(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

  Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, Lizard, RedFox, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, M.Mollen, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, BigGunn, Dolcett, Starwatcher, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

  Anonymous7: Damn, it is a helluvalot easier to get a slot running the megadungeon in the Horus system now that the Chaos Brigade has pissed off somewhere else!

  DarkAngel: I heard that they were basically camping the dungeon and not letting anyone else in while their people were running it, but was it really that bad?

  Chummer: Worse, actually. They had it effectively locked down until they got the money for that warship of theirs.

  Anonymous3: Damn, big guilds throwing their weight around like that make me sick. Should put a size limit on them.

  Bennie: Never gonna happen.

  MacD: Yeah, that would basically kill the game for a lot of the high-end players, leaving just casuals. You can’t build a game for the long term on just casuals.

  BackDat@55Up: Yeah, but without the casuals, the game won’t grow.

  BigGunn: Dev post over on the forums said that they’d be looking for ways to ‘discourage’ that kind of thing in the future.

  Knocker: Is that why the Governor in charge of Horus just got the sack?

  Queen’s_Bitch: The sack? He got his ass punted out the airlock, literally!

  TheDespoiler has entered the chat.

  Golddigger: Looks like there were corruption charges that got filed, and the Empress is still cracking down on stuff like that, since that’s the kind of thing that led to the civil war in the first place.

  DarkAvariel: Hmm. So, doing what ChaosBrigade did won’t work in the Empire any more. What about the other governments?

  Number5Alive: Not likely to be a problem in the Confederacy, since they generally try to crack down on corruption more.

  Digdug has entered the chat.

  DoYouEvenDPS?: The Alliance is too fractured, but they aren’t likely to go for that, since anyone sitting on the dungeon might be able to get more power and/or influence than the government. Well, at least on that planet.

  MacD: Probably going to be expensive as hell to try it in Consortium space, especially if you aren’t playing a Gauz. The damn space dwarves treat all outsiders like trash.

  WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: The Ihm would simply attempt to kill you for making the offer, since that would offend their honor or caste structure. Unless you’re a female Ihm with a plan for the proper exploitation and cultivation of the dungeon, don’t even bother.

  TheDespoiler: Man, it is weird to come on here and see people talking about you. Is this what the Black Stars deal with all the time?

  Parca: Yes.

  MajorTom: Oh yeah.

  HaveGunsWillTravel: Yep!

  Guardian: Definitely.

  Hullu_Kapteeni: Affirmative.

  Bennie: I’ve been getting that picture, yes.

  M.Mollen: You get used to it.

  Digdug: You filthy cheater! I’ll have you know I’ve already sent individual tickets for each member of the company and for each ship lost because of you!

  Chummer: Who are you?

  Digdug: Leader of the Crimson Sun Company. We tried to go to that new colony that opened up, and the bastard treated us like dirt!

  M.Mollen: No, you came to my planet, tried to claim my property as your own to avoid paying taxes, and threw a week long hissy fit when my people told you no. So I threw you and your company out of the system on pain of judicial enslavement. Then you came back.

  Digdug: We got killed as soon as we left the system, because you wouldn’t let us use the Gateway!

  M.Mollen: If you hadn’t been such a dick, then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten tossed out. And it isn’t my problem that you didn’t purchase a protection plan for an escort to the next system.

  Chummer: So, you ganked them outside the system?

  M.Mollen: Oh, heavens, no! That would be unethical. I simply mentioned to another party that three ships full of dumbasses would be leaving the system, and hadn’t paid me to care about what happened to them outside the system.

  TheDespoiler: The Eternity of Pain’s crew enjoyed the target practice, and the fun of taking the ships.

  M.Mollen: After which, quite a few members of the Crimson Sun Company respawned on Star’s Reach, where they were found in violation of their eviction orders, and sentenced to 12 months judicial enslavement.

  Digdug: See! He admits it! He’s nothing but a filthy CHEATER!

  GM_8675309 has joined the chat.

  GM Post: Game Masters have reviewed the relevant logs of this incident, and found no instances of any player violating the terms and conditions of the EULA, or using any exploits in the game code. The cheating tickets have been closed.

  GM Post: Game Masters also note that spamming support tickets for the same incident constitutes a violation of the EULA (Section 6.234.7: Harassment). Members of the Crimson Sun Company have been warned for this behavior.

  Digdug: Fuck that, how can you let them get away with this shit? You fucking shill! How much is that cheater paying you to suck his cock?

  GM Post: Abusive language towards GMs is not permitted. Good day.

  Digdug has been banned from the chat for 1 week.

  GM_8675309 has left the chat.

  M.Mollen: Have I mentioned that I really can’t cheat, since the GMs watch my streams closely, since I am a streamer and part of the medical testing program?

  Blaze: Hey, getting away from that, can anyone tell me what the heck is going on over by Coldana? There’s all kinds of rumors about ships going missing heading to the system, but I haven’t heard anything solid about what is happening there.

  Anonymous3: I’ve been trying to figure that out, myself. We haven’t had a single ship reach us here in over a week. Usually, there’s at least four or five a day, if not more.

  AggregatorOfSorrows: Pirates? Does the Consortium have a pirate problem?

  Anonymous3: Well, everyplace has pirates, but even the local black-market types don’t know shit about what is going on. If it weren’t for these chats and the forums, I’d think the whole rest of the game had died.

  M.Mollen: Anon, I hate to say it, but it sounds like you’re fucked.

  RedFox: Yeah, it is just a question of what kind of fucked you are.

  Inquisitor: You know, commerce raiding is up all over, recently, but I haven’t heard any talk of who is behind it.

  M.Mollen: The unknown commerce raiders are probably X’thari. Black Star ships have spotted and destroyed at least one group of them in Confederate space.

  GrimDark: So maybe the problems around Coldana are X’thari?

  Guardian: Maybe. Could also be that Shadowgate decided to get expansionist all of a sudden. I don’t think anyone in the game has managed to actually get there and see what is going on in that system, have they?

  SemiSolidSnake: The Gateway is blocked somehow, and somehow they manage to interdict and destroy ships coming the ‘slow’ way before they can even get into the system. Don’t ask me how the hell they do either of those things.

  GunKitty: Probably have some Lost Tech.

  M.Mollen: So yeah, Anon, you’re fucked. Whether it is Shadowgate or the X’thari, you’re fucked, unless the Consortium manages to scare up enough of a fleet to defend the system.

  (Consortium Naval Vessel Cormac’s Hammer, Star’s Reach Gateway, Star’s Reach System)

  “Transition complete. We’re now in the Star’s Reach system.”

  Captain Girgroir Beryldelver nodded to his helmsman at the report. “Very well. Send the standard greeting. Let us see how these mercenaries handle the sight of a real warship.”

  The CNV Cormac’s Hammer was only a light cruiser, but the superior technology the Consortium had available to it meant that it could easily go toe to toe with battlecruisers from the less advanced fleets belonging to the Terran Empire or the Confederacy. While the Consortium’s navy was smaller than the other star nations’, they didn’t need the numbers that the less advanced nations needed. Having ships that were at least two generations ahead of their rivals meant that they could save more money over time by having more advanced, more reliable ships that required fewer crewmembers and fewer maintenance cycles.

  Of course, that was for dealing with other star nations. Piracy and smuggling had always been a problem. There wasn’t a single star nation that had managed to stop that completely, but the Consortium took a different tack on things, fitting their business model. Namely, they had large numbers of corvettes that were used as revenue ships and pirate hunters. It was the most efficient use of money and manpower available.

  Unfortunately, that efficiency meant that they were not prepared for the sudden increase of incidents in one of the more isolated areas of the Consortium. The Grathdan Sector had been a fairly affluent sector originally, with one of the Gateways allowing for fast travel to the region, but when a group of Chimeras took over Thazdum and renamed it Shadowgate, before sealing the system off from ‘outsiders’, the entire sector had suffered a severe economic downturn. The Consortium had tried to retake Thazdum several times, but each attempt was rebuffed.

  The Board of Directors had been unwilling to simply allow Shadowgate, with the fleet they must have, unrestricted access to even a backwater sector, so there was actually a fleet base in the Coldana system. However, the rise of incidents meant that the fleet base was going to have to be reinforced. And, unfortunately, that meant that those reinforcements would have to come from units primarily tasked to hunting pirates and doing other internal security tasks.

  That meant that the Consortium needed to hire on mercenaries to do the work temporarily. Unfortunately, with the recent surge in piracy all through Known Space, and the Kul’tirans being thrown into disgrace, most of the mercenary groups who had the ships to do the job and could be trusted not to simply turn to piracy themselves were already engaged in other areas, either on anti-piracy patrols or as escorts for corporate ships. The rise of these Nomads in certain quarters had made things even worse, since their loyalties were always suspect.

  Unfortunately, the only mercenary group that had the size and capability to do what they needed was a Nomad-owned outfit, that had been making a name for themselves. They had some decent stealth technology, but from the news he’d heard none of the rest of their tech was all that impressive. They had scored some wins, sure, but that was going up against the Imperials and pirates. Hardly a match for the Consortium Navy. And the ‘Second Battle of Nuevo Edo’? Clearly blowing the numbers out of proportion as propaganda to increase their standing, and that of their new ally.

  Still, this group was large enough and influential enough that they couldn’t have just a low-level bureaucrat commission their services for anti-piracy patrols, which was why Sector Administrator Woldmane was going to try and hire these Black Stars. And a Sector Administrator didn’t just go around on civilian transports for missions like this, which is why his Hammer was here. And the sooner they left and could join the fleet looking to break through to Coldana, the better.

  “Cormac’s Hammer, this is Star’s Reach System Control. You are authorized to approach the planet. Course and orbital slot included in this transmission. Deviation from either will not be tolerated.”

  Captain Beryldelver frowned, and muttered to himself. “System Control? The only ships on screen are in orbit. Who the hell do these jumped up Nomads think they’re fooling?”

  “Captain! A ship just appeared on sensors, dead astern. Range… one thousand kilometers!”

  “WHAT?” He checked the information his sensor officer was displaying on the main screen. There was a corvette, one of the Assassin-class, according to the intelligence brief, sitting where there’d been nothing but a hole in space before. Despite himself, Beryldelver had to give that ship, the Shadowdancer, and her captain credit. Their main weapons might be crude, being the equivalent of throwing rocks at people, but the laws of physics were rather harsh on what happened when an object of a certain mass achieved relativistic speeds before striking another object. If that ship wanted his Hammer dead, they’d never know it until the ship was becoming a cloud of swiftly spreading debris.

  Maybe the intelligence briefs on their technology were slightly understated? Beryldelver shook his head. No sense worrying about that, now. “Acknowledge transmission. Helm, keep to the course and orbital slot provided to us.”

  Commander Kegdancer shook her head from her station next to his command chair. She spoke softly, so only he could hear. “I suppose that was the Black Star version of a ‘subtle warning’?”

  “Yes, I am thinking so. To get into position like that, so soon after we entered the system, that corvette must have been lying in wait, and began maneuvering as soon as the gateway opened. Apparently, the intelligence analysts were drastically underestimating their stealth capabilities.”

  He sighed, and said, “I better go and alert the Sector Administrator. I just hope she is in a good mood. She was not happy having to come all this way to speak to a mercenary leader instead of having him come to her.”

  “Will they be useful to us? I mean, even if their stealth is good, that doesn’t mean anything once a fight starts.”

  Beryldelver shook his head. “I wonder. But think, Commander. If Intelligence was wrong about their stealth capabilities, what else might they be wrong about?”

  (Guest Quarters, CNV Cormac’s Hammer, Star’s Reach System)

  Sector Administrator Yutreda Woldmane frowned as she looked at the viewscreen which the Captain had just disappeared from. She had hoped to impress these mercenaries with the sight of a Consortium warship, and help drive down the price of their aid in policing the Grathdan Sector while the Navy concentrated their efforts on breaking through whatever had happened to Coldana and relieving the forces there. But, as she watched the sensor readings in her quarters, it became clear that the Black Star Navy was just as impressive as she had heard.

  Around the planet there were a few ships, including a fleet carrier, and a superdreadnought that intelligence had said some madman had converted into a mobile shipyard. There were a series of defense platforms, as well. Most of them looked to be weapons platforms, but there was what was clearly a civilian space station in orbit, and what looked like the start of an actual military space station being constructed as they watched. Other ships were already moving through the system on clearly defined routes, mostly freighters and armed merchantmen from the Alliance, Confederacy, Empire, and Imperium.

  Representatives of several criminal syndicates appeared to be openly broadcasting their affiliations. She noticed two factions that were supposed to be at war with each other settled side by side in berths at the space station, without either attacking the other! Both even had their shields down and weapons offline! Even at the most dangerous dark ports, such a thing would be unheard of!

  Clearly this Black Star Company had impressed upon the syndicates that behaving was in their best interests. Given the stealth abilities their ships had casually shown to the crew of the Cormac’s Hammer, that impression probably went somewhere along the lines of ‘play nice, or we kill you’, and no one knew where they were to know whether they were watching or not. And a free port outside of the known centers, with access to the Gateway network was too lucrative a deal to get excluded from for these outfits.

  Oh, sure, that Nuevo Edo place was a free port, as well, but it was a planetary government, not a business. That kind of place was better for some smugglers, or freighter captains that wanted to get goods between star nations without paying tariffs or getting away from the fact that some nations didn’t like each other, on paper. They wouldn’t tolerate syndicates acting openly in their system, which is clearly something that the Black Star Company had no problem with, so long as people followed the rules.

  And those rules were backed up by the Black Star Navy. The presence she saw in orbit would be enough for planetary defense against pretty much any pirate raider or ‘normal’ attack. It wouldn’t stand up to a full-scale invasion, of course. But the Assassin that had dropped cloak behind the Hammer showed that they had assets in place to ensure that an invasion through the Gateway would be doomed to fail. And an attack staging out of Nuevo Edo or the Amazon system would take at least a month to arrive at the fastest speeds warships could achieve. A month in which time the Black Stars would have plenty of time to recall their ships, or get reinforcements from one of their bases near other nodes of the Gateway network. Until the local area was explored and colonized, the Black Stars were too well-defended to take on for anyone except the X’thari to have a chance of driving them back in this system.

  That fact had several implications for her mission here. The fact that the system had essentially combined the two concepts of holding a bottleneck and defense in depth to allow them to hold off any threat that might be heading their way (save the most dangerous enemies) meant that they were definitely capable of assisting her in keeping the damage from the Fleet redeploying to rescue Coldana down to a minimum. On the other hand, the military mind that could arrange for a defense of this kind would surely realize the situation the Consortium was in. The Consortium’s efficiency-based model of defense was well known in the galaxy, after all. And the Nomad information networks likely already had some reports from the Sector running across the galaxy by now.

  That meant that he could play hardball with her if he wished, and there was not much she could do about it. The normal tools she might have used in negotiations wouldn’t apply here. Black Star didn’t need the Consortium’s technology, clearly. And while they had several small businesses in the consumer markets, they primarily made their money off of shipping, protection, and, now, providing a security for other parties to do business. They would not be hurting for credits, that is certain. That also meant that promise of access to Consortium markets might not sway them, either. With access to the Gateway, and the assistance of syndicates, they could likely get to any marketplace they wanted, regardless.

 

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