Sabotage

Posted on May 26, 2014 @ 8:54pm by Commander Jacob Crichton & Cindy Rochemonté
Edited on on May 26, 2014 @ 8:56pm

Mission: All Our Yesterdays
Location: Various
Tags: Cindy, Jake

=/\=
“Sabotage”
Con’d from “Specters of His Past”
=/\=

LOCATION: Station UFP-855
SCENE: Core Control Room
STARDATE: 2.140514.0808

Jake Crichton was on his back, laying halfway out of a control station he’d partially removed from the wall. Several dozen cables hung down into his face, pulsing with faint blue light. Jake was holding aside a section of wiring with one hand, and using his other hand to wave the tricorder over sections of circuitry underneath it.

Or above it, technically.

Jake finished sweeping the tricorder over another section and then checked the readout.

“Node D-21: diagnostic complete, no anomalous readings,” said Crichton.

Standing outside the gutted control station, Cindy Rochemonte tapped a series of commands into her PADD.

“Node D-21, clear,” she said.

On her PADD, a dozen windows scrolled information in real time as Engineering teams throughout the control room worked at similar stations. They were building a map of the station’s main computer, and checking for malfunctions as they want, backtracking every system and subsystem to the station’s main control. It was grunt work, just a matter of throwing enough hours of labor at the problem, and the DISCOVERY’s engineering team was good enough that the work was going along at a good rate.

“Moving on to node D-22,” Jake said. “Running level 2 diagnostic.”

“We’ve mapped 81% of the station’s systems,” Cindy reported.

“Good,” Jake said. “That include life support?”

“Yes sir.”

“Pull one of the teams, have them get those systems isolated from primary station control,” Jake said.

“Sir, the computer problems haven’t affected life support,” said Cindy.

“So far,” said Jake. “Which is weird, since they reported malfunctions in just about every other primary system. But life support, environmental controls, atmospheric recyclers… they’re all working fine.”

“Strange that those systems alone would be unaffected,” Cindy agreed. “Unless they were deliberately ignored.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jake said. “Which means we’re not looking at a random malfunction, which narrows the list of probable causes to incompetence, or…”

“Sabotage?” Cindy supplied.

“I knew that word would sound better with your accent,” Crichton smirked. “And until we know what the problem is, or who’s causing it, let’s just say I’ll feel better if nobody but me can play with the thermostat.”

“Understood, sir,” Cindy said. “I’ll pull Ensign Maynell’s team.”

“You’re the best, Specs.”

She blushed, as he knew she would. “Sir,” Cindy said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to keep calling me that.”

“Why? Is the captain listening?”

“No, Commander,” Cindy said. “I don’t like having attention called to my glasses.”

“Your glasses?” Jake said. “That’s not why I call you that.”

“It isn’t?”

Jake laughed, and sat up from underneath the control console. “Lieutenant, what’s the length of the USS DISCOVERY?”

“442 meters,” Cindy said automatically.

“Number of decks?” Jake asked.

“Twenty seven.”

“Armament?” Jake asked.

“7 Mark XIII phaser banks, 6 Mark II plasma defense turrets, two Mark XI quantum torpedo launchers,” Cindy said, each item on the list rolling effortless off her tongue.

“Top transwarp speed in an emergency?” Jake asked.

“Transwarp 7.99 for 23 seconds before warp core breach,” Cindy said. Then, with a half-smile. “Though I bet you I could get it up to an even eight for twenty-five seconds.”

Jake smiled. Lt. Rochemonte was certainly impressive.

“That’s why I call you Specs,” Jake said, tucking himself under the console again to resume his work. “It’s short for ‘Specifications’.”

Cindy thought about this for a moment. Finally, she said, “You’re making that up, aren’t you?”

“Oh, most definitely,” Jake laughed. “Pretty good for just off the top of my head, right Specs?”

Cindy blushed again, and this time stamped her foot in a show of frustration. The result was comical to Jake – it made her look cute rather than angry. “Sir, please. I have to insist that you call me Lieutenant Rochemonte!”

“No can do, Specs…” Jake said, hiding his grin as he continued to scan. “Never was too big on all that formal stuff.”

“Commander!! Ugh.. Cindy then,” she supplied, half amused, half exasperated.

Jake grinned openly at her. “Well, then – Cindy – I have to insist you call me Jake.”

“But Sir…” she started.

“Seriously, keep up these ‘sirs’ and ‘Commanders,’ and I can’t be held liable for throwing you out the nearest airlock.” He winked at her. She held in a giggle, but it didn’t help – she snorted instead. Jake stopped what he was doing and gave her a look. “Did you really just do that?”

Cindy looked beyond embarrassed, and coughed, and rapidly scanned her PADD to hide a growing redness on her face. “Node D-22: diagnostic complete. No… oh.” She came up short, and the red on her cheeks was replaced by a serious look. “I think we found it. Someone… hold on, I’m running a trace…” She was typing furiously now.

Jake sat up again. “You found something?”

“I…” She started to respond, but then screwed up her face, and kept typing. Jake moved over to her shoulder to look, but Cindy was moving quickly, and did not give him enough time to digest what he saw before she was on the next screen. Suddenly, she stomped. “No, no, no, no, no! Merde!” She cursed, switching to her native French. “C’est des conneries! Foutre Putain…” She typed in furiously for a few seconds, before humphing in triumphant annoyance.

Jake scratched his head. “What’s up Specs?”

“Someone was mining data from the central computer,” she explained. “I was running that trace to figure out if I could identify the source. Instead, I uncovered a computer virus.”

“That explains the system failures,” Jake said. “What was the yelling and stomping about?”

Cindy blushed again. “Sorry, Comman- uh, Jake. When I located the virus, it became reactive. But don’t worry, I quarantined the little… Salop,” she finished, covering her swearing by reverting back to French for the moment.

“Good work, Specs,” Jake said. “What about the data mining? What were they after?”

“I can’t say,” Cindy shrugged. “Too much corrupted data in the system.”

“So the virus covered their tracks,” Jake said. “It fries the main computer, and we have no way to know what they were looking for, or whether or not they found it.”

“What do we do now?” Cindy asked.

“Good question,” Jake said. He activated his comm-badge. “Crichton to Captain Kane.”

[[Kane here,]] came the CO’s reply.

“You got a minute, sir?” Jake said. “We’ve uncovered some information, but if you’re busy with the station’s personnel…”

Kane seemed to pick up on what Crichton was hinting at.

[[I’m alone at the moment, Commander,]] Kane said. [[What’s the situation?]]

“Good news and bad news,” said Crichton. “The good news is we’ve isolated the cause of the system malfunctions.”

[[What’s the cause?]]

“That’s the bad news,” said Crichton. “Someone introduced a virus into the station’s main computer. It played havoc with most of the primary systems, but never touched life support.”

There was a long pause from Kane’s end of the conversation.

“Sir?” Crichton said after a moment.

[[A virus points to sabotage,]] Kane said. [[Why would they want to disable this station?]]

“That’s the rest of the bad news,” said Crichton. “We’ve discovered traces of data mining.”

[[How do you know?]]

“Looks like somebody blitzed the central computer with about half a trillion dummy requests for non-essential data,” Crichton said. “They kicked up a blizzard, they could have gone in and nabbed whatever information they wanted and nobody would have noticed a thing. We’d have to sort through all the dummy requests to find out what they were really after.”

[[Then I assume you’ve already started,]] Kane said.

“That’s where the virus came in,” Crichton said. “With all the corrupted data in there, we have no way of knowing what information might have been lost.”

[[Damn,]] Kane said. [[Commander, I want that virus contained immediately.]]

“Already working on it,” Crichton said. “Lt. Rochemonte managed to quarantine it. I’ll order a level 3 diagnostic for the entire station computer as well. Now that we know what we’re looking for, it won’t take us long to clean it up.”

[[Good work, Mr. Crichton,]] Kane said.

“Sir, there’s something else,” Jake said. “This virus… it was supposed to disable the station, but not destroy it. They wanted to cover their tracks, but they didn’t want to kill everyone on the station to do it.”

[[So either this is altruistic espionage, or whoever did it is still aboard,]] Kane said.

“That’s my guess, sir,” Jake said.

[[Okay,]] Kane said. [[Get that virus taken care of, but keep it quiet. Do what you can to sort through the data that’s left, see if you can find me anything that might point us in the direction of whoever did this.]]

“Will do, sir,” Jake said.

[[And Crichton,]] said Kane. [[Be careful. Kane out.]]

“Roger that,” Jake said quietly. He turned to look at Cindy. “Get the teams working on clearing that virus. I’ll start picking through the main computer. This virus was a pretty imprecise way to cover their tracks, there’s a chance that what we’re looking for is still in there somewhere. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“The teams were dispatch while you were talking to the Captain,” Cindy supplied. “And you’ll need help with the main computer – I’ve got nothing but time.” She smiled impishly.

Jake grinned appreciatively, “Well then Specs… let’s get to it.”

“Of course… Commander.”

Jake held up his hand in protest. “Alright, I get the point… Cindy.” He laughed. “Remind me when this is over, I owe you a coffee.”

Cindy blushed at that, and appeared demure and uncertain all at once. “Uh… yeah… I’d like that, Com… Jake.” She turned to the exposed circuitry next to them and began hastily working with the tricorder.

A sense of confusion filled Jake for a moment. Something had just happened, but he was unsure of what. Uncertain, he scratched his head, and decided to let it go for the moment. There was work to be done - he would figure it out later.

They worked in awkward silence for a few minutes. Then, Cindy finally spoke. She had moved off a ways, systematically examining panel after panel, while Jake did the same on the opposite wall. “S… Jake. I think I found something here,” she called.

“Yeah?” Jake asked still watching his tricorder.

“I think I may have found the original access point of our intruder.”

That got his attention. Jake turned to Cindy, surprised. “How?”

“Well, it was buried under the data, and the virus as supposed to have erased all traces, but they left some markers that I thought to look for,” she stated. “Whoever they are, they were good… but I’m better,” she grinned. “I’m running a probe right now. We should know momenta…” A whine cut off her words. Startled, she turned to the panel in front of her. It began to spark.

“Cindy! Get out of…” Jake began to yell, but it was too late. A moment later, the panel exploded in front of her, sending the girl falling back in a shower of sparks. Dropping his tricorder, Jake rushed to her while barking into his badge. “Medical Emergency! Lock in on my signal – two to transport!” He reached the girl and knelt down next to her, assessing her condition. “Cindy!” The world around him was shimmering…

=/\=
Location: USS DISCOVERY
Scene: Medbay

And a moment later he found that he was in sickbay, still kneeling over her. Commander Reardon was there rushing to them, just as Cindy was groaning in response.

The doctor ran her scanner over Cindy as her eyes fluttered. “What happened?” She asked groggily?

“Explosion,” Jake said, relieved. He looked up at Reardon.

“It doesn’t look like she sustained any permanent injuries… a concussion and some scratches, but we can take care of that,” she reassured him. “I’ll take care of her, Crichton. You talk to the Captain; he’ll want to know what happened.

Trembling slightly from the rush of adrenaline, he tapped his badge. ““Crichton to Captain Kane.”

[[Go ahead.]] Kane’s reply came.

“Sir… there was an accident. Nothing serious, but Lt. Rochemonte sustained some injuries.” He hesitated.

Kane sensed the reason for his hesitation. [[You can speak openly, Commander,]] he reassured him.

“Sir… whoever did this did not want to be found. I think he may have set up a booby trap around his access point, which Lt. Rochemonte stumbled on to. Whoever this is, they may not want to harm the station, but they’re certainly not going to give themselves up without a fight.”

Kane was silent for a moment. [[I see. Stay with Rochemonte and let me know when she is ambulatory. Report in after your team finishes their investigations.]]

“Understood sir. Crichton out.” Jake turned back to the two women. Cindy was sitting up now, and the doctor was treating her injuries. She had managed to escape any serious injuries… but if it had been a little more powerful… Jake shook his head and leaned against the medical bed to steady himself.

Who was this mystery hacker, and what was he or she after?

=/\=
NRPG:
*Dramatic Outro music, and cut to commercial*
FROM SHAWN: Please add apmumaw@gmail.com to the mailing list. He's a friend of mine named Adam who also wanted to observe the game.

Shawn Putnam
a.k.a.
Jake Crichton, Commander
Chief Engineering Officer
USS DISCOVERY

And

Christopher B. Del Gesso
As
Cindy Rochemonte, Lieutenant
Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
USS DISCOVERY