The Midship Mystery

Posted on 06 May 2012 @ 12:13pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil

1,704 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Security Office
Timeline: MD 03 - 1430 hrs

[ON]

Lamar paused just outside of the main security office. The exploratory adventure through the ship which he and Lilou had gone on the previous night had been great fun, and he had learned much about the ship's deck layout. Unfortunately, there was no hiding the strange discovery that they had made in the armory, and it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the same problem. Protocol dictated that he was required to notify the security department of any strange occurrences or potential breaches in ship security, so he had taken it upon himself to be the one to report it, preferring to leave Lilou out of it and not mention the secret access hatch that she had discovered.

With a tug on his uniform to straighten it, he tapped the door's keypad and the secure door unlocked and parted with a swish. Lamar stepped into the security office and looked around. It was small. Tiny would be a better word to describe it. Due to the small nature of Nova Class starships and the scientific nature of the ship, most aspects of the security department had been compacted into miniature size. Never was this more apparent than right now, as Lamar stood inside the room and looked around. The brig was actually right in front of him and connected to the chief's office, and only two vacant holding cells were available to contain any unruly crew or guests. After taking in his surroundings, the chief of the boat walked around the standing brig console and into the rear room where he tapped the door chime to the security chief's office.

"Enter," Kestra called, finishing reading the last of the training session notes Pawlak had compiled. They were improving speedily. She had no concerns over their tactical abilities, but their group think left much to be desired. Hopefully, giving them a few hours rest would allow the lessons of the day to sink in for them. She looked up as she finished the end of the report, "Good afternoon."

Lamar stepped inside when he head a voice summon him, the doors opening then closing behind him with a hiss. He took notice of a gold-collared woman with dark red dreadlocks sitting behind the desk, and he approached her before clasping his hands behind his back and standing at attention. "Good afternoon, Ma'am." he said in a professional manner, "I apologize for disturbing you but I...happened to discover a malfunction in the security grid on Deck 3, Section 5....specifically the armory" he said.

"It's no trouble-" Kestra straightened, turning to her console and pulling up the security grid. If there were a problem, why hadn't any of her people picked up on it? They ran a diagnostic scan at the beginning of every shift. "I'm not seeing malfunctions. Show me what you found."

Lamar nodded and moved around to the side of the desk where he bent down and reached over to access her screen. He tapped several button sequences and brought up a schematic of each security relay, finally finding the one which controlled Section 1 to 25 on Deck 3. "Here we go, have a look at this." he said, pointing to the screen which now showed that the relay had been rerouted and was being fed back into itself, in effect bypassing the armory. "I noticed it early this morning when I was doing my walk-through of the ship." he added, careful to leave Lilou's name out of his report. He liked her and didn't want to inadvertently implicate her in any wrongdoing.

Kestra stared at the evidence he presented. "How did you find this? We've run diagnostics and done walk throughs every shift since I came on board."

"Well...it's a bit of a strange story actually," he began as he cleared his throat and casually stepped back, leaning against the wall. "Like I said, I was doing my walk-through at about zero-hundred hours and I happened to run into a fellow crewman. She was an engineer, you see, and I'm rather new on Galileo so I asked for her help in finding my way through the decks." he said, then paused to take a breath before continuing. "So we were on Deck 3 when she mentioned to me an access hatch that led into the armory. I asked to take a look so we climbed through, only to notice that the security grid wasn't online...or at least, it didn't appear to be."

Kestra stood up slowly. "That's where you went? When you went through the wall hatch on this floor, it led you into the armory?" She tapped her com badge. =^=Pawlak, report to the security office and take over the console here. I want a full report on all unconventional access paths to all secure areas by the end of the day.=^= She crossed around the desk, "I need you to show me where it came out."

With a nod, the red-collared man walked out of the office and into the corridor with Kestra in tow. It was only several paces before they arrived at the end of the junction and he came to a stop at the armory's large gray door. With several taps on the door's keypad, he input his security code and the locks disengaged to allow the doors to swish open. Lamar stepped inside and moved into the middle of the room, then pointed up at the ceiling at the ventilation shaft. "That's where the access hatch comes out. It's not easy to get to and you have to take apart one of the ventilation assemblies." he said.

"Sneaky little minx," Kestra muttered, eyeing the ventilation shaft. "She should have told me." Why hadn't she? That was a question for another time. Another time soon. "So you came out through there... and then you noticed that the security protocol had been re-routed?" She went to the console and started sorting through the files there. "Rabicci?"

"Pretty much." he replied, confirming her analysis of his discovery. "Rabicci is the last crewman in the log. But he's not stationed aboard Galileo...must have come aboard at Starbase 234, maybe he's part of station security?" he said, suggesting what he thought was the most likely scenario.

"Except there was no reason for any member of station security to come on board the Galileo at the two-three-four. And absolutely no cause or permission for any such officer to access the ship's armory." She tapped her com badge, =^=Davis, report to the armory. I want a detailed accounting of our weapon and arms stores, disregarding console accounting.=^= Shaking her head slightly, she looked back at Darius. There was a disturbing lack of answers, but at present it was the principle of the matter that irked her. So far, there was no proof that anything was amiss. It could have been a prank, or a false log, or any number of things. But until she knew for certain, it was going to trouble her. "Do you know why don't we have timestamps for when these logs occur? Is that another part of the security re-route, or a software oversight by the designers of non-military vessels?" she asked, hoping maybe his experience would provide some of the answers she didn't readily have.

Lamar frowned and walked over to the nearby console, then brought up the access logs to the armory before looking at Kestra and motioning her to come over. "All logs should be dated since LCARS records every entry and query. But this last one occurred within the last twenty-four hours....looks like," he paused as he tapped a couple more buttons, "1400 hours yesterday." he said.

Kestra eyed the console he was looking at, then returned to the main security console by the door and scanned the information there. Neat trick, she thought. Somehow there were whole pockets of information missing from the main console that no one had removed from the auxiliary console. Pulling out her PADD, she organized an LCARS cross-reference between the two consoles and stacked the collected arbitrarily removed data into one file. Dates and times of armory access, vid feeds from the armory, data routing and patrol information, and alarm notifications. Someone had been very clever and then forgotten about the auxiliary system running off the backup drives. Clever and not so clever. Who knew what other damage Rabicci, or whoever it was, had done to her systems. She sent the stacked data to the main security console and began a download of the data from the auxiliary console to the main security console outside of the regular ODN route. If the auxiliary system's information was accurate, the infiltration should have taken place while they'd been in port on the station, but she couldn't be sure that the information was trustworthy. Not until they'd scanned the drives thoroughly for tampering. She looked at Darius, "Thank you for bringing this breach to my attention." She paused. "You don't happen to know anyone in station operations on two-three-four, do you?"

"Afraid not, Ma'am." he answered with a shake of his head. "I wasn't stationed there, just spent a day or so between deployments while waiting for Galileo to arrive. Never really got the chance to know any of the personnel." he added.

"Neither did I," she sighed, shook her head, and leveled a calm, grateful look at him. "I'll take it from here and inform you when I have more information. Thank you again. Was there anything else?"

"No that's it, everything else seemed secure enough during my walk-through last night." he answered as he slowly walked towards the door. "But you'll be the first to know if I find anything else, Lieutenant." he added with a sideways grin, giving her a mock-salute and heading back out through the armory doors.

Kestra watched him go and lifted her chin as Davis slipped into the armory past him. "Let me know what you find. I'll be in my office, reviewing the data from the consoles."

--

[OFF]

LT JG Kestra Orexil
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

MCPO Lamar Darius
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo
NPC'd by Lirha Saalm

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