Ensign Knight- Interceptions
Ethan Goodnight
(( Intelligence lab 13, Deck 13, U.S.S Atlantis, Par’tha Expanse ))
:: Knight sat in the intelligence lab bored out of his mind, he had been doing the same thing ever since the mission to Lydor V. What had once been exciting process of intercepting signals about the expanse turned to a repetitive status, Intercept……Analyze…. Decrypt. Most of it turned out to be pointless, chatter between one world or another, docking requests from far away planets, the same messages just in different words. The most valuable of his interceptions were form the VIR and Caraadain houses but anything from them was heavily encrypted and beyond recognition. For their disorganized state, Knight had to give the Houses credit, for all differences amongst themselves their communications networks were surprisingly well defended. Even his music was starting to seem repetitive to him, taking a break from his work he began to look up more classical earth music. ::
o0 Queens…..i wonder if that’s any good? 0o
:: His search was interrupted by an alarm flashing angrily at him, drawing it up on his workstation. He recognized it as a transmission he had intercepted from the VIR almost a week ago. he’d been running a decryption program on it that he got from a collogue some time ago. It hadn’t decrypted much just a few words, looking over them a word jumped out at him “Battlegroup”. Thinking to himself he drew up another intercepted transmission from the same source location, it was similarly encrypted, and he was only able to recognize a portion it as well. What he could read from the second transmission read “In position”. ::
Knight: Computer, access intercepted transmissions from 2395.27 to 2395. 30. Authorization Knight B23D217.
Computer: Access granted, what is the nature of inquiry.
Knight: What is volume percentage of transmissions picked up from…:: Reading from his console :: Quadrant Whiskey Four Four Three?
Computer: Transmissions picked up from that sector within allotted time frame is at 22.7 percent of total volume.
:: Anything above seventeen percent was unusually high, even for larger quadrants. He looked up the coordinates on his console, they were located on the edge VIR space in the system known as Delica. Knight took a moment to ponder on this recent development when a realization donned on him. ::
(( Deck 1, Captain Brell’s Office, U.S.S Atlantis, Par’Tha Expanse ))
:: Knight waited impatiently to the response to his command he had made on the console just outside the Captains office. Finally, hearing Brells voice to enter he rushed into the office with a PADD in each hand. ::
Knight: Capt’ I need to show you something
:: Taking a moment to look at the Captain he realized that Brell was already entertaining company ::
Brell/Williams: Responses
Knight: Right, Sir….Sirs. Its very important and in my opinion perishable.
Brell/Williams: Responses
Knight: If you’ll look at this report I made some time ago, you’ll find the war between the Houses and the VIR has reached a stalemate and it has become a resource race. With the Houses struggling to build more sophisticated warships as fast as possible and the VIR trying to keep their superior but fewer in number ships a float while trying to build more. Well, not a float more like alive, no….you know what I mean sir.
Brell/Williams: Responses
Knight: Exactly right :: Pulling up another report on his other PADD :: And if you remember this report I made detailing how communications are set up along the trade routes to avoid distortions made by special debris and anomalies. Which means we can pick up almost all of the comms traffic from just about everywhere, from the right the right locations. The only draw back of this is that the factions of the Expanse know this and take great lengths to encrypt their transmissions. And anything we intercept over this network is severely degraded, because of the long distances the transmissions travel over. As a result we can decrypt about five percent of transmissions we come across, which doesn’t mean a lot on the small scale but gives us a better look at the bigger picture.
Brell/Williams: Responses
Knight: Not wasting your time Sirs, I’m coming to a point I promise. :: Taking the original PADD from the Cpt, drawing up another report on the map of the expanse. :: If you’ll look here this is the Delica system, it holds no strategic or tactical values however we’ve picked up a 5.7 percent increase in transmission volume from there in the last few days. A rough estimate for that amount of chatter is around twenty or so starships, which is far above normal for any defense forces templates used by the VIR. If you’ll look here the system in question is only a short jump from a Caraadain industrial planet known as Derex, which is a vital resource junction for the Houses. And I was able to decrypt certain words from the Delica system from two transmissions over the past few days, “Battlegroup” and “In Position”.
Brell/Williams: Responses