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Presidential Complex. Beneath the lists were two lines, both in some form of a cipher and one he had not seen before. At the top of the message was a coded word, presumably the name of the subject or certainly an identifying code. He didn’t recognise any of the words but the first line would be a good start. He was about to hand the material back for analysis when he noticed a prefix code used on board the Confederation ships and depots for access to low security areas. It was changed daily and this code had only been initiated in the last four hours.
    “Gods!” he swore to himself.
    He fumbled as he highlighted the code at the start of the document and transferred it back to Lieutenant Nilsson.
    “The message has been encoded with an unknown cipher. This could be a serious breach. I need you to find out who it was intended for as quickly as possible!”
    She looked at the text and started feeding it into various analysis tools but the data didn’t match any of the known Naval coding systems. She started the polymorphic analysis engine normally used to assess and monitor electronic jamming and sensory data. The computer system was the most advanced in the Fleet and could handle multiple wide band data streams and decode them in real-time. At first the system appeared stuck then it started to pick up key parts of the cipher.
    “Commander, it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
    A light on the ship-to-ship communication channel started to flicker and she tapped the voice communications unit to activate audio. The authorisation signature of the Admiral popped up on her terminal. She turned around and caught the attention of Commander Anderson.
    “Sir, incoming transmission from Admiral Jarvis.”
    The Commander signalled for her to put the message through.
    “Admiral,” he said as her image appeared on the screen.
    “Commander, I take it you’re taking good care of my ship?” she asked with barely a smile.
    “Of course,” he replied.
    “I have just received word from General Shears on the surface of Prime that the colony of New Georgia is siding against us.”
    “Against us? I don’t understand, Admiral.”
    “It would appear that the sentiment of the general public, or at least their politicians, is that Confed Forces have no business on Colony territory. I suspect some of them must be colluding with the Zealots.”
    “That could explain how they have been hiding so many troops underground for so long,” he said scratching his chin.
      “Perhaps. Either way it looks like the troubles on the surface are about to become a whole lot more complicated. The official line from New Georgia is that they have declared the presence of Confederation Infantry as an occupying force on their territory. They have given all military units on Prime a twelve-hour ultimatum to leave or be interned. The other five colonies are in an emergency session of the Council of Seven, I don’t know how it is going to pan out, but knowing how this is starting to unravel I think we could be facing ground war.”
    “What can I do, Admiral?”
    “I need this to go private.”
    Commander Anderson lifted a headset from the computer terminal and flicked a switch that closed off the audio from the main speaker system.
    “We’re secure.”
    “Good. I have an intelligence team on Kerberos that I am waiting to hear from. They are investigating a potential terrorist cell with intel on the insurgency. I am expecting to receive important information in the twenty-four hours…” she said before the Commander interrupted her.
    “What are you expecting them to find?”
    “There have been rumours for some time in certain circles that something is going on between the mega corporations on Kerberos and the left-wing religious faction and their militant off-shoots.”
    “Interesting. We have already received an encoded narrowband transmission from the surface, we are in the process of accessing the data now,” he said.
    “ I doubt that