Re: Parin IV - Space Station Brilliance
"Patience doesn't seem to be his strength."
"Quiet now."
"Yes, mother."
"Don't call me that."
Anybody familiar with the Telarin would start to wonder when hearing these words - usually they are absolutely formal and factual.
The General nods at Viper and presses a button on his desk. "Ladies and Gentlemen: The Dividing Line." A hologram gets projected into the air above the desk. It's a model of a space station - a spheric main body with two quadrants circling it. "This space station has been built before the First War as a research facility and was used as an army base during the conflict. It has been deactivated a few years ago." The picture zooms out to show a map of the Juris sector, with a glowing red spot towards the edge. "As you can see it resides on the outside of the sector, close to the former Ashotur dominion. In the last weeks we have received a number of strange signals from this region. Chopped up distress signals that seem to be recorded during the First War, reports of people long passed away and a lot of white noise. Not to mention," the General says as he presses another button, "this."
The picture has changed again, this time showing something organic. A brown, sack-like body with a number of tendrils behind them. "What you see here is a space traveling lifeform that has shown up in the sector recently. As far as we can tell it's the spore of some kind of fungus. This wouldn't be that troubling... if they weren't 13 feet long and appearing in groups. Allow me to demonstrate." The picture changes again - another of the spores appears, together with a Sword fighter of the TPD. The spores turn against the ship and batter against it's shields until they give out. Almost instantly the tendrils bury into the ship and start to pump something into it. "The digestive juices of these spores are strong enough to destroy even metal within a few days."
The General turns the hologram off. "We have called for individual contractors because we want to position a task force on The Dividing Line. Your missions would be to reactivate the Dividing Line, search the surrounding planets, investigate anything unusual and defend the station against any incoming attacks. We can't send a Directorate troop, because quite frankly, we need them all in the new conflict with the Nnyarthall - who, to top things off, seem to show interest in the region around The Dividing Line as well. We suspect they receive the same signals as us.
Any questions?" The General looks around expectantly.