Echoes of the Fall
15 Nov 2023Argon Shadowstar
The message notification had arrived quite auspiciously, being the first thing I saw once the computer repairs and reboot had completed. With the ship fixed up enough to jump, I lifted it up out of the canyon and proceeded to make my way to a facility I could trust where proper repairs could be done. This gave me time to review the message and consider my response.From: Lord LaFey-Silverlight
To: CMDR Argon Shadowstar
Re: Matters of Honor
Commander Shadowstar, I trust that this message finds you in good circumstances. Now, while I still do not entirely agree with your methods, your service to this house and our resulting fortunes leave us in your debt. As such, I feel obligated to inform you that I have been contacted by one Argos Seleni, a descendant of the old House Sablestorm. This Mr. Seleni was, up until recently, a freelance mercenary, who, like you, had been inspired by the legends of the Imperium he was raised with. Mercenary work is not so unusual for descendants of the Fall, as you know all too well. But the interesting part is that he is currently being held at an undisclosed location by Aegis, as part of their quarantine system. You see, this mercenary had taken an Anti-Xeno contract to provide covering fire for rescue forces attempting to recover escape pods from the front lines. His entire unit was overwhelmed and was not heard from again, until now.
He and other survivors from that operation were recently recovered from a Thargoid Titan and placed into quarantine. While Mr. Seleni has been in recovery and seclusion, he has had a lot of time to read, watch the news, and study history. This is apparently how he came to learn about your recent exploits, specifically your quest to avenge the old Imperium. He is now interested in returning to the region and assisting you in your archaeological endeavors here and throughout the region of the old Imperium. He tried contacting you directly but suspects that his captors might have blocked the messages due to your notoriety. He was able to provide me with the encrypted address of a private server which he says you can use to speak with him directly, but he requested that I only give it to you in person. I am not entirely sure why, after all, he has already transmitted the data through the galnet once, why would it matter if I were to send it to you the same way? But I am a man of honor and I respect Mr. Seleni for his sacrifice, even if his motivation was purely financial. Therefore, I request your attendance at your earliest convenience, such that I may give you the information as intended. I would also suggest that, while you are here in Acokwus, you may check in on our archaeologist friends. While I am kept up to date on their activities, you may find some of their recent progress quite fascinating.
Respectfully,
Lord Arcadius LaFey-Silverlight
So, it seems that a fellow descendant of the old Imperium has recently been resurrected from the dead, in a manner of speaking. I admit I am somewhat curious about what this Mr. Seleni wishes to discuss with me. I returned to Acokwus promptly and met with Lord LaFey-Silverlight, who gave me the data in question. There was no decryption key, but the method was familiar; a specific cryptographic sequence often used among mercenaries engaged in covert operations throughout the Hyades Cluster, an area I am familiar with from my time with the Gunn Runners. Encrypting a message in this way allows anyone with knowledge of the sequence and a specific minimum level of competency with decryption to decrypt the file without the key. Though my field of expertise was in strategy and warfare, I picked up enough competency in data security to be able to successfully break his encryption and read the file.
The server was unsecured, but also hidden, in that it did not respond to pings nor send them. There would be no way for anyone to even know it existed unless they tried to connect to the specific address and port using the protocol provided in the message. Information security techniques such as this are simple and elegant, and have been favored for over a thousand years for good reason. Once I made contact, communication took the form of simple text transmissions. Clearly this man was fond of the old ways, and knew their value as well. This form of exchange was preferred in special ops situations due to low bandwidth and ease of use. Though his responses have been slow to come, he says it is because he is trying to avoid suspicion. We discussed a few things but I sense there is far more he wishes to ask me, and I feel that he may implore me to free him from his captivity at some point. Though I am not convinced at this stage that such a venture would be advisable, it matters little until I am able to determine his actual location. For now, I will have to consider this an interesting occurrence and nothing more, but all great stories have such moments of seemingly little importance which foreshadow events of immense magnitude later on. Perhaps this odd meeting is the first step in what may become a larger part of my own legend someday.