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"Our scan is complete." The Corewards transmit to the main bridge of the station after what felt like an eternity of stress. The two Corewards had moved around and went about scanning not only the station but also every ship in the sector, they even sent out a drone to go and scan the diplomats ships that had flown way out of the way to evacuate them in case things went south. To Riu the fact they haven't shot anyone yet was definitely a bit of a relief. Though to be fair he understands why they did, he very much would have rather they had left the diplomats ship alone, though. Defeats the point of making a gesture to get them all to safety and then have the Consortium pretty much ignore that precaution. Admittedly if the Corewards did choose to fire at the station, that ship would be more than far enough away to get away in time.

"There is no indication of the tech being anywhere in the area. The technology stolen was a shield component. Your station just performed a test about your shields. Explain."

Riu rubs at the bridge of his muzzle for the moment. Of course, that would end up be what was being stolen. It's possible that it is a fake out, that they're trying to catch them in a lie. They have done so in the past. But if it was trying to trick them, it makes no sense for them to justify running a shield test. Especially since they should be able to see all the documentation that was put in place leading up to it. But they have nothing to hide from the Consortium. So he decides that despite wanting to keep it under wraps until they got it more complete it was best to stay perfectly up front with the Consortium.

"We did perform a shield test a few days ago. However, it wasn't testing a new component but rather a new shield algorithm. Our engineers had been working on this for half a year by now and that was the first test trial to see how well their efforts have paid off. It is not a finished product either and we only have the system installed on one fighter, the same one we used to perform the test. If you scan that fighter you should be able to determine that it was not used with any Consortium Tech nor was the algorithm created by studying Consortium Tech. The test was done in private with a minimum of observers because it's not yet ready for full implementation and we wanted to make sure none of the participating races were able to get the technology leaked to them and provide an unfair advantage as per our charter."

After a minute or two of them likely scanning their logs for the test results and debating it between themselves they decide to make the statement to him.

"We will accept this explanation under one condition, we must see this test performed to us again without any delay or time allowed to make any adjustments that may be designed to obfuscate your actions to us. If this test is as you have described we will acknowledge that this facility has not had any interaction thus far with any forbidden technology. Failure to produce a satisfying enough test will result in us deciding you have been attempting to deceive us and we will destroy this facility and the Gate. You have one of your hours to comply."

Riu takes a deep breath and sighs, this is not how he would have liked this conversation to have gone. But they do have an out, it just means throwing their Head Guardian and one of his best friends at the station out in a fighter using unfinished shield technology against two Corewards. He calls up Anon, knowing she likely is aware of the general aspects of the situation, if not the particulars.

"So I'm assuming you know about the Corewards," he says to make sure there is no confusion as to what he's talking about and the severity of what he's about to ask of her.

"Yes, I'm aware."

"They're here because someone stole a Consortium shield technology. And we just performed a shield test. They're willing to acknowledge we don't have their technology under one condition."

"I have to go out there again," she says over the communicator. After a moment she talks again. "Okay, let them know I'll do it."

"Anon."

"It's fine. I know what I'm going into. And I think even if they do fire that I can handle their shot. I still remember how powerful Corewards were from Mars. We've improved since then and they have not. With the algorithm focused to a point and I put all my shields into blocking the projected attack I can take one shot from them and still be fine."

"Anon."

"I said it's fine. Go ahead and tell Majis to get my ship ready and have everything else associated with the test prepared. If they want the test then that's what they'll get. Just a repeat of last time, right?"

"Very well," Riu says, terminating the link then sending the signal for one of his communications people to go ahead and schedule the test again. He'll have to figure out how best to not spoil what all they were aiming towards. Thankfully a lot of the ships would not be taking that close a look at what's going on in the test. If anything they'd see the blasts and back far enough away to safety. The only one he really has to question about how much they'll see would be the Family. Even for the ships that haven't fled, the Family's ships are the only ones that didn't even move further away from the station, even after being scanned. It's almost like they are mainly just waiting for permission to go back onto the station, as if it was a simple alarm.

Anon sighs as she flies out of her ship and heads to the designated location. This is most definitely not where she wanted her day to go. Though she does have to admit that having her run the test again is far more preferable than to have the Consortium soldiers come onto the station and disrupt everything, probing everyone's mind with no concern for any issues that would be had. And bypassing any and all regulations made to make things safe for everyone in the interest of getting at the information they want most efficiently. And as the Head Guardian she'd be responsible for trying to keep order amongst everyone on the station. Here, all she has to do is do what she's good at and hope to not die. And unfortunately while the initial test was a lot more private, this second test, being in plain view of everyone and the Consortium, means that the individual empires will likely soon start working on similar technology, head starting the shield modulation arms race before the station has had enough time to even be able to implement their own.

And though she is still confident that she can do as she said and block a full power blast from a Coreward, it would still be a barely thing that she would never truly want to have to test. Let alone the fact there are two of them here and there's no way she could ever block a full powered shot from both of them. The drones follow behind her, being programmed to do so until she initializes the test. Even with everything else she wants to keep everyone safe so she's aiming at a spot that would make either Coreward firing at her be unable to cause any serious concern to anyone else if it misses. She's grateful they don't get impatient with this positioning as she doesn't hear any chatter about hurrying things along. Anon takes a moment and closes here eyes, breathing deeply in and out a few times in order to both calm her mind and help her focus. The stakes in this test are potentially far greater now than the initial one. There the worst case scenario is her ship malfunctions and she has to try and keep it together until a rescue was sent. But now the worst case scenario is they destroy the station. She starts the test the same way, but this time has far more targets to turn off beforehand, though she does leave both Corewards as potential threats to keep track of. Might get slightly worse results but then who knows what updates the engineers already made to it.

At first the test went on as normal then she is quickly glad she had set the Corewards as targets. Probably as a means to make sure that it wasn't simply a scripted run one of the Corewards actually fire on her ship. Far too weak a blast to be seen as an actual attempt to kill. Even if she didn't have her own shields up it likely wouldn't have destroyed the ship. But since it was tracking the ship and noticed them firing it did manage to hit the shield modulation. It barely even registered but it did shake Anon up a bit to have a Coreward firing on her ship, even at such low power. Despite all her boasting earlier, if they had fired even a moderately powerful shot for them, she would be dead. The shields still keep up with the drones but she's having trouble flying the route that would work best for the test. Then the Coreward escalates things by launching a blast that takes out every single drone that was circling her ship at the same time, causing her to flare up her shields to its maximum. But they don't seem at all interested in attacking her own ship, just the drones. It does show the degree of precision that the Corewards are capable of, to hit so many tiny little objects from so far away and never even missed one or even grazed her own ship in the process. She wonders what that means in regards to the test but then she sees that one of the Corewards have sent out their own drones. Immediately she begins frantically adding all the drones to the target list and flares up her own shields, cursing slightly and sending a silent prayer to the Three to watch over her. These drones begin shooting at her ship as soon as they get into range but she finds that the intensity of their attacks is at the same level the Coreward had fired at her ship earlier. Making it clear that they have decided that they'll be providing the drones for the sake of the test.

She can't exactly stop the test now that the drones have changed. As far as she can prove the Consortium is still abiding by the test parameters. If she were to stop the test now it's quite possible they'd claim that the test was faked and destroyed the station. All she can do is try to man the shields as best she can and hope that the Corewards decide to stay at their current level of power, for eventually the test would have it exceed what the program can do and she's not sure her own personal barriers would be up to the task of defending against all that many drones all at once. At any rate, in order to maximize her chances of survival and with all eyes on her she feels like she might as well push her ship to its limiters. And while pushing her ship to as fast as her body can accommodate she makes sure that no matter what's going on she keeps an eye on the two Corewards. The drones the Coreward sent do stay at the same power and thankfully aren't becoming stronger. However, these new drones behave much more erratically and change their speed a lot more often than the original drones did, meaning Anon is forced to increase the shield size faster than before.

But as Anon is running through the exercise of trying to not get destroyed by the Coreward's drones she starts to notice something strange. The shields start trying to deploy in locations that don't really make sense to her. They're putting their shields up in locations where there are no drones to begin with and somehow the program is still marking that they are scoring hits there. Figuring that the software is glitching out she starts trying to take a bit more control over where the shields are being placed but once she starts doing this the drones all immediately disperse and her sensors can detect a massive buildup of energy coming from one of the Corewards. She immediately tightens her own shields as much as possible on the one that is building the energy and for the moment turns off targeting for all the drones, having the ship's shields focus only on the two Corewards so that it can be as tight and focused as possible. And then the Coreward fires and goes right through the ship's shield as if it were nothing. But never made contact with her own shield. She sits there confused for a few moments as to what happened. Thankfully the shot never actually made contact with the ship. She'd say that they missed but at that power and that range and given these are the Corewards fighting against a single target it'd be more accurate to say they deliberately aimed for a location that would hit the shields but not hit her ship. What's most concerting, though, is that according to what the ship says, the one that fired was not the one she thought was preparing to fire.

The moment that big shot is done the drones all fly back to their ships as Anon tries to process what happened. She goes back through the logs to see what happened and she realizes how it could seem like one was charging a weapon and then the other one be the one that fired, though the thought of it somewhat terrifies her. The shields operate on visual information. It tracks what she's actively focusing on as well as sensor readings and cameras. She has to tell the system what to not focus on to help speed its processor up. Meaning if something was hidden from her she wouldn't be able to tell the program to ignore it so it'd keep tracking them. This means at least one of the Corewards had put her under an illusion for some reason or another and was not only hiding drones from her ability to see them but also mislead her to which ship was actually firing on her. This is further supported by the fact that the one she had thought was marked as charging for the attack have no note in the logs for having charged an attack after destroying her own drones. But the other one was marked as charging up. The fact they could pull something like that off is extremely impressive by its own right, but also means that she might have just been killed without having done anything wrong. As the implications of this come over her she takes off her helmet and half throws it against the front screen of her fighter, careful to not use enough force to break it and even going so far as to shield the screen with a bit of her own magic out of habit. With that off she wraps her hands around her face and rocks back and forth for a bit, flicking off the cameras while doing so as she tries to get herself back under control.

After a moment of the Corewards not taking any further action and with the original drones all being destroyed Anon decides that for time being she might as well head back in. If they make any additional action she would turn around and face it, but without anything to go by from them it's better to be within the station's shields, even if in the grand scheme of things that wouldn't really make all that much difference if the Corewards decided to attack. And in the future she'll have to figure out how it was that the Corewards were able to put her under an illusion from that distance. But that'll just have to be for another day. For now she can get to the station and get ready. Given what she just went through she's pretty sure that none of her subordinates will mind if she takes the rest of her shift off to get something hard to drink to calm her nerves down. She did just have a Coreward fire at her with full force, even if they intentionally missed. She composes herself for a moment more, puts her helmet back on and turns her ship back towards the station

"Thank the Sisters for showing me equal favor," she prays as she releases the lock and pushes the button to let the station take full control over her ship. Even still she makes sure that she keeps her eyes on the two of them, just in case.

And as her ship is slowly making its way back into the station she lets her mind wander into the all important question of not only how were the Consortium able to put her under Con magic from so far away, but also why did they do that? They had never before actually shown any inclination to use Con magic at all. They've always been extremely leery about any sort of Con magic, and only begrudgingly allowed the Language of Intent spell to be used on them to help facilitate early translations of their language. But for them to use it now, and against her in a test is very strange.