had made her feel better.
Or worse, depending on how immediate the threat seemed.
DeRicci wasn’t sure how immediate this threat was or wasn’t.
Because she didn’t know exactly what was missing.
And neither did her analysts.
They had tried to dig through existing files, but they hadn’t found anything out.
She was going to do an old-fashioned investigation.
She was going to see exactly what information had vanished—and she hoped that would tell her why.