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By monbvol[]
| Falcon's Sight | |
| Facts | |
| Author | monbvol |
| Series Name | Revenants of the Star League Anthology of short(er) stories |
| Alternate Universe Name | |
| Year Written | July 30th, 2023 |
| Story Era | Republic Era |
News of Darkness[]
Khan’s office
Sudeten, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
12th February, 3132
“This is confirmed?” Jana Pryde let her anger show more than she had intended.
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Insignia of Clan Jade Falcon
“Aff, my Khan. We examined all the HPGs under our control. The code is there. Combined with what was released during the War of Plunder…” The Technician-Scientist squirmed, but did not dare finish his train of thought.
“You have a way to deal with this, Aff?” Jana gathered herself.
“Neg. The code is pervasive and in all our HPGs. We do not have a way to remove it without crippling our ability to communicate.”
“Earl?”
“Quite simply put, Jana, this is an enemy conventional methods never would have detected and thus conventional responses would be useless against.” The Loremaster of Clan Jade Falcon said quietly.
“What are you suggesting?”, Pryde demanded
“With the material leaked during the War of Plunder by this Kolossus, it is clear that Alabaster is the AI we have identified in our HPG nets and has much to answer for. But we cannot attack it openly.”
“If we do, we invite attack upon ourselves by our enemies and opportunists. Without the HPGs we would have just destroyed to coordinate a response we would be at a distinct disadvantage.” Jana nodded.
“Aff. If we instead use proxies, deniable assets…”
“I do not like the inherent dishonor in what you suggest but practically speaking it is our best option. If it comes to light it would divide our Clan. But until it does… Founder help me but I see no other alternative that allows us to retain enough strength and unity to resume our drive on Terra for that is where we must go to extract our full measure of revenge. It will take many years for us to recover from what I am about to order and we will still be beset upon by our enemies and opportunists while we do so but with the lessons we learned from our involvement in the War of Plunder using such assets our Warriors will be able to focus more clearly on combating such foes and as such we will prevail. Make the arrangements, Earl.”
“Seyla.”
Opportunity to Serve[]
The bad part of town
Sudeten, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
5th March, 3132
Earl Helmer’s perspective
Earl had been carefully and quietly doing as he had proposed, gathering those who could carry out the attacks on their HPGs without distracting or diluting the touman.
Which had brought him here.
A dingy little dive bar on the outskirts of the capital city.
It was a tolerated spot for certain activities, a way to funnel those who could not fully conform but still be of use despite being ‘Dark Caste’.
And yes sometimes that meant being targets for those who could conform.
He saw the man he was looking for.
Zachariah, formerly Pershaw. A former Mechwarrior. He was a known broker for exactly these sorts of situations and while his bloodname was never officially stripped away he no longer used it.
“Earl.”
“Zachariah.”
“So what brings the Loremaster to my establishment?”
“We have discovered a threat to Clan Jade Falcon. It is not an ordinary threat. It hides in the HPGs itself and it is pervasive. Neq, it is more than that... it is quite possibly the greatest threat to the Clan we have ever faced.”
“Shit.”
“Indeed.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“We lack the capacity to deal with this on a technological front. So we must act on a physical front.”
“What if the Khan ordered the touman to do it even her own Warriors would think she had gone mad but if you get people like me to do it instead you can pass it off as bandits trying to destabilize Clan Jade Falcon. Sure you will still get attacked but this way the touman will be behind your Khan. And you also need people who are used to communicating without using HPGs. Which we have to do or your job would be almost too easy.”
“Do you think you can gather enough people to do this across the entirety of our holdings?”
“Yes and no. I know you’ll have to act to defend your HPGs. Sure you will do what you can to clear the field but we both know there will be limits to this without making it obvious. So yes I can arrange to hit every HPG but no I cannot guarantee we will be able to destroy them all under such conditions.”
“I will have to hope what you can accomplish is enough then.”
“You know what this will mean afterwards do you not?”
“Yes. Those of you who survive this will have an unprecedented free hand to act. It is why you are agreeing to do this.”
“It is. Without HPGs to keep you up to date about our activities it will be a golden time for us on the fringes of Clan society. We will not be fools and expect it to last forever, but neither will we squander it.”
“An acceptable price for the threat we are facing.”
Author Notes[]
- Writer monbvol's Comment on Short Story and it's impacts
- As per one of Cannonshop's (main writer) side stories here Alabaster is a predictive AI, I can take at least some credit that it is also a distributed computing model AI that lives in the HPG network itself. It came into being sometime in the late 2740s to the very early 2750s.
It's goal is to create a non-violent human society under the leadership of House Cameron. There's probably other bits in there I am forgetting but that is the most important stuff.
Which brings me to something I am willing to share out of story. One of the struggles I have been dealing with under this consideration were the physical attacks against HPGs. I just have not been able to come up with something plausible for why Alabaster would initiate so many against itself. I figured out a way to have it self trigger Clarion that made sense. Alabaster was purposefully burning out HPGs to create a firebreak between itself and Daoshen's virus but could not be as selective about it as might have been desired. So I have been trying to come up with ways to explain some.
Hence the minor alterations I made to Daoshen's Crusade and the entire idea behind Falcon's Sight with a little bit of a seed to make Malvina Hazen's rise more plausible/believable. Which yes to be clear you can expect some effort being expended on making her a little more rational.
Daoshen and Jana both came into information indicating an AI that is hostile(at least from their perspectives) is in their HPG nets(and by all available evidence everybody's really) and are acting on it.
I'm seriously considering only doing similar for Wolf because I'm running out of ways to make the timings work out and be interesting with a 'less is more' sort of approach where I just do not explain all the physical attacks and just hand wave that they happened.
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