Brothers in more refined arms...

[Enkidu]

“So, no problems. No problems! Life is just ever benign, free of scrapes, illness or impediment. No problems...” His tone remained flat, smile fixed like a thesbian’s mask. “No problems with our prosperity, our birth rate, our excessive girth of manpower, the colossal number of laggards slurping our payroll, our excessive wealth attracting every hellion raider who would usually preoccupy themselves bothering others, the life support system of Slyvania straining to support its over-abundant human occupants, the excess, the splendour, the squalor. You say we have no issue which would impinge our prosperity, no sickness, no disease, no canker, no present malady. That, Robert, is precisely the issue at hand.”

“We are absurdly wealthy, this is an established detail, barely in question, and, for a predicate, it serves our fraternity excellently. Our organisation has grown exponentially in the two and a half years of our existence within Freeport Ten and is fringing the graphine fine edges of logistical suicide. You realise the pre-Commonwealthian populace rating of ’10, hmm? One hundred and fifty permanents crew, in maximum. Actual, present figures are incessantly variable, of course, but rarely fall below a thousand souls. We have two-hour mooring queues from trade vessels of all legal orientation and nationalistic viewpoint, who would probably be presently reducing each other to a fine red paste if not for the Freeport’s resident NFZ. On the point of conflict, what of the Council members, the Blood Dragon Clans, the Kusarian Navy, the Gallic Royal Navy, the Privateers, the independent Pirates, the Corsicans, the haplessly lost Gallic Brigands, the Junker Marauders, the Drunken, Whoring Miners Guild, the Communists, the Capitalist, the Fetish monsters, the K’harans, the Machine races, the Colonial Remnants, the Bounty Hunters, the Reavers, Other Zoners (God forbid), Those admirable Kusarian Feminists, the Wilde partiers, Aggressive Zoners, the Discordianist Chaos Cult and many other runts of the celestial litter all of which present a legitimate, existential threat to our continued sanity, nevermind survival. The conflicts of these warring parties are intriguing, true, their demises an exultant pleasure, but we must ever remember the value of our own skulls. This is discounting the fact that if the Contari Lance, for whatever reason, whished us... inactive, shall we word it so cleanly, they could do so with a snap of the wrist, or the XTF, or the Ishmaelites, or, damn the devil, any of those agencies should they so possess reason to vent our porcelain lives”.

“...This discounts the innumerable marduk Guardians intent on slathering their bodily fluids all over the freeport’s superstructure, as though the station emitted some form of sexual pheromone. Whist this certainly adds verve to the observation deck, I fear this particular event may prove as a detracting force once a certain... Omicronic black ops organisation catches wind of these occurrences, as they inevitably will.”

“Reality sweeps aside any possible delusion of security. We rival the TAZ and Phoenix Zoners in effective potential and exceed them in the delicate arts of diplomatic suave and not commencing in acts of idiocy at every other integer, but the reason why the TAZ and the Phoenix Zoners seem to survive every oddity of judgement, every failure, every deficit, every chink in the woefully permeable plate-mail of Zoner Neutrality, is because they possess a singular circumnavigator of the world’s problems which is nearly impossible to challenge – when you place a foot into your mouth, how do you respond? The answer of both organisations, as rendered apparent by the Zoner Community at large’s treatment of both the remarkable Grand Theft Gran Canaria incident and the emergence of Supreme Nephillim Fleet Admiral He Who Will Not Be Named In Polite Society, is to shove an even larger, heavier, spikier, more obtrusive tread directly through the teeth of whoever previously offended you, Baffin and Sir Skarzi providing us with a personal demonstration as to the... acceptability… of such a medium to the eyes of the Zoners at large, the TAZ very much being the idol to which all Zoners are compared. Their societal measure may be gauged through their linguistic influence - "Tei Kallisti" has become a very much normative method of introduction in a plethora of Zoneric circles, one may only look at the Zoner Alliance's own utilisation of the term, despite despising the Discordianists deeply (a sentiment one may find forgivable, I am sure)."

"…The issue lies within ourselves, within motivational thinking and expansionist methodology. Just look at the independents; we have become the very thing we universally despise; houses, or mini-house equivalents, vast, democratic…" He almost spits the word "…Institutions, self-sufficient star systems turning to cloistered bodies with their own laws, own view of the universe, own religion, own government, own military, their own laws, their own perfidious secrets and intrigues. As grasping on the nub of power as ever a Libertine was. True Zoners, the real Zoners, the respecters of unilateral freedom and self-responsibility, are a rare breed, threatened by the dilutions of our own, misguided attempts to raise civilisations in our image. Well, friend, what one may call a mirror, another may call a wall. And I call self-proclaimed colony ships, bristling with cerberus's and hatred, a tough wall indeed."

"…We have no such wall, nor do we require one. But subterfuge serves a dying purpose with every expansion of dialogue when your home is sole, isolated installation, and we have no place to run. Our Freeport, the last true Freeport, is fragile and will shatter when hit, in both the physical and metaphorical expressions of that phrase. We cannot salve the aching wounds our neighbours, nore pull the sword free from their grasp. By remaining total to the True Zoner Way, "neutrality above all" we have conserved our freedom, to an extent. By remaining only warm, not friendly nor protective, to the Lanceri we avoid triggering ill-feeling towards the allegedly Independent Guild, and in the inverse, Gallia, a mistress who we ever seek to woo. Even the otherworlders, the Living AI's of Gammu and the K'haran biorace bear us no resentment, but for how long exactly? Someday, at some time, we must assume that we will eventually encounter those so hostile to us, so opposed to us, that even basic appeasement and confidence trickery no longer runs sufficient. And what will we do then Robert? Even with a million Grengars our lives would prove forfeit".

"…There is a solution, an expensive one, which may require a vast amount of time and wealth (which is, of course, no object) on our account, which is, if your problem lies with the light then move into the shadows. Simple, as temporary overpopulation cure we have already routed none-essentials to the… what, five liners (the Straight Curve and the Sabnack but to name a few) we possess in the Commonwealth Commercial Flotilla? They have served us well, but for this particular project we will need to be more… grandiose".

"From my perspective it appears the Commonwealth's primary issue lies with mobility; that is to say, our key assets, personal, mining centres, food production, component production, trade centres and centres of division operation including (but not exclusive to) Deck Thirteen are all immobile - they lie upon the Freeport proper in one of the most hazardous (if beautiful) systems Sirius has bared birth to. A few errant nova discharges from an unenforcible No Fire Zone misunderstanding, and all of the above is nothing but ash. Now Robert, what if we could assign all of the Commonwealth's present assets to a Flotilla, a Zoner Flotilla, that would remain constantly mobile throughout the Tau worlds hmm? The simplicity is simple, when trading, the flotilla can fly directly to the traders. In times of threat, well, the barrier makes for an ample hiding ground. As to expansion, why, what could be simpler? We just merely add additional ships to the fleet, transports and tankers say, refitted to suit our needs. Defence in numbers; the biggest convoys are rarely pirated, fleets rarely come under engagement until they reach their targets. Diplomacy would be an issue of ease, and the benefits of the research department actually bringing the entire lab to sights of interest instead of the odd surveillance spatial are obvious. As an option for survival, there are no "iff's", no "buts". This, Robert, is our only possibility for the Commonwealth's continued operation, else we stagnate and wither accordingly."

"However, the problems with such a… remarkable fleet would be astounding. In Sirian history, there have only been two entirely self-sufficient movements of ship formations without a direct military purpose; the first, the initial colonisation by the Alliance and Gallic Sleeper craft, with a crew mostly in-state and barely consuming resources, hardly counts for naught. The second involved the voyage of the Omicroners into the depths of unknown space, and whilst they revolutionised the concept into real workability for Zoner kind, they had the advantage of nearly unlimited access to funds, materials, technology, shipbuilding, pre-manufactured vessels and hulls, universal technological conformity and most of all the gigantic gantry cradles of Liviada Shipyard, Omicron Seventy-Four. Additionally, most of their manpower comprised viable spaceship crew, drilled from birth. Our own stock (whilst exceptional), is drawn from specialists, not survivalists. They also didn't face the predicament of attempting to match the Niobium refining capabilities of a Mid-sized stellar habitat such as this one".

"All these problems can be overcome, so let me list them in sequence (if I may)?"

*A series of half-scrawled notes with the stylus of his PDA, and the resulting came into being*

First malady: Obtaining vessels of sufficient size and armour rating.

Second malady: Installing none-conflicting fleet coordination VI's into every single hull.

Third malady: Obtaining a shipyard (or at least a dry dock) for the construction of division specific flagships (Unless you really desire to be lumped upon my bridge, Autoine?).

Fourth malady: Obtaining sufficient resources to build the aforementioned flagships.

Fifth malady: Obtaining sufficient, capable crew.

Sixth malady: Locating a planet-bound landmass for drill-training and relatively cover, low-cost component fabrication.

Seventh malady: Fuelling pre-mentioned fleet whilst the flotilla exists.

Eighth malady: Obtaining hull designs, internal and external, bolt-on equipment for the aforementioned flagships, and somehow jury-rigging all that incompatible technology to co-operate without blowing something dire.

Ninth malady: Somehow prizing from Phoenix and/or the TAZ, or anyone else, their shipbuilding brainchild's.

Tenth Malady: Doing all of that covertly.

"What do you think of all of that, Autoine, hmm? Oh, and the eleventh: We're going to need a factory ship of some nature for repairs in-flight. God knows only where we'll manage in contracting such a bullhorse from…"

"...Well Robert, have I overwhelmed you with my genius and foresight? You seem a trifle mute."

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

Information | Recruitment | Message Dump |
Feedback | Diplomatic channel

(Links pending redevelopment).