driftfleet | video + text + action

Who: Agent Carter + YOU
Broadcast: Fleetwide.
Action: Aboard the Starstruck or the Iskaulit.
When: Today!

[ not too long ago, peggy pitched the fleet a diversionary puzzle. with all this talk of encryption and subterfuge, she's reminded how the puzzles were meant to be part of a series (of sorts) and so she gets out her notepad and pencils. after a few scrapped ideas (too long or too advanced or too dull), she settles on a code that's only a half-step up from her last one. ]

Last time we talked ciphers, we did a simple substitution. [ peggy addresses the network directly, and with little else in the way of a greeting. ] This time 'round, I've got something only a teensy bit tougher. Frankly, it can be just as handily brute forced as the other one -- but I'm more interested to know if anyone can figure out the math behind this one. Brute force only brings you so far in this hobby and I'm already working on something for next month that will require a lighter touch.

Extra credit, as ever, to those who can identify the source. Or express the cipher in modular arithmetic. And apologies for those in the Fleet who cannot speak English. Despite our augments, code seems to defy translation.

FA UYBDAHQ UE FA OTMZSQ, EA FA NQ BQDRQOF UE FA TMHQ OTMZSQP ARFQZ.

[ she'll field questions and answers for a little while from aboard the starstruck, but then it's off to the iskaulit where she passes an hour in the library -- in search of new source material, perhaps. for those players whose characters should be able to decode it but who don't want to try decoding it themselves, here is the quotation. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ alas, a question doomed to go unsatisfied until coulson shows up. someday. one can wish. ]

Poor bastard. He really had his heart set on that one.

I mostly know his work making weapons.

[It's almost sad to consider what that might mean for Howard.]

Edited 2017-03-10 02:13 (UTC)

Ah, yes. His bad babies -- or so he likes to call them.

His bad babies, huh? That's... weird, actually. But inventors usually seem to be.

It was in reference to a considerable cache of his most dangerous ideas and prototypes. A cache he kept locked up in a vault he dared to call impenetrable.

[ she doesn't need to lecture natasha, of all people, on the fallacy of the word. ]

[Oh, Natasha sees the problem here. If Howard can get in, if he put them there to start with, there's a way in.

And he's the liability in this equation.]

So someone got in.

And stole the whole lot.

That's unfortunately what I'd expect.

No reason to walk out with one when you can take everything.

-- With the added bonus, it would seem, of leading the American government to think Howard 'stole' them himself in order to commit treason and sell his bad babies to rivals.

[Which seems to confirm her suspicion that he was their way in to start with.]

Should I guess how something like that happened?

You could. And if you guessed blonde, then you'd be correct. Although whether she's always been blonde is another story. She certainly wasn't the last time I saw her.

I didn't have anything quite that explicit in mind, but that's about what I figured.

Bang up job, too. The SSR was fit to string him up.

Good way to make a clean exit.

It made the papers, of course. The accusations -- not the denouement. But I wouldn't doubt Stark money went into sanitizing that bit of history, regardless of whether he'd been on the right side of it or not.

Maybe. Considering what he had to offer, though, I'd be surprised if the government wasn't keen to help clean up after him. Wouldn't want to get n the bad side of one of your top weapons manufacturers.

-- I rather think they may have already ploughed ground on the bad side with the warrant for his arrest. And the seizure of many of his properties. And the congressional hearings. It's no wonder he about-faced and dabbled in film after it all went down. Something to get the taste out of his mouth.

All the more reason to help clean up the mess on their side. Howard actually going elsewhere with his talent would be worst case scenario for them.

Not that he ever would. Howard is disloyal to a great many things -- but he's no traitor.

And I'd never imply it. You'd know better than I would, and probably better than the CIA did after the war.

Just observing, they'd have reason to want to make sure that bridge wasn't completely burnt.

The organization called the CIA doesn't exist. Not yet. [ a pause. ] I only know of its existence because the Starstruck used to house one of its operatives for a short while.

If it's not already, then soon enough. The point remains.

[ when the agent had described his organization, peggy had begun to wonder whether his cia would even form in her version of the world -- or whether it was only shield that rise from the ssr's inevitable ashes.

quiet-like, as though her thoughts have already shifted elsewhere: ] Of course. Yes. The point remains.

[Natasha watches that, considering it.]

Probably enough speculating about politics neither of us was actually involved in.

-- Oh, I was quite involved. I'm the one he suckered in to clear his 'good' name. [ ... ] Not my finest choice, but it was vindicated in the end.

(no subject)

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