"Dispatch cleared it based on an uploaded digital sign-off," I said, tapping the damp carbon slip lying on my tray. "The physical station copy remained in Charlotte until two hours ago, when my office impounded the line records. The manual override was logged under station employee ID 48109."
I looked directly at the attendant standing beside him.
"Victoria Sterling," I continued. "Flight Service Lead, acting station coordinator on duty during the Charlotte layover. The signature approving the deferral of the actuator replacement belongs to a cabin lead who used a supervisor's terminal login while maintenance crews were stretched between three deferred de-icing procedures."
The color drained from Victoria's face so fast it left her skin looking gray against the sharp blue of her uniform scarf. Her hand moved involuntarily toward the pocket of her vest, then dropped.
"That's completely absurd," Victoria said, though the projection had gone out of her voice. "I don't have maintenance authorization access. I handle cabin scheduling and turnaround manifests."
"You handled the gate desk terminal between two and four this morning when Supervisor Evans was called to the ramp for a cargo door latch failure," I said. "The fuel transfer valve was flagged red. If that valve sticks open in flight, your cross-feed system cannot isolate a leak in the starboard tank. Fixing it properly meant pulling this airframe from the morning bank, costing your carrier twenty thousand dollars in rebooking fees and breaking your station's on-time departure metric."
Captain Miller looked from me to Victoria. His posture had ceased to be that of an annoyed pilot dealing with an unruly passenger. He was now an aircraft commander staring directly at the reality of an unairworthy machine operating under his command.
"Is this true?" Miller asked her, his voice stripped of all inflection.
"She's trying to cover for creating a scene," Victoria stammered, her fingers clutching the galley curtain. "She was aggressive the moment she sat down. She asked for water, I brought juice, she lashed out—"
"Chloe," I said, looking past Victoria to the young attendant who remained frozen near the forward bulkhead.