Leaked Transmissions

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Dalproxx, Councilor

     Commander Valka, I hereby offer my profound congratulations. The Virtupets Space Station Governing Committee elections have been finalised and appointments made. With Dr. Sloth’s defeat, in which you played no small part, the Space Station for the first time has a democratically elected governing body. The first meeting of the Committee has concluded. I have been elected Committee Leader in this first sitting, and a number of civil appointments have also been made.

     Primarily, in your concern, the Committee has established the Virtupets Space Station Security Force (VSSSF) with a remit to police and protect the Station under the laws that are and will be established by the Governing Committee. With a unanimous vote, the Committee has selected you to head this new department due to your singular leadership displayed in the Resistance against Dr. Sloth.

     In terms of practicalities, you will find little difference. Your security codes remain unchanged and you retain the ability to appoint personnel and deploy them as you see fit. But I hope you feel this legitimises your efforts to save the Station from Dr. Sloth’s tyranny.

     Further directions will be incoming,

     Councilor Baltan Dalproxx.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Fawcett, Captain

     Commander Valka. Please find included the VSSSF Horus report on Mission: Slorg Trail.

     The Horus has completed a survey of the debris field left behind after the explosion of Dr. Sloth’s mothership in deep orbit. Due to the gravitational fields of both Neopia and Kreludor, there has been significant drift, but our science officers have accounted for this in 97.6% of cases. Our survey yielded:

     - 700 tonnes of slag metal, remnants of the ship’s hull in various forms of destruction. None salvageable for rebuild. Delivered all to recycling plants aboard the Space Station as per VSSSF policy.

     - 2 tonnes slag metal, remnants of the attempts by Dr. Sloth to reproduce the Space Faerie’s Token. They appear to have melted into one solid mass. Delivered to recycling plants aboard the Space Station as per VSSSF policy.

     - Remains of one YRB-X1 model, chassis largely destroyed. My Chief Engineer informs me that the memory circuits could be salvageable. I have delivered them to Doctor Harding in the Robotics Labs for study.

     Of the genuine Space Faerie Token, our survey could not find any trace on any drift vectors. Traffic in this area has been monitored since the explosion, minimalising chances that it has been intercepted. Advise that it is likely the Space Faerie Token was destroyed.

     -*-

     To: Gorix, Officer

     From: Valka, Commander

     Gorix, I have an important mission for you. Our computer audits have found some odd transactions in the Virtupets Corporation bank accounts. It’s only been weeks since Dr. Sloth’s defeat, and we assumed that the company would flounder without his usual iron grip. We expected the usual automatic payments of a company continuing to function long after the upper management have departed, but this is something else. New purchases, some significant, all across the surface of Neopia. Dr. Sloth was the board of the Virtupets Corporation. There isn’t anyone left to continue his work or appoint a new CEO. These payments shouldn’t be happening. Someone new is pulling the strings in Sloth’s empire, and I need to know who.

     Get into the Virtupets systems. Find out what is going on.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Julples, Section Leader

     Commander, here is my daily report on in-orbit activity around Neopia.

     - 13:45 Unauthorised Freighter out of Kreludor on inbound trajectory to Space Station. VSSSF Blorbis dispatched to intercept. Captain Xulped of the Unauthorised Freighter unaware of Governing Committee’s new policies on shipping routes. Captain Haestor of the VSSSF Blorbis provided a verbal reprimand in this instance per policy.

     - 15:15 Comet on near-collision course with Neopia successfully deflected off planet’s atmosphere by Space Faerie. It now remains on route to deep space, not on collision course with any stellar objects.

     - 17:59 Routine maintenance work on Satellite MT-X01 concluded. Repair crews on route back to Space Station.

     - 19:34 Unidentified object detected broadcasting signal of unknown encryption. Pinged as standard policy, broadcast signal ceased. May be sensor glitch, have referred to technicians.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Harding, Doctor

     Commander, I took delivery of the remains of YRB-X1 model from Captain Fawcett last week. As you can imagine, with the downfall of Dr. Sloth our labs have been quite inundated with extra work. As a result, we have only today been able to examine the remains. The chassis and internal locomotion circuitry are completely shot. Sensory input processors are fused. Memory circuits are intact, as Captain Fawcett suspected. However, there is significant cross-wiring with the unit’s personality matrix, which itself is in poor upkeep.

     It is unclear how much of this is damage from the explosion as some of the wiring looks deliberately soldered, but the upshot is that the personality matrix only contains one of the six basic encoded emotions for robots of this type - anger. Any attempt to access the memory circuits is filtered through this one emotion, and the results are, to say the least, difficult to interpret. So far, it has caused the unit to overheat twice, fused three power cells, and overloaded the lab’s monitoring equipment once. At this point I do not believe we will be able to extract anything of value from the unit.

     I will archive it for further study, as I do not believe the unit is in a state that can be repaired, nor can the components be recycled into new units due to depreciation. I apologise we cannot be greater help in this matter.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Julples, Section Leader

     Commander, I’ve picked up the same unidentified signal three times over the last twenty-four hours. Each time, I have pinged it, and each time, it has immediately stopped broadcasting. I waited different amounts of time before pinging the second and third times, just to be sure. I am confident that the cease of broadcast is directly related to our ping. Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t like being noticed.

     I’m forwarding the telemetry we recorded off it to Specialist Pollock in Cryptography. I’m also going to reach out to Kreludor and the Lunar Temple Partnership Project to see if we can triangulate the source of the signal and pay it a visit.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Dalproxx, Councilor

     Commander, please find below a forwarded message to you from Colm Johnson, a close personal friend of mine:

     Commander Valka, I hope Councilor Dalproxx is able to pass this message on to you. I am the new CEO of the Virtupets Corporation, appointed soon after the death of Dr. Sloth. My employees have brought to my attention the efforts of one Officer Gorix to infiltrate the organisation and access our confidential proprietary information.

     I understand that the actions of VirtuCorp following Sloth’s demise will be of great interest to the VSSSF, and I would assume this is why Officer Gorix is involved. However, I can assure you that the present VirtuCorp leadership is in no way related to Dr. Sloth or his cabal. In fact, since being appointed, I have worked to expunge Sloth cronies from upper leadership and we are actively divesting the company from the more questionable projects that Dr. Sloth had involvements with. In order to compensate for these losses to our portfolio, we have been making acquisitions across Neopia. I assume these are the transactions that have gained your attention.

     If you need any formal statements from me I am more than happy to attend the VSSSF offices, you need only speak to my lawyers to arrange an appointment. But failing that, I do hope you could consider this matter closed as continued, baseless investigations by authorities are bound to eventually hit the press and that will hit our stock price. Such actions without significant evidence may garner allegations of overreach, which I am sure you can do without in such a new agency.

     Kind Regards,

     Colm Johnson.

     -*-

     To: Gorix, Officer

     From: Valka, Commander

     Gorix, you’re on to something. Whatever you’re getting close to, it has the people at VirtuCorp worried. That means they must be hiding something. I’ve had a message with thinly veiled threats of legal action from their new CEO, Colm Johnson. He was suspiciously absent with details on how he gained that position when Dr. Sloth was the only person capable of appointing him. He’s even leaned on Councilor Dalproxx, as if bringing in government oversight might scare us off.

     I’m sure whatever it is they are hiding, this Johnson figure is at the heart of it. Redouble your efforts, and be more careful this time! I don’t know how they discovered you, but it cannot happen again.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Scout, Officer

     Commander, here’s my report on Persons of Interest (POI) since the establishment of the VSSSF.

     - POI#001: Dr. Sloth, unaccounted for as of the destruction of his mothership (see: EVENT/FALLEN). Officers Gorix and Cylara’s report on his final actions place him within the magical confines of the Space Faerie’s Token, from which escape should be impossible.

     - POI#023: Commander Garoo. Captured by VSSSF personnel during the liberation of the Space Station (see: EVENT/LIBERATION). Remains in high security cell at Defenders of Neopia Headquarters in Neopia Central.

     - POI#024: Commander Gormos. Evacuated Dr. Sloth’s mothership prior to destruction. There have been scattered sightings of him on Kreludor, where some of the Grundos believe him to be a hero of the resistance. Remains at large, but we believe from Officer Gorix’s reports that his security access to VirtuCorp systems has been revoked by person or persons unknown. Appears to have fallen out of favor with Dr. Sloth due to his actions onboard the mothership.

     - POI#040: Ylana Skyfire. Evaded capture during EVENT/LIBERATION. Remains at large, taking confirmed mercenary contracts across the system (and possibly beyond). Reports for Officer Gorix suggest she has been blacklisted for employment from VirtuCorp due to her abandoning her contract at the conclusion of the war. Unlikely she will be working for Dr. Sloth again in the near future.

     - POI#041: Sophix II. Captured by VSSSF personnel during EVENT/LIBERATION. Incarcerated in high security cell at Defenders of Neopia Headquarters in Neopia Central briefly, but on the personal request of Supreme Commander Arlhox VII has been extradited to the Alien Aisha Hegemony to be imprisoned for unknown crimes.

     - POI#037: Designer Zelroo. Confirmed at large on Kreludor, has gainful employment under the new Unity Government to build their fleet. Ongoing links to Dr. Sloth unknown. Possible he is working to install weak points and back doors into their ships to be used in the event of a Sloth invasion. Surveillance is ongoing.

     - POI#056: Parlax. Sporadic sightings at the edges of the systems, possibly hiding out in the Giant Space Fungus Territory due to previous familiarity with the area. Scout ships unable to reliably navigate within, making investigation and apprehension difficult. Monitoring stations have been established at the edge of the fungal infection in case he reemerges.

     As per your directions, I have added the following:

     - POI#076: Colm Johnson. Little known about him currently. Intelligence gathering operations ongoing, headed by Officer Gorix.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Julples, Section Leader

     Commander, this is getting really weird. I successfully got in contact with Specialist Mercer at the Kreludor Observatory and my opposite number, Sao Long, at the Lunar Temple Partnership Project. We successfully triangulated the signal to an orbital location of 114.45, 175.34, 112.0. I dispatched the VSSSF Meepit on an intercept course with instructions not to ping it or attempt to make radio contact until it was in recordable sensor range.

     The Meepit was already in orbit, so this message was sent via ship-to-ship encoded transmission directly from my station. Myself, Specialist Mercer, Sao Long, and the Meepit’s own communication officer all noted that within a few minutes of the transmission, the signal stopped. Captain Mercer of the Meepit reports that on reaching the location, they found no objects of interests, no vapour or energy trails that would suggest the recent presence of a ship, nor any spatial or dimensional anomalies that one would expect with wormhole or teleportation technology.

     The thing simply vanished, Commander.

     What’s more, it clearly intercepted our ship-to-ship message - something that only a sophisticated hacker with direct access to Virtupets systems should be able to do. It has access to our systems and has broken our cyphers. At this point, I do not know what to do next.

     -*-

     To: Julples, Section Leader

     From: Valka, Commander

     At this point I do not believe continued attempts at contact or capture will bear fruit, and the longer this goes on the more likely it is that we drive it to different actions that we cannot monitor. Our best hope is now to crack whatever code is buried in the signals it is sending. Attempt no further interference with the object, but forward all intercepted telemetries on to Specialist Pollock in Cryptography.

     Thank you for your thorough service in this matter.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Dalproxx, Councilor

     Commander, I think perhaps you misunderstood the nature of our last communication. Colm Johnson has given a full and honest statement to you in regards to the recent business actions of VirtuCorp. He is a close personal friend of mine and the question of his integrity is beyond reproach. I assumed it would be the end of the matter.

     Yet, I have been contacted by him just this morning, and he informs me that your Officer Gorix has not only continued his investigation, but has been given the go ahead to proceed further, including with the personal investigation of Mr. Johnson himself.

     This is intolerable harassment of a private citizen, Commander. It cannot stand. I am ordering you to shutter the investigation into VirtuCorp and Mr. Johnson immediately. Failure to do so will put you and the VSSSF itself into some very hot water indeed.

     -*-

     To: Gorix, Officer

     From: Valka, Commander

     Gorix, they are on to us. I don’t know how, but you’ve been made again. I got a message from Councilor Dalproxx this morning ordering me to close this file. That can only mean we are onto something really big, but I can’t afford to have you on this. As an asset, you’ve been compromised.

     Sorry, Gorix, but return to base. We have to close this case or risk the entire VSSSF being shut down.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Pollock, Specialist

     Commander, I’ve been compiling the datasets from Section Leader Julples on the unidentified object she’s been tracking in Neopia’s orbit. As she may have intimated to you, the signals it has been broadcasting have defied classical decryption. It’s become something of a running bet in the department to see if anyone can break the code, and so far I am sad to report we don’t have any results to offer. Whenever we get close to figuring it out, it is as if the entire code mutates into entirely new levels of encryption.

     We’ve not encountered anything like this before, though some of the syntax bears worrying similarities to the foundational code we recovered from the Neopet V2 project.

     The reason for this communication is that, while we haven’t broken the code, we have made inroads into discovering exactly what it is trying to do. The patterns of code share an almost perfect alignment with the Virtupets Space Station’s own internal wifi network.

     It is at this stage a theory, but I believe the signal is somehow piggybacking on our wifi systems to access communication and database systems within the Station. Unfortunately, if that is true, discovering the intended recipients for this message would require tearing apart the Station’s systems and conducting a forensic autopsy on them, line by line.

     It goes without saying that if this theory is correct, Commander, this unidentified party has complete and unfettered access to all systems onboard the station, including communications like this one and the station’s surveillance equipment.

     -*-

     To: Conicks, Agent

     From: Valka, Commander

     Conicks, I have an assignment for you. It must be discussed in person, and not aboard the Station. I intend to visit Neopia Central tomorrow. Take a shuttle down and meet me at the Coffee Shop at twelve noon, sharp.

     -*-

     To: Valka, Commander

     From: Dalproxx, Councilor

     Commander Valka, it is with a grave heart I write to inform you of the recent closed session of the Governing Committee. As I warned you previously, continued investigation of VirtuCorp and Colm Johnson would result is serious actions against both you personally and the VSSSF itself.

     Unfortunately, you ignored the direct order from myself to cease investigation, showing utter contempt to the rule of law that the Governing Committee represents. I have received information that you instructed Officer Conicks to pick up the investigation where Officer Gorix left off, and that he agreed to do so.

     The Committee believes that you acted alone in this matter, and that the wider VSSSF is not collaborating with your insurrection. As a result, the Committee voted 9/1 to show leniency. Officers Conicks and Gorix, as well as any other VSSSF staff, will not face any disciplinary actions.

     The same cannot be said of you. We cannot allow the VSSSF to be headed by an individual who treats the law as an optional embellishment rather than the cornerstone of his position. The Committee has voted unanimously to remove you from office with immediate effect. Your OBSIDIAN BLACK clearance has been revoked, and your security passes invalidated. Thirty minutes after your receipt of this message is recorded, your biometric clearance will be deleted from the system.

     We are not exiling you from the Station, but as of this moment, you are a private citizen.

     I am deeply sorry it has come to this.

     -*-

     To: Gorix, Officer; Cylara, Specialist; Scout, Officer; Conicks, Officer; Xaner, Officer; Pollock, Specialist; Julples, Section Leader; Mira, Special Liaison

     From: Valka, Commander (Clearance Unavailable #ERROR)

     Sorry for the suddenness and speed of this message. I have only minutes until I lose complete access to VSSSF systems. I have been demoted from my position and removed from the VSSSF by the Governing Committee due to my continued investigation into VirtuCorp and Colm Johnson. I can only assume this is due to political pressure brought on the Committee by Johnson himself.

     He is up to something, I am sure of it. And I think I have managed to put together some of the pieces.

     Mira designed the Space Faerie’s Token to contain Sloth’s body, but I do not believe I has successfully contained his mind. I think he has managed to figure out how to send a signal from within the Token, and has used it to hack and infiltrate the systems onboard the Space Station via the station’s wifi network.

     I’m sure he’s been monitoring VSSSF activity. How else have the mysterious signals we’ve been intercepting stopped so suddenly? I also believe he has access to the Station’s own communications array, and piggybacked on it to send messages across Neopia and beyond.

     This is the only reasonable way we can explain how Johnson was appointed CEO. Sloth gave him the job via this communications array. He’s working under Sloth’s command. Indeed, Johnson appears to have intercepted information from within our network that could only have come from someone with sophisticated hacked access like the type Sloth appears to have gained.

     I believe Johnson is working to recover the Token, or further Sloth’s plans in some other way.

     I don’t yet know who he is, but I know enough to say that he must be stopped, whether or not the Committee agree.

     I may not be VSSSF any longer, but that doesn’t mean it is over. As of today, I am re-establishing the Resistance. We’ll continue the work that the VSSSF is being stopped from doing.

     You are all welcome to join me. Of course, this will put your careers, and quite possibly your lives, in danger. But most of you have walked that line before. I will think no less of any of you if you ignore this message. But those of you who wish to fight, I will find you.

     The Resistance will live on!

     -*-

     END TRANSMISSION LOG

     ///ERRORERRORERROR-RANDOM-STRING-DETECTED/ERROR/FATAL-ERROR-INJECTION////foolsyouunderstandnothingarenothingwillbenothing//

///icannotbestoppedyouhaveyettoevengraspthebeautyofmyplans//

///neopiawillbeminedrslothshallruleagain///ERRORERROR///

      The End.