Upper Hand

Posted on Tue Mar 22nd, 2022 @ 5:30pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Petty Officer 3rd Class Sam Saghir & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr

Mission: With Gleaming Eyes
Location: Intelligence Suite
Timeline: MD3 after “Hand Gesture”
1004 words - 2 OF Standard Post Measure

…and therefore should be considered a high priority target should any tactical engagement occur. The ramifications of leaving a biomimetic reactor online, should that be what we are dealing with, are already beginning to be seen and could worsen exponentially. I recommend -“

The computer interrupted P’rel as she was continuing her report “Warning. System access restricted. Lieutenant P’rel is no longer on active duty.”

Blinking in disbelief at the locked terminal in front of her, the Vulcan swore using a eclectic mix of Human, Romulan and Tellarite phrases.

"What's going on?" asked Silnan, who had rejoined her in the intelligence suite after missing the colourful interaction with Commander Zora.

"Executive Officers..." the Vulcan responded dryly and cryptically. Acknowledging the somewhat confused Cardassian's expression, she continued; "Commander Zora is trying to reinforce the nonsensical command hierarchy on the Athena by taking me off of active duty. This will force me to come to her to apologise and commit to behaviours I have no intention of committing to, in order that my access is restored."

"Oh..." Silnan replied, still not really any wiser as to what was going on.

"As with the recent XO's I've had the misfortune of dealing with, this one also seems obsessed with ego over function, and is more concerned with marking her territory than with the effective resolution of the mission at hand"

"Marking her territory?"

Standing and moving to an auxiliary console, the Vulcan knelt down beneath it and prised a circuit housing access panel from its clips. "Let's just say the Commander would have more been more subtle if she had come in her, cocked a leg and - oh never mind, hold this..." she passed over a circuit manifold containing about a dozen isolinerar chips all plugged in. The manifold remained connected to some kind of junction box inside the console by a long trailing conduit.

"Should I ask...?" ventured Silnan. "No, probably not..." he concluded audibly. "Whatever you're doing, Captain Kane will not approve" the youthful Cardassian offered, as if it would make any difference.

"I'm actually doing very little..." replied P'rel, her head and shoulders now buried inside the console as she moved a small manifold identical to the first, she passed it back to the Cardassian "...and this...".

Now standing, the Vulcan officer placed a tricorder against the first manifold she had asked her assistant to hold, there was a brief flickering on both the manifold and the tricorder. "When you come aboard a Starship, the operations officer assigns your digital profile a security level depending on the prescribed one appropriate for your job role..." she removed the conduit from the manifold with the tricorder balanced on it, and watched for any power failure, seeing there was none, she continued to remove the conduit from the second manifold which immediately lost power. "Some officers, usually department heads, command officers and such, have a security level assigned to their personal profile as well so that they can take work home and access restricted material from personal terminals, such as those in personal quarters...or recreational areas....".

P'rel moved across the room briefly to adjust a database setting on the primary console, before returning to her colleague who was stood woefully bemused, holding two chip manifolds and very much wondering why.

"The personal clearance is usually lower than the operational clearance, as a security mitigation measure - you'd really only find Captain Kane and Commander Zora on board with an identical fluid clearance profile."

"And you?" guessed Silnan.

"If one had thought to alter the system to provide parallel clearances months ago, yes..." P'rel connected the conduits to the manifolds, so that each was now running on the power and ODN supply that the other had previously been.

Holding both, Silnan gestured with each now powered manifold as he spoke. "So you've swapped one for the other, so you can carry on working on your personal profile." He concluded, sounding proud that he had worked it out.

"And with the levels of isolation and hard separation in the intelligence suite, so long as I only work here the computer will never know the difference." she deactivated the tricorder and watched again for power failure; seeing there was none she placed both manifolds back inside the console and replaced the panel.

"So now you can carry on writing the report for the Captain?"

"Now, I beat Commander Zora at her own game..." P'rel responded, her voice trailing off as she accessed the biometric files for the senior officers, opening Zora's. She would only be able to make a handful of tweaks, or the oddities would show up on a database discrepancy scan at some point. Adjusting the parameters of Zora's profile, she gave the Commander eleven fingers on each hand, and altered her height to eleven feet.

"Why....?" asked Silnan.

"The computer recognises each user and provides a custom layout, and this is usually species dependent - screens for Vulcans are generally brighter in accordance with our homeworld, and important information will show lower down for shorter species, buttons will be smaller and spread further apart for quadrapeds....infinite diversity in infinite combinations one might say..."

"So you're making it that the Commander's consoles will show a lot of small closely bunched buttons to account for her 22 fingers. And the height?"

"The computer knows that the doorways are too small for that height, and every time she tries to walk through one it should activate a site to site transport".

"You like her" grinned the Cardassian.

"Nonsense" replied the Vulcan, sitting back down to work after entering a provision that the modifications should delete themselves if Red Alert were to activate.

"No you do...." Silnan pressed further. "You wouldn't bother with this otherwise, you would just carry on with internal derisory judgement. You only antagonise people you're fond of..."

"I don't know what you're talking about..." P'rel responded dismissively, thumbing the door control at her console so they slid open to indicate Silnan should leave.