Revelations
06 Oct 2021Iridium Nova
While keeping a low profile, dodging bounty hunters and Sirius kill teams, I had the opportunity to pay a visit to one of my engineer friends, whose identity I will not reveal, so as to protect them from the heat I am dragging in my wake. I had a bit of a chat with them about the prismatic shield and what I had learned about it myself, and shared the data I had from the lab in Grebegus. Meanwhile, I had my decryptor working on some of the data I pulled from the Pandora facility in Luyten's Star. Unfortunately my engineer friend was expectedly tight-lipped."I ain't telling you anything. Let's just say I've got a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. But don't worry, you don't need my help to get to the bottom of this."
I figured as much, since the engineers wouldn't get too far if they blabbed about every state secret they stumbled upon. But I thought it might be worth a shot. On the plus side, he was able to soup up the unit a bit. Together we managed to replace most of the junk components with actual useful tech, though admittedly boring human tech instead of whatever weird sorcery is at the core of the thing. So now the Falcon is sporting a spiffy custom-job prismatic which should deter some of the more dedicated hunters out there and make hot extractions a little less stressful.
Now, on to the good stuff:
"It's all archived. We sent it back. There's nothing else we can do with it now. But if you're right, the Dreamer will be along soon, and I don't think she's going to ask nicely." - This snippet of data came from an open correspondence in one of the Sirius hab buildings. Unfortunately I came under fire while downloading it and had to abort before I got any more of the conversation. Mentions the "Dreamer", I've seen that before. Still not sure what or who that refers to. Could be these things are connected. Will have to research that later.
"Surely Dr. Li is handling this situation? Why can't we just move the whole operation?" - This snippet was extracted from internal correspondence in the CMD building. Still nothing especially useful but a piece of the puzzle anyway. Hopefully the decryptor will pull more of this conversation soon.
"You don't understand. Sirius is huge. Not all of it is operating within the purview of Dr. Li. And I don't think he'll be too happy when he finds out what we've got here." - This audio log snippet is most likely referring to the object I've been calling Pandora's Box. Whatever it is, it seems dangerous, based on what I could observe about it. The curious cat in me is craving more information, but that cat doesn't have enough lives left for me to want to pursue it any further.
Other information from the base suggests that Pandora's Box was originally found in Empire space and was probably connected to a group being investigated by Omega Company. Good old Omega Company, shoving their brown noses into all the nasty places the rest of us don't particularly feel like going. Perhaps when the heat dies down, I should go have a chat with them. Apparently the rogue Sirius PMC tangled with the unnamed neer-do-wells and looted the horrible box as part of their spoils. They brought it back to the base to investigate it but it quickly "got out of hand", whatever that means, and they locked it up until they could figure out a plan to deal with it, hoping LYR wouldn't catch wind of it and start snooping around. I guess that didn't turn out so well for them, and it left me with a plasma burn that'll take another week to fully heal.
Oh, the decryptor also managed to pull some more correspondence from the encrypted data from the Grebegus lab:
"They did release it. The Spice Smugglers couldn't get everyone to play ball. But they did have a backup plan. That's what the virus was about. It made sure that anyone who got the file contributed to a cascading Galnet failure which brought down the networks and prevented anyone from actually looking at the data long enough for the Spice Smugglers to implement the contingency plan. That's why I created the virus which has now become known as Interloper. It might threaten the Empire, but people need to know the truth."
This is pretty enlightening. It seems I wasn't 100% on the ball about my previous analysis. This is definitely referring to the same Galnet disruption that knocked my ship out months ago. But it presents more questions than answers. I had information pointing to this disruption being connected to that Imperial clone bioweapons project, but this snippet seems to suggest that the data they were hiding actually pertained to the potentially alien tech being used in the prismatic shield generator. I think, perhaps, what we have here, is a cleverly disguised coverup. I feel like the "contingency" the Spice Smugglers implemented was intended to misdirect investigations. In order to cover up the release of data that could suggest that Aisling has been hoarding alien technology for her own purposes, they planted information which would, upon investigation, blow the whistle on that nefarious bioweapons development project. This, being controversial enough, would satisfy most investigators (including me), and redirect the efforts of such investigators to shutting down that bioweapons program. Once that was done, the issue would be considered closed and no-one would learn the truth about the prismatics.
But how did I find my way past it? Luck? Chance? I hate to say it, but it seems so. I just happened to decide one day to question the technological feasibility of the prismatic shield generator, and out of sheer curiosity decided to get ahold of one to pick at it. This was a flight of fancy that had nothing to do with any investigation. And now I find that this random tangent I went on was somehow connected to a deceptively solved mystery I had just recently investigated? In my line of work, you learn not to believe in these kinds of coincidences. And yet, if it's not a coincidence, the implications are a bit unnerving. An extreme interpretation might lead someone to believe that someone (or something) is subtly planting suggestions in my subconscious mind.
And now I'm sufficiently creeped out.