To: Viper; BDM

[Mr.Ling]

...hack.initiated...connecting.to.Spyglass.Network...decryption.in.progress...
...Deceiver.Mr.Ling.recognized...encoding.transmission...
...uploading.data...

In my defense, it wasn't my choice.

The decision to release the information was almost entirely Outer Circle work. Most of the rest of the Inner Circle has gone under. Outcasts have decided they largely prefer Xenos, it seems, thanks to a "person of interest". LSF also preferred Xenos, probably still do. Rogues can't be considered "reliable" with their pack dynamics and no Hemlocke to beat them all into order, and with that, the Lane Hackers have no friends in Liberty. I've got a suspicion that Lovelace bent the knee to Xenos when it came time for the LSF to hand off Ontario to them, though you didn't hear that from me. Got a reputation to maintain. But, being an Inner Circle ain't a good thing these days. Only reason I haven't ducked under is probably nostalgia from growing up on Pittsburgh. Used to all of this, yeah? Who woulda guessed those damn snakes thirst for being kings by any means necessary would follow me to space?

Anyway, were it up to me, we wouldn't have released anything until we had either a working countermeasure or an early-warning-system. Outer Circle seemed to think that either they could somehow make a countermeasure in less than a month, or that nothing would actually change except crashing Ageira stocks. Which is true. My Ageira shorts are doing wonderful so far. My voice doesn't mean a lot in the wider group of Lane Hackers, though. More just an old man who lived the history, these days.

Anyway, the slipspace-webway thing is a good call. The official DSE term for it is "Jumpnet", and I'm not certain these Jump Drives interact with it directly.

...upload.initiated...jump_project.log...upload.complete...

As you and your colleagues probably already know, Ageira's Jump tech works off of the Jumpnet, or the sub-dimension that flows between locations of gravitational anomalies. Think a whirlpool in the sink that connects to one in a different location. If you touch the walls of the whirlpool, though, you get... well, we don't exactly know, but you don't come back, that's for certain, which is why checking Jump Hole phase alignments is very important, because if your Jump holes are out of phase, the gap you can pass through doesn't actually touch in the middle between the two whirlpools, even though the Jumpnet flows between them, and why there's a mass limit on unstable Jump holes, because your mass can pull the walls into you and that doesn't end well. Jump holes are locations where these anomalies are strong enough for you to pass through regularly, and Jump Gates are locations where we swirl the metaphorical water until it makes a whirlpool to go through.

Kusari's Jump Drive doesn't do that. My best guess on what these Jump Drives do is generate a singularity spinning so fast that it's outer event horizon is within the inner event horizon, and therefore doesn't exist in a practical sense. This creates a ring of stretched spacetime, which physically connects two points in space. This is where the horrors come in. First is "square root of negative one space". I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like, but the Niyodo's navigation protocol has it marked as a combat hazard, so wherever it is is filled with enemies of Kusari I guess.

The second one is that due to the inverse square law, Jumpnet has a maximum theoretical range within energy inputs humanity can manage. To make a Jump Gate that can cross roughly 20 light years, we'd need to input about 3 Sols of energy. That's 1.14e21 joules every second we keep the connection open. Kusari's little toy is linear. The slope is steep, but it's range is effectively infinite. And there's a function in here to synchronize these things, so they can make a two-way Jump. This is effectively a portable Jump Gate to any location in Sirius. And you can literally jump the paired gate to the endpoint instead of having to haul it there physically.

I'm personally not in the business of creating catastrophes. I've got a wife and kids, I'd like to still have a universe for them to grow up in. Ideally a better one than the Colonies have left us with right now. My goal now is putting a cap on this mess, because I think this stunt will aggravate Kusari into action, and I've seen Kusari wage war first hand. I was sent to scope out the war in Gallia. Outer Circle doesn't understand that Kusari doesn't see civilians or non-combatants. You're either obstacle or not, and given the amount of "free Erie" I'm seeing, it's disheartening to see these guys praying on Liberty's downfall, 'cause I know that's just gonna get Erie glassed with minimal fanfare.

So, what I'm asking is aid for creating a Jump-Drive countermeasure. Not with Lane Hackers in general. I'm not cutting any Outer-Circles into this. Buro and Inner Circle. Lovelace has heart, Gatebreakers have skill, but none of them have delicacy, and they seem to be lacking in critical judgement and situational awareness as well.

...encryption.in.progress...disconnecting.from.network...hack.terminated...