Wayward

The Break In

"Computer Core is all yours, L.C.," Zo said as she met Lark outside the Core's door. The door opened and a mist from the non-hazard coolant poured out into the main corridor Zophia didn't know, but she had just played into Lark's hand. Lark was born on Earth, and spent her very early years near Tib's family until her's moved to the old English colony world of Trafalgar. When Larks family moved there, Trafalgar was still stable enough to wear its facade of freedom and up tier living, which suited the Calot's expensive lifestyle. That is until it fell into financial ruin from the standard political missteps these rich planets always seem to take and quickly became another lawless fringe planet. The streets and a life of crime quickly became the main past time to the teenage Lark where she learned how to do what she was about to do now. She wasn't just about to copy the computer core memory undercover. No, she made sure she had a reason to get into it's memory, and with a little help from Tib, a "memory hiccup" gave her just the reason to be in there. Breaking into things through reverse engineering and her grandfather's love of ancient automobiles helped her make the decision to be in her current vocation. Thinking about her past life before her decision to be something more put a little smirk on her face. "Thanks, Zo, I'll only be a few minutes," she said as she entered the room, not even waiting for a response from Zophia. A few minutes was all she would need. The memory core, spanning from the floor to ceiling, waited in the center of the round room. It was on the smaller side of cores she had seen but the room was different from any other she had been in. Green lighting from inside the panel gaps made a sort of circuit pattern on the ceiling, deck plating, and floor. Lark quickly navigated down the small set of stairs and around the surprisingly small memory core until she reached a access panel at about halfway up on the side of the core. She rapidly reached out and with a little pull downwards, accompanied with hiss of hydraulics, the panel came off and revealed a row of access ports with a diagnostic screen displaying flashing sequences. Usually she wouldn't be in a rush but she had the clock to beat now as well as Union felony if she was caught. "Now to fix our little problem," she said with a smirk. She slotted two command chips into the core, one for resequencing and one for transferring, making sure to be discreet as well since the monitoring equipment for the Core room wouldn't be down until the re sequencing began. All she had to do was time the resequence command just right with the transfer command and the  core wouldn't register the transfer. For once Lark was glad the Ragnus was growing on the aging side of starships. Lark connected her padd and very easily found the bug that Tib and she had planted about thirty minutes earlier. Now all she had to do was find the memory on the Triangulum Project and go through with the plan, which she very quickly did. As the resequencing began, she expertly timed the transfer command with the core command cache clearing. Lark was somewhat astounded as she saw that the data flow just seemed to keep coming. If she had the time she would decode it herself, but like she told Zo, she would only be a few minutes. The plan had been completed for the most part at this point. She just had to sit through the rest of the resequencing. If her and her group were extremely lucky, than maybe the rip of the memory would be flawless but she knew it would be a barely functional mess. Lark looked over the Core and was reminded of a similar model she had done the same to in one of Orton's, Trafalgar's capital, smaller banks. Strange how space is so odd, yet so familiar. Maybe she would go back one of these days, when she was all done with the mess the Terran arm of the Navy had turned into. She chuckled as she quietly said, "Maybe I could finally rope Tib into something." She knew the chances of that were slim as Tib had visited the oddly weathered rock that was Trafalgar and had found he didn't care too much for it. The padd she was holding beeped three times signalling the end of both her projects. Lark quickly took the two chips she had slotted and closed the panel. As she walked around the core and to the door, she wondered what secrets could be on her padd now. She pressed the door open button to be greeted by Zophia. "That was fast," Zo said with a hint of hatred flaring the Orion accent in her voice. "Well that's the reason I'm on this ship Zo, always have been quick and efficient," Lark shot back with her own hint of animosity hidden behind her smirk. "We'll I'm going to make sure that your handy work is up to Union standards, if that's alright of course," Zo said taking a step closer to the entrance. "With pleasure," Lark said motioning inside and stepping away from the entrance. Zophia didn't say anything as she walked past Lark and into the Core. Lark lazily walked away wishing to not waste anymore time on the confrontation with someone whom she had lost all respect for. Her and Zo were almost as close as her and Tib were now before Tib had come aboard. Now that he was here though, it seemed as though she was almost threatened by him. Lark knew exactly what it was. Zo wanted to have the chief engineer spot probably more than anyone besides Tib, and after getting a taste of it before Tib came on as the full time replacement for his old friend Kae, there weren't better words to describe Zophia Canderhall now other than jealous and scorned. Lark sighed as she thought about the whole situation while walking through the corridor stretch to her quarters. She hoped that maybe Zo would snap out of it soon but it would probably take a catastrophe for her to get over herself. She knew that dwelling on it was not going to change anything at this point, unfortunately. Realizing this Lark switched her mind back to her main focus: figuring out if Maxwell and the Terran Navy really were hiding information about the Triangulum Project. 

Tib sat quietly on his bed reading one of his books from his collection. He had probably read this one, War of the Worlds, a thousand times over, but it never got old to him. In the end it was probably for the books resemblance to the Draylon campaign. A horryfing war, but one history would not forget. Tib remembered the news reports for it like it was yesterday, Terran marines entrenched against terrifying Hulyian weapons of war, carnage on a once beautiful tropical world almost like earth, and the continuous back and forth headlines of victory and defeat. Tib knew that in the end the aliens in this novel were defeated by the earth's native bacteria. That notion was humorous to Tib. Not that H. G. Well's work had got it wrong, in fact humans did really turn out to be the natural carrierers of a few disease that wiped out several civilizations, but more often than not, humans fell victim to another worlds contagion. Just as Tib turned over a new page, his quarters comm beeped. "Yes?," Tib said while looking around his room like he usually did. "What are you doing right now?," Lark asked. "Just studying some diagnostics, are you already in the lab?," Tib said, knowing she knew the diagnostic part was a lie. "Yes, why don't you put down that book and come crack open these files with me," she said with a laugh. "Maybe you should actually give books a try over your space files and then I will," Tib said with a playful tone. In actuality the wait for Tib to see what Maxwell might be hiding had seemed like an eternity to Tib and nothing was going to keep him from eventually looking over them. He had been hiding his emotions well, like he had always done, but part of him wanted to ask Lark if she was able to get anything on Kae's death. Tib hated that part about of himself that couldn't let her go. It had been a year since they lasted talked at all and quite some time since they were more, but the idea that her death was preventable brought him unbridled rage. "What do you think might be in them?," Tib said as he got up from his bed and threw his jacket on while carefully making sure to mark the place he had stopped in the book. He shot one more glance outside at the planet before he started heading to the door of his quarters. "Hopefully a foolproof plan to conquer the universe," Lark said. Tib could picture the eye roll when she said that, which she very much did. "Well, I'm on my way down there, have you called up Alex yet?," Tib asked while the door to his quarters opened and the communique switched from the quarters' speakers to his wrist comm. "Already on it, Tibby, don't take too long," Lark said. "Lark, when am I ever slow?," Tib asked as he was now standing in front of the lift door waiting for it to come up. "Whenever you feel like annoying me, mostly," Lark said with annoyance obvious in her voice. She was right though. Tib did have a liking to get on her nerves sometimes since she liked doing things as fast as possible and she knew he was faster than her at common things like recoupling conduits. "No, that's all in your head, Lark, you move so fast the whole universe can't keep up," he said hiding the smile in his voice. "Whatever, space boy, I'll see you when you get here," she said as the comm beeped. Talking with Lark helped calm Tib's mind. He was hoping the other engineers would be as close to him as Lark, eventually at least, but they had known each other since birth. On the other hand though, he could already feel Alex was going to be a good friend and with Sheeb mentoring him, somewhat, maybe they would make it through whatever was happening behind the scenes after all. Even then, Tib was starting to get a bad feeling. He had not had a dream in quite some time. The idea of the calm before the storm was palatable to him, but he had hope, and hope was what he knew he needed to make it through this. The trip down the corridor to its lift felt shorter than usual this time as his mind turned into a mass of different thought and ideas about what secrets could be hiding in that memory core rip. As he entered the lift he took a deep breath and pressed the close button. Tib sat in the lift for a bit. He knew that whatever he was about to see would change his perception of the Triangulum Project or maybe even the whole Union of Planets. He had to go through with it. He had to do it for Kae and Kelvin. He had to do it for his friends. He had to do it for him. He had to do it for the Union. Tib refocused and pressed the button for Deck 38. The lift hissed as it was pulled downwards to the derelict deck. Tib was in a struggle with his emotions and his patriotism for the Terran Navy. Was this really the right thing? Of course it was at least he thought so. Maybe risking everything, including putting his whole career at risk, was worth it. Tib could feel the lift start slowing down and eventually come to complete stop. The lift opened with a whoosh and Tib stepped out on the deck. He could see Lark standing at the door of the lab. She was not in her uniform which made Tib's anxiety spike over the thought of being caught in the process of this. There was no saying they were trying to fix a broken computer unit now. Tib quickly walked the distance and asked ,"You ready to get to work?" Lark shook her head, "Not as ready as you are," she said as Tib removed the mag-lock from the door and opened it. "You have no idea," Tib said as they both stepped in.