Work Text:
Blue lighting shifted to an orange glow though the hallway door as the facility entered its second night cycle. This deep within the complex, a gradual depletion in staff functioned as the only other indication external time. Monitors and computers hummed throughout the large room, broken only by the occasional beep signalling command completion. The scent of old stimulant beverage overlaid the slight plastic burn of the air recyc.
Kerr Avon hovered for a moment over the frantically bouncing alert messages that had sat ignored in the corner of his screen for the last several hours. Councillor Chesku steps down citing family obligations. The kind of lie told when someone overstepped themselves and needed to be removed from the spotlight quietly. He let the full story remain closed. Anna would no doubt be pictured, the dutiful and concerned wife, and Kerr could not bare to look at her. Not now.
The second alert did not belong to a public news feed. Whatever the update on Tynus's condition, it could only be bad. Re-education left scars on even the most resilient. Anna, if she had been there, would have called his continued attention morbid. You have to look out for yourself, Kerr. You know that Tynus is planning to sell you out at the first opportunity. I can help you, if you act now. Anna wasn't here and wouldn't be any time in the future.
Blake's enlarged face glared at him accusingly. “I suppose you think I should have saved him instead of me,” said Kerr into the empty space between them. “As if that was even an option.”
The room's bright white lights and the picture's slight gloss gave a glint of determination to the black and white eyes staring directly at the camera that only the fanatic could obtain. Six enlarged pictures dominated the space used by Kerr's fellow technicians and computer specialists. To Blake's left, Jenna Stannis and the inhuman guerrilla fighter Cally of Auron smiled grimly in what Kerr knew to be images taken from the last moments of an unfortunate security officer on the destroyed facility of Sauron Major. Back before the rebels had evolved from minor irritants with a tendency to wilfully destroy of government property to a true security concern.
Servalan, hung appropriately to the right of Blake, also smiled in a photo just as old. Her prophetic facial expression and stance, however, projected anything but grimness. Not the certainty of the idealist, but the certainty of a cat with a mouse in its sights. She stood clothed in the cold signature white that now accompanied every rebel propaganda vid and pamphlet. That slight upturn of lips had mocked him with every failed trap and new Independent alliance since Kerr had been seconded from the Devastator battle cruiser design team to provide more direct support for the hunt for Blake than attempting to outclass his flagship.
Kerr Avon, computer specialist and current member of the Liberator Task Force, pulled his eyes away as Servalan silently laughed at the predicament she helped created and looked down to the cursor blinking on his unfinished report. Kerr clenched his fists over his keyboard before glancing at the last two images.
Rough marker lines cut a red X through the face of Olag Gan. Underneath, in the initial enthusiasm, someone had scribbled “One down, five to go” in the same colour. At least Vila Restal's hunched shoulders and wide-eyed grimace radiated misery. The kind of misery that a man might feel upon realizing that escaping his prison sentence might not have been worth the cost.
“At least one of you knows how I feel,” said Kerr.
“What was that, Avon?” The words slurred around the edges. “The central reel? Do we even have one of those? Does Blake? What does it do?”
Kerr jerked up at the unexpected interruption. His colleague, Dak, popped his head up from behind the pile of cell boxes and command disks that separated their workspaces. Probes rattled as the man leaned back in his seat. The round brown face a century too young for a Federation officer turned in his direction, curly hair standing up asymmetrically from where it had been pressed into his arms. With the quiet, Kerr had forgotten he hadn't been the only one to make a late night of it.
Dak yawned a little and blinked his eyes, before standing to wander over to the cups stacked haphazardly in the sink near the stim-warmer and began the process of peering into them sequentially with squinted eyes before finding one that met his standards of minimal cleanliness. As Kerr watched, he poured himself a drink that he swallowed in one quick motion that turned into a dissatisfied wince. “Ugh, how long has this been sitting here?”
Kerr shrugged. “Six hours.” He'd made a fresh pot once it had become clear that he'd be staying the night for the second time this week. “Unless, of course, you are referring to the cup in which case increase that estimate by several orders of magnitude. I suspect the taste is due to the new species of bacteria you've been cultivating.” Even an impossible dilemma couldn't restrain Kerr from comment.
Dak huffed a closed-mouthed laugh. “Well, maybe I'm working on our new secret weapon. Once it gains sentience, we can infiltrate and gain intimate knowledge of the rebellion's breakfast habits.”
Kerr couldn't help the frown that overtook his features. “That, at least, would be something.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Okay, now I'm worried.” Dak carefully reached over and washed the cup in his hands before pouring another drink and walked over to Kerr. “I've heard you openly doubt the sanity of the entire command staff. Multiple times, in fact, since Commander Travis was given control over the Blake situation. I suspect that tendency, by the way, is why you don't outrank me.” He set the cup of stim very deliberately in front of Kerr before dragging his own chair over. “But I've never heard you doubt your ability to pull blood from a stone before.”
Kerr wrapped his fingers around the warm container. Kerr liked Dak. For all his incessant chatter, the young officer performed his duties with the skill that had pulled him into special assignments almost straight from the academy. However, working together successfully through adrenaline fuelled crises had given Dak the impression that he had both insight and entitlement to concern over Kerr's psychological state. Before Tynus, Kerr might have agreed. Kerr had liked Tynus, too. And look where that had gotten him.
Kerr stopped himself from glancing back at the image of Olag Gan. He already knew what it looked like. “I need to finish my report on the incident.”
Dak's eyes narrowed. “I handed mine in a week ago. You're never late. And it is now....” He glanced over at Kerr's screen and the time. “Almost 23:30.”
“Maybe I just felt the need to be thorough.” Kerr turned back to the blinking cursor at the top of the empty page. He typed the heading “Recommendations for Action”. Then he stopped. Kerr could feel the weight of Dak's concern and, after sitting for almost a minute, turned.
“Avon, you just managed to get there faster than the rest of us. No one blames you,” said Dak. Kerr eyebrows raised in disbelief at Dak's naivete. Passing blame was a time honoured tradition within Space Command. “There was no way we could have known Servalan would turn this into some sort of propaganda coup.”
“I distinctly remember otherwise,” said Kerr.
Dak sighed. “Alright, you said she would. But, for all she doesn't know you exist, I'm pretty sure you view that woman as your personal nemesis right after Space Commander Travis so forgive me for thinking you were exaggerating.”
“Anticipating the worst tends never to leave you disappointed.” Kerr abandoned the keyboard in favour of lifting the cup. Toasting Dak, Kerr sipped its contents. He flinched at the taste before forcing himself to drink more of the liquid. Kerr needed to be awake for the conversation he couldn't escape if not the report.
Dak's face warned Kerr knew he hadn't hidden his expression in time. “Well, now I know you've been here too long without a good night's sleep. You're as bitter as your stim.”
“Says the man with a cot under his desk. Do you even still have a registered domicile?”
“Well, at least I don't snore. Unlike some.” Dak leaned back into his chair. “I have to make sure the sensor rig doesn't catch fire again after the reinstall, so I'm going to be here for the rest of the night. You might as well tell me what's wrong.”
If Kerr said nothing Dak maintained deniability. But when had that helped anyone in the face of a head-shrinker. Though he'd avoided images, Kerr pictured a grey jump-suited Tynus, face smeared and dirty and eyes unfocused. Dak sat watching him. Kerr took a deep breathe and set the cup down. “I have a theory about why we had so much trouble re-initiating Central Control's auto-security system.”
“Well, that's good, right? I mean, unless it was incompetence on our part. In which case, yes, I volunteer to proof-read and re-word before you damn us all to a penal colony.”
Kerr, under other circumstances, might have reacted to Dak's accidentally appropriate comment. But not tonight. “I hope I'm wrong. Because if I'm not, we have a serious problem.”
Kerr stood and paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, for a few minutes before attempting to explain. The movement cleared his head of the adrenaline eating hopelessness and exhaustion that had crept up on him over the evening. Finally, Kerr paused as Dak perched himself onto the desk's surface and abandoned his drink to cool on the counter.
“Imagine a computer with near infinite access, that can override any machine within range and not only read its data but override its commands,” said Kerr. He gestured ineffectively at the machines sitting beside them. “Effectively allowing it into any other system that machine has permissions for.”
Dak followed the motion of Kerr's hands over every piece of equipment. “Well, that's a terrifying hypothetical. So, leaving aside questions of how this thing could even function or who built it, say the rebels have such a computer.” Dak glanced again at the picture of Gan on the wall. “So they try to access Central Control.”
Kerr nodded. “As much as I understand the political statement they could make infiltrating one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the Federation on Earth itself, the risk without some other payoff is too high. Why else break into it, though? Destroying it would just cause chaos and, frankly, put the Rebellion in almost as much of a disadvantage as us. They'd be killing their own people along with ours. But accessing every system that it could? Reprogramming them? That would be worth almost any risk. And yet, they don't bring a computer specialist with them. They bring soldiers, strong men, thieves, but no technicians. Why?”
“In this situation you're concocting they don't think they need them,” said Dak. “Even if they had access to original staff, the code could take months to unravel unless they were trying to do something very specific. Decades of changes, different coding styles... You've started to check personal logs for the presumed dead and missing?” Kerr relaxed a bit at Dak's question. Straightforward and to the point, even if he had thought of it himself hours ago. But it meant that the man was taking his concern seriously and not brushing it off as stress-induced paranoia. Or an attempt to shift blame. At least not yet.
“Could take weeks to fully compile, but I've got the preliminaries from the open databases. Actively working traitors are another possibility. And most black project data requires clearance that I don't have.” Not that that could necessarily stop him, but that could come later.
“Most, huh? Not all. And the mystery of your previous postings that made you an expert in computer security but didn't confer any promotions deepens once again. I know, vow of silence, mind wipe, you can't say anything.” Kerr involuntarily straightened. Mind wipes. Of course. Kerr began walking back towards his machine.
Dak held a hand palm up between them. “Um, just saying I'm just glad you're on our side. And that I value your privacy and my own job too much to perform any extra-curricular research.”
“Move,” said Kerr. He grabbed a large probe off the table and leaned over, intruding violently into Dak's space. The man jumped out of his way, mumbling something either vaguely apologetic or fearful that Kerr ignored for the moment. If he could access the schedules that would be a way around the clearance data. Failed wipes, maybe. Or those that had realized after the fact that they didn't want to lose years of their lives and bribed their way out. Or the Rebellion had done it for them. What better way to find people that had valuable information even if you didn't know what that information was? Mostly useless, but when it wasn't...
For a project like this they'd need time, probably couldn't be working intensely on anything else. He expanded the search from just the missing and the presumed dead to include the retired and those who had been kept on in much less strenuous positions. Or that had free-form schedules. Maybe even those who had been demoted for poor performance. Explainable with memory loss, but also explainable by selling out the Federation.
“Avon, what are you doing to my computer?” Dak's voice broke him out of his revery. He stopped inputting commands.
“Expanding my search for people who've had mindwipes.”
“Yes, I got that part.” Dak reached one hand over and traced his fingers over the slowly scrolling output. “Okay, first, I'm going to say that weeks is far too optimistic. At this rate you'll have everyone who has ever worked on anything remotely interesting in the past fifty years. Ensor? The inventor? Didn't he die decades ago?”
“He had the necessary expertise and no body was ever recovered,” said Kerr.
“Spaceship disasters tend to have that problem. But I was actually going to ask why you're putting your hands all over my workstation.”
“I disconnected my machines from the network a few hours ago.” Kerr began typing again. Dak had a point, he'd have to refine somehow. Months to perform checks were too long. Hm, maybe look at just the personnel performing the wipes instead.
“Disconnected? This isn't a hypothetical. You're serious. And now you want the trail to lead back to me?” Dak's voice rose to an indignant pitch.
“Dak, no one will pick up anything unusual in a computer security specialist running security checks. They might, however, find a certain value in strategic plans to deal with the problem.”
“And do you actually have any strategic plans?”
Kerr shook his head. “No,” he finally said. “Not yet.”
“You've sat up the entire night compiling a list from a nightmare scenario. Look, Avon, what is the weakest link in any computer system?”
Kerr shook his head at the sudden change of topic. “What?” he asked in confusion.
“Back to basics. You've drilled this into our heads how many times? What is the weakest link?”
Oh, that. “People,” said Kerr.
“You're exhausted and stressed. So right now you're that link. Everyone finds someone better than them eventually. Hell, maybe Restal is some sort of computer genius in his spare time for all we know. Right now that sounds a hell of a lot more plausible than the rebellion building some sort of, well, super computer. I'm sure Captain Sari will take you more seriously if you've slept on it first. If you're still worried, write it up in the morning. I'll even lend you my cot.”
This was the reason he'd paused in his report and spent hours with busy work and starring at walls. Kerr gritted his teeth. Positing the existence of the machine Kerr had personally termed The Oracle could, at worst, be written off as a funding grab. He suspected far worse in terms of personal consequences. He loosened his jaw. “I don't think rebels built it.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Dak waved his hand futilely in the air as if trying to ward off the words. “If that's what you worked on before all of this, my desire to stay out of an interrogation cell takes precedence over my concern for your sleep patterns.”
The contrast between the supposition and the months spent adjusting the Devastator’s systems made Kerr pause. As proud as he was of his detector shields, The Oracle and what he suspected of its capabilities stood entirely on another level. “Flattering, but I'm afraid not. Do you remember the morale tour the Supreme Commander made?”
“Who doesn't? I don't think anyone got any work done for a week. Besides cleaning.”
“Yes, you could see your desk. That must have been very distressing for you.”
Dak shook his head. “I still can't find where I put the B38 probe. All that work for him to stand at the front of the room for thirty seconds and give a speech.”
“A speech that promised a revolution in equipment that never materialized.”
“Avon, my father is a colony administrator. That isn't actually unusual when dealing with Earth and the Core.”
Kerr thought back to the gleam in the Supreme Commander's eyes as he promised to render their jobs obsolete, even as he'd thanked them for their service. And from the way Captain Sari's polite smile had not overcome the nervousness in her eyes, he hadn't been the only one to take it seriously. “Did you read the funding reports?”
“I have enough trouble keeping track of my rent.” Dak pointed with deliberate slowness at the cot. “As you know. It didn't occur to me to attempt to monitor Space Command's entire budget.”
Ah, well, not everyone had Kerr's background and inclinations. “We're one of the top computer divisions in Space Command. Almost everyone here has been seconded from various special projects because the Liberator has risen to be a top priority. Which, if anything, puts us on the high end for funding. Dak, I want you to take a look at this office for a moment.” Semi-cubicles of desks for the almost thirty techs spread across the space. Piles of boxes and pieces of equipment lay haphazardly on the shelf on the back wall. Kerr and Dak's own mutual space was frustratingly small compared with Ansen and Zur's hardware repository, compensated for by access to the kitchen consisting of water, one heater element, a stim maker and cooler built from a repurposed X40 regulator. What drew the eye, however, was the way the bright lights of the room cut sharp outlines around the sensor rig and highlighted the ash and soot clinging to the walls and ceiling from where a jury-rigged connector had caught fire the previous week. “Now, how much of an increase in equipment maintenance and upgrades do you think we've seen this last six month period?”
“Um, well, the sensor rig was almost 20,000. And the grid we launched to pick up communications was about 50,000. Except that was paid for before year end, wasn't it? So that would be the previous budget period, I guess. Um, maybe 100,000 credits?” Dak phrased the final statement as a question.
“Alright, let's round up to 200,000,” said Kerr. “Just for the unexpected. Multiply that by all fifty facilities gives an increase of about 10 million.” He'd checked the numbers three times. Before backtracking out random repair estimates to with the finances of any third party contractors used and records of previous years. Even accounting for various officers lining their own pockets, this gave an even worse discrepancy. Kerr himself would have exercised greater care which just increased his frustration.
Dak walked over to the cooler and pulled out a bottle labelled very clearly “water” that just as clearly wasn't, grabbed a random glass from the sink and poured. He raised the glass to his lips and took a deep swallow. “Alright, now I'm prepared. How much?”
“About 100 million credits.”
Dak choked. “I can't even imagine that much money.”
“Oh, I can,” said Kerr. He had even decided how he wanted to spend it once. “The discrepancies started about four months ago, the time our efficiency as a department dropped 30%, even with the increase in staff. Next, Travis disappears from view and returns with his zeal for Blake's death and subsequent errors in judgement increased tenfold. Finally, Blake walks right into our hands and then almost manages to escape unscathed because we can't override our own security systems. I do not believe in coincidence. I think Space Command paid a bargain 100 million credits for that capability, except Blake and Servalan acquired it first.”
“Well, it could have been worse. If Central Control hadn't been moved to Star One years ago...”
“Yes, even with soldiers standing by and auto-security systems primed, Blake could have done anything with access to the control computers. Of course, he would have to access the system and not even the High Command knows where Star One is.” Kerr looked over at his monitor and the blinking cursor of the report no one in their right mind would submit. Someone disappeared this problem. And people were in many ways easier to erase than a money trail. High Command couldn't even acknowledge a problem of their own making while there was still time to do something about it. And yet, if he didn't report it... If he ran... Kerr laughed. Dak handed him the bottle of soma. Kerr didn't bother with a glass and raised the bottle to his lips. The sharp burn of alcohol ran down his throat. He passed the bottle back. Soma was too easy an answer.
Kerr looked once again at Blake and the Liberator's crew. Blake's eyes still gleamed bright with determination. “Dak, another hypothetical,” said Kerr. “Assuming unlimited access to every database both in and out of Federated space, how long do you think it will take Blake and company to piece together the location of Star One?” And how long could the computer specialist who overrode security and brought down a door on Olag Gan survive in Blake and Servalan's new world?