Hoth: Blood and Ice

Lord Draahg touched down, and exited the shuttle, and made his way to the listening post.

Sylvain came to the entrance (ostensibly from within) and stood silently as Draahg approached.

"I trust I can take a moment to come in out of the cold, so to speak," he said calmly.

Sylvain nodded and gestured inside, "Of course."

He entered and said, “It has been an eventful day, if you are not aware we are now officially annexed to the Zakuul Empire, all glory to an empty Eternal Throne.”

He set down a small case and added, “We opted for aurum bars, Darth Baras appreciates a bit of poetry with his bribery. Five hundred thousand credits worth, for hopefully good information. Assuming you wish to skim some for yourself, Minister, before we deliver?”

Sylvain smirked at the joke and shook his head after carefully expecting the contents to ensure the proper sum was there.

"He is quite the poet..."

Luth heard the movement and voices and came in to see if it was finally time. Time moved slow in white out conditions.

"Oh, not to worry, I'm sure one of the two remaining will try to take power and screw things up. Worse, I suppose. "

"Well, it's all there," he said.

Sylvain nodded in appreciation and collected the case.

"Shall we?"

She nodded and began making her way to their guest.

Aphr had not gone out when the others had. The person was just coming in anyway, seemed silly to get frozen for no reason as they were all going back inside anyway.

She gave Draahg a nod, but said nothing. She hadn't forgiven him for the kick yet.

"Welcome back," she said brightly.

Sylvain walked towards her with the money and placed it near her feet.

"Your compensation..."

"Would it be rude to check?" she asked while lifting the case onto the table.

"You can if you'd like... But it's the best anyone has on this rock right now either way." He replied.

She shrugged and rolled the metal ball towards Sylvain, “That’s a data imprint with all my findings. The tl;dr as it were is that the Eternal Fleet, think that is the right name for it, is a mostly an automated system far out numbering any number of ships we possess.”

“Run by one of the most sophisticated synthetic intelligences I ever encountered, it’s more a neural network of self-aware machines or something, but yadda, yadda, yadda; they run the fleet which is tied directly to a central control device. But it’s just data signals, highly secure, encrypted, and damn near uncrackable signals, but just a data signal.”

“That is my notes on the process, but it’s all proprietary, you’d need the right hardware to pull this off," she said honestly.

"That's....impressive" Aphr commented "so their ships are unmanned? Or still manned just flown by AI?"

Aphr Ahaya wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 01, 2022 12:38 pm

"That's....impressive" Aphr commented "so their ships are unmanned? Or still manned just flown by AI?"

"I am guessing the latter," she said with a shrug. "I don't know from experience."

Sylvain looked over to Luth and back at the ball in his hand.

"We'll need to get our techs working on this as soon as possible then..."

"Or get someone onto a ship" Aphr comment with a thoughtful expression "if that were even possible. Might be able to disrupt a whole fleet from there though."

“A ship?” Sylvain asked looking for further elucidation.

"She just said their fleet is controlled remotely, so if you get onto one of the fleet you might be able to disrupt the whole fleet no?" Aphr clarified "although we could maybe get onto the big ship that's now in the hoth space."

She smirked to herself and counted the bars as they discussed their options.

Sylvain Torsin wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 01, 2022 1:12 pm

Sylvain looked over to Luth and back at the ball in his hand.

"We'll need to get our techs working on this as soon as possible then..."

She smiled and gave him a miniature salute. "I'll arrange a meeting. They'll be working on it by morning."

Aphr Ahaya wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 01, 2022 4:12 pm

"Or get someone onto a ship" Aphr comment with a thoughtful expression "if that were even possible. Might be able to disrupt a whole fleet from there though."

"We'll need our techs to know exactly what to do. We can see what they say."

"Good luck without access to the right hardware, you won't get far, like I said it's proprietary tech," she said finishing her count.