Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 01_ Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [55]
Only fourteen of those algorithms were known in detail to the experts of the Technical Section. In the first day the Gnisnal core was in the laboratory, all fourteen were tried on it, without success. The contents of the core poured out as seemingly impenetrable gibberish.
Five different teams made up of crack information-science specialists aided by speedy analysis droids immediately set out to find the patterns in the gibberish. Using files captured from other Imperial vessels as a guide, they searched through the digital jigsaw puzzle for pieces that went together. Even a few short strings could be enough to allow the droids to re-create the unknown algorithm, and unlock whatever secrets the memory core held.
Jarse Motempe’s Team 3 assembled the first fragmentary string, made up of the names and ranks of two of Gnisnal’s command officers. Within a day Team 5 had found an even longer string containing a standard Imperial hypercomm message header.
The final breakthrough belonged to Motempe again—the complete fifteen-point standing maintenance order for a TIE bomber. Its more than fourteen hundred sequential data bits seemed to map every detail of the new algorithm. Confirmation came quickly: The first file reconstructed was the ship’s duty roster. The second was its daily communications log for the day it was destroyed.
After that, things moved very quickly. An interface droid was programmed with the new algorithm and linked to the Gnisnal core, and this time tens of thousand of object and data files poured forth instead of gibberish. Each file was copied, tagged, classified, and forwarded to the Analysis Section for distribution.
One of them, given the ID number AK031995 and a priority code of Most Urgent, ended up in the hands of Ayddar Nylykerka.
Officially, Ayddar Nylykerka was a cataloger, and his assignment was Asset Tracking. Practically, that meant he made lists, requested lists, collected lists, collated lists, cross-indexed lists. All of the lists concerned the same subject—Imperial warships.
The Asset Tracking office had been set up in the wake of an intelligence failure that had nearly led to disaster. Grand Admiral Thrawn had been the first to rediscover the more than a hundred hidden Old Republic Dreadnaughts known as the Katana fleet, and had managed to seize the great majority of them before the New Republic caught up. Thrawn’s vastly strengthened fleet then attacked more than twenty New Republic systems. By the time he was defeated, a great price had been paid in lives and material.
Asset Tracking existed to make sure that there were no more such painful surprises.
But the office had undergone many changes since it had been established. At first it enjoyed a staff of fifteen—eight researchers, three catalogers, two analysts, and two clerical droids. The size of the staff reflected the importance given the task, and the chief analyst was invariably well connected in the Fleet Office. Reports from the Asset Tracking office regularly received high-level attention.
Over time, however, the office’s star faded. The easy work was done early, and each report contained less new and useful information. The passage of time raised doubts about the usefulness of Asset Tracking assessments, since it gave potential enemies the chance to build and launch new vessels. Little by little, staff was reassigned to higher-priority tasks, and the positions that remained came to be viewed as career dead ends. Those who could get out, did—except for Ayddar Nylykerka.
At the time the Gnisnal intelligence reached him, Ayddar Nylykerka was the Asset Tracking office. Starting out as a researcher, he had moved up to cataloger when no one else had seemed to want the job, and had added the analyst’s hat when the office’s last licensed analyst had been reassigned. For more than seven years he had carried the burden alone. He had the smallest cubicle