From: MD8422@node9688745.secure.fen
To: [REDACTED]
Troubleshooter,
MD-0000 leads our organisation for a reason, as no others have proven capable of keeping our criminal pasts from destroying us internally and externally, and who she chooses as her replacement will be one whom she has groomed to take up the reins of the organisation. But I am not writing this to moderate your opinion of her. As for the document in question...
It uses a standard GTV Theta-Hydra One Time Pad encryption pattern based on their Tier-level encryption patterns, this one being Tier Four and thusly a standard pattern for sensitive information, and is linked to a TN-902 'Tapeworm' Data Smart Bomb to destroy the file if a brute force decryption is attempted. It uses a split-decryption key, more than one Material Defender or GTV 'officer' must be present to fully unlock the file. The Faction Overview is public viewing for verification's sake, but the rest will remain encrypted and disguised as a data authorisation request.
I can partially decrypt the document for you but I ask this of you.
Destroy them Troubleshooter, the GTV are becoming a cancer to our group and should they fully move their operations offworld from Sedna they will grow into a threat deadlier than any Boskonian, and though they are blood brethren many of my comrades fear their plans. We cannot strike at them, they are brethren and to betray brethren as I am doing is normally unconscionable to us, but they are now too powerful for us to destroy and their recent leadership change has made them too willful, too reckless, too dangerous. You call us hard people, barely better than the boskonians we rose from, violent scum beholden to Daneside naifs and those in your society who have need for us but in their weakness and hypocrisy label us as outlaws to save face. I cannot stop you from thinking these thoughts, but whatever your opinion on us, the GTV are worse, for we at least acknowledge that we must coexist with the Fen, the GTV do not.
And I fear for the future if they are not destroyed.
I have attached the partially decrypted document, speak with MD-9923, her email is provided in the attachment with the partially decrypted file and give her the pass phrase 'Freespace is on sale' and she will decrypt the rest. Do not even hint about what Great Justice might intend with this information, else she will destroy the document and deny you valuable information, for though they are becoming too dangerous, the GTV are our brethren and by old debts and alliances we must move in their defence if they are threatened.
MD-8422, Material Defenders 3rd Squadron
-Data Authorisation Received. Opening Document Section One: History, Practices and Tactics.-
GTV Faction History:
The extremist splinter group that formed from the Material Defenders formed in 2013 during the Boskone War from a faction within the Material Defenders who took their rejection of Fenspace to the extreme, opting to go into total isolation and retain their criminal methods and tactics while the Material Defenders opted for a facade of legitimacy to their existance. Even we in the Material Defenders look upon them with a measure of unease, as their extremist nature and knowledge of resource and technology caches allowed them to establish their own private operations after the fall of Boskone Prime that are unknown to us, their brethren. Their activities during the period from 2014 to 2018 were spent building their base and establishing their forces, recruiting from the same pockets of social undesirables and hidden boskonians in the bolt-holes as we do, but while we recruit with the intent of providing a place where those that would eventually be rejected by Fen society can find solidarity and unity, the GTV seek only to maintain their philosophy of violent isolationism, despite our efforts educate them of the changing times.
The 2019 to 2021 period is unknown to us however, save for their single extrasolar base established with the intent to further distance themselves from the Fen. The location of the base remains top-secret and will only be referred to by its Material Defender code-name and we believe that the GTV are circumventing the PEPPER and PEPPER II treaties by moving manufacturing equipment to this extrasolar base while disguising them as part of the same demilitarisation measures being taken, a deception that we were all too willing to believe of them, for we had made a place for ourselves in the shadows of Fenspace, and had hoped that they too would join us rather than move deeper into the darkness.
As for 2022 however, the extent of their deception became known to us when they contacted us to act as liasions for mercenary contracts, but refusing to be introduced to our clientele, our allies in the Black Talon Group, and our primary supplier in the Triax Corporation. When we pressed them, they revealed the extent of their preparations to ensure their isolation and their intent to form an independant nation. We allowed this, not realising that while we had moved beyond our pasts to become at least publicly respectable to the Fen, regardless of their actual opinions of us, they had not.
This was further proven with the death of Commander Nicholas and the rise of Commander Strelnikov early in 2022 after what we believe to be a coup within the faction. By the time Strelnikov's extremist agenda came to be known to us, the GTV were already beginning to form their nascent rogue star-nation and had become far too powerful for us to rein in either with words or threats of action, and at the time of writing this document, we are hereby forced to make a request of our Russian and Chinese clients that will almost certainly see us destroyed should the Fen find out in order to enact Operation Katyusha, an internal direct action contract to destroy the GTV if our negotiations with Strelnikov fail.
All Material Defenders are hereby ordered to tread lightly around the Sol-GTV until we can enact Operation Katyusha upon delivery of the necessary tools from Russia and finish construction of the Albatross at Proteus. Should the Fen find out about the GTV and use their own military capabilities to destroy them, we shall continue business as normal but all Material Defenders should expect deployment orders for Operation Katyusha in Winter 2022.
GTV Faction Practices:
The GTV style themselves as a professional naval warfare group, but this is a facade put up to allow their pilots to appear professional, unlike our own hard-earned professional nature. Their pilots are reckless mavericks and the pocket carriers that they use are crewed by people little better than pirates. But they are all skilled pilots, many are veterans of the Boskone War and their training is both brutal and comprehensive, made from an ad-hoc arrangement of modified computer game simulations, extensive training flights, and the same hypnolearning systems we provided them when they were under the command of Commander Nicholas before the coup. After the coup, we believe that stimulants and drug therapy are also in play, along with a more brutal physical training regimen as well as live-fire battles to ensure that only the most skilled and vicious become pilots, and creating false bonds based on deception and constant seeking of weakness.
Recruitment of new GTV pilots and ship crews is done from the same sources as we Material Defenders; Boskonian holdouts, disgraced military and intelligence personnel seconded from our Daneside clients, and the wide array of Mundane and Fen who find no place to fit in either on Earth or in space. Unlike us, who provide solidarity and discipline in exchange for constant and well-paid work, the GTV take their recruits in and poison them against the Fen, and against us. If it were only the Fen, we would not care, conflict breeds unity but with Strelnikov's coup, he has painted us as weak, unable to build out power without the aid and resources of the Fen and Daneside, and in doing so has made our brethren belligerent and prideful, too self-assured of their skill to realise the need for secrecy in establishing facilities and bases. This makes the GTV come across quite rightly to our clients as overly arrogant, and more than a little insulting both to them and to us. Maintaining our professional nature is a necessity to doing business with our clients and the Fen, but the GTV in their isolationism make no such efforts.
They take contracts by requesting them from us, though this has changed recently to arrogant demands, and we provide them by acting as liasions with clients. With Strelnikov's coup, and the Knight Sabers interference in our attempt to slay his Inner Circle, we have been forced to act as sole points of contact to ensure that the GTV do not engage in actions that will affect our client relations, as well as allowing us to modify their contracts to try and restrict their actions to be less extreme, but that is rapidly failing in the face of Strelnikov's ambitions.
Their arrogance will be their undoing however, as while their information security is exceptionally well-made and secure, their pilots have loose lips and enjoy bragging their 'achievements' to us. It will be to their downfall should Operation Katyusha be activated.
GTV Faction Tactics:
The GTV's pilots are truly mavericks and reckless blowhards, but they are skilled blowhards whose skills are not mere grandstanding. Many of the military personnel in their number are ex-naval and air force pilots, and they have managed to instill some pitiful measure of discipline, but the GTV are as sharks and that is to their detriment. Once a casualty is confirmed, they will hound it in order to destroy it first, which will be instrumental in protecting the Albatross until it reaches launch range for the weapons we are expecting from Russia along with the MOAB devices promised by our American clients for the operation. However, it will be necessary to inform you briefly of the basic tactics employed by the GTV so that when the time comes, you can neutralise them with their fighters relatively intact and ensure that their base on Sedna is neutralised with as much intact hardware as possible for the infiltration of Shiva.
Basic tactics for the GTV revolve around their most elementary of formations; the Fox and Wolves. The Fox is an aggressor-scout, deployed to engage with hit-and-run attacks while scanning the target vessel to locate weakpoints and weapon locations while forcing the target to expend ammunition to shoot it down. Once it has enough data, it will transmit it to the waiting Wolves, who move in and engage with heavy firepower to overwhelm defences. The similarity to our own harassing and raiding tactics against shipping is not coincidence, it is a core tactic perfected during the Boskone War before the GTV splintered off from our ranks, but while we use coordinated strikes to force ammo expenditure and distract for precision attacks, the Fox and Wolves formation is a brutal sledgehammer of an attack, often using a fast ship as the Fox and then a group of heavier GTV bombers to pummel the target it is dead in space, before picking it clean and leaving it to drift.
Be aware that the GTV will take prisoners, and your duty as a Material Defender is to ensure that this distasteful practice is mitigated as much as possible by using the 'Unusual Expenses' account held in Switzerland to purchase prisoners from our GTV brethren and then use the standard chemical memory suppressants to ensure that we are not remembered and that any secrets revealed cannot be recalled. But their tactics of taking prisoners is something we may have to leak through our clients to those in Great Justice and Star Patrol, along with some of their more well-worn raiding routes, in order to ensure that the number of prisoners being sent from Sedna to Shiva to work on Strelnikov's Monster, the GTV Solaris, remains low. However, ensure that such information leaked does not compromise the Albatross and the Katyusha Strike Fleet.
This information will help you counter the GTV's tactics upon the initiation of hostilities with the GTV and will be used to supplement the combat warbook of your vessel.
WIPE YOUR DRIVES REGULARLY COMRADES, DO NOT ALLOW INFORMATION ON THE ALBATROSS AND OPERATION KATYUSHA TO FALL INTO GTV OR FEN HANDS! ENSURE ALL BACK-UP SECURITY SYSTEM TIMERS ARE SET TO FORTY SECONDS RATHER THAN ONE MINUTE TO ENSURE INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRACTICE WITH THIS NEW TIMER REGULARLY!
-Data authorisation is required to access the next section: Technology, Weapons, Vessels, Target - Sedna, Target - Shiva, Briefing File - GTV Solaris. Do you wish to continue reading?-
From: md9923@node45618486.secure.fen
To: [REDACTED]
Subject: Meeting place.
I am loathe to leave my squadron for long Troubleshooter, especially on a matter as sensitive as this. However, as we are being rotated in as security for Clearinghouse, I can make time to meet you on Mars. If you do not have the passphrase, I will not help you Troubleshooter.
MD-9923, Material Defenders Sixth Squadron
To: [REDACTED]
Troubleshooter,
MD-0000 leads our organisation for a reason, as no others have proven capable of keeping our criminal pasts from destroying us internally and externally, and who she chooses as her replacement will be one whom she has groomed to take up the reins of the organisation. But I am not writing this to moderate your opinion of her. As for the document in question...
It uses a standard GTV Theta-Hydra One Time Pad encryption pattern based on their Tier-level encryption patterns, this one being Tier Four and thusly a standard pattern for sensitive information, and is linked to a TN-902 'Tapeworm' Data Smart Bomb to destroy the file if a brute force decryption is attempted. It uses a split-decryption key, more than one Material Defender or GTV 'officer' must be present to fully unlock the file. The Faction Overview is public viewing for verification's sake, but the rest will remain encrypted and disguised as a data authorisation request.
I can partially decrypt the document for you but I ask this of you.
Destroy them Troubleshooter, the GTV are becoming a cancer to our group and should they fully move their operations offworld from Sedna they will grow into a threat deadlier than any Boskonian, and though they are blood brethren many of my comrades fear their plans. We cannot strike at them, they are brethren and to betray brethren as I am doing is normally unconscionable to us, but they are now too powerful for us to destroy and their recent leadership change has made them too willful, too reckless, too dangerous. You call us hard people, barely better than the boskonians we rose from, violent scum beholden to Daneside naifs and those in your society who have need for us but in their weakness and hypocrisy label us as outlaws to save face. I cannot stop you from thinking these thoughts, but whatever your opinion on us, the GTV are worse, for we at least acknowledge that we must coexist with the Fen, the GTV do not.
And I fear for the future if they are not destroyed.
I have attached the partially decrypted document, speak with MD-9923, her email is provided in the attachment with the partially decrypted file and give her the pass phrase 'Freespace is on sale' and she will decrypt the rest. Do not even hint about what Great Justice might intend with this information, else she will destroy the document and deny you valuable information, for though they are becoming too dangerous, the GTV are our brethren and by old debts and alliances we must move in their defence if they are threatened.
MD-8422, Material Defenders 3rd Squadron
-Data Authorisation Received. Opening Document Section One: History, Practices and Tactics.-
GTV Faction History:
The extremist splinter group that formed from the Material Defenders formed in 2013 during the Boskone War from a faction within the Material Defenders who took their rejection of Fenspace to the extreme, opting to go into total isolation and retain their criminal methods and tactics while the Material Defenders opted for a facade of legitimacy to their existance. Even we in the Material Defenders look upon them with a measure of unease, as their extremist nature and knowledge of resource and technology caches allowed them to establish their own private operations after the fall of Boskone Prime that are unknown to us, their brethren. Their activities during the period from 2014 to 2018 were spent building their base and establishing their forces, recruiting from the same pockets of social undesirables and hidden boskonians in the bolt-holes as we do, but while we recruit with the intent of providing a place where those that would eventually be rejected by Fen society can find solidarity and unity, the GTV seek only to maintain their philosophy of violent isolationism, despite our efforts educate them of the changing times.
The 2019 to 2021 period is unknown to us however, save for their single extrasolar base established with the intent to further distance themselves from the Fen. The location of the base remains top-secret and will only be referred to by its Material Defender code-name and we believe that the GTV are circumventing the PEPPER and PEPPER II treaties by moving manufacturing equipment to this extrasolar base while disguising them as part of the same demilitarisation measures being taken, a deception that we were all too willing to believe of them, for we had made a place for ourselves in the shadows of Fenspace, and had hoped that they too would join us rather than move deeper into the darkness.
As for 2022 however, the extent of their deception became known to us when they contacted us to act as liasions for mercenary contracts, but refusing to be introduced to our clientele, our allies in the Black Talon Group, and our primary supplier in the Triax Corporation. When we pressed them, they revealed the extent of their preparations to ensure their isolation and their intent to form an independant nation. We allowed this, not realising that while we had moved beyond our pasts to become at least publicly respectable to the Fen, regardless of their actual opinions of us, they had not.
This was further proven with the death of Commander Nicholas and the rise of Commander Strelnikov early in 2022 after what we believe to be a coup within the faction. By the time Strelnikov's extremist agenda came to be known to us, the GTV were already beginning to form their nascent rogue star-nation and had become far too powerful for us to rein in either with words or threats of action, and at the time of writing this document, we are hereby forced to make a request of our Russian and Chinese clients that will almost certainly see us destroyed should the Fen find out in order to enact Operation Katyusha, an internal direct action contract to destroy the GTV if our negotiations with Strelnikov fail.
All Material Defenders are hereby ordered to tread lightly around the Sol-GTV until we can enact Operation Katyusha upon delivery of the necessary tools from Russia and finish construction of the Albatross at Proteus. Should the Fen find out about the GTV and use their own military capabilities to destroy them, we shall continue business as normal but all Material Defenders should expect deployment orders for Operation Katyusha in Winter 2022.
GTV Faction Practices:
The GTV style themselves as a professional naval warfare group, but this is a facade put up to allow their pilots to appear professional, unlike our own hard-earned professional nature. Their pilots are reckless mavericks and the pocket carriers that they use are crewed by people little better than pirates. But they are all skilled pilots, many are veterans of the Boskone War and their training is both brutal and comprehensive, made from an ad-hoc arrangement of modified computer game simulations, extensive training flights, and the same hypnolearning systems we provided them when they were under the command of Commander Nicholas before the coup. After the coup, we believe that stimulants and drug therapy are also in play, along with a more brutal physical training regimen as well as live-fire battles to ensure that only the most skilled and vicious become pilots, and creating false bonds based on deception and constant seeking of weakness.
Recruitment of new GTV pilots and ship crews is done from the same sources as we Material Defenders; Boskonian holdouts, disgraced military and intelligence personnel seconded from our Daneside clients, and the wide array of Mundane and Fen who find no place to fit in either on Earth or in space. Unlike us, who provide solidarity and discipline in exchange for constant and well-paid work, the GTV take their recruits in and poison them against the Fen, and against us. If it were only the Fen, we would not care, conflict breeds unity but with Strelnikov's coup, he has painted us as weak, unable to build out power without the aid and resources of the Fen and Daneside, and in doing so has made our brethren belligerent and prideful, too self-assured of their skill to realise the need for secrecy in establishing facilities and bases. This makes the GTV come across quite rightly to our clients as overly arrogant, and more than a little insulting both to them and to us. Maintaining our professional nature is a necessity to doing business with our clients and the Fen, but the GTV in their isolationism make no such efforts.
They take contracts by requesting them from us, though this has changed recently to arrogant demands, and we provide them by acting as liasions with clients. With Strelnikov's coup, and the Knight Sabers interference in our attempt to slay his Inner Circle, we have been forced to act as sole points of contact to ensure that the GTV do not engage in actions that will affect our client relations, as well as allowing us to modify their contracts to try and restrict their actions to be less extreme, but that is rapidly failing in the face of Strelnikov's ambitions.
Their arrogance will be their undoing however, as while their information security is exceptionally well-made and secure, their pilots have loose lips and enjoy bragging their 'achievements' to us. It will be to their downfall should Operation Katyusha be activated.
GTV Faction Tactics:
The GTV's pilots are truly mavericks and reckless blowhards, but they are skilled blowhards whose skills are not mere grandstanding. Many of the military personnel in their number are ex-naval and air force pilots, and they have managed to instill some pitiful measure of discipline, but the GTV are as sharks and that is to their detriment. Once a casualty is confirmed, they will hound it in order to destroy it first, which will be instrumental in protecting the Albatross until it reaches launch range for the weapons we are expecting from Russia along with the MOAB devices promised by our American clients for the operation. However, it will be necessary to inform you briefly of the basic tactics employed by the GTV so that when the time comes, you can neutralise them with their fighters relatively intact and ensure that their base on Sedna is neutralised with as much intact hardware as possible for the infiltration of Shiva.
Basic tactics for the GTV revolve around their most elementary of formations; the Fox and Wolves. The Fox is an aggressor-scout, deployed to engage with hit-and-run attacks while scanning the target vessel to locate weakpoints and weapon locations while forcing the target to expend ammunition to shoot it down. Once it has enough data, it will transmit it to the waiting Wolves, who move in and engage with heavy firepower to overwhelm defences. The similarity to our own harassing and raiding tactics against shipping is not coincidence, it is a core tactic perfected during the Boskone War before the GTV splintered off from our ranks, but while we use coordinated strikes to force ammo expenditure and distract for precision attacks, the Fox and Wolves formation is a brutal sledgehammer of an attack, often using a fast ship as the Fox and then a group of heavier GTV bombers to pummel the target it is dead in space, before picking it clean and leaving it to drift.
Be aware that the GTV will take prisoners, and your duty as a Material Defender is to ensure that this distasteful practice is mitigated as much as possible by using the 'Unusual Expenses' account held in Switzerland to purchase prisoners from our GTV brethren and then use the standard chemical memory suppressants to ensure that we are not remembered and that any secrets revealed cannot be recalled. But their tactics of taking prisoners is something we may have to leak through our clients to those in Great Justice and Star Patrol, along with some of their more well-worn raiding routes, in order to ensure that the number of prisoners being sent from Sedna to Shiva to work on Strelnikov's Monster, the GTV Solaris, remains low. However, ensure that such information leaked does not compromise the Albatross and the Katyusha Strike Fleet.
This information will help you counter the GTV's tactics upon the initiation of hostilities with the GTV and will be used to supplement the combat warbook of your vessel.
WIPE YOUR DRIVES REGULARLY COMRADES, DO NOT ALLOW INFORMATION ON THE ALBATROSS AND OPERATION KATYUSHA TO FALL INTO GTV OR FEN HANDS! ENSURE ALL BACK-UP SECURITY SYSTEM TIMERS ARE SET TO FORTY SECONDS RATHER THAN ONE MINUTE TO ENSURE INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRACTICE WITH THIS NEW TIMER REGULARLY!
-Data authorisation is required to access the next section: Technology, Weapons, Vessels, Target - Sedna, Target - Shiva, Briefing File - GTV Solaris. Do you wish to continue reading?-
From: md9923@node45618486.secure.fen
To: [REDACTED]
Subject: Meeting place.
I am loathe to leave my squadron for long Troubleshooter, especially on a matter as sensitive as this. However, as we are being rotated in as security for Clearinghouse, I can make time to meet you on Mars. If you do not have the passphrase, I will not help you Troubleshooter.
MD-9923, Material Defenders Sixth Squadron