36 hours ago, I hired a group of four Freelancers to escort me on a mission to follow the hints you two gave me, and we started in Magellan. As soon as we entered the system, we were welcomed by a Lane Hacker called Gustav Graves, using a Vindicator. He followed us to Freeport 4 without caring to not show hostile intentions. I believe he was under strong influence of cardamine in this very moment. The Hacker began interrogating us, however without success, and when he realized we wouldn't tell him our plans just that easily, he opened fire on one of our Freelancers, causing the rest to engage the Hacker. It was insane. Four Freelancers versus one Hacker. He took out one and before he was able to take out the second, one of my escorts dropped a mine very close to him, causing her own ship to get ripped into pieces. She is alright though.
Just as the Hacker is. He managed to escape with his rescue pod. Damn it. I would have prefered it to have him not encountering us ever again.
We began with a search pattern. I thought the Barrier cloud was probably the best thing to hide something in, so we began there. There were a few things we actually found in there. The jump hole to Leeds, for example, guarded. A good while later we found the Lane Hacker base Mactan at C-4 in Magellan's coordinate grid.
We moved the hell out of there, knowing any Lane Hacker could arrive within seconds. So we returned to Liberty and headed for Galileo. The long range scanners were going crazy in this very moment, by the way, as we somehow managed to receive information about Nomad activity in Kyushu. Maybe we were just too close to those message nodes of the Mactan base, but we later found out this wasn't one of their tricks. In fact, my Freelancers contacted me later and told me what happened in Kyushu. You probably already heared of it as well.
In Galileo, I was certain the search would take even more time. Those Dark Matter clouds were killing our sensors, the Dreamweaver was about to collide with an asteroid base there if out navigator hadn't been skilled enough to start evasive manouvers in the very last moment. That asteroid base wasn't what we were looking for though, so we proceeded, continuing with the search.
We then stumbled across the Leiden base at B-2/3 in Galileo's coordinate grid. The emissions of this base were detectable from outside the nebula already, so we actually had an easy game finding this one in the second nebula. They have either conveniently placed this base next to jump holes to Kepler and Shikoku or are damn lucky that those two anomalies have popped up next to them. The base itself was like Mactan carved into a bit rock and equipped with those powerful nodes. Scans weren't really useful, we only got visuals.
That's pretty much all. We left Galileo as soon as possible and I ordered the navigator to bring the Dreamweaver back to Omega-49. And the Freelancers were heading towards Kyushu.
IDENTIFICATION PROCESS COMPLETE...
ELIJAH BISHOP, LIBERTY NAVY
MESSAGE DECRYPTING ... PLEASE WAIT ...
Greetings Kyu Akibara,
I wanted to sincerely thank you for these information. It's good to finally know the rumors about Hacker installations in Magellan and Galileo were right. Also, don't worry about Gustav Graves, as soon as I find him on one of my patrols I will end what your freelancers apparently weren't able to do.
As you know, I am only an officer of the Secondary Fleet, therefore I am sadly not aware what the First is planning to do about it, now that we know where we would have to position our fleets to hit the Lane Hackers. Maybe my fellow Lieutenant Mayer knows more about it.
But even though we might have been confronted by the Gallic Navy again lately, I think you can be assured steps will be taken soon to weaken the position of the Lane Hackers in Liberty. Anything else would be a pity, I suppose.
COMM ID: Lieutenant John Mayer LOCATION: Westpoint, New York TARGET ID: Kyu Akibara SUBJECT: Lane Hacker Installations ENCRYPTION: LOW PRIORITY: LOW
Greetings Mr Akibara,
So, you followed the leads we gave you? Good to know, didn’t thought you’d succeed though, but anyways. The information will be in good hands, don't worry about that.
We might not able to take any steps against the hackers right now but we will not forget about the information.
If you find out more about those pesky Hackers, we’d love to know it and finally put an end to the Hacker threat. I've sent the information already to Fleet Admiral Jones. Thank you for the Information Mr. Akibara.
John Mayer, out.
Signed:
Lieutenant John Mayer
First Fleet of the Liberty Navy