The Investigation Continues (Part 2)

Posted on Wednesday 30 January 2019 @ 08:56 by Captain Melody Jones & Lieutenant Marbim Rejal

Mission: The New Collective
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: After Beginning an investigation
1055 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

Melody was still going over the main computer files trying to find the problem but nothing was leaping out at her. A lot of processing power was being used and she still couldn't find what was using it. She tried a different approach

"Computer! Give me a level 3 diagnostic of all command processes currently running."

"Working. No anomalies present."

She frowned again. "There has to be something!"

"There is. At least I assume there is." Marbim says aloud as he enters the Chief Engineers' office. "I set up the interior of the shuttle with the crew, just how it was before I ejected the drone into space, and then it hit me. With the amount of time Karki and I were gone, the only thing that someone could have done was to access the shuttle logs. Its the one piece of information that we always download into the main computer when we return from a mission. That's going to be something we now need to reconsider. I can only assume that whatever is in O'Hara's head planted a virus in the logs, and it's either waiting for us to do something, or its already working its mischief in the background...the warp core is locked out to anybody or anything, but that doesn't mean it can't influence other systems. I hate to ask, but do we have anyone on board that is good at 'hacking'?" If she looks him over carefully she might notice that his right hand is balled into a fist still and perhaps has more color to it than normal.

Melody addressed the computer again "Computer, show any logs that have been transferred from the shuttlecraft Pendragon."

The computer responded, "No files found."

"What!" Melody started entering commands into the console, talking to herself while doing it. "Nope, nope, nope........ Wait. THERE!"

She looked up at Rejal "Very clever. The files have been encoded so a normal computer scan won't detect them."

The monitor suddenly started displaying a lot of very complex information. Melody's face blanched. "Son of a..........! This virus has infected almost every system onboard. Weapons, life support, propulsion. Woa....."
She let out a low whistle of respect. "This is very, very complex. It's going to take time just to find out what this thing is designed to do and........ SHIT!" Melody swore uncharacteristically. "It's got Dogs!"

"Dogs? I'm no hacker, but I have some basic idea of what a virus can do, but what's a dog and how do we stop it. I can give you a few ideas of what I would have a program do...decompress the ship, vent all the oxygen into space, blow the antimatter drive and turn us into a tiny black hole, beam everyone off the ship into the vacuum of space...I can keep going if you want..."

Melody shook her head "Its worse than that. Dogs...... Watchdogs. They are independent subprograms that guard the virus. If we mess with any of them, the whole ship could crash and burn. This is going to be a delicate operation. Hell, not even sure what could trigger it. Our own ignorance could kill us.

Again cursing, fluently in Klingon, Miles makes another dent in a wall. "Why can't these evil bastards just come at us with phasers or hand weapons, why do they always mess with our software," sighing he drops into a seat head down massaging his temples. "Didn't the Enterprise run into a problem like this once, something where they had created an intelligent AI that ... AI ...", Miles' head snaps up, "What about our AI, could she round up all these 'dogs' and run them into a biogel pack or something?"

"So basically, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't," Haie said. She had followed Miles in and was scrolling through report on a PADD. She looked up absently. She set the PADD on O'Hara's desk and began to poke thoughtfully at the desk terminal. "So what you're saying is that there's no way to purge them? What about the protected backups in core memory? What if we did a ship-wide simultaneous purge of every byte of computer memory on the ship, then restore the core operating system from the PBUs...", she paused and looked up between Miles and Melody to see if this idea had sparked any kind of creativity in either of them.

Melody pondered for a moment. “I’d thought of that but, I’d rather keep that in reserve for a ‘Hail Mary, last resort’ play. First of all we need to get rid of these sub programs.” She studied the readout for a moment. “Looks like there are 3. That’s lucky. I suggest we each work on one, then when those are eradicated, we can for us on the main virus itself. I’ve landed the programs as Pup1, Pup2 and Pup3. I’ll take one. Rajel, you take 2 and Hale number 3. Let go people.”

"I hope you're going to clean up after your pups when they make a mess on the carpet," Liz grinned before she scooped her PADD up off the desk and began heading for the exit."Insert whatever dog puns come to mind. I'll be in my office," This was something of an in-joke. She didn't actually have an office, but she had a station that was tucked away in a corner with a comfy chair. She had claimed it as her own, and not even O'Hara had the stones to challenge her on it. "Oh, just one more thing, Commander." She turned and looked at Melody. "What are we to do with these pups when we catch them by their tails? You said it yourself that any attempt to tamper with them could destroy the ship... and all my stuff is here."

“Let’s try and avoid that eventually shall we?” Melody replied with a wry smile. “We’ll have to take out these programs very carefully. They seem to have a self monitoring sub routine incorporated. We should be able to disable it using a fractal algorithm. Then purge the file completely. Then we should be able to take on the main problem, ok?”


OFF:

LTjg Marbim Rejal
Chief of Operations
USS Merlin

Commander Melody Jones
Second Officer / CSO

MCPO Elizabeth Hale
Senior Engineering NCO
USS Merlin