Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Spymasters at Work

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Daggum Hammor (Chief Engineer) in Spymasters at Work

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Spymasters at Work

(snip)

“And discrediting your mother dearest and proving she has no legitimate claim to anything certainly helps too,” Faye said, rubbing her fingers together. “Okay, you see if you can get his transport requests. Once we have those, I can do the cross-referencing, but I can start creating a particular algorithm for it so we’re not wasting time.” Her eyes held that same gleam she got when she not only had a project but had one that had challenges and puzzles to work through.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

“On it.” Daggum said and turned and went to the desk in the living area. Nothing he was requesting was classified, but he had to make sure that him asking didn’t get back to the Admiral. So instead, he opened the mental rolodex of favors owed to him and began making calls. It took a few hours, but soon enough he had all the man’s travels for the past decade.

“I’m done. And I think you will be pleased. Maybe you will give me my espionage merit badge for this one.” and he laughed as he slid a data disc across Faye’s desk to her.

Daggum

They had left her office knowing his efforts would take time and settled back in at their quarters. Faye, rather expectedly, had dove back into her own work, which for the last ninety minutes had taken the form of messing with the top secret R&D project. While Dag knew she had the object and was given license to ‘break it’, she was unusually silent about exactly what she was doing. He might be able to guess at times, but it would only be a guess. The reality was that unless she was given clearance to talk about her work, no one here on the Athena would know anything about it. Unlike her secret work on the Manhattan, at least this stuff was guaranteed legit. No shady overlords to take down this time.

“Hmm?” she said, his words having filtered through the set of equations she was working through in her head. Fay had heard him, but it took a extra second for her to parse the meaning as she mentally set aside the calculations so she could continue them later. She cracked a smile. “I don’t know, I’m notoriously hard to impress,” she said as she took the disc and twirled it in her fingers. “But then again, you are the rare exception that impresses me often. That or I’m going soft.”

Faye popped the disc into a secure reader and watched as a jumble of data appeared on the screen. The travel records were bits and pieces and there was a lot of them. It was like someone had taken the admiral’s records, put all the pieces in a jar, shook them up, and dumped them in front of her. None of it was chronological either, which was an interesting details, because if he could have gotten them in a nicer form, Dag definitely would have. These were clearly designed to not make sense.

Anyone else with more linear thought patterns might have spent a little time with all this and shut it down in frustration, but for Faye the chaos was beautiful. For a long time she just stared at the data, not changing parameters or adding any filters. She just looked. The only tell that she was actually processing any of it was the slight movement of her fingers, like a conductor bringing an orchestra into harmony. As far as Faye went, this was pretty normal.

Ten minutes later, her fingers stopped moving as she drew in a sharp breath. Faye didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. It was like she was frozen, her breath caught in her throat.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

Daggum watched her for a moment and then moved behind her. He knew an ‘event’ when he saw one by now. He also knew there was little he could do. He set his hands on her shoulders and whispered “It’s okay, Faye. I’m here. Just let it come. I’ve got you.”

Daggum