Looking For Hostages In All The Wrong Places
Posted on Tue Aug 4, 2020 @ 11:28am by Lieutenant Commander James Holbridge & Major Victor Crowe & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD
1,276 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
The Binary Suns
Location: Intelligence Spaces
LCDR Holbridge sat at his desk in Intelligence, quietly thinking. The last attempted coup was by Admiral Leyton before the start of the Dominion War. Jim quietly accessed the reports and began to carefully examine the reports. Key officers brought in from all over the Federation, mainly Intel types like me.... Jim closed the file and rubbed his chin for a moment. "Computer, access my deleted messages from my Intelligence mailbox and the Victory," he ordered suddenly.
=/\= Accessing. =/\=
"Search for any messages originating with Commander John Franklin at Deep Space Four received in the past week."
=/\=There are two unviewed messages. Shall I play them for you?=/\=
"Yeah,"
=/\=Hello, Holbridge, you old sidewinder! The face of Commander John Franklin grinned. I see by the reports you're generating that your doing your usual bang-up job! Good job tracking the Rebel Founders to the Delta Quadrant. You and your Marine buddy, Crowe, need to take a few days and rest cuz I have a hot one for you guys when you come back. It's all pretty hush-hush but I can tell you it will be pretty close to home, just the kind of assignment you enjoy! Let me know when you're ready on secure channel. Franklin out.=/\=
"Play second message," Jim ordered.
=/\=Commander Franklin here.=/\= Franklin looked less friendly and more sleep-deprived than he did in his previous message. =/\=Haven't heard anything from you and wanted to see if you were going to pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this one. If I don't hear from you in forty-eight hours I'll remove your name from consideration. I sincerely hope you take this opportunity because the doors it could open for you are endless. Just let me know one way or the other. Franklin out=/\=
"That sure is strange," Jim whispered, wondering just what in the hell his former CO was trying to tell him. suddenly Jim spun around in his chair. "Hmmmmm, sounds like I was invited to the party. Holbridge to Crowe: when you get a second, check your classified messages for any from John Franklin in the last week or so."
=/\=What are we looking for exactly?=/\= Vic asked.
"Point of origin, the usual ball of wax."
=/\=Roger that, Lt Levesque and I are on our way to your office.=/\=
THIRTY MINUTES LATER
The entry process to the Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility aboard the ship wasn't easy for those who don't normally have business within. Though Crowe's access was easy, Camille had never needed to enter the SCIF before today. She had the necessary clearances, but only those with business inside the secure space were ever allowed in, and to date she had no business in Holbridge's space. She was made to surrender her commbadge and had to have an escort (Crowe didn't count) until the two of them were in front of Jim.
But she understood. Though her line of work involved freedom of information, their incoming task was one where the intelligence apparatus was absolutely necessary.
Finally, Vic and Camille were in the main Intelligence Space. "Salut commander," she said with a smile. "What do you need?"
"Plenty, lieutenant," Jim replied, a stern expression on his face. "We received a massive update from Memory SIGMA in the Delta Quadrant. There are literally exabytes of data to sift through and it is also a perfect place to hide software that would compromise the ship.I need you to begin hardening the ships coms and data systems." Jim looked directly at the younger woman. "I also need you to devise an algorithm that will sift through the information we received, looking for hidden override cyberjacking protocols, snooper-ware, and other programs that would allow the bad guys to gain control of this ship or enhance their ability to see what we are doing."
“Can do, Commander.” Camille moved to an available console and began working. During her time at the Academy and on Jupiter Station, she learned enough about neural networks to write one that did exactly what they needed. “Anything else?”
"In addition, we need to come up with a subroutine that scrambles Victory's prefix code. We don't want to end up like USS Valhalla" Jim added.
She nodded, and turned to Jim. “What happened to the Valhalla?” she asked. But before a response came, a marine by the door, her escort into the SCIF, cleared his throat and gave her a dirty look. She blushed and resumed working.
Jim smiled at the younger woman. "I apologize for the presence of these two Marines, but this is serious. Vic here thinks you're a top-notch officer, and I trust his judgement. Let's get cracking, our fearless leader seems to have no patience for us underlings."
TWO HOURS LATER
Jim pushed himself away from his workstation and yawned. "Jesus Jumped-Up-a-Wombat! Six starships, four wings of fighters, and two squadrons of attack gunabouts protecting Earth!" Jim tossed the images on his monitor to the central holo-viewer. "Merrimack Tolstoy Westmoreland DeGaulle Lakota and the not-supposed-to-officially-exist Leviathan dreadnaught guarding Earth as well, stuck in geo-sync orbit above Paris."
"If we try to sneak our way past that, we're toast!" Vic sighed. "Anyway we could do some cyber-snooping, lieutenant?"
“Possiblement,” she replied, not looking up. “But without some serious cyberwarfare experts aboard ship, or without a mole on one of the opponent vessels, we’d be limited to line of sight netrusion strategies. We’re a top of the line starship, but we don’t have the resources for anything better than that, I’m afraid.”
"Shit!" Jim swore. "How's those projects I assigned you coming along?"
“Prefix code is scrambled, and will change every thirty seconds,” the scientist replied. “I’ve tied it to my own scientific sensor array; the randomization algorithm is based on cosmic background radiation. It can’t be predicted in anyway. As for your Memory SIGMA data, it’s already caught six malicious programs and isolated them. They’re being sent to a quarantined drive for your team to examine.”
Vic looked at Jim and smirked. "Told ya so!"
"Button your lip, jarhead!" Jim grinned. "Lieutenant, I gotta chase you and the major outta here so I can have a confab with Intel. I'm giving you a temporary clearance to the Intel spaces until we get done in the Sol system. Move out."
“Oui, Commander,” Camille said with a nod. “Contact me if you need anything else.” One of the marines escorted her back to the corridor.
When the lieutenant left the room, Vic turned to face Jim. "What are you really up to, Bouncer?"
Jim swallowed. "Intel Command wanted me to bring the ship to the Sol System by force if Captain Kennit was noncompliant with her orders. The programs I am having Camille come up with will disable any logic bombs, cyber-jackers, or any other cuties they hid in that data dump.”
"Why not just get rid of the dump itself?" Vic asked as he drank from a cup of coffee
"Data dumps of that size are logged and whoever is monitoring it would surely pass it on to the people who seized power back home, or so I am supposing." Jim explained. Jim outlined his idea to Vic, who nodded his head after loudly questioning Jim's choice of duty station.
"I think we are ready to see the captain." Jim checked his chronometer. "Two hours and fifty-three minutes! Damn I'm good!"
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