'Crying Crops'

Who: Andy, Holly, Seymour
Where: Comms room
When: 1 hour after previous post
Andy stared intently at the screen before him.
It wasn't that 'Hal' was a poorly made AI construct. The fact was just
that he was quite literally MADE out of Holly. Being the free-thinking
guy that he is, Holly has a few back doors (both code and personality)
that Andy had gratuitously leapt through whenever he was in strife.
After all, to the operations of Blue Dwarf he was a person second and
a gigantic nanny/spy/boss/food dispenser in primero.
A white gloved hand was placed on the Janitor's chair. "Well… what are
you doing?!" Seymour whispered irritably. "I'm analysing Hal's
structure. Holly's getting its attention by spreading junk data all
over the system. Each time it picks them up I get another 2 minute
window to peek into its brain."
The ambassador rolled his eyes before pulling back and tugging on his
gloves. He felt thoroughly useless at the moment. That wasn't to say
he wasn't needed at all mind you! If this cleaner… hacker… whatever
the hell he was could this thing, then he would need to open up a
comms with the Space corps!
Yes, he could just image that know-it-all Janitor and that half-baked
moron of an AI attempt to convince the Space corps not to blast them
out of the sky. No! It would take a man of poise, intelligence,
charisma… and good looks. Not to say that Seymour thought so utterly
highly of himself that he was all of the above. He just highly doubted
that a technophile Kenny the outhouse-man and a half bald Robby the
smegging robot were going to do much to sway them.
"Andy!" Seymour turned to the Janitor. "As soon as you achieve contact
I want you to immediacy hand the mike over to me. I'll set things
straight!"
The Janitor quickly turned back to him with a curled lip and a
bamboozled look on his face.
Seymour's own face contorted at Andy's response. "I-! I don't know
about you but I'm pretty good at my job!! I'll have you know that I
once convinced a mugger just to beat me up and NOT take my- Bloody
hell!! Wrong example...."
Andy shook his head and blinked in response. "You once convinced-? No!
Dammit that wasn't what I wanted to say!" The Janitor shoved his wrist
up to the monitor and allowed Holly to transfer back over.
'What's wrong Andy?' The AI rumbled in his ear, out of Seymour's notice.
"Someone's already done our job for us. While Holly was spreading
around junk data it looks like he accidentally fragmented the
firewall… it was connected to the email system. The window was tiny,
perhaps only a fraction of a second wide but one- just one- got
through. Someone MUST have been spamming the connection because it'd
have to be almost impossible for just one to get through."
Seymour stared at the Janitor in a blank face. "I've heard a great
many verbose speech but I never expected one to come from YOUR mouth
without saying 'g'day', 'mate' or some other form of crude Australian
swear word."
"What-?! I never say-! NEVERMIND!! Listen Seymour, on each E-mail is
an IP address. Since we're in space IP addresses are meshed into
positional data. Since its civilian this ship's network and everything
going to and from it, has a signature on it." Andy packed up his kit
then stopped over to his broom, lifting it away from the wall. "In
other words, they've found us- and I doubt we can do anything to stop
them from blowing us out of the sky or Jed warping away immediately.
I'm going to the engine room… at least we can hope they'll take
prisoners."
~~
Who: Annie, Potential
Where: An office in a universe beyond our own
When: Two minutes before Parrell-flux
Annie stared down at the information in front of her. Barrie's filthy
fingers were all over it, over HER world. Dammit- she'd passed, she's
made it, and what's more for her graduation she had to watch over her
own universe for a month before she was allowed to get the on the job.
What she did not need was some smug jerk leaning over her shoulder and
meddling in her plans.
She could fix this. This was something that she could do. Annie
slugged down her coke before she went back to scanning the paper.
Suddenly she noticed something. Her eyes widened. Oh no.
The papers flickered back over then she flipped them back. Everything
that had been happening recently… it was… unlikely to occur… extremely
unlikely. Barry, sure, he did crazy thing and sometimes downright
malicious but these… some of them just didn't make any sense. Like the
entire population of hamsters in the lab rooms doing a back flip at
once, or someone on the cargo deck finding a use for pink flamingos, or-…
Annie looked up. "Oh my god."
The Agent leapt into her universe with all haste.
Her transparent blue form twisted effortlessly around in space.
Annie's panicked eyes darted over to the Blue Dwarf.
Seconds passed as she stared at the monolithic space craft. Then a
full minute went past, all the while her eyes lashed the ship for any
changed detail. Finally ten whole minutes passed. She let out a
relieved sigh. "Maybe… maybe it was just chance." Annie turned away
from the Dwarf, preparing to leap back into her office- but then a low
growing noise caused her to remember the worst.
It was like a dream or a vision as she saw the SC Battle frigate
Oath-keeper crawl out of Pseudo-warp. Then only to see two ships be
crushed like a pair of aluminium cans as the Oath-keeper collided into
the Blue Dwarf's hind quarters at Mach 10.
<Hey Onion? I went crazy... tag for the aftermath!>