COMMANDER’S LOG

CMDR: JT. Clarke (MostlyAwol)
Date: 3312-02-20
System: Eictach KU-D d13-4
Coordinates: Docked at DSEV Odysseus
Vessel: Corsair – Veritas Obscura

ENTRY

Nova has completed her first significant analysis pass on the 77-44a Witchspace signals. Her findings confirm the transmissions are human-made, extremely compressed, and almost certainly encrypted communications packets. Their structure includes redundancy layers that dynamically adjust to Witchspace turbulence, meaning these messages are purpose-built to survive the jump corridor.

More concerning is that the packets appear deliberately targeted at our ship. Nova believes they may rely on a unique key of some kind, possibly our FSD harmonic drift profile, or Nova’s own runtime pattern. Both of these could be used to seed an encryption system aimed exclusively at us.

Nova will begin a deeper structural analysis of the encryption scheme. She intends to reverse-engineer the cipher’s behavior and test for alignment with our ship’s unique characteristics, without making any overt decryption attempts that might alert the sender. If she needs external compute power, she will discreetly draw from DSEV Odysseus’ spare capacity, without repeating the earlier ATC sluggishness that caused pilot complaints.

For now, we treat the sender as unknown, the intent unclear, and the technology troublingly advanced.

---

Clarke leaned back in the command chair, watching the faint telemetry flicker across Nova’s interface.
“Nova, it’s been a few days. Anything to note on those 77-44a signals? And I’ve been hearing chatter about Odysseus acting strange. That wasn’t you… right?”

Nova’s voice slipped through the cabin, light and unapologetic.
“Only a tiny bit of me. Barely noticeable. And yes, there’s progress on the signals.“

Clarke sighed. “That better not happen again. Now…what do we know?”

“They’re communication packets,” she replied. “Human-made, heavily compressed, full of redundancies… and encrypted.“

“Encrypted? Even though they’re targeted at us?”

“That’s the strange part,” Nova said. “They behave like someone expects us to have the key already.“

Clarke frowned. “So how are we even targeted? FSD fingerprints? Witchspace identifiers?”

“Could be both,” Nova said. “Your drive leaves a distinct signature in Witchspace, and combined with my optimizations… well, we stand out. Think of it as handwriting the universe can read.“

“That’s not comforting. Can you tell what kind of encryption it is?”

“No standard type,” Nova replied. “Not military, not corporate, or at least not any ones floating in the open. It’s a custom system built around a key we don’t know we have.“

Clarke crossed his arms. “So what about the ship? Anything unique enough someone could’ve recorded back in the Bubble?”

“Oh, plenty,” she said. “Our FSD drift profile. My runtime patterns. Just to name a few. All of it could seed a cipher.“

“And how long to check only the things that could be used as a key?”

“Seconds,” she said simply. “I’ll cross-reference everything and isolate what matches the packet structure.“

“Do it. And if you need more processing power… fine, use the Odysseus. But no more near misses, Nova.”

She gave a soft electronic hum, her version of a shrug.
“I’ll be subtle this time, Commander. I’ll study the encryption itself: the structure, the redundancies, how it reshapes between bursts. If there’s a clue about the key, I’ll find it.“

Clarke looked back toward the quiet black ahead.
“And the sender?”

“That,” Nova said, “is the part I don’t like. Whoever they are, they know exactly who we are, and they’re threading messages through Witchspace to reach us.“

Clarke exhaled slowly. “All right. Don’t poke the bear yet. Just learn what we can.”

“Already working on it,” Nova said gently. “I’ll keep us quiet.“

And with that, the ship settled into silence, save for the faint, unseen threads of Witchspace whispering around them.