A Criminal Act (RoTSA)

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=By Cannonshop=
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===A man on a mission===
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There are acts that…
…are crimes, regardless of what society you live in. There are stratagems that even the most depraved shy away from.
Well, one would hope so, anyway. Actually such depravity isn't that uncommon, what is, is the mix of that kind of depravity, plus the resources to carry it out and a lack of anyone to stop you.
Erich Frommer had the best education Terra could provide, university degrees in physics and business, billions of C-bills in resources, powerful friends in the Republic Senate.
He was also a man on a mission of sorts. That mission revolved around getting a measure of revenge for the damage done by certain factions on a certain world in the Republic.
Their sponsors were from outside, and as much as the official line was that the various factions that had initiated a civil war in the wake of Gray Monday were independent Actors, Erich Frommer felt he knew better.
The money and support, the resources being used to tear the Republic apart, had to be coming from Outside.
And Erich knew the capitals of every one of the foreign nations whom were using his Nation as a proxy battleground.
He checked the chart again, verifying the stars and the orbits, before he opened the fuel-feed and began warming the engines on his chosen instrument of Justice.
The first target was the easiest to reach, of course. New Avalon might be missed, but they'd financed, aided, and supported the Swordsworn, and possibly the Stormhammers, to destabilize the Republic in its hour of crisis, and for that, someone has to die.
His next target, will be Luthien, much harder to reach, but far more deserving. The puppet warriors of the Combine were tearing the nation apart as well, and after them, his list included much more difficult to reach places, places with names like Sudeten, and Tamar.
It was a bold plan, but it was also raw physics. Smash the head, the body (and the extensions) die.
He set the countdown, and hurried back to his shuttle, to reach the chartered Jumpship charging a few hours away. By the time anyone would come looking, it would be too late-500tons of nickel-iron and carbon-ice colloid would make short work of Avalon City and the hills around it-sometime in two weeks.
At the speed this asteroid would arrive, fifty tons would be enough to crack the tectonic plates, but he wanted to be sure that the misfortune got the people who were financing the destruction of his Republic.
Plus, there's a little extra security in going a bit overboard. 
Not that anyone will know, after all, who did it, or why… that would be too risky. Frommer wanted results, not Glory.
By the time the instrument reached the local detection range, it would be moving too fast to stop, and he would be gone days ago…
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==Victim of Discovery
Pamela Desmond…
…was a dishy brunette, a bit on the tall side, with an easy smile and light laugh. She was the very image of a proper New Avalon Institute of Science freshman, right down to her airtight security check, and her high IQ.
Something useful to have, when you're majoring in Sciences at the foremost non-terran institution for learning science.
Of course, that was the cover, because Perspective needed a cover, just to do the mission she'd been given.
"These images, do they look a little…off to you?" Her lab partner was Marsilla Knight, a Cambiano native, and Junior, taking the same classes with an eye toward joining a family shipping corporate.
"Huh…yeah, that's…weird. Run it back three days."
It would take them sixteen hours to get someone in AFFS's civil defense establishment to look at the imagery of the approaching cometary body.
Perspective's mission here, had been to quietly inject actual data into corrupted databases, an anonymous freshman can do a lot without being noticed, a celebrity cannot, and coming up with the warning that saves a world, tends to make one a public figure.
thumb|Avalon Class Cruiser, FSS Lucien Davion
By the time FSS Lucien Davion's battlegroup was running the intercept on the oncoming kinetic impactor, 'Pamela' was missing. Her body would be found in one of the canals near the waterfront, a coed murdered by a serial killer.
Perspective would have to wait for a new body, riding back as a file stored aboard an otherwise unremarkable cargo on a commercial JumpShip bound for the 'opportunity zones' along the Outworlds Border.
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===Terrorist Intercepted===
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Luthien…
…is not and has never been a particularly welcoming port of call for non-combine subjects, it is, however, an industrial world and center of power that needs trade, including foreign trade, to call at its ports.
Paula Diaz is a small-holder trader with paper from the Raven Alliance…among other nations. This status, and a Visa, got her access to the port, it also got her a fairly subtle minder from ISF following her around as she ran her errands here.
Perception knew better than to try slicing tricks that the ISF would catch on to. Instead, she was here to shop 'recovered tech' with Star League serial numbers, that tech contained counter viral code that would correct corrupted data on systems evolved from Star League export and Hegemony remnant systems.
It was a safer gig, but it didn't offer the kind of access to set up local agents that her sister had at NAIS.
Kolossus would have to rely on recorded intercepts picked up at the port from drop-sats left quietly tumbling from the jump points.
She was eating noodles in a noodle-shop, looking at image captures from her Kolossus-provided, completely-ordinary Merchant class Jumpship, when she noticed something that wasn't supposed to be there.
How do you tell paranoids they might actually be in real danger? She glanced in the window, and studied for her ISF tail…there he was.
The memories of Desmond supplied the answer, and she subtly manipulated the headings on the images, before getting up from her table, turning too quickly, and running into a civilian.
In the ensuing fracas, her tablet was left behind, as she was taken to the police station for questioning.
Her ISF minder thoughtfully collected it for data-mining and analysis.
The DCMS managed to get an interception launched with less than eighteen hours before the object would have struck Luthien.
Paula Diaz was subjected to intense interview questions and her ship was impounded, as brave aviators of the Draconis Combine Admiralty fought a powered asteroid, diverting it to miss the capital world by mere seconds.
She died, further giving credence to the idea that a hostile terrorist organization had just tried to murder the Combine's capital world.
Perception's consciousness would have to wait for nearly a month to be retrieved from the drop-sat she retreated to while her body was being subjected to the indignities of an ISF deep-probe.
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===Praise of a Merchant===
The third time…
…Penny Desmond was a 'Free Trader' in Clan Wolf territory, here to provide resources under a Clan Sea Fox flag. The flag was false, but the identity would read 'real' to Clanners on both ends.
Three times, makes a pattern.
Not that anyone besides Sixty-Six or Kolossus would notice, not with the HPG network down.
"How did you notice it?"
"Navigation fixes." she told the Wolf Watch officer, "I am here to pick up work, not just drop it off. So I needed to do navigation plotting for calculations to potential delivery sites, I cross referenced with extant system data on Tamar, and noticed the inconsistency, whereupon, I informed your port authority personnel, so that charts could be updated."
"Your service is a credit to your Clan, though I admit being surprised you did not demand recompense for rendering it."
"Being alive next time I ship through here is recompense enough." she told him, "navigation hazards are everyone's business, quiaff?"
He chuckled, "Aff…now if you could only get OUR merchant caste to recognize that!"
Kolossus is too far, but Lazarus was within range for a short burst, once she left Tamar…
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===Hunt for the Planet Killer===
The methodology is completely…
…logical. It uses commonly understood physics and local materials, and there is a pattern." Juanita Pujol Garcia waved a hand, and the virtual display split three ways. "New Avalon, Luthien, and now Tamar. They may have also targeted Rasalhague, but those belts are heavily developed and it would be seen."
"What am I looking at?" Helena Cameron asked. 
"Someone is throwing big rocks at planets full of people ,they are targeting capital worlds, and none of the known targets share any enemies with one another."
"Word remnant?"
"Unlikely. It's possible, but the odds are against it. Stone was quite thorough in getting that group under control, and the kind of attacks these are, are too…indiscriminate, while also being too focused."
“Yes and the Word has plenty of other little toys that they could use with far less risk of detection, Galedon being a prime example.” Helena nodded.
"Penny? What does Kolossus think?"
The Envoy unit looked up, "Here." she said, "if the pattern holds, it's either Sudeten or Tharkad next. The timing is consistent with a JumpShip on a routing course. Mind that's MY speculation, I haven't heard from Kolossus yet."
“Hmmm… We need to find a way to get a head of this. Juanita you think you can get to Tharkad and check there in time? Envoy given the situation with the Falcons, well that could be problematic but if you can make contact…”
"The Envoy in Falcon space is Perversion." Penny stated, "we'll need someone who doesn't look like me to make the contact."
“Given their increased sensitivities about AIs, well not sure they’d take any of my ladies seriously in time without making it an incident…” Helena frowned.
"So, let's give them an incident." Dave Foster said it from a virtual doorway-incongruous because he was more or less 'typing' from a meatspace terminal. "Slide a ship through, if they detect it, they'll be reacting in the right direction anyway."
“I suppose that would work. Okay Juanita new plan, I’ll entrust that to you. Regina you go to Tharkad.”
"What about the cause of all this?"
“It is clearly someone with a fair bit of resources to go around to all these systems without drawing attention.”
"Multinational corporation, or someone with ties to one, with unquestioned access to all these different star systems, and able to route through without being intercepted interrupted, or questioned…there can't be that many people with that combination."
"A shipping corporation from a recognized neutral then…or with offices in multiple nations so they amount to the same thing. Probably not Comstar, because everyone watches them so closely."
“And well the Falcons are going a bit crazy right now with anyone that’s not them. Which means it is likely someone with good charts of Sudeten.”
Juanita spoke up, "ExLyran from pre-war maybe, or someone who had recent trading deals and could get them-again, a short list, I find four corporations that fit so far. Problem being motive."
"Who would have all that, and have motive..?" Penny's avatar seemed to divide, then recombine. "Republic flagged! Has to be a corporation in the Republic, one with ties to someone who has pre-invasion charts and competent navigators!!"
"Why the Republic?"
"They're having a multi-sided civil war right now, and most of the factions have foreign sponsorship, or claim it. A Republic nationalist driven to extremes might come up with this as a way to eliminate the foreign influence!"
“Then there is another target we need to check out. The Capellan capital system.”
"Sian. I don't have an Envoy in the CapCon- Ping had to debody when she was picked up by Maskirovka last year."
“And Daoshen’s definitely not going to take my calls.” Helena shook her head.
“So we’ll just have to create an incident with them too…” Foster grumbled.
"Maybe if we stop the guy running it, we won't have to." Penny suggested. "Two corporations have the necessary resources, both are headquartered in the Republic. I'll need to pass the message along your channels to Purple and Pink…one for each."
“Do it. If we’re right we might actually just be able to get ahead of whoever is doing this.” Helena nodded.
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Finis
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