Three Square Meals Ch. 058

"Redacted Orders, Charles' emails, Norwood's emails. Got it," Irillith said with a confident smile.

"You seem a lot more sure of yourself today than yesterday," Calara said with an approving nod. "Did Faye's training session really help?"

Irillith laughed and replied, "She was a huge help actually. I got a pep talk from John and Alyssa too, and I know I can do this."

Calara's eyes dropped to Irillith's swollen belly, and gave her a warm smile, as she said, "Yes, they can be very encouraging, can't they?" She dropped to her haunches beside the seated Maliri woman, and instinctively reached out to gently stroke her tummy, as she asked, "Is there anything else you need before you do this? I've added as much information as I can to that list, with timestamps clearly indicated. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that all the classified orders from this campaign will be archived in the same location. The specific times and dates should help you easily locate the relevant files, once you can locate the correct archive."

Irillith gave her a grateful smile, and said, "I know what a perfectionist you are. I'm sure the information you've gathered will be invaluable." She took a deep breath, and said, "Wish me luck!"

Calara reached up to brush her fingers through Irillith's long hair, and said, "You won't need it. I've seen how determined you can be, and I know you'll be amazing!"

Leaning over to give her a gentle kiss, Irillith said, "You're quite the motivational speaker yourself."

Faye suddenly flashed into existence, reappearing in the Bridge above Irillith's console. "Hey Calara!" she said brightly.

"Hi Faye," Calara said with a smile. "Are you going along too?"

"She won't let me," Faye pouted, crossing her arms as she turned to look at Irillith.

Irillith smiled as she said, "We've been over this. If they detect us and cut the hard-lines to their servers while you're in it, you'll be de-resed."

Calara frowned and asked the Maliri, "So what happens to you if they do that?"

Irillith paused, and a shadow of worry flashed across her face, but when she looked at Calara she shrugged helplessly, not knowing for certain.

Faye let out a sigh, still disappointed about not being able to join her Creator, but said buoyantly, "I'll monitor everything from here, and broadcast an alarm if they start trying to track your signal back to the Invictus!"

More footsteps from the grav-tube had everyone turning to see John and Alyssa walking over to join them. They smiled in greeting, and joined the others gathered around Irillith's IntOps Station.

"How are you doing?" John asked, with a worried look of concern. "Is there anything else we can do to help?"

Irillith gave him a sly smile, and rested her hand on her rounded abdomen, as she said, "There's nothing else you can do for now, it's all down to me."

*Don't worry about overexerting yourself,* Alyssa thought to her telepathically. *If I feel you getting strained, I'll transfer energy from all of us to you. What you're doing is important, but above everything else, you need to stay safe, okay?*

The Maliri woman nodded, then focused on the console in front of her. With a final glance at her crewmates, she flowed her consciousness into her spirit form, and sent her mind into the data-jacks. Faye was there to greet her, and she kept pace by Irillith's side as they rushed along the connections that linked to the Invictus' powerful communications relay.

They arrived at the enormous swirling portal which linked the Invictus to the Terran Federation's Empire-wide comms network, and Irillith stumbled to a halt as she stared at it for the first time. Data was flowing in through the portal, now that they had finally flown in range of the comms signal boosters, and everything from news updates to personal emails were now pouring from the yawning hole.

Faye fluttered closer, and hugged Irillith as she said, "I wish I were coming with you, but you'll be just fine on your own! You're my Creator, you can do anything!"

"Thanks Faye, you've been a tremendous help," Irillith said gratefully.

The purple-hued sylph gave her a nervous smile, then said, "Remember to listen for my warning broadcast. If they start tracing your signal back to us, you won't have long to get back after I detect them!"

"I'll be careful," Irillith said, leaning in to give Faye a kiss on her tiny cheek, before turning and striding purposefully towards the entry point to the wider galaxy.

She didn't look back again, instead placing her hand on the portal, and letting out a shocked gasp as she was sucked inexorably through the swirling vortex. Just like that, her mind was racing at almost incalculable speed across the cosmos. Irillith had previously planned out her route with Faye, and she bounced from one relay station to another, as she raced across the Terran Federation Comms Network. Branching paths sailed away to sparkling clusters far in the distance, and she recognised each one as a planet, where huge numbers of servers were all linked to the Terran network.

According to Calara, the primary data repositories for the Terran Federation Military were all housed on Mars. It would normally take a comms signal several minutes to travel that vast distance, but Irillith's digital presence was shrouded in a psychic cocoon that zipped past the other network traffic in a flash. It took her just over a minute of weaving her way through the signal-boosting relay stations until her consciousness finally arrived at her destination on the planet, and when she did, she gasped in amazement at the majestic sight before her.

The data archives on Mars were housed in a vast network, containing everything from the mundane;- like standard ship maintenance reports,- to the ultra-classified top-secret data that she was seeking. The brightly lit server farms reminded her of a sprawling metropolis, and she had a moment's doubt about being able to find the digital needles she was searching for, in this enormous field of electronic haystacks.

Faye's advice about just proceeding with the hack as she normally would came to mind, and Irillith pondered the best way to go about it. She grinned as she had a sudden brainwave, and she reached out both hands, letting the data streams wash over her as they proceeded towards the network of data archives. She was able to gain a glimpse into each data packet, and they became a blur before her eyes, as she searched for one that would serve her purpose. She didn't have to wait long until a promising stream of data sailed past, consisting of a fairly innocuous request for vacation time, from a Cruiser Captain in the Dragon March.

She tagged Captain Bernard Grove's message with a tracker, then raced along after the missive as it navigated around enormous data archives, wending its way deeper into the glowing data catacombs. She followed after it, feeling her heart pounding with excitement in her chest. Sure enough, the message split off from the primary bus, and was routed to an enormous server farm, which was filled with hundreds of secured data compounds.

Irillith sent out probes as she passed each of these compounds, and the titles she got back left her in little doubt she was in the right place. The Second Kirrix Purge, the Drakkar Repulsion, the Brimorian Annex; these were all campaign archives from the Terran Federation's chequered past. She followed the leave request deeper into this maze of archives, which chronicled the past glories and disasters of the Terran Military in minute detail. Sure enough, the data packet made a beeline for a heavily fortified compound, and a quick data probe confirmed that it stored data on the Dragon March campaign.

Once its clearance had been verified, the message breezed through the firewall warding the gateway into the compound, leaving Irillith's digital presence floating outside. The digital fortress had opaque walls, which prevented her from seeing what lay inside the compound. Security looked robust, with at least a dozen guard programs focused intently on the firewall blocking the gateway inside. Movement at the base of the digital ramparts drew her eye, and she could see what looked like electronic hounds marching along rigid patrol routes around the walls.

She pondered the best way into this impregnable-looking fortress, and snapped her ethereal fingers, as she realised that all she had to do was treat this as a regular hack on a robustly defended data source. She created a tiny probe in the shape of a magnifying glass, too small and inconspicuous to be detected by the hounds, then replicated it until she had twenty hovering above her palm. Throwing out her hand, as if casting them into the electronic wind, the probes raced out, and began to carefully scrutinise the surface of the walls.

It didn't take long, and she smirked when one of the probes reported finding a locked backdoor into the system. These Terran programmers never learned. Always reluctant to give up absolute control of their digital creations to the organisations that had hired them, they invariably left some kind of illicit back entrance that bypassed the primary security measures. She drifted around the fortress walls until she was parallel with the correct section of wall, and now she knew what to look for, she could make out her target easily enough. The probe had highlighted the rectangular doorway at the base of the wall for her, outlining the edges in a faintly glowing aquamarine colour.

She gathered the probes back to her with a thought, and they floated obediently at her shoulders as she watched the regularly timed passes of the security sweeps. She tutted to herself as she kept up her observations, shaking her head that the Terrans were not even randomising the time periods between checks. Calculating that she had exactly thirty-five seconds before the next sweep, she sprinted to the door the moment the sniffing hound had passed, its sensors focused directly ahead in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc.

Summoning a powerful password cracker which appeared as a spinning tube of letters and numbers, she slapped it against the backdoor and watched it go to work. The dials spun in a blur, testing millions of combinations a second, and she rolled her eyes when it settled on, "1337godrulesall". The door depressed inwards with a soft click, then swung back, admitting her into the fortress. She stepped inside quickly, then shut it behind her, leaving the outer surface completely unblemished.

Looking around to get her bearings, she saw that she was in a small sub-net area surrounded by glowing green indexes. It looked like the programmer who built this digital fortress had gone the extra mile to find any data he might be looking for in the future, and she silently thanked him for making her life much easier. She tweaked the probes, and the magnifying glasses changed shape into orange-rimmed reading glasses as she sent them out to trawl through the indexes. She held the last one back, changed its search parameters to look for records on the Invictus or John, then sent it on its way.

While her tiny spies were hard at work, she looked through the translucent walls of the subnet that overlooked the interior of the digital fortress, and tried to get the lay of the land. Nearly all the security measures were focused on the firewall across the gateway into the compound, but there were some nasty-looking security programs that were criss-crossing the paths around the monolithic data-archives. The huge red cycloptic guards were quite reminiscent of Faye's simulation, which made sense, as the helpful AI had copied common Terran defensive programs. These ones had a powerful looking broad cannon on one arm, which represented their ability to de-res intruders.

Soft beeps behind her let her know that the probes had started to find the data she was searching for, and she turned back to check their progress. A handful had turned from orange to green, stopping at the relevant data entries in the index as they found the Fleet Commands that Calara had expressed an interest in. Unfortunately the index only gave the location of each of these redacted orders, so she'd need to visit each archive in turn, decrypt it, then steal a copy of the data.

She had set up the last couple of probes to search for emails and voice comms from Admiral Leonard Norwood, and Vice-Admiral Charles Harris, to and from any forces in the Dragon March. They took longer to find all the data, as there was a lot to search through, but sure enough, this information was stored here too.

Irillith plotted out her course around the interior of the electronic compound, while watching the guards to memorise their patrol routes. She waited until all nineteen of the twenty probes had found what she was looking for, turning green from orange, and when she had the last data location she set off. Slipping around to the first archive was easy, with the guards right over on the other side of the fortress. She set up the code-breaker to hack through the encryption, and it appeared beside her in the form of a sturdy pneumatic drill. It floated into position, then began to hammer away at the archive, attempting to break through the security code that protected the data.

The code-breaker wasn't making too much noise, and when she looked around warily, none of the defensive programs seemed to be any the wiser. She chuckled to herself, knowing she'd never be able to get away with this in a Maliri system, but fortunately these weren't her own people she was dealing with. The archive broke open with a satisfying crack, and Irillith scanned through the data, confirming Calara's suspicions. It had been Admiral Norwood who had ordered the Fleet moves that exposed this task force. She took a quick copy of the decrypted data, watching as it was recorded into a floating ledger, then moved on to the next archive.

It took several minutes to make her way through the winding maze of archives, but she'd soon gathered up everything she was looking for. She'd been able to confirm the names of all the Commanding Officers responsible for issuing the Orders that Calara had flagged as suspicious, as well as downloading a backup of the digital correspondence from Norwood and Harris. Feeling quite smug about the whole infiltration, she headed back to the private sub-net that she had used to sneak into the place, and got ready to open the hidden backdoor to leave.

She happened to glance back at the probes, and her brow creased with worry when she spotted that the last probe had also turned green, signifying that it had found something. Her heart started to beat faster when she read the data repository name, "Special Investigation: John Blake". The archive was located on the periphery of the compound, and she raced over there to find out just what they'd been investigating.

Irillith created another code breaker, and she set it to work to crack the encryption, tapping her foot nervously while she waited with growing impatience. Although the code breaker seemed to take forever, It only took fifteen seconds to hack her way in, and she scanned through the reams of data with growing alarm. Someone had authorised a special investigation into John, researching all his recent activities in the Terran Federation, from stopping the Kirrix slavers, right through to his heroics in the Iota-Leonis system when he'd saved Port Medea. As she searched through it frantically, a low booming sound off to her left made her twist in surprise.

That noise saved her from being hit by a bright red shell, which missed her by inches. It slammed into the code breaker, ripping a big tear through the data archive she was studying. Alarms began to blare around her, and she cursed her stupidity for allowing herself to get so absorbed in the data, that she'd forgotten all about the guards. She leapt to one side to dodge a second clumsily aimed shell, which blasted a big chunk out of the wall behind her. Her arms were tingling now, and she glanced at them in surprise as she saw them swathed in lightning once more.

She ducked another shell, then pointed her fists towards the looming guard, and crackling arcs of electricity blasted into the defensive construct, devastating its programming. It toppled over backwards, with a huge searing hole blasted straight through it, arcs of electricity sparking around the charred wound. Irillith glanced behind her with a worried frown, and cursed when she saw the damage to the Special Investigation archive. It was painfully obvious what she'd been caught snooping on here, and this would act as a red flag to anyone suspicious of John.

After worrying what to do for a brief moment, she came to a quick decision, and immediately felt a tingling sensation all over her body. Concentric rings began to form at her feet, which spread outwards in small ripples as she gathered her will, preparing herself to wipe out the archives in this corner of the compound.

*Hold on, I'm sending you more power!* Alyssa's worried voice reached out to her, and Irillith shook her head in panic.

A tidal wave of energy rushed into her, and her violet eyes flew open in shock. Vast reservoirs of psychic power throbbed through her body, and the rings surrounding her became massive waves of pulsating energy. She let out a scream as she threw her head back, her eyes and mouth opening wide as they gouted beams of purple eldritch energy into the sky. Her body struggled to contain the building tsunami, until it finally reached an abrupt crescendo. The towering waves that loomed above her blasted outwards, devastating everything in their path with overwhelming destructive force. Guards, archives, walls; all were obliterated in the maelstrom she had unleashed within the electronic fortress.

Irillith sank to her knees, gasping for breath as she trembled in shock. Looking around her incredulously, she realised she was now kneeling in the centre of a huge blast crater where the Dragon March data fortress had once stood. Every trace of the compound had been vaporised, leaving her unscathed at the epicentre of the destruction. She leapt into the air, knowing no good would come of being discovered here, and fled to the welcoming embrace of her body aboard the Invictus.

"I got everything!" she gasped a minute later, as her eyes snapped open. She looked around for John, and when she found him crouching beside her, she blurted out, "They've started investigating you!"

***

The whole crew was gathered in the Briefing Room, and It took Irillith quite a while to describe everything that had happened. Calara shot John a look of alarm when Irillith told them all about the Special Investigation, but her worry about this was tempered by the impressive haul of data the Maliri hacker had recovered.

"I hope they had enough sense to take a backup," Dana said with a smile, after Irillith told them how she'd levelled the fortress before leaving.

Calara nodded, and said, "The Military replicate any important archives, they should be fine."

She looked impatient to get started, so John grinned at her, and said, "Have at it, Lieutenant. How long will it take you to confirm all your suspicions?"

"I had a brief look when Irillith transferred everything to my Tactical Station. There's a huge volume of email and voice recordings to go through, which will take me a couple of days to fully analyse," she explained carefully. Her expression turned grim, and she added, "I can tell you right now that Irillith's decryption of all those redacted orders confirms without a doubt that Admiral Norwood is the traitor. Out of the seventeen suspicious Fleet Commands I asked her to look into, Norwood ordered thirteen of them, which included all the really calamitous ones. Three came from Lynton and one from Santini, which we can put down to a mixture of either incompetence or bad luck."