Bittersweet Cacophony
05 May 2021D. James Totendost
This past week has been a mess galaxy-wise and troublesome organizationally. The ups have been marred by the downs and the whole thing feels like a party in a lithium mist. The 242 finally got our flagships in order which should be the the trigger for a red-letter day but things don't always turn out. Someone killed one of our operatives and diverted a massive amount of the unit's fabrication materials into the hands of the only side of the federation which could cause real problems for our timetable or benefactor. A while back we ended up dividing our manpower to take on the large first steps of our mission. To that end we were able to work and invest our resources into a return which yielded the three flagships of our endeavor. Personally, I'm looking forward to no longer renting offices or sleeping quarters. Broadly speaking, these three should cover all our bases when facing the harsh nature of the galaxy. The Enochian Lament is geared toward defense and fleet maintenance, the Eolith Depot is built around procurement and fabrication, and the Sothis' Tenet was designed for admin, research, and storage. All in all these large ships in addition to the combined ships of our operators are a fleet I'd be proud to take on any venture.
The scent of champagne on the hull wasn't even gone when I got a grim update from our communications section. One of our operatives had gone completely dark in the middle of cache retrieval. We'd sent out some teams to retrieve caches of our supplies which could be properly stored once the carriers were finished. The one who'd gone dark had been sent to retrieve a particularly large cache of materials we keep on hand for our engineers to use in the process of upgrading and maintaining equipment. I was the closest to his system so I left to investigate and found the wreckage of his SRV surrounded and singed by a large amount of weapon fire. These were amateurs though. When it comes to corporate espionage, I know a thing or two, and in this instance I knew where I had my people put an after-market data logger. The engine and comms were sabotaged via planted devices (on a remote trigger presumably). I assume they also had embedded positioning components because it seems our man got out to check the problem and ended up with a tungsten round through the back of his head. This was a long-range shot with a long gun. He never saw it coming. The materials were gone and I only know about the sabotage because I cut the panels off and followed up on the aforementioned data loggers.
A full day hadn't passed when Hudson made his dumbass plea to the people of the galaxy. The stuff he wanted made up the bulk of what we lost and the series of events was more than enough writing on the wall for me. Someone with ties to Hudson, who's at odds with The Company (or has a grudge against the 242), has figured out what the unit is up to, and literally poured our own resources into an event which would definitely make it harder for us to operate in federation space. Invoking the spirit of "safety" and the buzzwords of "security" Hudson reeled in the collective five-heads of the galactic community and they ate that shit sandwich with a fervor one could only describe as masochistic. Luckily, the ones with brown grins had basically crossed themselves off the short list of new enemies, they definitely weren't friends, but someone else, big enough to be a real problem, is about to find out what the 242 is capable of.
Tonight, I'm going to let my people relax and revel in their new digs. We can steel ourselves tomorrow.