Bowex InfoNet (inRP)

[Scott MacFarlane]

Incoming Transmission NL819 86593002Z
Encryption Level: SECURED T145
CommID: MacFarlane: NL:DH 8764501
Message Target: Bowex Board of Directors, Director of Operations.
CC: His Grace, Lord Norfolk, BAF High Command, BPA Chief Commissioners Office, Bretonia Trade and Transit Authority
Message Source: Private Terminal 8033956, Devon Highlands, New London
Subject: Bowex-lead Convoy 819-7-12-A and the attempted "heist".

-------->Message begins, text only.

Sirs,

As requested by direct coms, I make the following report: I apologize for the delay, but as you know, things have been rather busy today.

First allow me to apologize for not being more forthcoming with this issue as it developed beginning some days ago. I realize that I have kept the Bowex leadership completely in the dark on the developing situation and did not report the entirety of my suspicions before, only giving small... "tid-bits". I'm afraid it goes much deeper than that.

I have willingly and knowingly deceived the Board and the Director of Operations, including Brigadier Petersen and other Bowex employees.

How and why you ask? Well the why is easy. The how I will explain. As for the why: I had reason to believe that the very real possibility of security leaks exist within our own corporation. Some employees have had contact, and maintain contact, with persons of rather dubious nature. One of which I swear is a Jerry sympathizer! (OORP: //I was concerned about metagaming) As you all know, I have put a great deal of effort, on my own time, into this endeavour. In addition, it is not only our security that concerned me, but also the security of our very nation. Bretonia lives on our ability to ship what is needed by Her allies and return with what She needs. Or, She will die due to our inability. There is little wiggle-room for error, and scarcely room for chances, although I admit to taking a large one today.

So what happened? As you already know, two scalawags attempted to abscond with the Queen's cargo after being hired by Bowex under wartime contract. I have been told that these things will happen, that it is unavoidable. I'll be damned to Malta if I subscribe to that notion!

The two men in question registered at the Bowex's offices some days ago. I became immediately suspicious of their registration due to certain....... reports in the past. However, I thought it imprudent to simply reject their registration out of hand (OORP: //The "Smelly 'Ol Pete" sig set me off right away, but rejecting them would have been metagaming), until more data could be gathered. I paid attention to the com boards, but saw nothing suspicious coming through Bowex channels. I paid close attention reports of pirate activities and movements, as well as BDM movements. I saw nothing that immediately tipped me off, so I fly out into the border systems myself to see if I could goad a reaction that would giveaway a possible scheme. Again, nothing. I had almost begun to consider that I was being paranoid. However, I have found that my paranoia has served me well in the past, and thus stuck with it. Some days later, my diligence paid off.

After making arrangements to have a miner droid on standby at Graves Station to direct load Convoy shipping for the scheduled movement, the two vessels in question did indeed report to be filled. However, unbeknownst to them, and in fact every vessel serviced, I had direct communications with the droid and was witness to every action, and every transmission. (OORP: //The droid was operated by my wife) My suspicions were heightened when they initially contacted the droid on long-range coms using a Rhineland based trace-marker, indicating that they were in fact in Rhineland at the time. Then, once arriving on station for service, the droid noted on its sensors that one of the vessels was a Camara Freighter. I found it very odd that such a ship would be willing to undertake such a hazardous enterprise, especially when every other ship that registered or expressed interest was a full-size transport. In addition, I had never seen this ship's transponder name before that immediately set my ears tingling. Of course I am suspicious of every ship I see that I don't know, but that is another issue entirely.

As I watched my screen, I made note of several other things that were wrong. The two vessels told the droid that all profits would be going to the Queens' War Chest. I found this laughable since both of these vessels were clearly of rough nature along with the men crewing them. I simply could not believe this utter poppycock. When the droid prepared to object to the situation, I silenced it and told it to press on. Later, as the droid labored, the captain of one of the vessels continually accosted the droid for information on the convoy route. No other captain had asked, because all captains knew already that that information would not be divulged until it was needed to be. I instructed the droid to respond that the information was classified under an ExSec security parameter. The droid, confused at first, carried out my instructions. The captain of the vessel became quite agitated at the response and demanded the information anyway, applying some great importance to their vessels being members of the convoy. I found this quite interesting, and at that point my suspicions were confirmed, at least in my own mind. There was no reason for this captain, who had no previous relationship with Bowex, to believe that he was entitled to anything. It became clear that he was merely attempting to bully the droid, which vindicated my choice of using the droid to begin with, his thinking that he could get from the droid what he wouldn't be able to get from a human operator. Now that my suspicions were confirmed, I ordered the droid to taint the cargo with moderately radioactive UD tracking dust in order to allow us to track the ore. As a further precaution, I had it mark the cargos of the other vessels it serviced after that as well.

I now considered two possibilities: One: That the two scamps had accomplices that would be waiting for the convoy on the lanes. Pirates? Smugglers? BDM? I had no way of knowing. My previous efforts to turn up something failed, so I considered the remaining possibility. The mercs that were hired could be part of the scam. Either the ones still on contract, or the ones who had backed out of the contract immediately after convoy schedules were sent out. I believed that it was likely the latter, but chose to take no chances there. I therefore deceived both. How? In a moment,
Two: If not the first scenario, then I considered the possibility that the two ships would simply rabbit, as I had outlined the previous day when I voiced my initial concerns. To cover this possibility, and the former, I secretly hired a merc from my own pocket to shadow the convoy when we moved out. The merc I hired was of dubious origin in Bretonian eyes, so I keep the details to myself per our agreement. However, he comes from a caste of professionals who place personal honor above all else, so I knew I could rely on him.

These safeguards in place, I activated the next deception: I feigned a confused ignorance of SMT (OORP://GMT) time zones in regards to New London time versus Newcastle time and arrived an hour late to RV the convoy. I used this bit to deceive everyone, including Bowex (my apologies), as to the real start time of the convoy. Only my personal guard-dog knew the truth of it, and he wasn't telling anyone. By pursuing this course I accomplished several things: First, I deceived and confused any leaks within Bowex. Second, the mercs who were hired were not even present. If they showed at the time I gave them, I didn't know, but I removed them from the equation regardless. Third, the mercs who had pulled out of the contract immediately after the schedule was set were an obvious leak that this deception plugged. Fourth, any other accomplices our scamps had made arrangements with would be out of position, if present at all. Fifth, if the scamps showed at the new time, refer to Four, if not it gave me more time to defuse the situation with additional precautions. Sixth, and possibly more important, the two scamps went into an absolute TIZZY over the delay. A reasonable man would have simply inquired as to whether something was amiss, but a GUILTY man, who's nerves are in a bunch, and the adrenalin is high with what is about to happen would react exactly as they did. (OORP: //The flood and Skype was crammed with hate for me being "late". Perfect. Is this metagaming? Considering that the attempted deception was both RL and RP, I would say NO it wasn't. If it had been RP only and I had been made aware OORP of the events about to take place, then yes) I had also deceived the other ship captain so he would not be there. I didn't want to risk him in my little gambit. So when we started, there was only my ship and the two scamps. No one else was at risk. At that point I made some show of trying to arrange additional security or getting a BAF escort, as well as brow-beating Bowex employees on company coms (skype) for not showing, when actually I was communicating with my guard-dog and getting him positioned behind us.

We moved out when I was fully prepared and commenced with some chitchat. The rest of those details are unimportant, other than their constant references to the lack of security cemented my suspicions even further and made me smile. If only they knew of what measures I had taken.

Well the two boys jumped the lane in Cortez and made off towards the Inverness jump hole. My merc was alerted and was hot on their tail. I made some noise of warning them that BIS officers would be waiting to intercept them. This was yet another deception, designed to divert their attention away from what was coming up behind them. If they saw something and it wasn'€™t a BIS agent, I considered that they would relax their guard. I am not sure if this ploy worked or not. We'€™ll never know because my merc was intercepted by lower caste Lane Hackers (NPC'€™s) that held him up just enough for the scamps to get away from his sight. I had seen earlier that a few Reavers were in the area, so I had put it into my mind that I would contact them if something went wrong. Something had, so I contacted Silver right away and contracted her to pick up the missed intercept. She succeeded in destroying one vessel in Leeds a few moments later. In the meantime, the scamps had made some noise about making for Rhineland as they ran away from me, and the Lane. I had instructed Silver to make doubly sure that the cargo be recovered, or destroyed, before that happened. However, when she told me that she was on one in Leeds, I realized that the Rhineland bit was a deception. One does not go backwards to get to Rhineland. Having not known of my tail on them, if Rhineland was their true goal, there are far more direct routes to take. I informed BAF Commander Woodrow of this when he contacted me and inquired if there was a problem. Just like the uniform services to contact you after a problem has occurred. Anyway, I made a short report as well as voicing my suspicions that the Rhineland gag was just that. Unfortunately, all the officer could think of to do was to lecture me on the anti-virtues of hiring Reavers. I did 14 years in the BAF, as well you know, and I must say'€¦ aww forget it. What'€™s the point anyway?

As it is, both my merc and Silver lost the second contact in Cambridge where he went to ground. We believe on Lisburn. The tracking dust is giving off a strong signal from that general area, which will become more precise the closer pursuit ships get. As you know, it is extremely difficult to remove and will spread to the entire cargo-hold of the vessel.

In the end, very little was lost. The ore covered by my own pocket, and insurance has already covered that. The vessels in question have been removed from registration, and stronger security methods will be in place.
I hope that this will indeed result in the BAF re-considering its position on supplying security escort for this effort.

Report for: Convoy 819-7-12-B

The second convoy for today consisted of the Bowex)BES Lennox, Bowex)Walpole, Gateway)Trafalgar, and the Harry.Dresden. Again, no security was present, and no mercs or Freelancers had signed up for this convoy. However, with two Shires, a Perchy, and DL, there were enough guns for me to take the risk.

We departed at 2000SMT from New London carrying ore and hull panels bound for Liberty. The exact route and stops are classified ExSec Delta 087 and are available by secure trans on request.

The effort was mostly uneventful, despite the skies being filled with ships in Liberty. We saw nothing note until we were mid-way through the run when we sighted a massive Liberty Navy battle group going the other direction. To engage the Jerries no doubt. Soon after, near West Point Academy, we spied a lone Rogue vessel, a VHF. He wanted no part of us, and was immediately set upon by three LN fighters. On our outbound turn from Liberty we spied an unknown. He turned out to be an indie pirate in a VHF who kept his distance from us. I attempted to goad the little bastard as the rest of the convoy moved on to the jump gate, but he made it perfectly clear to me that he wanted no part of two Shires and whatever else we had.

The convoy pulled into Leeds as our final stop. Final total earnings for Queen and County: 98.3 million SC profit. No losses of shipping or cargo. No damage to report other than some Shire bumps and grinds, and'€¦ I'€™m still trying to get the offensive Gateway stench out of my flight computers. Mr. Gordon and his team should have that sorted out by morning though.

All in all as very successful convoy run.

In closing, I again make request of BAF support of some kind, even if it is one Ensign in a VHF. I also request official coms to Liberty to make similar arrangements. I can, of course, attempt to do this again myself, but coming from the Foreign Ministry would lend it more weight.

Yours in Service to the Queen, now and always,

Master Scott MacFarlane, Clan MacFarlane
Captain, BES Lennox

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