Plank Sinatra
Snowdrops
FlappyTheSpybot
The World
ForsytheGM IC:
“Talk to me, Ensign.”
“I don’t know, sir!” Ensign Yelena Novikova answered, throwing her hands up in an unprofessional if perfectly understandable display of frustration. The Electronic Warfare officer was the youngest officer on the Pandora’s bridge even before she slept the whole journey to Proxima Centauri. There hadn’t been any need for an EW specialist in transit so she had been excluded from the skeleton crew that slept in shifts. For once she seemed as inexperienced as she looked, fighting with her console as though she had any control at all. She could monitor the computer with perfect clarity but nothing she did seemed to have any impact. The invasion of their systems continued as though she did nothing at all. “Nothing in the universe should be able to route data like this. It’s dropping the data flow down to a hardware level in real time to bypass the software restrictions, and it’s doing it without a noticeable drop in speed. It’s... “
Yelena threw up her hands again and everyone understood. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what was happening, or that she couldn’t explain it; but no one on the bridge would understand it as well as her. Her rank was extremely junior for such an expedition but there hadn’t been a better EW specialist out of any human institution in a long time. If she said it was impossible, then it was impossible. By human standards, at least. She was fighting it tooth and nail but to no avail. The process continued.
“Harkin, put CIWS in local control.” The Captain ordered after a moment’s deliberation, inclining his head towards the Tactical station. “Our sensors may be out but they should work. If it’s moving and it doesn’t have a friendly tag it gets shot down. Then warm up the cannon. Mons I want our nose pointed towards that cluster of signals we saw before our eyes went down.”
A chorus of assent answered as the bridge went to work readying their precautions. Under the circumstances it was the best they could do. Until Tiger reported or until their sensors were restored they could do nothing but prepare for a fight. But if one came they would need to be able to see.
“Novikova.” The Ensign raised her head from her futile efforts, looking almost irritated at the interruption until she met the Captain’s eyes. “The first sign of enemy fire detonate the bolt. We can replace the comms array. We can’t replace the whole ship.”
Novikova nodded, a touch unwillingly. It was the right call. Cutting off the comm array with the old fashioned explosive charge pre-installed would end whatever process this way and free up their systems, but would render them mute and deaf. Worst of all it would deny then any ability to operate offensively in kind, but she had to admit (very reluctantly) that if a foe could do this then she couldn’t-
“We’re back up!” She snapped suddenly, eyes snapping down at a chirp from her console. “No system failures, all systems responding normally. We pushed a tactical update downstream to all deployed units, our IFF was altered, and… Khristos. Sciences are reporting damned near an exabyte of data uploaded to their drives!”
“Status change! Many signatures!” Harkin announced quickly trying to categorize the codes that had began blossoming on his display. Dozens of new icons appeared on the planet’s surface with at least as many in orbit and scattered through the system, filling the void with traffic where seconds before had been silence. “All friendly. IFFs queried, consistent with our altered IFF!”
“Tiger Three is reporting silhouettes on our current heading, obscured by orbital debris.” He continued, flashing the relevant data to the Captain’s chair. Clear it wasn’t, but definite movement had been detected from inside a dense cluster. “Trying to refine.”
As quickly as they were seen the bogeys vanished in an electromagnetic aurora, winking out of existence as though they had never been and taking some of the debris with them.
“Targets lost. Chief Takaya is getting an update from the ground, relaying status changes now.”
Bandit Two screamed.
[ERROR: Data Transfer to PANDORA unable to complete. Suspected Signal Interference. Retry? Y/N]
[UPDATE: Data Transfer f̵r̵o̵m̴ PANDORA completed. Cached tactical data dumped to PANDORA.]
In the span of a second an update was pushed to every device tied into Pandora’s tactical network carrying with it instructions that performed an update and reinstancing of the transponder on every unit. For a split second Kon’s display became a mess of orange, every unit pinged as unknown and giving Merlon an electronic fit before it was corrected and proper coding was reapplied to every detected entity.
Bandit Two died and it seemed to die painfully. A supernova flared from the point just below its spines, shrapnel and flame alike tearing into its surface with wanton delight. The sound of its scream simply stopped more than it died down, ending as suddenly as it began while the alien slumped. What was left of it, at least. The enemy had been nearly bisected and not cleanly. Traces of its armor, or carapace, were scattered in the sand and the remaining sinuous connections between its upper and lower halves were scorched and shriveled. There was no fight left in it, no sign of its earlier malice. And it did not die alone. Bandit One screeched as Fox’s interference began and when Bandit Two died it simply stopped. Voyager impacted, Aurora shifted, and the alien simply fell to the sand limp.
With their cessation the alien Orbital stopped moving, again slumping into the sand that had entombed it for so long.
“Starlight, what are all these readings?” Artemie asked, keeping Voyager at the ready but turning her attention briefly to the status changes from Pandora. “Where did all these icons come from?”
“That’s… A little strange.” The assistant answered distractedly, as though processing. “Pandora pushed out a tactical update that added a thirty two bit modifier to each of our transponders. The first eight are shared among all of us, including Pandora. The next sixteen are shared sequentially by all observable Orbitals and the last octet seems to be unique. These icons appeared at the same time and seem to follow a similar pattern.”
<<Pilots, this is Chief Takaya.>> The COO chimed in on their shared frequency. <<Explorer One reached the ship. Now you guys, too. Saddle up and return to the hangar. Something had the bridge’s underwear bunched and we’re going to be checking it out. A security detail is deploying, so leave the hostiles. Bring the Orbital if you can.>>
