The Rebel Faction

The New Order: Moonstar

New Order Department of Research and Development
Project Leader: Garris Tandardii
Project Supervisor: John Orion, ISB

MOONSTAR

Moonstar's inception began several years back with an aspiring technological consultant to a computer systems subsidiary of Ulqib MacroTronics by the name of Garris Tandardii. Tandardii was already an impressively accomplished technologist, with contributions of significant value to home and business electronics. He began concentrating on military solutions six years ago and began a false start on a project involving droids and artificial intelligence. Having virtual systems as his strong point, he dropped the project at the request of Ulqib and began tentative work on a way to enforce customs codes and other related systems through the holonet. He spent the better half of a year analyzing how the holonet operated and what it was used for. He found himself impressed with the abilities of the holonet, and drew up a radical idea to create computer-generated "ferrets" which would seek out information valuable to Imperial Intelligence, essentially nothing more than a glorified set of software. The company again turned down his suggestions, and angered by yet another put off, he resigned his tenure with Ulqib and sought employment with the Empire. Someone in the Bureau of Operations saw his ideas, and he was hired immediately. They told him he would have to give up pretty much the rest of his life and release all obligations and contacts. He did it, only because the Empire promised him an unlimited budget and all the crew and equipment he could possibly conceive of...




Tandardii's concept takes advantage of abilities the holonet possesses which he indicates are entirely unexploited. He has proved he's right. Tandardii started with creating a set of software instructions which would do what his previous idea of a "holoferret" was intended to do: Seek information. He then spent several months altering the instructions to allow for a more broad sense of what "information" was. This went from seeking patterns in hard data, to actually seeking out individuals who left a "holotrail". These holotrails could be compiled from lists such as hotel and starport registrations to order forms and banking requests.




Preliminary tests showed the software worked, and Tandardii brushed it up with additional instructions which would allow it to become more of an independent program which checked in on a regular basis. It would seek out the most likely location of the individual based on the trail it left, then send itself into the closest mainframe to the individual itself. Once there, it would notify the proper authorities and follow the target from location to location, dependent on the trail left. Tandardii received high accolades for this system, and the Empire began using it immediately with terrific success. However, Tandardii was not even getting warmed up...




Tandardii understood that as great as the system worked, there were two things about it which bothered him constantly. The first was the fact that his program could only seek and discover those who were leaving trails. Second, it was not independent enough. He knew how far the holonet reached and what was available to it, and he knew he still was not tapping into it as fully as could be done. So he first worked on making it more independent




To solve the problem of finding people who left little or no trail to go on, Tandardii wrote a separate program which would go ahead of the first one. This program would study the available information of the target, compiled a list of locations where it would most likely be, then send copies of the first program to all those locations to seek out additional material as it popped up. This could number in the thousands, and rarely a couple million. He took it a step further, realizing there were those whom the Empire were seeking which left no discernible trail yet still were psychologically predictable. To do this, he added to his second program a set of instructions which allowed it to notify local authorities in areas where the prey was likely to be, and provide them with a list of possible locations of apprehension and ways to determine if the individual was actually present. This worked wonders too in the trial phase, and although Intell was ecstatic about their new toy, Tandarii realized he would soon be up to his neck in instructions, and went in a completely new and radical direction.




Tandarii had several of the best Imperial Intelligence operatives sit down and take a massive series of tests which he devised. They were constructed to allow the operatives to enter almost all information about their tactics and strategies they systematically use to seek out rebels. Upon completion, he combined all the data into one file, and called it the "superfile". This he considered to be the makeup of an ultimate operative. He dabbled for a while with attempts to infuse the superfile into his program, but met with some failure. Frustrated, he decided to jump the whole fence and attempt to create a device which would allow a living individual to plug into the holonet and operate through it. Announcing this concept to his research team met with several resignations and transfers, but luckily he retained most of his team and work began.




Tandardii devised an input/output system which was strikingly effective in emulating functions done in the real world through the net. He had teams write separate sets of instructions which would combine to create one contiguous program which made the holonet and it's functions fully viral. This took about two years and drained incredible resources. For this period of time, he alienated Intelligence with producing no results for the two years, constantly promising breakthrough material. He produced.




Tests showed that with practice, operatives could plug into the holonet and navigate anywhere it connected to. This stunned users, not used to the instant freedom of access and the ability to ignore transit and downtime. He then developed an interface which ran his first two ferret programs in tandem with the operatives. The operatives now had the power to unleash unparalleled amounts of power on the seeking of dissidents. Next, he arranged for unilateral access of his operatives to all military installations, to include everything from garrisons to Star Destroyer mainframes. Then, he tapped into the Bureau of Ships and Services (BoSS). Last, he administered already available mind-expanding chemicals into the operatives, which allowed them to think more on the level of the holonet's scope, a daunting task for a regular thought process. He was near completion.




Moonstar's first test showed what happens when you give a single man the ability and authority to hunt an individual with the full extent of the system. An operative was sent after a specified target, and was given five days to attain capture. In only seven standard hours, the operative had located the individual in a manner unique in capability only to Moonstar. The operative was able to collate patterned data from BoSS of stolen starship transponder codes, and discovered that if this was cross-referenced with customs schedules AND previous arrest records AND known operatives which used the same starship AND the location of those specific models of starships (once again cross-referenced against starport detection and logging systems), the location of the individual was narrowed down to five possibilities. In the following forty three hours, the operative was able to successfully locate and follow each of the five possibilities by directing the local Imperial authorities. He then set up a schedule of arrests which itself was planned according to known rebel cell activity in the different regions. This arrest schedule was set up to nab the suspects when they were close to possibly contacting their local cell. Arrests were made, four people were eliminated by virtue of alibi's and the true target was detained. Precisely 4.91 days before the target was supposed to have been apprehended according to the test criteria. Tandardii nicknamed the operatives "skycaps" since he contended that they seemed to fly directly to the target with no obstacles. He had no idea how right he was. Operatives began taking matters more and more into their own hands to catch their prey.




Subsequent tests showed that operatives were able to essentially take direct physical action toward others elsewhere. One operative started a fire in the apartment that a rebel cell used, destroying the structure and obliterating the equipment they used to contact their superiors. He did this by accessing the computer in the apartment over land lines by connection with the local communications company from a Star Destroyer in orbit. Once on the computer, he adjusted the horizontal hold of the monitor all the way up, causing the screen to flicker constantly. This caused the screen to heat up and eventually melt and catch fire. Another operative demonstrated the ability of disturbing mass destruction. He accessed the autopilot of a metropolitan transport bus and caused it to impact into a van full of rebels in the middle of a street, killing the rebels with a great deal of residual damage. The Empire likes these demonstrations, because they showed that operatives could now cause undue mayhem without the Empire possibly being blamed. Another operative was able to somewhat poison another rebel. They did this by accessing their past health records and discovering that they were dangerously allergic to a certain type of spice. The skyop arranged for this spice to be placed in their food by an autochef in a crowded mall. The rebel suffered from such severe asphyxiation, he became permanently brain damaged by the time authorities picked him up. The operative followed the rebel around town a whole morning looking for an opportunity to get at him by monitoring all the security cameras in the mall, which were already linked for alarm purposes to the local police station.




Reports are that there are several skyops regularly doing hunts now, with more coming online. This is disturbing news for the Alliance as they have no way to tell if one of their men was subject to a legitimate accident or not. Tandardii is apparently attempting to allow the full consciousness of a skyop to inhabit the holonet and come online when requested, furnished with orders and ready for the hunt, or just wandering the net randomly killing and apprehending.