Live stream later this evening!
[DW3] Distant Worlds 3 Website & Roster Signups
- Thread starter Qohen Leth
- Start date
Thanks for the heads up, We will have that changed asap.
Greetings CMDRs
Introducing the next Distant Worlds 3 Pre-Launch Event. The 'Ancient Mysteries Expedition'!
We will be visiting strange and mysterious locations within a fairly short distance of the Bubble. We'll be out in the black between the 9th and 23rd of November, and launching from the Lave system
Bring your exploration ships, or try out new builds as you try to hone the exploration ship you'll fly most of DW3 with. Just remember to bring your SRVs!
For more details please check out the ancient-mysteries-event channel in the Fleetcomm Discord server.
See you all there
o7
Introducing the next Distant Worlds 3 Pre-Launch Event. The 'Ancient Mysteries Expedition'!
We will be visiting strange and mysterious locations within a fairly short distance of the Bubble. We'll be out in the black between the 9th and 23rd of November, and launching from the Lave system
Bring your exploration ships, or try out new builds as you try to hone the exploration ship you'll fly most of DW3 with. Just remember to bring your SRVs!
For more details please check out the ancient-mysteries-event channel in the Fleetcomm Discord server.
See you all there
o7
Last edited:
Meene, 3311 AD (Calling Alba)
Three men and a lot of computers, displays and charts. Phoenix Base was the domain of Engineer Ram Tah. For nearly ten years now he was known as the premiere source of information when it came to the mysterious aliens commonly known as the Guardians. Ever since, people from all ways of space life had sought him out.
But his knowledge usually came with a price. Sure, he willingly shared what he had found out but then he always seemed to casually conjure up some tasks for the seekers; tasks that mostly spanned hundreds of light years and involved meticulous surveys or outright gravedigging; if there had been any graves, of course.
Now the three were standing before a room sized screen where a large number of charts flowed from one side to the other. Others flowed up and down. Again and again.
“Well, you had four days,” the Engineer said, addressing his senior lab assistant, a stoic man named Uwe Toramund. “This is it?”
Tah pointed at all the charts.
“Yes. We conducted the research you specified on obelisks, antennae and even what we assess as their equivalent to modern data terminals. We used eight different sites.” He summoned an interactive map of a sector of the galaxy and highlighted a number of systems. “Four of them often travelled by privateers and four more remote ones. All within 2000 light years.”
“And?” Tah asked.
“Yes, and?” the third man at the displays asked. He was obviously quite old. Still, he stood upright, his arms crossed across the chest, looking at Toramund through his tinted blue glasses.
“Well, we know the Guardians used six different frequencies to relay what they probably would have called short range transmissions. So a few hundred light years at best. Upon your request we activated one obelisk and simulated a complex network of interwoven communication bursts that should have agitated the whole network to autonomously start algorithmic calculations that would under given conditions have resulted in an activity magnitude of order 500.”
“What do you mean, autonomously?” the old man asked. His calm and stern presence clearly made the assistant uneasy.
“It’s pretty much like a COVAS or an autonomous library assistant. Self teaching and in a way self learning with each input; within legal limits of course.”
“I hate COVAS. Spiteful little things,” was all the old man had to say. The Engineer silently chuckled.
“What about the results then?” Tah asked.
“Well, like I mentioned, we expected these calculations to exponentially become more complex.” He hesitated: “Only, they didn’t. Not on any of the six frequencies.”
Ram Tah frowned, his thick, dark eyebrows forming a V above his eyes. “That doesn’t make sense. These frequencies were embedded in all obelisks we found, ever since we started discovering their sites almost ten years ago. They probably have been in use for a few hundred thousand years by now; at least…”
“Still, the frequencies are dormant. There is zero network activity.”
“Did you examine the obelisks? Scan for other frequencies?”
“Yes, and indeed they seem to have adopted a new frequency; only one, though, and it’s highly unusual.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s in pico-hertz.”
“I’d say that’s impossible,” Tah mused.
“Why?” came from the old man.
“Because pico-hertz is in the gravity wave range. Way too low for complex information transmission. But I guess, Uwe, you did your math, checked for glitches, did it all over again and came to this conclusion?”
“It’s not a conclusion, Ram. It’s physical. You can measure it.”
“Damn.”
“Sorry, guys,” the old man interrupted. “Consider me completely uneducated. What does that mean?”
“It means,” Tah said, “that the Guardian obelisks in at least eight sites stopped maintaining their internal communication. But through thorough analysis we have established that they need this inner connection.”
“Why?”
The Engineer thought for a moment. “The Guardians embedded much of their social patterns and behaviorism in artificial constructs. You could say they outsourced social, computational and manual functions, including the storage of information. It’s an artificial gestalt, really, much like a collective hive mind that can only function with all parts intact; which they now aren’t.”
“Yes,” Toramund added. “Which they now aren’t.”
The old man frowned. “What are the implications? Why does it matter?”
“Well, mostly it’s something no one expected,” Toramund said. “Because six frequencies going dark at the same time is highly unusual and statistically… well…”
He shrugged.
“Other than that,” Tah added, “We probably cannot rely on data accuracy any more. Guardian constructs curate and verify the information they store. When they can’t do this anymore, you could suspect that over time the information they store will be corrupted.”
“How long?”
“Difficult to say, the Guardians surely acted on other time scales than we do. Changes may be minute and hard to spot at first, but with a network thousands of light years across even slight changes will have repercussions on the whole Guardian communication network.”
“...which we suspect is far from wholly explored or even physically discovered, correct?” the old man asked.
“Yeah.”
“We need another dedicated approach to all this,” Ram Tah mused, a stern look on his face. “Maybe it’s local. No, hopefully it’s local. We need to check other sites and conduct the same measurements there. If the obelisks and whatnot still work as they always used to thousands of light years away, we may attribute this anomaly to something going on in the Bubble. Which is bad enough…”
“I agree. And all without ruffling feathers.”
”Preferrably so, yes.”
The old man thought for a long moment. He seemed to weigh some options and quite possibly some heavy decisions. Finally, he turned to Ram Tah again.
“As it happens, I know someone who is preparing a survey in the Conflux. Aren’t there Guardian ruins in the area? If so, he can probably be contacted and asked kindly if he could take the time and have a look.”
“Awesome, and just what we need. Freelancers scrounging ancient ruins for trinkets and treasure, all to mask a try to figure out what is going on.”
The old man thought for another moment: “It’s been like that since I’ve been around. You discover something, you study it, it studies you and in the end you cross a line and need to go into full damage control.”
“Well,” Tah said, “to be fair, we didn’t cross a line.”
“No? What did you do with all those discoveries? You built weapons. Weapons and other shiny starship tech. No one ever thought about building better recyclers or to improve colony management with all this knowledge and computational power lying around.”
“That’s it!” Tah suddenly shouted. “F**k me!”
“What? I wasn’t finished with my accusations.”
“Think about it! Whatever happens there with the frequencies, if the glitch lies in Guardian technology and is affecting obelisks and pylons…”
“Yes, it could also start affecting starship equipment based on Guardian tech,” Toramund added.
“Alright,” Tah said. “Call Alba. We need to meet.” Looking at the old man, he added: “Can you keep it under wraps? This guy you know, you vouch for him? ”
“Yes, I do, oddly.”
“Who else is involved with you? You don’t strike me as a loner.”
“Oh, but I have been most of my life.”
“Who else?” Tah pushed.
“No one,” the old man said without hesitation, although maybe he should have hesitated just a little.
“Of course,” Tah nodded, equally with no sign of hesitation.
It was what it was…
See the full Story so far on the Distant Worlds 3 Homepage.
You can now also read about our NPC who you will likely meet at one time or another.
Three men and a lot of computers, displays and charts. Phoenix Base was the domain of Engineer Ram Tah. For nearly ten years now he was known as the premiere source of information when it came to the mysterious aliens commonly known as the Guardians. Ever since, people from all ways of space life had sought him out.
But his knowledge usually came with a price. Sure, he willingly shared what he had found out but then he always seemed to casually conjure up some tasks for the seekers; tasks that mostly spanned hundreds of light years and involved meticulous surveys or outright gravedigging; if there had been any graves, of course.
Now the three were standing before a room sized screen where a large number of charts flowed from one side to the other. Others flowed up and down. Again and again.
“Well, you had four days,” the Engineer said, addressing his senior lab assistant, a stoic man named Uwe Toramund. “This is it?”
Tah pointed at all the charts.
“Yes. We conducted the research you specified on obelisks, antennae and even what we assess as their equivalent to modern data terminals. We used eight different sites.” He summoned an interactive map of a sector of the galaxy and highlighted a number of systems. “Four of them often travelled by privateers and four more remote ones. All within 2000 light years.”
“And?” Tah asked.
“Yes, and?” the third man at the displays asked. He was obviously quite old. Still, he stood upright, his arms crossed across the chest, looking at Toramund through his tinted blue glasses.
“Well, we know the Guardians used six different frequencies to relay what they probably would have called short range transmissions. So a few hundred light years at best. Upon your request we activated one obelisk and simulated a complex network of interwoven communication bursts that should have agitated the whole network to autonomously start algorithmic calculations that would under given conditions have resulted in an activity magnitude of order 500.”
“What do you mean, autonomously?” the old man asked. His calm and stern presence clearly made the assistant uneasy.
“It’s pretty much like a COVAS or an autonomous library assistant. Self teaching and in a way self learning with each input; within legal limits of course.”
“I hate COVAS. Spiteful little things,” was all the old man had to say. The Engineer silently chuckled.
“What about the results then?” Tah asked.
“Well, like I mentioned, we expected these calculations to exponentially become more complex.” He hesitated: “Only, they didn’t. Not on any of the six frequencies.”
Ram Tah frowned, his thick, dark eyebrows forming a V above his eyes. “That doesn’t make sense. These frequencies were embedded in all obelisks we found, ever since we started discovering their sites almost ten years ago. They probably have been in use for a few hundred thousand years by now; at least…”
“Still, the frequencies are dormant. There is zero network activity.”
“Did you examine the obelisks? Scan for other frequencies?”
“Yes, and indeed they seem to have adopted a new frequency; only one, though, and it’s highly unusual.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s in pico-hertz.”
“I’d say that’s impossible,” Tah mused.
“Why?” came from the old man.
“Because pico-hertz is in the gravity wave range. Way too low for complex information transmission. But I guess, Uwe, you did your math, checked for glitches, did it all over again and came to this conclusion?”
“It’s not a conclusion, Ram. It’s physical. You can measure it.”
“Damn.”
“Sorry, guys,” the old man interrupted. “Consider me completely uneducated. What does that mean?”
“It means,” Tah said, “that the Guardian obelisks in at least eight sites stopped maintaining their internal communication. But through thorough analysis we have established that they need this inner connection.”
“Why?”
The Engineer thought for a moment. “The Guardians embedded much of their social patterns and behaviorism in artificial constructs. You could say they outsourced social, computational and manual functions, including the storage of information. It’s an artificial gestalt, really, much like a collective hive mind that can only function with all parts intact; which they now aren’t.”
“Yes,” Toramund added. “Which they now aren’t.”
The old man frowned. “What are the implications? Why does it matter?”
“Well, mostly it’s something no one expected,” Toramund said. “Because six frequencies going dark at the same time is highly unusual and statistically… well…”
He shrugged.
“Other than that,” Tah added, “We probably cannot rely on data accuracy any more. Guardian constructs curate and verify the information they store. When they can’t do this anymore, you could suspect that over time the information they store will be corrupted.”
“How long?”
“Difficult to say, the Guardians surely acted on other time scales than we do. Changes may be minute and hard to spot at first, but with a network thousands of light years across even slight changes will have repercussions on the whole Guardian communication network.”
“...which we suspect is far from wholly explored or even physically discovered, correct?” the old man asked.
“Yeah.”
“We need another dedicated approach to all this,” Ram Tah mused, a stern look on his face. “Maybe it’s local. No, hopefully it’s local. We need to check other sites and conduct the same measurements there. If the obelisks and whatnot still work as they always used to thousands of light years away, we may attribute this anomaly to something going on in the Bubble. Which is bad enough…”
“I agree. And all without ruffling feathers.”
”Preferrably so, yes.”
The old man thought for a long moment. He seemed to weigh some options and quite possibly some heavy decisions. Finally, he turned to Ram Tah again.
“As it happens, I know someone who is preparing a survey in the Conflux. Aren’t there Guardian ruins in the area? If so, he can probably be contacted and asked kindly if he could take the time and have a look.”
“Awesome, and just what we need. Freelancers scrounging ancient ruins for trinkets and treasure, all to mask a try to figure out what is going on.”
The old man thought for another moment: “It’s been like that since I’ve been around. You discover something, you study it, it studies you and in the end you cross a line and need to go into full damage control.”
“Well,” Tah said, “to be fair, we didn’t cross a line.”
“No? What did you do with all those discoveries? You built weapons. Weapons and other shiny starship tech. No one ever thought about building better recyclers or to improve colony management with all this knowledge and computational power lying around.”
“That’s it!” Tah suddenly shouted. “F**k me!”
“What? I wasn’t finished with my accusations.”
“Think about it! Whatever happens there with the frequencies, if the glitch lies in Guardian technology and is affecting obelisks and pylons…”
“Yes, it could also start affecting starship equipment based on Guardian tech,” Toramund added.
“Alright,” Tah said. “Call Alba. We need to meet.” Looking at the old man, he added: “Can you keep it under wraps? This guy you know, you vouch for him? ”
“Yes, I do, oddly.”
“Who else is involved with you? You don’t strike me as a loner.”
“Oh, but I have been most of my life.”
“Who else?” Tah pushed.
“No one,” the old man said without hesitation, although maybe he should have hesitated just a little.
“Of course,” Tah nodded, equally with no sign of hesitation.
It was what it was…
See the full Story so far on the Distant Worlds 3 Homepage.
You can now also read about our NPC who you will likely meet at one time or another.
Information seems to be spread out in a few different places, so I'm having trouble finding a couple of specifics. And, honestly, Discord drives me crazy with how it's designed. Hopefully, someone can just let me know.
I'm gathering that we just need to be docked on one of the four fleet carriers for the launch in January. Is that right?
Also, I see mention on the website of official private groups in the game, but I can't find what those groups are called to access them. Could someone let me know the names of these groups in the game?
Thanks! This looks amazing. I've visited so many systems that were discovered in the previous Distant Worlds expeditions. Getting to be part of this one will be so fun.
I'm gathering that we just need to be docked on one of the four fleet carriers for the launch in January. Is that right?
Also, I see mention on the website of official private groups in the game, but I can't find what those groups are called to access them. Could someone let me know the names of these groups in the game?
Thanks! This looks amazing. I've visited so many systems that were discovered in the previous Distant Worlds expeditions. Getting to be part of this one will be so fun.
Try here, I think it is still valid. But without Discord, you will miss a lot of information I think.
forums.frontier.co.uk
The FleetComm HQ Discord is well organised and very helpful if you are lost, so I would recommend a bold move. There are the informations in the 1st post.
I am not fan at all of Discord, boomer inside, but this one does it.
Also creating a sens of community, getting used to see the name of Cmdrs, quick replies usually, good chan for outfitting, once you got used to it you will never come back (tadaaaa)/
Announcing FleetComm, the exploration-focused Private (pc) Group
"Those who took part in the Distant Worlds Expedition, the First Galactic Expedition, the Crab Nebula Expedition, and several others will be familiar with the Kamzel private group. The Kamzel PG was created by CMDR (Erimus) Kamzel to allow a safe space for the Distant Worlds pilots, and that...
The FleetComm HQ Discord is well organised and very helpful if you are lost, so I would recommend a bold move. There are the informations in the 1st post.
I am not fan at all of Discord, boomer inside, but this one does it.
Also creating a sens of community, getting used to see the name of Cmdrs, quick replies usually, good chan for outfitting, once you got used to it you will never come back (tadaaaa)/
You don't necessarily need to be docked in a fleet carrier, but you will need to have any other ships you want to bring along docked in one or more of them.
There will be a mass jump launch event for pilots that want to fly to the first waypoint on their own, but none of the waypoints have been announce yet.
Very little has actually been announced so far, so it's not surprising you didn't find any details. The planning is still happening and things may change depending on game updates happening before January.
Try here, I think it is still valid. But without Discord, you will miss a lot of information I think.
Announcing FleetComm, the exploration-focused Private (pc) Group
"Those who took part in the Distant Worlds Expedition, the First Galactic Expedition, the Crab Nebula Expedition, and several others will be familiar with the Kamzel private group. The Kamzel PG was created by CMDR (Erimus) Kamzel to allow a safe space for the Distant Worlds pilots, and that...
The FleetComm HQ Discord is well organised and very helpful if you are lost, so I would recommend a bold move. There are the informations in the 1st post.
I am not fan at all of Discord, boomer inside, but this one does it.
Also creating a sens of community, getting used to see the name of Cmdrs, quick replies usually, good chan for outfitting, once you got used to it you will never come back (tadaaaa)/
I echo this CMDR. It's really nice getting to know CMDRs by name, and without the Discord we never would have been able to do spontaneous fun things like we did on the High-G Training Event. Discord is where it happens, for the most part.
Is that because there are voice channels, or just more (and more flexible) text channels?
In our case it was because we were all in a voice channel
Yeah fair enough. I'm not a fan of Discord in general but voice channels are the exception for me. (It's about the only way in which I personally believe they beat a forum.)
One great advantage on discord is, we can ping people when we have a new annoucnement. Can't quite do that on the forums, would need to rely on people checking for themselves, which usually doesn't work out that well.
Today's the day.Greetings CMDRs
Introducing the next Distant Worlds 3 Pre-Launch Event. The 'Ancient Mysteries Expedition'!
We will be visiting strange and mysterious locations within a fairly short distance of the Bubble. We'll be out in the black between the 9th and 23rd of November, and launching from the Lave system
Bring your exploration ships, or try out new builds as you try to hone the exploration ship you'll fly most of DW3 with. Just remember to bring your SRVs!
For more details please check out the ancient-mysteries-event channel in the Fleetcomm Discord server.
See you all there
o7
OK, so I made it to the first waypoint, Herschel 36, in about an hour (~72 jumps) in my Cobra Mk V. We're not due to meet up at the next stop until next week which is only another ~5Kly away from here.
So far, no mysteries to speak of.
What to do for a week?
I have plenty of time to jot back to the bubble for some minor outfitting adjustments and hit a material trader to fill up on synth mats.
So far, no mysteries to speak of.
What to do for a week?
I have plenty of time to jot back to the bubble for some minor outfitting adjustments and hit a material trader to fill up on synth mats.
Last edited:
Gateway, 3311 AD (In Their Wake)
“You don’t often get a chance like this, dear,“ the woman said. She elegantly sat on the big sofa that stood against the wall, right underneath the Alliance logo and the portrait of the man sitting behind an even bigger desk. She didn’t slouch, though. Even when sitting on a sofa, Jasmina Halsey was all aura. Her keen eyes stayed fixed on the man and her blonde and grey hair augmented her elegance perfectly
“I’ve been pondering over this for some time now, and you are right,” came the answer.
Alliance Prime Minister Edmond Mahon sat in his big synth leather chair looking at one of the holofacs on his desk. His eyes darted around hectically and sometimes you wondered if the rumors about his eidetic memory were true or not. Not that Halsey cared. She was used to his workaholic presence that often was off-putting to people not used to work with him. And she had a reputation as a brusque workaholic herself, which she carefully curated.
“Massive FSD engagements have often been speculated to create undesirable side effects in spacetime,” she said. “Some genius described each entry to witchspace as a micro event with stellar mass properties or something like that.”
She seemed bored by her very own descriptions.
“I mean, ask me about the Antares or Starship One. I’m a micro event specialist.”
“You certainly are stellar, Jas,” Mahon smiled.
“We would have liked to run our tests during a military engagement for obvious strategic reasons,” he continued. “But with conflicts brewing all over the Bubble and beyond, MilInt has been scaled up considerably. Sadly, this means we can’t have our tech wizardry tested on military targets without risking exposing ourselves. So we decided to move to the civilian sector. Expeditions, mainly.”
“I am sure Rear Admiral Cortez protested loudly, proclaiming some Alliance Fleet dossier he himself ordered came to the exact opposite conclusion. Still, he has a point: Civilian exploration ships are rarely equipped with an FSD Wake Scanner,” Halsey mused. “You’re lucky if they even have a juice press.”
“Unless you give them a reason. For the Wake Scanner, I mean. Some red meat in space, so to say. Some story about necessity. Or maybe Thargoids? Privateers freak out when you mention Thargoids.”
“Maybe,” he added. “Just maybe we can suddenly scan their witch wakes now?”
He smiled, more to himself than to Halsey.
“Why is the Alliance Prime Minister even telling this to the Federal Ambassador?”
“Oh, come on, Jas! You can do better. Wake suppression will most likely impede operational and strategic fleet mobility which will make all Powers reevaluate their deployment doctrines. You should know that and appreciate its probable effects on Bubble politics.”
He looked at her with a vaguely warm look: “Time for a breather for us all.”
“And you dug that all up in the MetaDrive trash can before Sirius moved in?”
“We knew MetaDrive had something cooking,” Mahon said. “We fully expected Sirius or Core Dynamics to make a hostile grab so we extracted some assets before that and also placed some Trojans deep inside their hardware.”
“Did you warn Dakarai that something was going on?”
Mahon hesitated for a moment or two: “No. He was a very cautious man and upping corp security or even his own security detail could have raised suspicion. There was a risk it would have made the situation look less …authentic.”
“For the greater good of the Alliance then.”
“Your Federation isn’t the Virgin Mary,” he countered.
“Oh, I never said that,” Halsey said, waving him off. “We all agreed at some point that doing unspeakable things sometimes prevents even more unspeakable things from happening. It’s basically in our job description.”
“Poetic, but true.”
“So you’re telling me Sirius acquired a well prepared Alliance backdoor for several trillion Credits?”
“Smart, isn’t it? They were so arrogant with the Federal arms industry silently backing them that they never even considered it a trap. When a megacorp thinks it has a brilliant plan it never occurs to them that others may bury plans within their plans.”
“Poetic, but true,” she smiled. “So MetaDrive was a hollow hoax?”
“No, they sure did some very interesting research in hyperspace technology. We made sure some of it got leaked after the acquisition but all their blueprints were useless and based on red herrings. We acquired the real ones and now we’re on the brink of field testing.”
“Who did the research?”
“Make a guess,” Mahon smiled his sharky smile.
“Argent,” was the answer.
“Correct.”
“You sneaky ,” Halsey laughed.
“Have you made contact with Corsen?” Mahon asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I set him on a mission. So far he has recruited a very capable Flight Major for the expedition, so he made himself useful in that regard. Still, he’s wanted so I don’t know why bother with him when literally anybody else could have done the job.”
She looked back at Mahon: “One of your little secrets, I guess.”
Mahon just smiled his sharky smile again.
“Well,” Halsey said while getting up from that huge sofa. “I’ll leave you to your secrets then, Prime Minister of the Unspeakable. I need to catch my liner to Mars and prepare for that ludicrous speech people are expecting from me.”
“Good luck convincing them their opinions matter, Jas,” he waved after her.
See the full Story so far on the Distant Worlds 3 Homepage.
You can now also read about our NPC who you will likely meet at one time or another.
“You don’t often get a chance like this, dear,“ the woman said. She elegantly sat on the big sofa that stood against the wall, right underneath the Alliance logo and the portrait of the man sitting behind an even bigger desk. She didn’t slouch, though. Even when sitting on a sofa, Jasmina Halsey was all aura. Her keen eyes stayed fixed on the man and her blonde and grey hair augmented her elegance perfectly
“I’ve been pondering over this for some time now, and you are right,” came the answer.
Alliance Prime Minister Edmond Mahon sat in his big synth leather chair looking at one of the holofacs on his desk. His eyes darted around hectically and sometimes you wondered if the rumors about his eidetic memory were true or not. Not that Halsey cared. She was used to his workaholic presence that often was off-putting to people not used to work with him. And she had a reputation as a brusque workaholic herself, which she carefully curated.
“Massive FSD engagements have often been speculated to create undesirable side effects in spacetime,” she said. “Some genius described each entry to witchspace as a micro event with stellar mass properties or something like that.”
She seemed bored by her very own descriptions.
“I mean, ask me about the Antares or Starship One. I’m a micro event specialist.”
“You certainly are stellar, Jas,” Mahon smiled.
“We would have liked to run our tests during a military engagement for obvious strategic reasons,” he continued. “But with conflicts brewing all over the Bubble and beyond, MilInt has been scaled up considerably. Sadly, this means we can’t have our tech wizardry tested on military targets without risking exposing ourselves. So we decided to move to the civilian sector. Expeditions, mainly.”
“I am sure Rear Admiral Cortez protested loudly, proclaiming some Alliance Fleet dossier he himself ordered came to the exact opposite conclusion. Still, he has a point: Civilian exploration ships are rarely equipped with an FSD Wake Scanner,” Halsey mused. “You’re lucky if they even have a juice press.”
“Unless you give them a reason. For the Wake Scanner, I mean. Some red meat in space, so to say. Some story about necessity. Or maybe Thargoids? Privateers freak out when you mention Thargoids.”
“Maybe,” he added. “Just maybe we can suddenly scan their witch wakes now?”
He smiled, more to himself than to Halsey.
“Why is the Alliance Prime Minister even telling this to the Federal Ambassador?”
“Oh, come on, Jas! You can do better. Wake suppression will most likely impede operational and strategic fleet mobility which will make all Powers reevaluate their deployment doctrines. You should know that and appreciate its probable effects on Bubble politics.”
He looked at her with a vaguely warm look: “Time for a breather for us all.”
“And you dug that all up in the MetaDrive trash can before Sirius moved in?”
“We knew MetaDrive had something cooking,” Mahon said. “We fully expected Sirius or Core Dynamics to make a hostile grab so we extracted some assets before that and also placed some Trojans deep inside their hardware.”
“Did you warn Dakarai that something was going on?”
Mahon hesitated for a moment or two: “No. He was a very cautious man and upping corp security or even his own security detail could have raised suspicion. There was a risk it would have made the situation look less …authentic.”
“For the greater good of the Alliance then.”
“Your Federation isn’t the Virgin Mary,” he countered.
“Oh, I never said that,” Halsey said, waving him off. “We all agreed at some point that doing unspeakable things sometimes prevents even more unspeakable things from happening. It’s basically in our job description.”
“Poetic, but true.”
“So you’re telling me Sirius acquired a well prepared Alliance backdoor for several trillion Credits?”
“Smart, isn’t it? They were so arrogant with the Federal arms industry silently backing them that they never even considered it a trap. When a megacorp thinks it has a brilliant plan it never occurs to them that others may bury plans within their plans.”
“Poetic, but true,” she smiled. “So MetaDrive was a hollow hoax?”
“No, they sure did some very interesting research in hyperspace technology. We made sure some of it got leaked after the acquisition but all their blueprints were useless and based on red herrings. We acquired the real ones and now we’re on the brink of field testing.”
“Who did the research?”
“Make a guess,” Mahon smiled his sharky smile.
“Argent,” was the answer.
“Correct.”
“You sneaky ,” Halsey laughed.
“Have you made contact with Corsen?” Mahon asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I set him on a mission. So far he has recruited a very capable Flight Major for the expedition, so he made himself useful in that regard. Still, he’s wanted so I don’t know why bother with him when literally anybody else could have done the job.”
She looked back at Mahon: “One of your little secrets, I guess.”
Mahon just smiled his sharky smile again.
“Well,” Halsey said while getting up from that huge sofa. “I’ll leave you to your secrets then, Prime Minister of the Unspeakable. I need to catch my liner to Mars and prepare for that ludicrous speech people are expecting from me.”
“Good luck convincing them their opinions matter, Jas,” he waved after her.
See the full Story so far on the Distant Worlds 3 Homepage.
You can now also read about our NPC who you will likely meet at one time or another.
To be honest, I don't think you can "borrow" the layout.Honestly - I am (very slowly) developing a website for Elite stuff based on the game UI, but DS3's is leaps and bounds ahead in this regard!
Can I uhhhh, borrow this layout for my own?
Because of this at the bottom: