Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [51]
“I appreciate the implications, Lieutenant,” Haftel said. “Where do we go from here, Mr. Data?”
Before Data could reply, McAdams’s combadge chirped.
“This might be the confirmation we were waiting for,” she said to Data. “McAdams here. Go ahead.”
“Lieutenant, this is Chief O’Neil in database administration. I have that report you asked for.”
“Proceed, Chief. I’m with the captain and Admiral Haftel and the senior staff. We were waiting for your call.”
“All right,” O’Neil replied, then cleared her throat. “I’ve finished checking those DIT databases you specified and it was exactly what you said to expect: the files have been wiped clean. All the directories we pulled were dummies. You try to open anything and the files vaporize. Worse, it’s set up some kind of chain reaction that’s scrubbing logs, directories, wiping clean operating systems, everything. Poof, gone.”
McAdams smiled grimly, her suspicions confirmed. “No backups?” she asked. “What about the Starfleet Command master files?”
“Everything pertaining to the Maddox project is gone,” O’Neil said. “Someone rewrote all the maintenance routines and copied the dummies into the Starfleet backup directories. It was … well, I hate to say this, but whoever did it could teach me a thing or two.” Everyone in the ready room could hear the grudging respect in the chief’s voice.
“Anything else, Chief?”
“Well—I’ll say this: it wasn’t done on the spur of the moment. Whoever planned this was thinking ahead—way ahead. And one other thing … It’s a little odd, so I don’t know what to make of it.” She paused, obviously waiting for sanction.
“Go ahead, Chief,” Picard said.
“It’s just that some of the things I found, some of the file manipulation commands—either the programmer was insanely lucky or he knew about some trapdoors that no one else has ever identified.”
Riker, who had been listening in silence, asked, “Come again? Trapdoors?”
“Trapdoor,” Data explained. “Shortcuts that programmers install in command code in order to avoid repeating procedures or, more often, circumvent security programs.”
“I’m still confused, Chief,” Haftel said. “What does this mean?”
“It’s just that the Institute’s system—in fact, all of Starfleet’s systems—are based on the same code base. As strange as it might sound, all these codes, even the systems that have been augmented with non-Terran programming, share their origins in twenty-second- and twenty-third-century programming languages, especially the languages developed for the Daystrom duotronics systems. Whoever did this knew the code extraordinarily well. In fact, I’d say they knew things that have never been documented.”
A stony silence reigned while everyone absorbed the implications of this statement. Finally, Haftel, focusing on the most immediate problem, asked, “And is there any way we can be certain whoever did this isn’t meddling with other files?”
“Certain?” O’Neil asked. “No, not certain, though now that I’ve pointed out the trapdoor to the DIT’s systems operator, it’s been plugged. Could there be other holes? Absolutely. The perpetrator is so good, you might never know until it was too late.”
“You sound,” Haftel said, “as though you almost admire this person, Chief.”
“No offense, Admiral. I understand the implications of what I’m saying, but good code is good code. Our perpetrator, whoever he or she is, had the advantage of a trapdoor, but he knew what to do once he got where he was going.”
“No offense taken, Chief. I just wanted to make sure I understood the situation.”
Picard said, “Please produce a report for the head of computing systems at Starfleet Command and send it to my priority queue, Chief. I’ll authorize it and make sure it’s filed today.”
“Already there, Captain.”
“Excellent. Good job, Chief.” O’Neil signed off and Picard turned to McAdams.
“Have you and Commander Data assembled a list of likely suspects?”
“There is only one logical suspect, Captain,” Data said. “And that is Professor