Editing Episode 314: Libertas
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'''Rubicon'''<br> | '''Rubicon'''<br> | ||
| − | It’s 14 hours to Rubicon, nothing hard for our long-range shuttle. During the trip over, Rick revives (Not-Reynolds remains unconscious but stable) and we fill | + | It’s 14 hours to Rubicon, nothing hard for our long-range shuttle. During the trip over, Rick revives (Not-Reynolds remains unconscious but stable) and we fill them in on our game plan. Such as we have one, anyway. |
We arrive and take readings and despite it being a blackrock and uninhabited we do find some faint signs of life. Faint power readings come back to us from the surface and lacking any other indicator of where Blondie is to meet us, we aim for them and hope for the best. | We arrive and take readings and despite it being a blackrock and uninhabited we do find some faint signs of life. Faint power readings come back to us from the surface and lacking any other indicator of where Blondie is to meet us, we aim for them and hope for the best. | ||
| − | The best is a giant ship, a mobile surface mining platform and facility, its gargantuan drill stalled and still in a shaft of its own making. Valerie elects to stay behind in the shuttle and keep an eye on Not-Malcolm while we go investigate. There is no breathable atmo on the planet and the winds are something fierce, and we’re quick to board the platform and inspect it. It doesn’t take us long to realize that the platform is deserted and any installation suitable for living or hiding in would be found underground. That leaves finding ingress….and that leads us to the drill. The drill is actually a lift down below the surface of Rubicon and it takes us to a tunnel. We disembark and follow the tunnel straight to a large chamber roughly 40 feet high and filled with a black oily lake. The chamber has the requisite stalactites and stalagmites and the lake has an island in the middle of it. A light shines there and we wade for it. | + | The best is a giant ship, a mobile surface mining platform and facility, its gargantuan drill stalled and still in a shaft of its own making. Valerie elects to stay behind in the shuttle and keep an eye on Not-Malcolm while we go investigate. There is no breathable atmo on the planet, and the winds are something fierce, and we’re quick to board the platform and inspect it. It doesn’t take us long to realize that the platform is deserted and any installation suitable for living or hiding in would be found underground. That leaves finding ingress….and that leads us to the drill. The drill is actually a lift down below the surface of Rubicon and it takes us to a tunnel. We disembark and follow the tunnel straight to a large chamber roughly 40 feet high and filled with a black oily lake. The chamber has the requisite stalactites and stalagmites and the lake has an island in the middle of it. A light shines there and we wade for it. |
The water is as it seems, dark with some oily substance, and we wade through the knee-deep nastiness to the dry land at its center. And there, holding a battle lantern, is Blondie. And the questions begin. She’s rather forthcoming with the answers. | The water is as it seems, dark with some oily substance, and we wade through the knee-deep nastiness to the dry land at its center. And there, holding a battle lantern, is Blondie. And the questions begin. She’s rather forthcoming with the answers. | ||
| − | She’s a member of an organization called the Libertores. Back at St. Lucy’s the Operative had mentioned something of the sort, but still….if Blondie’s a | + | She’s a member of an organization called the Libertores. Back at St. Lucy’s the Operative had mentioned something of the sort, but still….if Blondie’s a Libertores, that must mean she’s not a Blue Sun agent at all but a mole, a spy. She admits she’s had to do some pretty vile deeds to maintain her cover and now that it’s pretty much blown, she’s free to tell us a little about the Libertores agenda. |
Basically, it’s resisting efforts to transform humans into something else through various means, both peaceful and violent, because it believes that such things rob mankind of its dignity. Certainly there is much in the way of entrenched policy and political corruption standing in the way of that benefit, and the Libertores hope to address that. When asked about where Blue Sun Corp fit in to all this, she mentions they’d made a plan with Falkan to support her for the Prime Minister spot in the next election. Which made the reason for assassination attempt a little more clear. It may not succeed—before we left for Rubicon, we found out that the current PM is comatose but alive, and still PM. | Basically, it’s resisting efforts to transform humans into something else through various means, both peaceful and violent, because it believes that such things rob mankind of its dignity. Certainly there is much in the way of entrenched policy and political corruption standing in the way of that benefit, and the Libertores hope to address that. When asked about where Blue Sun Corp fit in to all this, she mentions they’d made a plan with Falkan to support her for the Prime Minister spot in the next election. Which made the reason for assassination attempt a little more clear. It may not succeed—before we left for Rubicon, we found out that the current PM is comatose but alive, and still PM. | ||
| − | Other Libertore hopes: destroy the Alliance Central Intelligence’s database on Colchester. It’s there that every record on ever person, place or thing the Intelligence agency ever made is stored. The sheer amount of data in those records is staggering, as is the fact that this is the in place where all the top secret data is stored. Other sites only have a piece of the puzzle, never enough to make much use. Surprisingly, there is no backup copy stored elsewhere,perhaps because that would set up a challenger to the authority and power of Alliance Intelligence or perhaps because two such records might differ and there'd be no way to know the correct one. Once those records are erased or destroyed, that data is lost for good. | + | Other Libertore hopes: destroy the Alliance Central Intelligence’s database on Colchester. It’s there that every record on ever person, place or thing the Intelligence agency ever made is stored. The sheer amount of data in those records is staggering, as is the fact that this is the in place where all the top secret data is stored. Other sites only have a piece of the puzzle, never enough to make much use. Surprisingly, there is no backup copy stored elsewhere,perhaps because that would set up a challenger to the authority and power of Alliance Intelligence, or perhaps because two such records might differ, and there'd be no way to know the correct one. Once those records are erased or destroyed, that data is lost for good. |
| − | The Alliance would effectively have to reboot and start over with a clean slate, or do their best to | + | The Alliance would effectively have to reboot and start over with a clean slate, or do their best to hobble together what intelligence they trust their satellites with. There are political and practical opportunities in that and the Libertores are getting ready to make their move toward it. |
However, before the records are completely blown, the Libertores wish to use the information for their own purposes. Chief pick: getting the dirt on Falkan to foil Blue Sun Corp’s bid for power. Once they grab the intel they want, they will introduce a virus program, an ‘despooling worm’ that will unravel the data of all the records stored in the facility. | However, before the records are completely blown, the Libertores wish to use the information for their own purposes. Chief pick: getting the dirt on Falkan to foil Blue Sun Corp’s bid for power. Once they grab the intel they want, they will introduce a virus program, an ‘despooling worm’ that will unravel the data of all the records stored in the facility. | ||
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Blondie has another surprise. She’s able to tell Joshua that he was not, like Arden, a clone or someone engineered in a vat somewhere, but was instead a naturally born child. He was probably a child exposed to certain elements in utero via the drinking water his mother had access to, in a subtle program that subjected untold numbers of pregnant women to human experimentation via their unborn children, the goal of which was to eventually produce the subjects of the Academy. Subjects like River Tam, Johannes Volker III….and Joshua Drake. | Blondie has another surprise. She’s able to tell Joshua that he was not, like Arden, a clone or someone engineered in a vat somewhere, but was instead a naturally born child. He was probably a child exposed to certain elements in utero via the drinking water his mother had access to, in a subtle program that subjected untold numbers of pregnant women to human experimentation via their unborn children, the goal of which was to eventually produce the subjects of the Academy. Subjects like River Tam, Johannes Volker III….and Joshua Drake. | ||
| − | How does she know all this? It’s because Joshua is ‘her own’. She was the person who had been sending Joshua the mysterious messages while he was on the inside, subtly engineering his escape from the Academy. | + | How does she know all this? It’s because Joshua is ‘her own’. She was the person who had been sending Joshua the mysterious messages while he was on the inside, subtly engineering his escape from the Academy. What else does she know? She knows that the records for his trigger phrases likely reside at the Academy on Osiris and the records on his true parents are stored the Blue Sun HQ on Osiris as well. |
Perhaps we can get what Joshua needs to know from those places later, but for now, we’ve got other fish to fry. Blondie (and we hope, other Libertores) have a plan to hit the facility on Colchester. They have what they need to modify the shuttle she arrived in to run the op and we have the engineer needed to make that happen. | Perhaps we can get what Joshua needs to know from those places later, but for now, we’ve got other fish to fry. Blondie (and we hope, other Libertores) have a plan to hit the facility on Colchester. They have what they need to modify the shuttle she arrived in to run the op and we have the engineer needed to make that happen. | ||
