Watching Traffic

Posted on 10 Apr 2016 @ 3:05pm by Ensign James Langley

685 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 10 - Symposium
Location: USS Galileo, Deck 5, Intelligence Office
Timeline: MD 95, 1400 hours

ON:

"Good afternoon ensign." Tyrion smiled as he approached the intelligence officer while exiting his office. "I have an assignment for you, but it requires stealth and computer skill. Are you up for a special assignment?"

“Do I have to drop into a sound sensitive, pressure regulated, temperature monitored room devoid of my own perspiration or elevated body temperature with nary a sound more than my own heartbeat in order to get to a computer terminal to extract sensitive information,” he questioned with a smirk on his face. “Because I can think of at least one way to do that. But I suppose any special assignment would do if not.”

"Not quite," Tyrion smiled. "I need you to monitor the XO's comm traffic. There's something afoot, a danger to the admiral and others. I only have the barest of information at the moment and I need more before I can call a briefing and truely act on what we discovered. I want you to monitor who calls him, who he contacts, and how frequent. Don't pry into the content itself without security authorization, just monitor frequency. Also..if you discover anyone else listening in, I want to know about it."

James had to think for a moment. It sounded like a tricky situation for sure. “I suppose I could get that done without too many feats of logic and morality or stretches of the imagination. You basically want me to look at the face of the mail envelope without opening it? That seems safe enough. May I ask why, though? Cap' in a crunch?”

"If you mean Admiral Saalm, then yes I have reasons to believe she might be in danger. If you spot anything suspicious in Commander Holliday's communications I want to know about it, regardless of time of day. As soon as I have more concrete evidence, I will call a staff briefing. Ensign Circe is monitoring the admiral's communications for the same reason, while I continue to investigate the few leads I have."

“This sounds wishy washy to me,” his subordinate started before changing his line of thought. “I'd ask more but I fear it might land me in more trouble,” he continued, throwing his arms in the air and spinning in his chair. “So I'll do as you ask and not ask anything more. Just be sure to tell me anything else I might need to know. Right now I'm acting on intuition alone, which might not be enough.”

"I will keep you all updated as soon as I have more tangible leads. Such is the nature of our job ensign, sometimes a fishy lead is all we have to go on, but the deeper we dig, the more we discover. And I fear the admiral's life is on the line if we don't dig deeper."

“So am I fishing or am I digging,” James grinned in a toothy fashion.

"Both," the Betazoid grinned back, "gotta dig for worms first before you can throw a line, right?"

“You know what? You,” James pointed at Tyrion forcefully. “You. You're good. Dig it is then. And after that I'll see what I can fish up. I'll just have to keep my metaphors straight lest I accidentally go fishing with a spade.”

"Depends on what you want to catch." The Betazoid's smile widened. "Spades might catch you worms, you see..."

“OK. So shovel and fishing rod it is. And I'll be sure to let you know if I find any doozies. You know, if I end up digging up fish or something along those lines.” James didn't know what was more fun, keeping in the metaphors or messing them up. “But all things serious, in the interest of being thorough I'll be sure to log everything. Everything.”

"Yes please log everything, that way if matters go wrong you can prove it wasn't your doing. And you're acting on my orders, you should log that too when you get to work." Tyrion smiled. "That was all ensign."

OFF:

Ensign Tyrion Faye
Chief Intelligence Officer

Ensign James Langley
Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

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