[Official event] Journey of the Argonauts

[jammi]

Outcomes

• If Liberty acquires the Argonaut, it will "jump start" their progress in the latest Sirian technological arms race.
  
• If Kusari acquires the Argonaut, they will impede their primary rival and gain critical diagnostic insights into drives under extreme strain.
  
• ????: The Lane Hackers acquire the Argonaut, secreting it away to Cochrane Base. They will begin the work to understand what they have stolen and its value.

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After transiting through the Alaska Super Gate into Earhart, the LSF taskforce initially made good speed. Relying on the scant data recovered from surviving drones, they avoided the obvious hazards nestled in the pocket’s centre. The Argonaut-3 latched onto the Niyodo’s reactor section and began to tow it away. As the expedition moved towards an anticipated exit-point, the situation shifted drastically.

A drive rift opened and expelled a Kusari strike group, transponders disabled. While the LSF has long been aware of Kusari jump drives -- schemed to defeat them, even -- it was still an unpleasant shock to be on the receiving end of their abilities. The KOI were horrified to find they were too late, the reactor had already been acquired by their rivals. Records next become garbled and confused, and it is unclear which side fired first.

What is known is this distant and alien frontier became a bloodbath, as the two House’s agents tore one another apart. The LSF successfully disengaged from this first clash, however their escape left the convoy in terminal peril. The exit point led to Kepler, a morass of deadly dark matter and gravitational hazards. While the LSF had painstakingly mapped the shifting tunnels of relative safety in previous months, they were not permitted a free hand to retreat. Soon after, regrouped KOI survivors pursued through the exit point and the battle began anew.

Ames was thrown into disarray by the chaos, as Liberty and Kusari ships fought and died in the safe zone surrounding the station. Soon the local neural net was ablaze, attracting the malign attention of the Lane Hackers. A squadron launched from Leiden Base was first to respond, arriving on the scene to confront the handful of surviving KOI operatives. This confrontation was merciless, with the Hackers soon after inheriting the Argonaut-3 and overriding its automated protocols.

The Hackers were not quite sure what they had obtained, but it was evidently capital ship wreckage of great value. They determined Cochrane Depot’s drydock was the best place to take it, and made off towards Colorado. The journey to Ontario was calm, despite Colorado itself being in uproar. Nothing was being reported on the neural net, but clearly some sort of transmission had escaped from Kepler. The Liberty Navy had been ordered to maximum alert and were preparing to reinforce the border.

All LSF stations had also been placed at maximum readiness, and briefed on the strange energy readings the scout drones had detected emanating from the Niyodo’s reactor. It was exactly these readings that caught the attention of an LSF patrol flying off the Battlecruiser Lehigh. A sudden spike in exotic radiation was detected in the gap between the St Lawrence Ice Field and the North Ontario Debris Sea. Another interception, another bloody combat, joined part-way through by dogged KOI trackers. The LSF’s mission CO quickly surmised the tide was turning and determined that the component must be destroyed rather than lost to Liberty's enemies.

Critical damage was inflicted on the Argonaut, but the Hackers were successful in driving their pursuers off. The thieves vanished into the debris field, and arrived at Cochrane Depot with their dilapidated prize in tow. Despite this, one of their own had been forced to eject, and was now aboard an LSF interceptor heading for the Lehigh and an uncertain fate. The heist of the decade has overturned an ant hill. The attention of the LSF is now, more than ever, fixed on Ontario, while the Navy waits to see what response may yet come from the north.

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