The Trader was surprised by the sudden and intense interest by his guest, but then realised the military mans questions where serious and contentrated on the discussion again.
To be precise, General : I have no exact knowledge about Liberty Forces and their Intelligence status. And especially the Lane Hackers might have means to hide or delete any Information that is stored or archived in Liberty while the Xenos I suppose have many secret supporters on all levles of corporate and governmental hierarchy. I have no great confidence in libertonian bureaucracy to be honest. Too many groups pulling in too many different directions, too much to loose or to hide, and much to much private interest involved. General, we are talking about an oligarchic structure working in a representative democracy. We are talking lobbyistic settings, and the power of the almighty Credit. Do you know why we at Tinkers are so keen to support local Infrastructure ? Because our Investors do not come from the banking or financial sector. Our funds stem from middle class people denied any chance to better life without corporative consent.
He continued with a frown deepening on his face, speaking more slowly:
The corporations and the state are entangled into a web of necessity and cold warfare, where an outer threat is needed to hold state together while more or less "minor" threats are ignored or even used to hamper your rival and better your own standing. Xenos help hamper unwanted "foreign" corporate trade, Lane Hackers are used to hinder Ageira Technologies in getting too powerfull, and I suppose even the Hellfire Legion or the Liberty Rogues have some secret supporters in upper echelon Liberty. Same in Kusari : Samura supports the Hogosha as far as I know, while Kishiro probably works together with some die-hard anti-republican groups or support the GMG. And as far as I know its the same in Rheinland , while bretonian major companies openly pirating and crippling each other outside of BPA)sight is common enough too.
Realising that the General wanted more Information and not only words Tukker continued :
I have seen at least 2 bases I believe to be occupied by Xenos myself from afar or evaded a mysterious asteroid base surrounded by Hacker patrols in Magellan more than one time and I am sure our Skippers can tell you more. Fynn and his scrappers have been exploring the systems around Texas regularily, looking for wrecks, valuable scrap and other claimable resources. These junkers tend to come around a lot. By the way, there was a well known rascal called Venturer who left Tinkers to join you I believe ? He knows the jump holes in that area well I believe, as he smuggled ores as a free miner before joining us.
Sensing his guests excitement and wishing to calm him he pulled out his pocket organizer and transferred two communication tokens:
Here, this is Fynns personal comnet account and you can reach Bailey on the other channel. If you want to send out scouts to gather military grade scanner information I am sure we can aid you on that, though I do suspect you will have to risk detection and a fight with the local Patrols around these Hideouts. I am not as knowledgeable as our scrapoping teams or our senior skippers in these matters as in my own trading times as a captain I travelled the great circuit around the outer systems more than the independent systems around liberty.
With these words Tukker closed his organizer again and intensely fixed LaFlamme for a moment, then politely asked:
May I ask if there is a special reason for yor keen interest, General LaFlamme? As I explained, these groups and their supporters form a dense and dangerous web, and touching any fibre might send shivers through the network to alert more than the occasional Pirate or Smuggler. There are players in this game that are extremely dangerous, even if I could not name you any Individual. I only followed their moovements with my ship for most of my life, like a fish hunting after the wreckage some great submerged predator leaves behind in his wake.
