If the hardware is impossible to reproduce without the appropriate expertise, then the risk of the endeavour backfiring becomes inconsequential.

Mister Yoshida, you missapraise us. We have no intention of deconstructing the primary wreck. Whilst we equally have no desire to see the Bering gate repaired, irradiating our sanctuary would do little but demonise us in the eyes of a government which needs no more excuses, a consequence perhaps more suicidal than the very real physical untenability that would frame the Union’s actions in the Liberty border systems.

Perhaps it is my grasp of English which pushes me to craft mirages, but we have no grandiose aspirations to repair, tamper with, or in any way interact with beyond the capture of the detritus littering the tanner belt. There are a great many millions of tonnes of exotic materials drifting, unregulated, amidst the comparatively bland wastes of the main belt. Jumpgates are as significant an investment as they are because of their extreme material cost, alongside the niche expertise and closely harboured hardware from which they are composed. We may not be supersymmetry physicists, Hackers, but we are materials scientists, and we do know that the wreckage of that gate is a unique opportunity to prize the lid off Agiera’s proprietary jam jar. It is the minutiaeuae of the debris which intrigue us, not the potential of reconstructing the whole.

I am but a mouthpiece, Hackers. The jump gate’s debris represents a resource - a scanty one, but the best we have to work with in the limited time since the Hessians put a six lane highway over the geopolitical Rubicon. Ostensibly, the majority of Unioner operatives are little more than self-invested dogsbodies ill-adjusted to sudden conflict with the very battle-heartened partisans who had once provided for all from our bread to our bodybags. The blood diamond trade can only be naught when both supplier and delivery are in oppositional states, Hackers - a disadvantage that weighs most sorely against us. The Hessians can always find another buyer, of course. We readily expect our forever amoral Junker allies to step into the breech, which gives us little time to find a new slice of fiscal pie before the Arbeitsdirektor, myself, and most of my immediate superiors, find themselves with a pistol to their chests.

I will be very clear - I have been ordered to turn these worthless chunks of twisted, radioactive scrap into a marketable cottage industry. If I fail, our people will disintegrate, or we will have to find another source of revenue. There is another option; to be come a Corsair vassal, and whilst I live I will do my utmost to prevent such a fall from grace. My place is not to convince my leaders that the task is erroneous, but to accomplish. This is the nature of the beast, Hackers.

The objective is to sell the detritus as-is, as they come. The salvage is in itself compositionally unique - unlike the wasted wreckage at the heart of the Texas emissions, the salvage is comparatively un-degraded and individual elements of the gate distinguishable. By nature of their uniqueness and the illicit nature of the technology represented, we are confident that we will be able to find a consumer amongst the insecurities edge worlds, where the repercussions of such research would be isolated from our less craven home systems. I do not care if an aspiring zoner tinkerer floods their kidneys with neutrons, provided they would be willing to part with their credits for the privilege.

It is the next most potent asset to a white-box key code that we possess, Lane Hackers. We will do our utmost to turn the off-casts of the Rheinland Liberty conflict into assets, if only because the conditions of the now force us to action. Our newest fighter designs are not ready, Hackers, and the temporary contingencies put into place to ward the Hessians off will only last us for so long.

Be advised, this is happening in our cosmic backyard - we are not asking for your concern, although it is noted, for we will push ahead till ourselves, or the concept, breaks. There is no time to formulate alternatives. Instead, we are requesting oversight. Any intelligence the Lane Hackers could provide to minimise the risk to our extractors. You are the closest we come to Agiera’s intellectual proprietary, which makes your insight invaluable. You may not be able to discourage us, but you can ensure that we avoid repeating the mistakes of the many which came before.

In return, we are willing to embrace your offer of having a Lane Hacker present during the interrogation of Hoffman. This, of course, means the entire contents of the scenario will be shared between the Lane Hackers and the Unioners - a token of faith, despite our stubbornness. Out of our desire to have the man done away with before the BDM follow the corn trail, the interrogation will take place as soon as a suitable cell can be prepared. Call me antiquated; I will not divulge the location of such a sensitive event over the neural-net, despite the security of this channel. We are, after all, playing with an intelligence agency notorious for its inscrutability.

As to how we acquired Hoffman, I am not authorised to divulge GEIST operations, nor do I possess all the specifics, nor the figures involved beyond the captive. What I can reveal is the methodology, and it is an old one; a double-agent. A trusted asset selectively fed the BDM a mixture of false and true information that they acted on - sacrificing a unit here, taking a fall there - engendering a sense of trust and results. She succeeded in acquiring a face-to-face meeting with Hoffman at a neutral location, whereupon she shot Hoffman down, to be acquired under escort by our retrieval team. The entire operation remained seamless.

Hoffman is an unusual step for us. Whilst information is the essence of your trade, we mostly deal in hard assets. This is borne from the nature of our revenue sources - intermediary mixed-goods smuggling, and the fencing of, ahem, violently acquired, stolen goods. The vast majority of independent Unioner operatives are little more than terrorists and pirates funded by conflict diamonds and the trade of alien detritus - we are very conscious of the image we present. It is the wetwork that has permitted the under-society to survive for five hundred years off the entrails of the system that destroyed us - yet we try to preserve a certain honour amongst the damned - for the most part, by avoiding causing harm to our own as much as we can, including the more misguided of the cooperates, unless they carry goods harmful to the wider socioeconomic good. Call us altruists. But that would be a misapprehension of what we believe. Perhaps its the ideologic Randian in my soul that calls out for individual pleasure - or the consequence of being born into the green. It matters not. What is a concern for us is that Hoffman is just as patriotic in intentions as we are - he is a talented, if misguided, man. Unfortunately, he is of the fibre that does not flex when struck - if he was one of ours, he would have murdered his way up the path of advancement, as all true meritocracies must. Unfortunately, he is the enemy , in every sense of the term, but he is not The Enemy. You can understand our nerve in holding him. He cannot be bartered, for the BDM can hardly be expected to negotiate with those they treat with absolute scorn, nor will he break. If anything his capture is a blue-skies experiment into cause and effect. We have the opponent’s queen. How will the BDM respond to this decisive move? Will they sacrifice pawns to return her? Will they respond cautiously or with absolute aggression?

Our moves have been unconventional in line with the progressive diminishment of our conventional operational tenability. The Union has been acting in Alpha strikes because it is the only way to regain ground - and, perhaps, to take anew. This is our chance to cheat the devil. Our dalliances with the gate and our actions with Hoffman are just the first wave.