From the desk of the General. Mission 4.
#4 of From the desk of the General
The Kaos Army don't just wade onto battlefields with guns blazing, though that is a lot of fun. Sometimes, the situations they are called in to resolve require some thinking that's not just out of the box, but out of this world.
From the desk of:
General Sir Anarchy Warlock (ex demon of the underworld)
Senior Commander of the Kaos Army: Black Planet
Leader of 1st Tank Battalion
Killer of Tamagotchis
Military tactical genius
Occasional side character
BP date 08/11/3012 (Today's date)
Mission notes
Re: Operation N/A
Planet: N/A
TDW Gate: N/A
(Warning: Rambling ahead)
Working here on the Black Planet has been an interesting affair. When we arrived, the world was akin to medieval Earth: goods were delivered in small batches by beasts of burden, there were dirt tracks leading to smallholdings and cosy villages, the industrial revolution had not happened yet. The main races of elves, orcs, goblins, skaven etc still threw rocks at each other and pulled out the bows and arrows if they were feeling fancy. Humans did not exist here, and luckily this meant that the Council of Sorcerers had not poked their big noses in, neither. It was, on the whole, a quiet little space rock hiding in the shadow of its own ring, tucked away at the back end of the galaxy where nobody paid it any mind. (Told you.)
Once The Dragon got his claws into it, however, all that changed. With his portals, he carried in future technology along with modern (by our UK 1990's standards) machines and weapons of war. In a dizzyingly short space of time, the Black Planet had roads, and vehicles, and electric, and plastic, and even satellites floating around in orbit to provide cellular communications. The Dragon had attempted to make an alternative Earth here that was safe for me to reside in, far away from the aforementioned magic regulators. (If he starts waxing lyrical about his bloody magical ancestor again, I'm off. I've got turrets to grease.)
With this radical change in communication methods, we had to start thinking about security. We all know only too well that Norton AntiVirus was only ever efficient at slowing computers down, and halting the boot-up of perfectly safe applications while enthusiastically letting those pesky Trojans through with a wave. (Hell Afterlife Services was heavily involved in its production. Every time your tasks were interrupted by the antivirus software doing an impromptu sweep of your drive and halting work progress for twenty minutes, a demon got a pay rise.)
When your emails are full of Top Secret Stuff, and you have a database of every planet and civilisation that owe you a favour, along with a shedload of contact numbers for people who actually didn't want to be contacted unless it was an emergency, you kind of need a system that will keep eager beaver would-be hackers out.
We needed some sort of encryption device. A way of filtering out all those who were being nosey parkers and weren't bona fide Kaos Army employees. This would not just be for digital correspondence, neither. Some things still had to be done via pen and pencil; envelopes with invoices and Off-world bank account details. If civilian troublemakers got into the system, there was no telling what would happen.
The Enigma machine was legendary on many Earths. Unfortunately, I hadn't paid much attention in school and couldn't tell you how one worked, so that wasn't an option for us. I went with something more on my level.
I hid sensitive data in Magic Eye pictures.
There's nothing quite so wonderful than seeing a decorated Major stationed on the battlefield accepting a confidential envelope from a lowly Corporal with a snappy salute, and then proceeding to try to cross their eyes backwards, while shifting the piece of paper back and forth in front of them rapidly until they can actually see what's hidden on there!
It's only a temporary measure, and I daresay we'll replace it soon with a system that doesn't make your eyes go woozy, but for now it's working a treat.
Summary transcribed by Lt. Rap (who never quite understood the point of Magic Eye. If you wanted to look at a picture of a unicorn, just draw a unicorn. Right? Art should not give you a migraine.)