BeBeCe - The Elite Bar

  Over the last week, there have been three unsuccessful, but determined assassination attempts against high-ranking AJN officials. The first one was last Friday, against the TSCA Commander, James Winston in the BeBeCe (-8,-11) system. The second and third attempts happened on Tuesday. One was against Cpt. Amy Price, the commander of the Victor-class starship, the AJN Sovereign. Cpt. Price was reported to have been travelling to Alkaid (-4,10) for two weeks shore leave. The attempt occurred as she was travelling towards New Caledonia 2 in Alkaid system space. The other attempt was against Aleksandr Primakov, the AJN's press liason. This occurred much closer to home, in the Gateway system, as he was returning from a press conference held in the Veliaze system.

  Aleksandr Primakov was the only one of the three targets who was hurt in the attacks. The Asp he was travelling in was destroyed by the assassin, who was commanding an Imperial Explorer. Fortunately, Primakov's ship was fitted with a Stowmaster escape capsule, and Primakov made his escape before the Exporer could give chase. "It was rather frightening. It was all over so quickly - I'm not really a combateer, and the Explorer shot me down rather rapidly. I suffered a broken arm when the Stowmaster ejected, but that's the least of my worries," Primakov told a reporter.

  James Winston told the News, "I had been watching three ships - they had been following me for the past three or four hyperspace jumps. Two Sidewinders and one Cobra Mk.3. They thought they were keeping far enough back for me not to notice, but I was expecting trouble. I guess they thought BeBeCe was a good place to pounce since it's in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, since I flight instruct and adminster checkrides, I have good reflexes - you have to if you're going to survive what the students throw at you! The three assassins fought hard, but not hard enough. I think they must have forgotten how an Elite combateer fights. The whole battle lasted about fifteen seconds."

  We could not contact Cpt. Price by our publishing deadline due to a router failure in Alkaid, but it is understood that she had no difficulty in defending herself from the assassins. An AJN spokesbeing said, "Anyone who attacks Cpt. Price will be space-dust by now." She is reported to be enjoying "a welcome bit of R&R after the incident."

  Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks so far, and it is not known why they chose the targets they did. High-ranking AJN personnel have been advised to be vigilant in the light of these attacks. They have also been advised to travel with combat rated pilots if they are not combateers themselves. The AJNIB is examining both Cpt. Price and Cdr. Winston's flight data recorders and ship logs for any clues as to the identities and motives of the attackers.

  The Empire was this week licking its wounds after becomimg heavily embroiled in two separate, pitched battles. The first occurred in Facece, where the Vequess Liberation Army launched a suprise offensive against Imperial authorities. The Empire's infrastructure was seriously damaged in the attack, the ferocity of which surprised everybody - especially the Empire, which had taken great pains to ensure that the VLA was destroyed some months ago. The VLA strike fleet soon departed after the attack, leaving the arriving Imperial reinforcements with nobody to attack. An anonymous VLA spokesbeing told the News, "The Empire has to watch out. We are going to strike until they change their ways. Violence is the only language they seem to understand. If it means we have to destroy the Empire, so be it." The VLA's attack caused serious network outages, which alerted the rest of the galaxy that something was going on. No communication got in our out of Facece for two days. It is suspected that this was a deliberate part of the VLA's plans to ensure the arrival of reinforcements was delayed until their objectives were met.

  Meanwhile, the Empire had mounted an attack on what it calls "a rogue system run by a rogue, disloyal and despicable ex-Lord". Numerous Imperial attack craft poured into Sohocan, and tried to take over the system. The Empire did not reckon with the response of the local militia and independents from surrounding systems. After two days of intense fighting, the Imperial forces withdrew.

  The Empire was only in Sohocan for one thing - to capture the "disgraced" ex-Lord Sharrock, who denounced the Empire several months ago. The huge show of force to capture one person is a well-known strong-arm tactic employed by the Empire, the most notable uses of which was the attack on Veliaze in the 3260s. It is understood that the Emperor is "seething" about the poor results of recent Imperial military actions, which are showing that the Imperial Navy is a shadow of its former self. "Right now, the Imperial navy is no match for either the Alliance or Federation forces," said Marcan MacLeary, an independent military analyst.

Alliance Atlas: Olgrea

Frontier News Issue 37

  Olgrean authorities are furious after AllianceBell simulataneously powered down all the relays and routers in the Olgrea system for one hour. The denial of service occurred on Wednesday at 14:00 standard time. The network outage caused chaos within the Olgrea system, and caused network slowdowns in the Faraway connections of neigbouring systems as the relays began routing around Olgrea, as the hyperspace links between Olgrea's relays and their peers in surrounding systems collapsed.

  Eve Paget, the western region general manager for the AllianceBell Western Region said in a press conference, "This outage was done in protest against Olgrea's ridiculous and punitive bandwidth tax. We needed to demonstrate to Olgrea what it would be like if they implemented this tax, and we left when our contract expired later this year. We wanted to give them a taste of the isolation they will cause themselves."

  Ron Tetommo, Olgrea's treasurer, told AllianceBell that their action was "illegal and completely irresponsible." He told the News, "We will not make policy in response to AllianceBell's strongarm tactics. We have filed a lawsuit against them in the AIS High Court due to the breach of contract this outage represented, and we have also filed a complaint with the ACC."

  The Alliance Communication Commission (ACC) has reportedly already strongly rebuked AllianceBell. "The Olgreans are quite right to be upset. This outage represents a serious and illegal breach of contract by AllianceBell. We have informed AllianceBell's management that they risk losing their license over this incident."

  AllianceBell's deliberate network outage appears to have been a calculated risk they were willing to take. Last week, the Olgrea Treasury was quite adamant that it would not back down over the issue of the bandwidth tax. However, this week they are convening urgent talks with AllianceBell's management - so from AllianceBell's perspective, even with the drubbing they will undoubtedly recieve in the courts, they might just be able to get the Olgreans to drop the idea of a bandwidth tax - which is something that might pay off enormously in the long run as it will discourage other systems from setting up bandwidth taxes. The discouragement will not be because of a network outage threat (another protest will almost certainly cost AllianceBell their license), but the infrastrucure barrier to the tax will still remain. Other systems' governments watch with interest: nearly half of the Alliance has their G.I.N. bandwidth supplied by AllianceBell. The only Alliance system that has a nationalized bandwidth provider is Alioth. "This would never happen here," said Jeff Kayle rather unhelpfully. Kayle is Alioth's Communications secretary.

Frontier News Issue 37

Disappearance of the AJN Lion

  The ASC in this week's press conference on the strange LRA objects contained some startling news about the data retrieved from the probes. The probes, which were taken by the LRA-2 when it disappeared, were recently returned by a smaller object of similar nature to the LRA-2. Alice Thompson, the ASC officer heading up the LRA research project at the Ackwaze Space Science Institute told the News, "The probe's computer recorded a great deal of data whilst it was away. We are still busy analysing it for more information."

  The most significant news revealed at the press conference was that the probes were taken to where no one has gone before - in fact, the probes couldn't even work out where they were. The probes are capable of working out where they are by looking at the stars and comparing what they see to the starmaps in their memory. The maps contain all known systems. The probes were taken to a region of space which are so distant that they are not charted well enough. Researchers are sifting through the data to try and get any kind of fix. "It looks like the probes were taken to the other side of the galaxy," said Thompson during the press conference.

  However, more intriguing is not how far they went - but how they travelled. The internal clocks on the probes showed remarkably little time dilation (an effect very obvious in hyperspace). The probes did not detect a hyperspace pull, so clearly the LRA objects are transporting themselves via an unknown method. "Just like hyperspace would be indistinguishable from magic in twentieth century society, the LRA transport method is currently indistinguishable from magic to us."

  It is hoped that the probe's sensors will shed some light on the nature of this transport mechanism. However, the other big mystery that remains is the fifteen petabytes of data that someone or something at the other end loaded into the probes.

Marcan Rayger

Pritchard on the Frontier

Deceit, Harmony & Pleasure

3D Encounters

EBBS

Quiz

  To start...Marko Lehtinen has updated his Marcan Rayger online novel by starting the first chapter of the final part of the story. Marko tells us, "Marcan is finally doing something he should have done a long time ago: namely contact his parents who have been worried sick... and at the same time, a plot that Marcan stumbled over earlier in the story is reaching up to him again..."

  Matt Fossa also slipped one by us. Belatedly we report the next chapter of Pritchard on the Frontier! Chapter 22 of this great story has the group wondering on GalCop's demise...and just what is Max Weaver planning to do when the space dredger makes it back to inhabited space?

  There's also an update this week to Deceit, Harmony & Pleasure. Charles Albright finds himself captured and facing an uncomfortable interview...meanwhile, Winston notices he's late back and starts looking for him. Then there's a problem with everyone's communicators, which sooner rather than later will lead to trouble in the frigid town of Diamond... Find out what is happening in Chapter 16 - "The Suspect".

  Simon Challands, it seems, can't stay out of this section of the Frontier News. This week, he's done it by updating 3D Encounters. If you can do the stereo vision thing, check out the 3D images of various ships and scenes from Frontier: First Encounters!

  Finally, the Elite BBS has undergone some updating. You can now customize it a bit by creating your own user id. At the moment, this is limited to adding your name and email address plus the markers that indicate which messages are new ones, but there's more plans ahead, such as threading options. If you've not visited the EBBS, do so today!

  Oh...and don't forget the Fiendishly Difficult Elite Quiz. There's only a few days left on September's question!