round 6 Lt. Luna Walker: "Following behind, cleaning up the mess"

[Lt. Cmdr. Katy Orman]

((USS Excalibur-A, Main Engineering))

:: Murphy was not her friend. Neither was irony. Apparently, this was manifesting as a lot of things going wrong, all of which was definitely forcing engineering to work like mad. It made it worse that she had to keep in the corner of her mind whether one of the engineers was causing any of the problems. The only blessing so far was she'd not found anyone responsible. Oh, and that the ship was still semi-functioning and in one piece.. there was that too.

While she waited for a response from the bridge, hoping that Livingston or someone up there still remembered some base level diagnostic coding, she tried to trace back the blocks on internal sensors and communications. It was like the computer was auto-acknowledging everything. So messages were being sent, but prior to receipt the acknowledge code would go out. So, as far as the computer was concerned, things were working normally. The ship rocked from a hit, leaving her if anything more frustrated. ::

L.Walker: Phillips! Get more power to the forward shields! Not sure what's hitting us, but it's doing it often enough.

Phillips: On it... Chief!

:: She rolled her eyes briefly at the response. She was still being "hazed" by the other engineers about being put in charge. Something that she was sure every engineer went through at some point. Looking back at the panel, she saw that someone up there still liked her... well as long as "up there" counted as the bridge. ::

>> MAIN ENGINEERING I: DIAGONOSTIC ERROR. MESSAGE UNDERSTOOD. SHUT DOWN ALL HOLODECKS AND TRACE ACCESS REQUESTS.

:: She nodded to herself, bringing up the power flows to verify that her command had been completed... only to see that there was a secondary flow to the holodeck that had kicked on when she'd shutoff primary power. ::

L.Walker: :: softly to herself:: Why you little...

:: In response to her remarks, her opponent decided to blow stuff up. Which included the power to her station and from yells around her, to others as well. She cursed again, mostly to herself before raising her voice. ::

L.Walker: Ok, people... Get to damage control or the engineering labs. Move!

:: Thankfully engineering had a number of separately powered areas, specifically designed that if there were power failures they could continue repairing. She moved to the engineering holodeck as a slow smile crept onto her face. Likely the person had given engineering commands, changed the settings on something... then erased the commands. Which meant her logging program would capture it as differences to the logs. Unless, of course, that person had read all of her commands and countered it. ::

((USS Excalibur - A, Engineering holosuite))

:: Luna hadn't used this yet, but with her other options out... she brought up the suite, tying it to what information she could pull from engineering systems. She brought up several screens, one of which compared the commands given to the log that she'd pulled separately. Around her she brought up the ship as a three dimensional map. Immediately she could see blacked out areas between decks 13 and 14, as well as between 15 and 16. Whoever had done it had taken out both the primary and auxillary power to engineering and the Intel area. But she could already see that whoever it was had already left the holodeck. The door lock had been removed.

The problem was, she couldn't send messages to the bridge anymore. Her consoles were dead, and the interface used higher functions that wouldn't allow the diagnostic messages. Not without shutting it down.. What she needed was a computer system that wasn't directly tied to the main computer. Which of course there were a ton just lying around.

Suddenly she started chuckling... then laughing out loud. Just a couple decks above her.. there were in fact tons of computers just lying around. She just needed to get to the hangar.

She heard a chime behind her and turned to look through the results. Her face fell, her jaw dropping as she read the logs. That whoever had done it was an expert was obvious, and had Luna not already been logging any changes to compare... she wasn't sure that she'd be any farther for finding out what she had.

Her expected moment of triumph turned to ashes in her mouth. If she was right, she needed to tell Commander Livingston. And everything fit, so she was fairly sure. But... she wasn't sure that announcing it was going to help anything either. If Katy had actually done this... then there was no way to know how security would react. Would they support Katy, who would likely claim that Luna was the traitor? And worse, what if she WAS wrong? Accusing Katy would only make matters worse. Though doing nothing would leave her able to wreck (literally) more havoc.

This of course presumed she'd have a way to send that message, without revealing more than she should. Somehow Katy appeared to be able to access the computer at the root level. Higher than the Captain technically, and worse she obviously had the skills and knowledge to work around any obvious roadblocks Luna knew how to put up.

She forced herself to stop and take a breath. Moaning about what she couldn't do wouldn't help. She just had to think like a thief. If Katy controlled the place, she couldn't be overt, but she could work around her. She created a platform and tried sending a signal to one of the shuttles, and was gratified by a response. Then she setup a firewall around the shuttle, no one else could access it but her for now, any other signal would receive that the system was offline. She then reconfigured the communication protocols to send to specific locations on the ship using the transmitters and receivers there for those without badges. Since she was using the base locations, it would act as an old time switchboard. She could connect people together or at least locations. ::

L.Walker: =/\= Lt. Walker to Bridge. Over.=/\=

:: The sound and quality was terrible, but something that could at least be understood ::

Silveira: =^= Sil here, we are listening, what happened? =^=

L.Walker: =/\= Our friend took out power to the engineering stations as well as Intelligence suite. We are using the damage control stations, but more limited. On the plus side, I'm using a computer not attached to the ship to partially restore communications. =/\=

:: The obscure reference wouldn't take too long for anyone to determine, though at least she would avoid immediately announcing her method to any potential plotters. ::

Livingston: =/\= The sooner we get a system back, the better. Do you have any news on who was behind the sabotage? =/\=

:: She swallowed, not wanting to share the news she'd discovered. ::

L.Walker: =/\= Whoever it is, they appear to have the same access as the Captain, possilbly more. And they are very skilled, they were able to reroute my power commands on the fly, delaying them long enough to shoot back. =/\=

Livingston: =/\= Whoever it is, have you locked them out? =/\=

:: She shook inside, the thought reminding her far too much of what she'd been through before being rescued. Especially if it was Katy, one of the few people on the ship she still knew. Game or no, it was a shock. ::

L.Walker: =/\= Hard to say. I have a name that's called out, but it could easily be another false lead. Especially with the access they have. =/\= :: She couldn't make herself believe she was wrong. Too much made sense for it not to be her. :: =/\= The logs I generated show that the updates were made by Commander Orman. System traces were immediately erased and electronically muddied. =/\=


Livingston: =/\= We’ll deal with her. Thank you, Mister Walker. Please continue repairs. =/\=