✶✶✶ UNIONER ENCRYPTED UPLINK – CTE-3000 'FALCON' HEAVY FIGHTER ✶✶✶
CALLSIGN: TEUFELSKERL
--- DATEN ERHALTEN ---
Uplink initialisiert...
Signalverbindung wird hergestellt... Bitte warten...
>>>VERBINDUNG HERGESTELLT<<<
GAMMA-THREE-SIX-NINE-ZETA-'TEUFELSKERL'
TO: Caliban FROM: V.A.N.T. (Vorausaufklärungsnetzteam) GAMMA-THREE-SIX-NINE-ZETA, ACTUAL SUBJECT:One million credits, for the life of a Unioner. See, we're kinda' about getting those who have a million credits to splash to avoid setting fiduciary value on a human life. But usually, it plays out in reverse. You tried to save me from their guns at risk to yourself. Ravishing bravery - thunderous and coming down at us - deserves a second beg.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
As the name attests, the falcon corporate escort fighter is as formidable as it is ubiquitous, deserving the reputation it enjoys across the four inner houses of Sirius. Offering a balanced combination of offensive and defensive capability, the ubiquitous Falcon delivers an astonishing amount of firepower against potential adversaries quickly and efficiently.
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I need a neurologist. Swear my frickin' spine's shorter.
Alright, Tempest. I bet you're pondering why I'm not getting squeezed into a one-size-fits-all jumpsuit by an unsympathetic jailer right about now.
Guess I gambled and won, even if I've struck out. That fragmented bird of mine with the busted sniffer was, miraculous as it panned out for me, a two-seater, demobbed off of flight training.
Figured if I made 'Elsef and his backup dancers mad enough, they'd disperse to harry that Hacktivist before he and his subalterned Navals noticed pod two roasting in the debris field. Solar wind and a frisson of particulate noise did the rest. They've probably run home with the empty can. Stupidly risky pull, given it meant being clamped up next to an unconfined fusion flare, right in the sunglare, but I was short on escapist routines that didn't involve side-arming myself.
The Hacker wasn't kidding about vitamins. My everything cancer rate's spun up. If I pulled that in an MOX craft I'd have alpha emitters popping all over the pod's exterior, alike itty-bitty fleas, 'cept if one of these jumps into your mouth from the exterior of ya' flight gloves, your organs'll melt clean out of your ass. It's called puddling. It's grim.
Tell you what; humor a pirate for a moment.
You were willin' to pay that Johnny Kickdown a 'Lancer's ransom, a frosty one million, round and squared, to bail me out. That wasn't heartstrings, but puppetry. Means you were digging for something from me at least commensurate to the spend. It sure as heck wasn't for my quasi-functionin' near derelict ident unit, was it?
Alright. I'll game to wrestle. In the meta-<expletive>-kin'-phorical, sense, given I've... probs' displaced one spinal disc, slipped another, fused a third into a fourth. Call it the pain med courage, yet, high though I may be, face it...
I need a new bird, given my last was plucked from under me, and a date with a resonance imager. Can barely feel my ribs. The Union'll set me up with all of that, but it's considered good manners in my society to bring home a take. Hey, It's embarrassing to get pranged, patched, and spelling of primrose without tearing anythin' teachable from the injury.
We accommodate those who feed trapped rats. That's exactly what you did - in broad daylight, in front of Jacobi-doodle's uniformed exterminators.
You'll fire that one million credits, Shakespeare; the value of my life, and I'll answer whatever-it-was you think was worth tryin' to buy my life for.
WALLET DESIGNATION: UN|Kasse
PAYMENT REQUEST:
YOU SEND - 1000000 SIRIAN STANDARD CREDITS Interspace Commerce's audit board advises against interacting with unverified wallets. Such wallets are often used for scams, blackmail, or other criminal activity.
Consult the regulations of your local polity before attempting to interact with an unverified third-party wallet.
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Now, don't get me for fresh-faced and pining; you're playing with us. But you're a full orchestra backed by Votta pipeworks; blaring but subtle, sophisticated, supra-entrappin' like. Sure as hell you're better at mining for scuttlebutt than that Elsef ever was.
I'm game. You've got me. For a million flat, Tempest, you'll get to buy yourself a Unioner.
I'm not sure what game you're trying to play, but this reverse ransom thing you're trying to pull is bound to hit a dead end. The million credit thing was to keep you alive and kicking. It looks like you're fine now and I didn't have to spend a dime in the end.
I tried to pay them off 'cause I was bored and you were out of your league in that Falcon of yours. There's no fun in watching a fight that's rigged from the start. Besides...the LSF bloke was sporting Order tech. Good luck beating that.
Tell you what. I'll give you 350,000 instead. And with that new bird of yours, you'll meet me around Bristol's big salvage op in Bering. Gear up for a dance. No plus ones.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
As the name attests, the falcon corporate escort fighter is as formidable as it is ubiquitous, deserving the reputation it enjoys across the four inner houses of Sirius. Offering a balanced combination of offensive and defensive capability, the ubiquitous Falcon delivers an astonishing amount of firepower against potential adversaries quickly and efficiently.
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Awful sorry to tell you this, Tempest...
But I'm not yet so spineless to take drastic cuts to the bottom line. It chaps against my grains, y'know? I'm a Unionist; I'd be deservedly labelled up as a scab if I dropped an honest day's infobrokin' from a million, to thirty five kilo. Talk about a paycut.
Tell ya' what; save your credits. Tongue in <expletive> cheek, mate: Spend it on an infinite sum of peer neer-do-wells in need, yeah? It's mighty efficient to save lives for zilch. Sirius would be all the better for it if you kept that miracle sharp. I'm only half pulling your arms.
I'm sure I'll see you soon. On our terms, or yours. Pleasant surprise to run into a masked up mono-visor packin' a leather-bound overcoat. You've got me curious, but we're the collective action types. It'll take more than one anomalous act of goodwill to wrinkle that seam.
You talk an awful lot for someone who thinks his Unioner buddies won't string him up for spilling gossip to the likes of me. I suppose I saved your life twice now -- once from the LSF, and once from your own guys.
Rummage through your memory again, why don't you? Do you really think I'd tell you to bring your best ship behind a scrap field 'cause I want your intel? Nah.
Truth is I'm bored. Have been for months now. You talk funny and love swinging around a pair of tungsten balls for everyone to see. One round, repairs covered by yours truly. I'll throw in a small shipment of Ageira's finest guns from my wares -- no serial number or safety locks. Provided you win, anyway. I find this to be a much better deal than offering yourself up to hang over Ithaca's airlock.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
As the name attests, the falcon corporate escort fighter is as formidable as it is ubiquitous, deserving the reputation it enjoys across the four inner houses of Sirius. Offering a balanced combination of offensive and defensive capability, the ubiquitous Falcon delivers an astonishing amount of firepower against potential adversaries quickly and efficiently.
ERROR // ERROR // ERROR // ERROR // ERROR
Ithaca's airlock? Is that a drip of a clue here? Are you cluing me in?
Alright, I'm interested.
Puttin' aside the lynching alternative - I'm in my forties, post pretty, post prime, and crustin' up.
Yet experience comes with tradeoffs for beauty and finesse. Observation one:
You're not filled in about Syndic life. But I won't brag about the discrepancies. Trust me, if a Unioner's offering ya' intel, they've got reasons beyond pack-brained yowling behind it. Info's a product, and, baby, we're seizing the means. Import-export, baby. It's somethin' the Hellacious Hesse can't grapple with through playing the askefise with everything flammable, and the 'Schuh put on the other foot when they went into theory.
We stick up for each other. But that doesn't mean we go hungry.
So, I tell ya' what;
I'm oxidized in my seat. I need a refresher. But, win or lose, we're going to have a conversation - you're gonna' tell me an interpretive spin on the real about all that ya' know about Ithaca base, and all of it's merry denizens. That's the price of trashing a fighter and endangering life, which, well, it's bloody space combat and people don't do it for fun - even when we tap the deck; we're gonna' want something.
All in a day's work. Fu<expletive>ing fair compensation for you and I, aye?
Ah, and if you change your mind about the lynching option, I'm gonna' renege on any magesterial sense of fairness in fisticuffs and pugilism, and apply a few Union dues. Ultimately, It's what we're not selling that we care about keeping zipped. Not everything needs to be told, or tortured out of people. Especially not in an airlock. Y'know, for the greater good, Solidarity n'all.
But, if you work earnestly, by the sweat of your underarms...
I'm game to entertain. Let's take a swing, Tempest.
Fair's fair, I suppose. Just keep in mind that this isn't a fight to the death, yeah? No exploding ships involved. Once your shiny set of wings is close to go critical, you fold. Same applies to my Valkyrie. Repairs will be covered by yours truly regardless.
See you tonight, then. Unless you've got a different time in mind.
✶✶✶ UNIONER ENCRYPTED UPLINK – UN-VF81 "ARBEITER" VERY HEAVY FIGHTER ✶✶✶
CALLSIGN: HELLION
--- DATEN ERHALTEN ---
Uplink initialisiert...
Signalverbindung wird hergestellt... Bitte warten...
>>>VERBINDUNG HERGESTELLT<<<
GAMMA-ONE-THREE-PHI-'HELLION'
TO: Caliban FROM: V.A.N.T. (Vorausaufklärungsnetzteam) GAMMA-ONE-THREE-PHI, ACTUAL SUBJECT:A bagdump for a magdump
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, maintainability, and ruggedness in combat conditions.
Okay, Caliban
We'll chase your coat-tails
We're going to spread that MND's entrails across the constellations, post-cremation.
Those scanners you're proffering might be listening devices, but, if I had better options to grab incubi detectors that function, I wouldn't be here, would I? There's be no sense in me covering up the obvious. You're all we've got.
I reckon the odds of this working out for the Union are a credit flip.
I'm uneasy. Trusting you is a risk. You didn't have a knife over me and my people before, but now, now you sure as s<expletive> do.
Please; help me live with this bad decision.
Get those scanners, and I'll get you that guncamera roll. Don't leave me hanging with a corpse and an open-ended question as to why we're picking up human laundry, for a former Core merc, in our adversary's employ. That'd be real stupid of us.
Surprise me in the positive sense, and I'll have another job for you.
Though that payload can stay moored for the moment, I can give you a whiff. Maybe it'll incentivize follow-through. It's a snake charming job.
▌ IN FLIGHT TRANSMISSION AUDIT LOG▐
Code:
[25.11.2025 21:00:40] UN|Hellion: ?: Sitting on the dock of the bay.
[25.11.2025 21:00:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Hi, Tempest.
[25.11.2025 21:00:55] Caliban: As usual. Hello.
[25.11.2025 21:01:12] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:01:13] Caliban: Why 'Tempest', though?
[25.11.2025 21:02:00] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. You're named after an enslaved half-human, half-monster, from that play."
[25.11.2025 21:02:04] Caliban: I'm familiar with 'mutant', 'liar', 'sellsword'. Tempest, though, not so much.
[25.11.2025 21:02:19] Caliban: Right, right. That makes some sense.
[25.11.2025 21:02:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Huh. So, you've got the subtext but you haven't read the book. Pretty darn interestin', that."
[25.11.2025 21:02:47] Caliban: No, I did. I just blanked out.
[25.11.2025 21:03:00] Caliban: Aaand he's gone.
[25.11.2025 21:03:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Erm, this train's pretty inconvenient."
[25.11.2025 21:03:44] Caliban: It's gone, you know.
[25.11.2025 21:03:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Had to try, at least."
[25.11.2025 21:04:40] Caliban: Sigh. Give me a moment to run err...some last checks. Then we can go.
[25.11.2025 21:04:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Tragic, isn't it?"
[25.11.2025 21:05:02] Caliban: Had to make a trip all the way to New Berlin for a top-up.
[25.11.2025 21:05:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I don't mean your lapses in memory, or your fuel state. T'was referring to this mess. Freeport Two."
[25.11.2025 21:05:47] Caliban: Freeport Two is...don't remember much.
[25.11.2025 21:05:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "There was a load've history out here, under those biodomes."
[25.11.2025 21:06:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Determined the fate of my people, that's for sure."
[25.11.2025 21:06:44] 2025-11-25 21:06:44 SMT Traffic control alert: UN|Hellion has docked
[25.11.2025 21:07:02] Caliban: Mkay, secondary power grid is working-ish. Guns might act up, don't know. Swapping the coupling always gives off --
[25.11.2025 21:07:05] Caliban: -- interesting results.
[25.11.2025 21:07:27] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You runnin' with a model IX, or somethin' earlier?"
[25.11.2025 21:07:51] Caliban: You know, it's the darnest thing that I don't know. This Valk's made out of two.
[25.11.2025 21:08:00] Tip: The world of Freelancer is full of ambiguity just like real life is. Not all characters showing up as hostile are your enemies. Likewise - not all characters showing up as neutral are your friends.
[25.11.2025 21:08:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "My sensors say you're flying an N9, but it's best guess based on machine inferrence and pure spit."
[25.11.2025 21:08:29] Caliban: An older one, and a newer one. Different generations altogether. To make things more fun, it's kitted out to hell and back with
[25.11.2025 21:08:37] Caliban: -- experimental tech that doesn't play well together.
[25.11.2025 21:08:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Two different Valks? They're serialized. If they're of the same gen', you'll be fine...
[25.11.2025 21:08:52] UN|Hellion: "...and they're not of the same gen'. Okay, you're nadgered."
[25.11.2025 21:09:15] Caliban: Most of the insides are swapped out for Core aftermarkets. And...a bunch of other kitbashed stuff.
[25.11.2025 21:09:24] Caliban: It works. Barely, but it does.
[25.11.2025 21:09:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "See, they went and changed the whole wiring harness arrangement between the N8 and the N9s, so I'd bet your...
[25.11.2025 21:10:00] UN|Hellion: Old Valk tech, and whatever Core artifices you've wired up in there, are crammed into an utterly unique form of chaos."
[25.11.2025 21:10:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That'll give you thermocycling issues, structural cut-through, the works."
[25.11.2025 21:10:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Exactly the kinda' mess a Unioner would consider a divertin' afternoon."
[25.11.2025 21:10:52] Caliban: And yet, it still beats the factory Valkyrie.
[25.11.2025 21:10:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You should consider docking up at the Rock."
[25.11.2025 21:11:00] Caliban: The Rock?
[25.11.2025 21:11:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Pacifica."
[25.11.2025 21:11:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We shift it's orbit every so often, but it's not exactly secret. It's simply too tough to crack for the law to give...
[25.11.2025 21:11:41] UN|Hellion: a fiddle. Pirates talk."
[25.11.2025 21:12:05] Caliban: I suppose, but this Valk's a personal work of mine. I doubt anyone'll ever crack the code under the hull.
[25.11.2025 21:12:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Mate, you're running less on code and more on pogo oscillation."
[25.11.2025 21:12:50] Caliban: You'd think that.
[25.11.2025 21:13:08] Caliban: But there's more going on than you'd think.
[25.11.2025 21:13:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...I would think that; I'm a Unioner. We're humble about most matters, save spacecraft repair."
[25.11.2025 21:13:18] Caliban: Fortunately for you, we have a scheduled demonstration.
[25.11.2025 21:13:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Hah, right. Your memory's not quite run through yet."
[25.11.2025 21:13:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Okay, lead on, MacDuff."
[25.11.2025 21:14:09] Caliban: Watch the mines.
[25.11.2025 21:14:26] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm watching, I'm watching. You hit more than I did."
[25.11.2025 21:14:47] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Careful when getting close to the halo. The dust occludes optical sensors."
[25.11.2025 21:14:49] Caliban: I don't have to give as much of a shit. My shields are meant to take damage.
[25.11.2025 21:15:11] Caliban: Alright. Here we are. A clean space.
[25.11.2025 21:15:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Sure, but you'll wear your supercapacitators from the charge cycles."
[25.11.2025 21:15:21] Caliban: Problems for later.
[25.11.2025 21:15:27] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Story of my life.
[25.11.2025 21:15:41] Caliban: Right. Rules.
[25.11.2025 21:15:59] Caliban: Shooting stops when fire starts shooting out.
[25.11.2025 21:16:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right, I'm with you there. I'd like to keep this one. Collective ownership n'all, but this bird's somewhat sacred to me
[25.11.2025 21:16:24] Caliban: Running around asteroids is a no-go. This isn't a fleet-on-fleet fight.
[25.11.2025 21:16:40] UN|Hellion: "Got an engine array dragged out of a cultist skiff."
[25.11.2025 21:16:57] Caliban: Right, that outdated shit.
[25.11.2025 21:17:36] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Also, I'm holding two weapons in my cargo hold I don't wanna' vent into the black.
[25.11.2025 21:17:49] Caliban: Good.
[25.11.2025 21:18:20] Caliban: Distance up two kilometers, then engage. We'll chat more after.
[25.11.2025 21:18:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Alright, ready to roll in.
[25.11.2025 21:18:55] Caliban: Lets.
[25.11.2025 21:20:07] [OOC] UN|Hellion: hold it, awful lag
[25.11.2025 21:20:19] Ping: 30ms (Max: 1000ms) Fluct: 3ms Loss: 0% (Max: 70%) Lag: 0% (Max: 100%)
[25.11.2025 21:20:28] [OOC] Caliban: 3ms
[25.11.2025 21:20:36] Ping: 30ms (Max: 1000ms) Fluct: 2ms Loss: 0% (Max: 70%) Lag: 0% (Max: 100%)
[25.11.2025 21:20:44] [OOC] UN|Hellion: gotcha, alright, let's go
[25.11.2025 21:21:04] Caliban: [::<Statement>::>"Target connection aquired. Data migration to primary host - complete."]
[25.11.2025 21:23:02] UN|Hellion has set Caliban as group target.
[25.11.2025 21:23:02] OK
[25.11.2025 21:23:25] Caliban: [::...uploading.random.bit.data::../>tgt.slctd/>...::warning:reduced.manoeuvrability...::]
[25.11.2025 21:25:05] Caliban: Aren't you forgetting something?
[25.11.2025 21:25:26] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Come on a... HOLY SH<expletive>
[25.11.2025 21:25:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: ..."the <expletive> ship's got an oxygen fire..."
[25.11.2025 21:25:51] Caliban: You don't say.
[25.11.2025 21:26:11] Caliban: Get to Bristol. They'll fix it for you.
[25.11.2025 21:26:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...My god; I'm atrocious."
[25.11.2025 21:26:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Appreciate you not out-and-out killing me while you had the opppertunity."
[25.11.2025 21:26:36] Caliban: Eh, I'll be there.
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] 2025-11-25 21:27:28 SMT Traffic control alert: UN|Hellion has docked
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Nanobots): Bought 68 unit(s), cost: 1.360$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Shield Batteries): Bought 68 unit(s), cost: 1.360$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Mines): Bought 5 unit(s), cost: 600$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Countermeasures): Bought 8 unit(s), cost: 32$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Missiles): Bought 15 unit(s), cost: 90$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Cruise Disruptors): Bought 18 unit(s), cost: 270$
[25.11.2025 21:27:28] Auto-Buy(Repair): Cost 3.938$
[25.11.2025 21:27:41] [2025-11-25] 21:27:41 You have received 35.000 credits from Caliban
[25.11.2025 21:28:13] Tip: Are you new to our server? Introduce yourself on our forums in the Welcome Section at Discoverygc.com
[25.11.2025 21:28:17] Caliban: And, repairs covered. As agreed.
[25.11.2025 21:28:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Strewth. I owe my unincinerated skin to Bristol's fire suppression systems - and my untoxified lungs to them using...
[25.11.2025 21:28:26] UN|Hellion: "...non-toxic aerosols."
[25.11.2025 21:28:57] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Huh; You're as good as your word, it seems."
[25.11.2025 21:29:20] Caliban: Wouldn't be a good merc if I were a complete liar now, would I?
[25.11.2025 21:29:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Bah. I didn't so much as scrape you."
[25.11.2025 21:29:44] Caliban: Hardened hull plating. Tungsten.
[25.11.2025 21:30:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Don't give me that crap; you flew the aerofoils off of me."
[25.11.2025 21:30:35] Caliban: That'd be the concentrated bolts doing their job.
[25.11.2025 21:30:57] Caliban: They're meant to cut through Nomad chitin. But it works for hull too.
[25.11.2025 21:31:47] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Her tone loses all padding.* "You've fought the Nomads before?"
[25.11.2025 21:32:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Who the hell drops that mid-conversation?"
[25.11.2025 21:32:38] Caliban: For a long time, yeah.
[25.11.2025 21:32:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "My last run-in with them was all the way down in Zurich. Opened up the patrol I was in without warning or any kind've"
[25.11.2025 21:32:48] UN|Hellion: discernible motive."
[25.11.2025 21:33:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We got two of them, they got five of us."
[25.11.2025 21:33:31] Caliban: Honestly? Good job.
[25.11.2025 21:33:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Really?"
[25.11.2025 21:33:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "At least with people you know the what and the why."
[25.11.2025 21:34:08] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But with them, it's alike fighting the <expletive> wind."
[25.11.2025 21:34:19] Caliban: The Military I was with some time ago got absolutely trashed. I took down a few before I saw the fleet wiped out. Had to bail -
[25.11.2025 21:34:23] Caliban: - just to get out of that mess alive.
[25.11.2025 21:34:34] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Uh, Bristol's decided to pretend they don't like me. Let's get out of here."
[25.11.2025 21:34:42] Caliban: Pacifica, I suppose.
[25.11.2025 21:35:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Do you know where you're heading?
[25.11.2025 21:35:14] Caliban: Not... exactly.
[25.11.2025 21:35:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Mh. I still haven't figured out who'se hired you, so, um."
[25.11.2025 21:35:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Little difficult of me to drag you down there."
[25.11.2025 21:36:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We had a run-in with the Core down in Omega-11, not two weeks ago."
[25.11.2025 21:36:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And your ship's packed with their tech."
[25.11.2025 21:36:37] Caliban: You know, 'client' privacy is a thing.
[25.11.2025 21:36:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm your client now? Alright, give me the pitch."
[25.11.2025 21:37:27] Caliban: Oh, but I did that on the Net. And you accepted. Ish.
[25.11.2025 21:37:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Fair's fair."
[25.11.2025 21:37:51] Caliban: Besides, I know better than to be a rat.
[25.11.2025 21:38:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Eh - it's pretty beneficial to be a rat. We Unioners are kinda' professional rats."
[25.11.2025 21:38:51] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We'll trade anything we produce, that includes intel."
[25.11.2025 21:39:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Information's a much a product as a spacecraft's hull. Sometimes more pressure-tight, too."
[25.11.2025 21:39:05] Caliban: For you, maybe. For me? Not as much.
[25.11.2025 21:39:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Hey, the thing I hired you for isn''t fully met by clause, by bullet point."
[25.11.2025 21:40:08] Caliban: Right, right. Did I forget to attach the corporate stamp on the contract? My bad. Ain't got one.
[25.11.2025 21:40:31] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...No worries; you've got a beffuddle in the muddle. We've all got a thing. My sympathies."
[25.11.2025 21:41:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...See, I'm siftin' for information regardin', uh, Ithaca Base." *She pauses.* "...You went and mentioned it ad-hoc...
[25.11.2025 21:41:32] UN|Hellion: in our neuralnet exchange. Am I ringing any intercoms, here?"
[25.11.2025 21:42:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Someone called Noth.... Noth Five? Noth Seven? I think they might've been Noth Seven... told me about...
[25.11.2025 21:42:09] Caliban: ...not exactly. Place is a Pirate's heaven. Underworld's beating heart. At least for South Rheinland's residents.
[25.11.2025 21:42:31] UN|Hellion: "A group of 'lancers turned pirate attached to the place. Yeah, Ithaca's new to me. See, I've been out of circulation...
[25.11.2025 21:42:53] Caliban: I knew Ithaca because I tend to deliver shipments there for the IMG on occasion. They love boomsticks.
[25.11.2025 21:43:05] Caliban: Me, I'm a Barrier Gate kind of guy.
[25.11.2025 21:43:35] UN|Hellion: *she halts.* "Right."
[25.11.2025 21:43:46] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I've only been to the 'Gate once."
[25.11.2025 21:43:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "A miss-jump took us tauside once."
[25.11.2025 21:44:14] Caliban: You *should* visit it more often in the right attire. Real good place for business.
[25.11.2025 21:44:24] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:44:36] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Would love to, trust me, but it's, like, seventy four lightyears away."
[25.11.2025 21:44:51] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I don't get pegged for smuggling runs in that part of Sirius."
[25.11.2025 21:44:54] Caliban: As long as you stick to Tinsley's law, anyway.
[25.11.2025 21:45:07] Caliban: Yeah, fair.
[25.11.2025 21:45:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Alright, I'll bite. What's Tinsley's law?"
[25.11.2025 21:45:36] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:45:53] Caliban: Tinsley is the big boss of Barrier Gate. What he says, goes. You don't like his way of life? Too damn bad.
[25.11.2025 21:45:54] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Mind, it's not impossible that you'd see Unionists up there."
[25.11.2025 21:46:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The artifact trade took a convoy as far as Ille De fuc<expletive>ing France, about a fortnight ago."
[25.11.2025 21:46:54] Caliban: Sounds gallic.
[25.11.2025 21:47:07] Caliban: Truth be told, I never visited the place. Don't want to either.
[25.11.2025 21:47:29] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Yeah; it's the capital of the Gallic Sector. Now that Imperial Shipping's gone and purchased Charles De Gaulle's old
[25.11.2025 21:47:44] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:47:57] UN|Hellion: "...pleasure palace as an in-road for Sirian commerce beyond the Barrier, I might find myself forced up there."
[25.11.2025 21:48:25] Tip: Be careful when picking out the ID for your character. Generic IDs offer much more freedom, but are severely limited in terms of combat as well as the size of ship these characters can pilot.
[25.11.2025 21:48:25] Caliban: Corporate invasion in Gallia. That sounds fun.
[25.11.2025 21:48:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Don't blame your attitude, neither. In Rheinland, it's easy for us to forget nigh-on everyone else..."
[25.11.2025 21:48:56] UN|Hellion: "...had to deal with the Gauls invadin' them at some point or another. Coming down like the Coalition at Pluto."
[25.11.2025 21:49:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Now Rheinland's worst corporation's pulling a reverse faint."
[25.11.2025 21:49:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They're setting up shop in Ille De France itself."
[25.11.2025 21:49:39] Caliban: Corporate stuff is...eugh, not my cup of tea. Only corp I worked with at some point was The Core, if you can call them one.
[25.11.2025 21:49:42] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:49:54] Caliban: And that was 'cause my body was turning to mush and I needed a crutch.
[25.11.2025 21:50:04] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Uh, they're publically traded, so, yeah, they're a corp." *Under her pressure mask, she pulls a face.*
[25.11.2025 21:50:21] UN|Hellion: "They're about the worst <expletive> corp' in the sector. We avoid tangling with 'em, though, since they...
[25.11.2025 21:50:27] UN|Hellion: like to decimate our Artifact shipments."
[25.11.2025 21:50:41] Caliban: Oh, I know.
[25.11.2025 21:50:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "As ingenious as we Unionists like to think we are, we're not rigged for that kind've scrap."
[25.11.2025 21:51:07] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:51:21] Caliban: Recently I've been steering clear of them. Don't like their new clankers.
[25.11.2025 21:51:24] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We're about economies of scale and sticking it up for the working man, not magical, Omicronish bullsheisse."
[25.11.2025 21:51:51] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Well, save Malvalda rock. That's a solid earner. It invites trouble, though."
[25.11.2025 21:52:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We had a few thousand Core allumni of our own in the Union, about ten years ago now."
[25.11.2025 21:52:28] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Even reclaimed one of their battlecruisers. What was the make of it, again - a bull shark, or somethin'?"
[25.11.2025 21:52:46] Caliban: Something like that.
[25.11.2025 21:53:09] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Yeah, well, even magical edgeworlds bullsheisse will get fixed up by the tender ministrations of...
[25.11.2025 21:53:09] Caliban: I can't understand Capital Ships, though. Even less their names, types and so on.
[25.11.2025 21:53:18] UN|Hellion: a Unioner technical team. If it's' worth recovering."
[25.11.2025 21:53:40] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "See, we don't really make warships of our own, no need for 'em in the piratical way of life, and they're....
[25.11.2025 21:53:44] UN|Hellion: a dead asset for smuggling
[25.11.2025 21:54:00] UN|Hellion: "but we'll sure as hell recover and repressurize anything that isn't wrecked through."
[25.11.2025 21:54:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They come in useful for deterring the Hessians."
[25.11.2025 21:54:24] Caliban: Right, the "Hessians". Love those.
[25.11.2025 21:54:43] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We learnt that the..." *she rephrases, dimly horrified by her own blase attitude.*
[25.11.2025 21:55:06] Caliban: Shot a few some time ago. All I understand from them is "shoot, kill, repeat and fuck everything in sight."
[25.11.2025 21:55:08] UN|Hellion: "...We learnt that when they massacred over a hundred thousand of us in a few hours."
[25.11.2025 21:55:25] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're not wrong. They make us look akin to saints."
[25.11.2025 21:55:50] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We're about the only part of the Rheinish underworld with the balls to fight them, as well."
[25.11.2025 21:55:54] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Everybody else toes the line."
[25.11.2025 21:56:11] Caliban: I mean, shit. I used to be like that. Once, but what's one guy going psycho versus thousands of *them*, at the same time.
[25.11.2025 21:56:17] Caliban: And for decades on end.
[25.11.2025 21:56:23] A bounty of $1.500 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 21:56:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They're overstretched. They overcompensate. The only reason they're so powerful is becuase people don't smack them in
[25.11.2025 21:56:46] UN|Hellion: the mouth."
[25.11.2025 21:57:09] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "There's a hot rumour going around that they've chewed through all of their heavy hitters - that they're down to a...
[25.11.2025 21:57:20] UN|Hellion: single heavy juggernaught, the Zuschen, down in the near Omegas."
[25.11.2025 21:57:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That's all they've got due east of the Hammen Hole. All they've got holding the 'Sairs back."
[25.11.2025 21:58:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It's leaving Dresden wide open. 'Course, the military and the heckin' Bureau's too busy sticking fingers up their own..
[25.11.2025 21:58:10] UN|Hellion: posteriors to exploit the situation. So it's up to us."
[25.11.2025 21:58:20] Caliban: Eh, the Bureau's busy with something worse.
[25.11.2025 21:58:24] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It'll be up to the Unioners to fight them. Fortunately, we've got better pilots than just me."
[25.11.2025 21:58:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Lemmie' guess. Thuringia?"
[25.11.2025 21:58:48] Caliban: ...eeeeh.
[25.11.2025 21:58:58] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We used to have a cruiser stationed there. It moved out when the Landwirtrechtbewegung went and..."
[25.11.2025 21:59:01] UN|Hellion: "...Reformed."
[25.11.2025 21:59:20] Caliban: Thuringia turned into a hellhole, really.
[25.11.2025 21:59:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Always was. Then the <expletive> Suhl started growing."
[25.11.2025 22:00:02] Caliban: The worse part is the Wild spreading everywhere. I'm having a hard time pinning their envoys.
[25.11.2025 22:00:09] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "There's questionable intel gettin' passed around that the BDM are going and screwin' with Jumpspace tech...
[25.11.2025 22:00:15] UN|Hellion: without Agiera's input."
[25.11.2025 22:00:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Screw Agiera n'all, but half of Rheinland believes the Munich disaster was the work of insiders."
[25.11.2025 22:00:36] Caliban: What's that saying? "Do as I say, not as I do?"
[25.11.2025 22:00:47] Caliban: I guess it applies well here.
[25.11.2025 22:00:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Ships keep dissapearing since they reactivated the Hudson and Bering gates. Half of the Union's convinced...
[25.11.2025 22:00:59] UN|Hellion: "...that the jumpgate construction site is gonna'
[25.11.2025 22:01:08] UN|Hellion: "...disgorge dark matter, or a soddin' black hole."
[25.11.2025 22:01:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And, sure, Unionists are healthily paranoid - but we're the movement in Rheinland with the longest memory."
[25.11.2025 22:01:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Only the Bundschuh knows more than we do about what the outcomes are when the Fed's go too far."
[25.11.2025 22:02:15] Caliban: C.S is definitely a living history book when it comes to that.
[25.11.2025 22:02:26] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *she's at the edge of revealing something she shouldn't. Riehl backtracks.*
[25.11.2025 22:02:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...The Union's waiting for it to all boil over."
[25.11.2025 22:03:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Trust in the regime's at an all time low - the civil war's still going, it's just in a state of peace."
[25.11.2025 22:03:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Nobody wants to fight, but nobody won or lost either. For good reason, killing each other isn't going to..."
[25.11.2025 22:03:44] UN|Hellion: "Keep Rheinland together."
[25.11.2025 22:04:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm glad the law went and renged on its amnesty agreements."
[25.11.2025 22:05:47] Caliban: The way I see it, Rheinland is doing just fine dropping its own bodies across the board.
[25.11.2025 22:06:43] Caliban: Eventually one side will lose less than the rest. Everything begins to reset over the next few years.
[25.11.2025 22:07:05] Caliban: A new threat is created, blah-blah-blah.
[25.11.2025 22:07:28] Caliban: Every House does this, really.
[25.11.2025 22:08:08] Caliban: Giving up on politics is the best thing I've done since I ate a Wardog to the rear of the ship.
[25.11.2025 22:08:38] Tip: In order to mine ore you must have the right ID and a Mining Laser. For a full list of all factions that get bonuses for mining - please visit our wiki @DiscoveryGC.com
[25.11.2025 22:11:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Geesh."
[25.11.2025 22:11:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And I thought I'm a pessimist."
[25.11.2025 22:12:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Or maybe, just maybe, you're being too pragmatic for me."
[25.11.2025 22:12:28] Caliban: No, I'm just a pessimist when it comes to the Houses.
[25.11.2025 22:12:40] Caliban: I got bamboozled by one. Hard.
[25.11.2025 22:12:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Huh. Is that why you went and joined the Core?"
[25.11.2025 22:12:50] Caliban: Joined? Fuck no.
[25.11.2025 22:13:08] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Or did that come after your time in a totalitarian paramilitary legion?"
[25.11.2025 22:13:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Sorry, no dig intended at you - only the... you get me."
[25.11.2025 22:13:23] Caliban: I started out as a scientist, you know.
[25.11.2025 22:13:43] Caliban: Hardly the skilled pilot.
[25.11.2025 22:13:50] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You don't say? How does someone make a career jump from science, to kicking the arse of experienced pirates...
[25.11.2025 22:13:53] UN|Hellion: in the tanner belt?"
[25.11.2025 22:14:26] Caliban: The Order tried to off me. Caught a wardog to the rear of my Valk'. The old one, anyway.
[25.11.2025 22:15:15] Caliban: It was a five on one guy with no combat experience. Only one way that would've ended.
[25.11.2025 22:15:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Riehl wonders if it's impolite to ask if Caliban's fuge states are associated with the combat shock.*
[25.11.2025 22:15:55] Caliban: Then came the technocrats, the Nomads decided to jump in and say "Fuck that guy in particular".
[25.11.2025 22:16:18] Caliban: Fast forward a few years and I entangle with the Core for an upgrade and a thermonuclear bomb.
[25.11.2025 22:16:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...The Technocrats came after you?"
[25.11.2025 22:16:41] Caliban: I do the odd job here and there. Help the big boss with some drama of his, then fuck off.
[25.11.2025 22:17:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Yeah, seems you made the right choices given the hell you were in."
[25.11.2025 22:17:12] Caliban: ...yyyeah. I went psycho for a few years. Drugs, cellular degeneration post-radiation poisoning.
[25.11.2025 22:17:28] Caliban: Bunch of shit went down.
[25.11.2025 22:17:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Heck."
[25.11.2025 22:17:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...You're doing alright. You got out of it, no the less impressive for the abyss you scaled out of to get back to zero.
[25.11.2025 22:18:14] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Well done, Tempest. Well done."
[25.11.2025 22:18:28] Caliban: Anti-psychotics are a thing. Regular dosage gets me through the worst, anyway.
[25.11.2025 22:18:43] Caliban: The name 'Caliban' really got to fit me, in the end.
[25.11.2025 22:18:53] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Ain't it a touch morose?"
[25.11.2025 22:19:19] Caliban: Maybe. Maybe not.
[25.11.2025 22:19:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're not a monster. You don't need to hold yourself to a 15th Solar Century's view of character."
[25.11.2025 22:19:43] Caliban: I used to be. And thats enough.
[25.11.2025 22:20:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Right; so this is, what, redemptive reclamation of yourself?"
[25.11.2025 22:20:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Akin to owning a bad tattoo?"
[25.11.2025 22:20:31] Caliban: I've retired -- mostly -- from that way of life.
[25.11.2025 22:20:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "No cynicism meant by it, I'm, flatly, impressed."
[25.11.2025 22:20:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Retirement that takes you into Merc work, flying a Valkyrie, ain't all -that- retired."
[25.11.2025 22:21:10] Caliban: I still shoot the occasional Order and Technocrat. Mainly 'cause I'm running all-illegal tech.
[25.11.2025 22:21:29] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Right - do you get any trouble there?"
[25.11.2025 22:21:30] Caliban: Gammu guts and Adapted tech developed in a garage.
[25.11.2025 22:21:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Say, aren't the Gammu, like, actual people?"
[25.11.2025 22:21:48] Caliban: Gammu are machines.
[25.11.2025 22:21:57] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I wouldn't run around with someone's spleen tacked into my control console."
[25.11.2025 22:22:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I've only met a few, but... they seemed alike people to me."
[25.11.2025 22:22:22] Caliban: Yeah, well. Technocrats do have something to say about that.
[25.11.2025 22:22:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Listen, if the Technocrats have a problem with you, I'm cheering for you in that argument."
[25.11.2025 22:23:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I don't know what you know about the Scouring of the Tanner Belt, but the Technocracy went and played their part...
[25.11.2025 22:23:48] UN|Hellion: in chivvying that sordid, pointless charnal sepsis along."
[25.11.2025 22:24:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They fired a damned nuclear weapon at Pacifica."
[25.11.2025 22:24:22] Caliban: I do know they used to be in kahoots with the Buro during the Civil War.
[25.11.2025 22:24:29] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It took out sixteen decks and six hundred and eighty people."
[25.11.2025 22:24:46] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Gave a bunch more life-altering radiation poisoning, and ruined so much equipment we had to half-rebuild the station."
[25.11.2025 22:25:11] Caliban: Kind of funny. I ended that partnership of theirs some years ago out of spite. Loved every second of it.
[25.11.2025 22:25:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Safe to say I hate the Technocracy. The H-word. Real hate."
[25.11.2025 22:25:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Abruptly vigilant* "..."
[25.11.2025 22:26:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You've spitting allusions to some kind've tie to the Bureau, and you're not telling me what they are."
[25.11.2025 22:26:31] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Headline from the Colony News Service, Tempest. They only cause trouble for Unioners."
[25.11.2025 22:27:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I don't know why the hell you'd tell me that, but..."
[25.11.2025 22:27:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're not being subtle."
[25.11.2025 22:27:34] Caliban: Call it a tip. Not that I can hide it anyway.
[25.11.2025 22:27:43] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Do you work for them?"
[25.11.2025 22:28:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...goddamn it Gunda, he's not going to tell you if he's a spy, is he? Imbecile."
[25.11.2025 22:28:33] Caliban: Well they pay me on a regular basis, so yeah, I suppose.
[25.11.2025 22:28:39] [OOC] UN|Hellion: Onions?
[25.11.2025 22:28:48] [OOC] UN|Hellion: Onions?
[25.11.2025 22:28:50] Tip: Accidentally mounted the wrong ID and ruined your repsheet? Planning on repurposing an old ship for a different faction? You can use the /resetrep command to reset to a blank repsheet. This costs $100,000 Credits per use.
[25.11.2025 22:28:57] [OOC] Onionmother: All of them
[25.11.2025 22:28:57] Caliban: Again, kind of fuckin' hard to hide it when they make it painfully obvious in every engagement against the Hessians.
[25.11.2025 22:29:08] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Beffuddled* "...Why would you go out and tell me that?"
[25.11.2025 22:29:25] [OOC] UN|Hellion: and I am the mother of Onions
[25.11.2025 22:29:36] Caliban: Because I work with them on my terms, on an objective I have personal interest in rather than their In-House troubles.
[25.11.2025 22:29:37] Death: Hans. was put out of action by a hostile vessel.
[25.11.2025 22:29:43] [OOC] Onionmother: 'tis I who is that
[25.11.2025 22:29:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Uh, that's not confidence percolating in my pants here. Mostly piss."
[25.11.2025 22:29:59] Caliban: Besides. We've established that you aren't in shape to shoot me down so...
[25.11.2025 22:30:09] Caliban: There's that.
[25.11.2025 22:30:12] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, and you've lured me out to a remote part of the belt."
[25.11.2025 22:30:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm wondering if I should fire up my cruise engines and run the hell away."
[25.11.2025 22:30:35] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Uh, engine, singular."
[25.11.2025 22:30:55] Caliban: By all means, go ahead. I'm not holding you down with hooks. Nor do I have a fancy channel to rat on.
[25.11.2025 22:31:15] Caliban: I fought you 'cause I was bored and needed to unwind.
[25.11.2025 22:31:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...I saw you earlier. In Frankfurt, maybe a week or three back."
[25.11.2025 22:31:37] Caliban: Pinning down a possible breach, yes.
[25.11.2025 22:31:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You were getting held up by three gunboats - or, really, two gunboats. The third was an Imperial shipping corporate...
[25.11.2025 22:31:45] UN|Hellion: security asset."
[25.11.2025 22:32:00] Caliban: Oh, I wasn't the one being held up.
[25.11.2025 22:32:05] Caliban: It was the other dude.
[25.11.2025 22:32:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I had a wing with me. We bailed on considering hitting the corporate asset because, well, we were outmatched."
[25.11.2025 22:33:49] Caliban: Quite the show, hm?
[25.11.2025 22:34:14] Caliban: ...well. Not really. It was awful. And now I have some douchebag MND to watch out for. Alleged MND.
[25.11.2025 22:34:36] La_Deule died to SCRA|CPW-Shenyang(100%)
[25.11.2025 22:37:57] Caliban: I'm guessing the sudden 'shock' really is too much to handle. Well, shit.
[25.11.2025 22:40:09] [OOC] UN|Hellion: sorry, had to AFK a moment
[25.11.2025 22:40:50] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Alleged MND?"
[25.11.2025 22:41:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, we've had our fill of alleged MND agents."
[25.11.2025 22:41:17] Death: Entropy+ was put out of action by a hostile vessel.
[25.11.2025 22:41:22] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They keep cropping up out of the near Omegas, and hassling our southern smuggling runs."
[25.11.2025 22:41:24] Caliban: Guy had busted transponder, non-standard equipment and a bullshit story and assignment that somehow outranks the Buro.
[25.11.2025 22:41:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Pft. Arrogant ass."
[25.11.2025 22:42:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...But all we scoff at him, he just've might. The last dangerous MND pressure bolt we encountered blew in...
[25.11.2025 22:42:28] UN|Hellion: "...with a core gunship in tow."
[25.11.2025 22:42:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They were coordinated."
[25.11.2025 22:42:50] Caliban: Point is. Guy is an unknown quantity.
[25.11.2025 22:42:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "He also had a heckin' Elbe classs carrier in tow behind him."
[25.11.2025 22:42:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right."
[25.11.2025 22:43:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Mind you, with the gear you're flying with, he might think you're an unknown quality. Rheinland's bureaus...
[25.11.2025 22:43:29] UN|Hellion: aren't known for sharing personnel information."
[25.11.2025 22:43:43] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I don't know why I'm telling you this, you contract out to these bastards."
[25.11.2025 22:44:08] Caliban: I guess. I know they've got a file on me, for starters.
[25.11.2025 22:44:14] Caliban: Damned if I knew what it said in it.
[25.11.2025 22:44:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Have you considered not being an intel asset? Once they get a barb into you, they'll never pull it out without...
[25.11.2025 22:44:44] UN|Hellion: pulling out a kilogram of irreplacable flesh."
[25.11.2025 22:45:02] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You could cruise up to Pacifica and dissapear, Tempest."
[25.11.2025 22:45:05] Caliban: I'm all-metal anyway. Mh...kinda'.
[25.11.2025 22:45:32] Caliban: I could, and I might. But until then I have things to do.
[25.11.2025 22:45:43] Caliban: And they need me as much as I need them, so.
[25.11.2025 22:46:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Uh-huh. That's not reassuring from where I am."
[25.11.2025 22:46:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I might not be able to shoot you down, but you're close enough to pacifica that I could have an entire squadron
[25.11.2025 22:46:22] Caliban: It's about the unknown quantity ships you keep seeing, mind you.
[25.11.2025 22:46:35] Caliban: That's my goal. Them.
[25.11.2025 22:46:52] UN|Hellion: ..." *she halts, mid-threat.*
[25.11.2025 22:47:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Laudable goal, I won't deny you the posts you're kicking at."
[25.11.2025 22:47:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But how do you know you're not at the wrong axial end of all of this?"
[25.11.2025 22:47:52] Caliban: I don't.
[25.11.2025 22:48:14] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...These beast wallow in the muck they'd have you drain, you know that."
[25.11.2025 22:48:33] Caliban: But what am I going to do? I'm tired of fighting this war alone. I'm tired, and there's still no end in sight.
[25.11.2025 22:49:03] Tip: Accidentally deleted the wrong character? Your harddrive failed and you lost your account? Visit our forums @Discoverygc.com and post under Player Help in the appropriate section.
[25.11.2025 22:49:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Caliban's admission catches Riehl's throat.*
[25.11.2025 22:49:24] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...I'd be remiss if I didn't say you've got me affected."
[25.11.2025 22:49:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...But, look. Do you really think a house intel agency - an agency that pulls the wires of the Imperial court..."
[25.11.2025 22:50:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...is going to do more than self-preserve?"
[25.11.2025 22:50:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They claim to care about public safety, but they cause half of the dangers in a gambit to beat out other house's spooks
[25.11.2025 22:50:39] Caliban: Why do you think they even considered to let me pass with the tech I'm packing? With the shit I know?
[25.11.2025 22:50:49] Caliban: I'm good at what I'm doing. Even now. They need that.
[25.11.2025 22:50:58] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Because you're an asset. The moment you're not an asset, they'll turn on you. You've resigned yourself to...
[25.11.2025 22:51:12] UN|Hellion: a life of never making a mistake. You will in the end. Then there'll be even less of you left."
[25.11.2025 22:51:24] Caliban: I know.
[25.11.2025 22:51:41] Caliban: It's a one way trip no matter how you slice it.
[25.11.2025 22:51:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You'd be surprised how many MND, BDM, call it whoever you like - end up in the Unioners; mostly because they're....
[25.11.2025 22:51:48] UN|Hellion: running from their own handlers."
[25.11.2025 22:52:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Sure, that also makes us full of moles, but... it's either that or turn away everybody."
[25.11.2025 22:52:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It's why I'm so blas about giving away intel."
[25.11.2025 22:52:48] Caliban: Uh-huh.
[25.11.2025 22:53:09] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "What can I say? A touch of the Zoner life rubbed off on us."
[25.11.2025 22:53:27] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The other Rheinish underworld groups think we're scum because we're big-tent and acceptin', like."
[25.11.2025 22:53:40] Caliban: The MND is the last of my concerns, anyway. BDM, what have you. I managed to vanish once. I can probably do it again.
[25.11.2025 22:54:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Listen, the Core, the Technocrats, the Order, they're tall, but they're not wide."
[25.11.2025 22:54:29] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They're wealthy, they've got immense abilities beyond my comprehension, but it's a concentrate, it's not diffuse."
[25.11.2025 22:54:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They can be anywhere but not everywhere - if you run and go to ground, like you have, you can start again."
[25.11.2025 22:55:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But house intel organizations are viral - you can't outrrun them."
[25.11.2025 22:55:40] Caliban: I know. LSF, MND, BIS. I know them all.
[25.11.2025 22:55:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They'll go after the low priority targets and loose ends that the Core, Technocracy, and Order won't. You might think..
[25.11.2025 22:55:50] UN|Hellion: I'm talking out of my posterior, being some dumb Unionist."
[25.11.2025 22:55:59] UN|Hellion: "But we're smugglers."
[25.11.2025 22:56:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Avoiding spooks is what you do when you run Malvalda artifacts to discerning creeps in upper Manhattan."
[25.11.2025 22:56:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Granted, I'm pretty bad at it in practice, but I know what I'm meant to do theoretically. I dodged that LSF agent...
[25.11.2025 22:56:51] UN|Hellion: didn't I?"
[25.11.2025 22:57:07] Caliban: ...yeah, lets call it dodge.
[25.11.2025 22:57:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The old two pod trick. If it's stupid and it works... Yeah."
[25.11.2025 22:58:44] Caliban: If it works, it works.
[25.11.2025 22:58:53] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right."
[25.11.2025 22:59:01] Caliban: Can't complain. It's the advantage you get when the ship you've got is disposable.
[25.11.2025 22:59:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Disposable? I wish. We Unioners are flush in ships and even we can't get enough; and we build them."
[25.11.2025 23:00:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "C'mon, Caliban - tell me. What do you need?"
[25.11.2025 23:00:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're a pained, lonely man dealing with being at the wrong end of an intelligence scraping operation."
[25.11.2025 23:01:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm a Unionist. Solidarity's our area of expertise."
[25.11.2025 23:01:38] Caliban: I'm a moron who's done enough mistakes to last me a lifetime, fighting a war that I've started and can't finish.
[25.11.2025 23:02:07] Caliban: For a noble cause, thinking I'm some hot shit protagonist. Every day reminds me I'm the opposite.
[25.11.2025 23:02:40] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You've got a fancy fighter out of the deal, and you're a better dogfighter than at least one other person in sirius."
[25.11.2025 23:02:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Might be a lonely life, but you can't say it's stripped clean of any merit, eh?"
[25.11.2025 23:03:20] Caliban: Deal? I got this fighter not through the Buro, but through a fuckton of debt that I've paid off with sweat and blood.
[25.11.2025 23:03:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Okay, that was shallower than superalloy sheet."
[25.11.2025 23:03:47] Caliban: You know. They ask you to submit some weird application to legalize Military tech in civvie hands, right?
[25.11.2025 23:03:53] Caliban: HAH! I never made that.
[25.11.2025 23:04:00] Caliban: Fuck the paperwork.
[25.11.2025 23:04:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...One one shoulder, yah, fck'em."
[25.11.2025 23:04:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "on the other? They're going to tie you up with that loose wire."
[25.11.2025 23:05:05] Caliban: If they had a detonator on this? Maybe. But they don't.
[25.11.2025 23:05:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Give them discrepancies and they'll use it to incarcerate ya'. Be glad we went and busted Vierlande's seams open."
[25.11.2025 23:05:24] Caliban: This ship's all me and I couldn't care less if they had something to say about it.
[25.11.2025 23:05:34] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Say, you don't like them. Why'dya' work for them?"
[25.11.2025 23:06:06] Caliban: Honest? It's a weird world we live in.
[25.11.2025 23:06:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You could do as much good keeping the unfathomable out of Rheinland's margins outside of their orbit."
[25.11.2025 23:06:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Take for instance, the artifact trade. We have to supply the artifacts, because if we don't, someone will."
[25.11.2025 23:06:50] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "So we vette every stone, every bauble, every trinket, that comes our way."
[25.11.2025 23:07:18] Caliban: I dislike House Agencies for what they are. Ranks, bullshit excuses, bureaucracy, warcrimes. Everything.
[25.11.2025 23:07:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'd rather be selling off Diamond, but the Hessians murdered their way out of that import-export market."
[25.11.2025 23:07:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "See, we're at the fringe of crapping ourselves, because, since the Gate Blackout, we've been aware..."
[25.11.2025 23:07:51] UN|Hellion: "...that our trade, artifacts, might be makin' the cosmos worse."
[25.11.2025 23:08:04] UN|Hellion: "But if we don't keep control of it, someone else, someone who doesn't care, will."
[25.11.2025 23:08:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yet our expertise is marginal; it's not as if we can entice in the Imperial Academy's best Xenoarcheologists."
[25.11.2025 23:08:46] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "No, they go to work for the blacksuits in Thuringia."
[25.11.2025 23:08:52] Caliban: ... on the other hand, the bullshit war I'm fighting. The reason I'm pushing hard on the Rheinland front is for old friends.
[25.11.2025 23:09:13] Caliban: "Friends" -- fuck it. Allies, what have you.
[25.11.2025 23:09:16] Rules Tip: Discovery Freelancer is a role-playing server. All attacks against another player must be the result of some form of written role play. One-Word engagements such as "Engaging" or "Halt" are not considered sufficient.
[25.11.2025 23:09:25] Caliban: Because just like you said -- if you don't trade the trinkets, someone else will.
[25.11.2025 23:09:53] Caliban: And if I don't spend the day shooting aliens, someone else will. And they will probably suck at it.
[25.11.2025 23:09:53] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Smart lil' immleman you pulled there, leastways, rhetorically. Alright."
[25.11.2025 23:10:15] Caliban: What's worse, had I not stepped in, the technocrats would've pulled the strings and driven the BDM into the dirt.
[25.11.2025 23:10:28] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Say - how did you go and screw over the Technocrats?"
[25.11.2025 23:10:41] Caliban: Today's Buro are a lot more agreeable. Good-ish, people.
[25.11.2025 23:10:48] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm all -for- shooting down the Technocrats, and, look, I like you enough to want to have reasons not to sic...
[25.11.2025 23:10:51] Caliban: ...I ah. Had a thing with the former Director.
[25.11.2025 23:11:00] UN|Hellion: a dozen angry Unionists on you every time you get detected in Rheinland."
[25.11.2025 23:11:19] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Look, we're not as competent as the BDM, but believe me, we'll make your life godawful if we have to."
[25.11.2025 23:11:31] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And I really don't want to. Personally."
[25.11.2025 23:11:47] Caliban: Mhm. Charmed, I'm sure.
[25.11.2025 23:12:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Eugh. The troubles of the life."#
[25.11.2025 23:12:13] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...You get it."
[25.11.2025 23:12:44] Caliban: Either way. Yeah, the "thing". We parted ways on not so good terms. The Order intervened, I vanished for months.
[25.11.2025 23:12:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Although how you went and charmed a BDM director, I'd, uh, be dazzled to know."
[25.11.2025 23:13:04] Caliban: Vanished is put lightly. Life support is more appropriate. When I came back, I found her in Hudson.
[25.11.2025 23:13:12] Caliban: She nearly took my head off, you know.
[25.11.2025 23:13:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "How'd'ya even meet someone like that? I get the impression, given your doctorate, you're from the guilded face...
[25.11.2025 23:13:31] UN|Hellion: of Sirius? You're either loaded, or from a loaded family."
[25.11.2025 23:13:50] Caliban: Bretonian living in the suburbs with the family? Yeah, loaded family.
[25.11.2025 23:13:55] Caliban: Well, at the time. Anyway.
[25.11.2025 23:14:08] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Hah. Yep; normal people don't have those kinds of social, professional, or romatic connections."
[25.11.2025 23:14:27] Caliban: I used to be normal. Left hoping to be a badass merc.
[25.11.2025 23:14:30] Caliban: Failed miserably.
[25.11.2025 23:15:04] Caliban: Turned out that I was pretty smart. Became a researcher kind of guy. It worked out -- even had base in Hudson for a time.
[25.11.2025 23:15:05] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're a badass of some nondescription; and you're still a merc, so, consider it a victory in detail?"
[25.11.2025 23:15:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Listen, Caliban."
[25.11.2025 23:16:07] Caliban: I'm listening.
[25.11.2025 23:16:12] UN|Hellion: Riehl: *Blink and it's over; one of the scarce few instances when Gunda Riehl, Arbeiter of the Unioners, didn't call...
[25.11.2025 23:16:18] UN|Hellion: Caliban 'Tempest'*
[25.11.2025 23:16:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...You need an exit route. Or, maybe you don't need one. Yet I've got an inclination, from everything you've told me...
[25.11.2025 23:17:03] UN|Hellion: that it'd make you, at least, happier with your lot in life. Stop me if I'm wrong."
[25.11.2025 23:17:28] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You don't want to be dead center in the Bureau's boresights."
[25.11.2025 23:17:54] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You'll want a pre-meditated way out. Up and out. Not a side door, not a crawlspace, not somewhere where you'd...
[25.11.2025 23:18:06] UN|Hellion: have to start again. You're too old for that crap, too many fresh starts wear on you."
[25.11.2025 23:18:25] Caliban: Heh...so here's the thing.
[25.11.2025 23:18:52] Caliban: I get where you're coming from with "too old", at the same time. I just turned like...28.
[25.11.2025 23:19:08] Caliban: All of this started when I turned 21. Maybe 22-ish.
[25.11.2025 23:19:29] Caliban: For what it's worth, let me keep some dignity and don't call me "grandpa" yet.
[25.11.2025 23:19:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Okay, let me rephrase, you're not too old for this crap. My bad. But you've got wear marks on you."
[25.11.2025 23:20:00] Caliban: Okay, fair.
[25.11.2025 23:20:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I can hear it in your voice. We're all equal in the Unioners, but on a functional level, you might call me an NCO."
[25.11.2025 23:20:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Don't ever make this comparison to someone else; we're not a soddin' military, and have no pretensions to be."
[25.11.2025 23:20:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...But trust me when I say you're soddin' demoralized, Caliban."
[25.11.2025 23:20:40] Caliban: And herein lies the question. If you were in my position, but from in a Unionist kind of story. Would you take the way out?
[25.11.2025 23:21:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, I would. Depends on what you'd consider a way out. For a Unioner, that'd be a shift down to Zurich."
[25.11.2025 23:21:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Or, if they're in the Rhein, up here, to Pacifica."
[25.11.2025 23:21:58] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We're somethin' anthropologists call a 'diverse hetrogenous collective'. "
[25.11.2025 23:22:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "So there's room to shuffle about."
[25.11.2025 23:22:35] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But that ain't helpful to you. Look, Caliban, if I were you, I'd melt into the underworld on your way out. Close...
[25.11.2025 23:22:47] UN|Hellion: the hatch behind you, then wind up on Curacao in a few decades."
[25.11.2025 23:23:04] Caliban: For what it's worth, I have a way out.
[25.11.2025 23:23:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah?"
[25.11.2025 23:23:28] Caliban: The Liberty Free Republic.
[25.11.2025 23:23:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The Liberty Free wh... The Xenos?!"
[25.11.2025 23:24:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Are you serious? They've got delusions of grandeur. They're Xenos. Ontario's desolate."
[25.11.2025 23:24:03] Caliban: What, you want me to bring my 'Rebel' here?
[25.11.2025 23:24:29] Caliban: They've got a point, you know. Cobra knows what he's doing.
[25.11.2025 23:25:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Alright, Cobra's a smart one, but he's so up his own nose he can't realize that all he wants was already done..."
[25.11.2025 23:25:21] UN|Hellion: "It was called the Commonwealth of House Liberty, Drake Thastus died to create it, and it was made by people like you...
[25.11.2025 23:25:50] Caliban: Liberty needs a new hope. Something done proper. Cobra isn't doing the Commonwealth's mistakes.
[25.11.2025 23:25:51] UN|Hellion: Caliban. People who clawed back the horrors and found themselves alienated at hearth and home after."
[25.11.2025 23:26:02] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, I bet he told you as much."
[25.11.2025 23:26:12] Caliban: Lived through it, mind you.
[25.11.2025 23:26:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "What did he tell you the problem was? Foreigner?"
[25.11.2025 23:26:40] UN|Hellion: "Or if not The Foreigner, what, some vague line about the Corporations without getting specific?"
[25.11.2025 23:27:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The Xenos are up to their arse in corporate blood money - USI pays them, IND bankrolls them, and Interspace...
[25.11.2025 23:27:16] Caliban: USI used to.
[25.11.2025 23:27:26] Caliban: Not anymore.
[25.11.2025 23:27:29] UN|Hellion: ...uses them to rig insurance prices in Gallieo and Hudson. You'd be better off taking your chances with the...
[25.11.2025 23:27:32] UN|Hellion: ...MND."
[25.11.2025 23:28:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Huh." *mollified* "...I mean, if that's the case, I've been gone a while."
[25.11.2025 23:28:07] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Eight years in a cryopod."
[25.11.2025 23:28:25] Caliban: The Xeno Alliance is something else. The Free Republic itself is.
[25.11.2025 23:28:26] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...My, uh, clique of the Unioners dipped out of Sirius after the Rheinland Civil War ended."
[25.11.2025 23:29:03] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Caliban, I might've been a flash-frozen icicle over the better part of a decade..."
[25.11.2025 23:29:09] Caliban: Out of all the "revolutionary" groups and whatever they call themselves, the Xenos have pretty good views on the world.
[25.11.2025 23:29:20] Caliban: Yeah, some parts suck. But then so does every other movement.
[25.11.2025 23:29:24] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...but they're doing exactly what the Hellfire Legion and the Commonwealth of Liberty did. "
[25.11.2025 23:29:28] Rules Tip: If you die to another player, you must not only leave and not re-enter the system you died in for one hour, but you must also not attack the players you died to for one hour on ANY of your characters.
[25.11.2025 23:29:37] Caliban: Without all the other bullshit mistakes.
[25.11.2025 23:29:47] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, every successive revolution says that, Caliban."
[25.11.2025 23:30:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm a Rheinlander - I've lived through revolutions that'd make the average Libertonian crap themselves."
[25.11.2025 23:30:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "There's no winning here."
[25.11.2025 23:30:20] Caliban: They've been kicking ass for a while now. Until that changes, I'm inclined to side with them.
[25.11.2025 23:30:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They're kicking ass 'cause Malta went and got itself into a slave revolt worthy of Spartacus's memory."
[25.11.2025 23:30:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Three cheers to the slaves, I say."
[25.11.2025 23:31:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That went and crashed Cardamine prices across the sector, while demand skyrocketed after Cryer went and..
[25.11.2025 23:31:19] Caliban: I know Malta, too.
[25.11.2025 23:31:21] UN|Hellion: ....lost Atka."
[25.11.2025 23:31:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "The tensions from all of that fallout pulled the Rogues away from the Lane Hackers."
[25.11.2025 23:31:49] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And the winners? The Xenos. They get to sell Cardamine -and- court the affections of the Lane Hackers."
[25.11.2025 23:32:11] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That's not being smart - well, not entirely - that's the entire sector miraculously working out in their favour, due to
[25.11.2025 23:32:15] UN|Hellion: ...well, dumb luck."
[25.11.2025 23:32:40] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Then the Seperatists went and collapsed the Legion because Admiral Knight, that detestable despot...
[25.11.2025 23:33:02] UN|Hellion: "...went and massacred the the entire monstrostity, giving room for Liberty to sweep in and knock them down."
[25.11.2025 23:33:15] Caliban: Uh-huh.
[25.11.2025 23:33:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Theye lost their political challengers -and- their economic rivals."
[25.11.2025 23:33:29] Caliban: Lets not forget the Legion trying to subsume the Xenos into their ranks.
[25.11.2025 23:33:48] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah - and they were never going to succeed."
[25.11.2025 23:34:00] Caliban: When the Xenos needed help, the Legion turned their eyes.
[25.11.2025 23:34:15] Caliban: Then dared to say "Hey, you should join us entirely now".
[25.11.2025 23:34:15] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, because they were effective rivals."
[25.11.2025 23:34:32] /fi un|
[25.11.2025 23:34:54] Caliban: As far as I'm concerned, the Legion was fucked from the start by power-hungry individuals using the ideals as an excuse for--
[25.11.2025 23:34:56] /fm un| charmed, unionist.
[25.11.2025 23:34:56] UN|Hellion: Charmed, Unionist.
[25.11.2025 23:34:58] Caliban: -- their actions.
[25.11.2025 23:35:14] [OOC] UN|Hellion: quick update, snubs use callsigns, not names
[25.11.2025 23:35:31] [OOC] UN|Hellion: if Herr Baecker is a callsign, not the character's name, that's fine
[25.11.2025 23:35:35] Caliban: Maybe they were something at the start, I'm not saying no.
[25.11.2025 23:35:41] UN|Herr.B cker: its a a callsign
[25.11.2025 23:35:48] UN|Herr.B cker: "The Baker"
[25.11.2025 23:35:48] [OOC] UN|Hellion: awesome
[25.11.2025 23:35:49] Caliban: But when the good guys died? Well. Shit went sour.
[25.11.2025 23:35:54] [OOC] UN|Hellion: it's cool
[25.11.2025 23:35:54] Caliban: And it went real quick.
[25.11.2025 23:36:22] [OOC] UN|Herr.B cker: gotta keep up with the theme of my other ships, bread and all
[25.11.2025 23:36:25] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You're not going to get a ringing endorsement of the Xenos outta' me. They mostly detest us."
[25.11.2025 23:36:40] Caliban: Not trying to, really.
[25.11.2025 23:36:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It's a one-sided conflict. They -think- we want to muscle in on the Libertonian underworld."
[25.11.2025 23:37:00] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We don't have any ambitions of doing that; but Liberty is our customer."
[25.11.2025 23:37:22] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We're the conduit for goods flowing west. See, if the Xenos wanted to be the endstop on that route, we'd tolerate it."
[25.11.2025 23:37:42] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Instead, they shoot at us. There's nothing in it for them, but they've been doing it for the better part of a century."
[25.11.2025 23:38:14] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That makes me think they're not even fringing on serious when they talk about ending corporate control."
[25.11.2025 23:38:25] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "They're xenophobes."
[25.11.2025 23:38:48] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Say what you will about Unioners - we accept Foreigners into our ranks."
[25.11.2025 23:38:49] Caliban: In a way, they work just like the Hessians.
[25.11.2025 23:39:02] Caliban: Using a noble cause to raid and steal.
[25.11.2025 23:39:23] Caliban: Every group has those. Sometimes in larger quantities. Sometimes in smaller ones.
[25.11.2025 23:39:25] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Eh, maybe."
[25.11.2025 23:39:37] Caliban: You'd be a moron to think the Unioners are complete saints.
[25.11.2025 23:39:46] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Ah, we're not."
[25.11.2025 23:40:03] Caliban: Fuck, out of all the groups in Rheinland, you have far worse problems than just a bunch of rotten apples.
[25.11.2025 23:40:16] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Smugglers, thieves, counterfitters. I wouldn't call our cause noble; we started out as people wanting to get paid."
[25.11.2025 23:40:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...We've never had noble pretensions. We're plain apples."
[25.11.2025 23:40:42] Xa'Qar-Nuul was blown out of the stars by DTR-Mephisto_D_Gracias(100%)
[25.11.2025 23:40:43] /fi un|
[25.11.2025 23:40:44] Caliban: And some of you sprout tendrils, too. Surely you never heard that one before, have you?
[25.11.2025 23:40:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...The <expletive>?"
[25.11.2025 23:41:31] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Howdy. I've been conversationalizin'.... that's, euh, not a word, is it... chewing the chaff, with a merc'.
[25.11.2025 23:41:31] Caliban: Five. This month. Last month, twelve.
[25.11.2025 23:41:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Goes by the name of Caliban.
[25.11.2025 23:41:39] Caliban: And I keep finding them.
[25.11.2025 23:41:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: Or, at least, by the callsign 'Caliban'.
[25.11.2025 23:42:01] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right - is that really why you came out here?"
[25.11.2025 23:42:12] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You've got me recontextualizin' at a high fraction of C."
[25.11.2025 23:42:22] Caliban: I never hid it.
[25.11.2025 23:42:27] UN|Herr.B cker: Caliban? What are they up to? and Greetings
[25.11.2025 23:42:30] Caliban: Even mentioned it a few times. Why I'm in Rheinland and all.
[25.11.2025 23:42:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Alright, yeah, you did." *She pauses.* "We're aware Arbeiters go missing at the odds and ends of it all."
[25.11.2025 23:43:06] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But none of it's recent."
[25.11.2025 23:43:26] Caliban: Recent or not. They pop up like weeds.
[25.11.2025 23:43:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Seems like every Arbeiter that vanished, got accounted for dead or missing, then... as you put it, turned pernicious...
[25.11.2025 23:44:09] UN|Hellion: "...fell out of our record logs sometime between the recrimination of the Union, and the return of Director Frei."
[25.11.2025 23:44:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Yeah, we're crapping ourselves over it too."
[25.11.2025 23:44:31] Caliban: I guess. Not all of them are going full on tendril mode. Some are just plain old deserters -- scanned, to make sure.
[25.11.2025 23:44:43] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...It's not a guess - it's the truth."
[25.11.2025 23:45:22] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm not going to give you the middle-fingered minutae."
[25.11.2025 23:45:40] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...But we know who the prime players are in the Unioners of the current day."
[25.11.2025 23:46:02] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "All that happened must've gone down after Arbeitsdirektor Hollywood - yeah, that was his actual name...
[25.11.2025 23:46:10] UN|Hellion: left a position of prominence."
[25.11.2025 23:46:15] Rallying 1 allies to your position.
[25.11.2025 23:46:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Unionists went missing without apparent cause or rationalization."
[25.11.2025 23:46:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Not a high fraction, but enough to notice. You can time it around the abandonment of Thuringia."
[25.11.2025 23:47:02] UN|Herr.B cker: Greetings.
[25.11.2025 23:47:07] Caliban: Hello.
[25.11.2025 23:47:10] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "It's... eating at me."
[25.11.2025 23:47:55] Caliban: Good. Because it should.
[25.11.2025 23:47:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "If we'd gone and wrenched back Valhalla for ourselves, maybe we wouldn't've had to exile ourselves.
[25.11.2025 23:48:10] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "If the exile hadn't taken place, we wouldn't be here."
[25.11.2025 23:48:23] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Staring into the abyss of the last few years."
[25.11.2025 23:48:53] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "So, what - do you think we're responsible?"
[25.11.2025 23:49:14] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Us and the artifact trade? If we are; hit us with it."
[25.11.2025 23:49:40] Rules Tip: Do not disconnect from the server to escape player versus player interaction. Your ship will remain helpless in space for 2 minutes and you will not be able to reconnect during this time.
[25.11.2025 23:50:16] Caliban: Are you fully responsible? No. You can't control all your people at the same time.
[25.11.2025 23:50:26] Caliban: Partially responsible? I guess so.
[25.11.2025 23:50:41] Caliban: By virtue of hazardous cargo.
[25.11.2025 23:51:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We can't stop the flow. If we did, it'd flow through a conduit that doesn't care where it drains, or how it got there."
[25.11.2025 23:51:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "All we can do is try to vette what we have. Which we'd be bloody open to doing, but the BDM doesn't make it easy."
[25.11.2025 23:52:03] UN|Herr.B cker: *constantly checks scanners*
[25.11.2025 23:52:35] Caliban: Not something I can fix. Not in the short run.
[25.11.2025 23:53:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...You've got some resources."
[25.11.2025 23:53:44] Caliban: I do.
[25.11.2025 23:53:44] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...if you can nudge anything favourably from your privilage, then you should think about doing that. You're not only
[25.11.2025 23:53:54] UN|Hellion: a tool of the Bureau, you can feed them selective intel."
[25.11.2025 23:54:14] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Moreover, you know all that I don't."
[25.11.2025 23:54:16] Caliban: I was waiting to see when you'd suggest that.
[25.11.2025 23:54:25] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Yeah, I'm not going to ask you to lie to the BDM."
[25.11.2025 23:54:45] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But we've got... a list... of those we suspect might be trouble of the kind you're after."
[25.11.2025 23:54:56] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We can't always act on that list. You can. Or the BDM can."
[25.11.2025 23:55:01] Caliban: Tell you what. Lets do a quid-pro-quo.
[25.11.2025 23:55:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm listening, if not from a position of trust."
[25.11.2025 23:55:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: SITREP: This 'lancer isn't what he seems; he's a hired gun, in the employ of the BDM.
[25.11.2025 23:56:12] UN|Hellion: Riehl: I don't know how honest he is, assume he's a liar, but I know that much is true.
[25.11.2025 23:56:20] UN|Hellion: Riehl: He's very good in combat, I do know that much.
[25.11.2025 23:56:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: He might be useful to us, if we play this right.
[25.11.2025 23:56:42] UN|Herr.B cker: Might as well hear him out. Even I heard whispers of his combat prowess. You do the talking.
[25.11.2025 23:57:34] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Go on. What's your scheme?"
[25.11.2025 23:57:55] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Gamma two-two, take out that Hammerhead."
[25.11.2025 23:58:08] A bounty of $1.200 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 23:58:09] UN|Herr.B cker: Down.
[25.11.2025 23:58:20] Caliban: Juergen Beck. The MND douchebag.
[25.11.2025 23:58:31] Caliban: That one unknown quantity Agent.
[25.11.2025 23:58:32] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right on. His wingman's coming in to scan for the sapless twit. Give him an impromptu pod test."
[25.11.2025 23:58:39] A bounty of $1.200 credits has been deposited into your account.
[25.11.2025 23:58:51] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Good kill, he's also splashed."
[25.11.2025 23:59:14] Caliban: Take him out of the picture when you see him. Catch a glimpse of what he's sporting when you do it.
[25.11.2025 23:59:20] UN|Herr.B cker: Area clear, will keep a look out.
[25.11.2025 23:59:24] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Wait - are we talking permenantly?"
[25.11.2025 23:59:30] Caliban: Preferably.
[25.11.2025 23:59:42] Caliban: If not, send him to an ER. I'll do the rest.
[25.11.2025 23:59:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That'll bring in heat, oxygen and fuel."
[26.11.2025 00:00:10] Caliban: Are you worried about the Buro who's shooting you anyway?
[26.11.2025 00:00:22] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'd prefer if we don't add 'murder of an government official' to some sapless ledger of sins."
[26.11.2025 00:00:46] A bounty of $1.200 credits has been deposited into your account.
[26.11.2025 00:00:47] Caliban: Puh-lease. They won't care about it.
[26.11.2025 00:00:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "But if he's one of the axeteeth who chewed up our Convoy in Omega Eleven, then we'll take that risk."
[26.11.2025 00:01:01] Caliban: Not about that guy, for sure.
[26.11.2025 00:01:24] Caliban: Take him down. Make sure it hurts.
[26.11.2025 00:01:40] Caliban: In the meantime, I'll see what I can do to deliver some Parasite scanners to you.
[26.11.2025 00:01:41] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right, I'm going to have to trust you're not setting us up to kill someone the Bureau wants dead, to pin it on us."
[26.11.2025 00:01:57] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "That's an tried and worn trick of theirs."
[26.11.2025 00:02:02] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Y'know, sting operations."
[26.11.2025 00:02:05] Caliban: You were there, weren't you? When we were literally interrogating the guy. Who claimed he's MND.
[26.11.2025 00:02:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Right, but you work for the guys the MND work for."
[26.11.2025 00:02:19] Caliban: Broad daylight. Hardly a sting operation.
[26.11.2025 00:02:35] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Ach."
[26.11.2025 00:02:46] Caliban: I mean, shit. If you don't want it, I'll do it myself. No difference.
[26.11.2025 00:02:48] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You say you can get us Parasite scanners."
[26.11.2025 00:03:21] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...You're going to have to factor that your average Unionist is far, far better at tinkering with optronic systems...
[26.11.2025 00:03:29] UN|Hellion: than your average schmuck."
[26.11.2025 00:03:36] Caliban: I caught a wiff of some Kemwer Munitions-grade scanners. Order stuff. I've yet to turn it in to the Buro.
[26.11.2025 00:03:37] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We're a people of generational engineers."
[26.11.2025 00:03:49] Caliban: Could lose it in transit. Could be yours instead.
[26.11.2025 00:03:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Alright, Order Tech I trust."
[26.11.2025 00:04:18] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...if, and only if, it works as the stickers advertise."
[26.11.2025 00:04:38] Caliban: They work.
[26.11.2025 00:04:59] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "You get us that gear - with no frickin' bugs, tricks, or widgits jammed under the casing; clean and untampered..."
[26.11.2025 00:05:16] Caliban: I'm quite literally swiping gear from under the Buro's noses.
[26.11.2025 00:05:18] UN|Hellion: "...No errant tweaks, or the like - as you found it..."
[26.11.2025 00:05:24] Caliban: Do you really think they'll be bugged by them, too?
[26.11.2025 00:05:26] A bounty of $1.200 credits has been deposited into your account.
[26.11.2025 00:05:31] Caliban: When they didn't even swap hands?
[26.11.2025 00:05:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "...Anything's possible, and I'd only have your word to go off."
[26.11.2025 00:05:53] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "I'm a middling pilot, but I'm not middlingly stupid."
[26.11.2025 00:06:02] Caliban: Well. I guess you'd have to just trust me again.
[26.11.2025 00:06:12] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Nope; full documentation of chain of custody."
[26.11.2025 00:06:22] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Do that, and we'll kill the bastard."
[26.11.2025 00:06:30] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "And we'll throw in his scan data."
[26.11.2025 00:07:02] Caliban: Chain of custody being...killed some zoner who was traveling with this. Their manifest being forever lost in the rubble or --
[26.11.2025 00:07:04] Caliban: -- something.
[26.11.2025 00:07:30] Caliban: And now they sit mighty fine in my humble establishment.
[26.11.2025 00:07:40] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Back that up with evidentiary solidity, and you've got your deal."
[26.11.2025 00:08:17] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We'll kill him. You'll provide the scanners. Then we'll go from there."
[26.11.2025 00:08:29] Caliban: Sure. Works for me.
[26.11.2025 00:08:33] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Alright, Caliban - it's been fun, but you can't stay here."
[26.11.2025 00:08:39] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Pick a jump hole."
[26.11.2025 00:08:52] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "We'll escort you to it."
[26.11.2025 00:09:10] Caliban: Mhm. Sure.
[26.11.2025 00:09:53] Unsure about the regions listed in your ID? You can use the following command to access the full systems classification list - /helpmenu regions
[26.11.2025 00:09:54] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Gamma two two, gamma two one; take flank position."
[26.11.2025 00:10:02] UN|Herr.B cker: Gotcha,
[26.11.2025 00:10:09] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Till next time, Cali'."
[26.11.2025 00:10:13] Caliban: See you around.
[26.11.2025 00:10:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: <exhaling> ....Spooks. They make my skin itch.
[26.11.2025 00:10:44] UN|Herr.B cker: Even I could feel the dangerous vibe..
[26.11.2025 00:11:38] UN|Hellion: Riehl: "Glad you're here to cover my five o'clock, Arbeiter."
[26.11.2025 00:11:54] UN|Herr.B cker: Almost lost my nerve back there in all honesty. But it went well
Now that has got to be one of the best decisions you've made in recent memory, Unionist. Sure, you can believe I put tiny bugs in your scanners, but at the same time you are already flooded with moles as is. 'Said so yourself. Hell, even your pet might be writing love letters to the Buro as far as I know.
Not sure what proverbial knife you're talking about, though. You stand to win everything at minimal cost. This is the kind of job rookies take up in Coronado for me in order to gain some experience and earn an honest credit. And you're no rookie -- you just need some WD-40 for those joints.
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