17 FORTUNE AND GLORY

WHEN LAST WE MET…

OMNINET ACCESS GRANTED

> IDENT 290@#^^^ῳ{IDENT DATA CORRUPTION! NETWORK INTRUSION

DETECCCCCCWHEEE₡CȺɤɮ☺ Ȁʁʥ ڜڱڞ⅍ ♠WaB%bAJaCk…. > Oops, I seem to have broken the poor little Omninet beacon’s brain… oh well, cheap-ass ISN piece of crap needed replacing anyway. So, my dear friend Cap’n Sally asked me to upload an update to her little history file since it’s been six months since she posted it. Six VERY entertaining months, to say the least. So, I put together a brief little timeline to bring people up to speed with the events of the last half-Terran-standard cycle and hope it helps bring enlightenment to some of you who apparently live under rocks.

> Aku, Proud Member of the Virtual Archive Brotherhood 2318-19Jul-2129GST

There are few things that wake you up in the morning like a planet being blown up. Yet, back in March that was exactly what happened. From January- when the dear Cap’n posted her initial history file- to March, things were pretty much the same: boring as watching frog piss dry. Then the Ahruga went on the warpath (again) in a big way. Now, I’ve heard a couple of different versions of the story- some say they rescued some slaves from a Byntai outpost that gave them the lead, others say they tracked a damaged Byntai ship, and still others say they used powerful psions to remote view the coordinates- but the results are the same in every tale. The Ahruga found one of the Byntai homeworlds. Now, some of you are aware that the Byntai D-rift their few remaining worlds to protect them, but for those that spent too much time watching Who’s Cheese Is This? on BBC rather than the news, allow me to give you the Idiot’s Guide summary. About a thousand years ago or so, the Byntai- who had a huge empire spanning much of what is now Orion, Serog and Bythrani space- pissed the Capellans off into one of their typical genocidal temper tantrums. Well, as some of us old enough to remember the Capellan War sixty some-odd years ago can attest, the Capellans have genocide down to an artform. To escape, the Byntai developed some form of dimensional shifting device that opened up a wormhole not into another point in space, but into a different parallel universe entirely. While this saved their bacon, it was a temporary solution at best. Seems there is some weird form of entropy cascade when a body the size of a planet is yanked out of its native universe and thrown into an alternate one (I truly hate multiverse physics, so don’t ask me why it only affects planets and larger objects instead of everything equally), so they have to rotate the dozen or so worlds back into their native universe for several months at a time. Well, needless to say, the ability to move their planets has made it damned difficult for anyone to track them down and put foot-to-ass on them in any significant way. Until mid-March, anyway, when the Ahruga suddenly located one of these worlds and sent in a joint tribal battlefleet bigger than any seen since the War. Word I hear on the wire is that they landed half a million troops, rescued all of the slaves the Byntai had taken, and then kicked those grey-skinned bastards around a bit before falling back to their fleet. Then they brought in one of those mother-of-God-that’s-effing-huge dreadnoughts of theirs. You know the ones, the Morrigan-class or something like that, that are damn near thirty-effing-kilometers long that they use as mobile shipyards and such. Anyway, it jumped in, locked on- and blew the planet away with a pinpoint singularity projector. Click-splat-BOOM… no more Byntai planet. Needless to say, the annihilation of an entire populace, including civilians (such as the Byntai have, they are all slaver scum in my eyes), with a Weapon of Mass Destruction set the Terran Alliance council into an uproar, with member nations choosing sides and screaming for this and that. What really mattered, however, wasn’t the political posturing- everyone wanted the Byntai gone, and this was a serious blow to

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their ability to raid Terran space- but the fact that the whole mess happened in the Sigma Nine star system, which sits right on the damned border with the Orion Empire. Yeah, the Orions shit eggrolls. Apparently, a neo-Fascist imperial police state gets a little bent out of shape when someone uses an unbelievably powerful WMD on their doorstep and then flips them the bird as they toddle off. So, the Orions started massing ships on the border, moving an estimated thirty-six MILLION troops (didn’t know they had that many meatsacks for cannon fodder, but I guess they offer a good dental plan) to within striking range of several hundred American, Aussie, European and Russian colonies, not to mention the entirety of the Andali Confederation. The Ahruga responded in kind, without waiting for the TAN Security Council, and the posturing began. That was all by the end of March. Well, if we weren’t in a Cold War with the Orions, we sure as hell are now. They didn’t have much in the way of diplomatic relations, but they’ve broken off all direct contact with the Terran Alliance in “protest”. They also brought the hammer down on border security, putting hundreds of thousands of Freetraders’ nuts in a vice as they lost their lucrative smuggling runs. SOP for the Orion border patrol is now to search EVERY ship jumping into their space, and the rat bastards have roving patrols of interdictor cruisers floating around to yank the unsuspecting out of hyperspace right into their crosshairs. It hasn’t been a complete loss for those with well-armed ships, however, they just needed to shift focus a bit. With a huge number of military and law enforcement patrols- especially ISP- shifted to border patrol or tightening up security on shipping routes near the border, formerly secure systems and routes have now become popular with pirates. There has been a 500% increase in piratical activity in the past few months courtesy of the political pissing contest. Both problems seem to have been made for each other, however, as the Freetraders who formerly made their fortune running illicit goods (and occasionally legal ones) into the Orion Empire have now found their ships put to good use collecting bounties on pirates. As if the grey area between Freetrader and privateer wasn’t obscure enough, lemme tell ya. There are two other similar results of the shift in military and law enforcement power to the border. The first of these is the least pleasant, the expansion of the Inter-System Police force. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Dudley Dorights of the modern age have had their scope of powers expanded, tens of thousands of more officers hired per month, and they are getting new toys- warships. Well, corvettes and frigates, but that’s a helluva lot more than most criminal organizations can bring to bear. ISP now has more enforcement abilities in Freespace, which is causing some friction. Prior to this, ISP did not have the ability to pursue fugitives into independent systems without prior authorization, as such systems were not signatories to the Alliance and thus never agreed to the ISP creation mandate. Now, however, they can and will pursue high-threat fugitives (read: “pirates and anyone we find politically motivating enough to piss off an indie system’s military”) into the system, but not into the orbit or atmo of the sovereign planets. So far, they have only gotten their asses shot off in the Kushan Dominion and the Legaros Free System, since both systems are A) under totalitarian rule, and B) currently at war with a neighboring system. It is just a matter of time before this overstepping of their bounds has profound consequences, however. The second result of the stepping-up of hostilities is the massive increase and expansion of militias, independent system militaries, and mercenary corporations. Unlike the annoyance of the ISP expansion of powers, this is proving to be a mixed bag. For more star systems, it’s a good thing, and the expansion of their military expenditures has made formerly dangerous regions of space a good deal safer. However, as we all know there is no end of tin-pot dictatorships in Freespace, and they are happily using the current tensions as justification to ramp up their militaries. The fact that they then promptly apply said militaries to the invasion of neighboring star systems is generally ignored by the Alliance. The Kushan Dominion launched a full-scale invasion of the Kingdom of Sevahr and the Rheinhardt Republic using over a thousand warships of their own design, nearly a million troops, and a metric ass-tonne of fighters. They won the first invasion, and are currently in a stalemate with the Rheinhardt forces. Rheinhardt has put out an all-call to any mercenary company willing to take on the substantial Kushan forces. Considering that the Kushan carry on their Afghani ancestors’ tradition of making insurgencies an artform once they are dug in, the Rheinhardt parliament wisely wants them flattened before they can achieve a

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beachhead in the system. As for the Kingdom of Sevahr, well, they’re teaching the Kushan a few new lessons on insurgencies and guerilla warfare tactics for their own part, keeping the Kushan from consolidating their hold on the system. This, of course, is making numerous arms dealers and any Freetrader and privateer with epic brass balls big enough to punch through the Kushan fleet very, very wealthy. Last, but not least, we have the entertainment that is Orion politics itself. Seems the Fifth Reich has managed to lose control over some of its happy little plebeians, and rumors of a full-blown insurrection are starting to surface. For all of its history, no successful insurrection has ever evolved within the Orion Empire. This has largely been the result of the complete and total surveillance society combined with the brutal efficiency of the Imperial Security Bureau, a.k.a. the Gestapo-like secret police of the Empire. Nevertheless, word has emerged that- due to the recent illness and seclusion of Emperor Contadino- several resistance groups have managed to organize notable attempts at rebellion. Considering that all diplomatic ties have been severed, and the Orions have slapped the ball-crushing-vice-of-doom onto the free flow of information, verifying this information has been a serious bitch. Still, if there’s one thing we Archivists are good at, it’s getting information from people that want it kept. T’would seem that the rumors are true for once, and a handful of star systems have gone into open revolt. Three of them were promptly orbitally bombarded into submission by the Imperial navy, which had two effects. The first was the cowing of the rebel systems into a less-than-overt insurrection, allowing Imperial control to be re-asserted while also fomenting substantial rebel undergrounds and safe havens in those systems. The second was the defection of three key military commanders, six ships and thousands of soldiers in the wake of the slaughter of over three hundred thousand civilians in the bombardments. These rebel commanders and captains of the vessels have been on the run ever since, only able to do resource raids to repair and refit their ships and equipment, but so far they have managed to avoid the Imperial forces. They are reputed to be getting aid from various factions within the Alliance *coughAussiescough*, and are becoming something of a form of folk heroes to some within the Empire. Now, I’m not saying these insurrections will be successful, quite the opposite. Nationalism is the meat and drink of the Empire, and the vast majority of the citizens are happy with the status quo. They have no unemployment, stable economies and governments, and generally have stable, happy lives. Like the Russians of the Putinist Regime and the Germans under Hitler, they don’t care about the intrusive nature, eugenic or genocidal aspirations, or totalitarian rule of their government so long as it doesn’t affect them adversely on a personal level. Additionally, the Empire employs psions in ways that are blatantly illegal in the Alliance- and even most of Freespace- to guarantee the loyalty of their soldiers and secret police. It does weaken their hold somewhat, however, which makes the Empire less likely to let their war machine off the chain and attempt to invade the Alliance. In general, unfortunately, these insurrections do not really matter in the overall scheme of things. Not to forget the breakthroughs of science, the Big One of this year was the controversial case of the Adarians. The recent report issued through the Terran Alliance Council of Science by archaeologist Matsushita Ayame that provided concrete proof of the relation between the Khurian, Terran and Naradi branches of Humans wasn’t exactly ground-breaking, as it was pretty much assumed that someone had tweaked all three to become similar at some point in the past. No, the breakthrough was the discovery of a million-year-old datastore from a heretofore-unknown race of proto-Humans explaining HOW they had done it, and why. The information is being kept close to the vest as it is vetted and genetic studies performed to confirm it, but t’would appear that this race- who lived on a planet within the Orion Empire, which we call Adaris today, over one million years ago- seeded their DNA on appropriate worlds to preserve their species in the face of a genocidal onslaught from another race. Dozens of races were modified, races that had already reached a stage of evolution very similar to early Humans, including the Kyaren, Namaran, Duroth and dozens of others as-yet undiscovered. Needless to say, there is a major push to find and contact these other quasi-Human races in the Kalindra Corridor, and the revelation has shaken modern science to its core.

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Which, of course, means there are detractors who claim the entire thing is a hoax perpetrated by an unknown archaeologist without any letters after her name, and that she did so with the backing of the Ahrugan Tribal Confederation in some distorted plot to discredit the anti-genmod crowds who condemn the Ahruga as abominations of science. Because, of course, no one lacking a PhD could POSSIBLY stumble across the greatest scientific discovery in over half a century, that would be unthinkable. The skeptics are, frankly, full of shit for three key reasons- 1) we already know that Humans- all three branches- can interbreed with Duroth, Namaran and Kyaren, which would be impossible if their genetics were not already nearly identical (something else easily proven with a basic corner-store DNA test). 2) The Ahruga neither give a flying rat’s ass what their detractors think, nor are the type to go about perpetuating a massive hoax to disprove them. They simply laugh in their faces and ask what the detractors want to do about it whilst cracking their knuckles and preparing to tent-peg the offending hairless monkey. 3) The evidence is too compelling- a verified data crystal from over a million years ago, further archaeological evidence dug up from Adaris before the Orions locked their border down, genetic testing survey results thus far, input from the Arelli (who, granted, have only been knocking about in space for half a million years, so they weren’t exactly ring-side for the original events) from their much more advanced scientific views, etc. all support the claims. So, in short, it would appear that all of those whackjobs running around since we first met the Khurians claiming that we were all seeded by some precursor alien race weren’t quite so crazy after all. Modified and tweaked instead of seeded, but definitely messed with by the Adarians nonetheless. Nor was that the only breakthrough to have happened in the realms of science, exploration had a major boon as well. The PR-36 “Lionfish” experimental probe launched in April of this year finally pulled off the Big Jump. For those of you living under a rock, this unmanned AI-run long-range exploration probe was built with dozens of T-rad venting ailerons, causing it to resemble the fish for which it is nicknamed. It was designed to push the limits of hyperspace jump technology, and boy did it ever. After months of trial jumps and test runs, the Terran Alliance Exploration Corps did the ballsiest move ever attempted six weeks ago. Yeah, I know, it was headline news for nearly a month, but a lot of people out there avoid the news like it was a social disease… which it is, so I don’t blame them. No vessel or probe has ever managed to get far beyond the edges of our galaxy due to the lack of navigable space with enough free-floating hydrogen in the big spaces between the Milky Way and other bodies. They flat ran out of fuel before they could get there. The Lionfish, on the other hand, did the longest hyperspace jump on record- 47,362 light years from the polar edge of the Milky Way’s core straight “up” (or “down”, depending on which starchart you’re looking at) to the outer edge of SagDEG (the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy for you dirtbound plebeians who never studied astronomy, the mini-galaxy that orbits the Milky Way). The probe was glowing with T-rads when it got there, with half of its outer armoured hull already degraded as the tachyon radiation disrupted the molecules, but it made it there functionally after a ninety-two hour jump. Yeah, it was pulling over 500 C/hr, twice as fast as the fastest known jump drive. What’s that you say? Where can I get me one of those engines? Well, ladies and gents, the tech from the tests is already starting to hit the market through the program’s corporate sponsors- Neeland-Kanamitsu, Conudyne (big shock, they practically run the Corporate Alliance, MEI’s chairmanship notwithstanding), Fujita-Croft and- surprisingly- the Andali defense contractor Cumberland Industries. Word is that Cumberland will be integrating the new jump drive designs into all of the next-gen warships they are building for the Andali Confederation. I think I just heard the EU shit itself at that thought… So, that brings us up to date circa 19 July 2318. No idea what tomorrow will bring, but for now, oh ye plebeians, be entertained by the bread and circuses the Threevee gives you. Go forth and once again join the somnambulant masses. Or, you could go out and take advantage of the juicy chaos and ocean of opportunity to make your fortune. There’s more beer money in the latter option, if nothing else. - Aku

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FREETRADERS, PRIVATEERS

AND PIRATES, OH MY!

There has always been a tightknit relationship between the three most romanticized and vilified members of our space-faring community, the Freetrader, the Privateer and the Pirate. Pirates attempt to take what Freetraders are hauling, Freetraders fight back, and privateers hunt the pirates in turn, creating a complex intimate tangle of interconnectivity.

The Freetrader

The true origins of the Freetrader are lost to antiquity, but the direct evolution of the current breed can be traced to the Fall. During the brutal and chaotic Mini-Dark Age following the collapse of much of civilization in the first half of the 21st century, enterprising men and women began running supplies between communities. They also established salvage operations, securing food, water, fuel, medical supplies, household goods, technology, etc. from abandoned vehicles, warehouses, homes, and- on occasion- off the corpses of those who attacked them. Looting was a passé term used for a time when there was a chance at recovery close at hand, and in the dark days of the Fall these merchants became a lifeline between communities. More than supplies, however, these early Freetraders carried information. With the destruction of most communication satellites- and the few that survived or were put up by the Indians and Australians afterwards being tasked for military and government use- the internet (the primitive ancestor of our Omninet today, for those who don’t study history) and most forms of telecommunications were wiped out. A primitive form of radio, called HAM (don’t ask me what it stood for, I’m not THAT dedicated of a scholar), along with other forms of shortwave radio communications were all that the civilian populace had to turn to. The destruction of the power grid meant that only a handful of those who possessed this form of communication actually had the power to use it. Thus, the trader caravans that rolled through with goods to sell or trade became an information lifeline. Today, Freetraders are part merchant, part courier, part smuggler, part vigilante, and all rough-and-tumble. While they have become romanticized figures who are iconic representatives of the Colonial Territories and Fringe the way cowboys are icons of the Old West, they are as varied as the cargos they carry. Some prefer legal cargos on hazardous routes, others will transport anything short of slaves, to hell with legality and morality. Still others blur the line between Freetrader and Privateer, operating a bit in both worlds equally. One thing is for certain, however- Freetraders are a vital part of our world today.

The Pirate

Unlike the murky origins of the Freetrader, piracy and marauding raiders have been a part of Human history since pre-history. The first evidence of such was the Neolithic hunter found trapped in ice in the Alps, nicknamed Otzi, who was laid low by a marauder’s arrow. Fragmentary evidence from the archeological digs in city remnants from the Atlantean epoch indicate that these Ice Age civilizations also engaged in marauding against one another, especially for the most valuable metal at the time- bronze- which only a handful of city-states of that era had managed to create. From Neolithic raiders to the infamous Caribbean pirates to the raiders of the Barbary Coast, pirates of ancient history have been romanticized over the centuries in film, threevee and song.

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Today’s pirates are- with the notable exception of the Barbary Bastards, who are arguably completely insane- nothing like these romantic swashbucklers of the ancient past. They have far more in common with the pre-Fall pirates working out of Somalia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. They attack ships to seize their cargo, take crews of commercial transports for ransom, and kill them if they either put up a fight or aren’t ransomed. The worst of today’s pirates are more akin to the Raiders that arose during the Fall- sadistic murdering, raping, torturing bastards who are almost as sick and twisted in their brutality and savagery as the Bythrani. And then, you have the monkey wrench in the machine of preconceived notions- the aforementioned Barbary Bastards. When I say the Barbary Bastards are insane, allow me to clarify- I firmly believe that, to a one, every single member of the largest and most infamous pirate gang in Known Space are completely, utterly, irrevocably batshit whacko. Most pirates zip up in modified and stealthed ships, hit their target with disruptors and breaching collars, board, shoot anyone who resists, and then take what they want and bolt. Not the Bastards… no, those nutters arrive in ships- often captured privateer vessels as a point of pride- displaying their infamous Jolly Roger skull-and-sabers mark painted across the hull. They make a splashy entrance, and follow through with theatrics better left to an Andali nobleman or an American movie. Who in their right mind boards a vessel wielding a pulse pistol in one hand, a vibrosword in the other, wearing some archaic captain’s coat over mil-spec body armor, and acting like they are some sort of mischievous rogues there to merely pick a few rich pockets, kiss a few maiden’s hands, and then slip back out the door? They’re bloody pirates, not some damned acting troupe! I digress. The point being, the Barbary Bastards are in their own little category, so not much of what I discuss here will be accurate for them.

Piracy in the Colonial Territories and the Fringe has led to an explosion in the populations of both Freetraders and privateers. Commercial vessels and guild ships run by the Barundi Spacer’s Guild are lightly armed at best, and easy picking for the heavily-armed, aggressive and cunning pirates. Freetraders… not so much. Freetraders are prey that bites back. Hard. And then follows it up with poison spat in the eye, a goring to the groin, and then setting the predator on fire for sport. In truth, the average pirate-versus-Freetrader conflict ends very poorly for the pirates, which has led more and more shippers to use the roguish armed merchantmen. Some of these Freetraders find greater profit in collecting the bounties on the pirates, and thus the line between pure

armed merchantmen Freetraders and dedicated pirate-and-enemy-shipping-interdiction privateers is very, very fuzzy. Most Freetraders will

go after pirates for bounty during lean times, and most privateers will run cargo, so the lines are so often crossed that the two might as well be one in the same, and we have the notorious pirates to thank for that. Not all pirates are so easily cowed, however. While most pirates tangling with Freetraders or privateers are begging to get their metaphorical faces kicked in, some are more than able to step up to the task. The Black Talons were one such gang that, thankfully, no longer exists. The Talons were deadly because they used warships, a mixture of old Capellan-war-era NAU and Aussie ships combined with a few current models purchased through front companies from the Russians. The Black Talon marauders hit dozens of Fringe and Colonial worlds hard, and their successes drove them to excessive violence and brutality. They were among the worst-of-the-worst I mentioned earlier. The Talons delighted in hitting worlds in a hard and ugly fashion, bombarding entire settlements from orbit, ravaging the survivors in ways I can only describe as the stuff of sick nightmares, and then wait for either ISP cruisers or privateers to respond. When the cavalry inevitably rode to the rescue, they met Custer’s fate- caught in an ambush of deadly warships lying in wait under stealth ECM and cloaks.

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The Talons finally met their end when they grew too greedy and decided to try and attack the Peregrine system, home of the Peregrine Mining Corporation- one of the richest Corellium mining operations in the Sargasso Sea (the space between the Sagittarius and Orion arms of the Galaxy, for the dirtsiders)- in an attempt to seize their wealth. Unfortunately for the Black Talon gang, the Peregrine system is also the headquarters of the mercenary firm Professional Military Solutions Corporation, which has invested billions in developing, constructing and arming a substantial fleet of next-generation warships to rival those of Spartan Group in firepower and durability. The ensuing battle was titanic, with hundreds of warships engaging in the Oort cloud of the system, but very, very brief. The Black Talon fleet was annihilated, the few surviving vessels tracked back to their base of operations and destroyed along with it. The moral of this story for both privateers and pirates- be careful, there is always a bigger fish in the sea.

The Privateer

The privateer has a history almost as old as- and often intertwined with- piracy. Originally chartered by various governments as a form of “legal” pirate, they would interdict shipping of enemy nations for bounties, seizing their cargo for the Crown, and also hunted pirates for bounty and booty. In those regards, little has changed in over a millennium of privateering. Privateers of the 24th century- like their predecessors during the heyday of the era of Tall Ships- carry letters of Marque and Reprisal allowing them to act in the course of their duties. This archaic form of licensing for privateers saw resurgence during the Fall that has continued to this day. Piracy had been on the rise in the decades prior to the Fall at the end of the 20th and first two decades of the 21st century, but it exploded during it. With navies of the first world nations stretched thin protecting their own nations- not to mention taking an average of 45-50% losses in vessels and personnel due to the impacts and resulting tsunamis- there was little to stop pirate marauders from attacking the vital shipping routes between nations. With the Southern Hemisphere nations such as Australia, New Zealand, and the countries of South America becoming the bread baskets of the world overnight due to minimal fallout from the impacts, food shipments became vital to keep the populations of the Northern Hemisphere alive. Needless to say, these cargo ships became targets of marauders and pirates. Much of the surviving Indonesian navy- which had long had a history of being tied to piracy- became a scourge upon the shipping lanes from Australia and New Zealand to Asia. African pirates raided shipments bound for Europe, and various Caribbean and Central American pirate gangs struck the Brazilian, Columbian and Venezuelan shipping headed north to the US and Canada. Unable to counter these attacks with naval assets, various governments began “deputizing” Private Military Contractors (the predecessor to the mercenary corporations of today) and other civilian entities and ships to go out and hunt the pirates down. Much like the treatment land-based Raider gangs faced, there was little in the way of restraint in the Rules of Engagement used by these pirate hunters. As the Fall stabilized and began the slow swing back towards recovery, pre-Fall rhetoric from an American politician turned into policy with the drafting of official documentation using the old title of “Marque and Reprisal” to license these 21st century privateers. Privateers today vary in their operations. Most of the member states of the Terran Alliance of Nations use them almost exclusively for pirate hunting work, but many independent systems in Freespace also make use of their interdiction of enemy shipping. Recent examples of this are the Lindes System using contracted privateers to board and seize arms and equipment shipments being sent to their enemy the People’s Democratic Republic of Lao Tsung, and the use of privateers to devastating effect against the Kushan logistics lines during their attempted invasion of the Rheinhardt Republic. While these operations do not pay as well as pirate interdiction- and are considered legal, but dubious by most of the TAN member states- they are relatively safe and easy jobs by comparison.

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