To: Unioners (Bering Relay 257)

[Enkidu]

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Entschlüsseln von Paketen

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✶✶✶ UNIONER ENCRYPTED UPLINK – UN-VF81 "ARBEITER" VERY HEAVY FIGHTER ✶✶✶

CALLSIGN: HELLION

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--- DATEN ERHALTEN ---

Uplink initialisiert...

Signalverbindung wird hergestellt... Bitte warten...

>>> VERBINDUNG HERGESTELLT <<<

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GAMMA-ONE-THREE-PHI-'HELLION'

TO: Lovelace
FROM: V.A.N.T. (Vorausaufklärungsnetzteam) GAMMA-ONE-THREE-PHI, ACTUAL
SUBJECT: The Greatest Dataheist of the Decade

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UN-VF81 'ARBEITER'

╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
│ DESIGNATION: UN-VF81 'ARBEITER' │
│ CLASS: UNIONER VERY HEAVY FIGHTER │
│ HULL INTEGRITY: ██████████ 100% │
│ SHIELDS: ██████████ 90% │
│ POWER CORE: THORIUM MOX REACTOR │
│ ARMAMENT: 7/1x Hardpoints // 2x Missile Mount // 1x CD/T Countermeasure │
│ CREW: 1 PILOT // AUTOMATED SYSTEMS: ACTIVE │
│ CURRENT LOCATION: REDACTED │
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝



TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The Arbeiter is a highly modular very heavy fighter platform built entirely with domestic Rheinland technology.
Publicly, it stands as the cornerstone of the Union’s drive for independence from foreign spacecraft suppliers.

Implicitly, the Arbeiter represents a bold attempt to leapfrog both Hessian and Gas Miners Guild fighter programs.
Drawing from decades of accumulated shipbuilding talent and mechanical improvisation, the Unioners have produced a space superiority platform that reflects their unrelenting pragmatism — combining performance, molecularity, and survivability under hostile conditions.

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▌ Message body x1▐

Alright, I'm here.

Sorry; it was my turn to smack the bolide.



Sympathetic tardiness aside...

▌ Gun camera roll▐

IMG: BERING-HAMBURG JUMP GATE CONSTRUCTION SITE

▌ Message body x2▐

Some so-called construction site. The worksite's been this side of functional for a decade, but Deep Space Engineering won't stop fiddling with the fit-checks. Till now, at least.

This isn't a Tau-23 situation; there's no family feud between Goliath and a Demogorgon to tie up project completion. Or, at least, there wasn't. Bear with me, Bering.

No, they're slow-walking the Bering-Hamburg gate's hand-off. It's Weird. Capital W.

Our best projections? Well, we don't have 'em. So the best you're gonna' get is an infotainment guesswork fed through a forecasting server (it's a machine''s spit-take, yeah, reliable as a ice bulkhead), suggests they're gonna' tear away the fit-test modules in the coming weeks.

So here we are, running with our worst projections:

Projection one:

DSE's milking this cost-plus contract for all it's worth, and taking their sweet infinity to release custody of the gate, 'cause they get double billing for maintaining the gate while it's technically a worksite. Never mind the quintillion tonnes of traffic passing through it every lunar cycle.

Projection two:

DSE's keeping the construction facility up, because there's something <expletive>cking wrong.

Call us conspiracy theorists, if you want to. We've all heard our share of Blackout hysterics by now, yeah?


But strange happenings are afoot, and we're living in them. We're up to our necks.

...Ageira isn't telling Sirius anything about what really happened during the Jump Gate Blackout. But we've got our contacts at Heisenburg. They've got their own riddling theories in-play.

But, see, there's no way of validating any of 'em without access to a gate's inner workings.

Usually, that'd be impossible. You'd need an active gate, and active gates have anti-tamper solutions that make any kind of hardware hack fringing on suicidal.

Well, that is to say, most active gates.

This one's got an entire manual test architecture, replete with access points, strapped to the side.

Best of all? It's vulnerable. Because it's in the wrong place, getting ogled by the right people. That gate is the only gate with an Access Platform attached in the overlap between our respective operations zones.

We're the best hardware hackers on this side of the law. After all, we're Unioners. We build ships for a living out of what others throw away. But at software, we're only good. That's not good enough for this heist.

This is where the Lane Hackers come in. You're by far and away the best blackhat code 'cryptors the Neuralnet ever produced. Besides, Ageira's your nemesis. We figure that you might want to have your name on the op'. Besides, we can't do it without you. We've got the guns, the tooling, but we don't have the hackers.

...Now, you might be wondering, what's the Union's angle? Why do we care?

Simple.

Gate disasters are associated with Dark Matter innundations, right?

Guess what consumed Munich?

There's about four hundred and eighty six million Munich refugees spread around Rheinland, who deserve an ransom, not an explanation. But we can start with an explaination. Getting them answers for -why- their lives are in pieces is a least the beginning of revenge.

Add to the top of that - something's up with those gates. When the Blackout happened, a lot of ships, a lotta' lives, civilian lives, mostly, but also a good few hundred Unioners, in transit, between Hamburg and Hudson, vanished.

It was as if the void winked. All those lives, gone. You want to know the worst part? Since then, the disappearances haven't stopped. Ships, still, sometimes, vanish, on Hamburg ingress.

Some think we're getting swallowed by our own Jump gates.

Plus, look, to be honest here?

If we can help Lovelace pull off what, to Liberty's Creditors, will be most catastrophic data-breech of the last ten years, it'll -really- devalue Liberty's stranglehold over the Hudson War Debt.

See, the Kaiser's yes-men are trying to justify a pension age hike - and they're using Rheinland's national debt to justify it.

Boarding that gate will take the wind out of that argument. It'll devalue Liberty's buy-in over the Bormann treaty. It'll be like personally punching former President Powell square between the eyes. Over and over again. Poof, there goes that bastard's legacy.

If Ageira and DSE; two of the big three, gets served an injunction, right as the trading floor opens on Bonn Station?

Ooh-girl. We're talking CNS headlines. The Major Leagues.

▌ Mission Proposal▐

• The Unioner movement is ideating an operation to board, seize, and capture the Hamburg Jump Gate Construction Site.
  
  
• The target of the heist is the jump gate's operational records and audit logs.
  
  
• Upon retrieval of the data, the boarding force will attempt to evacuate, before an overwhelming response force arrives.
  
  
• This would effectively be the most significant data breach of Ageira's proprietary information within the last ten years.
  
  
• The task is impossible without the aid of the Lane Hackers, who are the premier experts in waging cyberware against Ageira's intranet.
  
  
• The Unioners offer the muscle, firepower, and numerical strength required to hold the gate for long enough for the boarding to take effect. The Lane Hackers would provide the on-site cyber-warfare capacity required to access the construction site's operational data.
  
  
• We expect to be able to carve out a 25 minute boarding window, +/- 9 minutes, depending on Libertonian and Rheinlandic response times.
  
  
• Any data recovered will be turned over to the Lane Hackers. The Unioners will take no part of the data - our interest is in the resulting headlines. Leak it to the neuralnet, if need be.
  
  
• All points, and specific strategies, are subject to revision by the Lane Hackers.
  

▌ Message body 3▐

So - are you in?

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...Übertragung endet...

VERBINDUNG UNTERBROCHEN

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Transmitting Officer: Gunda Riehl
Rank / Position: <Scrambled>
Sector: Tanner Expanse

✶✶✶ TRANSMISSION TERMINATED ✶✶✶

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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