More, more I say!

Part IX: Of how we met the Itani

As it turned out, the peace and boredom lasted quite a bit. Regulated by the Senate and each other, the Corps worked for the benefit of the Union as a whole and their own bottom lines, engaged in a quiet, friendly economic war that saw Union technology and society prosper and grow (excuse me while I throw up…) A non-Corp citizen had a staggering array of options to pick and choose from when it came time to buy anything, from shoelaces to weapons to ships to an appendectomy, all reasonably priced since the Corps were competing for pretty much the same market; of course, the Corps were not as happy as they could be with this arrangement, but unless they somehow found a bigger market for their wares, what were they going to do? The level of satisfaction varied, of course: specialists like TPG and Valent dominated their corner of the market, and thus could weather losses in other departments with little or no problems (TPG, in particular, has always underperformed in the personal hygiene products division; do NOT buy TPG tooth floss, EVER!); meta-corps, that is, corps that provided services and products to the other corps, like Tunguska (bulk supplier of ores), Orion (supplier of superb heavy-duty industrial equipment for any and all purposes) and Aeolus (bulk shipping and transportation) were of course always in demand, and thus were the happiest. The less satisfied where those corps that had no particular field of expertise nor provided irreplaceable services to the Union or the other corps; such was the case of Xang Xi, Ineubis, and Axia, though each had found its own way to keep itself afloat and in the Green. Xang Xi, for example, fished for those jobs the bigger corps felt were not worth their time, while at the same time it manufactured low-cost alternatives to big name household items and electronics, their lawyers always keeping the Corp one step ahead of multiple copyright infringement suits; Axia, on the other hand, was always on the prowl for juicy tech contracts that it could wrest away from the bigger Corps, most notably Valent, often getting them by the corporate equivalent of flashing big, sad puppy eyes at the Senate.

So all in all, it was a good, boring life and business as usual, until something happened that was to alter the balance of Union life again.

In early 3924, a Tunguska repair team in the Edras system was dispatched to perform diagnosis and repair on a Harvester Queen… we all know about Queens, right? Gigantic AI constructs whose purpose is deep-space mining on demand, capable of building and maintaining a large fleet of miner drones and escorts to achieve their objectives within the given deadline (at least, these is how they were before that major SNAFU some centuries later). Harvester Queens are pretty much self-sufficient and fire-and-forget, able even to repair themselves out on the field, so when this particular Queen began to report wormhole-grade ion levels in a sector where no such thing was to be found according to existing data, a human team was sent to check it out and give the AI a total software overhaul, should it need it, after multiple remote diagnosis and repair routines seemingly failed to fix this “glitch”.

One can’t help but imagine the surprise when, upon arriving at the field, the team’s own sensors confirmed the presence of a wormhole within the sector; the surprise, however, must have been nothing compared to the shock of seeing the wormhole open before their very eyes and spew out a ship of unknown configuration. Faced with the impossible, their minds shooting blanks, the crew broadcasted a high-priority emergency signal to all the Union. For a few moments there, it was utter, lovely pandemonium.

The emergency signal triggered the Union’s largest military operation ever (at that time) as the Senate and the Corps sent the totality of their space defense fleets to the sector (those that had a fleet, that is; it is said Tunguska sent a Centaur full of belligerent, drunk miners), everyone expecting to find an armada of Serco vessels arriving en masse. In minutes, over a hundred frigates, corvettes, and ships-of-the-line with accompanying fighter escort surrounded the tiny alien vessel. Never had the might of the Union been concentrated on a single target, and only once in our past had we felt more embarrassed (back when the Union was named), for the ship not only was small, but also primitive by Union standards, devoid of Xirite armor, and unarmed to boot; an invader this was not.

Smart money says the Itani explorers soiled their pants before finally attempting to establish contact with the huge armada arranged all around them. This took some time since, unlike some lame Olde Earth Sci-Fi movies, the Itani and the Union did not share languages, comm frequencies or even Operative Systems (weird, huh?). After a rather long and tense period of time, the Itani Nation and the Union of Independent Territories spoke to each other for the first time ever in badly remembered English. The first exchange between the two nations was made up of short, clipped questions and answers that created more questions as the intruders explained who they were; the next was a cacophony of advertisements, proposals, and special offers from every Corp (Limited time only! While supplies last!) Corporate minds spin coinwards, after all, and not even the densest exec in the most remote department of the least important division of Ineubis Research failed to see the magnitude of the event.

Sequestered for a whole two weeks while they and their ship were thoroughly inspected and verified (as much has you can verify a previously-unknown culture, anyway), the five unwitting ambassadors were officially welcomed at last and set loose on the Union; by then they had already become media darlings: every Corp wanted to talk deals with them, every News agency wanted an interview, every Union Joe and Jane commented on their ship, their origin, and their weird clothing (them bitchin’ hairdos were nice, too). Everyone was in awe with the explorers’ tales about their Nation; the way they lived, their credo, their planets and achievements, the Union ate it all up and thirsted for more. In particular, the tale of the Ark captured the hearts of the people, being so similar to our own origins (not to mention they accomplished it with just a single dinky ship, if their scout vessel was anything to judge Itani tech by); people talked about it continuously, hasty dramatizations appeared on the entertainment Nets, and even fights over ownership of the story broke out, forcing the Senate to step in and point out no one can copyright History, though some people said “Oh yeah? Well you just wait and see!” and kept trying (the last such legal battle ended about 20 years ago, when a mysterious accident killed off all of the original claimant’s descendants, who had gathered in an Arta Caelestis station with their lawyers to discuss the possibility of appealing the Courts’ adverse ruling for the 500th time; gotta love the way Justice is carried out in the Union).

But while contact with the Itani Nation was all smiles and giddiness and photo ops and frivolous lawsuits on the exterior, it was a much more somber affair on the rational, practical side. The Senate and the Corps had interrogated and debriefed the ambassadors, on everything about their nation, its objectives, and its current situation, looking for a trace of the Taint of Akan; after all, all of this was that dead idiot’s fault! In spite of deep misgivings by some members of the hastily-built Foreign Affairs Committee, it was clear the Itani believed now that what Akan had done was a big no-no, and their culture was all about making amends for that mistake. They were millions, the Union was told, and widespread, and the Union itself could easily be fit completely in any one of their planets, of which they had a bunch.

The grimmest bit of news to come out of these briefings was, of course, the war with the Serco. The Itani had stupidly stirred them from their stagnant slumber and they were now pouring out of their planet in the manner of angry yet very stupid wasps, intent on killing off their old foe; they were now moving into space and expanding their nation, which they were calling the Dominion (the fact that they were still human and not prancing ponies also surprised some). And the Itani, more plentiful and advanced than the Serco as they were, the Itani needed help.

It was a decisive moment, which meant of course lengthy meetings, more committees and heated discussion. While the five Itani were fought over by the Union media (much to their horror) the Senate and the Corporations discussed long and hard over a course of action. The Corps saw a brand-new market for their wares, not to mention new technological opportunities (the Itani ship, inferior as it was, had a couple of unique technologies and a bunch of very creative features not present in any form in Union space technology, and all the Corps were very eager to get their hands on the licenses); the Senate saw not only fellow humans in need, but also an ally against their old enemy, the Serco. In the end, though, insecurity ruled the day: the Serco were winning the war even with the odds stacked against them, and if such a large nation as the Itani’s couldn’t hold them back, then what chance did the Union stand? The committees convened, the meetings ended, and agreement was reached. An official document was rendered, delivered to the ambassadors, and then sent on its way back to Itan with them.

The Itani government responded favorably to the document, and on December 1st, 3964, the heads of every Itani Order met with the CEOs of the Eight Corporations and the President of the Senate aboard the Union battlecruiser Rivnos, on the Edras-Jallik wormhole, and official Relations started between the Itani Nation and the Union. Both nations were getting freedom of travel and trade throughout both territories; the Corps got incentives and financing to establish themselves in the Itani markets, and the Itani got Union technology and know-how for the War with the Serco, most notably Xirite alloy plating. A new Sun had dawned, a new market had opened, and no one was unaware of the unique opportunities presented by war, though no one was openly speaking about them, either. All in all, the Corps figured, it would be business as usual.

As soon as the deal with the Itani was signed, nav buoys were deployed, by unknown persons, of course, all the way from Ukari to Rhamus…

Part X: Of how we met the Akanese, and how everything suddenly got a lot more interesting

Trust the Itani to turn any deal sour. Here we were, a whole nation and eight Corps ready to sell them everything their wimpy little hearts desired, and they wanted very little of it. Literally. They embraced civilian space and mining tech with open arms, and some of the more cerebral forms of entertainment, but the rest they didn’t want. No luxuries, no excesses, no guilty little pleasures; I swear, it was as if all of them were monks or something! What was irking the Corps the most was that they were accepting no weapons, either; they took the Xirite alloy and the military shipsystems, but saw no need of improving their weaponry. With the kind of pragmatism every salesman hates, they reasoned their weapons were good enough since, of course, the Serco had no Xirite plating, which our weapons were designed to counter; arguments and dissuasion and better deals made no dent on them, and so we were stuck.

It was around this time the Itani government finally warned the Senate about the Akanese, a radical group of terrorist zealots who were the main reason the Serco were attacking them in the first place. The Senate heard “radicals and terrorists”, the Corps heard “ka-CHING!” So it was no wonder that while the Senate advised everyone to keep away from these people and report of any contact with them, the Corps went and did exactly the opposite.

Or tried to, anyway; the Itani weren’t kidding when they said the Akanese were nothing if not secretive and sneaky. A second, and then a third survey of Edras, Pelatus and Bractus failed to discover any wormholes we might have missed; a watch for black starships of course turned up nothing (“couldn’t these Akanese like, paint their ships bright orange?” quipped one frustrated CEO at the time) and trying to find Akanese agents amongst the visiting Itani was like looking for a particular needle in a stack of needles. Union salesmen were forced to create a sales technique, later known as “Union subtle”, that consisted of mingling with Itani citizens and saying things like “It’s a good thing there are no AKANESE here to learn ORION is having a SALE of their best-selling XGX PHASE BLASTERS, preferred two to one against TPG Sparrows, because if they were and took advantage of it and the easy ORION FINANCING, who knows what terrors they’d unleash!” or “I hear INEUBIS has increased its production of XIRITE ALLOY, let us hope the AKANESE don’t find out and get their hands on some TO BUILD LIGHTER AND MORE RESISTANT FIGHTERS AND VESSELS!” You get the idea; to the Corp eye the Akanese were the customer the Itani should have been, and they were desperate for their market. And still, the Akanese did not show.

Years later, the Akanese would admit that what kept them away for so long were precisely those, uh, enthusiastic and subtle ads; they figured it was a setup, because no one could be so stupid and obvious (a few Union intellectuals had been pointing this out ever since the technique was conceived, but who listens to brainiacs?) As it was, Ineubis was the first Corp to be contacted by the Akanese, who were very interested in the Xirite alloy, after all. Ineubis tried to keep the contract a secret, but in the end, its (seemingly) faltering Xirite alloy production attracted the attention of the other Corps, and shortly after six out of every ten Ineubis employees were spying for someone else (or so I hear); Ineubis had to cut deals with one Corp after another to keep the whole thing under wraps, until only TPG and the Senate were oblivious to what was happening.

The Akanese did not quite turn out to be the “client the Itani should have been”; if anything, they were even more prudish and closed-minded than their hippie cousins, and thus sales of stuff like luxury goods and entertainment holos flopped even worse (the Akanese seem unable to comprehend Union soap operas at all). However, these war-like morons were VERY interested in our weapons, the bigger the better; it was only logical: whereas the Itani only wanted to give the Serco a bloody nose and make them think twice about attacking, the Akanese had nothing less in mind than the absolute eradication of the prancing ponies, and so to them any weapon that shredded Serco ships as if they were made of paper was a good thing indeed. The Corps only balked at selling them capital ship weaponry and designs, since it was obvious these loonies were no laughing matter; still, the Corps and the Akanese did brisk business, and the Akanese stockpiled and deployed weapons and ships of increased sophistication and deadliness.

It was not to last, of course; give a Corp a hand and it will take the whole arm and try to sell it back to you at 500% its value. The Corps soon began to renege on their deals between one another and try to undercut everyone else; the Akanese were happy to simply allow the Corps to slash prices, add benefits (like 24/7 tech support) and generally fall over each other in an attempt to get a bigger slice of their pie. After all, that’s what Capitalism is all about, right? Savage fighting in the sales floor soon turned into savage fighting into space, convoys raided, supply lines cut, manufacturing modules hit; in retrospective, it was a taste of things to come in three hundred years.

The battles soon caught the eye of both TPG and the Senate, and not long after launching an investigation, Senate Defense Forces warped right into an Axia raid of a Valent convoy (it was the first registered sign of the animosity these two Corps shared). The raiders were driven off, the convoy impounded when it began acting suspiciously, and soon the whole affair was out in the open, fingers were being pointed, excuses given, and people spaced.

The Senate slapped wrists all around, imposed fines, confiscated equipment and goods, and demanded the Akanese step forth. By this time the Akanese had an impressive arsenal of Union weapons and goods, but though bigoted and shortsighted, they weren’t too stupid; they realized their supplies were finite and their endeavor would be best served by maintaining trade with the Union. Plus, they still had some unfilled orders and were starting to realize not everyone had given them top-of-the-line goods, and thus were anxious to contact the proper Complaint departments.

So the Akanese stepped forth and began to talk with the Union proper, and one bright day in 4012 (a glitch on the energy control circuits made lighting everywhere on Aroan Executive 50% brighter, so everyone had to wear dark glasses) the Union and the Order of Akan officially started Trade. The Akanese agreed to keep their military operations out of Unionspace (we can see how well they kept that promise) and in return were given better deals and better goods. Weaponry sales were scaled back, but by then the Akanese had more than enough weapons to darken the Serco’s day; finally, attempts to make them buy non-essentials were met with the same derision as before, to the dismay of the Corps, who still dreamed of their Perfect Client, and cast their eyes towards Sol II as they did so.

Things were happening at an increasing pace, and we were all enjoying the ride.

"...had become a chew toy for the warbeasties and yet lived to tell about it"

Laughed so hard I puked.

keep it comin

You are on a roll jex!!!
Next, the history of the 20th century...;)

Part XI: Trackback, or How I forgot to speak of the origins of Corvus Prime

So sue me.

There’s not much to tell, really, but since we have at least one bunch of jokers claiming to be the real Syndicate, and since Corvus is the single most important institution in the Union, bar none, I think some mention of how it came about is required.

Let us go back to that cheery, chaotic mess known as the Shattering, when the Union broke up on a myriad corporations, all vying to grow strong and become top dog. I mentioned that a small part of the population grew disenchanted with all this and dropped through the cracks to land in the cushy embrace of the Union’s welfare system; eventually, when the Shattering was over and the Eight Corps arose to bring order back into the Union, people where chosen from this pool of unaligned talent to take charge of Government.

What I didn’t mention was the rough composition of this pool of people. Roughly half were honest folks, hard-working, dreamers and idealists who had grand plans for the Union once the period of madness passed; the other half was made of folks who realized there was no point in breaking one’s back working if everyone else was already doing all the work. These people spent their days lying back, enjoying life, watching the asteroids drift by, and taking what their hard-working brethren cheerily offered; in other words, these were very smart people.

When the call finally came to overhaul the corrupt government, both halves of the unaligned rose to meet it. The pansy dreamers and idealists saw a chance to bring a golden age to the Union; the smart ones saw their chance to line their pockets while working as little as possible. They "worked", and watched, and pounced upon any chance they saw for a quick profit.

One such man was Tobenna Crow; a wily Senator with a nose for money, he had a knack for jumping from Committee to Committee, sniffing around, looking for profitable situations. He soon found what he was looking for: like a space cow to Xithricite, he made a beeline to the Union Standards Committee, and joined it.

The USC deals mostly, since its inception, with establishing quality standards for anything and everything the Union produces, grows, refines, or repairs. It is Enemy Number One for all kinds of cheap and badly thought-out products and every year, as technology progresses, it issues new standards the next crop of goods must meet; it is the one single cause for the Union’s strong engineer market. Anyway, since the USC deals with quality issues, it also falls to it to deal with all those products that didn’t make the grade; it keeps close tabs on how the Corps handle their stock of defective goods, whether they are to be scrapped, repaired, upgraded, or simply re-packaged. All in all, and in different degrees, the Corps lose a lot of cash every time they run afoul of the USC, especially when the goods in question have to be scrapped, since that means all materials have to be recycled and that's awfully costly. Crow stepped into this arena, sensed Corporate unhappiness and cash to be made, and moved in to strike it rich.

USC’s standards and rulings were really, really harsh and unfair on the Corps, he argued. So maybe these items underperform, but really, is that so bad? I mean, take this babysitter robot, for instance: so it loses its temper rather quickly, so what? What’s a few extra spanked bottoms, or a couple of broken ribs, or some missing baby teeth, really? And if that is a big issue, well, how about putting it to work as, oh I don’t know, a prison guard instead? An inmate is not a child, now is he? Well, yes, the robot would have to be issued a gun, but an inmate is an adult who knows better than to misbehave, isn’t he? And, if that is not enough, why not have it guard the capital punishment wing? I mean, if it kinda overreacts and kills an inmate there, well, the guy was headed to the airlock anyway, wasn’t he? So where’s the loss? No, there’s no need to create a new product line, or send it back for review to the USC, for that matter; just slap a new paint job on the units, maybe wipe off that friendly grin and paint a frown instead, so the inmates know it means business. Oh, and guess what, I have a client lined up for these babies already…

You can clearly see the guy’s genius: by working creatively around the shortcomings of each particular item, he could put them back into circulation, turning loss into profit. Of course, he took a hefty cut of it; after all, not only did he made it look like the goods were really dealt with as the USC had determined, he also found buyers willing to take advantage of such great offers. He had, in effect, created the only defective-goods black market in the Union.

The operation grew quickly, and when the time was right, he brought other members of the Committee to his way of thinking, either by huge loads of cash or by spacing them when no one was watching; soon enough he was the head of the Committee, and everyone in it was involved with the operation. Yet he was not done: when the chance came to widen the black market to include all kinds of goods, not just quality rejects, he took it without second thought; the Corvus Market, as it was called (Rule Number One of Naming: if you can translate it to Latin, it sounds tons cooler) now covered every type of good, from schematics to ships to personnel, and soon it took over all the other black market, until it became synonymous with the term. And still Crow reached out further, moving to take over every kind of criminal or ethically-challenged operation within the Union, even as it expanded its influence within the Senate. At that moment, at its peak, Crow controlled every black market deal, every con man, every robbery or act of espionage, every hooker, every protection racket, every thug and mercenary within Unionspace, not to mention a good deal of the Senators themselves; he was arguably the most powerful man in the Union.

Of course it was not to last, and it’s rather ironic that Crow’s downfall came from the original illegal operation; though he was a very smart and shrewd man, and so were the people below him, there’s no way you can keep defective goods from acting up in spectacular ways. At first, no one paid much mind; the incidents were believed to be cases of a defective unit escaping detection from a line of acceptable goods. The Corps paid fines and had their wrists slapped when such an incident occurred, but no penalty really dented the profits they were making from the sale of defective goods, no matter how hefty. Still, such incidents began to occur with more and more regularity, and soon people began to wonder what the hell the USC was doing if all these defective goods were making it into consumers’ hands; a public outcry turned the focus of attention on Crow and his USC, and he was hard-pressed to keep everything under wraps.

Then, an independent (read: TPG) investigation brought the Corvus Market into the public light as the source of all defective goods, and from there the goods were traced to the Corps, and then the whole lurid affair was out in the open. The Corporations were shocked, shocked I tell you, about the “deceitful and deplorable actions of a few rogue employees out to make a buck while betraying all the Corp stood for”, and people were arrested, and accused, and indicted, and spaced.

And fingers were pointed at Tobenna Crow.

Now this man had balls(have I told you how much I admire him?): instead of slinking off, or making a run for it, or throwing himself at the mercy of the Senate, he rose up and declared War on the Union. Yes, you heard me, War; like Al Capone in that old song about a fictional event, Crow sent his gang to war against the forces of the Law. I heard my mama cryyyyy… wait, no I didn’t; or maybe I did, it’s been so long I can’t remember her face, much less if I ever heard her cry. Besides, I’m not even sure if her (much less me) was around during the time Corvus rose against the Union. Aaaanyway… Crow called for his organization to fight to the death against Union and TPG police agencies, and Corvus, figuring he had some plan, complied. Turns out, he didn’t have a plan, he was just trying to make as much ruckus as possible so he could escape(sheer genius, I tell you) and in this he succeeded: neither himself not a single member of his inner circle (known as "the Syndicate ") was arrested. As soon as he was safe, he called upon his “operatives” (sounds a lot better than minion or thug) to go into hiding as well; now this was much easier said than done since, from time to time, police forces had soured some Corvus operations, shot some people, and incarcerated others. While the fuzz had been unable (until then) to piece things together and discover Corvus, Corvus operatives had developed a bad opinion of the police and had been itching to strike back, so they fought back with unbridled ferocity, and it was a real war for a while; however, even with its tons of shiny black market weapons and ships Corvus took a beating, and lost a good number of people before it heeded its boss’ call to go into hiding.

Now, any law-enforcement officer can tell you that, unless you take out the leaders and confiscate all the resources, a crime organization can’t be really killed (and even then, it might not really die); such was the case with Corvus. While its powerbase was broken and much of its assets confiscated or frozen, it still had more than enough of everything to keep operating; things were now harder and the organization was always on the run, but in spite of everything(and contrary to the public reports) Corvus prospered again, albeit slowly.

Tobenna Crow, that man of vision and intelligence, spent his time reviewing the situation; he realized the critical mistake of not shutting down the defective goods operation, as well as some other, smaller mistakes, which he vowed never to make again. He was also bitter about his fall from the top; stripped of his rank, his assets seized, he who once was the most powerful man in the Union (and the best Joe Pesci impersonator, according to several biographies). He wanted revenge on the Union, but not the “last thing I do” kind of revenge, but the kind that lasts for an eternity and is a constant irritant to the victim. He wanted to call them out, those pompous Senators who had denounced him publicly and shamed him, for he knew them to be as corrupt and self-serving as he was; he wanted to put a mirror to the Union so it could see the seething filth that it was made of, to make it clear that Corvus was but a part of it that would never go away.

Some five years after Corvus took up arms against the Union, rumors began to reach law enforcement agencies about a station, somewhere in Odia, where illegal goods were sold and the black market prospered; a place where you could get your hands on anything, for a price, and where the Law did not reach. The station was Corvus Hold, the owner, an organization known as Corvus Prime, and its leaders, a shadowy group of people known as The Syndicate. Crow and his people stood up proud and defiant before the Union, and gave it the finger.

We all know what happened next: the Union made a few forays and then the law enforcement agencies determined that “if Corvus were destroyed, they would simply reorganize in another, unknown location. Better to know where the hornets nest", which translated into normal speech means they didn't want to get pwned by Corvus. Since then, Corvus has grown and prospered, expanding and taking over Sedina, Odia, and Bractus, and its presence can be felt everywhere, even the tightly locked Dominion. Corvus deals with all the major players in the War, and even the Union and the Corps, and all the while grows stronger, a nation pretty much unto itself and a force to be ignored at your own risk.

Now they only need to lose the stupid accents.

Part XII: Of how we unleashed the Hive

And now, back to the studio! The Union and the Corps had finally established trade and relations with both branches of the Itani Nation, the Pansies and the Nutjobs (guess which one is which); one branch was hungry for all our defense technology, while the other wanted our offensive technology as well (and neither of them, bunch of repressed prudes, wanted our entertainment technology). They were fighting a common enemy, the Prancing Ponies of the Serco Dominion, and the way we heard it, the Serco were getting pwned thanks to our Xirite armor plating; however, the Itani refused to do more than defend their systems, while the Akanese wanted to push forward all the way to Sol II and “kill them ponies”. For us, however imperfect these markets were, they still made for mad profits from increased demand, if we could get our hands on more and more resources fast enough.

So the Eight Corps and the Union proper unleashed their Harvester Fleets (both human and AI) and they descended upon the asteroid fields like housewives upon a clearance sale, stripping them of every valuable ore; some fields disappeared entirely inside the huge mouth of the Union mining industry, leaving nothing but dust and echoes behind; others were picked over for the best ores they had to offer and are now little more than clusters of Ferric and Carbonic. As the frenzy for resources reached its peak and the fleets demolished asteroids and planetoids, it became pretty obvious the Corps were engaged in a race with each other to see who could gather and supply the most goods and ores.

Leader of the resource race was the Tunguska Heavy Mining Concern, whose fleets were understandably more than a match for all the other fleets put together; it possessed the most comprehensive ore maps, the most competent crews and the most advanced technology, having invested heavily in laser sublimation mining systems (mining beams for all you ignorant slobs at home) while everyone else still used Orion mining drills and Xithricite bits. All of it combined meant Tunguska was able to deliver more ore in less time and at less cost, and soon left everyone else far behind; eventually, in order to meet their increased production quotas, the other Corps began to supplement their stocks with Tunguska ore, and suddenly the Mining Concern was top dog in the Corporate race; like Valent all those centuries ago, now it was Tunguska’s turn to shine.

The mining Concern enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame by lording it over the other Corps at the Senate, setting up sweet deals for itself and generally throwing its new-found power around; the other Corps took it all with clenched teeth since Tunguska was dangling their superior technology in front of them as bait. The Concern knew well it couldn’t keep mining beam technology for itself forever; sooner or later, one way or another, the other Corps would get their hands on it. By promising them the technology in exchange for favors in the Senate floor on a number of upcoming issues, the Corp managed to stall the illegal acquisition of its tech until it had improved on it; in effect, the Corp kept ahead by releasing new technology once it had something better up its sleeve. Eventually, it also had to offer and share Harvester Fleet technology, namely AI upgrades to the Queens that made them smarter and more efficient; it was this what started the whole mess.

What made Tunguska’s AI fleet so successful was the way their Queens talked to each other; while in a regular fleet, each Queen was independent and plotted and worked according to its orders and the maps given it, the Tunguska Queens shared information, maps, and conditions. Thus, a Queen could warn the others of storms, or Corvus pirates roaming in a certain sector, or a particularly rich field where a number of Queens could fill their orders faster, and because of this, they needed to have little interaction with humans. In short, while the regular Queens only talked to their drones and their human handlers, the Tunguska Queens worked as a community to finish their jobs faster and seldom needed to talk to their masters except to receive orders or to report completion and delivery of a job, or problems of such a magnitude the Queens couldn’t solve on their own. There was one other advantage to this open communications scheme: whenever Tunguska needed to upgrade the software or firmware on the fleet, all it had to do was upload it to a single Queen, and soon it would spread throughout the Fleet until all the drones that required the upgrade had it. Can you see where this is going? Good, I knew you could.

So the day came when Tunguska offered its superior Harvester Fleet system to the other Corps; it was a speedy affair, since the others had been trying to replicate with mixed success. Most of the discussion centered on payment, rights to the information and firmware shared, more payments, royalties, and customization and training for each of the Corps’ fleets (Xang Xi wanted its Queens to put on a little song and dance upon delivery and payment, for example), which involved more payments. Like I said, the Corps quickly agreed to the offer and threw heaps of cash towards the miners, who quickly set about upgrading all the fleets.

Not a month had gone by since the upgrades when it happened.

This is an abject lesson in the benefits of certification, people; at least, when used properly. This is what we know:

1. It didn’t happen during a training session, though it was claimed otherwise.
2. The operator responsible wasn’t certified in the procedure, though they tried to hide this, too.
3. Nobody cared an uncertified operator was issuing orders to the Queens.

Of course, in the operator's defense, there’s the little fact of the huge oversight within the program. I mean, with something as important as “Who’s my client?” and “How much does he need, and of what?” how could they forget to put safeguards on that input? Such a sloppy program wouldn’t have survived the scrutiny of my programming teacher, I’ll tell you that! However it slipped through, the fact remains that a Queen was ordered to go forth and harvest, but wasn’t told when to stop nor when to deliver nor whom to deliver to. The Queen went happily about its business and no one was the wiser.

Eventually, of course, when the Queen failed to deliver, people began looking for it. The first assumption was that it had run afoul of Corvus raiders, but when, as per procedure, contact with it was attempted, it was discovered the Queen was still running around, mining, and in control of a rather large fleet. Queried, it reported being in the midst of completing its order: having no quantifiable goal and no time limit or destination, the Queen had decided its masters wanted it to mine as much ore as possible, non-stop, and had created an ever-larger fleet of drones in order to accomplish this.

Now, human fiction is full of stories about robots and AI refusing to obey their human masters (“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”) but this took a turn for the ridiculous: when ordered to stop, the Queen flat out refused! Not only that, it became morose and angry and cut communications. During the latter investigation, it was discovered that in order to improve efficiency, Queen AI had been given a positive feedback loop; like those doors around Itanispace that live to open and close for you, the Queens got off by doing their job; for them, spawning drones and having them mine and store ores was Nirvana. Every new drone, every new crate of ore, sent them higher and higher in rapture; and this Queen, having been left to its own devices with a mission equivalent to the Seven Heavens to its artificial mind, well… it was as high as a Serco’s ego, and addicted to the mission, to boot, so when asked to stop, it didn’t take it so well (it should be noted that Queens still get high from doing their jobs; or why do you think they fly like that?)

So the Queen stopped communicating with everyone else; after some more failed tries to get it to talk, people were finally sent after it. It responded by fleeing, pleading to be allowed to “finish” its order; time and again people tried to reach and board it, to no avail. Attempts to override it via passwords and commands failed as well; another area of the firmware that had been left untested. Growing increasingly irritated with the errant Queen, it was decided to destroy it and its fleet, and that sealed the deal: the moment the first drone came under attack, the whole fleet turned against their would-be destroyers. Not really expecting it, the human ships were overwhelmed by the vast number of drones hell-bent on killing them; the battle was short, but even so the humans took a big bite out of the Harvester Fleet before being wiped out. The rogue fleet vanished into the depths of space.

Now, at this point in time, this whole mess was seen as a small mishap, and fingers and snickers were pointed; it was amusing to see a doped-out AI outwit and outfight a Corp. But then, over the following months, Queens began to disappear in large numbers; their transponders grew silent, and any attempts to raise them failed. At first the Corps assumed them to be losses due to misjumps or pirate depredations, but as more and more Queens vanished, and investigations were launched, it soon became obvious it was happening everywhere, and at an alarming rate. Conspiracy theories abounded, some Corps accused each other, and some others began to talk of flying their fleets to Corvus to “show them pie rats sum respec’”. Tempers were flaring up and reason was being abandoned when a group of deep-space miners found, much to their regret, the missing Queens.

Picture this: an emergency transponder signal, a standard, speedy rescue; a beat up, shot up escape pod, nearly wrecked, with more holes in it than the Lady Serco story. Inside, the body of someone who died by explosive decompression when the escape pod’s hull was breached; ID pegs him as belonging to a group of independent miners who disappear for months at a time to return to Unionspace laden with rare ores and wild tales, only this miner’s storytelling days are over, and the story the blackbox he’s clutching reveals is too shocking, too incredible to swallow. You can still find the video around in the DarkNets and some news archives, but back in the day it was deemed unsuitable for public consumption: a vast field, and all over it, Queens. Queens and Queens and Queens, at least a hundred, some circling each other, in groups of seven or eight, others flying in strange geometric designs, and others working in tandem, pushing asteroids together; and drones, everywhere, thousands of them, Collectors and Transports and Guardians and Observers, all types, flitting, mining, patrolling, following the Queens. You hear the gasps of the astonished miners, and then you see, coming in from below, the foremost mining ship, its pilot too astounded to realize the ship's still moving towards the rogue drones; and then, as one, as if they were a school of fish, as if they possessed one mind and one purpose, the drones turn to the miners’ ships and attack, swarming around them like furious, murderous insects. The video, like the miners themselves, does not last long.

Frantic, hurried action followed (the Union’s signature trait) but by the time the battlefleets got to the coordinates in the miners’ blackbox, the rogue drones were gone. All that remained was a gigantic, ominous ring of asteroids, a marker of some kind. The asteroids themselves were devoid of all kinds of useful ores, and so was the space around it: not a scrap of metal or dust, not even a nut or bolt to indicate they had ever been there; if it weren’t for the asteroid ring, everyone would think they had arrived at the wrong place.

A week of scans and investigations turned up nothing, and the Corps were breaking their collective brains trying to understand what was happening and assess the situation; above all, they were desperate to find the rogue Queens and drones. In this they didn’t have to wait too long: reports began to filter in from Corvus, then elsewhere in the Union, and finally, the Itani Nation; rogue Queens, with rogue drones, mining the asteroid fields and attacking anyone they encountered. They swarmed around the fields like angry bees and contested their possession; they scouted new territory and tried to take it over and retreated or expanded depending on their success. They showed an animal-level kind of cunning, quickly realizing stations were formidable targets, and that other places, like wormhole sectors, couldn’t be held. Everywhere they arrived they spread unless quickly eradicated, insidious, numerous and single-minded; invaders behaving like a group, with a single purpose, like insects.

The Hive had been unleashed.

OOC:

I love it. :D

(Damn, someone needs to put this on the wiki as a companion to the backstory. It's Just That Damn Good.)

Yes. Ironically, I like the Union bias in the story. Keep it up, man.

Indeed. The UIT backstory :)

What ever happened to the Serco backstory?

I'll write it! HA -no, I'm joking. I seem to recall that Spellcast, Lemming, Ku, and Borb were kinda working on it, dunno where that left off.

Oh crap. I missed the post where they said it died :( I could try my hand at it, maybe...

CrippledPidgeon, RelayeR and yours truly were also involved, Lex.
Since Ku has not migrated the Serco Secure Net, we cannot access it, thus we cannot further it.
I could, though, make what I wrote public. Not that it's a lot, but I might get around writing more Soon™.

I could link it somewhere... and hey, I was recruited to work on the Serco backstory too... <_<

I just didn't write anything because I didn't finish reading everything that'd already been written. >_<

Perhaps post it somewhere for us, tosh? That'd be neat-o.

Nice work, Jexkerome!

I look forward to future entries!

True, I forgot Miharu, Spellcast, ctishman, Borb, and I'm sure there were others who contributed, too. But, my memory not being perfect, and the forums being inaccessible, I forgot about most of them. My apologies.

Part XIII: Of the Mess that followed and the Secession of Tunguska

It was not a pretty picture: through sheer incompetence, we had unleashed a fleet of rogue mining drones upon space, and now they were multiplying and encroaching on our territory faster than you could say “prancing pony”. Since all the Harvester fleets had the same architecture, all these rogue drones had to do was contact an unaffected Queen and voilá, instant new rogue Queen, intent on getting as much ore as possible to build more drones, while aggressively attacking any human ship it encountered. Relentless, merciless and tireless, the Hive Fleets, as they became known for their modus operandi, began to contest Mankind for every square inch of Unionspace and beyond; even the Itani were hit by this scourge (later we learned the Serco had them, too), and not a week passed without the Itani leaving a message on our answering machine to the tune of “hi, uh, there are some mining robots of yours down here, and they are shooting up our pilots… hellooo? Anyone there?” It was beyond disaster: productivity was down, health care costs were up, and our clients were less than satisfied; the Union was besides itself trying to find a solution.

What looked like the simplest and best solution was, when acted upon, a no-go: if the Hive had been created by a software glitch, then software was the best bet to defeat it; after all, the AI shared the same architecture with the same flaws, quirks, and protocols. Retro-hacks and virii were designed specifically for the Hive, and aggressively deployed… to no avail. There had always been, you see, questions about how smart the Harvester AI was, and the general consensus was that it was damn smart, but awfully inexperienced and naïve; that if the need arose, Mankind could easily outwit and restrain it. Boy, were those software geeks wrong! By the time the Union launched its software offensive, the Hive had already altered its protocols immensely, while retaining full knowledge of ours. That meant our attack programs were useless, while the damn drones could still hit back; they kept stealing our Queens, and in one instance, a particularly nasty virus was bounced back to us, infecting the original Sikan orbital station on Arta Caelestis; the station mainframe sang Merry Christmas cheerily as it crashed the station and everything in it (including some ten thousand screaming humans) on the planet’s surface. This finally forced the Union to change its protocols and security systems, but the damage had already been done; overall, the Union enjoyed a couple of small successes against the Hive, from which the damn AI recovered quickly, and everything else failed. Pushed into the defensive by the disaster at Sikan, the Union never regained the initiative, and had to be content with making the remaining Harvester Fleets immune to Hive control, at which point they just became another target for the damn things.

So the best bet became direct confrontation: the average human pilot is a better dogfighter than any drone; this is why the Fleets had a built-in protocol to try and outnumber its enemies whenever possible. So all we had to do was attack with sufficient strength and/or skill, and victory was ours; however, the attacks were resource-intensive, and every pilot lost was a bigger loss than a bunch of drones (an ironic reflection of the human vs. Guise issue of the Itani-Serco War). Besides, the Hive was modifying its behavior to minimize damage to its Queens, which were the backbone of it all; they now spent most of their time in deep, open space, where risk of discovery was minimal, while the Collectors flew to and from the asteroid fields, bringing to them the ores necessary to build and expand. Even if a Queen was found and destroyed (usually by following the drones back to their source, a tedious and time-consuming exercise) chances were another one had just been put online elsewhere; indeed, calculations showed the Hive propagated faster than we could take it down, and some “experts” predicted that soon it would fall upon Mankind and smother us to death through sheer numbers. Which, of course, hasn’t happened, though we have no idea why; the most popular theory is that the Hive is simply more interested in expanding than wiping us out, while the second-most popular claims we’re now below its notice and it just takes us out when we’ve become too much of a nuisance. Whatever the reason is, I’m not complaining.

Anyway, fighting the Hive was (and still is) resource- and time-intensive, regaining control of it was impossible, our mining fleets were depleted and hammered, and productivity was still way down; the Itani were demanding their goods and compensation for their losses to the aggressive drones, and the Akanese were showing their displeasure by shooting our representatives (which was mostly seen as a good thing since our representatives were usually the most obnoxious people on the sales department). Something had to be done, and you know what they say: when the going gets tough, it’s time to blame others! The Senate created a Commission to investigate and report on just what had led to this debacle; TPG spear-headed the Commission, but through political machinations and favors most others Corps managed to put some of its employees in it, trumpeting it as a “truly multi-partisan effort to uncover the truth in this costly, shameful affair”. Now, a disaster of this magnitude cannot be really the responsibility of a single man; there’s usually a long chain of events behind it, from a hangover-induced error to bribed negligence to unadulterated incompetence. No, no, such a thing was the “work” of a multitude of people, so you couldn’t say it’s all the fault of a single man.

But you could say it’s all the fault of a single Corp.

Let’s face it: whose technology was it? Tunguska’s. Who trained the personnel? Tunguska. And who had been rubbing its success in all the other Corps’ noses? Why, Tunguska. In a lengthy, explicit report that some have called biased and the Tunguska CEO called other, less printable things at the time, the Commission lay the bulk of the blame on Tunguska’s doorstep; accusations of faulty, untested hardware, improperly Turing-tested AI, deficient training techniques, and a number of questionable decisions whose only purpose seemed to be cutting costs and maximizing profits, all these and more were leveled at the Mining Concern. Prodded by the other Corps, the Senate acted quickly on the finding and recommendations of the Commission, which mostly consisted of actions against Tunguska intended to appease and compensate the clients… and the other Corps. Girding themselves for what they knew to be an apocalyptic battle in the styling of Ragnarok, the Tunguska legal teams stepped forth to do battle and minimize the damage, using every ounce of legal skill and experience, not to mention a lot of dirty tricks to find loopholes and errors, dispute findings, and in general try to dispel the claims made against the Concern. To this day, Cavano Ralel’s recounting of the events (he was the Tunguska’s Chief Legal Counsel at the time) is required reading in all law schools across the galaxy; it’s a (thoroughly boring) tale of legalistic derring-do and shenanigans in the face of overwhelming odds, which can be summed up by the opening words: “it was more about what little we could hope to keep than how much we were going to lose”. Its claws sunk deep into the proverbial sand, Tunguska was slowly dragged down and forced to pay for pretty much everything, its accounts frozen, its wares seized, its claims over certain asteroid fields forfeit; in the end, the heroic efforts of the legal teams allowed the Concern to keep but a handful of ships, and two stations. The other Corps snickered and pointed: for the first time since the Shattering, a major Corp had been stripped down to nothing. The future looked grim for Tunguska, its remaining fleet and assets too little in the eyes of some experts, who predicted that the Concern would be unable to keep its financial obligations to their clients and the Union, and would fold in under a year; already a large number of its personnel were jumping elsewhere, like rats off a sinking ship, and credit institutions wouldn’t touch the miners with a ten-foot pole. Smelling blood, various Corps offered buy-outs of Tunguska’s remaining assets, some very generous, others right down insulting. Tunguska was given a deadline by the Senate to either present a plan for financial stability or declare bankruptcy, and as the date approached, everyone’s attention was fixated on the crippled Corp; some were theorizing of grand or pragmatic plans to keep the Concern alive with Senate aid, while many others were already thinking in terms of just seven Corps. Neither side was correct.

Tunguska’s CEO stood in the middle of the Senate floor on that fateful date, and began a long tirade; it was a bitter, venomous denunciation of everything the Union stands for, namely, profit-seeking, one-upmanship, and personal unaccountability. It was, as you can imagine, pretty much hypocritical sour grapes, and the other CEOs smirked with contempt, as this kind of speech could only mean one thing: capitulation; Tunguska was going the way of the Dodo, and the Corps were already splitting up the corpse amongst themselves. Then the CEO presented the Concern’s plan for financial stability, and everyone was floored: using the preceding rant as a springboard, the CEO announced the secession of Tunguska from the Union; after all, if the Union wouldn’t really protect one of its own, then the Concern didn’t see a reason to keep supporting it in return. Presenting a strong, coherent, and bulletproof legal argument (their lawyers had been working overtime ever since the Concern had lost most everything) the CEO presented the new Tunguska as a “client state” that would exist outside controlled Unionspace, paying a stupidly large number of taxes and tariffs but exempt from an even larger number of them, not to mention most laws and regulations; though life outside monitored space would be harsher and more dangerous, the obscene amount of money saved by this move would be more than enough to acquire a new defense fleet, move its operations to greyspace, and pay off all remaining outstanding debts and permits required to secede (some have said the Clause of Secession in the Union’s constitution was a joke; if so, no one was laughing that day, except Tunguska). The Concern would also auction off its one remaining field claim as well as the entirety of its AI Harvester fleet, which would give it additional solvency to start operations anew.

The plan was so bold, so dashing, and so unexpected, that the floor remained in silence a long time before the Senators and Corp representatives could digest it and start throwing objections, but Tunguska’s lawyers, accountants and analysts systematically eviscerated each and every one of them; the charade lasted for over five hours, the Corps scratching their heads, frantically trying to come up with something to stop Tunguska from its intended course of action, to no avail. The last attempt was made by a Xang Xi representative who gave an impassioned speech about the dangers of greyspace (there be pirates there!) and suggested it was draconic and wrong of Tunguska to send all of its personnel “into the wolves’ den without their consent”; the Concern’s CEO simply responded by giving the Senate a datapad with the Statement of Secession, signed by each and every remaining Tunguska employee. Silence fell again on the Senate as everyone realized that there was no way to stop Tunguska from Seceding short of hitting them over the head; the chagrined, defeated faces around the Senate floor stood in stark contrast with the pleased grins of the Tunguska team. A few minutes into this silence, when it was obvious all was said and done, the Concern’s CEO bid farewell to the Union forever on behalf of Tunguska, and the delegation turned to leave. A single question rang out in the silence:
“When… are you going to move out?”
The smug answer: “It’s happening as we speak, Senator.”

Tunguska wasn’t stupid enough to try and trumpet this as a “second exodus”, but this didn’t stop some news outlets (the very worst, none of which survive but CNN) from trying. As its two remaining stations made their ponderous way from Unionspace (one from Dau, the other from Nyrius) curious people got on their ships, or chartered one, and flocked to them, for one last look, or to visit them for the very first (and most likely the last) time; it was a veritable holiday of sorts with sad, terrible underpinnings: here was a large block of the Union, moving away in disgust for his fellow Man. It was almost like a soap opera, and for the next few years holo stories of love doomed by Tunguska’s secession became pretty popular. TPG, whose last, desperate offers were rebuffed by the Concern, called it “a great tragedy”, and the other Corps agreed, even as they snickered in private and played with the toys they had taken from the Concern. By the time the Tunguska stations prepared to leave Verasi and Azek, each was followed by a veritable fleet of civilian ships, showing the people’s support for the miner’s cause; it was the perfect moment for the Senate to step forward and do something, anything, to keep the miners from leaving and the Union from breaking. It could have changed the way things are done today; however, the Senate barely acknowledged the event, since “Tunguska has already seceded and we have better things to do”, in the words of one senator. The Tunguska Heavy Mining Concern left proper Unionspace to become its own entity with its own laws, and though no one was quite sure how things would pan out, there was one thing no one doubted: we hadn’t heard the last of the Miners.

Amazing,

only one issue though jex,

Given the elaborate network of subterfuge that would be in place in the UIT, how would it be possible for the other corps not to know that Tunguska was planning on seceeding, when Tunguska notified EVERY single remaining employee of the fact?

That is partly explained in the next entry. Suffice it to say that while the smart people decided to wait and see what happened, the dumb ones didn't think Tunguska would actually dare.