Project Freedom

About a year ago, Louise discovered that a substantial part of her fortune was being used to finance companies and projects about which she knew nothing.  She naturally investigated, and the trail led to several subcontractors used by NASA and the ESA.  Digging deeper, the trail led to the tiny Pacific island of Chambano, some 1,000 miles north of French Polynesia.  The waters around the island were heavily patrolled, and this naturally encouraged the Club to meddle further.

On that island, the Club was astonished to discover a large complex of buildings and a array of the very latest technology.  The complex was built around a massive launch pad, on which rested a space shuttle of unusual design, and the entire facility was hidden from radar and satellite detection by an electromagnetic Stealth field using technology not of this dimension.  Mercury was not at all happy to find this out.

It turned out that the complex was the launch and control facility for an orbiting space station whose very existence was hidden from the general public and governments alike.  There were two shuttles that supplied the station, named Castor and Pollux, used on an alternating basis with one remaining on Earth while the other was docked with the station.  The head of the Chambano facility was a man named Dr. Richard Kilroy.

Continuing with their investigations, the Club discovered an elder vampire ensconced deep within the bowels of the complex.  His name was Blake, and he was a Kindred of the Fifth Generation, over three thousand years old.  He told Louise that he was responsible for looking after the base and ensuring the staff of hundreds remained content and unwilling/unable to talk about its existence.  He told her that he had been so directed by his Sire, the sleeping Methuselah Dominus, and that Chambano and the space station had been financed to the extent of over a trillion dollars by Louise herself (the rest came from various unaware governments).  Blake told Louise that she was also a descendant of Dominus, and that both were acting on behalf of their master as he sought to achieve a decisive advantage in the Jyhad (See Kindred History).

The Club were able to get aboard the shuttle as it launched, carrying a replacement crew for the orbiting station (there are three crews of four, working on four-month shifts.  They include US, Russian, Japanese and ESA astronauts).  The shuttle reached the station, code-named Freedom, and the Club found it to be a modular design with a long central core and an outer ring some fifteen hundred metres in diameter.  It was hidden behind a similar Stealth field to the one used on Chambano.

The station used a combination of technologies, the cutting edge of Technocracy development as well as designs from the most technologically-sophisticated Reflection Earths.  Mercury was again extremely distressed to discover so much forbidden science in use.  The interior of Freedom Station was a bewildering array of holographic interfaces and nanotechnology, all controlled by a massive central computer node.  The Club then discovered the station's purpose: it was a weapon of mass destruction.

Freedom Station is the keystone and orbital control platform for a ring of Stealth satellites encircling the Earth.  The ring includes 'Killsats' armed with orbit-to-surface and orbit-to-air missiles ranging from small anti-personnel devices to multi-megaton thermonuclear warheads, as well as clouds of space-based interceptors to take out ballistic weapons and even massive solettas designed to reflect sunlight and destroy Kindred.

If this were not enough, Freedom Station itself has a huge mass driver mounted along the length of the central core.  This device alone is capable of laying waste to entire continents.

Having returned to Earth, the Club was in something of a quandary as to what to make of 'Project Freedom'.  Clearly it gave its controller a level of destructive power equal to or even greater than that of major governments; power equal to that controlled by the Technocracy, perhaps?

As to what a Methuselah such as Dominus might do with this power, and what further plans he may have in mind for Louise, only time will tell...