Zadge Talran had been on level twelve of Zombie Wars: Clan Discension when one Estelle Russard interupted him. The beeping of his com startled the man enough to cause him to drop his controller, which in turn led to the loss of his last life. Zadge shook his head sadly as he watched his player being devoured on screen, it's pale limbs (eerily akin to his own complexion) waving about helplessly. It had taken him six hours to get this far and now it was all shot to hell.
However a few moments later the game was forgotten.
If there was one thing that Zadge loved more than hologames, it was codes. As a young boy Zadge had devised basic encryptions for notes (which were, pathetically, most often written to himself by himself) in an attempt to make his older brothers feel stupid. It had not worked, had in fact only ensured fiercer wedgies and Corellian torture rubs, but the man had hit on an interest which later developed into passion.
So it was with great interest that the bespeckled Talran recieved the transmission on a secured line. He stared at the string of numbers, then picked up his comm and called Estelle back. "Is this it?" There was something between dissapointment and offense in his voice.
"That's it."
Zadge scoffed. "Geepers, this is just a simple monoalphabetic substitution, I could do this in my sleep. All you gotta do is..." As he hammered away at his computer Zadge's furrowed brow drew together tightly. Contrary to what he'd expected--which was a nice, neat little message--all he'd gotten was another string of ciphered text.
eairogiolfhteteofdteenuyenlriaesmnteeneot
gazkestndocnwloetamemsiesrtiodnapovhbigisrtimsoraa yh
"Er... I'll get back to you." Zadge closed the connection and, with a crack of his knuckles, tucked into the encryption.
Whoever had scrambled it had reverted back to classic means, using a method developed by historical warriors which involved staggering the text between rows. The rows read sequentially gave him yet another bunch of jibberish, but Zadge quickly recognized it as a basic reverse cipher, meant to be read right to left. He typed the reversed text into a matrix on his computer and after a few failed attempts found the keyword (poodoo, which caused a juvenile giggle to scuttle out) and was able to determine the alphabetical sequence. It was then just a few seconds work to get the original message.
Zadge leaned back in his chair, popping his neck in satisfaction. With a smirk the man picked his comm up again and punched in the proper contact number. He as practically gloating, his eyes haughty behind his thick glasses; Zadge was about to open a celebratory beer when Kazaar answered unexpectantly (Zadge preferred to talk to Estelle because she was less likely to get impatient and threaten him with bodily harm).
Sitting straighter in his chair, as if the burly Rebel was present, Zadge found himself stammering. It was a weird speech impediment, one which cropped up around large, intimidating sentients for some odd reason that the twerpy, stringy, pale-skinned Zadge couldn't fathom. "Uh... I-I got the c-cleartext. Bunch of co-co-coordinates and um, a message."
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