LM:
LM:“Um, yes.”
DC:
DC:“The leaders are the only signicant asset when you do that. How many do you think the Five Worlds Cabal has?”
LM:
LM:“A handful at most.”
DC:
DC:“Precisely. The Master is one, of course, and he and
Apollyon each have only one protégé. Now, how many outside that camarilla do you think they trust?”
LM:
LM:“As few as possible, but Blakist units are disappearing.
The Hidden Five are their best option to regroup, so they must to have a way to nd them. That doesn’t work unless more than just the leaders know the locations.”
DC:
DC:“Oh, but it does. In fact, it’s painfully simple. Final example: how did the Clanners hide the Exodus Road?”
LM:
LM:“They kept it a secret from the invasion force.”
DC:
DC:“Specically, no one person possessed the whole route, so no one person could compromise that information.”
LM:
LM:“Is that how it works for the Hidden Five?”
DC:
DC:“Yes. In days past, ComStar issued a special noteputer
to those few leaders trusted with the information. With the appropriate security protocols, they could plot a self-purging course that was never stored in the JumpShip’s memory.”
LM:
LM:“So, then ComStar has to be lying.” DC:
DC:“Have you been listening? Waterly was the last Primus
who knew about the Hidden Five. She planned to use their assets to reinforce garrisons after Operation SCORPION shut down the Sphere. The Master himself intervened when it became clear that SCORPION wouldn’t work. After Waterly’s death, you can be sure Mori and Focht were never informed. None of ComStar’s present leaders knew they had the information, and even if they did, their security protocols were disabled when the Master purged the data.”
LM:
LM:“Can you get me one of these ComStar noteputers?” DC:
DC:“No, but they’re just smoke and mirrors. The data is embedded in H PG rmware; you could put the software on any noteputer and access it.”
LM:
LM:“Why didn’t you say so twenty minutes ago? Give me your password and—“
DC:
DC:“It doesn’t work that way.” [unintelligible] “You needed three separate passwords to decrypt the information under the old system, and the Word of Blake made some improvements since then.”
LM: LM:
“Like what?”
DC:
DC:“You have to be Manei Domini. Our—excuse me—their
version works something like the DI computer in a ’Mech. A Manus within a certain range of an HPG thinks his way through the security protocol. Implants read this information, and transmit the decryption key to the HPG. The HPG transmits the course to the Manus and it self-purges after a set duration.”
LM:
LM:“If that’s the case, why haven’t we found leads in Blakist communications? Why aren’t we hearing of this through prisoner interrogations?”
DC:
DC:[unintelligible] “Do you comprehend the meaning of self- purges? No one capable of retrieving the information is ignorant enough to store it in another medium.”
LM:
LM:“Okay, so we capture some Shadow Division leaders and coerce them to provide the information.”
DC:
DC:“Blake’s will! You still don’t understand. You’d have to get three Manei D omini to willingly think through the security protocol. If you tr y to coerce them, you’ll just activate their suicide implants. And not just any three will sufce. You need very highly placed individuals— ofcers. It isn’t going to happen. How many Manei Domini have you captured?”
LM:
LM:“Very few.” DC:
DC: “None, I would wager, that didn’t want to be captured— either to gain information or to self-destruct in range of some prime target. Am I right?”
LM:
LM: [sighs] “So then, what about breaking the encryption on the HPGs?”
DC:
DC:“That’s theoretically possible, but analysis suggests it would take years to defeat the encryption algorithm, and it’s changed regularly using an embedded CPL message on the H323 signaling band that initiates the rmware update and rebroadcasts to all peers.”
LM:
LM:“Now that we’ve taken Terra that will stop.”
DC:
DC:[sighs] “Can you comprehend anything I’ve said? As long there is a single member of the Five Worlds Cabal to transmit the message, it will ultimately spread to all the HPGs. This update could be embedded in any standard message, and it’s effectively undetectable.”
LM:
LM:“So what you’re telling me that the information I want is thirty kilometers away on Rigil’s HPG, but there’s no real way for me to go get it?”
DC:
DC:“More or less.”
LM:
LM:“That’s not acceptable. These worlds are a safe haven
for every single Blakist that escapes the fall of the Protectorate. Until we eliminate them as a military threat, we have to assume they’re out there rebuilding, rearming, and planning to move against us. We have to nd them.”
DC:
DC:“You clearly aren’t seeing the big picture. Any of the remaining Hidden Worlds could hold a wealth of weapons of mass destruction—WarShips, ’Mechs, assault ships, and Blake knows what else. That’s more than enough to shift the balance of power for any faction, particularly with everyone so depleted. Who do youtrust to nd them? Who wouldn’t keep the discovery a secret and use those resources for their own ends? I guarantee you this: you won’t be the only one’s looking.”
LEGACIES OF THE WORD
LEGACIES OF THE WORD
connection
/JIHAD: FINAL RECKONJIHAD: FINAL RECKONINGING
/section07: LEGACIES OF THE WORD
The following information about the so-called Hidden Five worlds is the best we have gleaned so far that Cortland has confirmed for us. Much of this meshes with the material we have received from our allied sources, including Chandrasekhar Kurita’s network, Interstellar Expeditions, and even data that we were fed from Thomas Halas himself. As you can see, it’s pretty paltry when we get to the worlds we have not yet found, and it has become clear that while Cortland may have been able to confirm their existence, he has not been to more than one of these bases.
Once again, Devlin, I recommend that we keep a very tight lid on this information while we continue to track down the few leads we do have. Until we can locate and neutralize these hidden bases, we dare not go public. Imagine the panic if the public learned that there are not only over ten Blake Divisions unaccounted for, but that they probably have at least three hidden base worlds well stocked with resources, manpower, and technology to run to.
“JARDINE” “JARDINE”
Jardine is the Hidden World we now know the most about. Sadly, everything we did discover came too late to do us much good, as the Jihad was in full swing, and the Word took extreme measures in wiping out the planet. Subsequent reconnaissance missions to the site have confirmed no signs of surviving cities, factories, or enclaves of any kind. Indeed, the only signs of technology are the remnants of the warning satellite network srcinally seeded throughout the system by ComStar centuries ago.
What we do know about Jardine is that, at the time of the Star League, it was a pleasant and pastoral world. Blessed with slihtly mre than 80 percent surface water, it was hme t abundant expanses of woodlands and jungles and a range of native wildlife, dominated mostly by a host of feline mammalians. Human settlements on this world largely stemmed from peoples of the Pacific Island regions on Terra, particularly those of Hawaiian, Filipino, and Polynesian backgrounds. Most settlers in the world’s early colonial period tended toward agrarian and ranching pursuits, eventually leading to the rise of a number of agricultural and livestock exports—the most famous of which was the tabiranth, a large, intelligent, and easily domesticated creature prized by many of the Star League’s wealthy elite as a riding and hunting mount. With little heavy industry on- world, most of Jardine’s major cities were based on commercial and shipping interests, though a number of medical research institutions also called the world home. Still, it was the tabiranth that Jardine would be known for when the world vanished from the maps after the Star League’s collapse, the apparent victim of a border dispute between the Lyran Commonwealth and the Free Worlds League.
In truth, it appears, the still fairly new ComStar Order executed an elaborate and drawn-out “bait and switch” with Jardine during the latter years of Jerome Blake’s administration,
first changing the world’s name on official maps to Herakleione. Using the pretext of surveying the HPG network, ComStar’s ROM retroactively “updated” the records while the Great Houses warred against each other, all but wiping Jardine’s srcinal location out of history by simply changing its name in archival maps as well. When Lyran intelligence then learned of a staging base for chemical weapons was located on Herakleione, LCAF raiders apparently delivered a nuclear assault against the sparsely-populated planet, rendering it uninhabited and tainted. ComStar, acting in its neutral, humanitarian fashion, then set up warning satellites with House Marik’s blessing, quarantining Herakleione and thus stealing Jardine from the Inner Sphere.
However the Five Worlds Cabal (as it has been called) managed to maintain the secret through the centuries, they did so by some strict population and technology control measures. According to an alleged survivor of the planet’s population, only a single major settlement was maintained by ComStar’s “guardians”, and most of the industry on world took place underground, with no significant contact with the outside universe. Amazingly, the Cabal guardians allowed the people of Jardine to follow what was happening to the Inner Sphere in a roundabout way, but kept them laboring under the belief that the House Lords would destroy their world if they ever learned it was still inhabited.
Interestingly, it appears the very act of keeping Jardine a secret also limited its productivity. Instead of becoming some kind of secret factory or army training center, the world’s population was devoted more toward advanced medical and cybernetics research. It was this pursuit that ultimately led to it becoming the unwitting birthworld of “the Master”, when a critically wounded Thomas Marik was brought there in the 3030s. Rebuilt with technologies not seen since the Star League—but nevertheless wholly artificial tech—Thomas Marik was doomed to rule his birthright in secret, through the proxy we now know as Thomas Halas. Our belief is that, for at least a decade or more, Thomas remained on Jardine, where he gradually grew more detached and delusional.
The report gleaned from the late Dr. Brooklyn Stevens—who not only rediscovered Jardine in 3067, but actually returned from there with a Jardinian native to verify her claim—suggests that Apollyon and the first six thousand cybernetic troops called the Manei Domini were all produced on Jardine first, mostly from members of the local population. The development of these warriors shocked some of Jardine’s less devoted subjects, leading to a rise of “wanderer tribes”, gypsy groups who lived beyond the Word’s central enclave. Were it not for these gypsies, it is doubtful we ever would have learned as much as we know today about this world.
Soon after Dr. Stevens’ report, a coded virus traced to Dobless Information Services in the Lyran Alliance popped Jardine’s historical location back onto some maps produced in the late