*
By the time Ted made it back to the December’s bridge, he found Vandoraa and Trell hunched over the General Operations table, laser-focused on getting through the encryptions on that hard drive. Ted asked where Bea was, and Alana told him their new engineer was making a fast diagnostic of the ship to make sure they hadn’t beaten it up too badly. “She said it’d take about three hours,” Alana said, to which Ted nodded.
“I think it’s this kind of encryption,” Trell was saying, searching for a second opinion from Vandoraa.
“Agreed, but you’re not doing it right,” Vandoraa said. “You need to enter this sequence, then this one, and keep trying until it opens.”
“Even if you two do somehow manage to decrypt that data,” Alana said from where she stood at the other end of the table, drinking something warm out of a mug, “how are we going to make it so everyone sees it?”
“I figured I’d leave that up to you,” Trell said, not taking his eyes from the complex procedure he was performing. “Not really my specialty.”
Alana took another deep sip and thought. “Whatever we decide to do, we have to be careful and precise. We have to present what we find so as many Drevi as possible see it. That leaves very little room for error. We only have one chance at this, because they’ll be even less likely to believe us a second time.”
“The media’s about the best thing I can come up with,” Vandoraa said sadly. “But I don’t think that’s going to work very well. What the Drevi solder sees is highly controlled by the military higher-ups. Almost always it’s approved by someone out of the Queen’s office. It’s not the same on our home world, but you can understand why it’d be so controlled during a military operation.”
“What about someone you know who’s still in the military, Vandoraa?” Trell asked. “Could we contact them?”
“I’ve already been labeled a traitor. I don’t think anyone is going to listen to what I say. And I didn’t really have any friends in the military anyway. It... wasn’t something I really wanted to do.”
“Not even Gavton? I mean, he’s... not a very nice person,” Alana said diplomatically, “but he’s your brother.”
“Definitely not Gavton.”
They tossed around a few more options before realizing that the communications network of the Drevi military was about the only way they could go. Once that was decided, Trell got to work right away trying to figure out how best to accomplish that while multitasking with the file decryption. Alana suggested holding back one or two pieces of evidence, so there was something they would still have against the Drevi, but she wasn’t confident that they’d get a second chance.
“Finally, we have the data!” Vandoraa said with a triumphant shout. “I know guys in intelligence who would have taken days on this. We did well.” Trell looked proud too. It had only taken them about half an hour.
All four of them stood around the table, watching the newly-available files flash by on the screen. Some were documents, others were video. Most were pictures.
“Those documents are the most damning,” Alana said. “They have signatures.” She made a breathless noise of complete, disgusted shock. “I can’t believe the Queen has managed to keep all this hidden for so long.” Countless pieces of ironclad evidence were on that hard drive, detailing everything from forced suicide missions to financial laundering. None of them, save Vandoraa, were really familiar with Drevi law, but Ted imagined most of the things contained on that hard drive would be pretty damning.
Vandoraa’s voice was shaking. “That’s the signature of the Minister of Armed Forces...” he said, looking at one particular document that okayed a suicide mission where the troops weren’t supposed to know they were marching to their deaths. “And that photo... is of prisoners being... raped while the Queen watches.” He sounded like he was going to be sick.
“Save those two documents and that video in the back-up servers on the December,” Alana told Trell, her voice heavy as she pointed to the files. “The rest we’ll feed into the network. Make several copies of everything and hide some of them well, some of them in plain sight.” She looked to Ted. “I think we’re ready.”
“Set a course for Earth,” Ted told Vandoraa softly, raw fury in his voice. There wasn’t time to wait for Bea’s report.
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