Ziost - Crown of the Sith Empire

The holonet was abuzz again. The chatter was garbled through ads. But Tyber is a man of conviction. Keeping his usual routes to looking for information and clues on the Eagle, he came across something unusual.

A story written by a fan of two of the aspirants. His lips pursed. It was salacious, and a bit far fetched. But there was something more there...

Decoded Message wrote:Sound file that reads: Take to the streets, take your Empire back. The Dark Council is poisoning the Emperor!

His eyes wide at the blatant sedition, he looked around.

"Colonel! I've got something!"

Hala stood up and walked over to Rooks desk with interest.

"Did that come with anything else?" she asked, eyes needlessly scanning the transcript repeatedly.

"Jutrian, get in here. Share with Lt. Rook the results of your analysis for Eagle Op Sec."

"Coming colonel," came the answer from the main room. Elise walked in, carrying her datapad and a mug of something sweet smelling.

"Here is what I have so far lieutenant," she said, laying out the pad for him to examine. Metaphors, encryption schemes, ciphers and their variations. Loads of correlated, processed raw data.

"It's still a work in progress," she apologized.

Valuable Facts, Knowledge(Underworld): 1eP+3eA+2eD 0 successes, 1 advantage, 1 Triumph

"Work in progress is still good. Thank you, Jutrian. Your aid is always invaluable." He smiled he looked over the notes, and combined it with his own mental work on the task.

"I'm not sure what else is buried here, yet." He shook his head, still working to process the data.

"By the way. During my investigations last night, I hit the streets. Got some basic information on a person of interest. One Malam Gil." He leaned back in his chair, looking to the Colonel.

"Made a lot of money off of yesterday. He knew who I was, and that I'm working under you. His arrogance was infuriating." Tyber frowned, recalling his encounter with the man.

"Whoever the Eagle is, it is apparent they are well connected, and have inside information on who is hunting them, and how they are doing it." His features hardened.

"There is a rat."

"Who is he?" she asked simply, her brow furrowing, "What sort of issues might we have if we rendition him sooner rather than later? Or do we need more surveillance?"

OOC: Average Skullduggery or Computers check to glean anything else GM Destiny flip as well.

While her boss was busy with silly things like words and questions, Elise began to reorder the data to see if she could make a pattern emerge. First an association graph, then a word cloud, a few random permutations, and an automated routine she liked which tried to make the data from the association graph present as a tree.... which made it easier to navigate for people who she assumed weren't smart enough just to read the cluster graph and spanning trees.

Dataset gleaning, average upgraded by GM destiny: 1eP+3eA+1eC+1eD 2 successes, 1 threat

The voice clip has underlying data as well, locations around Ziost, around the People’s Tower with a time focusing on the afternoon. She can almost clean up the audio as the voice is masked but instead she crashed the system which takes hours to recompile.

"Shit," Elise cursed, looking up sheepishly at Tyber and Hala, "I'll go load this on a larger machine. Stupid data pad can't handle semantic interpolation. Stupid, stupid, stupid piece of crap.... Though I guess we weren't going to the parties today anyway, right sirs? So it's not like I'm keeping you from anything fun. Iiiiiii..... I'll just go start on rebuilding the analysis and I'll ping you once I have everything cleaned up?"

She slid her hands across the table, fingers tentatively extending to pick up the data pad. It chirped as she touched it, beeping through the startup routine and flashing the Imperial Army symbol as the operating system started to reboot. She winced at the noise, snatched it up, and gave her superior officers an expectant glance. Hala nodded to dismiss her, and Jutrian's clothing swished as she streaked around the corner with resumed but fading cursing.

"Kriff." Tyber slammed his fist on his desk as the computer crashed. Shaking his head, he looked back to Hala.

"He is a consultant on various projects. Very rich, has a choice apartment in Varas Point. Tight security. Paid him a visit last night. Thought it would be less of a disaster than a msssive military raid. Less fallout, anyway." He sighed, pacing a bit.

"I can hit the streets in the afternoon, Colonel."

She nodded, "With what in mind? Trying to poke things and see if something slithers, or were you going to keep an eye on Gil. Maybe there will be a weak point in his retinue's scheduling. Of course, depending on how well Gil is connected he may already be on his way to Dromond Kaas for the evenings 'festivities'..."

"Poke and see. Gil won't be out getting his hands dirty. I think he's the bankroll. Or at least the way any payments to mercs are funneled." He shrugged. "If something was going to go down this afternoon, it would be from a cell, or a separate entity."

That nagging feeling at the back of his mind.

"Ma'am. He mentioned that after all was said and done, the Empire would be thankful for what has happened. What's going to happen. I have a bad feeling about this."

"If he's the bankroll, then taking him out of the picture would greatly help..." she mused. At his question though, she let her eyebrows furrow slightly.

"Rook, there are two types of terrorists: the sane and the insane. The difference being that the sane have what they think is a rational justification for their actions. They think they are the good guys, or are at least doing what they think is necessary. Our job is to help them understand why they are wrong or, failing that, use them to show others why they are wrong. Our real enemy isn't Gil, or yesterdays assassins and saboteurs. It's their ideas. It's an infection, and we need to protect the Empire from it.

So I say that as a pretext because I don't know exactly what is going to happen. We are almost always on defense, and it is very hard to prevent a dedicated lone gunman from causing damage. We know something is going to happen tomorrow afternoon around People's Tower. The bigger problem is that we seem to have a leak, so it is difficult to signal security without it getting back to the Eagle that the op's been compromised. Tomorrow is going to be a hard day, probably. A bad feeling though? Accept it, and do your best not to dwell on it. There's always another plot. This is the job, after all.

Make sense?" she asked.

"No, I do." He nodded. "That isn't where my feeling is. It's that someone, or someones who have been infected by that thought are in the upper echelons. That something was missed along the way that either we have infiltrators or someone has turned." His lips narrowed, those dark eyes focused on the Colonels.

"Hard days aren't an issue at all. That's what we are trained for, ma'am."

"I agree, that is what is most likely if they are already aware of both of us and our intents. So we'll rip this out, root and stem. And deal with whoever we find at the bottom," she said reassuringly.

"Absolutely, Colonel. And once we've cleaned house, it will be easier to also keep security and order. Without a cancer growing from within." He nodded, echoing her sentiments.

And then, a smile. "And maybe see how we can prevent a new infection at a later time."