Between CO & XO

Posted on Fri Jan 19th, 2024 @ 12:45am by Lieutenant Commander Jaal Jaxom & Commodore Finchley Kerr

685 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Investigate the Chintoka Shipyard Buildup
Location: Jaxom’s Cabin
Timeline: Current

Since he would be on light duty for a couple of days, Jaal had donned some more comfortable clothes. Simple sweat pants and a shirt that declared he was ‘Property of the Starfleet Academy Phys. Ed. Department’.

He then got to work on his computer terminal checking the algorithm’s work. Satisfied the code would not turn up any false positives he sat back and let the processors do their work.

The next order of business was a letter home. While composing his door chime rang. “C’mon in,” he called and stood up to greet his visitor.

The door to Jaal’s quarters opened and Finchley walked in, “Forgive me not calling ahead Commander, I was wanting to catch up with you and find out if your algorithm had thrown up anything interesting.”

Jaal nodded, “It’s all right,” he motioned to his terminal, “Since we’re currently docked, I thought I’d commandeer some of the main computer’s processing power. It’s working, people that have been on board the shortest amount of time are finished. The crew and officers that have been here longer are taking more time simply because their comm logs are longer.”

After a quick check of the progress on the screen he looked back to Kerr. “I, myself, haven’t seen anything obviously suspicious yet but I’ve flagged some irregularities. You’ll want to check those out, you’ve been in this intel business longer than I so you may see some things I don’t”

“I’ve been in a while, yes” Finches replied, “and one thing I’ve learnt is don’t believe everything you see. Intelligence work can range anywhere from a few hours to a few years, just because some of the crew haven’t been here long, it doesn’t discount them from being above suspicion. But, gut instinct in our case has me thinking that yes, the perpetrator may not have been ’here’ long” he gestured to the ship in general, “but they’ve been in Intelligence a while. The PADD you gave me earlier, I used your algorithm on the information you gave me, and something interesting was flagged up. Prior to us leaving to go to the shipyards, Commander Dex received a communication from a source that wasn’t logged at the senders end, only this end.”

“If I may Commander” he gestured to the console.

“Of course,” Jaal allowed him the seat in front of the terminal.

“Thank you” Finchley said sitting down. Entering his command information, he pulled up the communication he had spoken about moments before.

“Do you think you can trace where the communication came from? It doesn’t have to be absolutely accurate, even if you can get a general area, preferably to within say…a few hundred meters.”

“It shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Jaal answered with ideas already forming in his mind. It wasn’t all that difficult to mask where messages were coming from or going to, but there were ways to track it down. “Do you think it came from somewhere on Blackeagle? Or somewhere else?”

“If it’s what I think it is, then I would say the messages origin would be from Earth,” Finchley replied, “Maybe not from Intelligence HQ, but I’m not discounting it and would be someone senior in rank.”

Jaal's fingers began working the console as his brow furrowed in thought. "If our mole is communicating with someone on Earth," he spoke slowly, "... it could be possible there's more than one... in Starfleet Intel... or Starfleet in general."

Finchely's commbadge chirped, "Incoming message for you Captain."

"I'll be right back," he told Jaal and stepped out into the corridor.

A moment later he came back into Jaal's cabin. "Kilbane, Karadis and I will be off the ship for a few days. Keep going with your investigation. Hopefully we'll be back soon."

Jaal was a bit gobsmacked by that but kept his expression neutral. "All right. I guess we'll see you when you all get back."

Finchley nodded and left.

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