Subject: Operation Snowfall Encryption:Stacked Like Pancakes Location:Neue Regel, Alaska
The recent intelligence-gathering operation for the Office of Confederal Intelligence has resulted in some interesting discoveries.
The Alaska system has several interstellar connections. Two jump gates, one of which leads to Virginia, and the other of which we believe to be the old gate to the Liberty core worlds, and a jump hole to Virginia. [ Attachment: Image ]
The system contains several long stretches of navigational buoys and trade lane construction sites, all of which are absolutely covered in weapons platforms. They are equipped with standard turrets as well as some particularly nasty missile launchers.
The battleship Minneapolis is stationed down the path from the Virginia jump gate. As mentioned in communications to OCI, there is a trade lane under construction to the south. Omitted from the report is a second path to the north of navigational buoys. [ Attachment: Image ]
The northern path ends at some kind of incredibly large jump gate, possibly related to the ones that were built between Liberty and Bretonia for the counter-attack against the Royal Navy. It did not appear to be powered up or active in any way. [ Attachment: Image ]
I estimate that the lane south from the Minneapolis to be at least halfway built. At its southern terminus, a gaudy Ageira facility called Prudhoe Skunk Works has been built. It didn't seem to see me, but I immediately moved for the cover of the Alaska nebula. [ Attachment: Image ]
The far end of the other half-built trade lane from Prudhoe Skunk Works is a shipyard with the battleship Carcassone in one of its drydocks. It was partially powered up, with IFF and AIS transponders running. AIS for the shipyard identified it as Juneau. [ Attachment: Image ]
The return trip to our staging area was... eventful. Thank God for the cloak on the Neue Regel. [ Attachment: Image ]
After getting nice and far out of scanner range of... that, I disabled the cloaking device, re-enabled comms, and caught a whiff of some DSE transport broadcasting. No visual or thermal identification, just a name and their poor operational security. [ Attachment: Image ]
Summary: That system is being built up as a goddamn fortress surrounding an Ageira sandbox. It looks like DSE is supporting Ageira's efforts in the system, which means that if we wanted to get some more eyes in there without needing to throw valuable assets in, that's how we'd want to do it. If we're lucky, the idiots at Prudhoe will flick a switch and suck half the system into a dark matter storm. They're two for two on slapping down long-range gate experiments on top of those now, so if you're a betting guy/gal/other pal, I'd be rooting for the storm.
On the subject of Nomads: None of us are experts in that field. Part of that is intentional, what with the whole New Caledonia experiment. My quick guess from my engineering days is that based on the rough size the Neue Regel's scanners reported it to be as well as the heated gases coming off its hull, it was likely the Nomad equivalent of a heavy battleship and was fairly heavily damaged. I got a good glimpse of it before I turned the cloaking device on, and if I could see it, well... without an active cloaking device, there ain't no stealth in space, and to use a metaphor, tracer rounds work both ways.