Chapter VII
Commander Petrovic fought off a yawn as she walked to the centre chair of the bridge. She had expected things to be slow today, seeing as how this was the first day any of them were on duty and how the crew was still a skeleton. Instead, when she arrived on the bridge at a little before 0758 hours, the first officer rattled off a series of orders that made it sound like a serious security breach occurred the night before. Unsure of what to make of it, she carried out her instructions to the letter (although she had to get some help from the Andorian chief engineer, Raleev, to verify the status of the repairs).
"I've finished looking over the guest records and checking the work orders with the work done," Petrovic said, handing Smyne a PADD. "It all checks out and according to the engineer, nothing on the work orders is the least bit unusual. Now, can you tell me what this was about?"
"Look, Commander, I'm just following orders, same as you," Smyne replied as he took her PADD and glossed over it. He was just finishing up the same report he had assigned to Petrovic, but it was taking him a bit longer because he inspected the repairs himself instead of deferring to Raleev. So far he found no discrepancies between her report and the one he was finishing. She had passed his test of trust, and he briefly considered mentioning it to Captain Pavlik. He dismissed it. Pavlik would only want to know if she failed.
"You are aware that I'm the chief of security, right?" Petrovic commented, before Smyne had finished with her report. "I should be at least told if this is a drill or not."
"If this is just a drill, it's the finest one I've ever seen. I can offer no explanation for the irregularities in the sensor logs that I've found."
This prompted Smyne to get out of the chair and look at Kristen Ferris, who had been quietly working at the Ops station until she chimed in. When she looked up and saw her two senior officers staring at her intently, she snapped rigidly straight, began hitting commands and directed their attention to the view screen.
"At 2230 hours last night, the internal sensor record until 2234 shows nothing out of the ordinary... except for the fact it is exactly the same as the records for 2226 to 2230. As you can see from the visual representation, there is a jump in the surveillance data." Ferris said as the video of the guests in the mess milling about showed a distinct change in the blink of an eye.
"So someone looped the sensor readings to cover what happened between 2230 and 2234," Petrovic said as she watched the video feed. She looked over her shoulder at Ferris. "Do you have any idea when the records were tampered with? Any leads as to whom?"
Ferris knitted her brow. "Nothing definitive as to the who or how. The when is the only thing I can tell you with any hint of accuracy. The loop was occurring as it happened, so they must have been on a timer. That means I can speculate on the who and how, but like I said; nothing definitive."
Before Petrovic could ask more questions, the door to the ready room swished open and the captain stepped out. He glanced at the view screen and then at Ferris.
"Did you finish your report, Lieutenant?"
"Yes sir."
"Good, in my ready room. You too, Smyne. Petrovic, you have the bridge."
Pavlik disappeared behind his ready room doors. Smyne waited for Ferris to walk in first before he went on his way. Petrovic made a step towards the room and Smyne stopped and looked at her sternly. She froze.
On Pavlik's ultra-thin display Ferris ran through the footage from mess hall and Ferris caught him up to speed.
"Well, Lieutenant, please speculate."
"There are two places aboard the vessel where something like this could be done," Kristen explained, keying up a pair of new feeds. "The bridge and main engineering. As you can see, both were empty at the time."
"Wait a minute, how do you know the records were not tampered with there? Maybe after the fact?" asked Smyne.
Kristen grinned. "Excellent question, sir. Internal sensors don't record all the data they possibly could register, but certain things - like the air quality - are constantly monitored at the highest possible sensitivity. Even an empty bridge will have unique sensor readings over any few minute span.
"As the captain will tell you, it's virtually impossible to have a true random number generator. I let the computer search for every algorithm I knew of and came up with nothing. So even if they managed to cover their tracks better than they did in the mess hall, they wouldn't have been able to create readings that would fool the algorithm test.
"So, I would say that I am almost entirely sure that the sensor data was not altered from the two places on the ship that could do it."
"Any more speculation, then, Lieutenant?" Pavlik asked, smiling slightly.
"The only other option is remotely, sir," Kristen replied with a shrug. "And I simply don't see how that could be done. It would require the prefix code, which is not only unique to each senior staff officer, but when used is permanently etched into the ship's logs. It can't be erased or lost, not through any means that would leave the computer core intact and functional.
"This would only leave some sort of programming back door that would allow this sort of thing. I have done a very preliminary search of the computer's operating system code looking for one, but I have come up empty. Frankly, sir, I couldn't conceive such a hole would exist."
"At least, not intentionally," Smyne added as he was looking at Felix. He looked back to Ferris. "Very nicely done, Lieutenant. I see why the captain wanted you aboard."
"Sir, I still have more."
"Very good, Lieutenant," Pavlik said, "please continue."
"As good as these people are, they're not perfect," Kristen explained, feeling particularly clever as she explained. "They made a mistake. You see, when a ship is out of dock, the detailed internal sensor readings are kept for only a day or so before they are erased due to lack of memory space. After the Changeling Scare, however, the policy for ships in shipyards or Starbases changed. These facilities have plenty of room for all the memory you could ever ask for and the internal sensor logs of ships in dock are all duplicated and later archived. So if anything's sabotaged, there is a chance the records can show how and where."
"So they failed to change the records in the shipyard database?"
"That's correct. And I believe I know why," Kristen answered. "Until two months ago, the duplication of the sensor records at Utopia Planetia occurred at the end of every day as they were wiped from the ship's core. When Fleet Captain Boyle took over, he changed the policy to have the sensor readings stream straight to the ship's core and the station's core."
"So the infiltrators just altered the ship's log because they assumed at the end of the day it would be transferred to the yard log." Smyne stated, nodding his head. "It is a good rule of thumb in the intelligence game to do the least amount of hacking required."
Pavlik nodded and smiled broadly at Kristen Ferris. "Excellent work, Ms. Ferris. Please show us the unadulterated sensor record."
"I'm afraid, sir, it raises only more questions," Kristen said as she called up the true files. "As you can see, at 2230, a woman - all life signs indicate a human woman - appear out of thin air just outside of the mess hall. Since she has absolutely no electronic identification on her, the computer could not log who she was. That combined made me think that this was who was trying to be hidden." She paused for a moment to gauge Pavlik's reaction. There was none she could read for certain. "I sifted through the log readings with a fine-tooth comb. Absolutely no evidence of a transporter beam."
"As for the end of the loop, at 2234?" Pavlik queried.
"Same thing. She was there standing beside you one second, then completely gone the next," Ferris answered as she fast-forward the footage. "No energy signature, no particle vacuum. No evidence of how she left the ship."
"And I'm assuming we have no useful information on the woman herself."
"Other than the visual image, no sir. Which, by the way, turns up nothing in the records, but I'm sure that's no shock. As you know, internal sensors are passive scans and identification is done through electronic means: combadges for Starfleet and APEX for the civilians. She was carrying neither."
"Did she have a UT implant?" Pavlik asked, referring to the universal translator device that virtually all Starfleet officers and most civilians have implanted so that they can speak or understand any language they encounter.
"If she did, it was not active," Ferris replied. "Otherwise I might be able to trace the signature back to a name."
"Is that all you have for us, lieutenant? Good work, you are dismissed."
Smyne waited for Ferris leave before he said, "What's with that look?"
"The intruder was a hologram," Pavlik said, allowing the mask of neutrality drop completely. He rubbed his eyes. Before Smyne could ask another question, he continued. "She said something to me that made me upset. And you know that when I get upset, I drop Federation Standard and speak Slovak. Without a UT implant..."
"Could she have fluency in that language?"
"There are no more than twenty million native speakers on Earth, in the neighbourhood of a hundred million who could speak a mutually-comprehensible language in the system out of a population in the tens of billions? So, she could, but it's a long shot. Given everything else, I'd say hologram is the safest bet."
"I've never heard of a hologram reading as a human," Smyne replied, thinking intensely. "And I'm pretty certain that the holo-emitters were reading offline though our time period."
"Given the level of technology required to do what we know they have done, it wouldn't surprise me if they had their own version of a mobile emitter. However, no known faction has that kind of technology and reverse-engineering the one brought back by Voyager has not gotten Starfleet Engineering anywhere yet. It's deeply disturbing that they have access to such superior technology."
"By 'they' I assume you mean Section 31."
"Hmm," Pavlik grunted positively. He had told Treyvin about his encounters with the black operations unit starting some years ago when they had first attempted to recruit him. Pavlik had withheld knowledge of Sloan's most recent visit to his apartment, but knew that he could not do so much longer if he was to get the most out of his First Officer's help.
The brief silence was broken by the door chime. Hardly before Pavlik uttered an annoyed "Come in," April Petrovic was through the door.
"Are you planning to let your chief of security in on what's going on?" she said in a fiery, borderline insubordinate tone.
"Sir," Smyne amended. When Petrovic looked blankly at the commander, Smyne opened his mouth to speak. Pavlik stopped him with a raised hand and a shaking of the head.
"This one is out of your pay grade, lieutenant commander," Pavlik replied. Motioning to Smyne, he continued: "We are assessing the situation and you will be the first to be consulted in the event of changing our security measures – on a strictly need to know basis. For now, you are to return to your station. Dismissed."
Petrovic gaped at her captain, who seemed very different than the friendly, rule-bending man who had convinced her to come aboard, before nodding curtly and retreating from the ready room.
"Wasn't Petrovic the only member of Red Squad to refuse to participate in sabotaging the central power facility during Leyton's attempted coup?" Smyne asked to break the quiet in the ready room. Pavlik nodded. "That kind of public rejection of the 'ends justify the means' philosophy makes it seem highly unlikely she would be affiliated. It would also make her seem to be a natural ally. I was assuming you were going to let her into this discussion."
"Well, I was, until that little display of impulsiveness," Pavlik said, motioning to the door.
"You are getting rigid in your middle age, Felix," Smyne countered with a grin. "What you call impulsiveness might be thought of as initiative."
"By whom? Morons? No, she may be in charge of security, but I am the captain. Everything that goes on this ship is my business, and I merely delegate most security tasks to her when I'm too busy to do it myself. The only reason initiative would be called for is if she had serious doubts about our competence, and I fail to see any justification for that."
"Maybe she read your profile."
Pavlik frowned at his first officer, but continued. "Right now, we should employ the utmost discretion. Unbridled enthusiasm simply will not do. I may let her in at some point, but not until she knows the difference between initiative and recklessness."
"Alright then." A pause. "So, skipper, what do you think we should do?"
"I don't know."