The Task (Part Two of Two)

Lieutenant Commander Tyra headed towards the turbolift still in her full dress uniform. She'd spent so much time enjoying the idea of her new position that she hadn't noticed the time.

"Deck 11, Section 231a." She announced as she entered the turbolift.

As she reached the open door to the late Shaka's quarters, she paused for a second, trying to get her breath back and gain some composure. She was also thinking about how she was going to explain her late arrival.

"Come in Commander." Came a voice from inside the room.

Tyra stepped inside the room and looked around. It looked like every other single persons room on the ship. But usually when you entered someone's quarters there was usually something personal to identify the occupant. Sometimes it was a favourite picture on a wall or holo-images of family and loved ones. Here there was nothing, nothing to mark this room out as the former quarters of the Slipstream specialist.

"I'm in the 'office' Tyra." The voice said again.

Tyra knew that only the Captain, First officer and Chief Science office had a separate office attached to their quarters. She soon realised that what the voice had referred to as the 'office' was infact a partitioned area of the room.

She walked around the side of the partition wall and saw the source of the voice.

"Glad you could join us Commander." Chu said jokingly.

"I'm sorry I am late Commander." Tyra apologised.

"Too busy partying." Chu replied jokingly "Don't worry about it Tyra, relax a little, this maybe your only chance for a while. I doubt we've seen the last of the Zeratul brood or the Proletarians."

"Thank you Sir. And I am sorry." Tyra again apologised.

"It gave me time to start packing Shaka's personal belongings, what there are of them. Like most of us who where aboard the original Leviathan, we lost most of our belongings when she was destroyed. Strange to think that the entire life of a person can fit into one small box." Chu said, pointing at the packing crate by the door. "I'll take it down to cargo bay three and put it into storage when we're done here. Take that jacket off and sit down Tyra, you're not on duty." Chu explained. "And when we're off duty Tyra, you don't have to call me Commander or Sir, Chu will do."

"Thank you sir, I mean Chu" Tyra said. "So what are we looking for exactly ?." She asked.

"Anything that would show us what Shaka had been working on. You examine the logs and I'll examine her personal files. Look for anything and everything relating to the Slipstream drive. Shaka it would appear was a fanatic about Slipstream theory and technologies, I think she must have every piece of information ever 'published' and documented about Slipstream, from Voyager's encounter with the alien Arturis onwards. Some of the files actually pre-date that time." Chu replied.

An hour passed by, as they looked through 'reams' and 'reams' of data files.

*Hello, what's this ?* Chu thought as he came across an encrypted file.

"Tyra, come and take a look at this." Chu said, beckoning Tyra around the table. "What do you make of that ?"

"It looks like an encrypted data file, about thirty years old from the date-stamp no subject heading though, which is unusual. Until we can get the file deciphered, we'll never know what it contains." Tyra remarked.

"Let's have a look at it's history first, see who and how many times this file has been accessed. Well look at that, Shaka's been attempting to use the master computer to decrypt the file since we came aboard. Judging from these file access entries, she's had the file over five years and never cracked the code." Chu exclaimed.

"I bet Rashad could 'crack' the code, from what I've been hearing she was once a computer hacker and a good one to boot." Tyra said.

"Don't believe everything you hear, there's far more to Rashad than meets the eye. I don't fully trust her and I don't think Shaka did either, as you said Rashad is a computer expert. I'm sure if Shaka had trusted Rashad, she would have asked for her help before now. No, this file was important to Shaka for some reason, it might be nothing but it might be a 'Pandora's box, full of secrets." Chu replied. "Let's try something first."

"Like what ?" Tyra said.

"Well let's see what I can do. Computer, download computer program Barker-Alpha-12 from my personal database into remote console Beta-14-Alpha." Chu asked the computer.

<Download complete>

"Now download the encrypted file Shaka-Gamma 1 to the same remote console and isolate it from all ships systems." Chu continued.

<File downloaded and isolated from all ships systems>

"Bring your console over here and we'll get started." Chu said.

Tyra picked up her console and brought it around to the other side of the desk. Chu activated the console and started the decoder program that he had loaded. "Rashad's not the only computer expert aboard you know." He said to Tyra.

"I don't think the programmes working, it's doing something to the file, but it still looks like 'gibberish' to me." Tyra remarked as individual words started to appear on the screen.

"Actually I think it is, every cipher is breakable if you know how. The Leviathan's computer systems are tri-state bio-neural and should have 'cracked' this file in weeks, if not days. Shaka's been trying to access this file for over five years. What could have stopped her ?" Chu asked rhetorically.

"I don't know, maybe the file wasn't encrypted in the first place." Tyra replied, not realising that the question was rhetorical.

"Or it's written and encrypted in a language that the computer system knows nothing about, something that even the universal translator can't understand or to be more precise was programmed to ignore." Chu explained.

"A language that the UT was programmed not to recognise, that's impossible." Tyra remarked.

"But true, the universal translator program is probably Earth's greatest achievement after warp propulsion. Over the centuries, it's been programmed with every known language, starting with all the Earth languages except one. Navajo." Chu replied.

"Navajo, never heard of it." Tyra said.

"An ancient Native American 'tongue', which by the late Twentieth century only a handful of people could still speak. The Navajo were a tribe of story-tellers, passing information about their collective history through these stories using 'word of mouth'. These stories were never written down and until the twentieth century, no written form of Navajo existed. However, Navajo was the only code that the Japanese couldn't break during Earth's Second World War. The language was still being used by the American military well into the twenty-first century. Look at these long sets on consonants, it's indicative of the Navajo language. The file was encrypted using a sophisticated self-encrypting algorithm, where anyone who accesses the file without a code key will just force the file to be encrypted further. The only way to break the code would be to decipher each encryption step." Chu explained. "However, once you decipher the last step, you end up with this which to the untrained eye looks like 'gibberish'."

"Can you convert it into English." Tyra asked.

"I think so. Computer, download all available data on the Navajo and it's verbal language into computer console Beta-14-Alpha and isolate the console again.." Chu asked the computer.

<Download complete. Isolation re-established.>

"Right let's see what we've got." Chu said.

Five minutes past, with Chu working on a new algorithm to decode the Navajo text into English. Finally, he started the program and things started to happen.

"It's working, look there's the words Slipstream and Quantum." Tyra said.

"Great." Chu said as the file slowly turned into English. "Now let's see what all the fuss was about." He said as the computer responded that the programme was complete. "It looks like a set of schematics for an array of some kind. What would Shaka want with details about an array and why was the file encrypted in the first place ?" Chu asked.

"Maybe it's because of this." Tyra said, pointing to the transmitter section of the array. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that looks like a scaled-down version of our Slipstream drive and these figures, they all seem to relate to quantum matrix equations."

"You're right. And look at this, we'd need to double-heck with the sensor readings we've taken since we arrived, but I'm sure those are spacial co-ordinates within this galaxy." Chu said.

"They're certainly not Alpha or Beta quadrant co-ordinates, I think you maybe right Commander." Tyra replied, slipping back into formality.

As they search through Shaka's personal files they found further information, also encrypted in the same way. As these too were deciphered, more and more data came out, along with more surprises.

"These files are amazing, they cover over fifty years of Slipstream development. No wonder Shaka was so interested in deciphering them, it's an archive and it shows that someone within the Federation had access to Slipstream technology long before Starfleet. I think it's about time we showed the Captain what we've found. This may not be a way home, but it's maybe a way of keeping in touch." Chu said.

"Chu, I've been looking at Shaka's logs and I think I've managed to isolate the time when she received these data file. From the file records, the first time they were copied by Shaka was when she was around thirteen." Tyra said.

"That's about the time Shaka was arrested and placed in the Penal colony on Earth. Can you get an exact date, maybe we can estimate when she got the files." Chu replied.

"Let's see, I can't give you an exact date, but it appears to be around February 23rd in the same year that Shaka was arrested." Tyra replied.

"From what I can remember Shaka telling me, she was involved in some sort of smuggling operation that went wrong. She claimed that she was only a 'middle-man', but she was the one that got caught. Maybe this information was part of that operation. Shaka could somehow have managed to hide the information before she was captured." Chu remarked. "I seem to remember hearing her once say that when she was released and before she joined the Academy she returned to the planetoid where she was arrested. At the time I thought she went back to remember the past, but now maybe she went there to retrieve this data."

"Sounds feasible. The records show that for over ten years the files were never accessed, then about the time of Shaka's release they were accessed again." Tyra explained.

"Let's get everything together and then we'll go talk to the Captain." Chu said.