Project Boussh: Occam's Razor
byu Nick Coghlan

"Why do we still think he has Imperial loyalties?" Piggy asked the
air. "The Imperial war droid could have something to do with it."

"He's still an unknown quantity, Piggy. God knows I want to believe him,
but ..." Nick's voice trailed off. Shaking himself, he continued, "He
was right about one thing though. This location has been compromised."

Piggy snorted. "If it hadn't been for Brad's appearance, I'd have had us
out of here an hour ago."

"Yeah, well I guess we need to make up for lost time." Nick looked at
the comms console. The sensor readout indicated Brad's B-wing had
disappeared to the southwest. "Hmm, looks like he's headed back inland -
with any luck Ooryl will go Findsman on his butt."

"Ooryl is Findsman, but that is not the right word for what he does."

Nick briefly considered trying to explain some of his preferred ways of
torturing the English language to Piggy. Very briefly. "Ahh, yeah, I
know. I just thought ... On second thoughts, don't worry about it."

Piggy gave Nick a quizzical look before reaching over to shut down the
console. The scanners showed the area was clear, with the TIEs destroyed
and Brad long gone. No other contacts had appeared. As the Gammorean
quickly collapsed the intelligence gear into its transport
configuration, Nick ducked into his own room to throw some clothes into
a bag. He returned to the lounge room to find Piggy already there with
his own kit and the case containing the equipment.

"Good. I'll throw the scanners down to you, and we can get out of here."
Climbing onto the verandah railing, Nick hoisted himself onto the roof.
It was the work of a few minutes to unmount the scanner arrays and toss
them down to Piggy on the verandah below. By the time the pair had all
the gear stashed in the car, it was barely twenty minutes since Brad
precipitous departure.

Nick ran through a quick mental checklist. Windows closed. Doors locked.
It should look like any other time all three of the flat's normal
residents were away. Wondering how long it would be before he got to see
the place again, he started the engine and reversed across the
courtyard.

"I was figuring we'd head somewhere out west first, so you can check out
the comms gear to find out what Brad and our Imperial friends managed to
do to it. Then we'd swing back north and hole up at my brother's place
on the coast. There's no-one there right now."

Piggy grunted his assent. It was clear the Gamorrean was busy trying to
work out ways the console's systems may have been corrupted.

The trip went smoothly. Since the main aim was to be somewhere else,
rather than to reach a specific destination, Nick picked Gatton as a
convenient stopping place, checking in to a motel there. Cash
transaction, no names required. There are times when real money is the
only way to go, so Nick had withdrawn a fair amount while getting fuel
before leaving Brisbane.

Once they were safely ensconced in the motel room, Piggy gave the
analysis gear a complete physical inspection before switching it on.
No hidden recording devices, no auxiliary transmitters, nothing. Which
meant two things: 1) without their own transmitters attached, they
didn't need to worry about giving away their position by activating
the console and 2) the shutdown must have been a result of software activity.

The inspection Piggy gave the console's software was every bit as
thorough as the one he'd given the hardware. This time, though, Nick
understood even less of what the Gamorrean was doing. Eventually, the
Gamorrean sat back with a grunt of satisfaction.

"There." he said, pointing at the screen. Nick looked up with interest.
It turned out the Gamorrean was working in Aurebesh.

"I'm sure it's very exciting. What does it actually mean?"

"It looks like our 'friend' managed to install his own back door, giving
him access to the lower levels of the system. He used it to thoroughly
erase the contents of a message he sent from this machine and then again
to shut down the system and display that message."

"Wait a minute. If he erased the message, how do you know about it?"

"The back door mechanism can't access the message logs properly. It
managed to erase the message itself, but it couldn't erase all the
traces of its existence. The entire program appears a little
shaky actually. I'm almost certain that it was intended to shut down our
sensors permanently. The extra command to pop up that little message
apparently overrode the previous operation." While he was talking, Piggy
was entering more commands into the system, erasing all traces of Brad's
access program.

"Why couldn't he just erase the message normally? Hell, even Windows
lets you delete files."

"This isn't a standard comms console. It's designed to be impossible to
use without leaving evidence of who used it, and for what. Flushing
messages from the logs generally requires priviledged access. There are
ways around that, naturally, and it looks like Brad found some of them."

Nick nodded slowly "That explains the access program and the erased
message, certainly. But what about that stuff when the TIEs flew over?
Brad had to have been up in his B-wing during all of that."

Piggy grunted. "True. It is clear from the system records that the
commands that activated the program the second time came from outside
the physical console. The exact source of those commands is
unfortunately unclear."

"So it didn't have to be Brad?" Nick was still looking for ways to
believe that Brad really was just a misunderstood good guy. It was
getting harder, though.

"Strictly speaking, no. But consider the two possibilities. Firstly,
Brad flies away to this secret rendezvous with an unknown A-wing pilot.
While he is fortuitously absent, TIE fighters fly in and destroy the
only means we would have of following him, our system is shut down due
to the Imperial's coincidental discovery of a back door Brad installed,
and then Brad just happens to arrive back in time to destroy some of the
fleeing TIE fighters. Alternatively, the Imperials knew about the back
door because Brad had told them about it, and Brad deliberately took out
the TIEs _after_ their mission was completed, to try to further secure
his position amongst the Republic contingent here on Terra. The plan
failed, simply because Brad's slicer wasn't as good as he thought he
was. The first scenario requires a number of implausible coincidences.
The second requires one simple fact: Brad Corletti is an Imperial agent.
I believe you even have a name for the scientific heuristic of use in
situations like this."

Grimacing, Nick reluctantly replied, "Yeah. We call it Occam's Razor."