Chapter 67

Once they were back in the commander's office, Luke sat at the computer and opened a high security file. He now looked at the others, "Jeff, this needs to be treated like a Special Op back home."

"Yes sir."

"So what are our goals in this OP?"

Jeff thought for a moment, "First and foremost, not getting any of our people killed."

Everyone just nodded their heads. Jeff continued, "Then deactivating, distracting or destroying the satellites. At a set time."

Commander Ahmed looked at them, "We also have to distract the Corvettes, somehow."

Lennon now looked at them, "And not letting anyone know that we did it."

Luke nodded, "OK, those sound like good starting points. But we also have to figure out a way to get the people off of Babylon 4 safely."

Commander Ahmed looked at him, "How do we do that sir?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know."

Lennon looked at them, "Well I am sure that they do get off, or did get off. Because there were not any humans on board it when it arrived."

Commander Ahmed looked at him, "Arrived? Arrived where sir?"

Luke, Jeff and Lennon looked at each other. Now Luke looked at her, "Commander, do you know any Minbari history?"

"No sir, I haven't had much time to review the history of the various races here sir."

Luke turned to Lennon, then Lennon proceeded to give her the short version of the history of the last shadow war, and the history of Valen. Then Luke and Lennon held up the two parchment letters. After she saw them, she just had to ask, "Are you sure that Valen wrote them Lennon?"

Lennon looked at her, "I believe so, because I was given both of these letters by a priest from the House of Mir."

Now Jeff and Shannaz both looked perplexed, finally Jeff just had to ask. "How could someone who lived a thousand years ago know not only about you Lennon, but about us as well? And when we would need to pull off our distraction."

"I do not know Jeff. But he did know, and he was believed to be the wisest of all Minbari everywhere."

Luke just looked at the others. "That doesn't matter right now. What matters is what we have to do and how we're going to do it."

The others just nodded. "So how do we disable this many satellites in such a short time."

Jeff looked at Luke, "Maybe we should contact Hershel."

Lennon shook his head, "I'm afraid that she and her team are somewhere out of communications range. The system they are in has a rather unique make up, which not only prevents hyperspace travel into the area, but it also disrupts normal communications. We would have to send a ship there and with the total travel time." he just shook his head a little.

Now Jeff and Shannaz looked at each other and Jeff just nodded his head. Shannaz now looked at Luke, "I know you probably won't like this sir, but what about Sargent Herasuta?"

Luke put his head down for a second and groaned softly, "How did I know you two would suggest him?"

Jeff just looked at Luke, "He is the best sir, after Hershell. What with our limited time frame and all."

"Yeah, I know your right, but him, really?"

Shannaz was smiling now, "Sir, you know that no one proved that it was Sargent Herasuta that did it sir."

Luke just looked at them, with a frustrated look on his face ."Of course they couldn't prove it. That's how I know it was him."

Lennon looked perplexed. "What are you all talking about?"

Jeff looked at him, "Sorry about that Lennon. We're talking about one of our computer techs. It seems that he has a small attitude toward authority figures."

Luke just looked at Jeff, "Small?"

Jeff smiled but continued, "And every once in a while he reminds people of it."

"How so?"

Jeff looked at Luke, and Luke just nodded. "Go ahead and show him."

Shannaz went to another terminal and activated a defunct screen scrubber. Lennon saw a scantily clad woman with Luke's head dancing and jiggling across the screen. He couldn't help but chuckle a little, but he quickly caught himself. "Well I could see how that could be considered, ah, less than flattering."

Jeff was just smiling,"The funny thing is, that the person who did this, did it while the system was active and running. They also left no electronic fingerprints. One second the system was normal and the next." and he pointed at the screen.

Luke smiled now, "And it took the computer people 6 weeks to get it off our systems. Or so they thought, it still pops up every now and then. It's like it's hiding from them."

Lennon looked at Luke, "And where is the person who may have done this?"

Luke smiled, "Well, he is currently doing robotic maintenance on one of our mining vessels."

"And how long will it take to get him back here?"

"No more than a day."

"Good. So what's next?"

Luke looked at Lennon, "Now hold up Lennon, there's no guarantee that he'll help us."

"That is true, but while we await his arrival, we should continue to formulate our plans."

Luke and the others knew he was right. They then started to come up with idea's for the other parts of the mission, while Commander Ahmed placed a call to the mining ship.

20 hours later:

Sargent Herasuta stepped off the shuttle and saw 4 MP's waiting for him. He just smiled, "Now what does the Admiral think I did?"

The MP's marched up to him and the Lt just looked at him. "Come along Sargent. Your presence has been requested at an urgent meeting."

Sargent Herasuta smiled, "Well I'm game. Let's go boys."

The group then marched to a hover truck and they all got in the back. The truck drove to an isolated area and when it stopped, the Lt let the Sargent out. "Good luck Sarge." and the truck left.

Sargent Herasuta looked around and saw Jeff Grove waiting in a doorway. Jeff came over, "Hi Matt, how was your trip in?"

He smiled, "Can't complain sir, I won 100 creds off the crew playing poker." and they went into the office.

"Does that mean you're in a good mood?"

Sargent Herasuta just looked at him, "I swear sir, I haven't done anything this time."

Jeff just put up a hand to stop him. "I know Matt, this time we need your expertise. And believe it or not, the Admiral wants you to mess up our stuff on purpose."

Now Sargent Herasuta just looked at him, "Yeah right."

Then he heard the Admiral, "Yes Sargent, that is right. We need someone who can find a weakness in our programing and take advantage of it."

Sargent Herasuta just slowly turned around and looked at the Admiral on the desk monitor, the man looked deadly serious. "You wouldn't happen to know anyone who could do that, would you sargent?"

Sargent Herasuta started to sweat a little, "Well, uh, maybe sir."

Now he saw the Admiral smile, "Excellent." and Sargent Herasuta let out the breath he was holding.

Jeff led Sgt Herasuta to the hidden hanger that had become the planning area. He saw a few people he knew and others he didn't. He was more than a little shocked to see a few Minbari men there as well. He looked at Jeff Grove, "Sir, what the hell is going on?"

"Well Matt, we currently have two hundred and sixty sensor satellites in a pattern around the B-4 Station. We need to disable those satellites at a specific time, for a specific amount of time. We also can't leave any traces of tampering and we have less than two weeks to plan everything and be in position."

Matt just looked at him, "Sir, there's no way anyone could take out that many satellites with less than a months lead time."

Now the Admiral came up behind them, "I told you he couldn't do it Jeff. I knew he would wuss out then whimper and whine like a little girl. He's so useless, we should send him back to the mining ship. After all, he's only able to work on the robotic systems."

Sargent Herasuta nearly snapped his neck twisting to look at the Admiral. His face had a hard expression on it. "Oh that's it. You're so on."

Sargent Herasuta dropped his bag and just walked over to a terminal, cleared the screen and started typing.

The Admiral smiled at Jeff and he spoke softly, "I thought that would work."

The others just watched as the Sargent kept opening more and more screens. He was typing lines of code faster than most people could follow. He only stopped to hit the head, pace, and to drink more coffee. He was constantly pacing and talking softly to himself. Occasionally he would glance over at the Admiral. Finally after almost 8 straight hours, he pushed himself away from the terminal.

Jeff looked at him, "Taking a break? You look like you could use one."

Now he saw that Sargent Herasuta was smiling as he stretched, "It's doable sir. But there may be a hitch."

"Really, what sort of hitch?"

"The satellites can be reprogrammed like you want with a small work around worm and a mini loop. But it's the inserting them that's going to be a problem."

The Admiral came up then, "Don't worry about the inserting Sargent. We can figure out a way for you to do it. Just what sort of a work around are you thinking about?"

He just looked at the Admiral, "We use the satellites own programing against them for our benefit. The time frame you gave me was for at least 15 minutes, at a specific time. "

"Go on Sargent."

"Well sir, 15 minutes is the same amount of time that the satellites are down for their routine diagnostics cycle once every three days. So the work around would set up all of the satellites to go into their maintenance cycle at the same time, instead of at their normal set increments."

Now Lennon looked at him, "I am not that familiar with your peoples systems, but would that not set off some type of alarm, or alert the crews of the ships?"

Sargent Herasuta smiled, "Normally, yes. But that's what the mini loop is for. Before the satellites go into their maintenance cycles, we have them record their normal readouts for 20 seconds, then set the recording to loop. Then the satellites play these loops a total of 49 times. Once all 49 loops have played, and the satellites have completed their diagnostic cycles, the altered programing auto wipes."

The Admiral smiled at the Sargent's plan, "And there is no evidence of what happened to the satellites programing."

"No sir."

Sargent Herasuta saw the Admiral smile, "Good work Sargent. Do what you have to to finalize the programing, then get some rest. You earned it."

Sargent Herasuta just looked at the Admiral, "Sir, the programing is just the first and easiest part of the problem. The really big part of the problem is how we deliver it."

"Why?"

Sargent Herasuta rubbed his eyes, and then realized that everyone was looking at him. He took a deep breath, "The way Commander Langford and I programmed the satellites."

The Admiral stopped him, "You programmed them?"

"Yes sir. Commander Langford said she wanted the best possible protection for them, so she figured that if I programed them, well..."

The Admiral just nodded, "Makes sense, so you were saying."

"Yes sir, the way that their programed. The satellites will only accept updates from the lead ship of whichever group is stationed there. When a new group of personnel transfer in, or a new group of ships transfer in, the outgoing lead vessel's CO sends a specific signal to any one of the satellites. The satellite sends back a response, then the CO uploads the new personnel or ships ID codes. The satellite processes the data and then sends it to the next satellite in the net, which processes it and sends it along and so on and so on. Until all 260 satellites have received the new Intel. When the new data signal has completed the loop, the first satellite that was contacted sends another codded response to both the old lead ship and the new lead ship acknowledging the updated Intel. Which then both ships must reply to properly, or the security alarm will be tripped and the new data is deleted. Once the initiating satellite receives the two codded responses, the satellite sends another codded signal to the satellite net to activate the new data. This data processing takes about 15 seconds per satellite, or 63 minutes total. And after that, the satellites will only accept commands from the lead ship, unless it's listed as destroyed, then the satellites follow the chain of command lists that have been uploaded."

Jeff just shook his head, "And we just rotated our ships a week ago. The next cycle isn't for three weeks."

Sargent Herasuta just nodded, "Yes sir, I saw that."

The Admiral looked at Sargent Herasuta, "Sargent, how hard would it be to insert the programing, if you had all of the necessary IFF and command codes of the lead ship?"

Sargent Herasuta thought for a few seconds, "If I had the right codes, then it would be easier. But it will still take 63 minutes to do the updating. All command updates have to follow the same data entry procedure. Any unknown ship would be vulnerable for the 63 minutes, since it can't move or it might not receive the completed response signal."

The Admiral looked at Commander Ahmed, then he turned and smiled at Sargent Herasuta "Sargent, meet your new skipper."

She looked at Sargent Herasuta , "Welcome to the crew of the CCS Spectre Sargent."

He was a little surprised, "Uh thank you Commander."

"Oh by the way Sargent, how good are you with holograms?"

He just looked at her quizzically.

The Admiral just looked at his people, "Well we can do the satellites, now we have to figure a way to distract the corvettes."

Commander Ahmed smiled, "That may not be a problem sir."

"Really Commander? How so?"

She looked at Lennon, "Lennon asked me how our cloaking field worked sir, and I gave him the abbreviated version. How it takes the various EM wavelengths that hit the field, and projects them from the opposite side of the field."

"Go on."

"Well Luke, I asked if it would be possible to project a different image through the field. Something similar to a hologram."

Luke looked at the two of them, "That's brilliant. I wonder why Hershel didn't think of that."

Jeff smiled, "She probably did, but didn't think we would ever need it."

Luke just looked at Jeff, then nodded, "Yeah, she probably did. So what should we make her look like?"

Lennon smiled, "We can have your people download all the scans I gave you on the Drahk ships. We could make it look like one of theirs."

Luke smiled now, "I'm starting to like this plan people. Let's get everything moving, we've got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in."