Comedy in Error

[Caelia]

Liberius Scaevola, Imperator Scaevola Quintus Rex, felt his frown deepening as he listened to his secretaries dictate report upon report. His work that begun not long after dawn had stretched well into the night, but was still far from complete. New reports had been coming in even as he had worked through the ones already on his desk. There had been an intelligence failure of unprecedented scale. An intelligence catastrophe would be more accurate. Over the past three weeks, Caelia's intelligence network in CETO had come completely unravelled with a speed and totality he had never before seen.

The first rumblings had been a sudden sweeping change of ciphers. Communications intelligence nearly halted. Then, the Caelian splices in the trans-Yunagi fibre optic cables were disabled over a 24-hour period. And it got worse. The Aureus network, a clique of disaffected Sarmatian officers in the Anti-State who had been among the crown jewels of Caelia's HUMINT, dropped out of contact completely and had not been heard from since. In a dive bar in Stato da Mar a Caelian-Ebrian businessman who had long worked as an intelligence front was stabbed to death in what local authorities described as a bar fight; to his ex-wife had been returned every one of his effects, except the special secure phone. In the Federation, three major defence contractors Caelian cyber intelligence had painstakingly wormed their way into rolled out new updates and security overhauls that closed every single exploit they had uncovered. At the same time.

It was a total route. And there were still reports coming in.

Small minds, Scaevola had always believed, saw evil intention behind every misfortune. But Scaevola suspected treachery. He could hardly not, the scale of the disaster was so enormous. His advisers were split between those who suspected Caelia had been targeted with a highly effective technical attack, though if that attack was a compromise of codes, a cyber infiltration or something more exotic, there was no consensus. Others insisted one or more CETO assets had successfully penetrated Caelia at the highest level. Desperate defensive countermeasures were already underway. For the past three days, some of the most powerful men in Caelia had been under de-facto house arrest on Scaevola's order. The broad scope and precise nature of the targets pointed to a source who was highly placed indeed, and if they were not the willing source their communications had been read like a book.

He had contemplated even more drastic actions. Shutting down international communications. Closing the borders. But this he believed would be a mistake. The Taurasan crisis was escalating rapidly. Caelia needed to project an image of strength, at home and abroad, to weather that storm. He knew his enemies would be gloating but took solace in the fact they could not do so openly, lest they reveal their most powerful trump card against him.

As the secretary droned on he turned his gaze to the impressive busts of his predecessors which surrounded him in the study. His father, his grandfather and those before him. In the dance of the firelight, the marble faces seemed so much more lifelike. When he was young he had felt intimidated by them. Their legacies weighed heavy on his conscious. But he found as he aged their stern gazes became invigorating. What had been his burden became his fortitude. They were dead and gone, but everything they had worked for now lived in him.

"...bear witness" his voice barely escaped into the room.

The secretary skipped a beat in his dictation, but perceiving that Scaevola was not interested in speaking further, resumed smoothly.

One day, Scaevola mused to himself, he would join them there.

 

[Caelia]

"...in brief it is the conclusion of the Master of the Fleet that the counter-intelligence campaign was orchestrated by the Anti-State, with technical support from the Federation, to open the way for a CETO invasion of Al-Magherb and the Noks Free State, with the objective of establishing imperium over Northern Himay. He humbly requests your lordship take decisive action to preserve Caelia's imperium. Ave Dominus!"

The young officer saluted stiffly and enthusiastically and dropped the sealed report binder on his desk. Scaevola waved him off. The situation remained critical, no definitive culprit had been identified yet. He had ordered all top-level communications to be handled in writing or through messengers for the immediate future, it was almost unbearably cumbersome. But there was no one who could assure him any electronic communications were secure now. If someone were reading his mail he would at least make them work for it.

Technical intelligence means remained intact however. A growing clique of naval officers, perhaps having spent too much time scrying ship movements, had developed a belief that a grand CETO plot against Caelia was now unfolding that was in some occult fashion tied into the rapidly evolving Tarusan civil war. On the contrary, Fidelus Seia, his trusted legate to the Federation and a man not ignorant of naval matters, had rushed a hand-written to him the previous day insisting there was no indication whatsoever CETO was preparing military operations against Caelia and that their efforts were directed entirely towards the Tarusan crisis.

Scaevola was inclined to agree, but the movements of CETO fleets was sufficiently concerning to him that he had not rebuked the fleet commanders. They needed to be ready. He had already agrees to a soft mobilization of the fleet; orders were being disseminated to conduct a large scale air-defense and anti-landing exercise in the southern island chain. All sailors on leave were being recalled and instructions had been issued to prepare as many ships to sail as possible without a war mobilization.

He needed some breathing room. Less than a day ago the Legate to Oltremare had killed himself, shortly before he was scheduled to board a flight back to Caelia. His name had come up in the ongoing intelligence investigation. He was not a serious suspect, the intelligence which had been compromised was far above him, but it had become clear that he had a remarkably lax attitude when it came to information security and that he had been regularly accessing information far outside his purview. Complicating matters he had destroyed a huge number of personal records before killing himself.

His death was currently being concealed by the Legation staff, but it would be only a matter of time before his body would have to be returned and an investigation team would need to be dispatched, and Oltemare's authorities would need to be informed.

And much closer to home a careful search of the national air defense command headquarters had turned up a suspicious cellphone in an unused locker, protected by highly sophisticated encryption. Whether it had anything at all to do with the current situation was a complete mystery, but the cellphone was being investigated from every possible angle. Last he had heard it had been taken apart by top engineers in Saturnia who were attempting to find hardware exploits that would break its encryption while at the same time its parts were being scraped for traces of DNA and pollen that might reveal from who and where it had come. The base was now locked down completely, its commanders assured him operations were not impacted, but he had no confidence of that.

All the while the war in Tarusa was boiling over.

Scaevola called for another drink.

 

[Caelia]

Justicar Photious Metellus studied the man lying in front of him carefully. Ovidius Arvina, a 44 year old computer programmer. Currently clinging to life after intentionally overdosing on opiates during a botched arrest. For the past six months the national air defense command had been attempting to extricate itself from a failed attempt to migrate its personnel database from local mainframes to the Air Force's cloud system. For reasons well outside Photious's expertise, the process had failed and resulted in the loss of a huge portion of personnel records, from pay to security clearances. The bases command had been under enormous pressure to resolve the situation and had taken the extraordinary step of bringing in external private contractors that had not previously been cleared to work in such high security facilities. One of them was lying in front of him.

Ovidius Arvina was by all indications a very capable programmer and one who happened to be quite knowledgeable in the now arcane language of the old personnel records mainframe system, knowledgeable enough that his troubled life had been very deliberately overlooked. Ovidius was medicated for depression and anxiety and self-medicated with opiods, he was estranged from his ex-wife and two daughters none of whom had heard from him in a decade, he was known for coming to work late, unkempt or not at all, he had no known close friends. Searches of his computers and apartment had turned up a not entirely unexpected interest in fetish pornography and a long history of radical political commentary on anonymous social media.

Ovidius was apparently an ardent admirer of the Anti-State dictator Hayabusa and was already known to political counter-intelligence. Eyebrow raising perhaps, but it was clear to Photious from even a casual examination of his ramblings, and counter-intelligence agreed, that Ovidius was in plain terms a loser. An armchair commentator with no following whose only contribution was several incomplete attempts to translate obscure 90 year old political literature from Touzen, and linguists had already informed him they were translations of no value.

His financial situation was poor, he had made leveraged investments into cryptocurrency that had been produced huge losses. He spent extravagantly on video games and adult content creators. But his income was both high and steady, so there seemed little reason to pursue that line.

In fact almost nothing in his personal effects had been particularly interesting. Aside from an oven full of hastily burned letters and certain small traces found of a visitor to his apartment.

Something had happened. Someone had happened. Five months ago Ovidius had begun to access parts of the bases computer system he was not authorized to access. He had exploited his access to personnel records to apparently lift credentials that allowed him to re-activate accounts for personnel no longer assigned to the base and even more alarmingly, he had inserted a number of new phantom personnel into the database. In theory this alone should not have been enough for someone to gain access to the base. But if these false records were matched to fabricated documents, held by matching agents...

His phone rang.

"...its what you suspected sir, cash, a lot of it. Not just Aureus. Two false passports as well." Ovidius was certainly skilled with computers, but Photious mused he should have hired someone to put up the wallpaper. His whole kitchen had been wallpapered, very evidently by someone with no skill. Pulling it down had revealed a recently patched wall.

"Anything else?"

"No Justicar"

"...I will prepare the warrants and send more men. Document everything, gut the apartment. He may have wiped his hard drives but I do not accept he was meticulous enough to destroy all physical traces, we find who his new friend was. I am heading to the landfill."

Turning swiftly to leave and deep in thought Photious halted abruptly at the door "Doctor, call me the second this man regains consciousness. You have my personal number. Keep him under round the clock direct supervision, it is essential he survive, the Magna Curia will cover the expenses." he turned his gaze to the uniformed police officers in the room, who he had all but forgotten about "and you men, aside from you and me, only vetted medical staff are allowed in this room, he does not leave, he does not make or receive communications of any kind and he does not try and ingest more drugs, I am entrusting this matter of state security to you"

The officers saluted to his back.​