Comparing notes

Posted on Fri May 21, 2021 @ 11:12am by Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Commander Cullen Walker & Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Lieutenant JG Aergad Halvor & Lieutenant JG Ardal King & Senior Chief Petty Officer Samantha Summers & Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Admiral Alan Markus & Captain April Dragon

1,304 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Archangel
Location: DQ8

Penny looked up from her board. "Captain, we're approaching DQ8. They've cleared us for docking port C."

“Very well. Take us in. Don’t hit the docking support this time..” Kennit answered.

"Aye, Captain," Penny said as they dropped out of warp, angling in towards the station. "We'll be docked in eight-point-six minutes."

The Captain just nodded.

Penny tilted her head but wasn't going to object to less vitriol from the center chair, and continued steering the ship. Eight-point-five-seven minutes later, the ka-chunk of docking clamps sounded and the ship was docked inside the station.

"Moorings secure, ship is on standby," Penny concluded, shutting down the helm and reviewing her Ops boards. She turned in her seat. "Do we go knock?"

Only if you want to give them a chance to hide their dirties,” Kennit answered. “Besides, they know we’re here. Have our guest from that star base prepared for transfer to the station. He is to be charged with attempting to impede an official investigation by deliberately sabotaging a Starfleet installation - that being the base we arrested him at.”

“Miss Naroot!” the Captain then said. “If you would be so kind as to open a channel to DQ8 control and advise them that I require a meeting with Admiral Marcus as soon as possible, in a secure location.”

"Aye, Captain," Penny said, plying her board. A moment later, a series of blinking lights scrolled across her board, the pattern seemingly nonsensical, but she tilted her head as if reading something interesting. "He'll see you...in one hour...in his quarters," she said, turning. "Probably the most secure place on the station," she said.

“Secure for who..” Kennit drawled in response. “Send an acknowledgment. XO you have the conn.” With that she exited the bridge, retreating to prepare for her meeting with Admiral Marcus.

Answering, Walker spoke, "Yes, Captain."

Penny watched the Captain leave and after the lift doors hut turned back to Walker. "Do I start the betting pool on who survives now, or wait until she actually gets to his door?"

A grin turned into a chuckle, "If Gambling was allowed, I would say, 5 strips of gold-pressed latinum says there will be a threat having to do with King eating the prisoner." Walker looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

From her post on the Bridge, Summers slightly grinned and shook her head.

---

An hour later, Penny was almost feeling bored. Sitting docked was never a terribly exciting time, and with the ship not falling apart, Ops duties were pretty routine. She'd spent the better part of her time trying to unravel the mystery of the fake logs supplied by Commander Walker. She'd tried playing around with word combinations, names, dates, cyphers of the logs themselves. Nothing seemed to have a pattern. Nothing was giving her a clue as to the purpose of the logs. She tried reading them backwards, every other word, read the first word of each one, then the second, and so forth. Nothing was sparking any inspiration.

She reviewed what she knew about the logs. First, they were fake. One read through gave evidence of that. None of the language or tones were correct compared to how the official logs looked, and dates and events did not match up correctly. Second, they were obvious fakes. Two seconds of verification would show that. Third, they weren't hidden, implying whoever wrote them wanted them to be found. So why build obvious fakes that they wanted found? Sometimes the motivations of organics was beyond her.

She turned in her seat from the Ops panel and looked at Walker. "Why does someone not hide something?" she said.

Thinking about her answer, "Traditionally, we don't hide things that are on the up and up, or we are proud of them. Why do you ask?" He got up and looked at the tactical station. "Link up with Starbase Tactical. I want coordinated spacial scanned." He had done a few prisoner transports in his day. "Look for anomalies connected to cloaking."

"I was thinking of those logs you gave me to look over," Penny said. "The ones that were clearly forgeries. They weren't even good forgeries. I mean, ten seconds of fact-checking showed they were fake. So why make them? I keep coming back to that. There's no malicious code, no hidden trojans, no secret codes. They're just...useless."

Walker looked up, "I'm pretty sure some of them were there as fodder. Shit to sift through and waist time. A few of them were designed as coded messages, I don't think the majority are anything to do with our case." He walked over to her station and brought up one of them on her display. "This was is hiding a rendezvous between an Admiral and a Commander, so they could have activities." It was against regulations, but not what they were looking for. It was time, date, and coordinates, not much else. "I feel like they were flooded in the system to draw our attention away." He felt used and that he wasted time.

"Yeah, but that's kind of my point," Penny said. "There's no code I could find. The computer and I have been going through it nonstop, checking every possible permutation, and we've found nothing. There's no code here. It's a time-waster, maybe, but if that's all it is, what did they accomplish? They didn't hide much, so....what's the point?

Walker looked at her, "Confetti bomb. It's a distraction i would think. Pretty much all they did was snitch on people doing wrong that had nothing to do with the situation."

Penny grumbled in frustration. "With your permission, Sir, could I run these by someone on the station? They have a couple of specialists I'd like to check with."

Nodding to her, "You trust them? Then be careful. Really and truly, I think they confetti bombed us, ie making sure we are vacuuming for months." He knew that outing rank having personal, off record liaisons. "Be advised cock blocking an Admiral has consequences. If that is all that is there, and it has nothing to do with Archangel, leave it alone. I don't want confetti years from now."

Penny was sure there were several colloquialisms she would have to research later, but she took the yes, closed her boards, nodded to her stand-in and rushed off the bridge.

She hurried through the corridors to the airlock and through the hanger on to the station. A quick turbolift ride later landed her on the executive deck. She keyed in an access code and stepped into an empty conference room, sealing the doors behind her. She tapped a command on the computer console and waited. A moment later, a figure appeared. "Hello, Penelope."

"Hi, Roger," Penny said, smiling. "Listen, I need help. I'm trying to potentially crack a code. If I share some logs with you, could you give them a second glance? I'm not finding anything."

"If you aren't, I'm not sure what else I can do," Roger said, brow furrowing. "But I'll give it a try."

Penny tapped the console again, initiating a link to the Victory's computer, and downloaded the information.

Roger blinked as he reviewed the logs, and finally shook his head. "Nothing. It's a load of gibberish."

"Right?" Penny said. "I can't figure out why someone did it though. My CO thinks it involves something about impeding a rooster or I don't know. But organics don't go to these lengths without a reason do they?"

"Asking the wrong person, Penelope," Roger said with a wry smile.

"Yeah, I suppose," Penny said. "If anything pops into your thoughts, let me know?"

"Of course," Roger said, vanishing.

Penny sighed in defeat and went back to the ship to translate Commander Walker's statements.

 

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