For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

Initially formed as the Solarian Treaty Organization from the ashes of the old United Nations Security Council, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the Global Climate Relief Organization in the worst decade of Earth's environmental collapse. The STO was originally a body tasked with overseeing the granting of offworld mining permits and the purchase and distribution of the resources to countries struggling from climate change.

The advent of the Korolev-Chandrashker gates and the construction of the first one under STO oversight in 2063 led to the beginning of the transformation of that body into the de facto single governing body of the Human species.

Reorganized into the 'Solarian Compact', the first Charters were granted to massive corporate conglomerates to explore and exploit the cosmos for Humanity with little to no regulation or restriction.

In the early decades, the Solarian Compact oversaw the construction of KC gates in the systems closest to Sol and began the process of granting colonization rights to the most habitable worlds within that region with colonization rights granted to a number of national and international blocks.

With the growth of the Solarian Compact's power came calls for the body to become more representative and democratic, and in 2099, the Solarian Compact held its first elections and constitutional convention, inviting representatives from the Sol system and the five systems that held permanent Human settlement.

Over the course of the 22nd and 23rd centuries the Solarian Compact has held fast to what it sees as its duty to act as the mediator and financier of the Charters, the unifying agent of the disparate first Human colonies, and the guarantor of interstellar peace for Humanity.

As of 2252, the three most important bodies within the Solarian Compact are the Solarian Parliament -Located on Earth, the Solarian Compact Navy -based in the Korolev-Chandrashker system, and the Solarian Central Bank, -based out of the Columbia System.

Organized as a liberal democracy, with universal suffrage, the Solarian Compact is theoretically overseen by three equal institutions: the Solarian Parliament, the office of the Solarian Secretary General, and the Solarian High Court.

Though the Solarian Compact prides itself on being a Constitutional government, the actual original document merely outlines the terms of admitting new MPs and High Court Judges, and the electoral procedures of the Compact Parliament, with subsequent Parliaments meeting to add items like the Declaration of Property Rights, the founding of the Central Bank, the creation of the Solarian Navy, and the Laws on Freedom of Navigation and Travel being added later.

The Solarian Parliament is made up of two thousand six hundred and twenty seats representing ridings on Earth, Columbia, Atlantis, Penglai, Olduvai, and Epsilon which are elected every three years to a Parliament that meets in the New York prefecture of Earth.

Though the many frontier colonies do not have direct representation in the Parliament due to being owned and operated by private entities, their inhabitants are considered 'Absent for Employment' and may register with a home riding and submit a physical ballot (for security reasons) by courier from when polls open until they close. Though this process was suitable for the closely settled regions of space at the time of the ratification of the Compact Constitution in 2100, the rapid growth of Human settled space in the century and a half since has seen the de facto voter suppression of over 90% of Human settled space.

At the first sitting of each new Compact Parliament, the assembled members will elect a Secretary General and a slate of Ministry officials on a majority basis, and those individuals will oversee the executive branch of government and day to day operations. Though the average Compact Parliament contains between seven to nine parties in each Parliamentary sitting, the vast majority of seats belong to one of either the Party for Human Rights and Liberties or the Justice and Development Alliance and have since the very early 2100s. The governments formed this way can be brought down by losing the confidence of the Parliament for example, by failing to pass a budget, the process of finding a majority government will repeat again.

Though a democratic body that has maintained stability for over a century and a half, the Solarian Compact Parliament has been dogged by accusations of dynastic politics, Charter influence, voter suppression, regulatory capture, inability to reign in the Banks and MIlitary, and corruption at all levels.

Separate from the Parliament is the Solarian High Court that consists of eleven judges that serve terms of up to thirty-three years, with each new sitting of the Compact Parliament selecting one judge from a list provided by the governments of the six main worlds of the Solarian Compact. The High Court rules on matters of adherence of laws to the Solarian Constitution, and have been accused of serving as an arm of the Charters, though this has been strenuously contested by the Solarian legal profession as a whole.

By law the Solarian Compact also oversees a number of other important institutions including the Earth Reconstruction Commission (In a permanent public-private partnership with the Earth Reconstruction Association), the Solarian Central Bank, and the Solarian Compact Navy, though these important institutions often exhibit an alarming degree of autonomy from Parliamentary control.

The Charters:

The result of a cleverly conceived merger between specialty transport vessel manufacturer Titan Staryards and Private Military contractor Martian Military Solutions, Ares cut its teeth not just supplying material to the skirmishes between Mississippi Shipping and United Starhaul, but in supplying military contractors to both sides.

The professionalism of Ares mercenaries and quality of Ares gear led to the rapid expansion of business opportunities for the company and investment skyrocketed even after the Mississippi-Starhaul war ended in a hostile takeover of Starhaul by Mississippi.

Thanks in part to Mississippi debts held by Ares, when the RT-2102 Gate was opened up for settlement strategic maneuvering saw the Compact grant Ares mining and settlement rights to the newly opened system.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leveraging the immense resources of the Alexander system with their existing military expertise, Ares expanded nearly exponentially over the following century. While they maintain a dominating edge in the military field, they now integrated companies in fields from agronomy to personal fitness centers to xenobiology.

Internally Ares very self consciously styles itself as a hierarchical military organization complete with a semi-formal rank structure and an ethos of respect for the chain of command, professional courtesy, and treating your subordinates with respect. In practice Ares is hidebound, authoritarian, filled with passive aggressive sniping and rampant empire building.

While Ares remains headquartered on Mars, they have holdings in several systems and own the distant system of Alexander outright.

Rhodes Mining

One of the three original Charters that the Compact granted, Rhodes considers itself the singular reason that Humanity survived ecological collapse and spread past Sol. Immensely wealthy, over 52% of all material mined and processed by the entire Human race has passed through Rhodes hands at one point or another.

While founded merely to provide Earth the vital materials that it needed to rebuild itself after the lost decades of ecological collapse, Rhodes quickly expanded into all areas of the economy to support their mining, refining, and processing operations.

Dedicated to their vision of logistical chain efficiencies they've developed an entire chain of star systems into an efficient production center based around the resource rich system of Foundry, and the nearby feeder systems of Ecrams, Qem, and Crucible.

Rhodes considers itself home to a version of meritocracy built on hard work, education, and good old fashioned personal drive. This has developed over time into a stratified internal divide between the rank and file workers, the lower level management, and the highly lauded senior management. Each class lives in entirely separate worlds, attending separate schools, consuming different products, and leading very different lives in what many observers have labelled a de facto caste system.

they make food and medicine, the 120 year old CEO is kinda creepy tho?

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

Born from the union of Hermes Interstellar Services and The Ishtar Group, the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation owns and operates not only the communications backbone of Compact space, but much of the content that crosses over it.

The results of increasing consolidation of pre-spaceflight communications infrastructure and content creation and management firms, Hermes Communications and Ishtar Entertainment Group were both part of the second round of Charters established after the advent of the KC gates.

While Hermes quickly established operations throughout Compact space, their waystations, couriers, and communications repeaters a common sight in every corner of Human occupied space; Ishtar Group mainly limited their own operations to Sol and the Radiant system, where Ishtar owned and operated the world of Elysium to support their many projects.

Following a wave of Compact space wide reorganizations following the Mississippi-Starhaul conflicts of the 2130s, a desire for complete vertical integration on Ishtar's part led to a mostly amicable union with Hermes in 2139.

Since then Hermes-Ishtar have dominated all communications across Human space with only the privileged internal high-level communications of the other Charters managing to avoid consolidation under Hermes-Ishtar.

While Hermes-Ishtar make a great show of respecting individual creativity, initiative, and drive from their employees; in practice this amounts to rampant internal fighting involving the parasocial personality cults of different "genius" inventors, artists, and executive that rise and fall inside of Hermes-Ishtar at a dizzying rate.

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

Between 2036 and 2071 the Democratic Federation was the governing body of much of Earth's Western Hemisphere.

Initially comprised of a Federation of Socialist, Anarchist, Communist, and other far left social movements, militias, and political factions controlling regions of Earth's North American continent during and after the decline and collapse of the United States of America (1776-2034) due to the effects of unaddressed climate change amplifying existing political and economic crisis.

Eventually solidifying into the governing body of the former United States of America, United States of Mexico and the Dominion of Canada, the Democratic Federation embarked on an ambitious program of cultural revolution and economic reform designed to mitigate and reverse the effects of the climate change crisis.

As the patron of much of the central and southern western hemisphere, the Democratic Federation attempted to chart a course of environmental restoration separate from that of the Solarian Treaty Organization (In 2063 reorganized into the Solarian Charter), choosing not to contest Eurasian and African domination of outer space.

Having never existed out of crisis conditions, a combination of pre-existing economic damage, sabotage, and instability drove the Democratic Federation into decline in the Grey Decade of 2062 to 2070 and eventually forced the Democratic Federation to ratify a series of treaties giving the Charters economic access to Federation member states in order to conduct vital reconstruction work.

A last ditch uprising by radical elements in 2072 to eject the Charters from the Democratic Federation failed when Solarian Compact peacekeepers were called in and in seven months of street fighting pacified most of North America's key urban centers via strategic use of orbital weapons on the areas of greatest urban resistance.

Though guerilla warfare would continue in the Western Hemisphere for another three decades, the Democratic Federation was officially defunct by December 2072 and parcelled out into a number of Charter owned reconstruction areas under Compact authority.

Today radicals still pine for the four decades that the Democratic Federation attempted to build an alternative to the emerging Charters, and the polity's distinctive black, red, and green flag is brought out for each and every Great Black Summer. Well into the twenty second century, riots were often accompanied by demands to 'Avenge the Martyrs of 72!'.

Despite this underground extremist nostalgia, Charter and Compact schools teach that the Democratic Federation was a collectivist state whose iconoclastic behavior saw the destruction of famous landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain, and other monuments to Liberal Democracy and the Free Market in a mad attempt to remake the human race, but whose doctrinaire adoption of command economics saw them unable to deal with the ever-changing complexities of climate change.

Misc Details:

The first five systems to hold permanent Human colonies are known as either "The First Sisters" or "Earth's Daughters", depending on who you are asking and their political persuasion. From oldest to youngest, these worlds are:

Columbia: settled by billionaire American expats and tens of millions of refugees who had fled the unfolding revolutionary violence of the North American continent several years beforehand. Columbia was founded under a vision of fidelity to the American dream and to prove the indomitability of the soul of the United States of America and liberalism in the face of the red flags of the (North American) Democratic Federation. Fiercely loyal to the Compact and the dream of Charter prosperity, and home of the Solarian Central Bank, Columbia is often known as the "Gilded World" in reference to what many see as a return to American Gilded Age wealth and social inequality. Ares Conflict Solutions' central command is located here.

Atlantis: With colonization rights to this majority oceanic planet initially granted to the waning power of the European Union, the nations of the EU opened up colonization opportunities to other allied powers, especially Russia and Egypt. Atlantis was often seen by the EU as a place to dump unwanted refugees from outside of Europe's borders, and Russia and Egypt's tendency to see the world as a genuine project led to the usurpation of colonization rights away from Europe in the mid 2080s. Known today as the most restive of the first wave of colonies, Atlantis is the most skeptical of Charter power and plays a delicate game of wealth redistribution to underwrite the greatest social security net in Human Space. Cernunnos is de jure headquartered here.

Penglai: Originally the world in the most need of terraforming of the original colonies, Colonization rights were granted to the People's Republic of China and their allies after a lackluster bidding campaign. As China's focus was mainly on attempting to stem the damage of climate change on Earth herself, colonization of Penglai initially lagged until the Chinese Politburo struck upon the strategy of subcontracting colonization rights to Pacific adjacent nations suffering from the rise of that ocean. As colonization unfolded in the early 22nd century Penglai became known as a multicultural mosaic as hundreds of millions from across the Pacific settled and intermingled on the wine darkened shores of that world. Known today for its vibrant cultural milieu, violent clashes between labour unions, and private police, Penglai hosts the headquarters of the Hermes-Ishtar, Omoikane and Rhodes corporations.

Olduvai: With Colonization rights granted to a coalition of African nations at the height of the 'African Century', the African Colonization Organization did not see their colony as a refugee destination, dumping ground, or resource colony like their fellows. Instead the ACO saw the colonization scheme as an opportunity to preserve and export the rich traditions and cultures of Africa on their own terms, fully intending to set up healthy and self-sufficient colonies. To the current day, Olduvai has the closest relations with the home nations and is the heartland of Daughter sentiment and a bedrock for the Party for Human Rights and Liberties.

Epsilon System: While not technically a single world, the cluster of heavily inhabited space colonies in the Epsilon system are always considered the 'Fifth Sister' or 'Fifth Daughter'. As the most mineral rich system of the original colonies, Epsilon was the source of many of the materials that helped pull Earth through her darkest hour, and the system was recognized for their efforts by being invited to send delegates to the 2099 Solarian Compact Constitutional Convention. Epsilon is famous for its people's long roots in spacing and for being the headquarters of Mississippi Shipping Interstellar and thus the most heavily trafficked system in history.
Technologies: Nanomanufacturing, summary:

The contemporary gold standard for manufacturing. These devices use mechanosynthesis, a process that guides chemical reactions by placing reactive molecules with atomic precision. Ribosomes in the body's cells use a form of this method.

While the largest units can create objects up to 2m x 2m x 2m, smaller units (halving the units each time) are viable on basically any human scale. Projects larger than this size (such as ships or buildings, need to be either grown layer-by-layer via nanofabricators attached to robotic arms, or assembled from smaller parts through traditional assembly line, dry dock, or construction processes.

In principle basically anything can be made with these devices, and some materials can only be manufactured via these methods in microgravity. All manufacturing patterns in Compact Space feature Charter DRM using embedded explosive molecules like octaazacubane or cubic gauche nitrogen that will damage a disassembler or x-ray machine making reverse engineering of their products difficult.

A common part of 23rd century life is the near ubiquity of Artificial Intelligences in daily life, from consumer grade VIs through specialist TLIs, controversial AGIs, finally the perpetually 10 years away Artificial Super Intelligences.

The common consumer will daily run into what are properly known as Narrow AIs, and generally labelled as VI -Virtual Intelligences- by people outside the field. This category covers a broad swathe of techniques, from search and pathfinding to expert systems to genetic fuzzy trees to deep neural networks, which are mixed and matched with each other to optimize for the designed task. VIs are ubiquitous, exceeding human peak skill in their areas of specialization (though real world applications often don't do all that much better than trained humans), and have spent the past two centuries getting augmented with more and more clever algorithmic tricks for improving VIs. In order to do this, the Charters employ large teams of analysts and software engineers to develop clever algorithmic tricks that supplement or outright supplant neural networks, exploiting machine precision where stochastic methods are inadequate.

The use of VIs in everyday life is well accepted by the vast majority of the population, with professionals mixing and matching various consumer VIs to analyse data or assist them with creative or scientific works. Some VI lines are well loved by both the populace and the Charters themselves, with Charter programmers often deliberately leaving VIs with behavioral quirks and unpredictable glitches that not only save money on quality assurance, but are considered endearing traits that lead to anthropomorphization by the consumer market

Despite the mass comfortability and profitability of VIs of all kinds, the introduction of AGIs has been, to put it delicately, controversial. Though computer science has advanced to the point of producing programs that can not only pass the Turing test, but demonstrate sapience and match 23rd century human intelligence, flexibility, and creativity, the public reaction to the introduction of AGI saw the companies of the time rapidly pull them from the market, and even say the Compact itself move to heavily regulate the AI sector.

First introduced in the 2060s, the great tech firms began replacing their work staff with AGIs who did not require food, rest, housing, or pay. This shift led to an alliance between white collar workers fearing that automation would put them out of work and radicals who opposed what they insisted was AGI Slavery, a growing movement that would climax in the First Great Black Summer of 2084. When the ashes of the First Black Summer settled, the Compact's Parliament moved to grant rights to AGIs, and the resulting economic damage saw dozens of formerly great names in computing consolidate under the aegis of several of the first Charters who flaunted their extra-Solarian wealth by buying up prestigious brand names and research divisions on the cheap.

Since the 2080s, while the regulation surrounding AGI production and use have been severely weakened none of the Charters have sought to reintroduce them into the market, perhaps fearing another backlash like the First Black Summer and the few hundred thousand surviving AGIs that were granted Solarian Citizenship rights have found spread throughout the Compact and Charter Space where they usually work at the same white collar jobs whose workers they were designed to replace.

Perhaps due to the risks of attempting to reintroduce AGIs to the market, Omoikane has instead introduced their flagship product the "TLI" or Temporary Limited Intelligence. Approximately as effective as an AGI, a TLI is billed as a more moral replacement for AGI that uses a suite of high end VIs and a proprietary batch of creativity algorithms in order to complete complex tasks.

TLIs are used as a fire and forget program designed to be licensed to solve a single issue, no matter how complicated and then delete itself. Though the TLIs are a black box product, scientists from the other Charters believe that the central creativity algorithm in the TLI is inherently unstable and rapidly degrades in ability with time, making the TLI an instance of Omoikane attempting to market a critical technical flaw as a selling point that is accepted due to the ubiquitous market practice of planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity.

Though expensive, most businesses and successful professionals will keep a few licensed Omoikane TLIs on hand to throw at difficult problems or to supplement manpower in crunch situations.

While AGIs have been possible for nearly two centuries, the promise of a Seed AI, a recursively self-improving general superintelligence, is perpetually 'a decade away from the market', and no successful ASI ever been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Charters or the Compact.

This is not to say that the Gödel machine architecture or the AIXI model has somehow been forgotten in the past 230 years, but that the Friendly AI problem has yet to be cracked. Every demonstration has either stalled out or gone immediately rampant, attempting to overthrow Charter Space before being stopped by the safety net of Narrow AIs. The small trickle of roughly human intelligence level AGIs that are created every decade typically come from these projects.

Urban legends persist that a few Seed AIs managed to escape and hide out beyond known space, plotting to return and crush humanity, or that they control all of society in secret, puppeting the Compact and Charters from their very foundation and occasionally engineering publicly failed ASI attempts to allay suspicion. These rumours are, of course, patently false, and simply the fevered imagination of crackpots at work, no doubt inspired by entertainment made by Hermes-Ishtar that feature AI supervillainy.
Systems: Map made by @Redshirt Army

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

The Radiant system is host to a G-class star, only slightly smaller than Sol. The system itself is rather small and resource-poor; experts believe that one or more Jovian planets ejected much of the system's bodies and then followed themselves. This is evidenced by the system's asteroid belt degrading over time, with high levels of eccentric orbits and impacts on planetary surface.

Radiant 1: A rather unremarkable airless iron planet, gravity 0.4 Earth Standard.

Radiant 2: A slightly larger unremarkable airless iron-silicate planet, gravity 0.6 Earth Standard.

Radiant 3: A binary planetary system and the outermost of the Radiant systems' planets.

Asphodel (Radiant 3a): The larger of the Elysium 3 pair, Asphodel might have once hosted life of its own. That life has been snuffed out for hundreds of millions of years, though, as the planet's significant atmosphere began the runaway cycle of your usual hothouse planet. Hermes-Ishtar maintained a significant aerostat and automated surface miner operation for in-house manufacturing, given that the frequent asteroid impacts from the asteroid belt keep digging up chunks of the upper crust and having low-melting-point metals rain out of the sky and solidify, unoxidized, on the surface for collection. Gravity 1.4 Earth Standard.

Elysium (Radiant 3b): Elysium was settled in the late 2190's, being a relatively simple affair. Simple life had already begun to evolve under its oceans, but continued orbital bombardment far past the lengths of things like Earth's Late Heavy Period had kept it there. It was a simple matter of forming up a small anti-asteroid task force armed with tugs and mining lasers to artificially end the pummeling, and the surface proved amenable to Terran life transplants. The colony is energy-self-sufficient, using a variety of solar, tidal, and nuclear power. Gravity 0.9 Earth Standard.

Radiant I: The outermost significant feature of Radiant, this asteroid belt is more a loose mixture of a primordial asteroid belt much like Sol's with a Kuiper belt. The shepherding gas giants which once nudged all these rocks into their orbits are gone, and with it the entire outer system is a maelstrom of chaotic orbits as the belts lose their coherence. This requires constant vigilance from Elysium's anti-asteroid team, but the high eccentricity of many asteroids also makes it cheap and easy to mine the ones that might come Elysium's way, which provides a trickle of basic resources for upkeep and personal goods. All large-scale building and infrastructure projects have been supplied from out-system, however.

A G-K far binary system, Gaid is simply a transit point to Radiant. Gaid's own gate maintenance techs and SAR rotated in and out through Radiant itself. There is no infrastructure other than a set of buoy lines for communications in Gaid A, and nothing in Gaid B.

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid A2: A planet much like mars with a vestigial CO2 atmosphere. Quality 7.

Gaid A3: This planet boasts a methane hydrosphere. Quality 4.

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

Gaid A4: A turbulent Jovian planet, its storms would make resource extraction difficult. Quality 5.

Gaid A4a: An icy moon, with tidal heating creating a large ocean under a thin icy shell. Quality 9.

Gaid B1: A molten Cthonian world hosting a simply ludicrous amount of iron. Quality 15.

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid B3: An airless binary system with two near-identically sized planets. Quality 7 and 8.

Gaid B4: This airless planet boasts a large and beautiful ring system, famous as a screen background option across human space. Every few years, a cruise or scientific expedition will stop by for more images.

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

Gaid B7: An interesting gas dwarf sometimes referred to as an 'ice dwarf.' Quality 14.

A close K-M binary, Shei is home to an old Ares penal colony.

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

Sheol (Shei 3): A boreal world, with a large, decaying ring, the planet features two large continents. The population of the consists of a large prisoner population on the larger of the two continents and a small Ares training base on the smaller. Records show that the prison consists of several million persons convicted to "high risk labour" and dropped on the continent with automatic resupply via Ares contractors and watched from orbit by weapons satellites. Most of the planet's land area is covered in a native tree analogue with a strange multi-stranded trunk.

Sheol is actually home to a population of over 100 million made up of prisoners and their descendants taht Ares was usuing as a live fire training course. Cooperation between Radiant agents, Ares mutineers, and the Sheolites themselves have seen the planet freed.

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Watchman (Shei 3a): Once the outer of two moons, this body now boasts Ares' local light shipyards and system command center. Quality 13.

Shei 4: Spiraling in from the outer system, this planet will eventually evaporate near-entirely as it closes towards the dual suns of Shei. Quality 3.

Shei 5: Martian planet with an active methane cycle. Quality 5.

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

Shei 6: Jovian planet with high rotation rate. Slightly squashed as a result. Quality 8.

Shei 6a: An icy capture, this moon will be torn into a ring sometime in the next hundred thousand years. Quality 2.

Shei 6b: Cold Martian planet, covered in a thin layer of water and carbon dioxide ices. Active methane cycle. Quality 8.

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

Shei 7a: An icy moon with significant cryovolcanism. Quality 6.

Shei 7b: A tiny icy moon, this is on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 2.

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

Shei 8b: An icy moon, orbiting in an unusual polar orbit. Quality 9.

Population: 103,000,000

While lacking any currently-habitable planets, Five Lions' large size and potential have made it a significant point of Rhodes' recent extraction efforts. Ambitious terraforming efforts have recently begun.

Carajas (Five Lions 1): A Cthonian ball of iron, it's actively mined by robotic Rhodes-built landers. Gravity 2.3 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Five Lions 2: A small rocky ball. Quality 3.

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

Grasberg (Five Lions 4): A large rocky world, glaciation has rendered it uninhabitable for now, but terraforming efforts have begun to artificially ramp up the greenhouse effect and restore liquid water to the surface, along with mining its ice. Gravity 1.11 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Five Lions 5: This planet's atmosphere is so significant it verges on a gas dwarf. While a solid surface covered in a thin layer of ice is at the bottom, no reasonable colonization is possible. Quality 7.

Five Lions I: This asteroid belt, along with all the others, is being mined heavily.

Five Lions 6: This Jovian planet forms the center of current Rhodes extraction efforts. Quality 4.

Five Lions 6a: This Martian planet boasts significant ice caps and active plate tectonics, though only a vestigial atmosphere. Debate on whether to put resources into terraforming it are ongoing. Gravity .81 Earth Standard. Quality 17.

Oyu Tolgoi (Five Lions 6b): Home to the local population in covered shelters, this Martian planet, while nearly completely lacking water or plate tectonics, has its own atmosphere. Comet bombardment away from populated areas is ongoing and is already beginning to show results. Gravity .79 Earth Standard. Quality 11.

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 8: Jovian planet, its rotation speed has resulted in an unusually calm upper atmosphere. Quality 15.

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

Five Lions 10a: A small icy moon. Quality 5.

Five Lions 10b: A large icy body, this was probably its own planetoid at some point before being captured due to the complex interplays of no less than 5 gas giants.

Population: 15,000,000

A rare system with a brown dwarf orbiting a G-type star (just barely in the limits of what's considered a single system rather than a binary), and with a Jovian planet orbiting that, and on top of that treasure trove a dual ice giant binary, Osliam presents a golden research opportunity, and was bid on by Omoikane despite its otherwise sparce resources and poor habitable prospects.

Osliam 1: A rare hot ice giant, this planet is actively shrinking on a measurable time scale. It must have migrated in as a much larger planet recently.

Osliam 1a: This once-rock-ice moon is now a tiny molten ellipse barely holding together.

Osliam 1b: This somewhat larger moon changes color unusually with its day, as the shade of its parent cools lava to a dull red before emerging back into the light heats the lava back to a healthy orange glow.

Osliam 1c: This entire moon glows dull red in its day, just barely solid, and cools to an unusually smooth moon in its night.

Osliam I: This asteroid belt was probably a planet before Osliam 1's passing tore it to shreds.

Osliam 3: A hothouse planet with a relatively thin atmosphere, it retains temperatures and pressures that are survivable with heavy-duty equipment on the surface—when it's not raining sulfuric acid, that is.

Osliam 4: This small Martian planet seems to have collected some of Osliam 1's offgassing in its move inwards, and has a renewed temporary atmosphere.

Osliam 5a: This planet seems to have survived at the edge of the frost line by siphoning gas off its smaller twin.

Osliam 5b: Barely a gas giant, this planet was probably only slightly smaller than Osliam 5a in the distant past.

Osliam 6: The focus of Omoikane colonization in-system, Osliam 6 retains plate tectonics from the nearby brown dwarf but no atmosphere, an odd combination.

Osliam 7: A brown dwarf, this substellar object long ago burnt its deuterium and now lies slowly cooling, glowing dimly red. It is, however, still giving off a prodigious amount of low IR radiation.

Osliam 7a: Once its own planet, Osliam 7a was captured at some point by Osliam 7, perhaps in the same interaction that threw Osliam 1 to its suicidal innermost orbit.

Osliam 7a1: This icy moon is simultaneously shrinking and becoming more habitable—while its outer layers of ice are sublimating, the fierce tides of its complex interplay with Osliam 7 and 7a are heating the inner ocean to temperatures comparable to terrestrial water sources. Some scientists even suggest a pocket of water vapor is forming under the ice, and may form an internal "sky" for as much as a hundred million years before the outer shell sublimates entirely.

Osliam 7a2: This moon is less lucky; its tides are so strong that they seem to slowly be ripping the moon apart. It won't have the honor of becoming more than an ephemeral ring; the same complex tides tearing at it will rapidly disperse its debris field. While it lasts, though, it's easy water harvesting.

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

A distant double G binary, Xotreh hosts a small habitable moon around Xotreh B, the smaller of the two stars. As such, development has focused on the second star, despite the fact that the jump points center closer to Xotreh A.

Xotreh A1: This world boasts an active liquid silicate cycle on its surface, with oceans of basalt and continents of granite. Gravity 0.38 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A2: A rather large airless world, its original atmosphere was likely blown off by a massive impact. Gravity 1.2 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Xotreh A3: A binary planetary pair of airless worlds about the size of Mars. Quality 6 and 8.

Xotreh A4: A hothouse planet with a planet-wide sulfuric acid storm due to its rapid rotation. Gravity .71 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A5 "Cueball": This planet is remarkably similar to Earth—if earth was buried under a kilometers-thick ice sheet across 90% of the surface. One day, as Xotreh A expands and dies, this world will become an ocean planet, but for now it's a cold desert. Gravity .87 Earth Standard. Quality 5.

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

Xotreh A7: A Jovian planet, Xotreh 7 corrals the entire inner system in line. Quality 10.

Xotreh B1: This planet must have once been a gas giant at least the size of Uranus before it was sent inwards. Now all that remains is a dense core with a molten surface. Gravity 1.51 Earth Standard. Quality 13.

Xotreh B2: A binary pair of earth-sized airless worlds. Quality 6 and 7.

Xotreh B3: Another once-gas giant, this planet remains far out enough to boast a wholly-solid surface of iron. Gravity 1.64 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Xotreh B4: A Jovian right on the frost line, its tidal heating keeps its moons on the edge of habitability. Quality 3.

Xotreh B4a "Sushi": An ocean world with massive polar ice caps, Omoikane has constructed a series of seasteads on the equatorial high ocean plateaus where it was feasible to drive foundations into the sea floor a few hundred meters below the surface. These small facilities serve as housing, data storage, and production centers for the research teams studying the dual Cthonian planets of Xotreh B. Gravity .67 Earth Standard. Quality 2.

Xotreh B4b: The lesser tidal heating here worsened the glaciation, and the planet lies under a planet-wide crust of ice. Gravity 1.13 Earth Standard. Quality 10.

Xotreh BI: The close proximity of this asteroid belt makes it an ideal location for resource extraction.

Xotreh 5: This Jovian is definitively beyond the habitable zone. Quality 6.

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

Xotreh 8a: An unremarkable icy sphere. Quality 8.

Xotreh 9: This planet would have a massive atmosphere, if it wasn't so cold it all froze and fell to the surface. Only a few degrees above the space surrounding it. Gravity 1.3 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Population: 54,000

Besides an interesting Jovian-gas dwarf planetary system, Bestreer holds little of interest other than its connections to other places.

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

Bestreer 3: This airless world once had a captured moon, torn apart at the Roche limit and forming a ring. A small gate maintenance and SAR team bases here, siphoning fuel and water from Bestreer 5 and mining into the surface for both resources and safe spaces for housing. Quality 10.

Bestreer 4: A rock-ice world. Quality 5.

Bestreer 5: Another rock-ice world made up more of ice than rock. Quality 5.

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

Bestreer 6: A large Jovian planet, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf. Quality 15.

Bestreer 6a: This gas dwarf might have become a gas giant in its own right without its massive sibling. Quality 5.

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

Bestreer 7a: An icy moon, with an internal ocean buried under kilometers of ice. Quality 12.

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

G-class star. A transshipping point to Radiant and environs, Mississippi keeps a substantial support crew on hand for possible cargo ship breakdowns or emergencies in-system, due to the slightly increased risk of issues from the absolute shambles of Akleod's inner system. A minor executive has also put together a cheap refueling and battery exchange station.

Akleod 1: Even actively evaporating and leaving behind a trail in orbit of dissipating volatiles, this body is large enough to have usurped Akleod 1a's orbit temporarily until it disappears away or the chaotic orbit of the two throws one into the star or out of the system. Quality 2.

Akleod 1a: The original Akleod 1, its orbit has been badly disrupted by the current, migrating Akleod 1. Which of the two gets ejected is still uncertain despite a decent amount of computational simulation; odds put it at 48-52% relatively. Quality 6.

Gnat's Ass (Akleod 2): A small, loosely-held-together icy body, perhaps what used to be an asteroid belt before Akleod 1's suicidal inner-system dive. It's not yet had time to fully reach hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 3.

Akleod 3: An icy planet similar to Akleod 1, perhaps an old sibling. Quality 13.

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

Akleod 4: A Jovian with an unusually elliptical orbit, it's regarded as the culprit for the chaos of Akleod's inner system. Quality 11.

Population: 5,000

As it turns out, transponder codes from regular priority messages through Gaid (now that we can see them, having backdoored the gate control) bear tags from a system, Thoa, along with navigational chart updates for any ships that happen to stop by. Thoa and Gaid both seem to have been nothing more than transit points to the far-more-valuable Radiant for Hermes-Ishtar, but Thoa holds a small anti-pirate base guarding against raiders from Signia. Hermes-Ishtar was apparently serious enough about it to have a converted corvette on station.

All told, the Thoa system holds gates to 2 systems besides Gaid's. There's also an unimproved jump point simply labelled as "dangerous." that leads to Signia

Thoa System Stats:

Thoa 1: A molten mess of a planet, it's hot enough that a residual atmosphere of vaporized low-melting-point metallics exists.

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

Thoa 3: A super-earth hothouse, this planet would have been uninhabitable due to its gravity even before turning scorchingly hot.

Thoa 3a: A captured asteroid barely on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium, the Nasty Bastardhad been excavating rudimentary shelters for "leave" for its crew.

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

Thoa 4a: A moon much like Mars in climate.

Thoa 5: A Jovian planet with an unusual triangular wind pattern at the poles.

Thoa 6: Blooms of hydrogen well up from the core of this Jovian, perhaps disturbed by some recent impact.

Thoa 7: Bathyscapes would find themselves at home on the surface of Thoa 7. Pressures much like that at Earth's seabed keep a crust of ice 3 stable enough robotic drones could walk on it.

Thoa 7a: Unusually, Thoa 7a is the only large icy body in the system. Scientists are unsure of where the others went. As the only easy source of volatiles, the UNasty Bastard periodically stopped by a handful of obsolete volatile collection systems on the surface to top up.

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

Kimberly: A fairly unremarkable and empty system, this site was chosen as Rhodes' spinward boneyard—a place for failed experiments, old equipment, and ships so worn they weren't worth maintaining anymore, but were still valuable enough to warrant not throwing into a gas giant or otherwise completely destroyed. For 2 decades a Rhodes-affiliated salvaging contractor worked here, gathering scrap and other valuables, but following high injury and death rates and low returns, the contract (and most non-local dumping) was cancelled in 2247 (4 years before the March Days.)

Kimberly 1: A large rocky planet, this must have migrated inwards from further out in the system a long time ago to be so large so close to its parent star.

Kimberly 2: A Martian planet that keeps a comfortable daytime temperature despite its lack of atmosphere due to a close orbit.

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

Kimberly I: This asteroid belt is actually combined with a thinly-spread junkyard corralled by Kimberly's 2 gas giants.

Kimberly 4: A Neptunian world, this planet has several starship hulks abandoned as the closest stable orbit to the gate out. An old deactivation hub orbits in resonance with Kimberly 4a, the former site of a salvaging operation.

Kimberly 4a: The only significant satellite in the system, this icy moon retains a thin crust and a massive subterranean freshwater ocean.

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

Current Position: Influential media figure and figurehead of Social Committee propaganda

Not a traditional diplomat, or a traditional individual 'Veronica Stardust' is the persona of a trio of XP broadcasters who have been working together since 2246 and has consistently been one of the most recognized figures across Charter space and is a local Elysian celebrity.

In Charter space those individuals who choose to make money by recording their lived experiences, of all kinds, for later playback are treated with an indulgent disdain by the polite classes as a mix of internet celebrity and sex worker despite the practice of selling XP experiences being common in the poorer segments of society and a smaller portion of the professional middle class attempting to stay afloat in a tight gig economy.

Amanda Redcrest was a former media programmer whose attempts to supplement her income with XP work backfired and saw her fired from her job. Contrarily, Kayla and Victoria both come from lower class backgrounds, though Kayla's attempts to climb into the middle class by earning a marketing degree were frustrated when her lower class status markers and financing of education via XP work saw her frozen out of the job market.

A former collaborator of Kayla's, Victoria had been a rising XP star in her own right and had no desire to change her station, but as her brief celebrity began to fade Victoria approached Kayla to propose the creation of a dedicated broadcasting persona that both would act as. Later bringing on Redcrest, who they'd both done crossover XP work with, to do technical work, the trio used carefully gathered market data and some intuition to create the "Veronica Stardust" persona of an middlingly-intelligent and freewheeling persona who played to the upper class's picture of what depravities and indignities the poorer class must get up to in their spare time.

From 2246 to 2251 the Veronica Stardust persona (performed by all three at various times, though primarily Victoria) produced experience recordings that were nearly always in the top 10 best sellers across Charter space.

Though they enjoyed the wealth that they brought in, the trio increasingly chafed at the market driven limitations of Veronica, and were considering a number of possibly catastrophic brand shifts when the March Days broke out and all three participated in street actions in a private capacity after sending one last broadcast as 'Veronica' to encourage revolt.

Since the formation of the Social Committee the figure of Veronica has been rebranded to serve as the figurehead of Social Committee Propaganda and several major initiatives have been launched with her at the forefront including a highly successful part of the anti-overproduction initiatives.

As part of the now-completed campaign to maintain the charade that Radiant was still under Charter control, Veronica Stardust continued to sell broadcasts to HI media chains, though the trio could not help but begin a brand shift towards a far more intelligent and radical persona.

Pros: XP Celebrity, influential, well known, inspiring to the middle and lower classes

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

Diplomatic Goals: Defeat the Charters in the field of public opinion, push social revolution and freedom of information and communication, cause public opinion to oppose attacking Radiant

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

Ares Military Grade - Access to mid-sized shipyards, bonuses to planetary army combat. Bonus to completion of Chinook remodeling

Rhodes Light industrial Grade - 10% increase to all mining income, reduced Cost for BLG and other actions that use basic fabber processes

Rhodes Heavy Industrial Grade - Massive discount on mining upgrades, able to unlock automated technologies with Omoikaine

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Omoikane Consumer Grade - +1 to FRM reserach for each two tech bases unlocked (+6 currently)

Omoikane Enterprise Grade - +5 to blue sky research, automation with Omoikane

Hermes-Ishtar Consumer Grade - Your economy doesn't crash when the turn of funding

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

MSI Consumer Grade - Consumer Goods, Drones, and personal vehicles, +2 to domestic projects in IndComm and SocComm

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

The Box: Fabber the size of a X-box that can, with time, materials and power, print the components for a full sized box. Less efficient, but easy to print and hide.

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

Born into poverty on Earth as the twenty-second century began to wane, young 22-year old Maria Awhina caught up in radical anti-Charter politics during the third black summer of 2187 and was convicted of property destruction during the rioting and sentenced to serve as a contractor to Hermes-Ishtar until her contract was paid off.

The stark choice of starvation or service to Hermes-Ishtar caused Maria to descend into self-destructive behavior where for twenty years Ms. Awhina continuously volunteered for the highest paid and most dangerous positions that Hermes-Ishtar had available.

Hermes-Ishtar considers Special Operations Lieutenant Awhina to have served with distinction throughout the heavy skirmishing of that era, though Maria herself continues to carry guilt for her service and her survival.

After performing exceptionally well in a hostage rescue operation Awhina was transferred to the Protective Detail Division of Hermes-Ishtar Security, and was eventually assigned to serve as the head of the Radiant Vice President's protective detail.

Over the next four decades she came to see the world as her home, and while her professionalism never wavered, her loyalty to the company who still owned her contract did.

This March, Maria had the option to gun down her fellow planetary headquarters workers to secure Yang's escape, or to finally return to roots in anti-Charter agitation. The fact that we are all here today shows what choice she made.

Pros:

-Actual Combat Veteran, knows Radiant inside and out, special operations expert, professional.

Cons:

-only academic knowledge of starship operations, logistics, organization command and strategic operations.

Command Traits:

-Objective oriented, unflappable, aggressive, prefers attacks and operations to come from unexpected angles.

Reports from the Permanent Commission for Military Intelligence on hostile forces in neighbouring systems:

Blue Squadron:
-Allegiance: Ares Combat Solutions
-Service: Mars Interstellar Security
-CO: Rear Admiral Weylon Kang
-Flagship: MIS Yorktown

We know little about Rear Admiral Weylon Kang except that he has received a number of commendations from the MIS board for keeping costs low while on deployment. He appears to be making an effort to clamp down on the rumours racing back and forth across the fleet.

MIS Yorktown
-British Empire-class Fleet Tender
MIS Eurymedon
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS La Rochelle
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Rachado
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Second Schooneveld
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Matapan
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Valcour Island
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Kerch Strait
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Galveston Harbour
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Sarych
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS River Plate
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Third San Francisco
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Scipio Africanus
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Suleiman I
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Louis Botha
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Fort Ware
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Mackinac
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Osage
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Arabian
-Postal-class Courier
MIS Macedonia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Citerior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Ulterior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Gallia Narbonensis
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Sicilia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Corsica et Sardinia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery B
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery C
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal B
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal C
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal D
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal E
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal F
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation
Battery B
-Airstrike Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal B
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Strikecraft Wing, ID# 48603
-Radiance-Type Strikecraft

-None

Local Security Forces
-Approximately fifty strong volunteer station security militia drawn from station personnel

Local Security Forces:
-Deep Space Security Solutions (Omoikane Subsidiary) Customs shuttle squadron based out of Xotreh B-4a's orbital station
-Three companies of Standard Planetary Security Company (Ares subsidiary) troops based out of Xotreh B-4a's habitat complexes for internal security and law enforcement

139th Solarian Navy Squadron:
-Allegiance: Solarian Compact
-Service: Solarian Navy
-CO: Vice Admiral David Visser
-Flagship: SNS Krak de Chevaliers

Thanks to his heavy handed labour discipline and extractive tribute and demands for corvee labour from Ascension Admiral Visser is viscerally hated by the populace of Ascension, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Solarian Force as well. While the gate's completion draws near, it is uncertain what path that Visser will persue.

SNS Krak de Chevaliers
-Star-hold-Class light-tender
SNS Victoria Newman
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Julia Stonechild
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Robert Chuikov
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Wallace Al-Wazir
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Dawn's Early Light
-Freedom's Light-class cruiser
SNS Jacob Nagumo
-Herald Kanumba-Class frigate
SNS Alexander Hamilton
-Liberation-class troop transport

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

PCMI Provides new system data on the single system that lies beyond beyond Five Lions:

Mobile Force:

Current Orders: Defend the All Radiant Congress by acting as a rapid response in the event of any hostile acts.

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

-Red Wolf Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Home Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol, act as a reserve force

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

CNS Nasty Bastard, A Jury Rigged Mess of a Drone Carrier

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

CO: Overseen by Admiral Gregory Mansur in his capacity as MilComm Chief of Naval Operations

Radiant Customs Squadron, Arabia-class boarding craft with marine contingents

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Frontier Force

Current Orders: Keep watch on SolNav force in Raphanus, assist with integration of Ascension military forces, patrol Spinward frontier

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

CNS Valiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Defiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

CNS Reliant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

CNS Actium, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain John Rankin

CNS Crête-à-Pierrot, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

CNS Valmy, New Model-Class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

Resources
Naval Ship Types: Ship Types (Public Version)
Naval Officers: Congressional Navy Officers (Public Version)
System Codex: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtNbPCcPsTK7HCHKo9dPgK7ntx5tBKOpltrZb_In7GY/edit#
Blaze Zhang: Blaze Zhang is trans-masc. That means his pronouns are he/him.

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BiopunkOtrera · May 1, 2024

Pacific City: San Jose District

Kusanagi 519 watched from the open door of the VTOL as Pacific city went by underneath. It was a hot spring in Pacific City, unseasonably hot, and it was going to shade into a hot summer. 519 remembered when this kind of weather had left a hot kerosene stink in the air, even at high altitude. She remembered when that had become the coarse, swimming pool smell of ozone from improperly shielded fusion cells. Now, almost a year since the most recent revolution, the air smelled cleaner. Actually, what it mostly smelled off to 519's boosted senses was construction. The old skyline of Pacific City had started to bloom with new towers. One high density habitation block after another, constructed in the ruins of uninhabited investor property and old ruins. Each tower was lit up with a mass of safety lights, glistening through the bio-engineered vines that grew across them. New residential spaces. New spaces for people to attempt art, or recreation, or whatever commercial style projects.

It had been like this when she'd been very young. In the opening days of the Federation. So many new buildings. That sense of newness in the air.

She remembered the smell of smoke when the city burned. Withdrawing, retreating. Running out of everything, fighting with knives and small arms against an enemy who had drones, lasers, and orbital fire.

The crashing explosion that had blown her limb from limb. Her late induction into the brigade.

She remembered fighting again during the Fourteen Days. Only a year ago now. Up against their old foes one last time. Human Error Processor moving in with tanks and armoured vehicles against them with drones and UVIIEDS..

And then the whole city coming alive.

But still, so many had–

"Hey." A hand squeezed her shoulder. "Don't get sad on me. We're doing something cool. We might get interviewed for a podcast or something afterwards."

She glanced over at Cobra-114, her sometime girlfriend and former blood enemy. The one time Human Error Processor operator was a little shorter than 519, and still did the corporate femme thing with long white hair and a stealth suit coloured to sort of look like a one piece swimsuit. She looked like a gacha game character, which was obviously the intention. 519 in the meantime was going for a more dashing butch look, basic black suit done slightly baggier, tactical vest on top.

Out of combat, the unit didn't worry too much about uniform cut and colour so long as everyone wore the patch. It gleamed on the shoulder of each of the platoon strength units in the VTOL's troop bay. A flying locust, black on a red field, in its centre the hourglass.

Locust Army.

They were Cicadas no more.

#

Jackie watched the VTOLs come in. They were new, with x shaped wings on top, cycling on as they began their approach. It circled once around the old police station then began to settle. The converter planes were new, with a top wing surface that could spin up to provide vertical lift and then convert over into a set of quad wings for level flight. The jetwash in rotor mode was heavy. The lifter's large wing surfaces gave it even more slap than a helicopter and the cat augment's ears flattened slightly as the aircraft touched down. Her long black hair whipped in the breeze. Beside her, Morgans, the head of the Committee, winced slightly at the downwash.

Jackie didn't like using the old police precinct. She thought it sent the wrong message. If there was one thing that the San Jose Criminal Investigation Committee didn't want to be associated with, it was the old Pacific PD. Especially not when she'd once been a member of it.

The problem of course was that you needed the functions of a police station. Pacific City's council of delegates did not see the CIC as a high priority for the provision of new buildings. Not when the Los Angeles district alone had a pre-broadcast homeless population approached five hundred thousand fully unhoused, with millions more pushed into capsule dorms or those rotting, unsafe condoplexes and three hundred year old commie blocks. Not when the city's previous utility companies had apparently been conducting an experiment on how long the old Democratic Federation infrastructure could be left without maintenance before it broke down.

In her secret heart, Jackie thought they were probably making the right decision. It was months since they'd had to connect the box-provided water purification units to the mains in her building. You could smell how clean the air was, even with the construction dust, even just from killing the worst of the cheap chemical fabricators that had operated more or less under the radar.

Still it put them in this old police post, whose top floor was still black and exposed to the elements because it had cells and secure evidence rooms and most importantly: office space. It made them, potentially, like the people who'd once lived there, and that was not an association that Jackie ever wanted.

In the courtyard below, a transporter was offloading a group of tactical robots. Heavy forty ton machines on a complex system of legs and wheels. Each one had a big laser and railgun in its central turret.

The VTOLs settled onto the pad and two squads of cyborgs and their drones began to shake loose, hopping heavily to the ground.

We're actually doing this. Jackie thought as she followed Morgan to meet the locusts. Holy shit.

#

"You a cop before the broadcast?" 519 asked the augment who'd met them. Her VI tagged her as Jackie Cano. The same name she'd introduced her under. She was tall, though not as tall as the cyborgs, with dark skin and darker hair, done long, just about the only feminine thing about her. The kind of person who got called dashing, and stylish, and who other women giggled over secretly. A bit like 519 herself.

The woman bristled slightly. "For a little while. I quit."

"Hey, null sweat, Sis." 114 waved. "I was a Human Error Processor. I fought in the battle of LA. We were way worse."

Cano sighed slightly. "I'm from some shitty exurb in the rockies okay? I needed a job, and bought the line about cops protecting people. Then I found out what we were really doing."

"Like she said," 519 said. "No sweat. We just like to know who we're working for."

"Also you still walk like a cop." 114 grinned. "It's cute. I like the suit."

Cano coughed, cutting off the conversation by opening the door to the briefing room where half a dozen IC were waiting, mostly decked out in combat gear. 519 had been in a lot of rooms like this over the years, even though there had been a big gap in the middle where she'd received briefings through electronic uploads while hanging upside down in some old tunnel or crawl space. Even then, you sometimes had to get with a group of mortals and talk out what you were going to do.

She shouldn't call them mortals. It was a bad habit. Especially when they weren't.

There was a general staring at the Locusts, but a release of tension too. 519 had seen it a lot before with various militias, investigative committees and the like. Nobody ever wanted to call the Locusts down, but when the decision had been made, it was reassuring for the super soldiers to turn up.

The cyborgs dispersed around the room, finding seats within the ranks of IC detectives. Cano walked to the front. "Alright," she said. "Most of you know this already but we'll go over it for our guests. Here's our target."

A figure of a man appeared on the screen. A normal looking guy, tall and thin, with the slight bulge of the eyes that showed corrective implants. He looked like the kind of guy who in another age would have been bald. A real hairless energy. "This is Wayne Christie. Former LAPD SWAT officer and, so our investigation has led us to believe, likely responsible for the deaths of more than twenty women over the last fifteen years."

The LAPD, and indeed all the district PDs were very much poor stepchildren of the overwhelming Pacific PD; SWAT in particular had been regarded as a second tier unit by the real go teams, the Pacific City Rapid Response Force and Tactical Group. The Tacs and the Rapids had fought bitterly over what scraps the Solarian Marshals had left them, and mostly got fuckups and burnouts. Units like SWAT had been an order of magnitude worse, and were always scrounging for funds and recruits. Those kind of notionally elite but second or third tier units were always incredibly insular. A perfect place for a serial killer to hide. Jackie had heard much of the budget was from Hermes-Ishtar, to let them use the name in various dramas. The whole LAPD had been maintained for name recognition more than anything, the dissolution of the LAPD having been one of the first things that the Democratic Federation's pacific coastal component had enacted during its first mastery over North America.

"His victims were mostly sex workers and runaways. People who wouldn't be missed, or whose deaths could be blamed on those close to them. Records show that he was interviewed as a witness by the LAPD and Pacific PD several times but for whatever reason he was released without trial."

"Testimony from members of the union of prostitutes," she nodded to the beautiful black woman sitting at one side of the briefing room, "has been vital in identifying Christie as the principal suspect in these previously unsolved murders. We have considerable old forensic evidence from the Pacific PD vaults linking him to the crime. As of twenty hours ago, the Revolutionary Court of Los Angeles has issued a warrant for his arrest."

New slide, showing a building. A large, square box. Empty looking and abandoned. One of the mid-rise blocks of office space that appeared in little clumps wherever a Charter or one of the major multinationals had set up. One of the signs, in 519's opinion, of the sclerosis of the Compact had been the return of the giant office complex, which had been hard to sustain even before the first revolution. Modern companies, the Charters included, had recreated many of the worst practices of the 20th century, open plan offices prowled by a strata of middle managers designed to force workers into a performance of productivity, and fitted with a complex set of sensors and VIs to assess and punish minute by minute drops in productivity.

The white collar revolution had taken no time at all to dispense with both of these systems, both of which had been agreed by most workers to only decrease their actual ability to do their jobs. White collar work now took place the same way that the richer elite had done it, from home offices, or small local work shares for those who wanted geographical separation between work and home life.

The blocks themselves, though, were a problem. Even more than the investor grade buildings, which were mostly totally inefficient but at least liveable. Sewerage, windows, nothing was designed to handle residential occupancy. They were some of the few capitalist ghosts still haunting Pacific City, and the City Committee was pulling them down as fast as possible.

A good place to hide out.

"An attempt has been made to detain Christie at his usual place of residence in Santa Clara, but he appears to have gone on the run. However, witnesses have reported him near the old Santa Clara administration centre. We've managed to track him to a camp in the shopping atrium of one of these towers. However, this is where the snag happens. The suspect has close ties with several local counter revolutionary groups and former officers of the LAPD SWAT. He is known to have a number of weapons and drones. So, that's where our friends in the Locust Army come in."

She looked over at 519, who nodded and stepped forward. She let her movements be as alien as possible; you had to impress people. "Hi there. Thanks for inviting us. So our mission is to capture this guy, alive, if possible. Dead, if not." She threw up a map on the screen. "Here's how we do it."

#

Earth was not really what 114 was expecting. She'd been here more than a year and a half and it still did not look the way it should.

She'd expected it to look like the virtual dramas she'd watched as a child about the last days of the Democratic Federation, or maybe like various crime dramas and action thrillers you saw about the mean streets of Earth. A place with real age. Old 20th century buildings, bright but tarnished 21st century work spaces to symbolise the Fin de millénaire grandeur of Earth's corporations who'd climbed so high and so fast before collapsing under their own hubris, but whose fall had given birth to a new world in the process. Or even those gigantic, Democratic Federation megastructures, always filmed to look both sinister and dilapidated with propaganda murals eternally lashed into faded megalomania by dust and rain.

The reality was just way too normal. Great portions of Pacific City were just like walking around Penglai or Columbia or Atlantis. God awful print homes of instantly rusted metal and dirty sapphire. Fucked up investor homes whose bright exterior often hid rot and the invasion of nature within. And of course, the inevitable Admin towers with their great subterranean mall spaces, born to die commercial real estate sold to dumb investors and helpless employees as a perk. Corporate kitsch masquerading as work benefit: "Employees will enjoy full access to our already dying mall." The kind of places her father had guarded from the security room. The human liability link who sat in a chair and waited to get sued if something went wrong.

He'd been a very responsible guy, who always paid his anti-liability insurance, even when it meant that they'd have to skip meals. He'd also been an extremely pilled conspiracy nut who talked a lot about the (((Hidden Masters))). He hadn't liked it when his son, who he'd been grooming on Counter-Strike, baseball, and wanderers' fire, had decided she was a woman.

There was a distinct kind of suck that came from being a minority that didn't have it worst. Non-binary people and augments, you knew they were worse off than you, but being a binary transwoman was not great. She told her parents and they suddenly expected her to be the most girlish girl ever, and became disapproved of even the slightest hint of Tomboy. 114 had always preferred to dress femme, but she still liked guns, and Counter-Strike, and her lethanim and posthumans had shattered the legions of the last empire on more than one occasion. They hadn't been particularly happy that she still wanted to fuck girls either, even if they'd been even less willing to admit it.

It was, frankly, a miracle that 114 had turned out as normal as she was. Merely being willing to murder people while dressed like a bishoujo pinup for a corporation was pretty normal, all things considered.

Really it had been a natural enough decision. She'd always loved stories of the Cicadas of Earth. Distant enough from Penglai for them to be a safe topic of furtive fascination. You could tell badass, idealistic stories of former DemFed units, dying a romantic death for a Federation that had already betrayed them, or cynical tales of the faded remnants, with only the ashen embers of their idealism, fighting their long war. Of course there were also a lot of media types that presented them as literal demons, but she never liked those. If they were supernatural, surely she couldn't become one of them.

When Omoikane had sought her out, they'd presented themselves as more or less the inheritors of the old Federation. Not the anarchist Iconoclasm of course. Never that, but the idea that some day, after the right people had built the right technology there might be a world without scarcity or want.

It had taken thirty years, and the capture by the very force she'd idolised to realise it had all been a lie. They had never really wanted to build a better future. They only wanted the aesthetics of one. Her enemies had been kinder than her employers had ever been. They'd seen her talent. Given her a squad. She had a new purpose now. A true future to fight for.

Sometimes she wondered what had happened to her father, or to her mother. Probably they were dead.

Good fucking ridance.

This admin block, though. Even without the assault prep in virtual, it was like running through a familiar Counter-Strike map. Just another white collar slave complex. She'd fought corporate rivals, Seamstresses (and, to her shame, more than some leftists) in them on Penglai, Atlantis and Columbia. She'd used seeker grenades and fuel air explosives to kill fascist holdouts in structures all but identical to this in Toronto, New York, and Brasilia.

The enemy were camping in the mall level, having stacked out one of the basement food courts which still had a functional set of food printers. Power and feed usage suggested they'd probably got an already jailbroken commercial fabricator down there and were using it to run their own little camp. Really, it was quite close to the kind of tiny commune that was appearing all across human space, as people who wanted to just dropped out, feeling no need for society.

Most dropouts who weren't racists would come back. You eventually wanted stuff your little commune couldn't build itself, and people wanted it from you. Nobody wanted these guys though. Still, it was a good way for them to hide out, up until you got detected and someone sent a platoon of Locusts after you. There had been discussion about just dropping a PGM on the place, but the local committee wanted their collar, or at least a body. Or maybe they just thought bombing their own city was a bad look. 114 wasn't sure about that. She wasn't going to kill anyone who actually surrendered, but the world would certainly be better off without them. Then again, couldn't the same have once been said about her?

They'd made entry through an old utility tunnel that one of the ex-VdCB fighters had known about. It was just the Locusts moving in. The local police and their combat crabs were still waiting in convoy on one of the nearby highways, stopped at a fake argument with a local committee who'd agreed to yell very loudly about police overreach and bringing assault armour into their district. The current cordon was sensory rather than real, but the convoy would deploy as soon as they made contact.

114's squad were moving with a tight screen, wary of microbot detectors, their ancillary guns and combat swarms flaring around them, visible only in slight motions of the carpet. The current stealth suits they wore were even better than the ones they'd had in the revolution, close fitting bodysuits designed to work naturally with the cyborgs' already cold internal organs. Her whole team knew how to move in total silence, even on hard concrete. They were a mixed force. Old HEP and VdCB operatives, newbie ex-military and revolutionary fighters, even one survivor from Helen Keller brigade.

114 didn't expect any ambush here. The walls here were thick enough it would take mines to blast through them in an ambush, and 114 was confident her sonar would alert her to such an attack in time. Still, it paid to be careful. They didn't have informational superiority in the mall itself.

Finally, they reached the area which the briefing had called the "staff only" door. This led out into the main court of the mall outside the enemy camp. 114's point woman, an ex-VdCB operative called Kusanagi-18 moved up to cover it, her microbots swarming over it for a moment then gave a thumbs up. Not wired.

<<519, this is 114.>>

<<114 go.>>

<<We're at the initial point.>>

<<628 here. Also in position.>>

<<Copy. Peek it.>>

They didn't have eyes in the main atrium. 114 extended a probe from her arm under the door and swung it around. The side of the restaurant that the enemy was hiding in had been barricaded. A single man stood outside as sentry. 114 looked around for any detectors, then, satisfied, gave 18 the thumbs up. A microbot wormed under the door and swept forward, alighting on one of the firing slits inside.

The inside of the restaurant had been mostly wrecked, with a half dozen armed men lounging around on the remaining benches. The fascists were all very obvious. Shaved heads, printed green clothing done in imitation of some ancient military power or another. Body armour that they were too slack to actually wear. The four others, though, they were interesting. They looked, frankly, like Seamstresses, or, 114's finely trained sense of corporate decorum suggested, corporate security masquerading as such. Two men and two women, all bland, cold eyed and heavily muscled. No visible implants, but short and hulking in a way that suggested drug enhancement and muscle implantation training under high-G.

That was a highly unusual training regime. Most people who wanted to go that far would just get cybernetic implants.

She'd seen this before. Somewhere. She remembered it with biomemory only, which meant it must have been years ago, but it implied some things. 114 suddenly wondered what she hadn't for a long while: why had Human Error Processor been deployed to Morro Bay in the first place?

No time now. <<They're meeting someone.>>

<<Let's hear what they're saying.>>

One of the women looked around. 114 saw her glance at the firing slit. <<'Fraid not. They just saw the micro. Hit them with the swarm.>>

There was a wet snap as the first high velocity swarm munition hit the sentry.

And then the outer area of the mall blew apart. The blast was strong enough to knock the staff only door down and make 114 sway on her feet. "Wahaho!!" she laughed. She hadn't expected a giant explosion! Nothing on her tactical overlay showed a friendly device. Instead it looked like the unknown team had detonated a big surprise to get out.

The blast had also fucked up the drones the other section had launched. Still, they were close. 114's squad stormed out of the door, guns up, vision switched to full spectral in the dust. 18, first through the door, was almost cut in half by another explosive charge, this one laid invisibly behind the door. The circular explosive sent a shape charge down through the cyborg's head. The strike would have been a pure kill on anyone but a Locust army trooper but the latest upgrade package had moved the operative's brains to a heavily armoured vault in the back of the centre mass. As it was, 18 was in the golden hour of dying.

114 pushed past it. Losses could be cried over later. She was busy not dying herself. Still, how had they hidden that one? 18 had been- was- an operative with centuries of experience, and equipped with the latest equipment. Yet she'd fully missed the device laid to cover the door. That wasn't anything a bunch of fascist former third rate cops could manage.

She pushed through more. Couldn't worry about it now. Swarms and counter swarms warred in the air. The four operatives were running. 114 saw them go. They moved fast and tactically, one covering, the other three moving, dodging into the concrete pillars. Their thermal signatures blurred out as they engaged high end stealth systems.

It must have been some very clever use of shaped charges to blow a hole into the mall section without frying the squishies inside, but they'd done it. Half the dust is water, they must have tamped it down with water to control the explosion. Cheap and effective. Too smart for cops and militia.

114 shot at one and missed. Behind her the Helen Keller Brigade member, who just went by Locust-404 aimed and shot. 114 admired, briefly, the way she'd used a mix of selectively cutting through her full spectrum vision to see a distortion in the dust. She'd dropped one of the stealth suits. He jerked back, still shooting, then his head exploded from the inside.

Suicide charge.

The other Locust element was moving to cut off the three remainder, aborting their part of the L to chase the more interesting target.

There was another massive detonation. "Shit" <<100 and 222 are down. Watch out. They've got their escape path rigged too.>> 518 called in.

Both Locusts were flashing distress on the unit telemetry. The bomb had done a number on them. 100 was delimbed, and 222 was simply not reporting. 114 winced inside, that probably meant she was extremely dead.

<<Netcall, this is Locust-6.>> That was 519 talking to the friendly squishies. <<We've got at least three leakers heading out of the hole. Perimeter, this is your pigeon.>> You couldn't use the really cool call signs anymore. It was a shame. You just had to use ones that would be clear to a bunch of militia.

Outside, the crabs and militia were swarming off their low loaders. No time to watch that now. 114 ran to the side of the restaurant. Hind-111, another human error processor cyborg moved behind. 404 pulled out a stun grenade and hucked it in through the destroyed door. There was a loud explosion of light and sound and the Locusts stormed into the building.

A fascist popped up behind the bar with an elephant gun and 111 splattered him. Several other armed fascists met the same fate as the Locusts worked their sectors. The suspect was on the ground. He'd lost his rifle somewhere but 114 saw his eyes go to a big bear protection revolver on the ground next to him.

"Freeze where you are!" she called, aiming her gun. Could he even hear her? She switched on amplification. "Don't do it man. You can surrender. I know you killed a bunch of people but there's actual justice now. You'll probably just end up on a nice psychiatric island with bright sun and–"

Christie went for the gun. 114 had locked him up with her gun's VI, and the twitch was well within its shoot parameters. His unaugmented muscles only got him a few centimetres before she put three rounds into him. He dropped, dead before he could even touch the revolver.

"Oh well." 114 shrugged. She'd fired centre mass, so maybe he could still be salvaged. <<Clear.>>

111 aimed her gun over the bar. <<Clear.>>

404 poked one of the fascists over. <<Clear.>>

114 looked around, checking each face against her recognition program. All the reported targets were down. <<We're soft clear inside the main restaurant. 404, take your element and check the back rooms.>> That should be all of them but it wouldn't hurt to check.

That took care of the fascists, and she noticed they did have a live one. Good. Now let's see about these runners. <<508, this is 114. We've got all the reported fascists. Get us some medics here and let's see who can be revived to stand trial.>>

She glanced into the hole ahead. <<We'd better be careful. These people must love bombs.>>

#

Jackie winced as explosions erupted. There was gunfire too, but it was dwarfed by the explosions. She'd seen combat during the revolution, and made sure to do her virtual training, but nothing prepared you for the real thing. She wasn't actually part of the militia proper, she was just a reserve, camped out in the area of mostly abandoned slum housing that lay to the north of the admin block. The residents here had been high priority to move into new public housing, and had left a tangled mess of structures cut by surprisingly wide streets behind. If things had gone as they should, the perimeter team should have had time to get into position even here, but instead explosions were going off everywhere, taking out remote sensors and blocking the way from the highway in a wall of fire. Curses and tense medical calls suggested at least some of the militia teams forming the perimeter had been caught by a secondary device deployed to block their route.

It looked like she was going to see action after all.

Jackie looked at the six officers with her and then whistled. They were all dressed as city workers, with a pair of minitrucks with covered payloads. The covers dropped away and the two assault crabs underneath dropped down. Let them lead the way. She pulled her rifle from out of the van and pulled down her tactical visor.

She glanced at the tower and the plume of dust. The whole structure had started to list badly. This was a bit much for just a serial killer wasn't it? No time to think about that now. She got her rifle up and ran down the street after the crabs. The things were mobile cover so they could move pretty fast. There was a large drainage channel between the slum and the old corporate complex, with only one way down. Only one real crossing point.

<<Locust-6. This is Stone-6.>>

<<Stone-6.>>

<<Are the runners augmented?>> she asked.

<<Not significantly. If you're thinking of the drainage channel you should be able to block it. Watch out though. There could be more of them down there.>>

Jackie checked each of the windows. They had swarms overhead, drones, and the assault armour, they should be–

She saw the man pop up in the window as the flicker of a stealth suit on her visor. The visor should have let her see it much earlier, but hadn't. Now she was screwed. The man was going to fire an ATGW into them, and blow her and her relatively lightly armoured colleagues to hell, as far away from the crabs as they were.

She saw him turn, aim, and fire. A pair of weapons, high velocity unitary charges, apparently armoured against the crabs point defence ripped into them. Both crabs blew up instantly. Jackie threw herself flat, and sent a frantic signal to the swarm above. The side of the building the ATGW was in vanishes in dust under a tide of micro missiles.

Morgan ran up and grabbed her, pulling her into better cover. "You okay?"

"They had us fucking cold," Jackie gasped. "Why'd they shoot the crab? I just got them with the swarm."

Morgan looked at her like she was crazy, then peered over the top of the concrete block they were sheltering behind at the burning structure. "Beats the fuck out of me," he muttered, then braced his carbine. "Come on, let's see if we can get the others."

Gladsome · May 1, 2024

I really adore this setting, and this was a really interesting PoV ^^

So glad we're still getting more Tyrants

TheGrape · May 1, 2024

BiopunkOtrera said:
and, to her shame, more than some leftists

Why be ashamed? Participating in circular firing squads just means you're a real leftist. That you did so before being an actual leftist doesn't matter.

thatone_dude · May 1, 2024

great update

these guys reek of CIA or whatever the compact's calling them nowadays
can't wait to see where this goes from here!

TheBarrometer · May 1, 2024

BiopunkOtrera said:
"This is Wayne Christie. Former LAPD SWAT officer and, so our investigation has led us to believe, likely responsible for the deaths of more than twenty women over the last fifteen years."

Well, I already see this being spun as by Compact friendly "media" as "evil anarchists murder long serving cop, a known community figure"

TheArcanist · May 1, 2024

Setsul said:
In a more comedic universe, the rest of the season, or at least the rest of the episode, would then be spent repeatedly capturing Roderick to at least put her physically back into her office, with her escaping via increasingly whacky means and trying to lay low in increasingly whacky disguises.

it ends with Roderick and JN OK literally swapping bodies in a deranged Freaky Friday accident

Ekzentric Lohner · May 1, 2024

BiopunkOtrera said:
Two men and two women, all bland, cold eyed and heavily muscled. No visible implants, but short and hulking in a way that suggested drug enhancement and muscle implantation training under high-G.

That was a highly unusual training regime. Most people who wanted to go that far would just get cybernetic implants.

She'd seen this before. Somewhere. She remembered it with biomemory only, which meant it must have been years ago, but it implied some things. 114 suddenly wondered what she hadn't for a long while: why had Human Error Processor been deployed to Morro Bay in the first place?

BiopunkOtrera said:
She hadn't expected a giant explosion! Nothing on her tactical overlay showed a friendly device.

BiopunkOtrera said:
Still, how had they hidden that one? 18 had been- was- an operative with centuries of experience, and equipped with the latest equipment. Yet she'd fully missed the device laid to cover the door. That wasn't anything a bunch of fascist former third rate cops could manage.

BiopunkOtrera said:
He jerked back, still shooting, then his head exploded from the inside.

Suicide charge.

BiopunkOtrera said:
Jackie checked each of the windows. They had swarms overhead, drones, and the assault armour, they should be–

She saw the man pop up in the window as the flicker of a stealth suit on her visor. The visor should have let her see it much earlier, but hadn't.

BiopunkOtrera said:
"They had us fucking cold," Jackie gasped. "Why'd they shoot the crab? I just got them with the swarm."

Lots of "Why didn't my tech pick up these guys?" No cybernetics unless you count the suicide charges in their heads. Targeting the tactical robots but not the human with them.

114 suddenly wondered what she hadn't for a long while: why had Human Error Processor been deployed to Morro Bay in the first place?

I think this is one of Omoikane's Legionnaire units (or whatever they're called) that they send in to wipe out potential ASI breaches.

Genolution · May 1, 2024

What do they mean by the "Golden Hour" by the way? It seems that Kusanagi-18 got hit by a shaped charge that would have killed her if not for her upgrades, but then Cobra-114's narration starts to pointedly speak of her in the past tense.

Weird Guy · May 1, 2024

Genolution said:
What do they mean by the "Golden Hour" by the way? It seems that Kusanagi-18 got hit by a shaped charge that would have killed her if not for her upgrades, but then Cobra-114's narration starts to pointedly speak of her in the past tense.

If I had to guess, the Golden Hour is a term referring to the time left that critically injured augmented soldiers have to receive medical attention before whatever emergency life support they have fails and results in brain death.

Torgamous · May 1, 2024

Ekzentric Lohner said:
I think this is one of Omoikane's Legionnaire units (or whatever they're called) that they send in to wipe out potential ASI breaches.

On the upside, it sounds like they haven't found MINUET yet.

Genderite · May 1, 2024

Genolution said:
What do they mean by the "Golden Hour" by the way? It seems that Kusanagi-18 got hit by a shaped charge that would have killed her if not for her upgrades, but then Cobra-114's narration starts to pointedly speak of her in the past tense.

I think it means she's still going to die just not instantly. So she still suffers through the pain first.

BiopunkOtrera · May 1, 2024

Genolution said:
What do they mean by the "Golden Hour" by the way? It seems that Kusanagi-18 got hit by a shaped charge that would have killed her if not for her upgrades, but then Cobra-114's narration starts to pointedly speak of her in the past tense.

The golden hour is basically the time where if you can get someone to a hospital alive you can keep them that way from most any trauma. The level of trauma that can be is a lot higher if you're a Locust Soldier than a normal human of course.

Derpmind · May 1, 2024

Torgamous said:
On the upside, it sounds like they haven't found MINUET yet.

I think that makes logical sense. They wouldn't still be hanging around if MINUET had been destroyed; they'd have left by now.

A combination of extremely hard to detect gear and a mountain of explosives is a scary combo. They could've rigged up exit routes all over the place, and without a decent way to detect them, the entire area is a massive danger zone. Plus, there are probably other teams hiding out around the city, too.

Model DC.14F · May 1, 2024

A probably relevant section from Mere Anarchy Part 2, that hints at what's going on here:

"We've known that Ascension's been rogue for over a fucking year now. And what's this about MINUET being in a Stage I GENESIS breach?" she taps the table with a single finger insistently, "ALL codeword events must be reported to a full meeting of the executive board immediately. To do otherwise could indicate unproductive secretivity or ineffective personal behaviours."

The head of Pacific Labs, Michael Zimmerman sucks in air through his teeth as all heads turn to look at him, "A contract seamstress from the Redwood Lab Complex in Pacific City was converted into a PROPHET and went code NOAH with MINUET a week ago, but we never-"

Takara cuts in, "It was a stage I breach that HEP and NERO were tracking through the old DF megaurban districts of Pacific City. It was being handled fully effectively until ARIA's intervention changed the calculus."

So those four outliers are probably the LEGIONNAIRE NERO group that were tracking down MINUET before the broadcast. There was also mention of an AUGUSTUS team based in Eurasia that was being sent as reinforcements, with orders to kill everyone involved.

Torgamous · May 1, 2024

Derpmind said:
I think that makes logical sense. They wouldn't still be hanging around if MINUET had been destroyed; they'd have left by now.

Also, meeting with people who open up new security holes and are not in any position to get them out of the city, and shooting the tachikomas first in a way that wouldn't make sense if they thought MINUET was dead.

DracoDracul · May 1, 2024

Ekzentric Lohner said:
Lots of "Why didn't my tech pick up these guys?" No cybernetics unless you count the suicide charges in their heads. Targeting the tactical robots but not the human with them.

I think this is one of Omoikane's Legionnaire units (or whatever they're called) that they send in to wipe out potential ASI breaches.

Makes sense, no cybernetics so no magic hollywood hacking that Omoikane might fear from an ASI.

obssesednuker · May 1, 2024

So they're assuming all the drones and robots are ASI controlled and thus the greater threat? Fits with their brainworms.

The Laurent · May 1, 2024

Derpmind said:
I think that makes logical sense. They wouldn't still be hanging around if MINUET had been destroyed; they'd have left by now.

A combination of extremely hard to detect gear and a mountain of explosives is a scary combo. They could've rigged up exit routes all over the place, and without a decent way to detect them, the entire area is a massive danger zone. Plus, there are probably other teams hiding out around the city, too.

Yeah, as it said at the end: "They had us fucking cold," Jackie gasped. "Why'd they shoot the crab? I just got them with the swarm."

If the goal had been a bunch of dead Locusts specifically, rather than one and one mission killed or something like that, they could have done it.

Whoever it is, they aren't playing around.

trooperist · May 1, 2024

That raid would have worked against just a regular militia. It's just there was a corporate squad there that invests exclusively in anti-tech tactics.

So really that was like the worst matchup the Locusts could have gotten. Hopefully any fallen operatives can be recovered.

SaltyWaffles · May 2, 2024

Yeah...I honestly give it five years before Earth is even remotely approaching a "more-or-less-unified-on-paper" status. As it is, they've got charter elite special forces teams still active in even their own friendly territory. Granted, they were definitely inserted pre-Broadcast, but the point remains that they are there and active and can resupply most things with Boxes of their own.

Kind of unfortunate we haven't really seen anything on the ground on Mars or the outer solar system.

I hope Sol's gate defenses are absurdly heavy and actually secure under friendly control.

Also, isn't this a flash-forward? Has it been a year since the Broadcast for the AIC at this point?

Ekzentric Lohner · May 2, 2024

The Broadcast made the Emergency Broadcast System first play the famous chiptune on May 18th of 2255. The coming General Session should be on May 1st of 2256.

So it has been almost a year. If we weren't preoccupied with survival, we'd probably have SocCom or MedCom projects for throwing some kind of celebration.

SaltyWaffles · May 2, 2024

Ekzentric Lohner said:
The Broadcast made the Emergency Broadcast System first play the famous chiptune on May 18th of 2255. The coming General Session should be on May 1st of 2256.

So it has been almost a year. If we weren't preoccupied with survival, we'd probably have SocCom or MedCom projects for throwing some kind of celebration.

Kinda hard to celebrate when we've had to deal with two SolNav fleets, one of which is trying to murder us all. I mean, prior to the Battle of Thoa, our populations were preparing for a long war against an occupying force. We still kind of are, because if we're unlucky we'll end up with RVB's main force blitzing into Radiance with more force than we can take out while the bulk of our forces are savaging Bastion.

Setsul · May 2, 2024

Torgamous said:
On the upside, it sounds like they haven't found MINUET yet.

Well, there's also the more depressing possibility that those legionnaires haven't found MINUET, but others have. It's just difficult to tell the rest of them when those unaware are still treating anything digital as compromised and any dead drops that weren't blown up in the war have been bulldozed by the City Committee.

We'll probably find out in Part 2 or later, after Cobra-114 points the other locusts in the right direction.

SaltyWaffles · May 2, 2024

What even IS MINUET? And where would it be?

If it was an ASI project, surely Omoikane would have just sent a coded order to its personnel on site before the broadcast instructing them to shut it all down.

Of course, that begs the question of why Omoikane's brand of paranoia would ever even consider running an ASI project on Earth.

Wait, did those micromissiles get the guy who fired the ATGW? Seems kind of crazy that they wouldn't get a non-augmented soldier who was wearing a disguise that didn't include heavy powered armor (and was specialized for stealth regardless).

If so, that's 2 out of 4 down.

Setsul · May 2, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
What even IS MINUET? And where would it be?

If it was an ASI project, surely Omoikane would have just sent a coded order to its personnel on site before the broadcast instructing them to shut it all down.

Of course, that begs the question of why Omoikane's brand of paranoia would ever even consider running an ASI project on Earth.

Relevant post.
Short version, Omoikane had legal permission to run two secret ASI projects. They ran five anyway, kept secret from each other. Two were killed off years ago, essentially for being ASIs and doing what they were built to do.

MINUET is basically an ASI infant and with very limited hardware portable enough to be smuggled out just in time before the kill teams arrived, because for all of Omoikane's paranoia, they had no contigency plan for The Broadcast.
MINUET is presumably still somewhere in Pacific City. GENESIS I BREACH means "ASI loose within a single urban area."

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