STF

CIO's Office - A Favor For A Gift

Posted June 6, 2021, 12:42 a.m. by Lieutenant Commander Daggum Hammor (Chief Operations Officer) (James Sinclair)

Posted by Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office - A Favor For A Gift

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Daggum Hammor (Chief Operations Officer) in CIO’s Office - A Favor For A Gift

Posted by Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office - A Favor For A Gift
Posted by… suppressed (17) by the Post Ghost! 👻
The Ops Chief walked the passageways towards Nightstalker’s office. The computer said he was there… but Hammor had been on board long enough to know that may not be the case. Palming the small black pyramid in his hand, he pressed the chime and waited.

Hammor, Ops

There was a slight pause and then the sound of energy humming within the room. Moments later Stark opened the door looking a little breathless.

“Hammor,” he said with a slight smile showing a perfect canine, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor cocked his head to the side and said “Um… if I am interrupting, I can come back. I just needed your input on a little side project.”

Hammor, Ops

Stark frowned for a brief second, “Interrupting, no, not at all, at least in so far as anything unexpected is an interruption but certainly in this case, not an unwelcome one,” he gestured to his spartan quarters with two leather chairs, one seriously scratched and a work station. “Please come in”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor nodded and accepted his invitation and walked in. “So… before I begin… you may want to turn off any recording devices you want to keep. Because what I have may interfere with them… as in… well… permanently.” and he chuckled and held out a small black pyramid in his massive green palm.

Identical on all sides, the top of the pyramid was some kind of carbon fiber mesh. “I’d also like your help testing it.”

Hammor, Ops

Stark didn’t often give away secrets but in this instance he felt he’d make an exception. He twisted a patch of fur on his forearm revealing a sub-dermal ceramic patch powered by the electricity of his own nervous system. A couple of taps was all that was needed to set the room to ghost mode.

He looked at the pyramid intently and leaded in to get a closer view still his breathing as he did so, finally he smiled broadly and looked up. “You have piqued my curiosity, please tell me more”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

“It’s a audio-optical signal disruptor.” Hammor began. “I started by isolating the majority of the light spectrum and the majority of frequencies of vocal communications. Then I inserted a carrier-wave generator that masks the signal of the device from beings in the room. This, then, effects all sound and light waves in a given area… say roughly the size of a standard Conference room or smaller… by mirroring them and sending them back in a loop in thirty nanosecond bursts… but amplified at 100x. Think of it like inaubible and invisible ‘white noise*. So It shorts out all the recording and eavesdropping devices I’ve tried. But I thought you might be able to put it through its paces a little more substantially.”

Hammor, Ops

Stark was smiling now. “Fascinating. A few tweaks one way to make it less detectable, a few tweaks the other way to make it weaponisable, yes fascinating. Please tell me that you have a situation you’d specifically like me to test it on, I do love intrigue”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor chuckled slightly and he said “I am thinking it to be a more ‘proactive defense’ than anything else. When you want to ensure any listening devices are disabled and you don’t care if the opposing party knows about it or not.” and he looked at the CIO and grinned. “The espionage form of ‘making a statement’, of sorts. ‘I know you are listening, and now you not only know that I know, but you also cant hear. Have a nice day.’ kind of thing. I really don’t know. My familiarity with espionage is only so far as hacking Station Quartermaster and Dockmaster scheduling.” and he chuckled.

Hammor, Ops

It was Stark’s turn to chuckle, “Considering how proprietary Station Quartermasters and Dock masters are, if you can hack that even the Tholians need to be wary”. He looked again at the object, “I like the idea of “you can’t listen, suck it up” but I’m still wondering if we can rig it with a feedback loop that says “you can’t listen, oops your listening device just got fried, so sorry”“. He cocked his head to one side, “But that could be a story for another day, as for now, do you have anything in particular you’d like to try this out on?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor thought for a second and then grinned. “So we do a gradual feedback amplification instead of a full one from the start. The listeners will hear subtle but ever increasing distortion until it hits critical levels and then pop, there goes the device. I could probably add a second delay before that point to activate a recording that says ‘Gotcha.’ and then they fry.” and he laughed.

Stark outright laughed at that, “Perfection would be if we could record the look on their faces at that point”.

“As far as what I want to try it out on? Everything, but I don’t have access to that kind of equipment, especially non-Federation models. So I thought if you had some we could try and destroy and we get it to work… then I’d give you the prototype and schematics, and I’ll just make one for my friend. What do you think?”

Hammor, Ops

“You’ve come to the right place for that and I’m definitely keen. I’m going to have to ask you to keep a vow of silence on what I have that we can test it with. Orvos is aware of my devices. He needed to be to make sure that what I use doesn’t affect the ship adversely, however much of my inventory was picked up before I came back into Starfleet and some of it is unique”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor nodded, intrigued by what the CIO could have. “Of course. My word. But again… when this is dialed in correctly, whatever is active is going to be severely damaged or destroyed, so I hope none of it is too unique.”

Hammor, Ops

“True,” Stark thought it through, “I might reach out and get some backups just in case, I might leave my greatest prize out of the loop for now. A modified Ferengi thought probe might be a little hard to replace. Let’s start with something a bit more mundane”. He placed a claw on a metal stud on one of the armchairs and the back of it opened up revealing an array of equipment. He whipped out a triangular listening device and spun it in his paw. “Effective but cheap and easy to replace. Want to get started?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor nodded and said “Absolutely. You get it set up and I’ll activate the… whatever we are going to call it.”

Hammor, Ops

Stark whistled a little tune and looked over at his console. “It’s active now, have at it”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor nodded and touched the base and a small red light moved in a slow circle around the base, slowly gaining momentum. Suddenly the light disappeared and the edge of the base went solid red, then yellow, then green…

And the bug sparked and popped and thin wisp of smoke slowly curled up and away from it.

Hammor looked at it and grinned. “Well… that went well.” and he chuckled.

Hammor, Ops

“It did, didn’t it,” Stark agreed looking a little mournfully at his fried device. “I’m sensing a story here, care to share?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Hammor shrugged and said “I warned you.” and he cast a glance at the device and grinned at the CIO. “As for the story? Well… I have a good friend who has been the target of some not-so-nice people. People in the line of work where they would use such things. I’m going to visit her, and I didn’t want there to be any kind of… extra attention… paid to her during my visit. What we do and say is between us. That’s it. Not much of a story I’m afraid. Just a guy wanting some privacy… for him and his friend.” It was, of course, a bit deeper than that. Daggum didn’t want anything he and Faye said to each other to be able to be used as leverage against her later.

Hammor, Ops

Stark nodded. “There were some traces of communication between the two of you floating around in the memory logs. Nothing pertinent but just enough to know that you were in contact with each other. If you like I can set my devices to remove them.”

Looking again at the triangular device he smiled, “This should do the trick and if you need any help with the “not-so-nice” people I would consider it a privilege and a pleasure to volunteer.”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Daggum looked at him for a moment and then said “I may just take you up on that. As far as the logs go, I just don’t want anyone thinking they can use me as some kind of leverage against her. I dont take well to being used.” and he nodded once for emphasis. “But… that is a question for another time. So…” and he slid the device across the table to Stark. “… a deal is a deal. I’m going to make two more, then I’ll send you the plans. I appreciate your help, Commander. Hope you can put it to good use.”

Hammor, Ops


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