The Grebegus Connection
15 Sep 2021Iridium Nova
Finally got myself a nice batch of prismatic shield generators. These things really are something else, and I'm not just talking about the ostentatious Imperial packaging. The mechanics of the thing are downright arcane. There's a lot of wasted space inside, full of over engineered parts and stuff you'd expect to see in one of those hokey old science fiction holos. And the weird part is, most of it doesn't actually do jack. I was able to get the thing to run at the same specs by pulling out a lot of this garbage and reduce the weight considerably, though it wasn't easy by any means, and required bypassing some strange hard coded firmware. Even weirder, with all that crap removed and the firmware jury rigged, the thing still benchmarks better than any other shield. And most of the thing's drawbacks come from the extra garbage that comes with it. Of course, you'd have to be a pretty hotshot engineer to make these modifications and still be able to make it work in the field. I'm a pretty damn good engineer myself but this unit would fall apart if I tried to mount it in a ship. Good thing I know a guy who can do a better job than me.But the real question is why. Surely even more people would join Aisling's personal army if they offered a better engineered version of these babies, ie: one without all these junk parts weighing it down and wasting power. And thinking about that led me down a rather interesting little rabbit hole. The core components of this thing are unlike anything I've seen in the bubble. I did a few tests on some of the metals I didn't recognize. Whatever this stuff is, it's not in anything else I've seen human-made. Maybe some Guardian stuff, but that stuff is perplexing enough on it's own. If this is Guardian tech, I wouldn't be able to tell without access to Ram Tah's personal archives. Could be Thargoid too, but there's no way to be sure at the moment.
I started looking at model numbers and serial numbers for some of the parts and cross referencing them on Galnet. Nothing really stood out until I noticed that a bunch of the parts originated from a few manufacturing facilities in the Grebegus system. Now that in itself isn't really that strange either, except that I ran across Grebegus recently while following one of those leads from the Hunter-Interloper incident. It's a big system, one of the largest in Imperial space and it also happens to be a major base of operations for Aisling's campaign. But it gets better: the system is actually controlled by a criminal organization who operate under the thin veil of "providing a safe recreational drug as alternative to narcotics.". This allows them to operate what is effectively a drug cartel right under the nose of the most drug-hating group in the known galaxy. Brilliant.
But what's the connection? I did some more digging, this time utilizing my Darknet connections and NotGalNet. Legend has it the Grebegus system was originally founded after mysterious ruins were found by early colonists in the system. This drew interest from pirates in the region who took over the colonies and started smuggling Alien Artefacts, as they were called back then, to the core systems. This all got shut down pretty quickly after the Empire arrived and established order but now all these years later it's back to being a smuggler's Haven, and it's all thanks to Aisling Duvall. The thing that gets me though is how the Spice Smugglers get away with it. The "alternative to narcotics" line is full of crap and anyone with half a brain can see through it, but it's apparently enough to keep the lawyers happy as long as Aisling doesn't try to shut them down. So why doesn't she? She's not stupid, and she's not going to be fooled by these glorified pirates. So they must have some kind of special arrangement.
I have a theory. These smugglers are able to ply their trade throughout the bubble, not only immune but under the protection of Aisling Duvall, quite possibly the most famous anti-drug crusader humanity has ever known. If they've got control of some kind of fabulous alien technology which Aisling depends on for her magic shields, that could well be the bargaining chip they need to secure her allegiance. Conspiracy theories aside, Grebegus has a reputation in the Empire for dark dealings and shadowy characters. Especially if you believe a certain series of mystery holovids. My initial investigation turned up nothing, but that was before I knew about the prismatic shields. I think it's time for another look. But I'll have to move fast, those nosy agents have been poking around lately and I think they might have figured out what I was doing all day in the workshop...