I hate to admit it but my first thought was Edward in Cowboy Bebop. Yours was much cooler.

Thanks for that Intelsat story, I had no idea.

https://spacenews.com/intelsat-vows-stop-piracy-sri-lanka-se...

> Intelsat-12 is a bent-pipe satellite, whose "dumb" transponders rebroadcast anything that they receive within their frequency band. Bent-pipe satellites remain the most common technology today, with no real defenses against such attacks.[1][2]

[1] https://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/06/ltte-technologica...

[2] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA487592.pdf