Secrets in Subspace

Posted on 23 Mar 2013 @ 8:26pm by Raifi Zaren

1,908 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Liyar's Office
Timeline: MD04: 1600
Tags: romulan

[ON]

After his talk with Kiri, Raifi had taken the datarod back and downloaded the information, including the subspace frequencies into his PADD, sending them straight to Freya. She was fluent in Rihannsu and Rom'lesta and would be able to note pauses and hitches that seemed out of place in both languages that were used in the broadcasts. Something about it had bugged him, something he hadn't been comfortable sharing with the wide-eyed science officer who'd shown him the frequency. Why had she been listening to this in the first place? No. Not the point. He stared at the log he'd just received from Freya and lined up the broadcasts in order. Listened to them again. Again. Reading along the transcript and the translation. Breath. Breath, hitch, breath. He wrote them down, making notes on the side. Code. The whole damn thing was a code.

Zaren sat back, rubbing his eyes. Something... something... Being able to recognize a pattern didn't mean he could decipher it. That had always been Trill Intelligence's job. He picked up on things, passed them along, and they figured out what it all meant. He could reach back, make contact again, but Arjin's handler had long since retired and he didn't have many ties that still lived in that sector. He spun off a few notes, checking on connections and seeing if they might be able to help him with it, but the communications logs for this frequency had been happening for months, only recently growing in number. They were building to something. But who 'they' were or what it was they were doing, he didn't know.

Pushing from his chair, he collected his PADD and the datarods, and hurried from the room and down to Liyar's office. The man had a vested interest in the Romulan situation and had diplomatic contacts, as well as an excellent mathematical mind. If anyone could break this down... He knocked.

The door opened to reveal Liyar sitting on top of his desk, legs crossed. Opening his eyes, he watched as Zaren entered the room and his eyes flicked down to the PADD and datarods. "Mr. Zaren," he greeted the reporter. He was radiating a sense of purpose, and mounting frustration. Peculiar, how these emotions manifested in different people. Zaren's was temperate, and he found it usually pertained to the Romulan plight. He breathed it out. "Do you require assistance?"

"What have you heard about New Romulus?" Raifi held out the rod and PADD.

Liyar leaned forward and collected the items. "New Romulus? Who is calling it that?"

"That's the question, isn't it? Subspace broadcasts - I haven't been able to pin down where they're coming from yet. But I went through the records on that frequency; the broadcasts have been increasing in rate of occurrence. And here, look: 'Record Harvest on De'nar', 'Resettlement Plans Completed', 'Fleet Rescues Lost Colony Ship', 'City Plans Drawn Up for New Romulus' with images of the designs... look at the shape of the concert hall. And if you read the transcripts - these aren't normal broadcast lengths. And the syntax... I thought it looked strange and I sent it to a contact of mine who's fluent in Romlesta and Rihannsu. It's static and off-kilter to her too. And if you listen to the broadcasts, there's a kind of... irregular breath hitching."

Liyar pressed his feet into the floor and stretched his toes, turning the PADD over and walking to plug it into the monitor system. The isolinear rod followed it. His fingers were fast as he began drawing up the information. He tapped into the broadcasts and started listening to them. "It is not merely irregular," Liyar shook his head. "That is an artificial voice. Listen." He turned up the volume and began playing it. A female Romulan began speaking in Rom'lesta. "There is a reverberation." He moved his hand over the air alongside it. "It is very quick. Nearly undetectable. New Romulus," he sat down and switched the screen to the plans about the concert hall. "This form of communication is rather uncommon for Romulans, but I suppose their current rate of fracture makes it necessary," he muttered. "I do not think we will be able to solve the code, not unless we get the key. In the V'Shar we call them visatilaya-nosh-pitohat. Encryption stations. They use a method of plaintext known as a, is-tor kihtau-zehlanaya wuhkuh. One-use code, ciphertexting. The Romulans are not predisposed to alternate methods. They are impossible to translate without the specific generator. As this is in Romulan I sincerely doubt any non-native would be capable of cracking it regardless." He tapped his hand on the desk in time with the voice and it began to form a pattern. "Kavokes code. These are multilayered messages, and it will just translate to more nonsense." Liyar began drawing out some of the translated words on a sectioned part of his console. "This, in turn. These are done in interstellar diacritics, so CPDUNR in Rom'lesta becomes -" he leaned over to look at the translation matrix, "EQNVZ when translated. Let us try a simplistic key. Subtract... TQURI," he typed it in. "15, 0, -7, 4, 17, then we find 11, 0, 19, 4, 17, mod 26." Liyar arched his eyebrows flatly. "Later. But we can of course assume that TQURI is in fact any possible key. Later we will blow up MS1 or today my mother made a pie," he drawled dryly. "Even infinite computer generation will invent nonsense words. New Romulus is rather interesting nomenclature, however. The colonists at MS1 are considered traitors of the Empire, hardly Romulans."

"The population there is one of the largest single relocations of Romulans since the Hobus disaster, though," Raifi murmured. "If any place were to earn the name 'New Romulus' that would be it, surely? But I know for a fact that there's no plans for cities or concert halls there. It's a mess; they barely have enough supplies to survive the next year - now - let alone any long term planning." The Trill stared at the mess on the monitor. "All my Romulan contacts are on MS1. I could send it to them for translation, but if it's a plan they have, it'd be tipping our hand. And if it's a plan against them, it will spread and cause panic. Neither is a good option."

Liyar shook his head. "I doubt the messages truly mean anything in and of themselves, but I can run an analysis and see what other broadcasts have been released over the past two years. If we are lucky we could be looking at a systemic message. Because of the fracture of the Tal Shiar and the Galae it may not have been possible to issue generator keys individually. They could be potentially embedded, but that is a very serious if."

"Unlikely, too. The Tal Shiar don't have a reputation for being forthcoming to anyone, not even the leaders of the Galae. And if it is the Tal Shiar, they wouldn't embed a code somewhere where it could be found and deciphered."

"IKZ1 is the most information-theoretically secure means of encryption," Liyar agreed.

"But if it isn't. What then? This is usually the point I pass things on to Trill Intelligence, but most of Arjin's contacts there are dead now."

Liyar listened to him talk and began to create the code as he listened to the broadcast. This type of analysis took some time, even for him. He stood after committing the broadcast to memory and pulled out the fereikek reh, opening the hologrid. "I am going to try running integer factorization and discrete logarithm tests. IKZ1 is theoretically completely secure, but there are extreme drawbacks. They quite simply might not have had the resources to generate a perfectly secure ciphertext. For example, the level of security necessary to distribute the key for such long broadcasts is probably not available to whoever sent this message. It may be possible to retrieve the data itself. Do you have the rest of the translations?"

"Everything I have is there," he pointed to the PADD and datarod. "One of the officers on this ship - a youth named Cho - mentioned a 'New Romulus' to me, saying that the situation for the refugees was well in hand, and this is where she'd gotten her information. It felt wrong. And the more I looked... well, you see for yourself."

Every day more shipments of liradan are coming in - obviously not, liradan was a vegetable. He tapped in his unit's running key cipher. Strengthen friendships with Airek and - no. 75-59-75-47-59. "What size is the chair - no." Liyar pressed a button on his console to transmit the information on the PADD directly to his device. The translations appeared in the corner in real time. He brought down something from the last corner and his eyes lit up. "This is not ITK1. These are markers. Markers do not exist in ITK1 transmissions, they are irrelevant. You see this?" he replayed the broadcast and paused it at some of the more pronounced breath hitches. "Some of this is plaintext, these here, Draw up plans for New Romulus, with the designs, this is the plaintext, the hitches are markers designed to compensate for potential dataloss in synchronous transmission. These are being transmitted to someone on a public network, give me the network codes," Liyar moved to the other side of the room gradually as he thought. "This makes our job easier. For now, I can try to access this stream, but the best I will be able to do if it is even capable of being attacked is distort the message for its intended recipients." He looked up. "On the other hand, this message could very easily be status reports, progress updates. Any number of things, which might harm the Romulans if it were lost." Liyar stared at the code and tilted his head. "If I can determine the vector, I can begin to analyze the generator here -" he pointed down the broadcast. "TET gets K vector Y1 YK Vi Yi=(Ai1,...,aik,ai1,...,aid) then in fact Yi =... This." He drew out the symbol. 1>j>k (aijVj).. His mind started phasing out as he spoke, beginning to invert the linear transformations to the initial XOR code he had begun mapping out. "Either way, this will take a while."

Zaren nodded, "I'll stay if that's all right." He smiled, "I'm really glad you're not trying to hit me again."

"Are you," Liyar said superciliously, looking at the Trill over his shoulder.

"Yup."

Network codes. Liyar isolated them and brought them down. Intercepting the message would be his first action, but he wanted to figure out a little more of the code before he went tampering with it. Otherwise whoever the recipient was could accidentally do something they really did not want done. He fell silent again as more of the code revealed itself.

[OFF]

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

Raifi Zaren
Journalist, FNN
USS Galileo
(pNPC Lilou Peers)

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