"I'm not an expert, but I agree with Petty Officer Munoz, sir," Barton said.

"Let's just keep her secure here until we get some sort of plan to deal with her," Jackson said. "There's someone on the Nemesis that's trying to find a CIS asset that can come collect her. So have we gotten nothing from the search of her quarters?"

"We downloaded the entire datacore intact from her tile and sent it to Pike," Barton said. "He's supposed to be running CIS decryption routines on it to see if he can unpack it. We're still waiting for him to get back to us. There might be a message waiting on your personal Bluebird from him right now."

"Let's go see," Jackson said. "Chief Munoz, maintain the prisoner here for now. I know it's almost impossible on a starship, but we need to keep this quiet for as long as we can."

"Understood, sir," she said. "We'll maintain watch shifts with the people who have already been briefed on the situation. That should help."

Jackson and Barton left the detention area and made their way back up to Officer Country and the command deck. After dropping Barton off at the Officer's Mess, Jackson went back to his office and fired up the direct link to Pike. The Agent accepted the channel request almost immediately.

"I was just filling out a dispatch to your security detail, Barton," he said, the full-bandwidth video link stabilizing. "I don't know how you stand him."

"He mentioned something similar about you," Jackson said. "What is that noise in the background?"

"Those would be two little hellions I picked up on Arcadia running wild through a ship not build to contain their energy," Pike said. "Your wife has done an admirable job trying to keep them entertained, but I believe she's locked herself in the only head the ship had and is refusing to come out."

"I'll deal with them in a minute for you," Jackson promised. "What did you have for me?"

"I busted into your aide's tile data the jarhead sent me. You were right, she's dirty. She's also smart. There's not a ton of incriminating information on there, but we were able to figure out the ESA has found an economical solution to operating their own superluminal com network."

"That being?"

"They're using ours," Pike said. "The bastards aren't using stolen pairs of Bluebird boxes, they're actually using our routing system against us. The eleven addresses I've identified from her data are all boxes listed as assigned to the CIS and route their messaging through our existing com ships."

"Can we shut them down?"

"Easily. But I think it might be better to try and exploit the fact we know how they're coordinating their attacks so well without letting them know we busted one of their operatives," Pike said. "I also found a few simple character ciphers they've been using to encode their messages. Smart way to do it. Whoever gave them their Bluebird boxes probably told them the system would flag encrypted data streams, so they're just sending simple messages by scrambling the letters.