The Clock Is Ticking

Posted on Wed Jun 24th, 2020 @ 2:50am by Lieutenant Commander James Smith & Sasha Vieers (Deceased)
Edited on on Fri Jul 10th, 2020 @ 5:40pm

Mission: Death in Paradise
Location: Deck 4 Intel

James returned to his office shortly after the staff meeting. With so many of the crew that had been to the station it made it hard to narrow down anyone who could betray the Pandora or Starfleet. Bringing up the messages again he frowned. These people were good and the code was sophistication but their were always flaws to be found. Sighing he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. He had found another reference to the Pandora and her crew, but it was still vague because he hadn’t gotten the full message deciphered yet. Remembering that Ensign Vieers was available he hit his combadge =/\=Ensign Vieers, please report to Intel I could really use your assistance. Security clearance has been granted for your access.=/\=

There was a long pause before a reply came, finally Sasha Vieers replied. =/\= Aye, sir.=/\=

Smith had gone over her service record and knew she was a great encrytionist, and knew her expertise would come in handy with breaking the code. He could tell that she was a little nervous by the way she answered, but made a note to reassure her that everything would be ok.

Several minutes later, the doors to the Intel Office opened and Ensign Vieers stood forward. She felt out of her comfort zone in this office, and nervous about why she had been brought there. The Ensign placed her hands behind her back formally, and stood at attention. "Sir, you requested my presence?"

James turned and smiled, “relax ensign, please have a seat.” Smith accessed the big screen in his office and brought up the messages he had received from the ship and the complex code that was attached to it. “Ensign I need your help Ive decoding these messages, however, I’m running into an issue with the language coming up after I finish my encryption. It’s a language I don’t recognize and I keep getting references to the Pandora, StarFleet and Paradise Station. The Pandora and her crew are in danger and we need to figure out what these communications are about and if possible who sent and received them.”

Sasha frowned, she looked to her feet and back up again, "I will try my best, Lieutenant, but I don't know much about this. The computer does a lot of the work for me."

She moved over to the computer terminal and sat down, placing her hands in her lap absentmindedly. She started looking over what was in front of her before turning to Smith, "Does... the Captain know I'm here? I don't want to over step my duties."

Smith nodded, “The captain knows you're here.” He tried to reassure her by patting her on the shoulder. “I’ve been told that you are great with languages, and I’m having issues with a language I’ve decoded, the only word that I’m able to get is the word Pandora, and I’m afraid that someone is planning an attack on the Pandora. So whatever you can assist me with Ensign that would be great.”

Sasha looked to the decoded messages in front of her, her mouth moving silently as she tried to sound out the words. The 'words' were only a series of short characters, barely three or four in a row. There was no obvious punctuation, accents, or other markers to delineate sentence structures or phrasing. She pointed to a section of text with a frown, "It seems to be a code within a code." She murmured, "I don't think we're looking at a specific language, but a cable code. Shortened language to represent another language."

James nodded, “So we are looking at a language that someone is trying to disguise as something else.” Smith looked at a portion of the message that mentioned the Pandora. Pointing to it he said, “So this message states that the Starfleet presence is to be eliminated. Is that the gist of this message.”

"Yes, but the key seems to mix for every sentence." The Ensign stood from her seat and paced around the room, something she was used to doing when she couldn't figure out an answer. "Someone has gone incredibly out of their way to hide their messages, you have to essentially start again for every one." Sasha stopped in her place and looked to Lieutenant Smith, "Perhaps we're looking at it to closely? We need to find the pattern in the randomness."

Sasha stood on the other side of the console in front of Smith, "What if you ran a program that analysed the messages as a whole and could tell you how each one changed from one message to the next? If you did that, you could easily decipher the whole thing?"

Smith nodded, “Nyx and I developed a program similar to what you suggested while we were in the academy together.” Hitting a few buttons he started running the program and watched as it analyzed the messages, and smiled as the cipher started coming in. Looking at one message he frowned as he read it allowed, “No one suspects me, explosives will be placed on the station, will signal when I’m ready.” James looked at the message again before saying, “the murder and now the bomb seeemed to be connected, but we need to locate the explosives.”

"Goodness!" Sasha cried, "This is terrible! We need to find out what else they've said about this bomb right away!" She paced in front of the console, chewing at her fingernails. "Oh! Let's execute a keyword search of all the communications to look for more mentions of the word 'bomb'."

“Let’s give it a try”. Smith said, Sitting down at another console he started to enter a a few command codes and had the computer start looking for any words or sentences that mentioned bomb. Within minutes the computers in his lab started to go haywire, and he watched as the messages and all the work that they had accomplished disappear.

As soon as Lieutenant Smith attempted the search, however, the list of messages disappeared. Gone. Deleted. Empty. Every message that had been recovered from the Pandora to Paradise was instantaneously erased from the ship's servers. There was nothing but a blank screen in front of them now.

"What did you do?" Sasha asked as she moved back around to look at the console. She tapped at the screen several times, trying to find the deleted messages. "They're all gone!"

Smith continued to search for the messages but everything was gone, and something had shut down the Intel departments network of computers. Smith scowled, “These messages must of been booby trapped. The minute I started looking for a key word, it was ordered to basically destroy itself and erase all evidence. However, it took down my Intel network as well.” Smith shook his head, “The captain is not going to like this and now there may be a bomb on the station, so no one is safe.”

Sasha could only let out a deep breath, "I believe the Captain's on the station, I'll find Commander Nash. See if you can get your intel network back up again while I alert Nash and Griffin." She stood, giving her head a sad little shake, "Hopefully we're not too late."

OFF