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ENCRYPTION<span style="font-family:
"Courier New""> CODE: GOLF ALPHA HOTEL
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PUBLIC KEY<span style="font-family:
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FROM:
CODENAME: HAYSTACK
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TO:
CODENAME: CHAUCER
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SENT:
1/14/2551
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RECIEVED<span style="font-family:
"Courier New"">: 2/03/2551
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SUBJECT<span style="font-family:
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CLASSIFICATION:
NOT AVAILABLE
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SECURITY OVERRIDE:
NOT AVAILABLE
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We’ve been waiting for another big breakthrough moment since the ‘42 UH-12 incident, and it seems we’ve finally managed one. You remember the All Under Heaven? The carrier that launched the Beta Company Op on Pegasi Delta? The same on that disappeared in 2549, when it jumped into slipspace on an unknown course, on an unknown mission, after Paris IV? Well, it’s back. And you won’t believe what they’ve found.
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Reports from their return were slipped to me by one of our contacts in the Third Fleet, and we’ve managed to keep information on it’s reappearance out of circulation--for now. Time is critical on this one, CHAUCER. I was not exaggerating when I said that this could be our big break in research on the parasite. The Heaven’s crew apparently encountered some very weird shit while they were away--and it appears to be just the kind of weird we would be interested in. First hand interaction. A potentially still viable location for recovering samples. Live samples. I don’t need to explain to you how critical that could be for us.
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I’ve got one of our old Prowlers en route, and the crew is competent, but I want to call in that favor you owe me. I want Codename: EGOR on that ship--if there’s trouble, I want someone I know can handle things aboard. Based on the roster of the ship’s compliment in 2549, it’s quite likely that there are Sierra Twos aboard--the Class One Yellow Team went missing along with the rest of the crew when the ship disappeared. I’m sure you of all people don’t need to be reminded of that groups checkered origins. If the crew decides to resist, then I don’t think even CONSTANTINE would be enough. I’ve seen EGOR, however, and I know he can take on other Sierras, provided he is properly motivated…by which, I mean provided they are an assigned target.
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I know how touchy you are involving EGOR with Sierras--I can empathize with your dread over what would happen if CharlieHotel ever found out about LEONIDAS. I won’t go into details, but I’d advise you not to worry about that this time. Yellow Team will not be breaching the security of this op--I already have plans to ensure that. The Prowler will be reaching you roughly the same time as this message, so get EGOR prepped and ready as quickly as you can manage. He may turn out to be unnecessary, but it’s always smart to hedge your bets in this business. I know CONSTANTINE sent you the action report from the ‘42 UH-12 incident. There’s no such thing as to cautious with these things. But that means taking the chance to study them is even more important.
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ENCRYPTION<span style="font-family:
"Courier New""> CODE: INDIGO LAMBDA CHARLIE
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PUBLIC KEY<span style="font-family:
"Courier New"">: NOT AVAILABLE
FROM:
CODENAME: BYRON
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TO:
CODENAME: CHERUBIM
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SENT:
1/22/2556
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RECIEVED<span style="font-family:
"Courier New"">: 11/19/2552
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SUBJECT<span style="font-family:
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CLASSIFICATION:
NOT AVAILABLE
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SECURITY OVERRIDE:
NOT AVAILABLE
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I’ll be honest and admit how tiring it is to be stuck alongside your thugs CONSTANTINE and EGOR, like I’m some damned incompetent or security leak. The fact that you trust CHAUCER to keep the deployment of a Sierra--let alone Section Zero’s personal Sierra--baffles me to no end. I understand CHAUCER has done favors for you in the past and I know how many of my staff were “convinced” to join thanks to EGOR, but the man is still a damned opportunist. He doesn’t have the vision that this project needs. Mark my words, he is not to be trusted. The first chance he gets to exploit us--or the first hint the gets of danger--and CHAUCER will bolt. He’s too intimately familiar with how Section Zero handles rogue officers--he’s one of their triggermen, for God’s sake. He doesn’t have the resolve that we need for this kind of work.
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Thank God for CONSTANTINE at least. As much as I resent you handing me a babysitter, it’s at least gratifying to know you hire some competent people. If he wasn’t already your field team leader, I’d recommend him for a promotion. Maybe you can give him a raise or something instead. It pays to keep people that effective close to you. It’s a good thing he’s smart, too, because it’s a refreshing break from the stupidity of the others here. I don’t care how good their research is or what value they pose as allies--they’re all idiots. Their security is sloppy, they run experiments with countermeasures I think are insufficient, and I’ve identified a half dozen ways I think outside groups could infiltrate their ranks. I’ll pass that information on as soon as I can get it organized, of course.
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For all their experimental research and white-coats on the payroll, I would say these ACCRETION people are not worth working with, except to maybe turn in to Section Zero. They literally have no practical idea about what their dealing with. Their defenses aren’t up to spec and the scientists are oblivious to the full scale of the threat. They’ve obviously never had to deal with an outbreak. I fear they are just as likely to accidentally cause a release as they are to develop workable research. If Section Zero ever does discover their work and comes in guns blazing to stop them, then remind me to a be a few systems away. I can see huge potential for catastrophe. Any sort of battle, and there will be Flood biomass released--that is a guarantee. I can’t emphasize enough my trepidation with working with these people. It will come back to haunt us.
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Putting aside my personal feelings, the practical aspect of the mission is going well. We, quite obviously, made contact with ACCRETION, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest a Section Zero ploy. The team here were very pleased with the research fragments we provided, and returned the favor with some of their own preliminary data on Human-Flood DNA intermingling--interesting stuff, though nothing that serves an useable function. It appears they are willing to trade, provided we have the right goods to barter with. I myself would very much like to get my hands on further data on the integration of Flood and Human DNA, if only too see how far they’ve gotten on the problem. Meanwhile, they appear very interested in obtaining live samples--I get the feeling they would reward us handsomely if we could recover some for them. I still fear getting too involved, because if we turn ourselves into a regular supplier of biomass samples, it will only make us easier to track. Oh, and it will also make us guilty of transporting a biological super weapon.
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I know you are trying to give our operation direction and keep us ahead of the game, but I must caution you to be reasonable. We’ve been graced by extraordinary luck thus far--the forerunner glyph translations, the intercepted Covenant religious texts, the against all odds survival of the UH-12 crew, the recovery of the All Under Heaven, the containment of the Voi data, and now stumbling on to ACCRETION--all without being caught. But luck doesn’t last forever, and we can’t keep sticking our neck out and expecting it to come back intact. I know I’m regarded as the new member, but HAYSTACK taught me plenty about the secrecy of the early days. More activity invariably brings increased risk.
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ENCRYPTION<span style="font-family:
"Courier New""> CODE: GOLF ALPHA HOTEL
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PUBLIC KEY<span style="font-family:
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FROM:
CODENAME: ORIGAMI
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TO:
CODENAME: HAYSTACK
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SENT:
8/20/2552
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RECIEVED<span style="font-family:
"Courier New"">: 8/29/2552
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SUBJECT<span style="font-family:
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CLASSIFICATION:
NOT AVAILABLE
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SECURITY OVERRIDE:
NOT AVAILABLE
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Apologies for the delay on the report, HAYSTACK. Communications on planet are going to hell and a hand basket thanks to MAGPIE's efforts to hide news of the invasion from the rest of the fleet. Combine that with this RED FLAG operation that's being prepared, and you'll start getting a feel for how hard it is to report on those Sierra Twos. I almost had to ask CHAUCER to deploy EGOR on a covert reconnaissance. Thank God for CharlieHotel and her insistence on controlling everything about the project. Her security is so much easier to bypass than MAGPIE's.
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Anyway, I managed to slip an AI in a few days ago and access the observation logs from the last few months since the subject returned to service. Good news first: CharlieHotel suspects absolutely nothing. Seems she's gotten accustomed to ONI yanking Spartans from her pile. The rest of HIGHCOMM meanwhile thinks it was some trick pulled by MAGPIE--they're breathing down her neck, thinking she pulled them for a private op. She of course has no idea what really happened--but we both know she'll be loathe to admit that. She'll undoubtedly come looking for us, but I've covered our tracks as well as ever. The subjects aren't likely to expose us, either: the modifications are holding well and they've exhibited no sign of memory recovery. I can't totally rule out the possibility of the necessity of future treatment--there's no point being arrogant, because with work on the brain, there's never one hundred percent accuracy--but so far, things look good, at least as far as the durability of the treatment is concerned.
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Now, on to the more unsavory news. All three subjects are experiencing extensive side affects--just the thing we were afraid of. Observations indicate paranoia, isolation, and at least a thirty percent drop in combat effectiveness. My analysis of combat footage for their suit helmet recorders also leads me to believe that stress and proximity to "memory triggers" usually result in further drops in awareness and effectiveness. Bouts of anger, confusion, and extreme disorientation also seem related to stress, but these episodes are less predictable. In their four deployments since we returned them to duty, our three subjects have experienced five cumulative episodes, of which only two were combat related. Like I told you, selective neural paralysis is tricky. I had to wipe more than just the actual incident to ensure full effectiveness---Subject 137 in particular lost a big chunk. I would recommend further analysis and observation to gather more information.
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I know I said were fine since I covered our tracks from MAGPIE, but I'd like to revise that statement a bit. The Sierra Two contingent now gathered here represents a potentially significant security threat in itself. The Sierras are a very tight knit group, and they are much smarter than the rest of ONI generally gives them credit for. I have to hand it to CharlieHotel--she managed to train not just extremely effective combat experts, but also true tacticians. They're logical, intelligent, and above all, highly observant. CharlieHotel's security system never had a hint I was inside, but I can't say the same about the Sierras. I had to destroy part of a hard infiltration device when one of the Sierras caught the thing in an odd input slot and damn near blew the whole op. A two-by-three metal rectangle, and the Sierra in question only needed three minutes to notice it was in place. I've got to tell you, it made me regret not deploying EGOR. If he's half as smart as those other Sierras, then I think his own personal observations would be more helpful than the hours of footage I pulled.
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That observational ability could be a potential problem for us, though. The other Sierra's know something is amiss with the three subjects. They're anti-social, near mute, and as far as combat goes, they're always three steps behind the others. The three subjects have scarcely interacted with the others since their return, and they've noticed. The odd origins of the three of them don’t help matters, either. Sierra’s have long memories; they’re not keen on forgetting which of their comrades temporarily lost it. And they’re even less likely to forget which teammates physically died. If there is anyone who'll ask questions about the subjects, it'll be those Sierras. If they're anything like the subjects, then the first person they'll want to go to is CharlieHotel. And even if the old hag is too busy with MJOLNIR to pay attention to her supposedly oh-so-cherished Sierras, chances are she won't wait to get involved if one of them brings it up directly. To be honest, I have no idea what would happen if she got a whiff of this trail. She's not predictable like MAGPIE and is smart enough to think very unconventionally. I'd wager she's got the best chance of catching us out of anyone--at least, that is, if she gets interested.
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Making the entire contingent of Sierra Twos disappear isn't exactly feasible, but we may yet have to deploy EGOR if Hotel gets involved. Taking her out would be risky--however MAGPIE has stonewalled her, she is still technically the chief scientist at ONI--but she does have enough enemies that it might be possible to pass it off as the work of someone else. Then again, if the invasion on the opposite side of the planet makes it's way over here, then that may well do our work for us. The war isn't usually my chief concern, but I've been watching the deployment roster and it doesn't exactly bode well. HIGHCOMM is throwing every ground asset they've got--and then some--into the fight. On the off chance the grunts do manage to rout the Covenant, I'll stand by to do what's necessary concerning CharlieHotel. Invasion or not, operational security is too great to risk.
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ENCRYPTION<span style="font-family:
"Courier New""> CODE: SIERRA ALPHA HOTEL
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PUBLIC KEY<span style="font-family:
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FROM:
CODENAME: APPARATION
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TO:
CODENAME: HAYSTACK
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SENT:
11/17/2511
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RECIEVED<span style="font-family:
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SUBJECT<span style="font-family:
"Courier New"">: TEMERITY Translations
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CLASSIFICATION:
NOT AVAILABLE
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SECURITY OVERRIDE:
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It was more than a little difficult to infiltrate the translation software that ONI is running on the Zeta Doradus ruins, but I’ve finally got our counter program up and running. They can throw as many AI’s and algorithms as they want at them now, but unless they resort to doing things on paper, they’ll never get a solid translation going. Believe me, a little thank you would be nice right about now. You spooks forget how security minded us white-coats can be. ONI may be paranoid and clandestine, but with groundbreaking research like this, academia can be just as nasty. Try and remember that when you give me some absurd timeline. Sabotaging valuable research is bad enough. Doing it with the stress of being caught by some other professor is a bit to stressful for me.
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Regardless, we won’t have to worry much anymore--at least for a while--about the other researchers translating the ruins and blowing our cover. The next time we can talk in person, I would very much like to know why it was necessary. Is this bit of secrecy really worth all those lost wonders, all that knowledge wasted? I guess you have your reasons. It’s just damn frustrating. There is serious potential for huge breakthroughs here: weapons, technology, all manner of scientific marvels, just waiting for us to unearth them. I know it won’t make a damned difference, but hell, sometimes I wish I hadn’t forwarded that first transcribe to you.
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But speaking of translations, our current ones are going well. Progress is slow, admittedly; these runes are highly contextual, with different meanings assigned to the same glyphs, all relative to the location of other symbols. The whole thing is mind boggling; the translations are nearly impossible to match directly, because as near as I can determine, they’re multidimensional. Progress can be unbearably slow at times. We’ve got to carve out a half dozen translations for each glyph, then for the next, and the next, all without any basic understanding of the social structure of this species for context. We’re essentially trying to mesh together thousands of individual words into a comprehensible structure, without any background. It’s baffling. If your agents can locate any more help for me, it would be greatly appreciated. Understaffed doesn’t even begin to describe our situation. I’ve heard good things about a couple of up and coming people. Maybe that Halsey woman? If Section Three hasn’t already sunk it’s teeth into her, then I could really use a strong theoretical mind like that.
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Like I said, progress on the new glyphs is slow, but we have had some success working off previous translations. Our efforts to expand on the sentence fragments of those already translated symbols are vastly more effective than those concerning the newer fragments. It was an enormous stroke of luck that I was able to catch that first translation when I did. Anyway, I’ve uncovered a few new words, based off recovered translations from the ‘enemy’ glyph. The first one matches up with our initial belief of a traditional war, albeit one on a galactic scale. It’s a symbol, which at best we can determine, translates to ‘retreat’--there are extensive connotations attached to the word, which we believe indicates something akin to desperation, even panic. That would seem to correlate well to traditional war--but the other translations pose problems.
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The other glyphs translate almost precisely to ‘quarantine’ and ‘sterilization’--98 and 97 percent accuracy, the highest we’ve ever been able to manage. While the scientist in me is queasy about such wild extrapolation, I can’t help but believe that we’re onto something new, different from the old theory. Something bigger than a war, or at least more complicated; some kind of mass epidemic or disease. Something virulent enough to make it’s way through a presumably galactic wide civilization, and not only reduce the population, but actually destroy it. At the same time, that doesn’t match up well with the reports of ‘enemy’ and ‘retreat’. You don’t retreat from a virus, and no matter how deadly it is, it’s certainly not an enemy.
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With such absurdly little evidence to go on, it’s very tough to not veer into total speculation, and I’m finding it harder and harder to stop myself. Something about these ruins strikes a cord in me--if you were here, then I’m sure you would feel it too. It’s not just the weight of history, it’s the burden of some lost secret, always just out of reach, that you feel you should know. It plays hell with your scientific objectivity. I’m on the verge now of believing that these ancient aliens may have been at war with a literally incomprehensible enemy--something monstrous, too terrible for us to even imagine possible. Something that destroyed their morale, or made them doubt their own populations. Something truly insidious. It’s too early to tell anything for sure, and I imagine it will remain ‘to early’ for years, if not decades, to come. In the meantime, I’ll of course investigate all the other possibilities, but something in my gut just churns when I look at that ‘sterilization’ glyph. Get TARAN to hurry up and get the field survey underway. I hate feelings that I can’t explain, and these whole damn ruins defy explanation.
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ENCRYPTION<span style="font-family:
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PUBLIC KEY<span style="font-family:
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FROM:
CODENAME: CONSTANTINE
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TO:
CODENAME: CHERUBIM
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SENT:
11/18/2552
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RECIEVED<span style="font-family:
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SUBJECT<span style="font-family:
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CLASSIFICATION:
NOT AVAILABLE
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SECURITY OVERRIDE:
NOT AVAILABLE
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You brought me on to this operation for my combat experience, and I’ve seen my fair share of monsters in my time with it. I need you to seriously consider how we handle the next few days. With HAYSTACK dead, APPARATION, WHITMAN, and BANDIT all agree that you need to take the reins--and take them forcefully. The Covenant may be retreating into that vortex over Voi, and the Elites may be sweet on us for now, but mark my words, this nightmare is far from over. One ship infected with the parasite has already made landfall, and even if the Elites glass half of Africa, the threat of further infection--from Flood elements already here, or from additional space faring reinforcements--is to great to ignore.
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I know you read my after action reports from the ‘42, ‘49, and ‘51 incidents, and I imagine you even probably have your hands on the Installation 04 records, so I won’t bore you with the horror stories from those missions. I have too many to know where to start, anyway. But my reports don’t accurately describe the biggest threat I see with fighting these things. Whatever you’ve read, it’s not impossible to do; Sierra 117 took on practically an entire army of the things, on multiple occasions, and my own strike force has had extensive success. But you have to approach the fighting the correct way. Preparation is key. The research BYRON did between ‘42 and ‘51 made all the difference. For God’s sake, one of them ended in goddamn nuclear bombardment and the other featured only four casualties. That research saved our lives.
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I’m a military man, but I understand you cloak and dagger work well enough to get by. I do appreciate the work you and HAYSTACK did to keep this entire operation quiet. I know people had to be sacrificed to keep that silence. I know that not all of those sacrifices were made willingly, too. But if these creatures make landfall on Earth--or worse yet, one of the sparsely defended, slipspace capable colonies--then those sacrifices will be multiplied ten thousand fold. The casualties will be in the millions, in the billions. And that’s if we manage to contain the infection, which he have no guarantee the military will be able to do. We know from the Installation 04 incident that not even the Forerunners were able to do that. They had to kill the entire galaxy, just to stop the Flood from overrunning it. There is no guarantee we will be able to stop the parasite ourselves when the time comes.
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I don’t have the research data, so I am aware I cannot force you into anything. Any threats I make will be worse than empty. I understand I am far from vital, and that EGOR might just end up beside my bed should I get to rowdy. God knows, there are people who survived 04 and 05 who have just as much experience fighting the parasite, if not as many years in the service. But I will urge you to see reason and consider releasing that accumulated research data. I’ve spoken with WHITMAN, and he agrees. The old geezer even wants to take our strike team in--I’m not quite that zealous myself, let me be clear; people on that team would be hard to replace--and support the rest of the fleet. But even if we don’t help directly, that research could be the key to our victory. With it, the rest of the fleet stands at least a fighting chance. Without it, they’re almost as good as dead. I don’t care what you have to do--disguise it as someone else’s work, blame it on me, whatever--but this is too big of a risk to not help. This isn’t scattered incidents and kidnappings anymore. This is the future of the human race we’re talking about.
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