*Much delayed by the overly cautious method by which it was delivered, a hand written note arrives from a trusted courier... *
Greetings, Beholder, you may call me Agent Edelweiss.
I wont waste either of our time with senseless platitudes, my vessel launched shuttles close enough to Bethlehem that you know we launched from a Donau and what that means.
Attached to this is a comms frequency, my Direktor wishes to send an Envoy to talk with you.
Handwritten letters were relics of another age, an almost forgotten mode of communication -- comparable to doing calculus by hand. Everything was automated now. Yet crises had a way of reminding people that obsolete tools could still serve a purpose.
The letter was addressed to BEHOLDER - the PLF’s intelligence cell. At this point in time, it might no longer exist.
Word traveled with the letter. Codes and passphrases changed hands, authentication layers peeling back one by one, until someone finally recognized the callsign BEHOLDER. The message was accepted without ceremony; its contents entered transit.
The letter could mean anything: a trap, an ambush, a false flag, perhaps counter-information. LibGov collaborating with foreign actors to open another front was not beyond plausibility. The Liberation Front remained cautious.
A communications officer tuned their equipment to the assigned frequency, fragmenting the message into packets and routing them across civilian and military infrastructure alike, minimizing the risk of detection or traceback.
It contained coordinates, precise to the meter, pointing to an old factory long since reclaimed by Erie’s hostile environment. The time was set for midnight, valid after twenty-four hours.
It could be a site for negotiations -- or the last place the envoy would ever set foot in.
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