From the United Kerbin Government
This past weekend, on August 14th, a military patrol along the conflict border between United Kerbin and the United Koviet Kommunist Republic detected a group of individuals attempting to cross over into UK territory. Upon apprehension, it was revealed to be 3 of the 5 Kerbal X Space Research executives who had failed to appear for testimony at a trial back in June regarding the audit of the Kerbal Space Agency. The members of the executive board were suspected of taking both money and knowledge over to the UKKR sometime in July, when one of the execs was arrested near the border. He was later killed in an accident while being transported to Kerbalopolis for questioning. Although no evidence of foul play was found, UK intelligence asserts that the UKKR has the resources to pull off a clean assassination.
After a thorough debriefing by top UK intelligence experts, the three executives revealed that they had indeed defected over to the UKKR in the hopes of selling them technology gained through research in partnership with the KSA and other UK-based aerospace companies. They failed to make their escape from the UK a clean one, however, with a number of their agents within the companies being compromised prior to passing on their ill-gained secrets, such as the KSA’s head accountant Walworf Kerman. Having little to nothing of actual value to offer the Koviets, they were stripped of the money they had brought with them and forced to work for the UKKR space program, managing a number of low-security projects. Eventually they decided they could live a better life in seclusion and self-exile within the UK and attempted to escape back home. They maintain their remaining partner was killed by UKKR soldiers as they made their way across Koviet territory. They were unable to confirm or deny if the UKKR was responsible in the death of the executive captured in July.
While the intelligence investigation continues, information has been passed on to the UK Treasury Bureau that Lead Case Investigator Gimjon Kerman says will finally allow them to complete the audit on KSA finances, possibly by the end of August. “We have all the information we need at last,” said Gimjon at recent press briefing, “we just need the time for our analysts to do their work.”
Amid an upwelling of public support, the Presider has also announced that he will ensure the UK Treasury Bureau “really does have all the resources they need”, making it clear he wants the UK’s space program back on track as soon as possible. “We were born on this planet, but are not meant to die here.” In his short speech he further reinforced his stance made at the beginning of this year to have kerbals colonizing other planets/moons by 2020.
For his part, KSA’s board chair and Operations Director Drew Kerman says he is simply “happy to finally put this all behind and begin moving forward again.”
Lawyers for the three KXSR executives denied comment on behalf of their clients.
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
An interesting thing happened towards the end of July – I started getting bored of playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Despite the extra attention I was able to afford it by pushing KSP to the side, despite the world building I had worked on since the original Dragon Age: Origins, it was just… I don’t know. Whatever. Sure I had options, there are major branching story plot points throughout all three Dragon Age games, but it still got tiring to just play along. I think I’m pretty turned off from massive single-player RPGs right now – they are just too big. I actually ended up taking my difficulty level down to the most basic and just rushing through to the end of the story. You know what? There’s just too many cool things happening with the KSP community right now. Screw it. I wanna get back to playing KSP. Really playing KSP. I can’t wait for v1.1 any longer.
So it’s taken me a couple of weeks but I have 1.0.4 up and running with my 0.90 install ported completely over. Everything is still day-by-day, I have no lead time whatsoever, which is why the account went dark after my motherboard died at the beginning of this month. Even moving forward from this point things will be slow because I’ve still not fully vetted all my craft as they actually perform in the game. I know they will all load, but whether there are further issues with actually operating them remain to be seen. I plan to write any problems into the story as best I can. So there will be an extensive “Return to Operations” period for the next few weeks still.
I will eventually put up a much more extensive backgrounder into my 1.0.4 upgrade in my story thread when I get a chance. Stay tuned!