The only thing I would add is, TerSA– and by extension, the Galaxion– has it’s own set of ciphers that it uses for whatever messages it wants to keep private. IP, being another organization, uses different ones. If, for example, the Pathfinder had succeeded in accomplishing the same trick that led the Galaxion to finding the Hiawatha, they likely would have had all the codes stored somewhere in their computers, and Scavina wouldn’t be facing this little stumbling block.

That’s not hard to understand – the part of the file which describes the type of encryption used is itself unencrypted. To put it in current-day speak – instead of ‘cipher’ think ‘file format’. Now imagine they’re running the latest and spliftiest Linux computers – and have just downloaded a bunch of compressed DOSWriter II files. Pwned!

I take it that the IP ciphers, being military, aren’t something an exploration vessel would need? In that vein, I’m curious to know how the crew understands that the ciphers are ‘obsolete’? If they don’t have access to them, how would they know what was current?

Tangentially, I really like the way you add spikes to the radio speech balloons to imply static. ^_^