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Mar 23rd, 2012, 11:17:57 PM
#1
TheHolo.Net Poster
Sssmoke me a kjipperrr, jI'll be back forrr brrreakfassst!
Ghosts in the Ether
"Captain, incoming Holonet comms, from Captain Terius."
Lieutenant Mallin didn't waste any time as Cirr stepped on the bridge, fresh from an engine room inspection and usual fussing with his engineer. So much the better. He needed a diversion to keep him from pestering below decks too much. It was a compulsion difficult to ignore for the ex-engineer.
"jI'll take jit jin mjy offjice, Ljieutenant."
The Cizerack took a detour from his approach to his chair, hanging a left, and stepped through the sliding door leading to his ready room. Opting to stand rather than take the message at his desk, since it came from his flotilla command, Captain Raurrssatta activated the floor-mounted holoprojector, intending on having a conversation with Captain Terius's hologram on a 1:1 basis.
"Captajin?"
Last edited by Cirrsseeto Quez; Apr 28th, 2012 at 11:49:01 AM.
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Mar 23rd, 2012, 11:31:48 PM
#2
Half a spiral arm away, Soto Terius set down the mug of lukewarm caf he'd been cradling, and extracted himself from his chair. A hand tugged down at the front of the vest that had bunched a little while he'd been sitting: he blamed the cut and fit of the garment, while his medical officer insisted the cut and fit of his body was more the problem.
A few steps was all it took to cross his modestly scaled office, and step onto a holo-platform of his own, a respectful distance from where the shimmering blue Cizerack was now projected.
Terius returned Raurrssatta's greeting with a curt nod, and a "Captain," of his own.
Formalities taken care of, the Corellian turned his attention to much more important matters; apparently, idle curiosity seemed to take precedent. "How's she holding up?" he asked. From one Captain to another, and one engineer to another, it was clear to which she he was referring.
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Mar 23rd, 2012, 11:48:34 PM
#3
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Mar 24th, 2012, 12:03:30 AM
#4
"Commander Nadine from the Relentless finally gave birth to those twins she's been lugging around inside her," he answered, bringing the Captain up to speed with the latest scuttlebutt. "Rumour has it that the labour lived up to the ship's name."
Of course, that was hardly the kind of update that was being asked for; but Soto's mentor back during the Clone Wars had taught him that a good amount of innane trivia and chatter were important tools for any good Captain: they created a level of mild boredom that helped lull the crew into compliance, just to have a reason to escape.
"I have a mission for you," he said at last, after a lengthy pause. "Something requiring speed, stealth, and more than a little unorthadox flying." A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "It started sounding like your kind of mission the second it landed on my desk."
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Mar 24th, 2012, 12:31:36 AM
#5
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Mar 24th, 2012, 02:12:42 AM
#6
Glancing down at a datapad briefly, Soto punched in a few commands that would transmit the mission files to the Novgorod, for the Captain to review at his leisure. In the meantime however, he offered the basics.
"The General has had us ramping up the pressure on the Imperials for weeks, throwing hit and run attacks at them from all angles. We haven't broken them, but we've shaken them loose." He tucked the datapad away, and clasped his hands behind his back. "Now it's time to punch a hole."
"What we need is a distraction: something to draw the Imperials out far enough for the flotilla to break through. We have our target; we need you hitting one of their listening posts. One ship alone won't be enough bait, though. Which begs the question -"
His mouth tugged into a hint of a knowing smile. "- how good is your ECW Officer, Captain?"
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Mar 24th, 2012, 02:19:07 AM
#7
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Mar 25th, 2012, 10:48:51 PM
#8
Soto adopted a grim half-frown, his fingers toying through the whiskers of his beard. The General gave him a broad mandate and a long leash with which to operate, so time scales were largely left up to his own discretion. That said, in the world of Intelligence, old news was often wrong news: leaving the situation too long could completely close their window, and unravel months of work.
"I can give you forty-eight hours, Captain," he said eventually; carefully. "And that's forty-eight real, Coruscant standard hours: not the needlessly dramatic forty-eight hours and a few minutes that you spacers like to play around with."
His hands clasped behind his back. "I'll hold off the assault, awaiting your signal. If we don't heard from you, we'll assume the mission is scrubbed: if you're just late, you'll end up in there on your own."
Despite the hologram, he still managed to translate his piercing gaze across a hundred lightyears. "Can you get it done?"
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Mar 25th, 2012, 10:56:38 PM
#9
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Mar 26th, 2012, 08:42:32 PM
#10
Alliance communications were all encrypted, of course. They were piggybacked cleverly over the Empire's own equipment via the Holonet. What was once a highly restricted resource had been somewhat cracked back open, although Imperial Battlegroups would often black out the transmitters themselves after aggressive action against civilian populations sympathetic to the Rebellion. While the Rebels were organized primarily into small, fast response task forces, communications blackouts limited reaction times to the aformetioned crises. The Empire had become so thorough at disinformation that they would fake news reports from the planets in question for up to a month, depending on the locale's importance.
The concepts of hyperspace transmissions were grasped by few, but if Morgan could figure out how they worked, and if it was feasible to create more at moderate cost, it would be a huge boon to bypass the Empire completely. He sifted through data pads on hypercomm theory, and took notes wherever something concrete came up, and would theorycraft ways to impliment it with cheaper equipment.
"Morgan Evanar to the nearest comm room." Part of Morgan hoped it was Adia, but knew it wasn't. He took an engineering ladder shaft. It was faster than a lift, since he was only two decks from the comm. The Challenger's holocomm wasn't a retrofit, but a Clone Wars classic. It lacked the resolution of some of the newer holoencoders and emitters, but they were incredibly reliable.
"Cirr? Or should I say... Captain Raurrssatta?" He pronounced the Cizerack's last name with a bit of jest.
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Mar 26th, 2012, 08:53:41 PM
#11
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Mar 26th, 2012, 09:12:58 PM
#12
"We're fine. I miss talking shop, though." Morgan hadn't though about it very much since Cirr left, but Morgan had learned more about ship innards in the last two years from Cirr than most could learn in a lifetime. The burly Cizerack had a keen mind for the finer points of how a ship actually operated. Morgan was an information sponge with a natural intuition for the details of advanced theories and implementation/simulation. Also, there really wasn't anyone else who made a gym partner worth a damn since the 27th Marines had rotated out and took their Wookie contingent with them. He'd been authorized more food since his physical and managed to put on another solid 10 kilos of lean mass.
Cirr's face shifted, and Morgan knew he wanted more detail.
"Fizzkrik still won't listen about the shield buffers, Adia's... off somewhere. Serena is doing much better, but she still has some demons haunting her." The Jedi shrugged. "I think we're about as normal as we can be." There were some other details he wanted to add, but wasn't comfortable. Even if hyperspace data streams were nearly impossible to snoop on, the physical parts of the loop weren't.
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Mar 26th, 2012, 09:56:54 PM
#13
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Mar 26th, 2012, 10:19:58 PM
#14
Cirr knew Morgan well enough to know that he wasn't a glory hound, and the only reason he ended up on the foolish adventures he had was because they were absolutely necessary. However, Cirr would only bring up something like this if it needed Morgan's combinations of expertise. Morgan was only a decent pilot by virtue of reflex and spatial depth, so that wasn't it. The Rogues were better. His frame didn't fit well in a starfighter anyway. It wasn't teleportation, because Cirr flat out didn't trust it. Not that Morgan blamed him. He knew how to do it, not how it worked. No, it was something technical.
"jI need you for the E-Warr con." Cirr stated flatly. The Jedi paused, but his eyes lit up slightly. ECW wasn't something he had any real experience with first hand, but it was all signal noise and reflections, which Morgan understood well. If Cirr gave him the manuals, Morgan would be able to read it in a few hours. On the fly, there weren't a lot of slicers who could match his input speed after his Jedi training.
"OK. Send me your specs and an equipment rundown. What about your current E-War officer?" Morgan asked.
"jI don't rreally jhave one. Malljin jis already sprread thjin on the comms." Cirr explained. "He can't handle both."
Morgan gave the Cizerack Captain a knowing nod.
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Mar 26th, 2012, 10:32:05 PM
#15
TheHolo.Net Poster
Sssmoke me a kjipperrr, jI'll be back forrr brrreakfassst!
The E-Warfare suite was one of those wink-and-a-nod gifts from Koensayr-Meorrrei that had been retrofitted into the Novgorod's existing compartment. Technically there wasn't anything illegal or military about quantum-band refractors. It was hobby kit stuff to most people. Of course when you put advanced logic like the kind a hyperdrive motivator could crunch into it, and boosted the band, and then combined it with things like spectrum threaders, you could do all kinds of creative and malicious things to comm spectrum. Like, produce exponentially populating moments of packets to bog down triangulators, making people wanting to target you with turbolasers and missiles need either a lot of luck, or a dozen ships actively headhunting.
Of course, that was how it was explained to him by a very-motivated salesperson in a conversation that did not exist. Mallin was just lucky to keep half of it plugged in on a good day. Nothing to fault him, he was just spread in every direction.
"jI'm trransmjittjing coorrdjinates forr a rrendezvous. jIf you ljike what you see, we'll be wajitjing therre."
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Mar 28th, 2012, 11:04:43 PM
#16
The small courier shuttle Morgan had borrowed sat in space at the rendezvous location Cirr had specified. He took advantage of the transit time to read the Koensayr-Meorrrei ECW suite whitepapers and documentation. Morgan read the user guide first, of course, but found it a little light on the fundamentals of how the device worked. Some of it was classified, and it shipped with some clumsy presets. Morgan had started work on more effective echoing and reflection, even to bring the illusion of a full-sized task force to bear. So long as they stayed out of visual range as long as it mattered, they could pull this off. Imperial sensor suites were well known. It wasn't like the eyeballs had much in the way of anything beyond a pair of blasters.
He was unsurprisingly early, so he went back to designing scenarios and keying up formulas for the different sensor packages that might be encountered.
Morgan looked up an hour later, when motion caught his peripheral vision.
"Holy shitsnacks." The Marauder class Corvette's Alliance colors were battle-scarred, but in good repair. Very much like a proud Trandoshan. Morgan waited a few seconds while he got over his fight-or-flight reaction, and hailed the Novgorod.
"Shuttle 813712-AV to Alliance ship, requesting permission to board."
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Mar 30th, 2012, 10:19:32 AM
#17
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Mar 30th, 2012, 11:02:50 PM
#18
There wasn't much room for error, but Morgan was good at this sort of gravity oriented piloting. It was more like flying a speeder than a star fighter. He put the small shuttle effortlessly amidst the pallets, but had to climb one to leave the shuttle properly.
"Cirr!" Morgan said when he spotted the fellinoid. He swung is his long legs over the palletalized boxes, and hit the ground. Morgan embraced the Cizerack in a friendly hug, and clapped him on the back.
"So this is your new tub, eh?"
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Mar 31st, 2012, 11:26:10 AM
#19
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Mar 31st, 2012, 03:46:14 PM
#20
Morgan nodded. "Trading freedom for responsibility and power is always awkward." Hell, they'd done some foolish, straight out of a holo adventure things together.
When the bridge doors opened, only a Cathar ensign paused saluted. Cirr gave a simple nod, and she continued past. The rest of the bridge crew was busy with mission preparations, save for one empty seat, next to the communications console. When Cirr and Morgan moved closer, Morgan immediately recognized the layout of the displays and controls.
It was the E-War console. Full spectrum color displays that could be set to accommodate multiple different vision spectrum for multiple species operation. There were control clusters for grouped functions, with hold button toggles, plus a full Basic keyboard and macro buttons. It was the top of the line model, as Morgan had learned through the documentation. Cirr had sent him a general overview, but there were many details that were lacking.
"Can you give me a more detailed briefing?"
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