Wilson Port, Tewanta - 3306-03-11 18:24
Commander Austin Graves lifted a forkful of spinach and ricotta ravioli into his mouth and savoured the mix of flavours: the sharpness of the creamy ricotta, the freshness of the spinach, the richness of the pasta and the creamy sage flavoured sauce. He took a sip from his bulb of white wine and glanced down at his hand terminal. A small unobtrusive icon indicated that the data transfer was complete. He was sitting in a small bistro in Wilson Port which just happened to be right in front of a hidden surveillance camera in the wall on the opposite side of the narrow promenade. At least, it used to be a surveillance camera, when Official Tewanta Order ran the station. Prior to handing over the station to The Buurian Protectorate, he had the camera repurposed as a dead drop server, one of eleven. One was destroyed after a particularly unfortunate incident caused by an inexperienced and sloppy data courier. He'd been lucky: both the camera and the data storage embedded in the courier's bionic eye were too badly damaged to recover data from them, despite being sent to the Stable Cryptographic Analysis facility for analysis. However, the other dead drop servers remained. They even survived the fire and subsequent repairs. That was one of the advantages of him taking a personal interest in their refurbishment: the job was done right. The materials used around the cameras were up to specification, so they weren't damaged by the fire and also were passed over by the repair crews as they were good enough.
With the data transfer complete, he could relax. He finished his ravioli and ordered coffee and some almond biscuits to finish his meal as he pondered the data delivery. It was a strange one. The Order was hired, through the data brokers, to do analysis of The Buurian Protectorate, with particular emphasis on their combat capability, especially the defence of deep space installations. He didn't know who was commissioning the report, which made him nervous, but he was pretty sure The Protectorate wasn't behind it as he had specifically excluded any contracts from them in his deal with the data brokers. They may have betrayed him, but he doubted it. The relationship was quite profitable for both parties and not worth jeopardizing for one transaction. Whoever commissioned the report, it was likely that they were intent on causing trouble for The Buurian Protectorate and he was happy to help. Getting paid, and paid handsomely, was an unexpected bonus.
His hand terminal chimed quietly. A message had arrived. He glanced at the terminal. The message was medium level security, but tagged high priority. He picked up his terminal and opened the message, taking a sip from his coffee as he read. It was from Captain Fredericks, indicating unusual movements of criminal factions in the systems around Tewanta and the arrival of some mercenary forces. Tellingly, Tewanta itself wasn't exhibiting this pattern. In addition some chatter between pirates of the NLTT 42544 Silver Camorra faction suggests that an attack is being planned on some agricultural facility. That was interesting. He learned two things from this. The first was that the commissioners of the report were paranoid about operational security. That was good. The second thing he learned was that they were slightly sloppy about signals intelligence. By leaving Tewanta criminal factions out of the plan, they showed their hand, revealing Black Wildwood Ranch as their target. Hopefully, The Protectorate hadn't noticed. Commander Graves checked the status of the server: the analysis file was gone, which meant that it had been collected. He signalled the waiter for his bill. He needed to get back to Cortes Base. Things were going to get interesting.
Stable Cryptographic Analysis, Tewanta - 3306-03-11 19:47
Brian Jones opened up the latest daily comms traffic report that the analysis systems of the Stable Cryptographic Analysis produced. The facility was a deep space compute facility that was dedicated to cryptanalysis an pattern recognition. The systems skirted as close to a sentient machine system as was legal permissible. It was definitely not sapient: it didn't think and definitely wasn't self aware. It was, however, capable of detecting and reacting to patterns and learning new patterns by itself with the guidance of operators like Brian. It was less like a super intelligence and more like a very vigilant guard dog on a very short leash. As he reviewed the report, Brian got the sense that it was growling. He opened a comms session with his supervisor.
"Hey Denzel, Rover seems to have found something. There looks to be a bit of a traffic build up in LTT 14976, which began about a week ago. Not large enough to trip alarms, but lots of traffic from less than reputable factions in the local area. In addition, there has been an unusually high volume of WSTCP traffic to and from a civilian installation there. It's all encrypted short text messages too according to Rover's analysis."
"Any idea where the other ends are?", Denzel replied.
"Not yet. We just have access to what we can pick up from the ripples the setup and teardown of the witch space tunnels are making. The wormholes are not big enough or long lasting enough to do a proper wake analysis. But they are suspiciously uniform in duration and profile. Rover believes that at least half are going to the same place."
"Okay. I am having a look at the report myself. It is a borderline case, but I agree with your assessment. It's definitely worth forwarding on to Operations. Good catch Brian."
"And Rover!"
"And Rover!", said Denzel with a chuckle.
Drunken Fish Civilian Installation, LTT 14976 - 3306-03-13 21:11
Hiroko Watanabe sat on a stool at the end of the bar in one of the Drunken Fish's seedier pubs. At a small table not far away sat Albert Stroud and Ada Johansen who comprised the rest of this undercover team. As the most experienced undercover operative she was team lead today. The mission was a tip off from the boffins of the Stable Cryptographic Analysis facility to see if there was anything to the rumours of mercenary build up in nearby systems. From where Hiroko was sitting, it looked like they were absolutely right. The bar was quite busy with small groups of filling all the tables and most of the stools at the bar were also occupied. It was a bit more subdued than normal for a bar of this type. While there were a few boisterous groups drinking heavily and making a lot of noise, most of the patrons were sitting quietly and sipping their drinks and checking their hand terminals. By the looks of things, most of the patrons were mercenaries or pirates of some sort. Hiroko and her team were sitting around listening to the chatter and rumours in the bar. They had been there a few hours and so far hadn't learned much, other than half the clientele were anxiously waiting for a message. Occasionally a message would arrive and the recipient would visibly relax and, normally, leave.
A few stools down the bar, a young wiry pilot eyed her suspiciously. He'd been sitting there for over an hour and got grumpier and more sullen looking as time passed. He had a green mohawk and an onionhead tattoo on his forehead. On his hip was an old heavy looking autopistol. Hiroko was sure that he'd be trouble later on. He'd very nearly started a fight already, when someone sat down on the stool beside him. Hopefully he'd leave her alone.
She caught the barman's eye. "Another beer, thanks!"
Green Mohawk shifted on his stool to face her. "Hey Tewantan! You should leave. I hear this job isn't for you. No Tewantans allowed. You're taking space and getting in the way. Maybe messages aren't coming because you are here!"
"Aw crap!", Hiroko muttered under her breath. She turned on her stool partly to make it easier to draw the micro shotgun strapped to her right thigh and partly so to give him a view of it. She fixed him with a steely glare. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Ada shift posture and drop her hands below the table to the butts of the pair of Nadion Twin Barrel laser pistols she was wearing. Albert had his own CSI Burst Pistol laser pistol, as well as a K33 Multifire SMG in the bag below the table. Between them they had enough firepower to kill everyone in the pub in under 10 seconds. Unfortunately, so did a quarter of the other patrons.
Green Mohawk glanced down at the micro shotgun and then reconnected with her stare. She could almost hear the gears turn in his head. For a few seconds they locked eyes. Then he swallowed hard, dropped his gaze, slid off his stool, and stormed off, a flush rising up his neck.
"He'll be back you know.", said the barman, "Once he convinces himself he is the brave pirate he thinks he is."
"Yeah! I know.", Hiroko said wearily.
"I'd prefer it if you were gone when he got back. No offence! I am pretty sure you don't want a firefight in here either."
Hiroko nodded an stepped down off her stool.
"And he's right, you know. Whatever is happening is invite only and Tewantans aren't getting invited. You have to be recommended by someone already on the job and they send messages through the main comms. relay. The invite comes back through the same relay and you have to be here to receive it. The boss here bills people for the relay usage every hour. Pulls the data from the relay."
"Every hour, you say?"
"Yeah!"
"Well in that case, I am wasting my time. Thanks dude!"
Hiroko walked out of the pub, flashing the extract hand signal as she passed Ada and Albert.
Outside the Drunken Fish Civilian Installation, LTT 14976 - 3306-03-13 22:54
Hiroko maneuvered the Cobra Mk III, Battenburg, into position near the installation's comms. relay. A few minutes previously she had scanned the installation and figured out the location of the relay and the installation's missile defence turrets. Her current position placed the structure of the installation between the turrets and her ship. Ada and Albert were about 20km away, in the Kirschtorte, running quietly and monitoring the situation. If things went really badly, they'd call in support from the Wyvern Wing who would take about 5 minutes to get there. By that time it would be all over, but at least someone would avenge her and possibly pick up the data from her ship's wreckage, she thought, grimly.
She turned off all non-essential modules, which in this case included weapons, and prepared to hack the comms array. She took a deep breath and scanned the array to search for the interface points. When the scan completed, she targeted the interface connector and launched a recon limpet. All hell broke loose. The defence turrets turned hostile and started tracking her and a 300 Cr bounty was assigned to her ship. The Protectorate's legal team would have to take care of that at an Interstellar Factors office later.
Albert sent her a message over their tight-beam connection. "Systems Authority emergency response team inbound! ETA 4 minutes!"
The recon limpet connected and delivered its electronic payload, which immediately got to work.
"Come on! Come on!", muttered Hiroko.
About a minute later the limpet finished its work. The relay's buffers were now unprotected and could be read with a scan. She quickly began another scan. Another 300 Cr bounty was assigned to her ship. Seconds later, the scan completed. The data was downloaded. Hiroko stowed hardpoints an boosted away from the installation. Missiles launched after her, but her path was far enough away, and her ship fast enough, that it was unlikely that they would reach her before she exceeded their maximum range. She launched a heatsink to throw them off, just in case.
"Data acquired! Extracting! I repeat: data acquired! Extracting!"
"Roger that Battenburg. Extraction order acknowledged!"
The 'Mass lock' indicator on her HUD turned off and Hiroko engaged supercruise. A few seconds later the Kirschtorte also entered supercruise. Hiroko lined up her jump to Tewanta and quickly had a look at the data she had acquired.
"Kirschtorte, I am going to drop this off to the boffins for analysis, but from a casual look it is already clear where a lot of the messages are going."
"Where?"
"Isinor!"
Footnotes
- WSTCP: Witch Space Tunneled Circuit Protocol (back)