-16:00 Capital Time
-Mid-Transit to the Crayven Homeworld
-Intelligence Bureau commissioned Fleet.
-Modified Battle Cruiser; Agincourt. Martin sat in his captain’s chair bringing a minor fleet of battleships, all of which are secretly under the Black Sun's banner, he looked on his unmarked tab as he swiped through current events, the Empire was bombarding Xthae; homeworld of the Xythae Empire. It bothered him quite a bit as he was on assignment to investigate unusual activities regarding Admiral Konev and his generals.
He sent a message encrypted, encoded, and under alias through the communication net, the signal was sent through many proxy servers, making it look like it was being sent from multiple places at once, the authority level was high enough for it to be passed without check, and even if opened and decrypted the code used would be near impossible to decipher. Years of being a spymaster taught him that layers upon layers of security was vital if one were to remain undetected.
The message read when decoded "Black Sun of Xthae, intervene to help local Human population, document indiscriminate imperial bombardment to be used in anti-Imperial propaganda. -Watchman" the Black Sun was well connected as a fighting force, especially when their relay system was hidden within the Imperial Quantum Communication Relay Stations, some of which are exclusively held by the Black Sun insiders making communications a bit easier on them, however it took a little longer to relay messages safely as they needed to be relayed to another station held by the black sun or delivered through an encrypted Data drive personally.
It didn't take long for Martin to send off his relay, he looked at the men in the trenches of the bridge, all of them sick and tired of being under the Emperor for so long, sick and tired of his decisions that always leads into conflict. There was a breaking point to every man and not every man broke the same, some break to just accept their fate others break to give up on their lives, and yet here we are, we were broken to be reforged into a dagger that would strike the Empire a deathly blow from the back.
He looked back at his terminal to read Nuntius’s message for the third time now.
“Spymaster Kell, a pleasure to be working with you again, It’s been too long, the Emperor would like you to investigate on Admiral Konev and his General’s recent actions, General Lucretia’s location has been provided for you. Remind them who they work for, and tell Hotch to treat his Auxiliaries like they are, meat shields for the Emperor’s men, not equals.”
He then barked, ”Give me an ETA, and give me a status on the Black Sun team on the Gargan homeworld, I want to know what that Xeno is up to.”
“Sir…” His first-mate answered.
“Estimated time to arrival is one hour, teams on the Gargan homeworld report that they are following their car closely sir.”
Martin lied back on his captain’s Chair and waited, contemplating his next move, he wanted a free human race, a species that is capable of it’s own decisions… He was getting closer and closer everyday, he just had to wait a little more.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
-17:34 Capital Time
-Crayven Homeworld
-Intelligence Bureau commissioned Fleet.
-Modified Battle Cruiser; Agincourt.Martin looked out his window to see the Crayven homeworld, the home of the most controversial Xeno species to exist, as they are one of the most effective imperial Auxiliary to ever grace the Imperial war machine. He was slightly disgusted, he never liked Xenos, but then again, he wasn’t completely against them either, he was very philosophical, every time he thought something bad about a Xeno, he would think how they would’ve thought of a Human.
Humanity butchered, slaughtered, raped, and drove the Xeno species into the ground, either completely wiping them out, making them slaves, or for the more fortunate, auxiliaries and lesser classes of the Empire. It was quite a sad existence. His fleet stationed itself in high orbit, his ensign then said “Spymaster, your boat down is ready sir.” with a wave of a hand, his ensign made way and saluted him as he got out of his chair and exited the bridge.
He hailed Konev and his subordinates on his personal communicator, open channels
“Konev, you are hereby ordered to form your officers, Xeno and non-xeno, submit all documents and security feeds to my men, we will be on the ground ETA 5 minutes, you should be there by then. This is an Imperial inspection I expect everyone to be there when my security team and myself arrive.”
His tone was serious, and it was straight to the point, there was no air off friendliness, however in his mind, Konev and the Crayvens would become a rather dependable ally if all went well, the Black sun could use more men on the field, it would allow more traction till the time of secession, perhaps there was more to this ‘General Lucretia’ than what meets the eye, he has been studying her records, of course it’s embelished by human achievments, but the underlying topic is that she is a successful battlefield commander, perhap better than himself, but then again, he took it with a grain of salt, after all the reports and articles were written by imperial journalists, and that is why the Black Sun will keep the General under close watch.
______________________________________________________________________________________
The control center at the Ladder gave the Agincourt landing coordinates for shuttles as down bellow on the moon, a surprise inspection was called and the swarming mass of soldier at HQ followed in surprising order the evacuation plan laid out in case of emergency. The regrouping point was after all the courtyard where the Spymaster would walk in after leaving his shuttle. The Crayvens didn't need a word from their officers to stand in perfect rows exactly where they needed to be, uniforms pristine and all in all, looking superbly drilled, especially considering how similar they were all to one another. No, the problem actually was in the officers.
General Hotch could only hope he'd be given a little more time, but he was only afforded 14 seconds more than the 5 minute delay given for a few more missing human officers to get in place and even then, a lot looked like they didn't have enough time to get dressed. "Sooooooldiers SALUTE!" As the Spymaster walked in the courtyard, the ground quaked as in unison the Crayvens moved to a human salute before being at a stand still. They had no eyelids to blink with, and they might as well be statues. No, the problem lied in the human officers, half of them were either missing as they were out in town (This was a sunday after all) or looked terrible.
Hotch hoped however that Martin would understand. Konev's fleet was seen by everyone as a punishment assignment, who wanted to serve with xeno auxiliaries? And so, half of the human personal given to the fleet were fuck ups, people who had no place in the army or space fleet that were given this assignment to punish a mistake or another... But that was the good part of Konev's army, for the spymaster at least. The other half of the human officers were harder to deal with since they were those punished unjustly. The hyper competent officers that could do better than their own superiors and made the mistake to show it, people who made others look bad or had the guts to talk over important idiots. These guys were there and apparently had their act in order, well dressed and looking at Martin and his goons with anger filled eyes that showed a malicious glimpse of their intelligence. Ironically most would make good recruits for the Black Sun, but right now they only saw Martin as a pompous idiot from the Core Worlds here to make their lives more miserable and to make sure none of them had any funny ideas.
And of course, there were the few Crayven officers. They seemed to have no identity of their own, just part of a faceless personalityless mass that slowly crept up the chain of command whenever someone would allow it. This was apparent among Hotch's subordinates who had relegated all of his fuck ups on 'containment duties' where they had a post, but where the job would be done even if they didn't exist, the officers under his orders were about equally Crayvens and humans, all of them of a decent quality. On the other side was Stern. Even if Konev didn't care, Stern had done his best to keep the xenos at bay from Naval command and while he had a core of competent officers standing behind him, the lower echelons weren't at all impressive as he sacrificed quality to keep at least the captaincy of the ships human if he couldn't insure every officers were humans... the sailors though, were practically all Crayven at this point. It couldn't be helped as the more Konev promoted xenos, the less the Capital was ready to send fresh troops and supplies to him... so the more he had to promote xenos to fill in the ranks!
Being assigned as the second in command, it was Stern who stepped in to face Martin... for Konev was not there. "Spymaster! We welcome you to Admiral's Rest! Unfortunately Grand Admiral Konev isn't available at the moment, he..." The admiral made a pause, knowing what he would say would make Martin unhappy. "...Is currently playing cricket on the other side of the moon. I sent a message, but his answer was that he's depart as soon as possible and that, I quote, 'He would get there when he gets there'. In the meantime, I am invested with control of operations as his second in command." Konev had a way to anger representatives of the Core Worlds... After all, Martin was Spymaster, which meant he had the equivalent rank to a Grand Admiral, which meant Martin couldn't order Konev around as he pleased. No doubt Konev would actually take his time to drill that notion in his head. "I however took the liberty to download the entirety of the last 15 years of security reports to give them to you right now, we can assemble any information you need but it would take a longer time."
Stern raised from his pocket a little chip... technology was amazing indeed, but such a voluminous amount of data would certainly need a large device no? "...It is however, not much. You'll find most of the content are indeed just that, reports. As Imperial Command sees fit to distribute most of the resources of the Empire to active combat troops and not to garrison and suppression units like us, Grand Admiral Konev prefers to ask for guns and ships, rather than security cameras and motion sensors. Rest assured however that since we have such a huge number of available auxiliaries, we maintain a tight, physical rather than digital, based security."
So there were little to no security footages...
And most of the security was in easily temperable text record...
Written by a overwhelmingly majority of guards who were xenos...
It would be no surprise that 90% of the data in the device was the same line of text written over and over. 'Nothing unusual to report.' No doubt this would frustrate the Spymaster, but if army regulations demanded for camera footages to be kept for a certain amount of time... nothing forced commanders to actually install cameras.
Stern was of ice, professional and completely in the dark as to what Tunis and Konev planned and likewise Hotch maintained a cold demeanor but... he was resisting a slight urge to smile for he knew what was going on. Not only was there no surveillance to draw information from, but it would be next to impossible to establish one without him knowing as the heavy magnetic field around the planet prevented long rage wireless communication, which meant any spy cameras had to be wired, a listening post would have to be established on the moon which was entirely populated by military and their families in a duchy owned by Konev personally. The only danger was human intelligence, an infiltrator... which was why the secret was well kept, thus far only himself, Tunis, Konev and a handful of officers knew. There were Crayvens of course, but imperial intelligence could never infiltrate the Crayvens.
"Would you wish to wait for Grand Admiral Konev to get here or to commence the inspection right now?" Admiral Stern continued, hoping for the first option to allow Konev to handle this and get this useless work load off his back.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Martin took up the data file and handed it off to a dedicated tech trooper, his white uniform was clean and kempt, his soldiers marched out securing the area, as they’ve drilled for over and over, he didn’t answer Stern, he was calm and collected, he often did these routine check ups on different planets, it was different this time, he knew his job, yet it was a perfect opportunity to study the military strength of the planet.
“Sir!” The trooper yelled, “Data appearing on your Tab now.”
Martin looked at his data tablet, and scrolled through the reports, of course it was obvious that there was not much effort put into surveillance as they eloquently put it: “Konev prefers weapons and ships…” the first sign of military mobilization. Whatever they were doing they've done an amazing job hiding it legally, as per lack of evidence it would be hard to stop them. But Martin has seen this before, the use of the lack of information to conceal big operations, he wasn’t promoted to Spymaster without knowing something’s clearly up when surveillance is not prioritized on a planet full of Xenos auxiliary, though he also knows that right now it's still assumption.
“We shall proceed with the inspection procedure…”
He looked around and realized there were people saluting him, including the auxiliaries, he thought it was quite impressive that a xeno race could have such perfect organization compared to their barbaric Human counterparts who couldn’t even get themselves ready in five minutes; then again, Martin always thought of the Human Race as impractical, illogical, and imperfect beings, himself included; they rationalize their irrational selves for their own self-interest, revenge, money, conquest, victory, and many more things, it always seemed to be holding humanity back, despite this, he felt the need to be wary of his thoughts, xenos are known to hate humanity’s grip on the triangulum, things would not change so easily, and who’s to say that Xeno’s don’t fall to the same flaw.
“I see you rushed your preparations, if I remember correctly I only really asked for the officers, you may dismiss all your men, except for the Auxiliary Officers present, I will start my inspection through basic interrogation. My men will conduct inventory, my fleet will conduct a planetary survey, if anything comes up, there will be cause for concern for you, if none, of course nothing happens. This process may take days considering the amount your Admiral has stockpiled, we may have to re-register all your imperial weapons and ships along with the Xeno Auxiliary.”
He handed the chip back, keeping up the facade that it was of no import, when in fact it gave him more information than what was meant for him to find, there’s evidence of gradual military build up, a planet like this does not require a large arsenal, if it was so lax on surveillance and the crayvens were so trust worthy, ships and weapons were hardly needed, not to mention the amount of available auxiliaries; there was something amidst, but there were no signs of rebellion to be found. Perhaps, it was the Human side that wanted to rebel, the thought intrigued Martin; certainly something the Black Sun should keep an eye out for; but then there is the possibility that this was just the situation here for imperial troops, he had learned to keep realistic expectations, this was no different.
Martin was for the entire time stoic, never changing in his facial expression, no sign of despair or annoyance, he acted not as a pompous imperial, he acted as if he had plans, as if he was playing a chess game where every move counted; he was calm, precise, and decisive. He knew his purpose as an Imperial and he knew his place in the hierarchy, and underlying that facade, an insurrectionist leader that has avoided death and capture at every turn.
He signaled the Tech Trooper with a hand gesture, and the tech trooper simply nodded, Martin had plans for Konev and the Crayvens if his hunch was correct, and he was already putting it in motion.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Admiral Stern nodded, glad he could go on about his business and hopeful this wouldn't interrupt his work flow too much, he had been tasked with devising a plan in case of a Gargan rebellion and he wanted to do just that. "I'll leave you to it then, general Hotch here is in charge of most auxiliary officers. I'll make sure to send the message across the system for the rest to report here as soon as possible. There are few serving on ships and bases, etc. Good day then."
The first few hours went surprisingly smoothly as the Grand Admiral's staff had kept everything in surprising good order and up to date, there were very little discrepancies... but that didn't mean some things weren't awfully suspicious.
Interrogation Reports of Auxiliary Officers: Note
After interviewing several hundreds of officers on every level, it has become notable that the answers gathered are often either extremely similar or completely identical. We can confirm that there was no communication through the staff about the nature of the questions but getting such homogeneous answers are rare, interrogators aren't sure if this is sign of foul play or that Crayvens, with their smaller skull shape and inferior xeno cognitive abilities, are simply so alike that this should be considered normal.
Interrogation Reports of Human Officers: Note
A vast part of the human officers interrogated displayed a generally unhelpful to cold attitude toward interrogators, answering only in general terms and hinting to a dislike of the central government, although not to the army or the Grand Admiral himself. The more open recruits showed sign from their files to also being inferior of quality than most, but their interrogation revealed a general lack of mistrust toward the Crayven aliens and a general consensus that after years working with them, that they are simply not cognitively able to have a personality of their own and even in situations where they do not know someone may be eavesdropping, the content of discussions often remain technical and of work nature. It should be noted this is suspicious since this does not corroborate with reports of Crayven behaviors prior to the sixth rebellion 65 years ago.
Notice of the use of Manpower and Xenopower in Scheduling
A special notice of the nature of xeno work hours and human work hours. Crayvens do not sleep and their biology geared toward constant work to maximize their short lifetime means they also do not take time off save for the healing of injuries. It is thus notable that while the Crayven/Human ratio of soldiers and officers is alarmingly xeno shifted, in practical terms, Crayvens also fill over 98% of the hours worked in the fleet, humans also enjoying increased leave time and shorter work shift to raise moral and cope with 'difficult and sub-standard working conditions'.
Report on the Financial Status of the Fleet, Duchy and the Duke's Assets
This is a recommendation to reevaluate the financing of the Konev Fleet due to special circumstances. While large amounts of money are provided for maintenance of the fleet and for salaries, the Crayven Auxiliaries are simply not paid and maintenance also costs dramatically less due to the presence of an industrial basis on the planet 'Gulag' in this systems, which also employs Crayvens which are not payed, that use materials exploited by Crayvens, which are again not paid, the whole thing being owned by a company owned by Grand Admiral Konev every step of the way. It is fair to say that the Fleet is virtually independent from Imperial subventions in reality.
The excess money however has already been spent on what few things the system cannot provide for itself and to create reserves of these things. By estimates, the Konev fleet should be able to operate for 2 years should it be completely cut from imperial funding before it runs out of things it is unable to replace.
Likewise as a Duke, Grand Admiral Konev levies local taxes on goods and revenues as he sees fit for the management of his duchy. In addition to this, he owns the major civilian companies in the sector, which doesn't have any competition since the Duke also owns all of the land (There are no actual owners here other than him, everyone is technically renting the land they use). All of this insure that Konev is a very wealthy man.
Report on Auxiliary Training
Initial observation of Crayven training regimen prove interesting. Training begins at birth and is notably harsher than that any human would be able to tolerate, with a heavy use of live munitions and a very high amount of death in training. A curious fact is also the 2670% higher amount of 'accidents' in training barracks. A human instructor explained this as murder of Crayvens by other Crayvens and a quote, 'Culling of the Weak'. Group punishments for failure are often used in training but the Crayven approach to this is to remove the problematic elements of the group.
All of thus result in statistics that, assuming they aren't actually tempered with to make the Grand Admiral look good, would make the average Crayven soldier that survives training at the same level as specialized storm troops with some areas they are outright unmatched (it is considered impossible to beat a trained Crayven in hand to hand due to the fact they have 4 arms and are naturally stronger than humans.)
Notice on Auxiliary Cadets
Special attention should be given to the existence of Cadet corps for the Crayvens. While this isn't unusual as this provide the Army with a pool of semi-trained soldiers that can quickly be enlisted should it be needed, Crayven Cadets undergo the same regimen as Crayven soldiers, being chosen from birth and placed in training. It is fair to say they are soldiers in every aspect except in the fact they are not officially in the army yet. Should all of these cadets be mobilized, the already extreme disparity of human/xeno personel would become even more overwhelmingly favorable for the xenos.
Notice on Ship Production within the Duchy
A fact worth attention was found when examining the inventory of the local shipwright company (Owned by Duke Konev). There are currently hundreds of hulls 'On hold'. When interrogated about this, it was explained that these are ships, light cruisers mostly, that are not technically finished as they lack their armaments. Specifically, it would take around 12 hours for each of these ships to become fully operational as they have their weapon systems on stand-by as well, but they cannot be mobilized under the current conditions since the Grand Admiral's fleet does not have the permission to integrate more ships. The effective strength of the fleet with these ships would be 38% superior to what it is now.
There was no mistaking it, Konev was ready for war and this was left very much in the open, though if no one had come to check, all of this would just be insignificant numbers no one would have ever bothered to notice. That was why as the Grand Admiral came back from his little trip on the other side of the moon to Imperial Intelligence shoving its nose everywhere, he was confident in himself going to his office and ask for his dinner to be served while he drank coffee and waited for that spy master to come and interview him himself. After all, was it not his job to be ready for war?
There was however someone else who was coming back from her travel. General Lucretia was back early and had landed on the tidally locked Ladder Station and was taking the elevator down to the Moon. She had been informed the moment she had arrived of the situation but had known the second Martin's ship had appeared on the sensors of the system who was visiting and, from rumaging around the mind of her fellow insects, knew why he was here. As always, she was just insignificant, a xeno pushed in power for political reasons. Martin was after Konev, this would be nothing special.
Inertia
Member
