enigma variations

[tetractys]

Who: Bill Cipher
Broadcast: First to the SS Golden, then to the rest of the fleet after a few days
Action: Aboard the Golden
When: Wednesday - Friday

[Action:]

[There's a distinct smell of smoke when the comms fry, on the Golden, and a horrible electronic whine just barely within the high range of human hearing. The ship blinks off of fleet radar. Fifteen seconds go by, and the system fails to reboot itself. Thirty seconds. Sixty.

By the time any of the rest of the crew can come investigate, a bespectacled man with his sleeves rolled up is elbow-deep in the comm array, a small flashlight between his teeth. He hasn't been around the ship before, no one will recognize him. The ship's had all the equipment associated with a Communications officer for a month now, it's just that nobody's touched it, or even showed up to claim the title. So maybe this is the guy making an appearance, finally? Then again, it's a little weird that he's never come out of his cabin for meals, if he's been here that long.

The man waves over anyone who gets close and pulls the flashlight out of his mouth to hand it to them, if they'll accept it.]

Hi. Hold this, will you?

[Text, to the Crew of the Golden.]

[It's a few hours of tinkering before this message appears. Bits of the communications array have been tossed haphazardly around the entire surrounding area. Try not to step on anything breakable or sharp?]

The good news is that I found the problem! The bad news is that it's going to take the rest of the night to fix. It's good and cooked in here! I'd say the router is about medium-rare! Bring me some protien sauce to put on it and check back tomorrow morning.

The other bad news is that this was sabotage! But the other good news is that I've got a plan! I wrote an executable for you guys to all run on your communicators so that we're all on the same page when I can get the system running again.

Attachment: sysupdate.exe

Just type this in like you would if you were sending a regular message. Don't make any typos or we'll be isolated in the unforgiving depths of space for another six hours while I try to find out what you did wrong. Ha ha! :)

[What Bill isn't mentioning is that this little bit of code has nothing to do with fixing the ship and everything to do with remotely scripting any communicator it's run on.]

[Audio, fleetwide.]

[It's thirty-six hours into the rebuild when the systems suddenly click back on in a burst of static and feedback. Muffled, triumphant cackling is audible down the entire main corridor of the Golden. The ship comes back into radar detection. On the communicator network, an unfamiliar male voice crackles to life. Anyone who's heard Bill's real voice in a dream won't recognize this one - he's borrowing it from a friend.]

Hellooooo, fleet! This is a systems test, the SS Golden hailing any other satellites that can recieve. Please respond if I'm getting through to you! I've got some pret-ty interesting news about what just put us into a blackout.

[Text. Double-encrypted; Private-locked to self only.]

THAT SURE WAS A DUMB MISTAKE YOU JUST MADE. FORTUNATELY, I'M A GENEROUS GUY. I CAN SMOOTH ALL OF THIS OVER AND MAKE SURE YOU CAN STILL COLLECT WHATEVER IT IS YOU NEEDED. I WON'T TELL THE OTHER SHIPS HOW TO CORRECTLY UNHOOK YOUR LITTLE DOODADS, AND THINGS WILL GO BACK TO NORMAL FOR YOU. ALL I WANT IS TO GET IN ON WHAT YOU KNOW. LET'S BE A TEAM!

I WANT ACCESS TO PRIVATE FILTERED COMMUNICATIONS, FLEET-WIDE. I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU 24 HOURS TO THINK ABOUT IT. IF I GET MY PRICE BY THEN, I'LL ASSUME WE HAVE A DEAL. IF THERE'S NO CHANGE BY THEN, WELL - YOU WOULDN'T HAVE PUT THIS ON MY SHIP UNLESS WE HAD SOMETHING YOU WANTED! AND IF I DON'T GET WHAT I WANT, NO ONE DOES.

◬
[(FQ PBBJP XQOLJX EXP X CLB, XK FKQBOZBMQLO PQFII RKKXJBA
F'SB PELTK JV ZXOA IBQ'P EXSB PLJB CRK
QEBOB KLT XOB QEOBB PFABP FK QEFP DXJB)]
((Want your character with a Commuications augment to be able to catch and decode that last message? PM or hit me up on Plurk, I'm totally down for that!))

Comments

action;

[noprophecies]

[smelling smoke is one thing, but the strange noise is what gets her to leave her bed to investigate. She's not familiar with the crew enough to be suspicious, but . . . well, then again, she's suspicious of everyone at first.

She raises both eyebrows as the strange man waves her over, and she almost decides not to before her curiosity gets the better of her, and she takes the offered flashlight, looking it over with some confusion before she points it properly]

Did you break something?

[I mean, it's a legit question given the smoke]

action;

[tetractys]

What? Please.

[His tone suggests the entire idea is comical. Him! Breaking stuff! He doesn't take his eyes off of his work.]

One of you guys probably broke it! I came out to see if it can be fixed or if the entire ship's going to catch fire and depressurize the hull!

[He sounds kind of excited about the possibility, and absently waves his hand to waft the smoke out of his eyes. A quick glimpse shows that he has one too many fingers.]

Over there with the light, please.

[noprophecies]

[she shines the light where he directs her, humming in faint amusement]

You are the one working back here, it is natural to assume you are the one at fault.

[sorry it's one of the assholes who've come to help you out here, buddy]

Though from those I have met, I believe they would at least speak up, if they had broken something that would . . . ah. Depressurize the hull. That is bad, yes?

[tetractys]

Do you like breathing oxygen? Because I do. As often as I can, preferably.

[He ducks his head into the hole in the wall. It makes his voice echo strangely.]

Hmm.

[noprophecies]

[she wrinkles her nose at the strange echo]

I did not know it was pressurized in the first place. All of this spaceship nonsense is foreign to me.

audio

[pneumo]

Hiiii~ Welcome back Es-Es Golden. [ he didn't even know you were out. THAT IS HOW WELL SASCHA PAYS ATTENTION. ]

audio

[tetractys]

Thanks! Which ship is this I'm hearing from now?

audio

[pneumo]

Bloodsport! I'm Sascha--who're you?

audio

[tetractys]

[Bill doesn't miss a beat.]

I didn't ask who you were. Doctor Stanford Pines.

[pneumo]

I know, but Bigby says I need to "people", and people tell other people their names! So...nice to meet you, Mister Doctor☆

action, some time after tempest?

[ontrial]

[ with enough people apparently on fixing whatever broke to wake barriss from her nap, she hadn't been keen to interfere once she figured out how beyond her area of expertise the problem was. but after a while, she'll go properly investigate for herself, careful not to step on anything. ]

How is it going out here?

ok! :D

[tetractys]

Hm? Oh. Fine, fine.

[The man's hair is Very Fluffed now, as if he's been driving his hands through it all day and smeared a ton of ash and metal shavings in there in the process. Oops.]

You didn't see anyone interfere with this console, did you? This should not have been in there. I'm your technical support, not your babysitter, don't put things into the machines.

[ontrial]

I haven't been out of my room much lately but I haven't heard anyone doing anything questionable over here. [ nor has she gotten any "let's sabotage a thing" vibes from the rest of the crew. usually that would be a helpful giveaway before things went sideways. ] But I can assure you I do know when not to mess with technology I'm not familiar with, ah...

[ it's a spot where a name would go for reassuring emphasis. but she doesn't have one to use for him. ]

Sorry, I don't believe we've met before. I've only been here a few weeks.

[tetractys]

Dr. Stanford Pines.

[He turns away from the device, finally, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose to get a better look at her.

(Now, Bill knows perfectly well who Barriss is. Jedi, academic, idealistic, politically restless. Has something to prove, allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

More information is always needed, though. For instance: she didn't correct the Captain about those clearly not being freckles, but how far does her patience go?)]

Oh. You aren't human. What are these-?

[He reaches a grubby six-fingered hand out to prod at Barriss' tattoos, as if to try and smudge them.

(The more he can ruin Stanford's reputation here the better.)]

[ontrial]

That is my face.

[ that is exactly as far as her patience goes, right to her personal space. still, she seems to realize that sounded rude as soon as it's out of her mouth and so she recoils, taking a full step back and putting a hastily apologetic face on. ]

Sorry, Doctor, I- They're ceremonial tattoos. In mirialan culture, they signify my achievements and capabilities as a Force user.

Audio

[goldenglasses]

[Vash was at his pilot seat. Having not moved too far since the Golden fell off the radar. They couldn't track the ship, but look out the window and you could still see it was up and flying.

So he was keeping an eye on it. Making sure the Three Twins didn't run into or more went wrong.

He figures Shirley, their communications officer, will also respond, but he jumps on as well anyway. Contemplating if it's still flying when in space is the right term or not gets dull after awhile.]

This is Vash from the SS Three Twins. You guys okay over there?

[tetractys]

Vash. Good to hear from you.

[The edge of glee in the voice from the Golden is probably just the officer being happy that he has the system working again. Yes. (HI SUNSHINE.)]

We're all fine, no injuries to report! It seems someone introduced a foreign element to our hailing array, and it crashed the entire system.

[goldenglasses]

[And Vash does assume the glee is from being heard after communication problems and doesn't think much more about it.]

Yeah? That's good to hear. So I take it things didn't go quite as planned then? What were you guys trying to do? [As Vash has seen a number of people try to change things on their ships before with both success and failure. Thus it's his first guess as who could have gotten into their ships after all this time?]

[tetractys]

We weren't trying anything.

[Son, don't insult him.]

It was an implant. Someone bugged our ship, and the tracker malfunctioned. The cascade took out our radio. I'm willing to bet there'll be a device on yours as well, if you go digging.

[goldenglasses]

Really? [Vash's interest perks a bit more.] I'll ask our communications officer to take a look with me if it took out your radio. Thanks.

I wonder how long it's been there then.

[audio]

[nedstarksbastard]

Aye, we can hear you. What happened?

[audio]

[tetractys]

Sabotage. What ship is this?

[audio]

[nedstarksbastard]

The Three Twins.

What was sabotaged?

[audio]

[tetractys]

Someone put a foreign bug in our communications system. It glitched and took out our radios for a few days - I've only now been able to get it in working order again.

[audio]

[nedstarksbastard]

[A bug--oh, yeah, so that's what a bug is, thanks, augment. There's nothing creepy about suddenly knowing that, or anything.]

Do you have any idea how long it's been there? Who might have put it there? Is there some way to tell?