From yesterday’s News Article, further developments in the LDSS Airkio’s Promise dispute:
LDSS Airkio’s Promise Situation Unclear as Lai Dai-SuVee Bring in Kirkinen Risk Control “Specialists”
The intrigue deepens: whatever “strange developments” arose to disrupt the ongoing dispute between Lai Dai and Sukuuvestaa have now necessitated the calling of experts from a third party to presumably better understand and define the exact details of what happened to this mysterious vessel & whatever it brought back with it, and to determine the proper process, definitions, and outcome of this legal battle.
By this point, there is ample information available regarding the elements of this situation, both direct and adjacent; perhaps enough to begin forming some suppositions on the events as a whole:
KNOWN INFORMATION
–This ongoing dispute concerns a once(?) fully crewed science vessel that emerged from the domain of once-torporic Sleeper civilization after having disappeared into Anoikis a decade ago.
–The Aikiro’s Promise originally departed just shortly after Lianda Burreau made the dive in her own ship, itself also long lost before reappearing years later, along with a form of Jove-adjacent data in its cargo, only recorded in its killmail manifest - as the drifting, unresponsive ship was unceremoniously destroyed by a wary Capsuleer upon their discovery of it, committing whatever the ship may have carried to the darkness of space.
–Kirkinen Risk Control “specialized in developing and supplying cyber-warfare defense solutions before it diversified into researching other leading-edge military technologies”, eventually gaining access to Clone Soldier implant technology through a research contract - and inevitably moving to branch their operations into mercenary operations utilizing their own soldiers.
–Last but certainly not least, the science behind Clone Soldier implant architecture is well-evidenced to bear similarities to the technology of the implants found in every member of the Sleeper and Drifter race.
The mutual calling-on of Kirkinen during this suspicious legal hiatus by both involved parties strongly suggests that something unusual arrived in New Eden aboard the Aikio’s Promise - something that could not be properly categorized in a legal and scientific sense without bringing in experts from a group specializing in cyberwarfare defense and Clone Soldier implant technology.
DISCOURSE EVOCATION
Given all available evidence, one possible reason for the current strangeness of this situation has been elevated through winnowing of relevant discourses: that one or more of the Aikiro’s Promise’s crewmembers returned to New Eden alive, in some manner.
The salvage directives invoked by Suvuukestaa in their recovery of the drifting science vessel were indeed airtight enough for the megacorp to refute a claim by Lai Dai, and the legal dispute concerning the recovered ship’s ownership would likely be quickly settled in the recovering corp’s favor, especially in consideration of Kaalakiota’s moving to support SuVee in a stark reversal of their historical “patriot bloc” allyship with Lai Dai.
But then, a change: “strange developments” resulted in a total legal hiatus concerning the dispute. Whatever the development was, it threw a sturdy wrench into the ongoing legal proceedings - and given their total halting, the development must have been indeed significant. Mere static objects or data aboard a drifting ship would be unlikely to significantly affect a salvage claim - but living crew in any form would certainly provide sufficient impetus for the situation to change.
However, the discovery of any members of the ship’s original crew - previously assumed lost or dead - would have rapidly flipped the dispute in Lai Dai’s favor; living corporate citizens still residing aboard the ship, however broken down it might be, would have strongly elevated their ownership claim against SuVee’s own.
Instead, a legal hiatus was declared, and experts from Kirkinen were quickly brought in to investigate these “developments” by joint request of SuVee and Lai Dai- suggesting more complicated factors in play.
FORWARD THEORIZATION - this is the realm of far-flung speculation and theory, not any known truths.
Kirkinen Risk Control’s calling-on by both involved corps suggests a need to strictly define certain unforseen elements in the Aikiro’s Promise case, something likely pertinent to Kirkinen’s specializations: cyberdefense and Clone Soldier production.
Reaching backward: something happened to Lianda Burreau in Anoikis that left her ship abandoned and drifting, but her fate is unknown; something also happened to Hilen Tukoss in Anoikis, but his fate is much clearer. Tukoss was somehow captured in infomorph form by the Drifters - and despite no longer having his own original, now-dead body, he managed to escape from them aboard a stolen vessel. It is not thought to be likely that such an escape could be made by an infomorph alone - but in this case, would the Doctor have somehow appropriated a Drifter body to inhabit and pilot said stolen vessel?
The Drifters do not utilize Capsules - instead, their heavily modified bodies are plugged directly into their ship, and the base Sleeper implant that remains implanted in each of their heads is suspected in many circles to act as the bridge for their infomorph at the moment of death, just as our own Clone Soldiers transmit their stack-update through a very similar core implant that shows evidence of being derived from the Sleepers’ and Drifters’ own.
The Aikiro’s Promise returned under some power, controlled by something or someone; if a member, or members, of its original crew remained aboard as it was claimed, what would they appear as now?
Standard, obviously original crewmembers in their original bodies would be assured support for Lai Dai’s case. Instead, a hiatus - followed by the mutually-desired involvement of a cyberdefense and Clone Soldier production specialist group.
If crew of the Aikiro’s Promise - or living beings claiming to be crew - instead returned in a Sleeper-Drifter-bodied form, the question of their truth - and of their legal status as people or assets - could be indeterminate under current laws.
A distressing precedent in this area has in fact already been set; Hilen Tukoss was disavowed by his parent corporation Zainou Biotech, whom Kirkinen has also acted on the behalf of in the past in paramilitary operations, after his apparent arrival in Eram aboard his stolen vessel - making him a “citizen of nowhere” with “no human rights”.
However, if Lai Dai were to sustain that any of their perhaps similarly physically-natured citizens were indeed citizens and therefore people with rights, they could continue to lay their claim of ownership of the Aikiro’s Promise.
Could this be where Kirkinen comes in?