The Zoners Consortium is hereby asking you all for support in order to continue the (]c[)Leonardo Event Series. We are currently preparing Chapter 4 and would like to encompass again as many players as possible. Beside Zoners and Order folks we are addressing the Corsair players this time.
1. Summary of the Chapters 1-3
2. Chapter 4
3. Player Information
1. Summary of the Chapters 1-3
"Among the members of the Zoners Consortium it was Yev Lightwing, a well-known philanderer and gifted scientist on Corinth Research Station, who had searched for ways to prove that the threat imposed by Nomads on all human civilizations in the Edge Worlds could be faced by using the alien's major weapon against themselves. While the laboratories were busy with the hypothetical considerations about Nomad Brains and their capabilitiy to produce the phenomenon referred to as Mind Sharing it was very soon clear that the Consortium would need to construct and dispatch specialized vessels to collect samples from living Nomads and to prove the developed theories by case studies in space. The Consortium thought about the proper ship type for a while and finally decided to choose the Zephyr Carrier developed by the Independent Miners Guild. While the Zoners had vessels on their own, suitable well to research deep space, neither the legendary Jinkusu Juggernaut, nor the Aquillion Carrier had the simple and pragmatic layout the Zephyr had: Clearly separated sections best suited for containing variously specialized and exchangable laboratories, a centralized power system to decrease the costs for readjustments and integration of scientific equipment, and isolated cradles to be rebuilt as drone chutes for launching large arrays of sensors into unknown space. Thus Yev Lightwing ordered the construction of one Zephyr Carrier at Singapore.
The Consortium knew that it was still a long way until the Zephyr, christened by (]c[)Leonardo, would be ready for his first mission, so the Zoner group around Charles Burns, Johann Boll and Louisa Salome started to organize the transfer of several thousand tons of H-Fuel from Ogashawa to Java by courtesy of the Gas Miners Guild. Yev Lightwing as leading envoy of the Leonardo Project arranged a fleet of Gas Miners Guild and Zoner vessels to deliver the H-Fuel from Ogashawa to Java (Leonardo Chapter 1), and not only during this specific journey the pilots of the Gas Miners Guild have shown true faith to their alliance with the Zoners. Both revived the ties of this alliance.
The second part of the construction works was ready to be started then. The Consortium knew that the missions the Leonardo is desgined for would lead the scientists aboard into great dangers, so further refinements were necessary. Frank Zamboni being the assistant of Yev Lightwing, who was mainly occupied with his graduation as Shipmaster of the Consortium at this time, was able to arrange a delivery of Super Alloy originating from Trafalgar. The Junkers there agreed to deliver the Super Alloy to Freeport 11 (Leonardo Chapter 2). Again many Zoner Captains, actually friends of the Zoners Consortium, joined the fleet taking professional care for the delivery's safety. At Freeport 11 the Super Alloy was deposited for a while, in order to cover its tracks. Then it was picked up again and delivered to Evora Shipyard where the second part of the construction should happen.
The ZTC maintained secret connections to the Order's Primary Fleet from the days this group just emerged from unsatisfied and alarmed Zoner individuals, not even mentioned in the Global Registry of Sirius Factions yet. This ongoing cooperation concerned with the survival of the Human Species in Sirius based on mutual exchange of technology and intelligence and the funding of the Primary Fleet ensured the success of the joint efforts to explore the capabilities of the Nomad Species. The High Admirality of the Order granted permissions to their engineers to cooperate with the shipwrights of Livadia to help with the enhancement of Leonardo's hull, also granting a rarity, the installation of an Order Cloaking Device for Capital Ships. But the hardest part, the transferral of the Zephyr from Singapore to Evora, was still not accomplished. Again the envoys Yev Lightwing and Frank Zamboni, both swapped positions, arranged a fleet to escort the Leonardo from Singapore to Evora (Leonardo Chapter 3). Despite of the secrecy and caution the Consortium has imposed on all involved a large fleet of Keeper vessels almost intercepted the Leonardo on its way from Tau-44 to Omicron-100, and forced the Leonardo fleet to head for Evora in disorder where a second and better planned assault lead to one of the greatest battles between both species since the end of the Nomad War.
Although the Human Species prevailed this day, the Nomad and their kin left the impression as if they were just testing the determination of humans ..."
2. Chapter 4
Louisa Salome arrived in the small hall on the lower levels of Corinth Research Station where she was supposed to meet Professor Vega, the leading scientist of the Consortium's MSD Project. Along the edges of the hall the dimly lit grid galleries reaching from the floor to the ceiling were populated with the research staff of the MSD Project. The center of the room was bright as a sunny day on Gran Canaria. Just below the galleries were the large blocks containing the Deuterium Reactors arranged in an octagon, each connected by a thick fiber optic cable to a pedestal in the the very center of the hall. On this pedestal, smaller by half than the room between the reactors and covered by a cloche filled with a milky but still translucent fluid, was one of the samples the Consortians were repeatingly searching for during the last months. The thing inside the cloche looked like moldering cheese but with a structure and consistency only highly tensed muscles have. This thing was vibrating every time eight bright pulses from the reactors reached the pedestal enclosing it completely into a sphere bright as a star. Louisa had to cover her eyes. Similarly tensed as the Superior Nomad Brain the researchers sat at their workstations and monitored the data collected by countless sensors installed at the pedestal and on the inner side of the cloche. Louisa made a grimace as if she would have just tasted adulterated milk. Then she swept her look over the galleries searching for Professor Vega.
"Buenos dias, Mrs. Salome!" Louisa was startled, she turned, just to look into small and dark eyes glowing in the depths of a tanned face. The wildly growing beard and the oily hair gave Professor Vega the look of a vagabond, but this man was in reality the best researcher on both sides of Freeport 11, probably in the entire sector, who the Consortium was able to find for the tininess of an extraordinarily expensive laboratory and a yearly salary that would have been enough to buy a nice little strike fleet to invade and occupy Pennsylvania. Born on Crete, educated on New Tokyo and New Berlin, and known as a notorious consumer of Cardamine this incalculable man was a real treasury of knowledge in the fields of natural sciences, and especially alien lifeforms. His works on Alien Organisms were Louisa's reason for this hire, although she has already started to regret it, since the advances of the MSD Project were in a stalmate for longer than a month. "Your smell is charming", he almost whispered while granting her an indicated bow. Louisa opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. Raising one brow she put her hands on her hips and answered with a sonorous voice: "I bet that I can buy off all flatteries available on New London for just one hour of your service, if they'd just sell them. Show me your results", adding with more temper: "NOW!" Vega smiled, He pointed to a cabin not far away from them.
After Vega has closed the door and both have taken a seat Louisa stared at the scientist waiting for the answers she was expecting for some months by then
Louisa: "Have you found what you've been searching for?"
Vega: "Yes, ... err ... actually ... no, we are still waiting for it!"
Louisa: "Waiting? ... What are you doing with one of these very rare samples out there?"
She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder to the hall.
Vega: "We are just searching for an alternative power source, that's all"
Louisa: "Alternative?"
She slammed her tiny fist on his desk, and ignored the pain.
Louisa: "Don't try to fool me, Vega. I've heard enough of your pathetic excuses. Another one, and I'll call our security to throw you out of the next lock."
Vega sighed, shook his head, but he still smiled when he answered:
"I'm not fooling you at all, Mrs Salome. If you'd have read my reports you'd know that we've successfully isolated the electromagnetic frequencies Nomad Brains are using to share their thoughts and emotions, and you'd also know that we've invested a lot of resources for the approach to create interferences to finally disrupt their native communication, but we cannot keep up with their modulation speed yet. Unbelievable, but they're sometimes using several hundred frequencies at once, most likely for distraction purposes while they're transmitting their vital information on just a few. Even more than that, they seem to sense free riders, thus interrupting their communication completely. But we're sure that their Superior Brains are the key to all of our answers, since decentralized communication needs always some kind of negotiation mechanism, naturally inherited by their biology, yes genetics again, or deliberately imposed to all connected brains by mental commands, but it is still nothing else but centralized coordination."
He pointed to the pedestal.
"This brain over there is a kind of miracle, unseen before. We know since the Nomad War that their brains are extremely skilled, but we couldn't figure out how they're communicating. To be honest, we still know just a tiny bit of all details, but even with the standard samples we were able to find out that their brains are capable of changing chemical potentials by utliizing a broad variety of substances. The ions they're using and the possible types of reactions are far more complicated than we're used from human brains. Human brains cannot produce electormagnetic fields up to a strength that they could use it to tune themselves up to another brain. Nomads are capable of doing that. It seems as if the Nomads have done nothing else but to refine their cognitive capacities for millions of years, so after we've found out that they're able to get in tune with some frequencies very easily, we thought that we'd only need Nomad Superior Brains to isolate the electromagnetic clusters they're sending in occasional carpets through space - uh, let us call them channels, although it's just a crippled abstraction. The Nomads are incredible, really, almost everything about them."
He glared throught the window to the pedestal.
Louisa, not very impressed, answered: "I knew that already, and I've read your damn reports, each of them. The last thing you've logged was some weird stuff about the prerequisite of a proper power source in order to activate the Superior Brain. All's clear so far - you'd just need to activate this sample to start a better recording with your sensors, so stop lecturing me now. Why aren't you getting this damn power source?"
Vega leaned back crossing his arms: "It is not as easy as it might seem to uninvolved. We've been using all known energy sources to get this damn thing working, heat, electricity, light, and even mixtures of all and often enhanced by electromagnetic radiation. We've even tried to apply Dark Matter enriched by Strings, and I know that this must be the right approach because this brain clearly responded to some of those mixtures, but only for a very short time, which is by far too short if we want achieve a major progress. And, yes, Mrs Salome, I've already sent out some of my assistants to to gather all scientific information from our bases and to buy off foreign"
Louisa pressed on: "Continue!"
Vega sighed: "We've reviewed every file available about Nomads, but we couldn't find anything knew but then the scales fell from my eyes: It must be a Nomad Power Cell we're searching for. THIS is the energy source we're needing. I know that this rare item is permanently changing the type of energy and the whole mixture, probably to support the mentioned variety of chemical activities in a Nomad brain. Therefore I've sent out several pilots of the Consortium to find one of these cells - Jane O'Malley, Titus Blonerba, Fritz Meyer, Akemi Hanakata. Even Frank Zamboni set out to search for this little artefact, but I haven't heard ..."
Louisa interrupted him immediately and asked: "Frank Zamboni, our Head of Researches?" She seemed alerted now. "How many days have passed since he has left Corinth?"
Vega frowned. "Must be two or three weeks ago. He took a part of my staff with him on the Volantis."
Louisa jumped up. "And you thought that you could sit here doing nothing? ... Oh, I am sooo sorry ... You're investigating alternative power suplies for our key sample ... how smart!"
She opened the door and turned to him saying: "We will try to bring this damn cell to you, and if we should come back alive I'm expecting usable results within a few weeks, or you'll end on a plantation on Malta, I'm sure you'd appreciate this fate compared to that what will happen to the rest of us if our Mind Sharing Disruptor Project won't succeed finally."
She stepped out on the galley and slammed the door behind her, looking around in search for an elevator. 'Frank must never fall into the hands of the Squids. We need Leonardo's sensors to find him.' she thought.
3. Player Information
The ZTC hopes to get a positive resonance for a participation by the following groups:
1. The Order's Primary Fleet
2. TAZ, OSI, and CoZ
3. TBH, Benitez, and HAF
4. Zoner, Order, Sair and Freelancer/Mercenary Independents
As always we would like to be accompanied by fighters and bombers mostly. A few gunboats fit in well too, but we are preferring the usage of smaller vessels. In the end we should have not more than three or four caps except for Leonardo.
Mission Objectives
Primary:
Find (]c[)Volantis and try to rescue as many lost ZTC pilots as possible including Frank Zamboni, ZTC Head of Researches
Seondary:
Try to collect one Nomad Power Cell
The Leonardo has to be escorted from Omicron-100 to Omega-58. It will use its sensors to search for the lost ships once the fleet has reached Omega-58, and if everything is going well also for a Nomad Power Cell. The first part of the fleet, Zoners and Order, would gather at Evora Shipyard in Omicron-100. The second part of the fleet, the Corsairs would join in Omicron Kappa or Omicron Theta. From there the whole fleet would travel to Omega-58 and fan out in search for the lost Consortium vessels. After having found the Volantis at least, the fleet should escort the Volantis back to Livadia and the Leonardo back to Evora, since Leonardo's construction is not finished yet. It is likely that the Leonardo will not have any weapons for this mission, so it will be very vulnerable. The Leonardo and the Volantis have to reach their destinations at all costs.
The Wilde Systems are not a simple walkthrough, and they are a horror if Wilde and Keeper characters should join us in this event, so this mission event will require a lot of preparation if we want to reach the mission goals. Currently we do not know how good this event will be booked, so we are adjourning the specific planning (assignments, operational groups, etc.) till a time when we know more about the participating ships and ship types. This event will be happening on a Saturday or Sunday within the next weeks (could range from two weeks up to eight). We are interested of course to find a day when most of the registered players can participate. The events for the chapters 1-3 took an average time of about three hours.
Payments:
4 million Sirius credits per Repair Ship
3 million Sirius credits per Fighter or Bomber
2 million Sirius credits per Gunboat
So if you want to join this event - you would make us happy, you know? - register here by posting the character name, the ship type, the faction affiliation and your GMT based timezone below. You can also register a whole group, no problem.
..:: Incoming Transmission : The Order Primary Fleet ::..
..:: Neuronal Identification : Grand Admiral Tovig Kelt ::..
..:: Signal Location : Planet Toledo, Omicron Minor ::..
Greetings.
Count me in. I'll probably fly a Nephthys very heavy fighter.
---Incoming Transmission---
---Openning Channel---
---ID: (]c[) Mohammad Sadiq al Noori
May the peace be upon us sisters and brothers,
since I'm not much of a warrior and my little sister just got new Zoner Gunboat (first ship she ever was in charge of) I'd like to propose her to be the member of the ZTC team. Our chronometers are adjusted to the GMT+1 measuring system, so feel free to let us know when and where to meet over the secured private channel
Hail. It seems my instincts didn't lie when I set my course for Freeport 11. I will help with everything I can. My choice of ship will be my Griffin, although I don't have much to choose from *laughs*
Good luck to you all.
> Decrypting............... done
> Com ID: Peter Duke
> Location: Duct_tape, Barrier Gate Station, Coronado
> To: ZTC, Freeport 15, Omicron 74
> Subject: Something need fixin'?
..:: Message Begins - Starting Playback ::..
[font=Verdana]
This thing on? Hmm...
*taps the screen a few times then smiles contently about it working*
Looks like it... '[color=#CCFFFF]neway, Peter Duke here. Heard from my contacts that yer in need of some ships to get stiched and glued back into shape.
I think I got most of them [CENSORED]hick-ups outta Barrier Gate Station's docking pylons... apart from that [CENSORED]piece of[CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED] that keeps getting my precious smack into a closed [CENSORED] bay door when launching... *takes a deep breath* Err... sorry 'bout that.
So count me in. I should be able to find some free time on week-end evenings 'round that GMT+1 time thingy...
Kind Regards
Peter
*pushes a button...
and as nothing happens smacks the screen with his wrench...
which causes the recording to end abruptly*
I think I will be able to squeze some time to take a part in this. I will be flying fighter or bomber, it will depend on which will be needed more. Kheops will be avaliable of course if some major barries pop out around Minor, but I am sure it will be alright.
[color=#CC9933]
Vice Admiral of Order Primary Fleet, Jack Osborne