I slapped his hand away from the controls.

“If you pull that plug, they keep the data,” I said, my fingers hovering over the override keys.

Turner drew his hand back, his face darkening to a deep purple in the flashing red light of the terminal.

“You just assaulted a commanding officer, Doctor,” he hissed, his chest rising and falling quickly.

“I stopped you from completing a transmission to a foreign entity,” I said, not looking up from the screen.

The progress bar on my diagnostic tablet was at forty-two percent.

The file names scrolling past were encrypted, but I recognized the file sizes and the header formats.

These were the acoustic signature profiles for our next-generation fast-attack submarines.

“This is a local synchronization routine,” Turner said, his voice straining to maintain a tone of authority.

“It is an authorized system update that my department scheduled weeks ago.”

“An update does not route through three different servers in Eastern Europe, Captain,” I said.

My fingers flew across the ruggedized keyboard, entering my high-level clearance codes.