These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Intergalactic Summit

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Open Thread: Tales from the YC 119 Kyonoke Inquest

Author
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#1 - 2017-04-24 19:23:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
Ave, pilots.

So-- the Inquest's ended, and apparently about as well as it possibly could have considering that we were all probably infected with our subject matter on Day 1. We're all home safe, as much as can be, and probably a lot of our peers and superiors have been wanting to know everything that happened.

I don't know about the rest of you, but trying to write up reports has been kind of a frustrating experience. There's just too much I don't know. And, it seems that's true of even the people, like Makoto Priano of ARC, who were among the best-informed. It's natural: there was so much going on, and none of us could be everywhere at once.

So, rather than just enter my half-baked report and call it as good as it's going to be, I thought, maybe, we could do this in the spirit of the Inquest itself: cooperatively. We might have different points of view on what happened, but, maybe together we can put this thing together into a ... I don't know, a mural, or collage, that'll make more sense than what any one or several of us could do.

So-- naturally I have no way of enforcing these, but, maybe a couple kinda-sorta rules to help things along:

There was a lot going on, and each of us writing reports on all of it is going to just end up with soup. Let's keep it to one story-- that is, one basic chain of events ("the doomsayer," for example)-- or one question or answer per post. Write as many stories as you have energy for, but maybe let other people enter their own stories in between, okay?

Let's not argue, right now, not here. Instead of disputing someone's account, even if you think it's an obvious fabrication, just write your own on the same or a related topic. Try to declare the truth as best you remember it; if it doesn't match someone else's truth, that's only to be expected. We all had different points of view.

Some of the "stories" (like the saga of the Rook and the Vulture) are probably going to take a bit to tell. It might be good to break those up a little, as in "The Saboteur: DAY 1," so that you don't wear yourselves (or your readers) out. Similarly, while links to outside data are a good thing, please don't just post massive collections of data; it's not like many, maybe any, of us received all that stuff as a sort of single massive data-dump. Give it to us in pieces-- or (continuing the mural analogy) tiles, if you like.

I'll have a first contribution a little later, but, if someone else wants to start, please feel free.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#2 - 2017-04-24 21:27:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
Ill Omens

Signs and rumors of illness were all around from the moment the Inquest began.

It's not a good sign when the director of an inquest into a plague has a bad cough during the first briefing. It's also probably a bad sign when he denies there's anything wrong, as opposed to saying something more comforting like, "I have a nasty case of [such and such]. It's medicated but persistent; don't mind my cough."

Of course, we had no idea how bad that really was. I kind of doubt any of us went into all that seriously thinking that the director was undermining the proceedings on purpose-- and purposely spreading the plague he was infected with. At the time, it just seemed, well, like a bad sign.

There were others, too. There was maybe just a little touch of a festive atmosphere according, I think, to the news reports at the time the Inquest began, and that was maybe sort of backed up a little by events on H4-RP4: the Caldari and Amarr had people there seeking capsuleer support that seemed less specifically about the plague than general sentiment; really the only national representatives who seemed pretty much "all business" were the Matari scientists running the labs. There was even a Gallentean pleasure hub, though it lacked a lot of the more, er, earthly pleasures such places are known for.

So, so far, so "ordinary summit; let's all build connections, work on a problem, and have a good time," but, really, I think that was all on the surface. Underneath, the atmosphere even on Day 1 was pretty tense.

The labs had been burglarized the previous night, a possible cure lost-- more work by the saboteur, who probably also caused the pre-Inquest data loss. So: there was some tension over that; each of the factions seemed to suspect the others.

Rumors were rampant, a lot of them spread by the Matari scientists staffing the labs (I still don't get why. It's not like the scientists ended up sabotaging the work or anything; maybe they thought the whole business was being set up to fail? Which, given who was directing the whole thing, it was....). The Gallentean pleasure hub staff were getting capsuleers to spy on each other, though not for significant stuff; more just to demonstrate ability, though to what end was a little unclear. The Caldari played their role more or less straight, though there was the occasional possibly-unrelated cough. (In hindsight, probably not unrelated.) The Amarr also seemed to play their role pretty straight, only....

One of the Amarr delegates running the shrine was a babbling fool, all noisy, thoughtless devotion and wild mutterings, and there was a rumor the holy water in the shrine was tainted. That later turned out to be completely true, so, maybe he wasn't a muttering fool-- maybe he was just sick. (He was definitely sick, fool or not.)

The rest-- the demonstrations of piety they were seeking-- seemed only very questionably related to the situation, though pretty related to Imperial loyalty. Really, that was probably true of everybody's agenda that first day but the Matari, and that might not have been in a constructive way. Maybe they were just ahead of the curve on really understanding the situation we all found ourselves in. It was like they'd mostly had their agendas for publicizing their values, finding those who'd support them, and so on ... and then things had started not really going as planned, but most of the baseliners were sticking to script and hoping things would work out.

Maybe the Matari were just the first to throw out the plan and start trying to highlight how much danger everyone was in. The rest, out of place as some of it seemed, was maybe as symbolic of the real situation as any other dark omen that first day. With an outbreak with the potential to kill trillions on our hands, everyone was kind of trying to act like things were okay:

"Everything's fine, haha, we're counting on you, capsuleers; ah, very nice, getting everybody to get Amarrian sigils inked on their hands and holo-recorded. Fine sign of devotion to the Empire.

"... and God help us all."
Sakura Nihil
Faded Light
#3 - 2017-04-25 00:04:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Sakura Nihil
I'll bite...



"Why is there a maintenance tech hanging around us capsuleers, diplomats, and scientists? And why is he so calm all the time, just going about his business like it's another Friday on the calendar? It makes no goddamn sense..."

I believe I said these words (perhaps a bit less professionally than recorded here) to one Makoto Priano near the end of the second day.

It didn't make sense. After the attack at the Caldari Recruitment Office, here was a baseliner maintenance tech toiling away at a floor electrical panel, pulling access logs from the systems inside. Why he asked me to help, a capsuleer with more money and ordinance than the Amarrian God and all his angels, to hold the (expletive deleted) panel open, I don't know.

"Last access by someone named Vulture" he said. I'm pretty sure my eyebrow peaked in curiosity. A day earlier, a contact with the very helpful Gallente representatives on the station led to a piece of leaked data, talking about a scientist named "Etsmala", and how she was apparently doing very... bad things to the person in question, believed or confirmed to be Patient 7, Akira Kasaras. Earlier that day, we'd gotten word that an individual within SOCT had been murdered in the elevator or garbage chute (my memory's fuzzy on that point), and that Etsmala had been killed as well.

That murder, along with the power loss in Caldari Recruitment both implicated Vulture, who previous intel had suggested as being involved with either tracking or releasing Kyonoke in the first place. Whatever, leave scientists to do science and detectives to detect, and let me do what I do best...

"I'll give you ten million ISK if you take me up to the site in question... plus a beer." The tech shrugged, and said he'd think about it. I told him to think my offer over, and give it due consideration... after all, that's enough to buy your own city planetside, the guy would never have to work a day again in the rest of his life.

He shrugged again and said he'd think about it. Frikkin' baseliners, I swear they're just weird sometimes.



The next day, less than 24 hours to go. We're all (supposedly) infected, and what do I get in a response from him when I see him?

You guessed it - shrug. Specifically, that he'd be on-duty at 1500, and until then, he was going to eat. The man faced imminent death, fortune, and fame... and he wanted to eat a sandwich.

These baseliners are just weird sometimes.

On the flip side, not every day a baseliner can convince a capsuleer to wait on them... some things are truly priceless, I guess. To sweeten the pot, I offer him fifty million ISK, and remind him that in less than a day (station-time), he's going to be extra-crispy along with the rest of us. Anyways, so 1500 rolls around, and him, myself, and two other un-named eggers form up for an elevator ride to the upper decks. The location where the SOCT officer was killed, where Etsmala was killed, and where my gut said there had to be some evidence, or something stored away out of sight. After all, if a place was quiet or isolated enough where murders happened, what else is lurking up there?

That gut feeling was confirmed when we rounded the corner, the tech swiped his badge, and there in the corner, curled up in a ball was Patient 7, Akira Kasaras. Or rather, the individual who Akira Kasaras was in, a small little black-haired Scope reporter, probably Gallentean by the looks of her, looking super-vulnerable. Leaning against the viewport with space on the otherside, looking miserable and scared. Poor thing.

Unfortunately for me, the years of working in fleets as a scout immediately told me "get this information back to the team, ASAP"... instead of staying on-site and helping get her down to the Minmatar Research Lab. Poor communication forced me to hoof it on-foot down to the Arataka office set up for the Inquest, sending reinforcements up to her last known location... by the time they got there, the other two capsuleers and the tech had successfully gotten her to the Research lab. My only comment on this was (expletive deleted) the (expletive deleted) communications system to (location not found) and back again.

Grr.

Thankfully, their intentions were good, and she was vital, alongside the PEI and several recovered vials, in synthesizing the treatment for Kyonoke. With that final piece of the puzzle, we had a means to cure the populations in question, and were not forced to burn the station or infected areas to ash.

My only regrets are that I didn't stay by her side when we found her to coordinate the operation better, and that I never got the full name of the maintenance tech in question. I owe him 50 million ISK and two beers should he ever come forward to receive it.

Give that guy a statue on a few planets for staying calm under the pressure as a baseliner. While you're at it, I think I look best in stone, not bronze. Just sayin'...
Makoto Priano
Kirkinen-Arataka Transhuman Zenith Consulting Ltd.
Arataka Research Consortium
#4 - 2017-04-25 01:18:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Makoto Priano
Hm. May've been better if you'd stayed alongside, I think. One of the others is Umbre Fallenstars, and he's been claiming sole credit for finding Kasaras. The third capsuleer-- was it Cali Estimaire? She reports also having been there and having assisted with escorting Kasaras to the clinic for processing, but may have arrived later. Certainly, Fallenstars complained about an ARC associate claiming a share of the bounty, so one of us stayed with the Kasaras, either way.

oh, and Sakura? I talked with him, as well. He seemed, well, affable, but distrusting. He refused to give his name. Consider: capsuleers aren't exactly known for being warm and fuzzy.

That said, consider this my entry.

Patient 7.

We went in knowing a lot of names, places, events. Jaron, Ohmon, Akira Kasaras. Myrskaa, RP4, Muttokon, Efu. Intaki Bank slush funds. Kaalakiota embezzlement. Home Guard armory log discrepancies. FIO disclosures of active intelligence operations. Postouvin's initial 'hoax.' Intelligence leaks spiking potential collaborative action.

We went in with a staff of twenty, the means to recruit independent capsuleers, a list of threads to pull for an investigation, and promptly ran into a wall. Of course the Caldari delegation didn't know anything about Home Guard accounting practices. Of course the FIO operatives aboard the Keepstar were just cheerful entertainers. Of course the Minmatar medical staff were quiet about Eifyr & Co.'s work.

But even though we couldn't often pry answers from the Empire delegations, we did start finding that threads, when pulled, kept pulling.

Rumors circulated, were substantiated, were chased down inexorably until the truth behind them was uncovered.

The very first things we learned: the Postouvin data corruption was only the first instance of sabotage. There had also been registry issues, confirming unknown parties aboard the structure. There had, of course, also been an attack on several of the labs, and a patient had escaped. There had been a clonejacking, and the Society itself had been infiltrated.

We learned, soon enough, that the patient that escaped was Patient 7, and soon we realized that Patient 7 was Akira Kasaras herself. How she'd made it from Nonni to RP4 to the H4-RP4 Keepstar is, I'm sure, a fascinating story. We didn't get a chance to ask the question, though. By the time she'd been recovered, the stress, the treatments, the Kyonoke infection had rendered her psychotic. She was weak, raving, and so perhaps her death following the Inquest was a merciful one.

We don't know why Vulture was attempting to kill her. Was it to prevent the deployment of a cure? Was it to conceal what she knew about the Kasaras-Pakera plot, and Vulture's and Rook's utilization of it as a means to secure a sample of the Kyonoke pathogen? We don't know.

Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries: exploring the edge of the known, advancing the state of the art. Would you like to know more?

Sakura Nihil
Faded Light
#5 - 2017-04-25 02:57:57 UTC
Makoto Priano wrote:
Would've certainly been better if you'd stayed alongside, I think. One of the others is Umbre Fallenstars, and he's been claiming sole credit for finding Kasaras. The third capsuleer-- was it Cali Estimaire? She reports also having been there and having assisted with escorting Kasaras to the clinic for processing, but may have arrived later. Certainly, Fallenstars complained about an ARC associate claiming a share of the bounty, so one of us stayed with the Kasaras, either way.

oh, and Sakura? I talked with him, as well. He seemed, well, affable, but distrusting. He refused to give his name. Consider: capsuleers aren't exactly known for being warm and fuzzy.

Hindsight's 20/20, unfortunately... however at the time, I figured that we were in an area of the station that was unsafe at best, dangerous at worst. She was the critical missing link that was necessary to develop the treatment, and had we been ambushed by a third party at the location, three unarmed capsuleers and a baseliner with a spanner aren't going to do much. Figured it made sense to call for backup in case things went south.

In retrospect, it wasn't needed, and I basically traded personal glory and influence with the Minmatar for ensuring that we got her to the lab... while the choice really sticks in my craw today, if it means the successful treatment of millions, I guess my ego can endure the hit.

If the guy starts getting colonies or star systems named after him though, I'm going to be pissed.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#6 - 2017-04-25 04:18:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
So-- an observation sort of crossed with a question, here.

At some point over the course of the proceedings it turned out that there was a scanner of some kind that revealed the presence of Kyonoke specks (I'm still unclear on how high the concentration has to be to get that to turn up). It's not something we really had ourselves, but....

We had a kinda-sorta cleanup crew wandering through the Inquest during Day 3 and marking things that turned out to be contaminated. It's how I know the holy water urn was definitely contaminated-- they really got upset when they found it, especially since one of them suffered equipment failure while inspecting it, resulting in exposure.

(I wonder whether that's how it tends to breach quarantine? Maybe it tends to chew on stuff used to seal environment suits and airtight environments somehow? That's not my question, though.)

So, that's handy, but....

At the moment where the Inquest director was being unmasked as the Vulture, the SoCT security people used a scanner on him. Not only was he contaminated, but there was something ... odd. The Kyonoke infection on the back of his hand was in the shape of a triangle; I was just a couple meters away when they scanned him, and it showed up vividly, way too regular to be a natural pattern. If I remember correctly, it had spread outward aggressively all over the back of his hand and up his arm, but the inside of the triangle was entirely trace negative.

The security people took discovery of this mark as proof positive that they had the right person, and the director was the Vulture. Given that we now know that Kyonoke's probably a bioweapon, it's maybe not too surprising if he had infected himself or been infected by someone purposely to spread the contagion on board, but the mark was so obviously artificial....

Do we know what that was?
Makoto Priano
Kirkinen-Arataka Transhuman Zenith Consulting Ltd.
Arataka Research Consortium
#7 - 2017-04-25 05:14:12 UTC
Nerve damage.

Evidently the process of clonejacking is invasive, and causes identifiable nerve damage to the subject. I can only assume the process of priming a clone for a person involves at least sufficient individualization that a foreign party seizing the clone is problematic.

And, voila, Vulture was revealed.

Interestingly, when I originally spoke with the good doctor about potential clone-jacking, he indicated it was possible but required equipment that was cumbersome and difficult to locate. The next day...? Noticing no progress on that front, I inquired very specifically with Netee and the Minmatar delegation, to push the point. Et voila, as the Gallente say.

Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries: exploring the edge of the known, advancing the state of the art. Would you like to know more?

Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#8 - 2017-04-25 05:18:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
Makoto Priano wrote:
Nerve damage.

Evidently the process of clonejacking is invasive, and causes identifiable nerve damage to the subject. I can only assume the process of priming a clone for a person involves at least sufficient individualization that a foreign party seizing the clone is problematic.

And, voila, Vulture was revealed.


Wait. Nerve damage?

In a neat triangle etched in Kyonoke specks on the back of his hand?

Uh ... are we sure that's what that was? It seemed at the time more like a ... brand. Or a vessel of some kind-- like a tidy patch of skin over a reservoir of specks or something.
Sakura Nihil
Faded Light
#9 - 2017-04-25 23:38:52 UTC
Aria Jenneth wrote:
In a neat triangle etched in Kyonoke specks on the back of his hand?

Uh ... are we sure that's what that was? It seemed at the time more like a ... brand. Or a vessel of some kind-- like a tidy patch of skin over a reservoir of specks or something.

...aaaaand there goes my appetite for the evening...
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#10 - 2017-04-25 23:48:03 UTC
Sakura Nihil wrote:
Aria Jenneth wrote:
In a neat triangle etched in Kyonoke specks on the back of his hand?

Uh ... are we sure that's what that was? It seemed at the time more like a ... brand. Or a vessel of some kind-- like a tidy patch of skin over a reservoir of specks or something.

...aaaaand there goes my appetite for the evening...

I'm sorry; I don't mean to be making an issue out of this but I'm also not asking rhetorically.

If that was a different kind of scanner they were using, that might explain it. So might the scanner actually turning up ... I don't know ... abnormal nerve patterns or something (the speck's basic form is a folded protein anyway, so, maybe it catches more than one thing)?

Anyway. Was weird, and worrying, especially in context of speck as bio-weapon. Want to know more. Also want to be sure that what we "know" doesn't turn out to be about something different.
Nauplius
Hoi Andrapodistai
#11 - 2017-04-26 11:57:16 UTC
In occult studies, the Triangle of the Art is the shape into which demons are summoned.

Stop thinking science this and science that and learn to see the occult war that is going on around us.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#12 - 2017-05-01 05:08:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
So ... nerve damage. Guess that's all I'm getting on that for now. (Sorry, Ms. Priano....)

Here's one that I mentioned before, but might want a little more thorough treatment.






Rumors, Rumormongering, and Good Faith

It's kind of natural that there were rumors flying around the Inquest like crazy. One thing that puzzled me a little was that the Matari (Sebiestor?) science staff was pursuing rumormongering with a mighty will, and offering political backing to people willing to help them do it. The rumors were not the productive type; uniformly, they seemed calculated to spread paranoia and undermine confidence in the Inquest from its very foundations.

One that still puzzles me a lot was the rumor they asked me to spread-- that the scientists themselves were psychotic.

The scientists. That is, the Matari scientists who were spreading the rumors. Why would you do that?!

The best total speculation I've been able to come up with so far is that the Matari had already seen their labs burgled, their formulas, ingredients, and a crucial test subject go missing, and a lack of data redundancy that they'd probably sounded the alarm about themselves come back to bite them right when it mattered. They didn't have any question about whether there was a conspiracy to undercut the Inquest; they already knew it for a fact, and in the absence of facts and the presence of a lot of danger they basically wanted everybody to be as alert as possible to the possibility of treachery from any side.

Maybe they wanted to create an environment of fear so that the very real saboteur would be ferreted out, somehow, sooner or later, by someone. Only ... that's far from a foolproof method. It's just really fortunate that the capsuleers present weren't nearly as suspicious of each other as the baseliners were, or we could have really had chaos erupt. But maybe that was part of the calculation, too.

All of this is hindsight, of course. At the time, I was kind of freaked out by this behavior, and went so far as to suggest to an SoCT official who was being badgered by the researchers to find their stuff, that maybe they'd conducted a false flag operation and staged the burglary themselves. After all, they were the ones most clearly working to undermine the Inquest as a whole....

I try to take my own mistakes kind of in stride, but I don't think I've ever been so completely happy to be so totally wrong. (Seriously, what are you going to do to salvage the situation if your scientists are the ones sabotaging your astoundingly-deadly biohazard research project?)

48 hours after "suggesting" that the researchers had burgled their own facility, I was pretty nervously lying down on an examination table in that same lab and being told to pull a bag full of tubes up to my waist to receive the cure (we didn't know the name for Agent 0410 at the time).

I'm pretty happy for my fellow Kyonoke patients who are being treated AFTER they figured out how to deliver the stuff by aerosol. First generation Agent 0410 infusion was pretty uncomfortable. I'm glad I received it, though. The researchers kind of went from being my personal prime suspects in the whole matter to being the people saving my life.

I still don't get it all, but it's good, sometimes, to be just really wrong about a thing.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#13 - 2017-05-06 15:54:10 UTC
Am I really the only person who wants to find out about other people's experiences there? Or share mine?
Arrendis
TK Corp
#14 - 2017-05-06 16:06:58 UTC
Find out? No. But I wasn't there, so my 'sharing' would be... uhm...

'Day 3: woke up, read the news, read the IGS, expressed myself, got drunk over the stupidity of Man'.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#15 - 2017-05-06 16:24:03 UTC
Arrendis wrote:
Find out? No. But I wasn't there, so my 'sharing' would be... uhm...

'Day 3: woke up, read the news, read the IGS, expressed myself, got drunk over the stupidity of Man'.


... that was actually a pretty reasonable reaction to a lot of events on Day 3.

(I wish they'd explained exactly what Agent 0410 was a little faster.)
Syenna Celeste
Shadow Legion X
Seriously Suspicious
#16 - 2017-05-06 20:51:26 UTC
Day -6: Theseus Station.

"Did it work?"

"Hold please."

Seconds pass.

"So?"

"It worked. Get ready to move."

Explosions crackle over the held-open comm link as the destroyer is torn apart by the guns of CONCORD fast-response frigates.

"This is Wood Pig actual. Align to planet five, confirm when ready."

The rest of the fleet snickers. The callsign was of course absurd, but I'd spent some thirty hours leading up to this moment reviewing every detail of our plan for the next seven days, and the latest hit of Blue was just starting to get into its stride. Nothing mattered anymore.

Theseus Station was about ten days old at this point, or so we believed. I can't say we'd been watching it. To be honest, I can't even rightly say how we heard about it. All I had was a solar system, a set of bookmarks, and give or take fifteen battleships. We'd all done this before, and apparently they wanted me in charge. Or maybe I'd volunteered? It had been a blur.

Our freighter jockeys had done a great job of getting us this far - Leaping across the cluster at thirty hours notice. Amassing a fleet where one once was not, in total secrecy, with no prior planning beyond what they could make up at the time. To Soltiude, too. Now all I had to do was make sure they had a fleet to take home later on.

We landed at about five-hundred klicks. We'd need to get a bit closer, but I had to be sure that there wasn't anything waiting for us. That said, we knew they weren't expecting us to hit so soon. The margin was thin. If we'd confirmed our initial intel more than ten minutes later than we did, we'd have had to wait for a later window. It might've even caused us to miss the inquest. And if we had only just managed to get ourselves set up in the time we were given, what chance did they stand?

Grid was clear. We warped the final hop down to the maximum range of our cruise missiles and set about our brutal work. The shields fell without resistance, as we'd expected and hoped. The occasional retaliatory missile salvo caused little trouble for our supporting cruisers. We'd be back, after some sleep.



Day -5: Odinesyn
"Think they'll form?"
"GMVA? Probably. But they've got a long way to come."
"So did we."
"Still. I doubt they'll bring anything serious if they do. Maybe some HACs."
"Can the Ravens deal with HACs?"
"We're about to find out I suppose."

Things were tense. Despite completing the mission, something just smelled. It had all been too easy, and the Pyre contingent had bashed heads with the FDU enough to know that they generally didn't just lie down in the face of aggression. What were they waiting for?



Day -2: Cold
I'd come to an hour late to a one line message from Milo. "Get on comms". Or maybe it was from Jev. Whatever, I was still pretty ****** up, and this was not what I'd wanted to read when I tried to silence the incessant beeping sounds coming from my nightstand.

"Three allies? Anyone we know?"
"Not really. FDU."
"So we were right to be suspicious."
"I suppose so. Still think they'll bring HACs?"
"Well what would you bring?"
"Hm."
"Give me an hour. I'll send out a ping to everybody with a set of refits. Let's plan for the worst."

We'd been using the Rapid launchers on Ravens in the wormhole for a while. We didn't know if they'd work in our current predicament, against what we could only assume would be a coherent and organised opponent rather than the stragglers we'd fought while collapsing. After a small discussion it was agreed that it was probably our safest bet, and the purchase order was placed. The freighters once again came through, and before the day was out the crates were arriving.

Put your hands around my heart and squeeze me until I'm dry.

Syenna Celeste
Shadow Legion X
Seriously Suspicious
#17 - 2017-05-06 20:52:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Syenna Celeste
Day 1: Confirmation Day
"Syenna, you have to see this."
A link opened to one of our scouts. A Scorpion class battleship making its way into Syndicate, heading our way. This one I can definitely blame Jev for, although one of our newer additions had made the initial sighting. I still need to get him that medal.

"Take an interceptor. We'll snag it before it gets here."
What once had been Ravens had become a rag-tag assortment of Taranises, Claws and Raptors. Like hunting dogs sallying out from a kennel, the small ships sprinted out of Solitude and into bat country. Syndicate wasn't the scariest place in the cluster, but we were all expecting the locals to get involved before we got there. But.. Nothing. The Scorpion didn't hold up long once we dug our teeth in. The pilot's capsule didn't make it out either, followed by one of our more bloodthirsty members. It was a nice catch, I have to hand it to him.

Further discussion followed. Were they really so disorganised? Our confidence grew massively.

Hours later, we had massed up as planned. The refitting had been completed by what were now some exceptionally well paid station-side mechanics, as well as the small band we'd brought out of Eldjotnar to deal with our more temperamental - Or more classified - modules.

At point blank range of the Raitaru's hull we waited. So close that the shrapnel of our missiles would've skittered off of our own shields, if we were firing. Saving ammo was the order of the day, and so we'd set our drones to work to hold off the multi-stage reinforcement system. They'd return and re-arm from time to time, but not for long enough that Upwell's finest tech could keep up with the sheer weight of numbers involved.

Hikari gave us the good news. "Machs."
"You're kidding right?"
"Nope. Five, ten.. Fifteen or so Machs."
"****."
"FC?"
"Hold fire until they land. What else have they got? Recons?"
"A couple. No ECM."
"Well then."

Minutes pass. Eventually they hit the field. I call a primary and wait... And to my surprise, it dies.

The rest is written in blood. I won't bore you with a battle report.

I don't know if what we did was right, but I have no reason to believe that our source wasn't entirely truthful.

Besides, the crew of the Queen Olga deserved closure. Long overdue closure.

Put your hands around my heart and squeeze me until I'm dry.