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Description
This is a short story, two parts, documenting a co-operative mission between Sith Sorceress Eludajae M'Nar, , and her slave, Sith Assassin Impetus M'Nar.

“Your task comes from the Emperor himself, Sorceress M’Nar,” the Imperial communications officer said down the comm., the numerous enciphering and deciphering of the transmission masking even the species and gender of the speaker. “Your mission is to neutralise the Republic Admiral Rosetta Ridell. She is currently stationed on the Defender Class Corvette, the Gallia.”

“You expect the two of us to take on a Corvette?” Eludajae was interrupted before she could even begin to explain how suicidal those odds were.

“You are to depart immediately. The Gallia is expected to play a key role in an imminent attack on Imperial Space, co-ordinated by Ridell.”

“And I assume you have some sort of strategy that doesn’t involve the Corvette destroying our Freighter on sight?”

“No, but I hear your slave’s as clever as you are powerful,” the comms officer replied. “I’m sending you an encrypted transmission intercepted from the Gallia. Perhaps she can formulate an algorithm to recreate it and dock freely. You should have approximately 22 standard hours.”

“And why wasn’t this code cracked before?” Eludajae demanded, irritated by being put in the firing line by an apparent oversight.

“The message was only just received. This mission is top priority.” Emotion in the speaker’s voice was difficult to read, hidden as it was by the noise generated by the encryption.

“I understand,” Eludajae said flatly, aware that the conversation was going nowhere. “We’ll take out Ridell. Eludajae out.” She cut off the communications. “Slave, get in here, this is big.”

***

“We’re expected to infiltrate a heavily guarded republic warship and take down the Admiral,” Eludajae said to her twi’lek slave, summing up the situation as quickly as possible.

“That is not optimal...” Impetus understated.

“I know it’s not the best situation but it’s where we’re at. I need you to decode a heavily encrypted message, and write a code to mimic it and gain access.” She presented her with a hardcopy of the transmission. “Think you can do it in 22 hours?”

Impetus glanced over the string of numbers in front of her. “I’ve seen this sort of thing curiously often from Republic encryptions. They have a disposition for the exponential cipher, quite archaic compared to the ones we used on Avere. And they called us primitive... anyway, the reasons they cause you such problems is because they combine the exponential cipher with another function whose parameter depends on the letter’s position in the word. To a computer, the two codes overlap and produce false readings. Usually this is just a string of random letters, but under more clever mathematicians it can be deliberately written to translate into a message that gives incorrect information. I think you killed all but one of those though,” she added, referring to the war in which Eludajae’s army slaughtered Impetus’ people and took her captive.

“Can you do it or not slave?” Eludajae wasn’t too concerned about the theory, or what remained of her slave’s bitterness over her invasion. Impetus’ obedience was unquestioned.

“They passed this on to me because they knew it requires an organic intelligence, Mistress. Decoding the message shouldn’t be a problem. As for telling your computer how to recreate one, I can’t even type properly.”

“Ok slave, just do what you can, I’ll request the support of a computer specialist.”

-- Part 2 here [link] --

Description
This is a short story, two parts, documenting a co-operative mission between Sith Sorceress Eludajae M'Nar, , and her slave, Sith Assassin Impetus M'Nar.

“Your task comes from the Emperor himself, Sorceress M’Nar,” the Imperial communications officer said down the comm., the numerous enciphering and deciphering of the transmission masking even the species and gender of the speaker. “Your mission is to neutralise the Republic Admiral Rosetta Ridell. She is currently stationed on the Defender Class Corvette, the Gallia.”

“You expect the two of us to take on a Corvette?” Eludajae was interrupted before she could even begin to explain how suicidal those odds were.

“You are to depart immediately. The Gallia is expected to play a key role in an imminent attack on Imperial Space, co-ordinated by Ridell.”

“And I assume you have some sort of strategy that doesn’t involve the Corvette destroying our Freighter on sight?”

“No, but I hear your slave’s as clever as you are powerful,” the comms officer replied. “I’m sending you an encrypted transmission intercepted from the Gallia. Perhaps she can formulate an algorithm to recreate it and dock freely. You should have approximately 22 standard hours.”

“And why wasn’t this code cracked before?” Eludajae demanded, irritated by being put in the firing line by an apparent oversight.

“The message was only just received. This mission is top priority.” Emotion in the speaker’s voice was difficult to read, hidden as it was by the noise generated by the encryption.

“I understand,” Eludajae said flatly, aware that the conversation was going nowhere. “We’ll take out Ridell. Eludajae out.” She cut off the communications. “Slave, get in here, this is big.”

***

“We’re expected to infiltrate a heavily guarded republic warship and take down the Admiral,” Eludajae said to her twi’lek slave, summing up the situation as quickly as possible.

“That is not optimal...” Impetus understated.

“I know it’s not the best situation but it’s where we’re at. I need you to decode a heavily encrypted message, and write a code to mimic it and gain access.” She presented her with a hardcopy of the transmission. “Think you can do it in 22 hours?”

Impetus glanced over the string of numbers in front of her. “I’ve seen this sort of thing curiously often from Republic encryptions. They have a disposition for the exponential cipher, quite archaic compared to the ones we used on Avere. And they called us primitive... anyway, the reasons they cause you such problems is because they combine the exponential cipher with another function whose parameter depends on the letter’s position in the word. To a computer, the two codes overlap and produce false readings. Usually this is just a string of random letters, but under more clever mathematicians it can be deliberately written to translate into a message that gives incorrect information. I think you killed all but one of those though,” she added, referring to the war in which Eludajae’s army slaughtered Impetus’ people and took her captive.

“Can you do it or not slave?” Eludajae wasn’t too concerned about the theory, or what remained of her slave’s bitterness over her invasion. Impetus’ obedience was unquestioned.

“They passed this on to me because they knew it requires an organic intelligence, Mistress. Decoding the message shouldn’t be a problem. As for telling your computer how to recreate one, I can’t even type properly.”

“Ok slave, just do what you can, I’ll request the support of a computer specialist.”

-- Part 2 here [link] --