Ironic Names and Other Pretenses
19 Mar 2022Iridium Nova
A kind of peace seems to be returning to the Marsonna system, in so far as anyone can have peace in this part of the galaxy. The Royal Phoenix Corporation has withdrawn from the system after apparently completing whatever objective they had here and I haven't heard anything more regarding the mysterious super hacker(s) who did something in Marsonna 1A and 1B. I still have no idea what any of this was about, or even if the two were connected (though I suspect they were). Too many loose ends and not nearly enough closure, but that's life for you. If this were a holovid or novel, or Galnet article, there'd be a nice conclusion that would make everything clear, or at least a politically correct opinion piece to sum it all up in a way that discourages the superpowers from sending some friendly Omnipol agents to have a chat with the journalist. Unfortunately, the universe doesn't work the way Galnet thinks it does, and that means a lot of mysteries never get solved.But that doesn't stop us from trying. With the calm in Marsonna, largely guaranteed by mercenary hit squads and your friendly neighborhood Gestapo, I've been able to spend some much needed time doing research and following up on some tip offs. The Criminals in Disguise, who, if you've been paying attention, you'd remember were the start of this whole fiasco, have gone dark. They still have a presence in the system but there's been no public activity and even their comms channels are surprisingly quiet, suspicious only because of the lack of general chatter you'd expect to hear from a faction that's just sitting back and relaxing. This kind of quiet is the kind associated with radio silence. Which either means they're up to something or they're scared shitless and trying to avoid attention. Which leads to these tip offs...
My recent investigations into the CiD and their interest and motivations for their initial campaign in Marsonna have frequently put me into brief contact with the "Mysterious Stranger". Nobody knows who they are, but this Stranger has contacted many individuals across the bubble. As far as I know, they only contact Pilot's Federation members, but little more is known about them. They typically will send a message, usually a casually-written form letter of sorts, which is intended to direct the recipient to check out a location on a planet somewhere. Included in the message is a decryption key, and occasionally other data, usually hidden in the file header. That header data is usually overlooked, and with good reason, since it seems to be meaningless data: typically just a few random bytes. It very well could be nothing, but since I've worked for the Canonn for years, I've gotten into the habit of seeing patterns where there appears to be nothing. Too bad that habit rarely ever produces results.
The header data so far has not been decipherable, if it even is anything that can be deciphered. The header data, found in the ship's netlog among other data normally filtered out to prevent the HUD from being cluttered by data that has no place in the HUD, includes quite a bit of potentially interesting gibberish which could all be part of some bigger game we have yet to be able to see, but on the most basic level, these tip offs are at least somewhat rewarding. They always lead to some high value data, and occasionally more interesting things, though, like with most things in this universe, often leave one with more questions than answers. Answers are probably the commodity in the shortest supply in this universe. I guess that's why the Canonn exists.
So, then, why does the Mysterious Stranger seem to be taking an interest in the Criminals in Disguise? Maybe there's some deep connection between the two, a dark and sordid past that haunts them to this day. Or maybe it's just because they both have stupidly ironic names.