XRisks-Ultimates 1e

# Ultimates

**Posted by:** Pree Inti, Scanner <**Info Msg Rep**>

Recent intelligence gained from the short-lived but productive success of assets monitoring the ultimates’ activities around the Discord Gate shows that Firewall must abandon its long-standing “wait-and-see” position on the ultimates, and that operations be initiated to deal with them as an incipient x-risk. I’ve already been in touch with other routers in the extrasolar, rimward, and conventional forces workgroups and they will be contacting you as well with additional assessments specific to their own portfolios that back my concerns. This request is of necessity brief as it is drawn from limited information, but what we have is serious enough that quick action at a high level is warranted. Due to circumstances detailed below, I will need to go dark for the immediate future for security concerns, so I urge you to take this information seriously and pursue it with others in my absence.

For a previous operation dealing with follow-up on the exhuman attack on Mockingbird, I had developed an asset, BT hereafter, who was part of the Go-nin gate operations team managing their Discord Gate operations. BT proved useful during that op, and has been useful on several occasions since providing intel on exsurgent and exhuman incidents beyond the gate that Go-nin have kept quiet otherwise. I trust the information from BT, and had already begun additional work to clear BT for introduction to Firewall as a sentinel. BT is presumed dead and is currently irretrievable, but I trust the information provided.

Since the incident on Mockingbird was publicized and it resulted in such a hit on the operating gains from the mining operations, the gate managers were spooked and the ultimates took the opportunity to work them into upping ultimate staffing at Rorty, across the other destinations from the gate, and inside the gate facility inside Torii itself. Over the last three months, the numbers of ultimates at Pharos and Torii have increased by more than 250, and more than three times that number have been sent as “forward security” expeditions to Mockingbird and other exoplanets where they’ve set up a short-term base with the ostensible goal of exploring and pacifying the gate network used by the exhumans. The majority of the ultimates that arrived for the work are purifiers with extensive combat experience in gatecrashing ops for take-and-hold maneuvers and are extremely heavily-armed. The last wave of them also arrived with Myron Chalmers, one of the ultimate’s autarchs, and an ideological figurehead to the overhumanist strain of thought long in ascendance at the Pharos station. He’s quietly taken command of daily operations at Pharos and is in regular contact with the Torii station chiefs.

BT got in touch with me when, after several successful excursions into the exhuman gate network, the ultimates noted they were meeting increased resistance and sought and received approval for bringing several small-scale WMDs through the gate. Go-nin has never allowed this before as it obviously creates a huge operational risk. BT only found out about it through dumb luck—he was the gate officer on duty when the equipment was brought in for transit. He stopped transit, but his hold on the matériel was overridden and one of the station chiefs took him aside and explained that this was being done on their own initiative to speed up the timeline for clearing out the exhumans and save costs on the ultimates’ contract. Apparently Chalmers had proposed it at a recent meeting with the station chief and they approved it as an effort to increase profits and get back in the good graces of the corporate higher-ups. BT was told that it would be lucrative for all of them and was also bribed to make sure the records didn’t show anything other than basic arms supplies were going through.

To get better intel on the situation I sent two sentinels in as part of a civilian mining support team scheduled to go to Ne No Kuni. While awaiting departure, the sentinels were operating at their own discretion and attempted to contact BT directly. Unfortunately, the ultimates had apparently been watching BT and took this as an opportunity to take action. In the ensuing confrontation, the sentinels were compromised; one triggered a dead switch, and the other was able to escape with a farcaster. In debriefing the survivor, the increased ultimate presence on Torii and as part of the crew complement that was scheduled to head to Ne No Kuni was confirmed. Through some elint gathering, they were also able to determine that increased activity from Pharos was scheduled to keep bringing additional supplies and personnel to Torii for the next 5 weeks. BT is assumed compromised and in the hands of the ultimates.

Although BT passed all this on to me thinking that it was related to broader issues with the exhumans and possible risk there, I believe the remarkable increase in ultimate military personnel and capability in the Discord Gate network is a far bigger problem. The sheer numbers of ultimate forces closely match or exceeded the Go-nin forces at or available for immediate deployment to other colonies and stations in the Discord Gate network, and the ultimates easily outstrip them in terms of operational capability, expertise, and firepower. The presence of Chalmers so far from his governance position at the Ariel habitat places an ideological hero to the forces at the Pharos base in theater. There is no reason one of the faction’s central command-and-control elements should be in situ at the gate unless they planned on using him to head a major operation of import to the faction as a whole.

The ultimates already functionally control Mockingbird and have forces in place that could quickly seize control of several other exoplanet stations and colonies. The pieces are in position for them to gain control of an entire gate network, and one with access to all manner of important resources, from minerals and volatiles to major established colonies to terraformable worlds—and, if the gate re-opens, the incredible alien artifacts at Giza. Firewall cannot allow this threat to develop. We have to get in front of this, quickly, or risk compromising the entire gate network.