Today, Galnet reported a spate of mysterious malfunctions and technical issues in Gabriel Enterprise, the capital of the Free Pirate Empire of the Kumo Crew.
These malfunctions are symptomatic to mass sales of Unknown Artefacts, the mysterious, dangerous entities of possibly Xeno origin found in deep space.
So someone is selling large quantities of UAs to Harma; but who, and why?
That screenshot was taken a approximately 1700 hours GMT in Harma. The CMDR (whose name I have retracted) is a member of the prominent Empress-aligned groups, the White Templars.
As you can see, with their Asp with collector limpets, a fuel scoop, and most damning of all, an AFM unit, is exactly the setup used to collected the damaging artefacts and dumb them in the black markets of unsuspecting systems. This, combined with their location mere hours after reports of malfunctions (where other systems pay 10% more within 15LY, ruling out economic incentives), there is only one possible conclusion.
Higher echelons of the Imperial power structure, possibly reaching up to the Empress herself, are deliberately using dangerous bioweapons as a weapon against their enemies. Not able to defeat the Pirate Lord in a fair fight, they are resorting to jeapordising humanity itself in order to advance their petty war of aggression against this small, independent power.
This also brings into question who caused the malfunction and shutdown of systems like Rhea and Sol. It would not be too far to suggest that it is the Empire itself that is bringing these potentially apocalyptic devices to huge population hubs to aid their tactical advances.
