9: Breech Of Dawn
by Chaoseternus

Trust is broken and the rules rewritten when traitors are revealed and secrets released.

Chapter 6: Jammy Dodgers and Code-breakers

MTB Griffin (Sol PDF Variant)

Sub-Lieutenant Tyler glanced proudly over the bridge of his new command, they had launched just four days ago and now after extensive acceptance trials they were finally on the roster.

They were now an official component of the Sol system Planetary Defence Forces, joining the MTB Chimera and two Lancer Solar squadrons, 177 'Cobra's', 194 'Reavers' as Earths sole permanent line of defence.

Tyler didn't count Thundersdawn, she was a sitting duck, unable to move, if a serious attack came she could be bypassed, and disposed of at leisure.

A noise made Tyler turn to his left in time to see his systems operator, CPO Moore slam upwards in his seat, shook written across his face.

" Christ! We just crossed a com-laser line"

"What?!?" Tyler shouted startled, "we don't have any sats or ships in this area to com-laser with"

Moore nodded, taping furiously at his console. The readouts refused to change.

"Its pretty definite sir, com-laser trace"

Tyler began frantically barking out orders, consternation running through his mind, whoever was using the com-laser wasn't authorised, or he would know about it. That meant trouble.

"All stop relative! Sensors to maximum sensitivity! Turn us 180 on the spot please helm, thrusters only, take us back dead on our old course and slowly, we don't want to pass right over the blighter"

"Aye cap" Petty Officer White replied, frantically working his console, desperately trying not to get things wrong on his first day on helm.

It was fifteen minutes before they caught the com-laser again, recording the final 30 seconds before the laser shut down, its message sent.

But it was enough; they had followed the laser line carefully and found the sending satellite.

It was Goa'uld.

And triangulation placed the receiver as being in Earth orbit.

RSS Thundersdawn

"Right" Peters said, charging into Loading Bay 4, a bay created and reserved for use with anything potentially dangerous to the station, "What do we have here?"

"A Goa'uld satellite, no markings to indicate the Goa'uld it was manufactured for, but the message buffer was still intact, Intel are on that now, it appears that because of the distance the beam was designed to travel, they were not only setting it up to transmit real slow, which is why Griffin was able to find the beam again, but also they expected frequent repeat signals"

"Hence a buffered signal" Peters nodded, "Good work Mr Schwartz"

"Yes Ma'am"

"Mr" Peters lips curled up "'Smith', any luck with the decode"

The unremarkable looking individual shrugged, "Not much as yet, but it reads like an attack warning, like someone is telling their agents to hide out for a while because they are coming, that's not definite though, we're working on it"

Peters eyebrows disappeared into her hairline, "An attack warning? I think you had best hurry"

"Indeed Ma'am" Smith replied, a cold smile hiding behind his dark, unforgiving eyes.

Deep beneath St Athan, far below the prying eyes of the reporters, the protestors and the alien nuts above, full eleven levels below the ground a large number of mainframes rested. The RSS Central Computer Repository was home to 24 top of the range servers and 6 Cray-12 class supercomputers making it the most powerful computer centre in existence, even if its existence was denied.

In here, computers whirred and clicked, LCD monitors tracking CPU load outs and available storage space as new commands were networked down from the workstations above.

The whirring grew louder as the Crays switched on, running diagnostics as they prepped for the task they had just been ordered to complete, fans speeding up to accommodate the extra heat load.

With a distinct click, the Crays sped into gear, downloading a small chunk of data from the servers, chewing the corrupt and encrypted file over, processing it to a fair-thee-well.

15 minutes later, they spat out their results, and far above them, an alarm sounded in the quiet, still corridors of RSS Command, St Athan.