CONCORD admits to hiding facts regarding infestation

2004-11-06 00:00

By Svarthol

The Inner Circle of CONCORD released a rare press statement yesterday. The statement confirms the authenticity of the report that was leaked earlier in the week. A rogue drone hive was indeed found recently well within empire space, though the exact location is still held secret. CONCORD officials state that the rogue drones discovered constitute a new breed and their exact nature is still to be determined. CONCORD wants to make sure that these new rogue drones are not capable of spreading their evil influences to nearby space vessels before the location of the new hive will be revealed. It is estimated that a full investigation of the matter will take close to two weeks. The official promised full cooperation with the public from now on.

However, that promise may have to be broken if the chief Caldari representative to CONCORD, Tashin Ernabaita, is anything to go by. Ernabaita says that the accidental discovery of the hive within deadspace opens up interesting possibilities for the empires in increasing their power and security in space. The empires are planting warp beacons within known deadspaces to allow dronesweepers to enter and clear out any rogue drone hives. Ernabaita says that the State considers access to these warp beacons a state secret and should be guarded by the empires. The State is already planning to construct complexes in deadspaces within its borders and wants them to be out of bounds to the general public. The other empires are still to comment on this, but may be persuaded by the Caldari to follow suit and keep deadspace warp beacons hidden.

The statement released by the Inner Circle concludes by describing how the rogue drone hive in deadspace was discovered a few weeks ago. Transmission with a freighter from one of the empires (presumably from the empire where the hive is located) was suddenly lost while it was in transit. The freighter was carrying new types of implants, valuable enough to warrant a strong search party being sent out. The area where the freighter was lost was located close to a deadspace bubble, a phenomenon known for a long time, but considered to be of no interest due to its inaccessibility. But after a fruitless search for days, the leader of the search party finally decided to search close to the deadspace bubble. And there he received faint signals from the freighter, from within the deadspace. Further probing revealed an ancient acceleration gate on its outskirt. The gate was only capable of handling a frigate size ships, so a couple were sent in. There they were immediately set upon by dozens of rogue drones. Only one of the frigates returned to tell the story; that residing within the deadspace bubble was a vast hive of rogue drones, thought to be long extinguished from empire space.