Are you ready?

Posted on Fri Jan 15th, 2021 @ 7:09am by Petty Officer 3rd Class Pim & Lieutenant Commander Yivliph Ra-Gruvloveii

1,434 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: The Lonesome Road
Location: Intelligence Center
Timeline: Current

=/= Begin Log =/=

...like everywhere intelligence was put in some out of way place, which for most intelligence personnel that was ideal.

Pim was busy at work using a highly customized piece of hand held equipment, something of her own design, something she called a hand terminal, a simple solid clear rectangular device; roughly size of a early 21st century smartphone, made entirely of a glass silicate or a transparent hard glossy plastic/polycarbonate material.

Now the hand terminal had many new features that the traditional PaDD did not have like, the ability to do proximal motion, and gesture detection, as well as potentially holographic projection. Now all of this is impressive, but the truly impressive thing is the primary program.

Syn.

A beautiful Lovecraftian-malware.

Syn's base-programming was the Kraken malware which used tentacle-netConnections depositing Worms that would replicate at a very fast rate causing distractions allowing for the Kraken to do what it did best.

Locate and burrow into the subspace networks, whenever it would connect to a new one.

The Kraken malware would also setup Access points giving backdoor access whenever you reconnect to the network. Her program Wraith would create the Access points as well as stealthily removing the largest threats on the networks which would allow Syn to sent out her beautifully modified Data Leeches.

It was truly a thing of beauty, and the biggest plus was that no one else knew she had something like this.

****

....Pim was sitting at her terminal doing what she did best, programming working on a new program that'll help search fro keywords better and faster. Really just more efficient.

While she did this, she doubled check to see if Syn was nesting into the ships computer core and that she; aka Sin, was well hidden under layers and layers of code that Sync created to hide herself. Then all of a sudden the Hand Terminal shut off, a safety feature as it sensed someone coming into proximity of it.

Having spent most of the day collating information in his office, Yiv had felt it was time to check in on his colleagues in the Intelligence Center. It was a grand title for what was essentially an open plan office behind some stringent security measures. Not for the first time, he noticed that the Ontario's doors were always a touch slow to open after the authorisation was input.

He stood in the lobby area as the Security Officer inside subjected him to a full body scan down to the molecular level. This had been Yiv's routine for years, these precautions had been instigated at the time of the Dominion War, before he had joined Starfleet. Once Terry was satisfied that Yiv, his tricorder, and PADD, were all standard issue and safe, he waved the Chief Intelligence Officer through another door with biometric security measures. The Efrosian smiled and nodded his thanks.

Stepping through the door, Yiv noticed his staff beavering away at their work at terminals calibrated for maximum comfort to each species. He had found they worked better that way. Glancing off to the right, he noted the dimmed lights of the classified briefing room, sensor shielded in myriad different ways so that the Intelligence Department could share the most sensitive information with the Captain and whomever else needed to know. As he walked through the office, he noticed the slight sloped of the deck that created a well at the centre of the room.

There a holographic map of the Federation and its near neighbours was projected, directly linked to that in the Strategic Operations Office, and updated as Starfleet Intelligence received new data and projections from across the two Quadrants. A smaller map at the same table showed Ontario and her immediate surrounding sectors, based on the Starbase's telemetry. That would change as the Ontario ventured out into the Draedexian Sector. The lighting in the room was slightly dimmer than on the rest of the ship. Yiv had been slightly selfish in asking that it be set at a level more comfortable to his Efrosian eyes as he would be spending most of his time there.

Yiv made a quick circle of the terminals, noting who was working on what. By far his favourite section, though he would never mention that to anyone, was Encryption/Decryption. It was an aspect of the Intelligence game which eluded him, and he prided that he put regular requests through for only the finest Starfleet had to offer, wherever his assignment. He had been lucky aboard the Ontario.

He made a stop beside a dark-haired Bajoran/Cardassian woman, and leaned in. 'Crewman, is the day proceeding agreeably?'

"Lieutenant," Pim said simply never looking up from her work, she was neck deep in old-intel reports trying to find a pattern of anything, really.

The Intelligence Chief suppressed a sigh. Pim would often get ducked up in to her tasks. Or so it seemed to him. She could just be ignoring him. He had never really been able to tell so far.

He pulled up a chair from a vacant station. Sitting down he cleared his throat, 'Crewman, I'm asking you to report on your day's activity,' he said, gently.

"Not a lot to report," Pim said never understanding asking for a mid-shift report, if something did come up it would get reported, if nothing came up why bother asking, "....it has been quite of late," Pim added.

Chuckling, Yiv leaned back in his chair, 'quite. An exploratory cruise isn't always the most exciting for people in our line of work. Going weeks without anything tangible to work on isn't quite my idea of fun.' He looked at her thoughtfully. 'By 'not a lot to report', I take it you mean you have very little work to do at the moment?' He raised his eyebrows as he spoke.

"No that is not what I said, I just said there is nothing to report, seeing as we are docked at a star base," Pim said in a cool but necessary calm voice, "....I am making our data analysis programs more efficient so when we do leave, it'll be able to analyze data quicker and more efficient," Pim said never looking away from her console, "figure that would be a good thing depending on said exploratory assignment we picked up," she said looking up and at the lieutenant.

'That shows some initiative. Have you measured the increase in efficiency at all?' Yiv was impressed, despite himself. Most of his officers enjoyed working with what systems and programming they had, never expressing curiosity in improving their tools. 'And yes, I expect there will be more work ahead of us in the days and weeks to come. You think you can handle it?'

"Still working on the coding, and then it'll take awhile for us to see if my changes were effective, maybe a little faster depending on what we find on our mission," Pim said rolling her eyes at the other thing she said and sighed, wishing that her request of transfer did go through.

'I know you find your assignment here trying, for any number of reasons,' Yiv said patiently, replying to the eye-roll. 'But make the best of it - you're good at your work, which you know, and your superiors know. Do your time and play the game and I'm sure any number of assignments will come up for you, and you'll get your ideal choice.'

Pim just went back to work with a shrug, for her she wanted to disappear in the shadows it was partially why she said yes when Starfleet Intelligence recruited her, but he was right, if she did something big enough she truly could slip into the shadows.

'You didn't answer my question, Petty Officer,' Yiv chided gently. 'Are you up to the work that's coming your way?'

"...yes," Pim said looking up at him, Psuch a stupid question, how can anyone be ready for something that they don't really know is coming, and well we don't know what to expect going into uncharted territory,} she thought.

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded in acknowledgement. 'Good,' Yiv got to his feet, 'I'll be expecting nothing but your best.' He wiped a bit of fluff off his tunic, 'as you were then.'

{Again, another useless saying, why in the name of Prophets would I give you my worse,} Pim thought shaking her head and clearing the conversation out of her mind before getting back to work.

=/= End Log =/=

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