Sorry I’m late, everyone. Been briefing the marine and damcon teams on their respective duties in operations to come. I see Lieutenant Nhaima’s already covered a fair bit of the traffic intel we’ve come across in the Atlantis sector, thank you. Permit me to graphically augment our findings.
Wielding the conference room remote, Ironclad triggers an overlay on the Atlantis region, with highlighted paths showing a blur of ship paths crisscrossing the sector and converging on its gates. Some paths are densely colored.
The first and most obvious traffic nexus for our traffic of interest is Atlantis Command. Not particularly subtle or secretive, but would make sense as a refuel/refit stop for Azure Legion ops. I originally thought that it’s overt nature would preclude it as the holding area for our senior officers, but the our other leads seem to stockpile there, particularly the core world administrative transmissions. If Atlantis command turns out NOT to be the holding site, given the operational patterns we’ve been able to deduce, we may be able to track a suspect vessel from the command base to another Azure Legion asset… if we’re sneaky.
We aaaalsooooo get a fair bit of heat in Sector VII, running from Atlantis Command. Another candidate for a concealed facility, especially with the nebulae nearby. Note as well that a lot of the suspect traffic tends to linger in nebulae or areas made ideal for signal masking due to cosmic conditions, much like pirates. The same approach may behoove us if we’re able to tackle this operation prior to our cover being blown.
Two other installations of interest also emerge if we examine ISN controlled space in the Marches zooms out and highlights Krisenda. The R-56X research installation is highlighted in our data mining, which you’ll recall we recently defended from Hegemony incursion with the support of the Imperial Caltron-deploying prototypes. In retrospect, the involvement of such heavy firepower suggests further significance to that station. We also get some hits at DS-001, which is a very old and backwater station that’s otherwise unremarkable and unvisited… perfect candidate for a black ops outpost.
All together, lots of useful data; even if it’s not all relevant to the task at hand, these leads may be worth pursuing later to determine the scope of the caltron project. Given that we’re likely going into a more covert tempo, I’ve taken the liberty of having the Group’s Tag warheads modified to favor low-observability over duration. They’ll be difficult to detect in flight, and nearly impossible to find once attached, though they won’t take to a target that’s actively configured their shields for incoming fire. As long our ship is silent running, with minimal power settings, they may be able to bug a passing vessel beyond two klicks without being detected doing so, enabling us to eavesdrop on suspect Azure legion vessels without tipping our hand or raising alarm.