Is Hurston paying for all of it?

When I approached CPATH about building a covert transport network, they didn’t hesitate. After months undercover in Lorville, I’d already seen enough of Hurston’s rot to know we needed something bigger than rumors and whispers. We needed access. Real access.

So we built it — CPC Logistics.
On paper, just another contractor clearing Hurston freight, running cargo lanes, and moving personnel across the Stanton system. But behind the scenes, it was our way inside their armor.

And the deeper I got, the more I realized something was wrong. Not just with Lorville. Not just with Hurston. With all of Stanton.

At first, it was little things. Cargo manifests that didn’t match what we loaded. Personnel transfers where the “passenger” never showed up in any arrival logs. Shipments billed to shell companies that dissolved the moment we completed the job.

But then the patterns started linking together.

From inside Hurston’s supply chain, the chaos in Stanton started to make sense.

I used to think the attacks across the system were all disconnected — pirates, radicals, warlords, bad luck, whatever explanation was easiest. But it wasn’t that simple. Not once we saw the routing data, the shipments, and the timing.

Because Hurston kept popping up.
Everywhere.

• Nova Intergalactic’s Annual 890 Jump cruise attack — official reports blamed pirates. But the weapon signatures matched shipments we quietly moved for Hurston two weeks earlier.

• Zark leaving "Stanton Today"— not surprising, considering Hurston was laundering influence through half the event sponsors.

• Drug labs popping up across the Hurston region — every lab coincided with “waste management” deliveries routed by Hurston Logistics.

• XenoThreat resurgences — too well-timed, too well-armed. Someone was feeding them intel or hardware.

• CDF forced to intervene at Orison when Nine Tails seized the platforms — Hurston had quietly downgraded security shipments the month before.

• Daymar Rally attacks — traced back to contract operatives whose gear came straight from a Hurston-controlled surplus depot.
  
  

None of that is a coincidence.

Hurston isn’t just part of the problem — they’re paying for the problem. And CPC Logistics is going to give us the proof.

Sometimes we transported sealed crates of security electronics, only to pause mid-flight and flash them with rootkits. Other times we swapped datapads, injected firmware defects, or replaced microprocessors with CPATH-custom versions that gave us control later.

We were the “trusted contractor.”
Hurston never suspected a thing.

Then there were the passengers — the “high-priority personnel” who needed relocation. Some were political problems Hurston wanted to disappear. Others were whistleblowers who needed extraction. Every time, the arrival logs said they checked in. But they never did.

We were playing the middle. The quiet middle.

Surveillance grids flickered.
Patrols missed their routes.
Cargo chains slowed.
Workers started catching breaths where they never had one before.

No one could point to us — not yet — but the fallout was obvious.

Hurston thrives on control.
CPC Logistics thrives on taking it away.

And with every shipment we touched, every datapad we swapped, every executive we “relocated”…
the cracks in Hurston’s armor spread a little wider.