Turning point
05 Jan 2016Tristan Pacheco
It's true. The Federation is hiding extremely advanced technology from its citizens. Needle took me via a black, windowless Core Dynamics shuttle of a model that I'd never seen before to a remote jungle on Secular 1. There we were escorted by 8 armed guards, all of which were officers, to an underground facility. I still didn't understand my place in all this. It already seemed way, way over my head. Hard to believe it all started with a few paper deliveries. Eventually we entered a massive underground hangar, filled with...bear with me here...a Farragut Battlecruiser. It looked to be nowhere near complete, but the rear section was mostly solid. We didn't even slow down as we walked across a precarious steel walkway with very thin suspension bars. We walked clear across the bay, skipping the many staircases and elevators that led to the ground level. We exited the bay, and passed by an uncountable number of doors that had security levels written on them. I couldn't make sense of the terminology, but I had the feeling that whatever I was about to see would only scratch the surface. Eventually, we came into a room. The guards stood outside as we walked in. Immediately my attention was drawn to several small autoturrets in the corners of the room on the ceiling. Their red laser emitters targeted Needle and I as we walked towards a holo-table. He brought up a display and showed me a device that could change the future of warfare. The XD-34B FSD Inhibitor could completely disable any frameshift drive within a 2 light-second sphere. He tried explaining it to me in "Layman's Terms" but didn't even come close. I honestly don't think he knew what the phrase even meant. I did gather a few key points though. First, the tech didn't scale very well, so it was only effective on a capital ship, and second, the Federation was not the first to utilize the technology. Apparently the Empire had tested it illegally on a prison colony in the Artemis system (I think) a while back, with devastating results, but somehow the operation went south, and the prisoners took the colony back despite the presence of the Majestic-Class Interdictor, but one of the prisoners was captured by the FSS, one thing led to another, and now we had it.
He then went on to explain my new role within the Federal Navy, or more accurately, roles. I was to utilize new and advanced Federal technologies to bring major Imperial and Independent targets to their knees, allowing hit squads to move in for the kill. He also mentioned the INRA, and refused to explain further when I asked what that was.
My first mission was to head to 13 Trianguli and kill 4 targets: Rich Amena, Mars McSnap, Emilio Vasquez, and some guy by the name of Penguin. I was told that Amena and Penguin had a Cobra and a Python, respectively, but that the other two weren't pilots. I would have to wait to receive special operations training to eliminate them, but in the meantime, I was to be given an XPL-2E Cytoscrambler, an upgraded version of the Classified: Confidential version available only to Winters' private agents. It disabled a targeted subsystem as well as any around it generally for about a minute, which is all I'll need. This is a test mission, to see what my capabilities are, at least I think it is. So as I'm probably going to need it, I'm going to talk to Needle about getting a cypher for my following journal entries. If you're reading this sometime in the future and are completely baffled...that's why.
Until then, I'm staying another day here so my Python can be fitted with this new weapon.