B11 Locksmithing (Patreon)

Only minor tweaks to this scene from Executioner's Gambit.

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When Tori and Sese marched into the reactor room, Runo’oa froze, the expression on his ears tragic. Activity around him continued unabated, the other engineers paying no notice to the two visitors, but the middle-aged geroo stood stock-still in the center of all that commotion like an actor who’d forgotten his lines.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed at Tori when she stepped close. “This is harassment! Why are you stalking me?”

“Well, I’ve got more engineering questions,” said Tori, “and as you were so helpful last time—”

“Knock it off!” he pleaded. “I already helped you out. I answered everything I could. Please just—”

“And now she has more questions,” said Sese, looming closer. “Get used to it.”

Runo’oa crossed his arms in defiance, but at least the protests stopped.

“How hard would it be for someone to break into an apartment without a trace?” asked Tori. “Could they disassemble the lock—”

“No, they can’t,” he said, sounding aggravated.

“I mean like in the action videos where the hero opens one up,” she said, miming such a scene, “and touches some wires together—”

But Runo’oa was shaking his head.

“Why not?” asked Sese.

Runo’oa growled, but softly this time, under his breath. “The door locks have two parts. There’s the locking mechanism that holds the bolt closed—that’s the part you hear click when you enter the code on your strand. The other part is the wireless interface—that’s the part that communicates with your strand.”

“You can’t take them apart?”

“You can, but the locking mechanism is on the inside of the apartment,” he explained. “Before you could disassemble it and touch wires together, you’d have to already be inside. At that point, you could just turn the knob.”

“Aw, you’re ruining the action videos for me,” groaned Sese. “What about the other bit? Is the wireless thing on the outside?”

“Yes, the wireless interface is outside, but disassembling it wouldn’t help you get inside,” he said. “It’s job is to encrypt and decrypt radio messages, to transfer your device identifier to the locking mechanism.”

Tori shook her head. “Device identifier?”

It’s just a number, a really big number with hundreds of digits,” he groaned. “Every strand has one and they’re all different. The locking mechanism keeps a list in memory of all the device identifiers it will open for, but taking the wireless interface apart isn’t going to make it easier to guess one of the numbers on the list. Shorting wires together is just going to break it.”

“I guess that makes sense,” sighed the big officer. “It wouldn’t be much of a security system if you could bypass it easily.”

“Okay,” said Tori, deep in thought. “So, you walk up to a door, you type in your code, it transmits your big number to the wireless bit which passes the number to the lock part. If the number is in the database, it unlocks, right?”

“Right,” he grunted, then glaring over at Sese and her screwdriver, he repeated, “Taking one apart won’t get you inside.”

“Hey!” Sese cried, wagging the tool at the engineer. She started to say more, but Tori already had another question.

“I’m curious why the device identifier would need hundreds of digits. There’s only ten thousand geroo aboard. Why not identify our strands with one, two , three, and so on, up to ten thousand?”

“The device identifier is huge to make it hard to guess,” he said. “If you hacked your strand to send each number from one to ten thousand, it wouldn’t take much time at all to stumble across one that worked. But if the identifiers have hundreds of digits in them, then we’d all be long dead and gone before you got one on the list.”

“Could you steal the code out of someone’s strand?” asked Sese.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s hacking, not engineering.”

Tori frowned. “So, to get through a locked door, you’d need to steal someone’s strand.”

“Which would be reported,” said Sese.

“Or steal someone’s number,” repeated Tori.

“Which would require hacking,” sighed Sese.

“Are you satisfied?” the engineer whined. “Can I go?”

Tori nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thanks for your help.”

“Like I had a damn choice,” he muttered under his breath before scuttling back to work.

Sese stared at his back. “I hate him.”

“I know, but that was useful information,” Tori sighed as she headed down the corridor toward the center of the ship. “Fairly reassuring too. I’m glad it would take more than a screwdriver to break into my apartment.”

“But it leaves us nearly where we started,” said Sese. “Instead of The Executioner being a teen or an action hero, he’s gotta be a teen or a hacker.”

“I don’t really want to send a teen into the air duct to see if he gets stuck.”

“Well, then we need to learn more about hacking,” said Sese.

“Unless you know an expert on hackers,” Tori said, “I guess that means we talk to Computer Chief Nija next.”

The big geroo scowled.

“Don’t like her?” asked Tori.

“I’ve only met her twice,” Sese said. “You were there when someone accused her cub of murder. The other time was a couple years back, when she stomped into security, pissed about the captain changing some policy. She accused Tipohee of being behind it.”

“Oh yeah?”

Sese nodded. “Best I could tell, they were trying to solve it by seeing who could yell the loudest.”

“Lovely,” yarped Tori. “So, who won?”

“Beats me,” Sese said with a shrug. “I excused myself and left them to it. I’ve got better things to do than listen to screaming.”

Tori nodded. “Good move. Now, I see why the chief wanted you to come along when he interviewed Asui.”

Sese grinned and gave Tori a wink. “I had his back then, and I’ve got yours now.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xHZq97lZ5JsgOcMiQtgYGLZgBvSwH0aI4vMBaXiPaD0/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?