#118 A Disturbing Message

Posted on Fri Jan 6th, 2023 @ 11:16am by Lieutenant JG Jamie T. Kirk/AKA: "Jim"

Mission: BUGS OH NO!!
Location: Strategic Operations Dept.
Timeline: current

ON:

Having worked the night before for about four hours, Jim Kirk had then left the office and gone home, getting a good night's sleep. Awakening at her usual 0500 she then got up, did the shower, evacuate, and hygiene. Uniform gathered from the refresher she got dressed in her vest variant, had breakfast, and then made a pot of actual coffee she had stored in her quarters. The smell of percolating coffee alone was enough to get her eyes and brain fully awake, such a wonderous odor. Once the brew was done she took up her 20oz. thermomug and filled it, capping it and opening the sipping hole to ventilate the steam better. Now, coffee in one hand and PADD in the other, Kirk left her quarters and headed down the corridor.

Arriving in Strategic Operations, using her key code and a retinal scan, the airlock parted and allowed her entry to the inner sanctum of the department. She liked having the airlock in place. Any visitor would have to enter the main doors, stop, and be recognized by either the computer security system, or the people within before being allowed entry. Intelligence had the same style of door system.

As the acting Strategic Operations Chief, with all rights and privileges thereof, Kirk's primary duty was to keep tabs on all Starfleet activity within the sector that Amandora was currently within. In addition, she also had other various responsibilities aboard ship, stretching across several departments including:

Small arms recalibration
Intelligence officer with a level 4 security clearance
Fleet liaison officer

It was not unheard of for the Strat Ops Chief to work hand-in-hand with the Security, Operations, Marines, and Intelligence departments in the course of their duties. Jim had forgotten that her security clearance had been raised to a level just one level beneath the CO and XO, making her privy to quite a bit of classified information in regards to Starfleet. Trust, was all it was. Green had obviously invested a great amount of trust in her or this position would never have been offered. Strategic Operations was one of the subdivisions of Starfleet Operations, along with Administrative Operations, Engineering Operations, and Tactical Operations. It was a posting that most considered unimportant until they looked at what it really involved: Starfleet internal security and defense. SOCOM, or Strategic Operations COMmand, had specialized units and teams for infiltrating and defusing threats before they could become a serious problem. In some cases, Black Ops.

But, in the here and now, Jamie Kirk simply went through her reports from around the sector, noticing after a couple of minutes that there was a flashing message box. Opening the message, finding it encoded, Kirk entered her codes for Amandora and began to read. "What the...?" She started to ask herself, her eyes widening a bit as she continued to read the rather long message.

According to Command, Jupiter Station had been infiltrated by an unknown organization, some of them being within the Starfleet personnel assigned to the facility. An internal job with traitorous officers aiding in absconding with a plethora of Starfleet data. No one was killed, just knocked unconscious through various means and then the invaders broke into the computer security system with the aid of the collaborators, downloading a vast amount of Starfleet data before they simply disappeared in a transporter signal. There were three Reliant class advanced light cruisers around the facility at all times, and none of them detected anything. No cloaked ships, no transporter emissions, nothing. The collaborators were looked up instantly, with HQ finding out that all of them had been in service for years and they were all trusted personnel and why they had been assigned to Jupiter Station. Yet, they had aided in this act of terrorism and aggression. The message had gone out quietly, without a red flag, to keep this on the down-low. SFHQ did not want the galaxy at large to know that the Sol system had been infiltrated and shown their own ass. The message she had received from Commodore Henry April had been sent out to every starship in the fleet, directly to Strategic Operations departments, so that they could relay said information to their CO's and command staff. With trusted Starfleet officers aiding the hackers there was no telling who command could trust.

Kirk leaned back in her chair, her mind going a mile a minute. They were worried, she thought. With the way this was being relayed then Commodore April suspected that there may be CO's who were sympathetic to whoever had the gall to pull this off. Jim was not about to start questioning her faith in Commander Green or Commodore Song, with no instinctual feelings that they were in any way suspect. As Green often told her; trust your feelings.

Gathering her PADD Kirk stood up from her desk and made her way out the door. All that had been relayed to her department by Commodore April was on the PADD, encoded so she was the only one who could open it. By asking the computer she was informed that both the Commodore and Number One were on the Bridge so, that was where she was headed.

OFF: