This post is in response to the events surrounding the current shadow war as reported on by The SCOPE. ARC is saddened to see how these events are fracturing the cooperation between the Empires even further. Especially considering there are common threats to all the Empires that are best dealt with by working together.
ARC has been trying to investigate the reported mercenary forces that are attacking the Empires Research Nodes, Couriers and Research Laboratories that are working on Stellar Transmuter and Transport Relay technologies. Unfortunately the investigation on the mercenary forces have yielded next to no results. It has been noted however that there are simularities to previous events surrounding The Deathless. ARC therefore assumes that the mercenary forces are associated with The Deathless. Because of this, I have been authorized to organise and run data recovery fleets to limit the amount of data and materials that these mercenary forces can steal.
Due to the sensitive legal nature of the current situation, the data recovery fleets limit themselves in scope to the attacked Couriers. While it is impossible to prevent the Couriers of being attacked and destroyed, it is possible to attack and drive off the mercenary forces in order to recover what remains inside the wrecks of the destroyed Courier ships.
It is impossible for ARC to deploy in support of all the Empires. It has therefore been decided that, considering the historical ties that ARC has with Ishukone Corporation, ARC will focus on The Caldari State and its Transport Relay research.
ARC has and will continue to regularly deploy and respond to the attacks on the Caldari State Couriers. It will recover as many materials as possible and assemble Transport Relay Datacores in order to return them to the Caldari State. At the time of writing, ARC has been able to recover enough materials to assemble 275 Transport Relay Datacores. While this isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, ARC has at least been able to deny these materials and datacores to the mercenaries.
While it is possible to buy the required materials from market and escrow, ARC refuses to do this on a large scale as it could result in a incentive to attack the Research Nodes, Couriers and Research Laboratories. As such, ARC will not be offering any bounties or compensation for these datacore related materials. ARC is willing however to coordinate the return of recovered research materials to each of the Empires.
More proof would be need to confirm they’re the Deathless, but sure these mercenaries “without affiliations” came out of nowhere considering also there’s a massive war in Nullsec too. This being is considering about joining to some similar operation to gain more data about that.
Well at least we learned from our past mistakes, no? That’s worth something. And chosing the right empire to back too! Wow, you’re really hitting the proverbial ball out of the park on this one. You know what? I’ll throw you a bone: in regards to the first part of your post, you’re almost there, not quite over the target but very close.
I shall pay credit where merited. The noted absence of a bounty is a direct reference to ARC’s past disgrace in Athounon. Perhaps many loyal citizens may read an apology between the lines. If not, we should at least appreciate results.
It is also refreshing to see ARC being transparent and honest about its contributions. It takes courage to instigate change. Thank you, Dutchgunner.
The Warning of SOCT confirms the concerns that ARC has had regarding the ongoing shadow war between the Empires. The State was the first to complete their efforts. The Empire is getting close to complete theirs and the Republic and Federation are not far behind with their own efforts.
In light of the above, it has been decided to stop the data recovery efforts. ARC has been able to recover enough materials to assemble:
1.101 Transport Relay Datacores
250 Stellar Transmuter Datacores
In addition to these assembled Datacores, the ARC has the following data :
250x Transport Relay Research Encryption Key
48x Transport Relay Research Data Fragment
76x Stellar Transmuter Research Encryption Key
43x Stellar Transmuter Research Data Fragment
As mentioned at the start of the data recovery efforts, ARC wishes to hand over the assembled datacores and data to the Ishukone Corporation. The datacores and data have been moved to the Ishukone Corporation headquartes in Malkalen. Attempts have been made to hand over ownership of the datacores and data to Ishukone Corporation through contract but this has been unsuccesfull. ARC awaits confirmation from a representative on how to proceed.
I wish to express my gratitude to all who have helped with achieving this great result as ARC remains a scientific organisation.