Matters of Security

Posted on 30 Dec 2025 @ 3:14pm by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale

2,836 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Epitaph
Location: Security Complex
Timeline: July 11, 2390 || 1000 Hours

Harvey stood outside the security complex, just outside the range of the door sensors. It didn't matter to him that in this moment he was being watched, likely judged. And it was no secret what had transpired over the last couple of weeks. Joey had been captured. Then he had been captured. Both had been replaced with clones who had near-expert knowledge of the Black Hawk's security protocols and how to circumvent them.

This meeting he'd dreaded above all, even the hard discussions with Commander Reynolds and Master Chief Rasputin. With the pressures of interrogation and identity verification behind them, and the removal of the G90B threat, the time had finally come for Harvey to submit to the ship's Chief of Security and address the fallout. Rather than make Camila come to him, he'd decided to approach her.

He inhaled a deep breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled as he stepped forward. The door's sensors registered his presence and parted. Harvey stepped inside the complex and approached the officer on duty. "Commodore Geisler for Commander Di Pasquale."

The Andorian Shen at the duty desk looked up as the Commodore entered, her antenna leaning his way. "Commodore," she said briefly before she tapped the intercom on her console. "Commodore Geisler is here to see you, Commander."

Camila sat in her office, her desk bare and the office just as bare. There were no books, no photos, no PADDs on the desk, no plants in the corner and nothing of any personal value at all. She tapped the console and spoke. "Send him in,"

A moment later, the office door opened and Harvey entered. His eyes wandered the office as the door closed, taking instant note of the lack of decor. Every personal item that he'd seen before was nowhere to be seen. Harvey internalized a sigh and fought to keep his expression as neutral as possible.

There was only one action to infer from any of this. Camila had resigned from the Black Hawk once before following the horrors aboard Deep Space 11 at the end of the Consortium Crisis. He'd allowed her to leave then, largely because he'd been a Captain without a ship. And when he reclaimed one, the now retired Black Hawk-A, he'd found a way to get Camila back aboard.

This time, it seemed, he was going to lose her again.

"Congratulations," he said, his tone neutral and calm. "Your undercover work saved the entire quadrant. This ship. And my family. Thank you."

Camila looked at him and didn't respond for a moment, her eyes distant before she spoke. "I only did what was required of me to do, Commodore. I don't deserve thanks or full credit for that."

Harvey nodded, taking in her response. "Such is the burden of the uniform, I suppose. But whether or not you think you don't deserve it, the facts are simple. Had you not gone undercover and travelled to Mellon, we would no longer have a wormhole. The Black Hawk would be twisted wreckage and its crew scattered among the stars. And my kids would be... hell, I have no idea where they would have been taken."

"He would have come one way or the other. The only reason he was discovered in the first place was because I went out to track pirates that just turned out to be desperate colonists. It was pure luck that D'Rimo was discovered. If he hadn't felt the need to make a big show of things, he could have continued picking us apart." Camila was factual, neither accusing nor bitter in her response.

"So if you wish to give credit, give it to the lack of hubris on his part."

"More like an exaggeration of hubris," Harvey remarked still standing just past the door sensors. He considered approaching her desk and sitting down, but the way the conversation had started and was progressing instructed him to keep his distance. "Seems D'rimo and I might have that in common."

She gave a shrug. "However you choose to interpret it. I only wanted to keep people safe, no matter what. Instead, I get to watch people die. I get to watch ships be destroyed. I get betrayed by people that I trusted. I get made to look incompetent and I can't even have a drink when I get off shift to relax."

The Commodore nodded, but still made no effort to come in any further. It was clear to him that Camila had detached herself, and while he wanted to reach out, he had to see for himself that she'd be willing for him to do so. He didn't need to point out that anyone who wore the uniform did so knowing the risks involved. "If it's one thing I learned early in my career as a researcher, no matter what you do, you can't always save everyone," he said calmly. "It's honorable to try, and the fact that you are still hurt by death shows how much you still care."

"Well, have a seat and tell me what you want me to do, Commodore," the ombre haired woman said. She saw that he had no interest in what she expressed, so decided to see exactly what he wanted and how far she was going to bend before she broke.

"What I want is irrelevant," Harvey replied simply, shifting into more of a direct approach. But he made no effort to move towards the offered chair. "You're packed up. You've had setback after setback aboard this ship, and the bad times are outweighing the good and tolerable. So, what do you want?"

Camila looked around as if surprised that there was nothing decorating her office and back at him. "Nothing. It's easier not to lose anything if you don't have anything."

He didn't reply, at least not immediately. Part of him wanted to submit her for psychological evaluation and determine if other action was needed, including shore leave. As he stood there, observing her actions, Harvey had a hard time seeing the animated woman he'd once promoted two years prior. Surely she was still in there, somewhere.

Harvey's response was first revealed by a few steps forward and expanded to taking a seat. "All right. I'll tell you what I want. It's clear what I've been doing isn't working. I want to reevaluate our security protocols."

"Okay," she responded, waiting to see what changes he wanted.

He blinked, surprised by her one-word response. "We had a clone run freely on the ship for three weeks, and we had no idea. That clone allowed another clone to come aboard and replace a command officer. We haven't seen anything like that since the Dominion War. Short of running daily or hourly blood screenings, we need ways to prevent imposters from running amok."

"I'm well aware of that," Camila said. "What do expect me to do? Every single time I've attempted to implement something, you look out for the higher ideals and standards of Starfleet." She tapped the console on her desk and the monitor slid upwards from its recessed hiding spot. She tapped the console a few more times, then spun the monitor around to face him to reveal a wall of data that extended off the screen. "Is this what you expect of me?"

Harvey leaned forward to review the draft she had prepared, noting changes ranging from genetic scanning at secure locations such as the bridge, various recognition sensor adjustments, an overhaul of transporter protocols, and a completely new bio-neural intrusion grid. There were several other protocols drafted, and Harvey took his time to properly review them.

"It's been a minute since I've performed a genetic scan," he confessed. "What would be the process for that?"

"It would cross-reference sampled Starfleet personnel DNA with encrypted shipboard registry and compare biosignatures as well," she said. "I plan to work with Medical with it."

The Commodore nodded, showing his understanding of the process. "How invasive are the scans themselves?" he asked. "I would imagine that such a scan would take a few seconds to take and process the results. What would happen to a turbolift car if it had just one person inside, and that person failed the exam?"

"Just a quick blood sample and bioscan," Camila said. "It would trigger a Security alert and lockdown the turbolift, or wherever they were at and initiate force fields to contain them in that area at every junction."

"And if there are others in the turbolift who passed the scan?" Harvey asked.

"Then a transporter locks onto the one that failed and transports them to the Brig."

Harvey nodded yet again, and looked back at the screen. "All right," he said. "Consider that one approved. Let's talk about the transport protocols you have here. This is definitely handy for away missions, but as you know not all of our excursions use the transporter. How would you take that into account?"

"Bioscans on the personnel on runabouts and shuttlecraft upon entry as well. Each time, coming and going," Camila stated. She had read the reports of the real Harvey going into the alien shuttle and being replaced with the clone. "Provided it's a Federation transport. If it isn't, each member of an away team has to submit samples before and after each time they leave the ship."

"Sounds appropriate to me," Harvey confirmed. "About this intrusion grid you have here, what sort of bandwidth will this take on the bio-neural circuitry? I know this ship has a mix of the gel packs and isolinear chips. Would this tax the network, or would we need to see what can be offloaded to isolinear?"

The Security Chief brought up a grid showing the breakdown of resources and conditions and explained each section. “The integrated Bio-Neural Intrusion Grid and Adaptive Forcefield Deployment Suite consumes approximately eight to twelve percent of an Akira-class starship’s nominal processing bandwidth under standard alert conditions, with transient peaks approaching twenty percent during high-intensity intrusion or boarding events, well within the computer core’s operational margin.”

"Layer this on top of the canonical 45–50% average mission load, and even under heavy use you’re sitting around 65–70% total computer utilization — busy, but still with tactical and navigation safety margins, which fits Starfleet design philosophy," Camila finished.

The calculations seemed appropriate to Harvey, though he made a mental note to recheck their performance from the last few weeks. The ship's holographic projectors had been enlisted to simulate damage all throughout the ship and he wasn't sure what sort of load that had pressed onto the bioneural network. "That's certainly impressive, especially considering how isolated it would be to certain sectors of the ship." Another mental note was made, an instruction to coordinate that rollout with Operations. Total computer utilization was one metric, but the strain it would put on gel packs near the sensitive location would be another.

"Looks like weapons access is next," Harvey noted. "Lock downs in the armory I can support, but I'm curious about the weapons lockers. These exist throughout the ship to protect against boarders and things like a zombie apocalypse. How could phasers in a weapons locker be keyed to individual profiles? Are they assigned upon retrieval?"

"Personal phasers and tactical gear are keyed to individual, genetic signatures,, Anyone who isn't assigned one isn't going to get to use one, and everyone is going to be retrained." she replied. "Unauthorized use disables weapon and alerts Security immediately."

"But that isn't going to stop someone who is authorized from grabbing a phaser for unauthorized purposes," Harvey pointed out, considering the possibilities. "If that happens, how quickly can that phaser be deactivated?"

"Once unauthorized use is reported, the phaser can be disabled immediately in terms that you and I think of," Camila said, wondering if he were going to grill her on every last detail. "Roughly point zero zero zero three two milliseconds in computer core response time."

"Syncing phasers fully to the computer then?" Harvey asked, having raised an eyebrow. With the genetic signatures, that honestly should have been obvious to him and he wasn't sure why he didn't catch it to now. "That does make sense. "Last but not least, the security blackout. If initiated, what functions remain available?"

"It locks authority, not function." Camila explained. "Only Command or myself can remove the blackout. Power and propulsion go under restricted control, life support and environmental controls remain fully operational, defensive systems are given priority and internal security systems are given maximum operations. All Medical systems will be protected, communications will be encrypted and partitioned, sensors and navigation will be filtered, Engineering and damage control will have local authority."

"Replicators will be restricted to emergency rations only, holodecks will be offline, civilian access terminals will be locked, personal quarters controls will be limited and non essential labs will be sealed," she continued. "Personal transporter access, independent shuttle launch, unencrypted internal communications, computer core reprogramming and crew manifest modification will all be disabled."

Harvey's eyes returned to the protocols on the screen, and reviewed them all once more from top to bottom. A small portion of him tugged at his objectivity, reminding him that the ideals of the Federation should be held above all. Recent events, however, spoke louder. If this ship was to continue operating in the quadrant, then it was time to take a different approach. His eyes returned to Camila and he asked, "Given everything that is outlined here, how long do you think it would take to implement?"

"I'll need to talk to Operations, Medical and Engineering, depending on the availability of whoever is currently filling those roles," Camila said. She had made double sure that absolutely nothing about her protocols were lethal or went outside of standard Federation measures even if she felt the need for more draconian measures. "A week or two? It depends."

"Doctor Monroe currently still has Sickbay, and Lieutenant Frex still has Engineering," Harvey answered simply. "Commander Marsh's transfer was approved by Command recently and I think he disembarked officially yesterday." Harvey took a moment to consider all of the moving parts and then added, "Let's shoot for ten days on the needed upgrades, and another ten for training. That should make sure we're fully ready by the end of the month."

With that, Harvey leaned forward again and entered a few taps into the monitor in order to affix his signature and authorization code.

Camila was very surprised that he approved everything and it showed on her face. "I'll get briefings made and keep you updated on each step, Commodore."

"Excellent," Harvey said, sporting half a smile. With that, he rose from the chair and tugged down on his uniform. "It's a new day on the Black Hawk, Commander. No more boarders, no more breaches. If we want to share the Federation's ideals with this quadrant and rebuild trust, it starts with us no longer being a doormat."

"That's what I'm hoping for," she said as she came to her feet. The animation she formerly had was still absent from her demeanor and manner, but she wasn't just waiting for his input on which direction she should go. She had that direction now and it was approved by him. She would duct tape him up like a mummy and drop him down a turbolift if he went back on his word now.

If Harvey could have read her mind or heard her thoughts, he would not have blamed her. "I cannot say I hope that these protocols never need to be exercised. We all need better safeguards, and I think these are an excellent first step in that direction. Any last thoughts, Commander?"

"Only that you don't deny every suggestion I have for the Black Hawk, Sir," she said. "I'm not in it for power or fame. I just want to fucking save people."

Harvey couldn't agree more. "I'll do my best," he responded. "And these protocols should help us do more than save people. They should help us protect them."

"Now to meet a friendly species that wants to join us instead of kill us," Camila said wishfully.

"Strange new worlds, right?" Harvey scoffed as he turned to leave. He was two paces from the door before he suddenly stopped and turned around. "By the way, with what little influence I have at the moment, I was able to pull some strings and secure some supplies for Mellon. Medicine, food stuffs, an industrial replicator or two, even some mining equipment."

"Thank you, Commodore," Camila said honestly. "I know they'll appreciate it. I just hope the Federation can rebuild the lives and trust that were lost."

"Me too." In all of the words that Harvey had shared in this meeting, those two were the most honest. With a final nod, he turned and left the office, bound for the next location on his tour.

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