Adventures in Scouting and Intrigue
02 Feb 2022Iridium Nova
If you've been paying attention to the INARA registry of the Haiden and HR 8133 systems over the past few days you might have noticed a bunch of new settlements popping up. No, these aren't actually new settlements. Turns out they were unregistered settlements. As part of my scouting role for the Haiden op, I went around and tracked down these little hideaways. My usual policy is to upload the data for everyone to share, unless my employer forbids it, so those settlements are now public knowledge in INARA's database. Enjoy. During the scouting op, I came across plenty of weird little things that just tend to go with scouting. For instance, I found a weird lifeform in HR 8133 that looks like it'd be a sweet and tasty treat. But it'll probably kill you. Or, more likely, make you wish it had. Also found a little enclave of skittish miners who decided they didn't like the look of me and started shooting at me for no good reason. I didn't shoot back since this was in Fed jurisdiction and I didn't want to deal with a bounty. Plus, they were really bad shots. There was also a crashed satellite loaded with manufacturing instructions. That was a nice find. I'm going to go through them later and see what kinds of proprietary secrets I can dig up for use in my ongoing tinkering projects.
But possibly the most interesting bit was inside a crashed Imperial Courier. The ship's computer was still mostly functional and contained a wealth of bioweapon data, as well as a conversation log between two unnamed individuals. Most of the log is simply a discussion of recent news events, but there was an interesting bit:
"The NMLA isn't done. They were too useful for their backers to just let them get destroyed. They'll be back, but maybe under a different name."
"That's what they said about INRA."
"And look how that turned out."
The rest of the log pretty much suggests that these two either believed strongly or knew for a fact that the NMLA is being backed by a group of imperial factors who have a vested interest in the downfall of the Duvals. Now, this isn't surprising at all. Anyone who's been in the intrigue game for a hot minute knows that this kind of stuff is absolutely going on everywhere. Of course the NMLA is a pawn. And of course the Duvals have powerful enemies. It's the Empire for crying out loud. The NMLA is a perfect pawn: a powerful, deniable weapon which also makes the Marlinists look bad. But of course, this kind of stuff isn't going to ruffle any feathers because it's not proof and these guys were at least smart enough to know not to use names. So in the end, while it's an interesting find, it's pretty much useless.
As for the wreck itself, there were no bodies, so whoever crashed here got out. Maybe they're still in the system, but it makes me wonder what they were doing here. They were shot down, judging by the battle damage. Whoever did it didn't finish them off, or didn't survive. This region isn't exactly close to the Empire, but nothing these days is beyond the reach of a galactic power. There's a lot of possibilities but speculation won't get me anywhere. I'll keep an eye on local newsfeeds for a while, see if anything Empire pops up over the next few days.