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Part XIV: Of the success of Tunguska, and the Secession of more Corps
Tunguska had left the building; not taking well being outmaneuvered and blamed for the fiasco that was the Hive, it had sold most of its remaining assets and taken the rest to greyspace, there to eke out a living among the drones, pirates, and space cows. The Union buzzed with theories about how the Miners would fare; some predicted doom, other’s predicted mediocrity, and yet others assured people the Concern would be back within a year, begging to be allowed back in. Strangely enough, for all the curiosity about their fate, no one went to visit them, and so Tunguska became a peripheral entity in Union discourse, as far away and mythical as Olde Earth, at least for a year.
Because then the ores began to arrive; cheap, plentiful, high-quality ores with the Tunguska logo on the crates. This in turn brought cries of “WTF?!” and “ZOMG!” and “A/S/L?” (don’t ask about that last one); after all, Tunguska was a client state and some heavy taxes had been slapped on its wares so they wouldn’t threaten domestic product, so how in blazes was the Concern able to offer so much ore for so little? Economists quickly pointed out the obvious: though it paid some taxes unique to its condition, Tunguska didn’t need to pay a bunch of other taxes the rest of the Corps did, like the manufacturing tax. Nor, for that matter, the waste disposal tax; or the packaging tax, labeling tax, utilities tax, air tax, water tax, carbon tax, silicon tax, food tax, advertising tax, social security tax, insurance tax, foam tax, quality control tax, ruler tax, recycling tax, right-of-way tax, emergencies tax, handbag tax, surplus tax, overhead tax, importation tax, R&D tax, station maintenance tax, space cow tax, fleet support tax, retirement fund tax, lollipop tax, hydroponics tax, wood tax, law enforcement tax, local resource tax, guten tax, work safety tax, name tax, education tax, bear tax, ship tax, telecomm tax, tax tax, field mapping tax, Itani tech tax, support for the arts tax, exemption from taxation tax, charities tax, nor most of the other myriad taxes local industry had to contend with, and that made Tunguska very competitive. So, to the chagrin of many, the Miners were alive and well, and more productive than before.
Of course, the other Corps didn’t take this sitting down; while maneuvering in the Senate floor to stall the flood of Tunguska wares, they sent people down to snoop on the Concern’s operations and assets, and what they found was, if not surprising, certainly admirable:
First of all, the Concern had struck a deal with Corvus Prime. By giving them a share of all proceeds, the Miners didn’t have to worry about having their ships blown up or hijacked, or their ores stolen. In fact, their deal with the Pirates went beyond a protection racket: they shared resources, pilots, assets, and even did some R&D together; it was a win-win situation that allowed both groups to prosper, and the obvious results were being seen in the Union markets (and at the wormholes, where pirates were becoming more and more bold).
Second, and more importantly, the Miners were exploiting, for all it was worth, the third and least popular solution to the Hive problem: accommodation. An idea put forth by some analysts and generally derided by everyone else, it argued that the Hive could be exploited much more efficiently than fought; after all, the rogue fleets were still mining and collecting ores, so it was just a matter of relieving the drones of them. Proponents of the idea said it was more cost-efficient than outright fighting the Hive, while opponents said the difference was negligible; as it was, no one had taken it seriously enough to do some real benchmarking, and so the idea had languished unproven and mostly unused, until now. With its fleet depleted, Tunguska had taken a risk and completely rebuilt it around a scavenger role, very similar to the raider fleets of Corvus. Its joint R&D ventures with the Pirates focused on the creation of tradeship variants that could fight, haul and even mine in a pinch, and thus were the Miner Marauder and Centaur Aggresso born (along with Corvus’ Mercenary Marauder). Armed with these superior ships, the Concern fell upon the myriad asteroid fields of greyspace and harvested the Hive, distracting the escorts, destroying the Collectors and Transports to steal their ores, and sometimes even tracking down and hunting the Queens themselves. Avoiding all-out combat and focusing on the juiciest targets, the Tunguska pilots kept their losses to a minimum while maximizing the harvesting of ores from wrecked drones; the wrecks themselves were collected both as extra resources, and to further the Concern’s understanding of the evolving Hive technology and programming. This in turn allowed for even more efficient raids, and thus huge amounts of ores could be scavenged and sold for a fraction of the cost of a regular mining operation; and sometimes, even if they felt like it, the Miners actually mined. By force and cunning (and with Corvus’ help), Tunguska had overcome the Hive and turned it into a useful, if very dangerous, tool again.
Of course, Tunguska’s resurgence as the premier mining corporation wasn’t going to last; the other Corps had eyes, more resources, and weren’t (very) stupid. Still, while they re-aligned their human fleets to the new mining paradigm (and mothballed their AI fleets for good), Tunguska enjoyed a very successful run that allowed it to secure its continued existence and prove its mettle one more time. Not that it needed it, since, after all, it had displaced Orion from its position in the mining industry through the invention of the mining beam and perfected AI fleet design; its place in the history books was already secure, and yet, it now showed everyone how to deal with this monster it had been accused of unleashing (I still say it’s their bloody fault, though) and make it, in a way, serve Mankind’s interests again. For the last time, the other Corps followed Tunguska’s lead: Orion and Axia, who had developed variants of the Hornet and Wraith to deal with pirates, unleashed them on the Hive, while TPG and Valent made Marauder variants for their scavenger fleets. Everyone else made do with what they had already, and the slow mining ships gave way to fighters with hefty holds, the better to shoot you and steal your ores with, my dear.
And that should have been it, some say, but then, six months after Tunguska had shown the Union how things were done in greyspace, Xang Xi seceded from the Union, and then Aeolus announced its intentions to secede as well.
What? Huh? How is one thing related to the other? Well, my young clod, Tunguska had proven that a Corporation could do more than survive outside the Union; it could thrive, excel, succeed, outside the loving stranglehold of the Senate and TPG. It had proven you didn’t need no stinking federalism and no stinking oversight and no stinking bear tax; and, believe or not, a number of Corps could do without any of those. Oh yes, some of them were less than thrilled with some of the bullshit they had to put up from the Senate and goody-too-shoes TPG, and were looking for a way out. Secession was clearly written in the Union’s Charter but… what if it didn’t pan out? What if it proved too difficult, too challenging? What if the Hive was worse out there, or the pirates resented the intrusion? What if the scarce information on the greyspace systems was wrong and they weren’t as rich as it was believed? It was too risky to take the plunge, and things like experimental stations outside Unionspace proper were incredibly expensive. But didn’t the pirates live there? Well, yes, but they lived off plundering Unionspace, and it was a well-known fact their stations were sub-par and their living conditions not that good; for all one knew they needed to plunder just to survive. So what’s wrong with piracy? Well, it’s not as easy as simple trade, not to mention that, if Corvus didn’t mind new neighbors, it would most certainly mind new competitors, plus the Union may decide to crack down on you as well, before you became as big as Corvus, and then where would you be, huh? No, no, piracy was out of the question; a trial, a test of the possibilities had to be conducted but… who would be foolhardy enough to risk everything on such a huge venture? Well, how about someone who had nothing left to lose?
Do you see where this is headed?
Now, it has to be said that, while no one will officially say so, and suggesting it to a Tunguska employee is a sure-fire way to get into a brawl, it is common belief that Tunguska was driven out of the Union by a cabal of Corporations looking into the feasibility of seceding from the Union themselves. There are a number of points that support this theory, the most telling being Tunguska’s announcement of Secession itself; if you’ll recall, the Concern had a period of grace during which it “conceived” the idea of seceding. Well, during this time employees were still abandoning the mortally wounded Corp, and it’s rather unlikely that none of this people leaked information to the other Corps; so why then the looks of surprise across the Senate floor when Secession was announced? Some point out that these people could have left before Tunguska began to pitch the idea of seceding to its employees, but there’s the fact that a number of employees refused to sign that infamous datapad the CEO showed to the Senate, and these people were the last to leave the Concern; so there definitely were ex-Tunguska employees out there, with knowledge of the secession plan, days before the Corp announced its decision to the Senate. So, again, why the looks of shock and surprise? Why the lame, not-thought-out-at-all arguments against secession that the Concern shot down so easily? Or rather, lame, not-thought-out-at-all arguments against secession so the Concern could shoot them down so easily?
But if this were the case, how far back did this conspiracy go? How many of the prior events were of this cabal’s doing? Are they responsible for the Hive? Well, most essays on this theory (some by serious historians and researchers, and all available on the Nets) agree that the cabal’s goal was a pipe dream, impossible to pull off, but when the Hive was unleashed and the Union began to look for a culprit, they saw their chance and moved in; they didn’t create the Hive but they took advantage of the crisis to force Tunguska out of the Union so their ideas could be tested, and when they borne out they made their move. Of course, there are those who have written essays of their own claiming this is all hogwash; after all, it sounds just too convenient and the idea that all this maneuvering could have been carried out behind the Senate’s and TPG’s backs is too ludicrous for some.
And then there are others, others who go further and claim that yes, the Hive was part of the plan, as well as Corvus, the final location of the Union, the Shattering, the Corporate Wars and even the Exodus; people who try to link every single important event in the Union’s history to a shadowy group of puppet masters for whom this is all an elaborate game, a group sometimes called The Guild, and sometimes what these conspiracy theorists say makes a lot of sense but if you go down that path you’ll suddenly find yourself working in a basement, surrounded by file cabinets, with a poster on your wall that has a Bunchies UFO on it and the legend “I WANT TO BELIEVE”, trying to draw a bead on a cigar-smoking man and so, well, let’s not go there, alright?
Anyway, regardless of who you choose to believe (my money is with the “Guildies”), the fact remains that Tunguska thrived outside the Union, and suddenly Xang Xi and then Aeolus decided to secede. Xang Xi’s announcement brought worry to the Senators; Aeolus’ sent them into panic. Committees were scrambled to try and reach some kind of agreement with these Corps, but they were having none of it; they, too, expressed mistrust in the way the Union conducted itself, and they, too, presented vacuum-tight cases for secession that couldn’t be legally disputed. Hysterics gripped the Union: was everyone going to break off and our nation fall to shards? TPG moved quickly to stem this very public, very distressing impression, declaring itself for the Union and the Senate for as long as both stood; Orion and Valent followed suit. Ineubis, however, sided with the Secessionists, and left. Axia, too, jumped on the Secession bandwagon and presented its case for Secession; as it prepared to mobilize its stations, Valent’s CEO, when asked by the media on his opinion about all this, said “AxiaTech’s secession is a clear admission that, on a level playing field, it is totally incapable of matching Valent’s quality and customer service”. Axia stayed.
So in the end, about two years after Tunguska took that first step, three more Corporations had left the Union that gave birth to them, to fend for themselves and profit without their burdensome parent, while another four, arguably the strongest ones, remained behind and watched them go. The Seceded Corps, as they are known since then, quickly reached agreements with Corvus Prime, Xang Xi in particular becoming very chummy with the Pirates, and settled down on greyspace to do business. The Itani looked with puzzlement at this development, and after a couple of tries to “mend the family”, adapted to the situation; the Akanese just shrugged, shot some people, and adapted as well. Both adopted the new, better way of dealing with the Hive, and, all in all, business returned to the usual.
Until, of course, the Serco came.
Tunguska had left the building; not taking well being outmaneuvered and blamed for the fiasco that was the Hive, it had sold most of its remaining assets and taken the rest to greyspace, there to eke out a living among the drones, pirates, and space cows. The Union buzzed with theories about how the Miners would fare; some predicted doom, other’s predicted mediocrity, and yet others assured people the Concern would be back within a year, begging to be allowed back in. Strangely enough, for all the curiosity about their fate, no one went to visit them, and so Tunguska became a peripheral entity in Union discourse, as far away and mythical as Olde Earth, at least for a year.
Because then the ores began to arrive; cheap, plentiful, high-quality ores with the Tunguska logo on the crates. This in turn brought cries of “WTF?!” and “ZOMG!” and “A/S/L?” (don’t ask about that last one); after all, Tunguska was a client state and some heavy taxes had been slapped on its wares so they wouldn’t threaten domestic product, so how in blazes was the Concern able to offer so much ore for so little? Economists quickly pointed out the obvious: though it paid some taxes unique to its condition, Tunguska didn’t need to pay a bunch of other taxes the rest of the Corps did, like the manufacturing tax. Nor, for that matter, the waste disposal tax; or the packaging tax, labeling tax, utilities tax, air tax, water tax, carbon tax, silicon tax, food tax, advertising tax, social security tax, insurance tax, foam tax, quality control tax, ruler tax, recycling tax, right-of-way tax, emergencies tax, handbag tax, surplus tax, overhead tax, importation tax, R&D tax, station maintenance tax, space cow tax, fleet support tax, retirement fund tax, lollipop tax, hydroponics tax, wood tax, law enforcement tax, local resource tax, guten tax, work safety tax, name tax, education tax, bear tax, ship tax, telecomm tax, tax tax, field mapping tax, Itani tech tax, support for the arts tax, exemption from taxation tax, charities tax, nor most of the other myriad taxes local industry had to contend with, and that made Tunguska very competitive. So, to the chagrin of many, the Miners were alive and well, and more productive than before.
Of course, the other Corps didn’t take this sitting down; while maneuvering in the Senate floor to stall the flood of Tunguska wares, they sent people down to snoop on the Concern’s operations and assets, and what they found was, if not surprising, certainly admirable:
First of all, the Concern had struck a deal with Corvus Prime. By giving them a share of all proceeds, the Miners didn’t have to worry about having their ships blown up or hijacked, or their ores stolen. In fact, their deal with the Pirates went beyond a protection racket: they shared resources, pilots, assets, and even did some R&D together; it was a win-win situation that allowed both groups to prosper, and the obvious results were being seen in the Union markets (and at the wormholes, where pirates were becoming more and more bold).
Second, and more importantly, the Miners were exploiting, for all it was worth, the third and least popular solution to the Hive problem: accommodation. An idea put forth by some analysts and generally derided by everyone else, it argued that the Hive could be exploited much more efficiently than fought; after all, the rogue fleets were still mining and collecting ores, so it was just a matter of relieving the drones of them. Proponents of the idea said it was more cost-efficient than outright fighting the Hive, while opponents said the difference was negligible; as it was, no one had taken it seriously enough to do some real benchmarking, and so the idea had languished unproven and mostly unused, until now. With its fleet depleted, Tunguska had taken a risk and completely rebuilt it around a scavenger role, very similar to the raider fleets of Corvus. Its joint R&D ventures with the Pirates focused on the creation of tradeship variants that could fight, haul and even mine in a pinch, and thus were the Miner Marauder and Centaur Aggresso born (along with Corvus’ Mercenary Marauder). Armed with these superior ships, the Concern fell upon the myriad asteroid fields of greyspace and harvested the Hive, distracting the escorts, destroying the Collectors and Transports to steal their ores, and sometimes even tracking down and hunting the Queens themselves. Avoiding all-out combat and focusing on the juiciest targets, the Tunguska pilots kept their losses to a minimum while maximizing the harvesting of ores from wrecked drones; the wrecks themselves were collected both as extra resources, and to further the Concern’s understanding of the evolving Hive technology and programming. This in turn allowed for even more efficient raids, and thus huge amounts of ores could be scavenged and sold for a fraction of the cost of a regular mining operation; and sometimes, even if they felt like it, the Miners actually mined. By force and cunning (and with Corvus’ help), Tunguska had overcome the Hive and turned it into a useful, if very dangerous, tool again.
Of course, Tunguska’s resurgence as the premier mining corporation wasn’t going to last; the other Corps had eyes, more resources, and weren’t (very) stupid. Still, while they re-aligned their human fleets to the new mining paradigm (and mothballed their AI fleets for good), Tunguska enjoyed a very successful run that allowed it to secure its continued existence and prove its mettle one more time. Not that it needed it, since, after all, it had displaced Orion from its position in the mining industry through the invention of the mining beam and perfected AI fleet design; its place in the history books was already secure, and yet, it now showed everyone how to deal with this monster it had been accused of unleashing (I still say it’s their bloody fault, though) and make it, in a way, serve Mankind’s interests again. For the last time, the other Corps followed Tunguska’s lead: Orion and Axia, who had developed variants of the Hornet and Wraith to deal with pirates, unleashed them on the Hive, while TPG and Valent made Marauder variants for their scavenger fleets. Everyone else made do with what they had already, and the slow mining ships gave way to fighters with hefty holds, the better to shoot you and steal your ores with, my dear.
And that should have been it, some say, but then, six months after Tunguska had shown the Union how things were done in greyspace, Xang Xi seceded from the Union, and then Aeolus announced its intentions to secede as well.
What? Huh? How is one thing related to the other? Well, my young clod, Tunguska had proven that a Corporation could do more than survive outside the Union; it could thrive, excel, succeed, outside the loving stranglehold of the Senate and TPG. It had proven you didn’t need no stinking federalism and no stinking oversight and no stinking bear tax; and, believe or not, a number of Corps could do without any of those. Oh yes, some of them were less than thrilled with some of the bullshit they had to put up from the Senate and goody-too-shoes TPG, and were looking for a way out. Secession was clearly written in the Union’s Charter but… what if it didn’t pan out? What if it proved too difficult, too challenging? What if the Hive was worse out there, or the pirates resented the intrusion? What if the scarce information on the greyspace systems was wrong and they weren’t as rich as it was believed? It was too risky to take the plunge, and things like experimental stations outside Unionspace proper were incredibly expensive. But didn’t the pirates live there? Well, yes, but they lived off plundering Unionspace, and it was a well-known fact their stations were sub-par and their living conditions not that good; for all one knew they needed to plunder just to survive. So what’s wrong with piracy? Well, it’s not as easy as simple trade, not to mention that, if Corvus didn’t mind new neighbors, it would most certainly mind new competitors, plus the Union may decide to crack down on you as well, before you became as big as Corvus, and then where would you be, huh? No, no, piracy was out of the question; a trial, a test of the possibilities had to be conducted but… who would be foolhardy enough to risk everything on such a huge venture? Well, how about someone who had nothing left to lose?
Do you see where this is headed?
Now, it has to be said that, while no one will officially say so, and suggesting it to a Tunguska employee is a sure-fire way to get into a brawl, it is common belief that Tunguska was driven out of the Union by a cabal of Corporations looking into the feasibility of seceding from the Union themselves. There are a number of points that support this theory, the most telling being Tunguska’s announcement of Secession itself; if you’ll recall, the Concern had a period of grace during which it “conceived” the idea of seceding. Well, during this time employees were still abandoning the mortally wounded Corp, and it’s rather unlikely that none of this people leaked information to the other Corps; so why then the looks of surprise across the Senate floor when Secession was announced? Some point out that these people could have left before Tunguska began to pitch the idea of seceding to its employees, but there’s the fact that a number of employees refused to sign that infamous datapad the CEO showed to the Senate, and these people were the last to leave the Concern; so there definitely were ex-Tunguska employees out there, with knowledge of the secession plan, days before the Corp announced its decision to the Senate. So, again, why the looks of shock and surprise? Why the lame, not-thought-out-at-all arguments against secession that the Concern shot down so easily? Or rather, lame, not-thought-out-at-all arguments against secession so the Concern could shoot them down so easily?
But if this were the case, how far back did this conspiracy go? How many of the prior events were of this cabal’s doing? Are they responsible for the Hive? Well, most essays on this theory (some by serious historians and researchers, and all available on the Nets) agree that the cabal’s goal was a pipe dream, impossible to pull off, but when the Hive was unleashed and the Union began to look for a culprit, they saw their chance and moved in; they didn’t create the Hive but they took advantage of the crisis to force Tunguska out of the Union so their ideas could be tested, and when they borne out they made their move. Of course, there are those who have written essays of their own claiming this is all hogwash; after all, it sounds just too convenient and the idea that all this maneuvering could have been carried out behind the Senate’s and TPG’s backs is too ludicrous for some.
And then there are others, others who go further and claim that yes, the Hive was part of the plan, as well as Corvus, the final location of the Union, the Shattering, the Corporate Wars and even the Exodus; people who try to link every single important event in the Union’s history to a shadowy group of puppet masters for whom this is all an elaborate game, a group sometimes called The Guild, and sometimes what these conspiracy theorists say makes a lot of sense but if you go down that path you’ll suddenly find yourself working in a basement, surrounded by file cabinets, with a poster on your wall that has a Bunchies UFO on it and the legend “I WANT TO BELIEVE”, trying to draw a bead on a cigar-smoking man and so, well, let’s not go there, alright?
Anyway, regardless of who you choose to believe (my money is with the “Guildies”), the fact remains that Tunguska thrived outside the Union, and suddenly Xang Xi and then Aeolus decided to secede. Xang Xi’s announcement brought worry to the Senators; Aeolus’ sent them into panic. Committees were scrambled to try and reach some kind of agreement with these Corps, but they were having none of it; they, too, expressed mistrust in the way the Union conducted itself, and they, too, presented vacuum-tight cases for secession that couldn’t be legally disputed. Hysterics gripped the Union: was everyone going to break off and our nation fall to shards? TPG moved quickly to stem this very public, very distressing impression, declaring itself for the Union and the Senate for as long as both stood; Orion and Valent followed suit. Ineubis, however, sided with the Secessionists, and left. Axia, too, jumped on the Secession bandwagon and presented its case for Secession; as it prepared to mobilize its stations, Valent’s CEO, when asked by the media on his opinion about all this, said “AxiaTech’s secession is a clear admission that, on a level playing field, it is totally incapable of matching Valent’s quality and customer service”. Axia stayed.
So in the end, about two years after Tunguska took that first step, three more Corporations had left the Union that gave birth to them, to fend for themselves and profit without their burdensome parent, while another four, arguably the strongest ones, remained behind and watched them go. The Seceded Corps, as they are known since then, quickly reached agreements with Corvus Prime, Xang Xi in particular becoming very chummy with the Pirates, and settled down on greyspace to do business. The Itani looked with puzzlement at this development, and after a couple of tries to “mend the family”, adapted to the situation; the Akanese just shrugged, shot some people, and adapted as well. Both adopted the new, better way of dealing with the Hive, and, all in all, business returned to the usual.
Until, of course, the Serco came.
Tax-tax tax...
Hehehe.
Hehehe.
Awsome read, jex.
I accidentally translated the first chapter to Russian. Enjoy
o_O
Heh, that rocks Aleksey. One question, though: what's that thread and the forum about? I wanted to get an idea more or less by babelfishing but I a cannot move through the thread, seems maybe I need to register or something.
It's not the forum, it's the site for posting your artwork -- prose, poetry, code, photos, images, music, etc.
I don't have much on that site, but I posted my VO config there as well -- http://skill.ru/artwork/153600.shtml
These numbers -- "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" -- are not for "moving through the thread", but for evaluating the work, and yes, you need to be registered to be able to.
I don't have much on that site, but I posted my VO config there as well -- http://skill.ru/artwork/153600.shtml
These numbers -- "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" -- are not for "moving through the thread", but for evaluating the work, and yes, you need to be registered to be able to.
I wonder, will I ever get any feedback from actual Russian speakers...
Ah... that's the problem with foreign languages, I guess. So it's kinda like a cyrillic version of the infamous DA?
(uh, that was me temporarily hiding behind Murloc name)
What is "infamous DA"?
What is "infamous DA"?
Part XV: Of how the Serco finally beat a Path to our Door
While all of this was going on the Union, the Itani and the Serco were still waging their little War, but by then, apart from the Itani contracts, we had little interest in it. After witnessing it for a couple of centuries, it was quite obvious the Itani were never going to try and defeat the Serco, the Akanese notwithstanding, and so the War would drag on forever, and money would keep flowing our way. There was some rekindled interest when we found out about the Oernon-Karun fight, since an armistice would certainly mean new contract terms and reduced profits, but in the end, like we knew it would, nothing changed and the War continued its stagnant course. About the only other thing we hoped to get out of it by now, was access to the Serco markets.
In 3436, they finally granted our wish.
Though it was no surprise when they finally did come, what with all our spy drones scattered between the intervening systems, we still had to act surprised at their arrival, if only for appearances’ sake. We made a pretty good show of looking startled and scared, our battle fleet surrounding the Serco ship (a very good echo of the Itani incident centuries ago) before allowing it to dock with one of ours; we even made a show of trying to communicate with them, when by that time, thanks to information supplied by the Itani, we had many people capable of speaking their language.
The Serco, of course, already knew we were helping in the fight against them (the only ones trying to keep it a secret were the Itani, after all) but seemed not to mind; they, after all, had done much worse things to us in the past, and were sorry about it, and, if we could let bygones be bygones, surely we could both become friends again. Now this was a real surprise; we had expected the Serco to act all high and mighty and start making some demands, but here they were playing nice and offering apologies for what they had done to us. The Union, of course, was not about to let such a situation slip by.
The Itani have said, in their faulty and obviously wrong and biased version of the Chronicles of Exile, that the Serco reparations to the Union were “symbolic”; nothing could be further from the truth, and if any of you believe that, well, I have some Avalons I can sell you, honest! How to explain what the Serco did to appease the Union? Well, if Lady Serco and Union Joe were porn actors, the resulting movie would be banned everywhere due to the sheer, unadulterated obscenity of it; Lady Serco did for Union Joe everything a woman can do for man, up to and including trimming his nails, and more besides. Union Joe demanded and demanded and Lady Serco complied and complied, until Joe, fully sated and with both a big grin and a large cigar in his mouth, told her she could stop and go clean herself up. After that, the Serco and the Union sat down to discuss business.
The situation was a bit complex: the Serco wanted our technology but were trying to pretend they didn’t; we wanted them as a new market for our goods but didn’t want to lose our Itani markets; and the Itani and the Akanese were fussing and whining and didn’t want us to make any kind of deal with the Serco at all. However, once you looked at it more closely we held all the cards: neither Nation could afford to have us as an enemy; both were aware of the difference our technology made in the conflict, and neither could afford to lose it. The Itani were going to have it worse once the Serco got their hands on our tech, but that wasn’t as bad is if, in addition, they themselves lost access to it; so we were set to impose terms and have fun, and did plenty of both.
Since that time, the Union has played the Itani and Serco off one another for our own benefit. In technological deals the Serco were often sold overpriced, defective goods, or incomplete technical readouts; we knew it would be impossible to stop them from obtaining most if not all our tech secrets (as well as those Itani secrets we were privy to), but we could drag the process out as much as possible. As for the Itani, they no longer got preferential treatment, being now just another market; prices could be raised merely by mentioning that maybe the Serco would be more accommodating of our demands, and in some cases technologies that were sold to the Itani were still offered to the Serco anyway, despite promises not to do so. Of particular note is the Neutron Blaster MkIII, a brilliant joint coup pulled off by Xang Xi and Ineubis: Ineubis sold the gun to the Itani, promising not only not to sell it to the Serco, but also, that they wouldn’t produce it themselves, if the Itani bought the purified Xithricite required in the process exclusively from them. Meanwhile, Xang Xi made an identical deal to the Serco, and they promptly accepted. Next all they had to do was let it slip that the other side had the means to build the gun, too, and limit the purified xith output. In no time flat were the Itani and Serco fighting each other over the limited xith supply, running after and blasting drone convoys up and down greyspace; this only allowed the Corps to raise prices, which in turn made the Itani and Serco more frantic to get a hold of as much pure xith as possible. It is a pretty damn entertaining thing to watch, and it’s incredibly profitable, to boot.
Of course, not everything went so well; like the Itani and the Akanese before them, the Serco turned out to be less than perfect clients. Their reasoning was somewhat different than their enemies, though; while the Itani lived thrifty lifestyles with little time for frivolities (and the Akanese had their own kinky entertainment), the Serco had this overbearing nationalistic pride that made them disdain our products, no matter how superior, in favor of their own. If they had to choose between a shoddy, ugly Serco device and a spiffy, efficient Union one that had a lot of extra functions, they’d spring for the Serco one; it was an uphill battle for a time, trying to place our products, and every kind of commercial and publicity stunt was tried, to no avail. In the end, what worked was the radical, preposterous idea of making simple devices without so many bells and whistles that also adhered to Serco aesthetics; it made our products inefficient, ugly and clunky, but the Serco started to buy. Eventually every Corp created a Serco Goods Group specifically to deal with the Serco market, modifying their goods and publicity to appeal to their psyche, and soon after we were selling to them as much as to the Itani.
So, at last, 1685 years after the Itani had been kicked out of Earth II by the rampaging Serco hordes, all three people of the Dispossessed were together again, even if not in the best of circumstances; things promised to get a bit more interesting, and they did.
While all of this was going on the Union, the Itani and the Serco were still waging their little War, but by then, apart from the Itani contracts, we had little interest in it. After witnessing it for a couple of centuries, it was quite obvious the Itani were never going to try and defeat the Serco, the Akanese notwithstanding, and so the War would drag on forever, and money would keep flowing our way. There was some rekindled interest when we found out about the Oernon-Karun fight, since an armistice would certainly mean new contract terms and reduced profits, but in the end, like we knew it would, nothing changed and the War continued its stagnant course. About the only other thing we hoped to get out of it by now, was access to the Serco markets.
In 3436, they finally granted our wish.
Though it was no surprise when they finally did come, what with all our spy drones scattered between the intervening systems, we still had to act surprised at their arrival, if only for appearances’ sake. We made a pretty good show of looking startled and scared, our battle fleet surrounding the Serco ship (a very good echo of the Itani incident centuries ago) before allowing it to dock with one of ours; we even made a show of trying to communicate with them, when by that time, thanks to information supplied by the Itani, we had many people capable of speaking their language.
The Serco, of course, already knew we were helping in the fight against them (the only ones trying to keep it a secret were the Itani, after all) but seemed not to mind; they, after all, had done much worse things to us in the past, and were sorry about it, and, if we could let bygones be bygones, surely we could both become friends again. Now this was a real surprise; we had expected the Serco to act all high and mighty and start making some demands, but here they were playing nice and offering apologies for what they had done to us. The Union, of course, was not about to let such a situation slip by.
The Itani have said, in their faulty and obviously wrong and biased version of the Chronicles of Exile, that the Serco reparations to the Union were “symbolic”; nothing could be further from the truth, and if any of you believe that, well, I have some Avalons I can sell you, honest! How to explain what the Serco did to appease the Union? Well, if Lady Serco and Union Joe were porn actors, the resulting movie would be banned everywhere due to the sheer, unadulterated obscenity of it; Lady Serco did for Union Joe everything a woman can do for man, up to and including trimming his nails, and more besides. Union Joe demanded and demanded and Lady Serco complied and complied, until Joe, fully sated and with both a big grin and a large cigar in his mouth, told her she could stop and go clean herself up. After that, the Serco and the Union sat down to discuss business.
The situation was a bit complex: the Serco wanted our technology but were trying to pretend they didn’t; we wanted them as a new market for our goods but didn’t want to lose our Itani markets; and the Itani and the Akanese were fussing and whining and didn’t want us to make any kind of deal with the Serco at all. However, once you looked at it more closely we held all the cards: neither Nation could afford to have us as an enemy; both were aware of the difference our technology made in the conflict, and neither could afford to lose it. The Itani were going to have it worse once the Serco got their hands on our tech, but that wasn’t as bad is if, in addition, they themselves lost access to it; so we were set to impose terms and have fun, and did plenty of both.
Since that time, the Union has played the Itani and Serco off one another for our own benefit. In technological deals the Serco were often sold overpriced, defective goods, or incomplete technical readouts; we knew it would be impossible to stop them from obtaining most if not all our tech secrets (as well as those Itani secrets we were privy to), but we could drag the process out as much as possible. As for the Itani, they no longer got preferential treatment, being now just another market; prices could be raised merely by mentioning that maybe the Serco would be more accommodating of our demands, and in some cases technologies that were sold to the Itani were still offered to the Serco anyway, despite promises not to do so. Of particular note is the Neutron Blaster MkIII, a brilliant joint coup pulled off by Xang Xi and Ineubis: Ineubis sold the gun to the Itani, promising not only not to sell it to the Serco, but also, that they wouldn’t produce it themselves, if the Itani bought the purified Xithricite required in the process exclusively from them. Meanwhile, Xang Xi made an identical deal to the Serco, and they promptly accepted. Next all they had to do was let it slip that the other side had the means to build the gun, too, and limit the purified xith output. In no time flat were the Itani and Serco fighting each other over the limited xith supply, running after and blasting drone convoys up and down greyspace; this only allowed the Corps to raise prices, which in turn made the Itani and Serco more frantic to get a hold of as much pure xith as possible. It is a pretty damn entertaining thing to watch, and it’s incredibly profitable, to boot.
Of course, not everything went so well; like the Itani and the Akanese before them, the Serco turned out to be less than perfect clients. Their reasoning was somewhat different than their enemies, though; while the Itani lived thrifty lifestyles with little time for frivolities (and the Akanese had their own kinky entertainment), the Serco had this overbearing nationalistic pride that made them disdain our products, no matter how superior, in favor of their own. If they had to choose between a shoddy, ugly Serco device and a spiffy, efficient Union one that had a lot of extra functions, they’d spring for the Serco one; it was an uphill battle for a time, trying to place our products, and every kind of commercial and publicity stunt was tried, to no avail. In the end, what worked was the radical, preposterous idea of making simple devices without so many bells and whistles that also adhered to Serco aesthetics; it made our products inefficient, ugly and clunky, but the Serco started to buy. Eventually every Corp created a Serco Goods Group specifically to deal with the Serco market, modifying their goods and publicity to appeal to their psyche, and soon after we were selling to them as much as to the Itani.
So, at last, 1685 years after the Itani had been kicked out of Earth II by the rampaging Serco hordes, all three people of the Dispossessed were together again, even if not in the best of circumstances; things promised to get a bit more interesting, and they did.
Part XVI: The Corporate Wars
As the year 4350 rolled by, the Union and the Corporations were having a good time: the Serco had finally come out of the gridwork and established relations, opening for us a new market for our goods and services. It wasn’t a perfect market, of course: it forced us to modify our goods to the “Serco Ugly” aesthetic standards, and it had no use for Union entertainment programming (how can anyone not be charmed by Spiffy the Talking Space Cow is beyond me), but on the other hand (the one that matters) it gave us leverage against the Itani markets, so we were able to raise prices and cut back on warranties and such. All this meant we were making money like crazy from both sides, and no one could object much to it; it was bliss.
And if things looked good on the surface, they were way better underneath: with the War on a renewed footing after the Oernon-Karun debacle, both sides were handing out contracts left and right. Said contracts, of course, officially didn’t exist since the Union was now 100% neutral to the conflict (the Seceded Corps followed suit because they, unlike the Union, could actually be wiped out by either side without too much effort), but in reality all but TPG took those contracts. TPG, doing legal business with both nations on civilian and non-military spacecraft, tried to guilt the other Corps into dropping the lucrative contracts; when that failed (you can’t guilt someone who has no conscience) it tried to get the Senate to act, but the Senate was kinda bought out, as usual, and the tax revenues were nice, and so TPG’s whining went unheeded. The Corps kept feeding the Serco-Itani War Machine, and everyone prospered (everyone that matters, that is). So that meant, of course, that things were about to go down the drain.
Ever the latecomers, the Serco were very aware of how much catching up they had to do if they were ever to defeat the Itani, and were doing their best to correct that situation. It would be years before they could implement the technologies they were learning from us (hell, it would be years before they figured how much of what we were teaching them was pure bullshit) so it was better and faster to pay us to build what they needed; and thus the Serco began offering a bewildering array of very lucrative contracts, even more so than anything the Itani were offering, for everything from weapons and ships to military-grade toilet paper, and the Corps snatched them up faster than you could say “profit”. It became a frantic affair: no sooner was a contract offered than the Corporations would start squabbling over it, each making more outrageous bids than the last in order to win it (once Axia claimed it could churn out 700,000 Vultures in ten minutes, in an attempt to win a contract; obviously they didn’t get it); like the Akanese before them, the Serco only had to wait, and then choose the Corp that offered the best deal.
As the Serco rejuvenated their fleet with our products, the contracts slowly began to die out, and the squabbling over them got fiercer; as the Corps fought to outbid one another, tempers began to flare, cutthroat tactics got even uglier, and some people even came to blows. The Corps were addicted to these contracts, and as the Serco slowly choked off their fix, they went cold turkey rather badly. At this point TPG stepped in again and pleaded to the other Corps to simmer down and take a deep breath, but it was ignored as usual; it had been quite some time since TPG had any teeth left with which to threaten its younger siblings, and the Senate had never really had any. Things were occurring with frightening speed now, and the metaphorical pot was about to boil over.
The contract that set everything off at last was an incredibly lucrative one involving Itani reactor technology, and everyone wanted it. Seated around the negotiations table, the Corps really tore into each other, not only praising their capabilities but also slinging mud against the others, citing production problems, quality issues, and personal hygiene; it was extremely ugly and made for very bad blood, and, in the end, it was Valent that won the contract, wresting it at the last minute from Axia’s hands. All the other Corps expressed their displeasure with the result, but Axia took it as a personal insult, and its representatives left telling the Serco they’d be sorry, because Valent would never be able to supply that contract.
I don’t think it was so much a rant as a promise.
A couple of weeks later, Edras Crossroads station issued an alarm, as an unidentified group of fighters swept by them and into Verasi; our ever cheerful and always inept Defense Forces almost immediately began to track them. As they sped deeper into the Union, the raiders behaved exactly like bored Corvus pilots looking to have a bit of fun in Union Town: taunting the Defense pilots, harassing convoys they ran across, and in general raising a ruckus; the ploy worked like a charm, and the Defense Forces, fooled, moved to contain what they thought was just a bunch of loud troublemakers. They followed the raiders all over Unionspace, making sure every convoy out there knew their position so they could stay clear; when the raiders eventually jumped to Sarkon Research station in Nyrius, the Defense Forces called ahead so a suitable welcoming committee would be in place for them. A committee that was ready to repel possibly drunk fighters that would balk at a real scrap, but that could do nothing but watch, dumbfounded, as the raiders suddenly stopped being playful and proceeded to bomb the station’s production modules, mainframe, life support systems, and power station with cold, professional efficiency. In mere moments the raiders finished their attack and were jumping out, without suffering a single loss, leaving Sarkon Research critically crippled behind them. In the end, virtually all of the personnel who had survived the attack were rescued, but the station would be unusable for a whole year, and all the research and goods that had been in production there were lost.
Guess where Valent was working on that contract for the Serco?
The Union was rocked by the attack, as nothing like it had ever happened in our long, mostly boring history, and an investigation was immediately launched. Video from the Defense Forces showed the raiders’ markings didn’t match anything on record; the initial belief was that the attack had been carried out by one of the violent fringe groups that had plagued the Union since the Shattering had ended. These groups, small and weak enough not to merit any mention before, were gatherings of people who shared a grudge or vendetta against the Union, or a Corp, or a group of them, over a real or imagined slight, from firings to takeovers to legal rulings to cancellation of a popular holo-show. Whatever the reason, these groups lurked around and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to make life difficult for whoever it was they were angry at; they’d vandalize ships, or steal goods, or order pizza and have it sent to Corp personnel, who then had to pay for it. In short, whatever they felt would throw a spammer in the works of their hated enemy, including, of course, acts of violence. A few of these groups had carried out murders and bombings, but nothing of this magnitude, and so this theory began to unravel; no such group had either the grudge or the resources for such an attack, and so to find the culprit one simply had to look for some organization that had both.
Valent had accused Axia of staging the attack since Day One, but the Senate had refused to accept this as a possibility. As the mounting evidence moved the investigation away from the small fry and closer to the big players, Axia started to sound desperate, spinning tales that pinned the blame on everyone from the Akanese to the Pirates to the Serco to TPG. It has never been proved decisively that it was Axia who carried out the attack, though, because way before the investigation got close, Valent lost patience with it and launched a retaliatory attack on Verasi Industrial station.
The Union was aghast; people started in disbelief as recordings of the attack on the Axia station were broadcast by Valent, explaining what it had done and why. Verasi Industrial had been built inside a gigantic Xithricite-laced asteroid, and in a testament to the power of Union weaponry, the punitive Valent fleet pounded it until it split into many pieces, atmosphere and equipment and people pouring out of the cracks (the current incarnation of Verasi Industrial clings to the pieces of the asteroid that housed the old one, as a reminder of what it used to be; it is still, in its own way, an impressive installation and a feat of engineering. They also make great koffee). The Valent fleet then captured all survivors and demanded Axia own up to what it had done.
Axia, enraged, immediately vowed to wipe Valent off the map and launched its entire fleet against all Valent assets; Valent was more than ready, and willing, to engage the Axia fleet with its own. Both ignored the Senate’s and TPG’s calls to reason, and suddenly the Nyrius and Verasi systems were engulfed in violence. But what looked to be the long-overdue showdown between these two Corps soon spiraled out of control, as the other Corps joined in: Orion had lost some key personnel and equipment on loan to Sarkon Research, and wanted reparations (read: vengeance); similarly, Ineubis had suffered losses when Valent had destroyed Verasi Industrial. Aeolus pledged support to Ineubis, a preferred client since both had seceded, and by extension to Axia, and this convinced the Miners of Tunguska, who were squabbling with Aeolus over mining operations, to back Valent. Xang Xi and Corvus had no bones to pick, but the first saw a chance to strike at and weaken his rivals, while the latter saw rich opportunities in terms of smuggling, mercenary work and plunder. Casting the dice, giving in to the frustrations and bad blood created by the Serco and their contracts, and completely forgetting their obligations to their other clients, seven of the Eight Corporations of the Union threw their fleets and their armies against each other, in an orgy of destruction and misery that we all know as the Corporate Wars.
There were a thousand battles, all over Union and greyspace, and in each the people of the Union proved to be every bit as bloodthirsty and genocidal as the Serco or the Akanese; the Itani and the Serco watched as our people tore each other asunder, and for a brief time our savagery was equal to theirs, and our War more terrible. Entire fleets were annihilated, their flaming debris spinning in the cold of space, or plummeting to the surface of our gas giants; stations were blockaded and besieged and boarded, shock troops and space marines paying in blood for every meter they moved forward. Some stations were destroyed, pummeled into non-existence by a victorious fleet, or torn apart by asteroids sent careening their way; Orion still commemorates the Battle of Fenhall Belt, when only the timely arrival of Valent prevented the destruction of the Orion mining station at the hands of a joint Xang Xi-Ineubis fleet. The miners still remember the day a Tunguska medical convoy, carrying the dead and wounded from a failed boarding action against Ukari Outpost, was completely massacred by a marauding Aeolus fleet; the Aeolus Board offers apologies to Tunguska every year. And any Union kid in the 6th grade can tell you about the Second Battle of Beta Verasi, where the Corvus mercenaries under the employ of Valent suddenly switched sides, bringing about the victory of Axia and the complete destruction of the Valent Deepspace Fleet, that led to the rout of Valent forces from the system and the capture of their stations.
It was atrocity after atrocity, glorious victory after shameful defeat; the Corporate Wars raged from one end of the Union to the other. Even systems where the presence of the warring corps was small saw fierce fighting; the Helios III Orbital station was gutted, Sikan Orbital repelled a small task force of Orion shock troopers, the battle around Pelatus Bunker raged for weeks before mounting pressure on other fronts forced all the fleets taking part to break off and head elsewhere. Not even Union proper and TPG stations were safe; ships and fleets seeking succor there were pursued and attacked as they attempted to dock or were at rest, and the ensuing battles often resulted in damage to the stations. The toll on the Defense Forces pilots was tremendous, and soon Union stations refused sanctuary to any fleet or warship that came to them, even to the point of forcing them out of the sector at gunpoint. Only the TPG stations remained stalwart in the defense of refugees, and though at first some thought the Corp was at last choosing a side, it was soon apparent that it was just sticking to its weak, outdated ideas about honor and morality, and so it remained a non-entity in the Wars, a mere nuisance not worthy of any serious attention, a laughable, pusillanimous organization that posed no real threat.
The Corporate Wars went on unchecked, death and destruction everywhere. Then the giant woke up.
As the year 4350 rolled by, the Union and the Corporations were having a good time: the Serco had finally come out of the gridwork and established relations, opening for us a new market for our goods and services. It wasn’t a perfect market, of course: it forced us to modify our goods to the “Serco Ugly” aesthetic standards, and it had no use for Union entertainment programming (how can anyone not be charmed by Spiffy the Talking Space Cow is beyond me), but on the other hand (the one that matters) it gave us leverage against the Itani markets, so we were able to raise prices and cut back on warranties and such. All this meant we were making money like crazy from both sides, and no one could object much to it; it was bliss.
And if things looked good on the surface, they were way better underneath: with the War on a renewed footing after the Oernon-Karun debacle, both sides were handing out contracts left and right. Said contracts, of course, officially didn’t exist since the Union was now 100% neutral to the conflict (the Seceded Corps followed suit because they, unlike the Union, could actually be wiped out by either side without too much effort), but in reality all but TPG took those contracts. TPG, doing legal business with both nations on civilian and non-military spacecraft, tried to guilt the other Corps into dropping the lucrative contracts; when that failed (you can’t guilt someone who has no conscience) it tried to get the Senate to act, but the Senate was kinda bought out, as usual, and the tax revenues were nice, and so TPG’s whining went unheeded. The Corps kept feeding the Serco-Itani War Machine, and everyone prospered (everyone that matters, that is). So that meant, of course, that things were about to go down the drain.
Ever the latecomers, the Serco were very aware of how much catching up they had to do if they were ever to defeat the Itani, and were doing their best to correct that situation. It would be years before they could implement the technologies they were learning from us (hell, it would be years before they figured how much of what we were teaching them was pure bullshit) so it was better and faster to pay us to build what they needed; and thus the Serco began offering a bewildering array of very lucrative contracts, even more so than anything the Itani were offering, for everything from weapons and ships to military-grade toilet paper, and the Corps snatched them up faster than you could say “profit”. It became a frantic affair: no sooner was a contract offered than the Corporations would start squabbling over it, each making more outrageous bids than the last in order to win it (once Axia claimed it could churn out 700,000 Vultures in ten minutes, in an attempt to win a contract; obviously they didn’t get it); like the Akanese before them, the Serco only had to wait, and then choose the Corp that offered the best deal.
As the Serco rejuvenated their fleet with our products, the contracts slowly began to die out, and the squabbling over them got fiercer; as the Corps fought to outbid one another, tempers began to flare, cutthroat tactics got even uglier, and some people even came to blows. The Corps were addicted to these contracts, and as the Serco slowly choked off their fix, they went cold turkey rather badly. At this point TPG stepped in again and pleaded to the other Corps to simmer down and take a deep breath, but it was ignored as usual; it had been quite some time since TPG had any teeth left with which to threaten its younger siblings, and the Senate had never really had any. Things were occurring with frightening speed now, and the metaphorical pot was about to boil over.
The contract that set everything off at last was an incredibly lucrative one involving Itani reactor technology, and everyone wanted it. Seated around the negotiations table, the Corps really tore into each other, not only praising their capabilities but also slinging mud against the others, citing production problems, quality issues, and personal hygiene; it was extremely ugly and made for very bad blood, and, in the end, it was Valent that won the contract, wresting it at the last minute from Axia’s hands. All the other Corps expressed their displeasure with the result, but Axia took it as a personal insult, and its representatives left telling the Serco they’d be sorry, because Valent would never be able to supply that contract.
I don’t think it was so much a rant as a promise.
A couple of weeks later, Edras Crossroads station issued an alarm, as an unidentified group of fighters swept by them and into Verasi; our ever cheerful and always inept Defense Forces almost immediately began to track them. As they sped deeper into the Union, the raiders behaved exactly like bored Corvus pilots looking to have a bit of fun in Union Town: taunting the Defense pilots, harassing convoys they ran across, and in general raising a ruckus; the ploy worked like a charm, and the Defense Forces, fooled, moved to contain what they thought was just a bunch of loud troublemakers. They followed the raiders all over Unionspace, making sure every convoy out there knew their position so they could stay clear; when the raiders eventually jumped to Sarkon Research station in Nyrius, the Defense Forces called ahead so a suitable welcoming committee would be in place for them. A committee that was ready to repel possibly drunk fighters that would balk at a real scrap, but that could do nothing but watch, dumbfounded, as the raiders suddenly stopped being playful and proceeded to bomb the station’s production modules, mainframe, life support systems, and power station with cold, professional efficiency. In mere moments the raiders finished their attack and were jumping out, without suffering a single loss, leaving Sarkon Research critically crippled behind them. In the end, virtually all of the personnel who had survived the attack were rescued, but the station would be unusable for a whole year, and all the research and goods that had been in production there were lost.
Guess where Valent was working on that contract for the Serco?
The Union was rocked by the attack, as nothing like it had ever happened in our long, mostly boring history, and an investigation was immediately launched. Video from the Defense Forces showed the raiders’ markings didn’t match anything on record; the initial belief was that the attack had been carried out by one of the violent fringe groups that had plagued the Union since the Shattering had ended. These groups, small and weak enough not to merit any mention before, were gatherings of people who shared a grudge or vendetta against the Union, or a Corp, or a group of them, over a real or imagined slight, from firings to takeovers to legal rulings to cancellation of a popular holo-show. Whatever the reason, these groups lurked around and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to make life difficult for whoever it was they were angry at; they’d vandalize ships, or steal goods, or order pizza and have it sent to Corp personnel, who then had to pay for it. In short, whatever they felt would throw a spammer in the works of their hated enemy, including, of course, acts of violence. A few of these groups had carried out murders and bombings, but nothing of this magnitude, and so this theory began to unravel; no such group had either the grudge or the resources for such an attack, and so to find the culprit one simply had to look for some organization that had both.
Valent had accused Axia of staging the attack since Day One, but the Senate had refused to accept this as a possibility. As the mounting evidence moved the investigation away from the small fry and closer to the big players, Axia started to sound desperate, spinning tales that pinned the blame on everyone from the Akanese to the Pirates to the Serco to TPG. It has never been proved decisively that it was Axia who carried out the attack, though, because way before the investigation got close, Valent lost patience with it and launched a retaliatory attack on Verasi Industrial station.
The Union was aghast; people started in disbelief as recordings of the attack on the Axia station were broadcast by Valent, explaining what it had done and why. Verasi Industrial had been built inside a gigantic Xithricite-laced asteroid, and in a testament to the power of Union weaponry, the punitive Valent fleet pounded it until it split into many pieces, atmosphere and equipment and people pouring out of the cracks (the current incarnation of Verasi Industrial clings to the pieces of the asteroid that housed the old one, as a reminder of what it used to be; it is still, in its own way, an impressive installation and a feat of engineering. They also make great koffee). The Valent fleet then captured all survivors and demanded Axia own up to what it had done.
Axia, enraged, immediately vowed to wipe Valent off the map and launched its entire fleet against all Valent assets; Valent was more than ready, and willing, to engage the Axia fleet with its own. Both ignored the Senate’s and TPG’s calls to reason, and suddenly the Nyrius and Verasi systems were engulfed in violence. But what looked to be the long-overdue showdown between these two Corps soon spiraled out of control, as the other Corps joined in: Orion had lost some key personnel and equipment on loan to Sarkon Research, and wanted reparations (read: vengeance); similarly, Ineubis had suffered losses when Valent had destroyed Verasi Industrial. Aeolus pledged support to Ineubis, a preferred client since both had seceded, and by extension to Axia, and this convinced the Miners of Tunguska, who were squabbling with Aeolus over mining operations, to back Valent. Xang Xi and Corvus had no bones to pick, but the first saw a chance to strike at and weaken his rivals, while the latter saw rich opportunities in terms of smuggling, mercenary work and plunder. Casting the dice, giving in to the frustrations and bad blood created by the Serco and their contracts, and completely forgetting their obligations to their other clients, seven of the Eight Corporations of the Union threw their fleets and their armies against each other, in an orgy of destruction and misery that we all know as the Corporate Wars.
There were a thousand battles, all over Union and greyspace, and in each the people of the Union proved to be every bit as bloodthirsty and genocidal as the Serco or the Akanese; the Itani and the Serco watched as our people tore each other asunder, and for a brief time our savagery was equal to theirs, and our War more terrible. Entire fleets were annihilated, their flaming debris spinning in the cold of space, or plummeting to the surface of our gas giants; stations were blockaded and besieged and boarded, shock troops and space marines paying in blood for every meter they moved forward. Some stations were destroyed, pummeled into non-existence by a victorious fleet, or torn apart by asteroids sent careening their way; Orion still commemorates the Battle of Fenhall Belt, when only the timely arrival of Valent prevented the destruction of the Orion mining station at the hands of a joint Xang Xi-Ineubis fleet. The miners still remember the day a Tunguska medical convoy, carrying the dead and wounded from a failed boarding action against Ukari Outpost, was completely massacred by a marauding Aeolus fleet; the Aeolus Board offers apologies to Tunguska every year. And any Union kid in the 6th grade can tell you about the Second Battle of Beta Verasi, where the Corvus mercenaries under the employ of Valent suddenly switched sides, bringing about the victory of Axia and the complete destruction of the Valent Deepspace Fleet, that led to the rout of Valent forces from the system and the capture of their stations.
It was atrocity after atrocity, glorious victory after shameful defeat; the Corporate Wars raged from one end of the Union to the other. Even systems where the presence of the warring corps was small saw fierce fighting; the Helios III Orbital station was gutted, Sikan Orbital repelled a small task force of Orion shock troopers, the battle around Pelatus Bunker raged for weeks before mounting pressure on other fronts forced all the fleets taking part to break off and head elsewhere. Not even Union proper and TPG stations were safe; ships and fleets seeking succor there were pursued and attacked as they attempted to dock or were at rest, and the ensuing battles often resulted in damage to the stations. The toll on the Defense Forces pilots was tremendous, and soon Union stations refused sanctuary to any fleet or warship that came to them, even to the point of forcing them out of the sector at gunpoint. Only the TPG stations remained stalwart in the defense of refugees, and though at first some thought the Corp was at last choosing a side, it was soon apparent that it was just sticking to its weak, outdated ideas about honor and morality, and so it remained a non-entity in the Wars, a mere nuisance not worthy of any serious attention, a laughable, pusillanimous organization that posed no real threat.
The Corporate Wars went on unchecked, death and destruction everywhere. Then the giant woke up.
Part XVII: Of how TPG brought the Corporate Wars to an End
In light of what happened next, some have said the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far” can be attached perfectly to TPG; for my part, I much prefer “you miserable, hypocritical bastards!” Ever since the other Corps had emerged from the Shattering, TPG had been nagging at them to “play nice”, to “be honest”, and “humane” and “understanding”; in short, pure bleeding-heart carebear bullshit. Sticking to its sensitive shtick, it had mostly avoided the use of threats or force to get the other Corps to do as it wanted, preferring instead to go whine to the Senate, and in fact it only applied force when the Senate told it to; as a result, TPG had earned its very deserved reputation as a bunch of whiny pushovers that had lost any power, respect or importance they may have had once as the saviors of our people. And when the Corporate Wars erupted, all TPG did was whine and beg to the Corps for the senseless (but fun!) violence to stop; this was in keeping with its pusillanimous nature. When that failed, it went to the Senate, pointing fingers and asking to (pretty please!) put a stop to the fighting.
When that failed, too, it declared war on the other seven Corps.
One minute TPG was pleading and whining, and the next the stars were darkened with Suppression Fleet after Suppression Fleet. And no documentary, docudrama, direct-to-video movie or trashy novel can do justice to the sheer chaos, the sheer confusion, the sheer terror of having one of these TPG fleets warp right in your face. Hundreds of capital ships, from destroyers to carriers to assault cruisers, bristling with weapons, scores of ancillary vessels all around them, fighters deploying, boarding craft launching, bombers making a beeline for your flagships with Avalon tactical nuclear missiles humming evilly in their bellies; if you added up all the other fleets in the battlefield, TPG still outnumbered them, and for a force that had never seen combat (hell, a force no one had ever even seen), its pilots, crews and assault forces were experienced enough to work together in a ruthlessly efficient manner. To say you were outmatched by one of these fleets is putting it lightly; saying that you were PWNED right from the start is far more accurate.
And, to add injury to insult, these damn Suppression Fleets were everywhere! TPG showed up simultaneously at every major engagement, taking on all other fleets. It was more than unheard of: it was impossible, and thus at first everyone refused to believe it; yes, TPG was by far the largest of the Corporations, but where did they get all these warriors, all these ships, all these weapons? And what about the tactical skills? Wasn’t TPG the wimpy corp that posed a threat to no one? And, uh, why is it mad at us? We didn’t do nutzin’, I swear!
Regardless of what one chose to believe or not, the TPG fleets tore through their foes with an alacrity that alarmed everyone; sure, by then the other fleets had more real combat experience, but the sheer numbers and technological prowess of the Suppression Fleets allowed them to weather any grievous mistakes and correct them, or redeploy to stop or minimize the effect of any clever tactic used against them. You could trick them and cripple or destroy a number of the largest vessels, and buy you some time, but in the end, they would grind you down and the result would be the same: annihilation or capture at their hands; the only tactic that worked with any regularity was a rearguard action, sacrificing a number of vessels so the rest could escape. As admirals, line-captains and commanders broke their fleets time and again against the Suppression Fleets like waves against a cliff, a sense of desperation and defeat began to become apparent, and smarter tactics were abandoned in favor of suicidal rushes, point-blank broadside exchanges, and battles in the middle of asteroid fields or inside ion storms, where the Hive became one more deadly antagonist; all of these took their toll on the TPG fleets, some more than others, but still they kept coming, and soon enough they were taking the fight to the Corps’ stations, blowing the defense fleets away, destroying any ships in dry dock, boarding and storming the station with marines wearing never-before-seen assault psuits. Those TPG bastards were fighting to win, and winning they were.
The first combatants to decide that discretion is the better part of valor were, unsurprisingly, the Corvus mercenaries (buncha wimps; I never liked them). TPG had no qualms about destroying pirate scum (not that it had shown any about destroying anyone else, either) and so all Corvus squadrons that had faced off against the Suppression Fleets had been ruthlessly targeted and annihilated. Fearing TPG would mete out the same treatment to their stations, the pirates ceased all combat operations, cancelled all their contracts, and kicked out all the other fleets docked with them; they fled the battlefields and regrouped in their stations, preparing for and dreading the cataclysmic TPG campaign that would spell their doom. TPG, however, had no intention of wiping out Corvus Prime; it seems they really meant that crap about knowing where the hornets nest, after all, or maybe it was enough for them to see the pirates wetting their pants. Whatever the reason, TPG paid no further attention to Corvus and concentrated purely on its wayward siblings.
However, Corvus folding was like blowing on a house of cards, and the Wars quickly fell apart, the Corps tripping over one another in their rush to surrender to their new TPG overlords. First came Orion, then Aeolus, Xang Xi, and Tunguska; Valent and Ineubis hung on for a precious few more days before surrendering as well. Axia resisted the longest, no doubt fearing it would be held responsible for everything, but it was a battle the Corp was not about to win; eventually all its stations were either interdicted or overtaken, and at last it surrendered to TPG. The manic, multicolored whirlwind that had been the Wars had lasted for a number of months, and TPG had brought it to a stop in a matter of weeks, with a ferocity and ruthlessness no one had believed it capable of.
Humbled, humiliated and defeated, the Board members and military leaders of the Corps were summoned to the Senate floor, where they did that which Corps do best: point fingers! Still with a bit of fight in them after all, they tried to justify their actions and involvement in the Wars by blaming the others; then TPG arrived and told them to shut up. In a long, windy and thoroughly boring exposition, TPG denounced each and every one of the Corps, their practices, contracts and assorted dirty laundry; it then chastised the Senate as well for allowing it to happen. As the victor (and with its Suppression Fleets still orbiting everyone’s stations) TPG set about to dictate terms to all present, including the Seceded Corps and the Senate; at that moment it wielded on its own sufficient power to cow the Senate into passing any law it wanted, and thus could make things really difficult for the Seceded Corps in terms of their trade franchises. Like all the Corps that had enjoyed such a position in the past, TPG took full advantage of it to benefit itself at the others’ expense; the Corp claimed all terms imposed were meant to protect the Union and the Corps, and to prevent another war from happening, but everyone could see through the lies.
First off it ordered the cancellation of all illegal contracts with all nations and organizations. For this, the Secretary for the Supervision of Corporate Affairs would be strengthened and its powers broadened, allowing its agents, auditors and officers to pursue inquiries and investigations even into the Seceded Corps for the purposes of finding and rooting out any and all such contracts, in addition to their usual investigations into smuggling, piracy, counterfeiting and espionage; by corollary, they could now perform stings and raids, and carry out arrests in any station inside Union and greyspace (Corvus excluded, or course). The Corps cried foul at this blatant breach of their rights and privacy, particularly the Seceded Corps, but TPG held all the cards, and nothing could be done; since then, the Secretary and its thugs have been a Corp’s most staunch, ruthless enemies in the pursuit of profit, though they have to be extra careful when conducting investigations in greyspace, lest they are never heard from again.
TPG then tightened, even more, the laws covering contract work with the other nations, so the Corps could not engage in the bidding wars of the past; here it took the extra time to completely cut the Akanese from any formal deal, agreement or contract we had with the Itani Nation, cementing the Union’s status as a neutral nation and cutting the loyal Corps off from one of our markets. As these laws couldn’t be enforced on the Seceded Corps, a number of changes were made to the tax code, making loyal Corps goods, for the first time, as inexpensive and therefore as competitive as the ones from their seceded brethren, both in the national and foreign markets. While some Union supporters point to this as a sign that TPG was indeed acting for the good of the Union, one simply has to look at profit margins and financial records to see that it’s TPG who benefited the most from these changes; it gave itself a ridiculously huge advantage that couldn’t be challenged or overturned, and from there on TPG is the de facto ruler of Unionspace, no matter how you choose to delude yourself.
On a roll now, the next order of business was the dissolution of the Corporate Fleets themselves! The ships and crews would be reconstituted into the grand Union Peace Keeper Fleet, with the crews intermingled and spread out across the whole fleet “to promote a feeling of camaraderie and unity throughout, ensuring the Fleet always serves the interests of the Union and the Corporations as a whole and not the agenda of a single organization”. Again, the Seceded Corps could not be coerced into supporting this initiative, so instead they were ordered to drastically reduce their fleets; since said fleets were mostly in tatters anyway, the Seceded Corps had little complaints to air here, especially when it was accorded that the Peace Keeper Fleet would come to the aid of any of them should it be needed.
And here TPG once more abused its position to its advantage: while its standard fleet was subsumed into the Peace Keepers, the Suppression Fleets were not! In fact, TPG was banking on its victor status to keep all information on the Fleets a secret, even to the point of confiscating (read: stealing) most if not all records made of the Suppressor Fleets in action as well as blocking all inquiries and investigations on their nature, and so no one was ever able to know anything definite about them before they vanished. To this day they remain a mystery, and theories abound; where did the personnel come from? And the new technologies? Some of them, like the assault psuits, suggest close work with the whiny Itani, while some of the fleet tactics seemed taken straight from the Prancing Pony Playbook. Were the TPG commanders simply observant, or well-trained, or born military geniuses, or were they not TPG at all? Did the Itani lend a hand, with personnel and/or technology? Or maybe the Serco? Or perhaps, even, both of them, preposterous as it is, since they needed our Xirite alloy to continue their silly little war? There are some that go even further, suggesting Olde Earth intervention or even aliens! Whatever the truth is, TPG isn’t talking, no one else seems to know anything, and those Fleets are still out there, somewhere, ready to pounce on behalf of their duplicitous masters at a moment’s notice.
A myriad other, lesser changes were imposed by TPG upon the hapless Union and the Seceded Corps, but none were as important as those stated above; after having its way with them all, TPG then nominally returned the reins to a seemingly-strengthened Senate, and switched back to its carebear attitude as if it hadn’t been wasting entire fleets just a few weeks ago. Still dazed from the political blitzkrieg TPG had unleashed on them after finishing the War, the Corps went their own ways and resumed all work that the conflict had put on hold; eventually, some of them returned to their old tricks, and after a while all of them were at it. They are now just a lot more careful about how and when they conduct their “business”; the Suppression Fleets are a veritable Sword of Damocles, hanging over every single Corp, ready to fall when one of them reaches for them grapes. So for now the Corps are content to nip at each other’s heels, and do small-time raids and feints, looking for signs of weakness, for any advantage over each other, while TPG sleeps; soon enough, someone will trip, or someone will feint and cause someone else to overreact, and the whole mess will start again. And then we’ll see if TPG is really sleeping with one eye open. I for one can’t wait.
In light of what happened next, some have said the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far” can be attached perfectly to TPG; for my part, I much prefer “you miserable, hypocritical bastards!” Ever since the other Corps had emerged from the Shattering, TPG had been nagging at them to “play nice”, to “be honest”, and “humane” and “understanding”; in short, pure bleeding-heart carebear bullshit. Sticking to its sensitive shtick, it had mostly avoided the use of threats or force to get the other Corps to do as it wanted, preferring instead to go whine to the Senate, and in fact it only applied force when the Senate told it to; as a result, TPG had earned its very deserved reputation as a bunch of whiny pushovers that had lost any power, respect or importance they may have had once as the saviors of our people. And when the Corporate Wars erupted, all TPG did was whine and beg to the Corps for the senseless (but fun!) violence to stop; this was in keeping with its pusillanimous nature. When that failed, it went to the Senate, pointing fingers and asking to (pretty please!) put a stop to the fighting.
When that failed, too, it declared war on the other seven Corps.
One minute TPG was pleading and whining, and the next the stars were darkened with Suppression Fleet after Suppression Fleet. And no documentary, docudrama, direct-to-video movie or trashy novel can do justice to the sheer chaos, the sheer confusion, the sheer terror of having one of these TPG fleets warp right in your face. Hundreds of capital ships, from destroyers to carriers to assault cruisers, bristling with weapons, scores of ancillary vessels all around them, fighters deploying, boarding craft launching, bombers making a beeline for your flagships with Avalon tactical nuclear missiles humming evilly in their bellies; if you added up all the other fleets in the battlefield, TPG still outnumbered them, and for a force that had never seen combat (hell, a force no one had ever even seen), its pilots, crews and assault forces were experienced enough to work together in a ruthlessly efficient manner. To say you were outmatched by one of these fleets is putting it lightly; saying that you were PWNED right from the start is far more accurate.
And, to add injury to insult, these damn Suppression Fleets were everywhere! TPG showed up simultaneously at every major engagement, taking on all other fleets. It was more than unheard of: it was impossible, and thus at first everyone refused to believe it; yes, TPG was by far the largest of the Corporations, but where did they get all these warriors, all these ships, all these weapons? And what about the tactical skills? Wasn’t TPG the wimpy corp that posed a threat to no one? And, uh, why is it mad at us? We didn’t do nutzin’, I swear!
Regardless of what one chose to believe or not, the TPG fleets tore through their foes with an alacrity that alarmed everyone; sure, by then the other fleets had more real combat experience, but the sheer numbers and technological prowess of the Suppression Fleets allowed them to weather any grievous mistakes and correct them, or redeploy to stop or minimize the effect of any clever tactic used against them. You could trick them and cripple or destroy a number of the largest vessels, and buy you some time, but in the end, they would grind you down and the result would be the same: annihilation or capture at their hands; the only tactic that worked with any regularity was a rearguard action, sacrificing a number of vessels so the rest could escape. As admirals, line-captains and commanders broke their fleets time and again against the Suppression Fleets like waves against a cliff, a sense of desperation and defeat began to become apparent, and smarter tactics were abandoned in favor of suicidal rushes, point-blank broadside exchanges, and battles in the middle of asteroid fields or inside ion storms, where the Hive became one more deadly antagonist; all of these took their toll on the TPG fleets, some more than others, but still they kept coming, and soon enough they were taking the fight to the Corps’ stations, blowing the defense fleets away, destroying any ships in dry dock, boarding and storming the station with marines wearing never-before-seen assault psuits. Those TPG bastards were fighting to win, and winning they were.
The first combatants to decide that discretion is the better part of valor were, unsurprisingly, the Corvus mercenaries (buncha wimps; I never liked them). TPG had no qualms about destroying pirate scum (not that it had shown any about destroying anyone else, either) and so all Corvus squadrons that had faced off against the Suppression Fleets had been ruthlessly targeted and annihilated. Fearing TPG would mete out the same treatment to their stations, the pirates ceased all combat operations, cancelled all their contracts, and kicked out all the other fleets docked with them; they fled the battlefields and regrouped in their stations, preparing for and dreading the cataclysmic TPG campaign that would spell their doom. TPG, however, had no intention of wiping out Corvus Prime; it seems they really meant that crap about knowing where the hornets nest, after all, or maybe it was enough for them to see the pirates wetting their pants. Whatever the reason, TPG paid no further attention to Corvus and concentrated purely on its wayward siblings.
However, Corvus folding was like blowing on a house of cards, and the Wars quickly fell apart, the Corps tripping over one another in their rush to surrender to their new TPG overlords. First came Orion, then Aeolus, Xang Xi, and Tunguska; Valent and Ineubis hung on for a precious few more days before surrendering as well. Axia resisted the longest, no doubt fearing it would be held responsible for everything, but it was a battle the Corp was not about to win; eventually all its stations were either interdicted or overtaken, and at last it surrendered to TPG. The manic, multicolored whirlwind that had been the Wars had lasted for a number of months, and TPG had brought it to a stop in a matter of weeks, with a ferocity and ruthlessness no one had believed it capable of.
Humbled, humiliated and defeated, the Board members and military leaders of the Corps were summoned to the Senate floor, where they did that which Corps do best: point fingers! Still with a bit of fight in them after all, they tried to justify their actions and involvement in the Wars by blaming the others; then TPG arrived and told them to shut up. In a long, windy and thoroughly boring exposition, TPG denounced each and every one of the Corps, their practices, contracts and assorted dirty laundry; it then chastised the Senate as well for allowing it to happen. As the victor (and with its Suppression Fleets still orbiting everyone’s stations) TPG set about to dictate terms to all present, including the Seceded Corps and the Senate; at that moment it wielded on its own sufficient power to cow the Senate into passing any law it wanted, and thus could make things really difficult for the Seceded Corps in terms of their trade franchises. Like all the Corps that had enjoyed such a position in the past, TPG took full advantage of it to benefit itself at the others’ expense; the Corp claimed all terms imposed were meant to protect the Union and the Corps, and to prevent another war from happening, but everyone could see through the lies.
First off it ordered the cancellation of all illegal contracts with all nations and organizations. For this, the Secretary for the Supervision of Corporate Affairs would be strengthened and its powers broadened, allowing its agents, auditors and officers to pursue inquiries and investigations even into the Seceded Corps for the purposes of finding and rooting out any and all such contracts, in addition to their usual investigations into smuggling, piracy, counterfeiting and espionage; by corollary, they could now perform stings and raids, and carry out arrests in any station inside Union and greyspace (Corvus excluded, or course). The Corps cried foul at this blatant breach of their rights and privacy, particularly the Seceded Corps, but TPG held all the cards, and nothing could be done; since then, the Secretary and its thugs have been a Corp’s most staunch, ruthless enemies in the pursuit of profit, though they have to be extra careful when conducting investigations in greyspace, lest they are never heard from again.
TPG then tightened, even more, the laws covering contract work with the other nations, so the Corps could not engage in the bidding wars of the past; here it took the extra time to completely cut the Akanese from any formal deal, agreement or contract we had with the Itani Nation, cementing the Union’s status as a neutral nation and cutting the loyal Corps off from one of our markets. As these laws couldn’t be enforced on the Seceded Corps, a number of changes were made to the tax code, making loyal Corps goods, for the first time, as inexpensive and therefore as competitive as the ones from their seceded brethren, both in the national and foreign markets. While some Union supporters point to this as a sign that TPG was indeed acting for the good of the Union, one simply has to look at profit margins and financial records to see that it’s TPG who benefited the most from these changes; it gave itself a ridiculously huge advantage that couldn’t be challenged or overturned, and from there on TPG is the de facto ruler of Unionspace, no matter how you choose to delude yourself.
On a roll now, the next order of business was the dissolution of the Corporate Fleets themselves! The ships and crews would be reconstituted into the grand Union Peace Keeper Fleet, with the crews intermingled and spread out across the whole fleet “to promote a feeling of camaraderie and unity throughout, ensuring the Fleet always serves the interests of the Union and the Corporations as a whole and not the agenda of a single organization”. Again, the Seceded Corps could not be coerced into supporting this initiative, so instead they were ordered to drastically reduce their fleets; since said fleets were mostly in tatters anyway, the Seceded Corps had little complaints to air here, especially when it was accorded that the Peace Keeper Fleet would come to the aid of any of them should it be needed.
And here TPG once more abused its position to its advantage: while its standard fleet was subsumed into the Peace Keepers, the Suppression Fleets were not! In fact, TPG was banking on its victor status to keep all information on the Fleets a secret, even to the point of confiscating (read: stealing) most if not all records made of the Suppressor Fleets in action as well as blocking all inquiries and investigations on their nature, and so no one was ever able to know anything definite about them before they vanished. To this day they remain a mystery, and theories abound; where did the personnel come from? And the new technologies? Some of them, like the assault psuits, suggest close work with the whiny Itani, while some of the fleet tactics seemed taken straight from the Prancing Pony Playbook. Were the TPG commanders simply observant, or well-trained, or born military geniuses, or were they not TPG at all? Did the Itani lend a hand, with personnel and/or technology? Or maybe the Serco? Or perhaps, even, both of them, preposterous as it is, since they needed our Xirite alloy to continue their silly little war? There are some that go even further, suggesting Olde Earth intervention or even aliens! Whatever the truth is, TPG isn’t talking, no one else seems to know anything, and those Fleets are still out there, somewhere, ready to pounce on behalf of their duplicitous masters at a moment’s notice.
A myriad other, lesser changes were imposed by TPG upon the hapless Union and the Seceded Corps, but none were as important as those stated above; after having its way with them all, TPG then nominally returned the reins to a seemingly-strengthened Senate, and switched back to its carebear attitude as if it hadn’t been wasting entire fleets just a few weeks ago. Still dazed from the political blitzkrieg TPG had unleashed on them after finishing the War, the Corps went their own ways and resumed all work that the conflict had put on hold; eventually, some of them returned to their old tricks, and after a while all of them were at it. They are now just a lot more careful about how and when they conduct their “business”; the Suppression Fleets are a veritable Sword of Damocles, hanging over every single Corp, ready to fall when one of them reaches for them grapes. So for now the Corps are content to nip at each other’s heels, and do small-time raids and feints, looking for signs of weakness, for any advantage over each other, while TPG sleeps; soon enough, someone will trip, or someone will feint and cause someone else to overreact, and the whole mess will start again. And then we’ll see if TPG is really sleeping with one eye open. I for one can’t wait.