United We Stand

[Jack_Henderson]

The small, worn freighter that was flying unmarked through the darkness of space was heading towards its secret destination: the meeting of the resistance who would try to wrestle the Taus from the war machinery of the GRN. The Independent Miners Guild had their hands tied by the GRN's presence and the vulnerability of their civilian assets in Gallic space, and of course there were also some in the Guild who did not wish to oppose Gallia for other reasons. Not the Frumentarii...

Sophie Chamberlain, agent of the Frumentarii was steering the freighter well off the lanes towards its destination while Sarah O'Riley was operating the sensors and communications. She was going over some of the data that they would provide the resistance with, when Sophie told her about another GRN patrol that IMG sensors had picked up.

"Hell! What's wrong with them today?!" Sarah cursed, while she was focussing on the data that they received on the movements of the GRN ships. "Come to course 229.1 773.1 883.3 to avoid contact. Do you copy, Sophie? Recheck calculation."

Sophie was running the same checks, just not by means of a navigation computer but by intuition and her knowledge of this part of the Taus. "Somewhere that way, yes. I'll turn harder... better safe than sorry." and the freighter was pulled into a gentle curve away from its direct course. "Tell the guys we will be late."

"Sure, just keep us out of sight. We are carrying stuff around... we would not want to be dropped on our feet." Sarah told her and then she opened the comms unit, checked the encryption and wrote up the message that was sent in a short encrypted pulse:

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¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤ Transmission Incoming ¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤

¤ COMM-ID: Sarah O'Riley
¤ TARGET-ID: United We Stand
¤ SUBJECT: Message of Arrial

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MESSAGE DECRYPTING... |||||||||||||||||||||||||| 100%

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Dear Sir or Madam,

This is Echo-74, transponder code ID 7208-D, clearance code Alpha-Delta-Tango-448, we are arriving with an estimated delay of 30 minutes due to heavy GRN patrol presence in Tau 23, which forced us to detour to avoid detection.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah O'Riley

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¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤ Transmission Closing ¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤-¤