*Albert Weis gets a notification from his comm screen, and frowns as he looks at the screen.*
"After all those small victories," he sighed, "why do the Unioners get their wish now?"
"Well, at the very least, we have more of a chance against the Rheinweir. But first, the Buro must be exposed for their treachery. I will not rest until I find the secret to end this conflict once and for all."
*Weis then proceeds to the laboratory, putting out the alert and notifying everyone in the WeiBe Rose of what just occured.*
What a calm time in Omicron Omega. The Sokol had pirated enough Zoners for a while, so it hid itself in one of the less dangerous pockets of the Calborana Field. Vyu sat in her room on the belly of her selfmade life-sized Pepe "El Comisario" Ladron plush, relaxing and watching her favourite cretan cartoon show about the unlucky pirate Victor Beltrump, who always tries to capture a Bretonian Princess but fails because of one stupid detail he never thinks of, or the incompetence of his sidekick Papo Lordaeron, who prefers eating chili sausage pizza over success. A show that always made Vyu laugh. The show was created and sent in Rheinland. But the laughter stopped the moment the show got disrupted for a Sirius-wide broadcast: Rheinland declares war to the Gas Miners Guild!
Vyu put the tube of Prongles away, sighing annoyed. The weird rheinlandian faces reporting about the declaration, just to be shut down by Vyu as she switched the channel.
"Who the fuck cares about those!?"
Luckily, there was a new season of Tekagi's Castle running on the other channel. Weirdly clothed kusarian people running through mazes, just to end up getting pushed into muddy water by people dressed like Oni. It looked funny, and Vyu leaned back on her big Pepe Ladron plushie, taking her tube of Prongles again.
Sitting in his hotel room, near the Nuremberg spaceport, Wilfred tries to wind down after a long day. Having spent two weeks mired in negotiations with the local authorities about ferrying some Nuremberg refugees to New Berlin, on a standard cargo hauler without passenger accommodations, and the last couple of days talking with some seedier elements about simply smuggling some refugees out, he is not in the best of moods.
And then the newscast comes on. Wilfred listens to it with a stone-faced expression. He draws a deep breath, and lets out a sound that's somewhere halfway between a loud sigh and a grumble.
"But for crying out loud..." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "What's wrong with these people?" he asks no-one in particular.
He turns off the newscast and tries to get comfortable on the bed. He suspects it will be some time before he falls asleep.
A quote from Shakespeare(*) comes to his mind, not for the first time:
We strongly condemn the rash move of the Bundestag for military action against the Gas Miners Guild. The investigation, and the conclusion of unquestionable guilt on part of the Guild for the cowardly attack on Fulda, is not solid enough for such an action in the view of the company.
While we will abide by all legal consequences that concern the Guild, we do not support or condone these actions in any way. It is the hope of the ALG Board of Directors that the conflict is resolved as quickly as possible, and the true perpetrators of the attack found.
Magdalena Atzenbruck, President
Satoru Yuhara, Scrap and Waste Division
Anita Raichert, Shipping Division
Kai Richter, Security Division
Franz Pfannenstiel, R&D Division
Helmut Weinstein, Corporate Security Division
Ian Winkler, Touring Division
ALG Waste Disposal
![[Image: IPcVwTV.png]](https://i.imgur.com/IPcVwTV.png)