Wow, the Drifters became interested in your stockpile just after CONCORD said they would? What a coinkidink!
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CONCORD infiltrated and replaced by Drifters, you heard it here first.
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Mysterious and unknown technology causing mysterious and unkown actors to behave in mysterious and unknown ways.
Who knew?
That said, do expect an incursion. What they have patrolling their structures are nothing compared to what they used to assassinate the Empress and invade the Empire. Prepare for a fight.
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Frankly wouldnāt surprise me one bit.
I propose that the Triglavian data artefacts that CONCORD are so worried about possess some form of rudimentary collective swarm intelligence, and that CONCORD are aware of this but want to conceal this fact.
The collective intelligence allowing a sufficiently large pile of the artefacts to act as a spy or possibly a recon portal that would allow the Triglavians to observe things here in what we possibly somewhat arrogantly consider āreal spaceā.
So CONCORD wish to conceal these facts and somehow the Drifters are also aware, possibly through nanite infiltration observation of CONCORD stations.
And possibly the Drifters want the artefacts to perform an infomorphic reverse invasion of Triglavian data realms.
In short, Oh Dear.
Now you might say thats a bit far fetched, but on the other hand, just a few years ago, the idea of the Drifters inhabiting secret wormholes was also far fetched. And only a few months ago, few had even heard of abyssal space.
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It is possible, the Datastreams contain headers and routing information embedded in them. Beyond our capabilities to analyse but Drifters might be able to glean info from them.
I feel Iād be remiss if I didnāt remind pilots that the consortium, its partners and associates have considerable experience engaging Drifters with a variety of doctrines under a variety of circumstances, including during the Throne Worlds campaign.
That said, as the matter is moving into the public view, it seems reasonable to discuss malware origins so long as it doesnāt compromise operational matters. Very simply, at this time we canāt rule out a variety of potential origins for the malware.
- Indeed, there is a non-zero chance the rogue drones being disassembled by Zainou Biotech aboard their facility may have either incorporated or been infected by some manner of Triglavian code. The intent and nature of such an action is of course unknown, but would indeed align with intercepts indicating that elements of the Collective wish to engage in a sort of religious unity-of-purpose with the rogue drones, as weāve discussed at various points in the past. The Navka hives are indicative of this.
- Vailakkel may have himself been suborned by the Collective. As we know, CONCORD has repeatedly indicated that it is concerned about the risk of neuromemetic control over susceptible populations. How this occurs, and under what circumstances, is of course unknown. However, it may be with precedent, given the interference of the āAstromancerā in a CONCORD experiment that we later learned was intended to verify abnormalities that resulted in the discovery of the Abyss and the Collective. Unfortunately, we did not have sufficient time with the āAstromancerāsā cadaver to adequately study it. Likewise, the on-going interrogation of Vailakkel remains subject to operational security concerns.
- There is a non-zero chance that the recent Triglavian worm that unlocked additional filament functionality has been used as a code base, alongside elements of rogue drone code, by an unknown actor. In this assessment, Vailakkel is a willing agent for a third party targeting the facility. In this assessment, the rogue drone disassembly facility is more of an arbitrary target to cause further chaos than a target on its own merits.
- There is, of course, the chance that Zainou Biotech itself has been experimenting with rogue drone and Triglavian code. Naturally, researching defenses against a repeat of the Triglavian Galnet wormās rapid spread would require testing novel information warfare constructs in a contained environment. It is therefore a possibility that sabotage caused an inadvertent failure of containment for a test environment.
There is a possibility that the answer is in fact some combination of these four possibilities. At this time, we hesitate to theorize, though Iāll admit to personally thinking the first two options the most likely.
That said, of more importance in this case is advancing the purge of compromised systems, both station and cybernetic, to limit the damage and injury that is resulting from this on-going crisis.
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Hm!
One of my assistants reminded me of this old piece.
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Thatās speciest. What if they donāt need blood to live?
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Then I suppose thereās egg on my face.
Isnāt that the line?
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Since Aliastra has co-signed as an associated party in this Confidential Appeal to the Inner Circle, GMVA has decided to petition the Federation Senate directly to raise the issue of CONCORDās lack of transparency on this matter.
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Iāve been poking around near Semiki for over a week. Aliastra, Caldari Constructions, Core complexions Inc., Hyasyoda Corporation, Propel Dynamics, State and Region Bank, Wiyrkomi Corporation and Zainou Biotech all have operations in the area. There is a lot of traffic, personnel and good being shipped between stations on a constant basis. Guristas are very active, as are Rogue Drones. Caldari Constructions have had malfunctions in at least one of their plants, linked to Rogue Drones, but it might be associated with the current virus. I advised them to contact Wiyrkomi Peace Corps and get it checked out. Given the amount of traffic, and security isnāt exactly tight, Steine Vailakkel would have been able to slip in unnoticed.
Drifter activity is on the increase, as noted, [ARC] Drifter wormhole formation rates , Ossa and Korama both have Jovian Observatories and Autothysian Lancers appear to be increasing salvage operations. Given that the incidence of Unidentified Wormholes means that there are approaching 350 of them about at any one time, itās not to be unexpected. Iāll keep digging.
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Thank you for your continued work, Mr. Kaugan!
Also, for pilots wishing to discuss the likelihood that a mixed trinary and rogue drone code base indicates Triglavian/Rogue Drone cooperation, this linked post has the relevant intercepts, and some of the original discussion from the middle of last year. While highly suggestive, itās important to recognize that the apparent Triglavian/Rogue Drone coordination does not eliminate the many possible initial vectors for the malware.
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News, pilots! Looks like the Stateās petition to the Inner Circle has been accepted, with the caveat that any materials and research that is developed is then provided to CONCORD officer Oveg Drust upon conclusion of the work.
While I will need to confer with the coordination group, this resolution is an eminently reasonable one, not least of which because it recognizes the critical disruption that Drustās demand resulted in.
Focus should now turn to dealing with the malware.
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Lancers have been confirmed in Semiki. ARC forces are responding. While Lancers themselves arenāt much threat, there may be escalation.
Edit; confirmed presence of Drifters, 2318 hrs.
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Is the presence of an ARC fleet necessary at this time?
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Pilots;
This will be a brief AAR. Clean-up and clearance is on-going following the primary engagement, and weāre now at a state of heightened alert.
Lancers were identified at 2312hrs by Annisir Kaugan.
Confirmation of multiple Lancer patrols and a Drifter battleship group soon followed.
Following attempts to pin down the Lancers, we decided to strike directly at the Drifters.
Engagement began at 2344hrs and was concluded by 2353, with the destruction of five Apollo/Artemis-class Drifters and no losses. Please note that only the first three Doomsday weapons fired, and were absorbed with no significant damage. The last two Drifters were destroyed with no Doomsday fire resulting.
Subsequent patrol of the system netted two Lancer patrols destroyed in full with no significant damage to the patrol group.
The fleet has stood down, with on-going patrols to deal with any Lancers that may have evaded our initial patrols.
edit; our thanks to Julianna Avala, diplomat of I-RED, for providing additional eyes and vectoring our patrols onto a third Lancer group.
Edit of edit; Mr. VasāHiigara, considering that Captain Drust himself seemed to think that allowing a Drifter presence to remain unchecked would be problematic, I think itās fair to say we have no particular qualms about disrupting Vigilant Tyrannos activity. The last thing we need is a containment failure sparked by Drifter intervention.
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On that we are agreed, and we especially do not need the Drifters to obtain the Trinary Streams for any reason, cause of contamination or no.
And if they aim to release them rather than claim them, then that is proof of being the cause, or at least complicit in it.
And neither of which will I allow.
//Report
Through peer research and discussion, the Astromancer Affair is now being called further into question in the context of unfolding events in Semiki.
The virus present in the system is based on Rogue Drone principles, but has an additional all-but-confirmed relation to the Triglavian Collective, given the significant events surrounding myriad Trinary Datastreams which are apparently relevant to ongoing efforts.
It has been known that the Astromancer was found to be in posession of a Trinary datastream relic on the day of his attack on the CONCORD timebase research convoy, which was itself prying into the secrets of the Abyss; following his attack, a Tyrannos vessel presented itself on the scene, but took no action against the convoy - simply electing to ominously observe as the experiment was successfully carried out.
The Astromancer took actions to prevent successful research into accessing the Abyss - the Drifters, however, did not discourage its completion.
The Astromancerās body was forcibly claimed by the DED, and attempts were also made to collect his datastream. Myriad circles have put forward the hypothesis of Triglavian intervention in this event, citing the cryptic warnings of Triglavian suborning of those who ādelve too deepā into the abyss and the memetic nature of Trinary relics, suggested by CONCORD far prior to any public insights into the Triglavian collective becoming public - āpossible vectors of colonizing neuromemetic worms or other coercive infowar technologiesā.
It has now been relevantly re-noted that the Astromancer and his accomplices were members of Algintal Core, āa military unit seconded to corporate interests studying the behavior of rogue drones in the Algintal constellationā.
The intrusion by Vailakkel at the inception of the Semiki event, given the rogue drone relation and trinary relevance of the situation, alongside the rogue drone relations of the Astromancer and his accociates, may then be compared; was Vailakkel himself in the same position as the Astromancer, possibly influenced or suborned by the Triglavian Collective?
Pertaining to the above connections, efforts are now underway to reach out to the Algintal Core and CeoDron corporations, with the goal of uncovering any possible relevant information in the field or Rogue Drone research.
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