Asking the Impossible

Posted on Fri Apr 30th, 2021 @ 11:52am by Colonel Sehan t'Varis & Lieutenant Xia Idris

600 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Chapter IV: Unravelling the Mystery
Location: Bridge, Ourainavassa
Timeline: 238702.14

After meeting with the Chief Engineer, Raven made her final call of the day, and headed to the bridge. The room was nearly deserted, since the ship was in dock, and only a handful of people were at their stations. The console that she had been thrown into had been replaced, she noticed, and most of the bridge had been cleaned up.

She quickly strode over to Lieutenant Xia, who was, as usual, focussed on her work. "Lieutenant Xia. How are things?"

Xia looked up from where she had removed a panel and flipped her dark hair from her dark eyes. “Not too bad, considering,” she told the captain. “Just replacing a few blown circuits. The new UT matrix is working well. Definitely worth pimping out Dr. Kaol for,” she said with a smirk as she straightened up and brushed her hands clean on her pants.

Raven chuckled. "Glad to hear it paid off. How bad is the damage to the comms system? I have a job for you, and I need to know the comms array is in full working order before we can even try and do it."

“Nothing too bad,” Xia mused. “I would say half a day, at most, to have everything up and running. And that’s on standard work shifts. You want it faster, we could call all hands and half that, maybe.

The colonel nodded. "There's no rush. Tell me, Lieutenant. How good are you at remotely hacking into systems?"

Xia shrugged. “I’m pretty good,” she said. “Depends on what system you’re looking to get into,” she admitted.

"You will need to be very good," Raven replied. "I want you to see if you can hack into the systems of the research station at Hobus. If you can't, which I fully expect due to the heavy shielding, see if you can access the Tal Shiar central records archive. I want to know what they are doing there. And what Vulture has to do with it."

“Hack the Tal Shiar?” Xia said with surprise. “I am not sure anyone has ever done that, Raven,” she had to admit. “Especially remotely. If I had physical access, that might be possible. Even then, we’re talking top level encryption and firewalls.”

"Are you telling me you can't do it, Lieutenant?" Raven said, feigning disappointment. "And here I thought you were the best. We have an uplink to their central computers, this is a Tal Shiar ship, after all."

Xia paused. “Well, if you have that, yes, I can do it then,” she said. “That’s like handing over the keys. Though the question is if you want to leave fingerprints all over the system.”

"That is where your expertise comes in. I know using our uplink is risky, but I am sure you can mask the access somehow. Make it look like we only accessed files that we actually have access to? I don't know, make it look like I'm vetting my crew or something." Raven shrugged. "You're an expert, I am sure you can cover your tracks."

Xia nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” she said. “When do you need it done? I’ll start working on it now, some mundane access to poke at things before I dive in deep.”

"Ideally?" Raven shrugged. "In a perfect world, it'd be done yesterday. Just get it done as soon as you can."

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Xia said, giving a cocksure salute.

"It's Colonel. But you know that." Raven chuckled. "If there is anything else I can do for you, just say the word."

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