Book 4:Chapter 29 “Task Foce Geek”
My name is Captain Miller. Otherwise known as HG which stands for Head Geek.
I am not your typical colonial fleet officer.
I don’t like to fly in anything. I’ve never dreamed of being a pilot. The mere thought of getting into a raptor and doing an FTL jump makes me sick to my stomach.
So how I ended up on a mission away from my Battlestar with a bunch of assault raptors in a couple of reconnaissance raptors to try and tap into the Cylons network, is an interesting story.
How I ended up surviving the destruction of humanity is an even more interesting story.
Here’s the short version: I was a well-paid high tech geek in my late 20s. I lived in Caprica City. I was 29 years old and I was bored with the job, helping corporations make more money with their computers. I answered the ad for a one week consulting project. That is when I met Lieutenant Maria Ramirez.
I absolutely detest flying of any kind when I found out that the gig involved spending a week on a Battlestar.
I said thanks but no thanks. When I heard that it was the Battlestar Mercury I was ready to jump out a window.
—-
That particular ship had a reputation for being troublesome. It was the first ship of its class hence the name Mercury class. I nearly had a heart attack when I found out that the work was to fix bugs in the FTL navigation computers.
One Frack up and you could materialize in the middle of an asteroid on your next Ftl jump. I wanted nothing to do with this contract even though we get 50,000 cubits for two weeks of work. After Lieutenant Ramirez offered me 75,000 cubits, I knew it was a death trap and it would be a career ending injury if I took the job.
Yes, she did not raise the price anymore. She sat there and stared at me with a special look on her face. She pulled a piece of paper out of her briefcase and pushed it across the table for me to read. It was an order from President Adar.
—-
——
I had just been drafted for two weeks into the colonial fleet. I sat there with my mouth open and couldn’t say a single word.
“Don’t worry puppy” she said, after petting me on my head like a dog. “You’re still getting paid when I let you go. I got a list of things you need to help me fix in the Battlestar.”
As things turned out the FTL navigation computer problem was simply a patch installation that was missed on an annual security upgrade. This and the entirety of the LT’s list took three days to correct. The FTL jump testing that was done at the end of that reboot made me sick as all FTL travel did.
——
The money seemed pretty easy, and I kind of thought that the LT was kind of hot, so I just decided to be thorough and insisted on a number of rebooting system checks and stress tests.
The strange thing was every time I ran a power cycle test on any of the computer systems or network gear, it stopped and waited for some kind of signal. A system trace showed references to a program called command navigation program. CNP by Gaeus Baltar.
At my daily meeting with Lieutenant Ramirez. I showed her the test results and she opened up her briefcase. She pulled out a datastick and dropped on the table.
Nobody saw that source code. Nobody.
—–
“Don’t tell anybody about how you got this or who gave it to you. That’s the source code. I think Baltar is a stuffed shirt and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. I want to rip that code out of the computer system, but I would have to prove it to the higher-ups before I touch anything.”
I told her that I could make a kill for the program and remove it with a single script. The name of the script was killCNP.sh
——
Unfortunately, for my fate, this was the day before the Cylon attack. My test of the script was scheduled for a Saturday night in a week’s time when the ship was scheduled to be docked. The crew was scheduled for shore leave, and the only two people on the ship will be myself and Lieutenant Ramirez.
The Mercury would spend the rest of the week on the Cylon border
This plan sounded good to me. The Saturday evening was a week away and the next day was the scheduled decommissioning of the Battlestar Galactica.
So I was not exterminated with the rest of humanity. But I had the sucky job running the IT for an entire fleet of under maintenanced and overworked Battlestars. So my wish for adventure had sort of come back at me.
—-
The basic Cylon operating system for depots, bases and ground stations assumed that all network traffic was authorized. An attempt was made to encrypt the data, but it was half hearted.
There were long buffers at the end of each message, and it was easy to put some gibberish in there, and only a script written by me would recognize the data.
The mission to jump and insert the program into a Cylon Communications station that we have nicknamed “Giant can opener” went without a hitch.
—-
Design was typical of my brilliant work. The original program was installed into the read-only memory on a Cylon data storage device. To be removed, the actual storage device had to be removed from the system.
Over the next week, we installed it in 12 other communications centers, mostly can opener clones. We then settled into an abandoned depot so as to not get killed while my minions gathered my data.
The Marines jogs around in the weak artificial gravity. I basically sat there writing my memoirs and waiting for data. I was all over getting home safely to New Helios and continuing the relationship with Commander Modi or starting a family fresh.
Eventually, I was getting daily reports on the location and sometimes the mission of over 100 Cylon war ships located in this oversized asteroid field.
—-
The Battlestar Mercury was fairly active in the area as it was jumping around trying to locate the Battlestar Saturn. Every time Mercury was in combat, it sent a small data packet that took about 4 hours to get to one of the can openers. That broadcast my encrypted gibberish across the entire Cylon network. This message was heavily encrypted, and if the Cylons altered it or cracked it, I would find out quickly.
All they needed to do was get one of these hard disks on the Saturn and coordinating a meeting would be easy. We received a report and followed it and were ambushed by a Cylon fleet. Someone had fracked with my code and sent me a false destination.
Living in a spacecraft hanger, or worse yet an assault raptor was not a picture of hygiene. After three weeks the raptors smelled like a sewer. I was checking all my code, and found the false message that had nearly gotten us all killed.
—–
I beefed up my encryption, but felt like I was suddenly in a duel with a human, sentient programmer. We started using mobile devices that I knew Lawson and Ramirez both had to try and get the message.
There was a beep, and my beat up mobile phone showed me I had just received a 2 hour old location on the Saturn. I said yeehaw and ordered the jump, after making my best efforts to ensure that the message was not altered.
The Marine Master Sargent was worried about another ambush and insisted on sending a pair of raptors to scout the location before we all jumped in.
—–
Thirty minutes later the signal came back. “This is Toad. The Saturn is at the coordinates. It is heavily damaged and on fire. They are not going to be able to jump to the task force. The task force is going to have to come to them.”
“Roger that Toad. This is HG. We are heading back to the flagship and getting them the news. We will take 2 raptors. The other 4 are ordered to render assistance to the Battlestar Saturn.”
“Roger that. Wilco HG.”
