Station Summary: Freeport 10 (CW|)

[Commonwealth]

Freeport X/Commonport II



Neuralnet moniker: Freeport 10.


Date of construction: 760AS


Commonwealthian Installation Registry Number (CIRN): Commonport 2.

Class: Frontier armoured residential arcology (highly expanded).

Additional Modules: Inflatable H-Fuel external storage tanks, External liquid oxygen storage tanks, External ambient gas storage tanks, x2 Kishiro Sankyatchā class large solar panels, improvised niobium refinement modules, x2 Deep Space Engineering Eden Nine class geodesic biomes (Sylvania and Planta domes).


Permanent on-station crew compliment: 350 civilian personal.


Gravity: Complete.

Produces: Border Worlds Craft, Refined Niobium, Liquid water, Basic Foodstuffs.

Imports: Diverse.

Maximum sustainable populace/guest populace: Approximately 800 Zoners.

Commonwealth Crew Compliment: Classified

Tourist compliment: Approximately 80 independent tourists.


Deed possessors: The Commonwealth Raven.

Host Parties: The Commonwealth Raven.


Citizen ethnicities: Gallic, Bretonian, Kusarian, Hispanic (Maltese)

Administrators: Robert d’Autoine, Achille Augustain Nadeau.

Known previous administrators: “Lucky” LeRoux, Howard Lovecrepe.

Operational charter: Assertion of the Commonwealth Control over the Torres Ice cloud, neutral operations base for house unaffiliated pilots, primary trade exchange stop along the Tau Cardimine artery, Trade platform between IMG, Maltese, CW, GC and Dragon parties, water ice mining, edge worlds tourism, solar research platform, embassy, residential arcology, food production, packaging and export, niobium refinement, stellar research, basic ship maintainence, permanent residence for crucial Commonwealthian personal.


Frequent visitors: Commonwealthian personal, Independent Zoners, Temporary Autonomous Zoners, Omicron Supply Industries, Lanceri, Ghost Squadron, Third Party Maltese, Wantannabe Blood Dragons, Golden Chrysanthemums, Independent Miners Guild, Lawful and unlawful freelancers, Kusari Naval Forces, Junker Marauders, bounty hunters, Reaver mercenaries.






Summarised Historical Descriptor:


Freeport ten, as its name depicts, was and remains the tenth linear push of the independent colonists to wedge open the abyss of space and hide in the obscurity of distance from the tumults of house warfare, politics and the generalised chaos inherent within the dependency system. These isolationists, scraping the frontier ethers, chose to shun the lucrative, burgeoning arteries of the border worlds trade routes in favour of complete detachment, total and complete. Via the construction of an intensively farmed synth foods biome and an extensive self-fabrication capability to replace damaged station modules and basic installation functionality, the base was designed to be an entirely self-sustaining island of self-denial amongst the barren-yet-beautiful ice wastes of the upper barrier nebulae.



(Below, an unmanned water ice extraction unit bores through the inner recesses of the Malvinas cloud, dating back since the time of the Freeport's initial construction. Most have been salvaged by the following generations of Zoners and independent Cardimine smugglers ever since direct mining of the Torres rendered such endeavours superfluous (or otherwise destroyed by the Maltese, who view them as spy satellites), but a few, scattered units remain functional, drifting and pitted amongst the planes).







As is inevitable with the Zoners however, the very demand for isolation is often scuppered by the essential presence of humanity, and the latter’s ever-persistent desire to profiteer even from the most unfavourable of circumstances. The most immediately evident integer in this cycle was the presence of the system’s niobium fields, which, once discovered, pulled significant quantities of independent prospectors to the region in-search of a quick buck extraneous to political mining restraints or conventional claims. The second predicament was the Nacion Maltese.




(Below, Outcast line dreadnaughts are a frequent, uncanny sight in the area surrounding the Torres gap, occasionally mooring with 'port to little protest by its occupants).








At the near-to-uncharted border region to the Nacion worlds, Tau-37 had the relative misfortune of straddling (what was at the time) Sirius’s largest and most clandestine cardimine artery, in a position only a Spartan jump away from the Outcast homeworld; a xenophobic people who view outsiders as both assets and insignificants. Initially, there was a minor degree of sustained threat and skirmish betwixt the Alphanites and the Bretonian colonists, which gradually settled into a simmering (then later comfortable) amicability as Outcast realised the benefits of the Freeport as a potential food source and export partner; an asset better left untouched than occupied or annihilated. Since then, the tentative truce between the Freeport 10 Zoners and the Tau Outcasts has settled into an unthinking coexistence – Nacion vessels (civilian and otherwise) regularly utilise the Freeport’s many amenities en-route to the contested Tau 23 system, the Kusari worlds, or to the remote, alien expanses of the Omicron systems and the Edge nebulae. This locality has proved extremely profitable for the Freeport residents via other mediums; the no-mans-land hostilities between the Outcasts and cardimine smugglers, IMG and the Colonial Remnants endowing the residents with burgeoning provisions of scrap. At the present, the future remains benign for the Freeport populace, under the proviso that its occupants retain suitably amicable relationships with their surrounding oppositional partners.







(Below, a panorama of one of the station’s two extensive hangar modules. Due to the vast amount of traffic shuttling through the Freeport at any one time, additional docking capacity would be one of the first viable targets for an future extensions to the installation).







Commonwealthian utilisation:






(Below, the Commonwealthian Raven).









For the two long years between 819 and 821AS, Freeport 10 has been the first Sirian stellar trade port to fall under the administrative talons of the Commonwealth Raven, and is treasured by the fraternals as the “jewel of the Taus”. Within that duration, the station has been host to an extensive number of foreign dignitaries, regional personalities and renovations, quadrupling in numerical populace as a desirable residence for Gallic citizens taking advantage of the recently initialised Tau jumpgate development to seek the fulfilment of alternative, dangerous lifestyles just beyond the northern cusp of the Crown’s dominion, which in turn has enticed in a second, larger human wave of niobium prospectors from the Gallic edge worlds. Whilst the Commonwealth bears inherent associations with the station and the surrounding airspace, the presence of other, external entities within the Torres field has exponentially multiplied, including more adventurous parties of Chrysanthemums and the KNF pursuing them, with the opening of the neighbouring Nagano Jump Connexion.

It is an erroneous assumption that the Commonwealth bears the majority of its populace upon the station. Indeed, the Commonwealth itself regards the station’s ever-increasing headcount with a critical eye, conscious of the modular installation’s inherent vulnerability, should the Maltese or any other regional militaristic power fall out of favour with the fraternals – realising the station’s extreme potential value as an opulent hostage, accounting for a significant proportion of the Commonwealth’s import revenue and nearly all of its food production and stock of Nacion-designed, Raven manufactured border worlds craft.




(Below, a sabre fighter under Commonwealthian utilisation).







Possibly the first two most critical assets of the installation to the twin dominions of d’Autoine and Nadeau (other than the trade revenue) is the arcology’s Sylvania pleasure biome, a spatial habitat deliberately indicative of a series of idealised, Earth-like terrestrial landscapes inspired by the royal gardens of New Paris and planted out of rumoured jealousy towards Baffin’s own Zenarch aboard the late Malaclypse Freeport, and has even succeeded in deriving significant tourism revenue from Gallic and Maltese visitors to the region, with the prospect of enticing more equally viable.


(Below, the view from one of Sylvania’s many terraces, the glow of the surrounding nebulae partially visible through the surrounding hexes).







(Below, the artificial sunrise ascends over the dome’s forested regions).







The second most crucial asset is undoubtedly the station’s 13th deck, the station’s only level excepting the three command and control centres, armoury, storage tanks and integral systems excluded for none-Commonwealthian personal. Apart from the general moniker of the area as “The Research Deck”, little is known as to exactly what formats of research are executed here. Ethically unsound would be a viable assumption.



(Below, a rare interior view into one of the labs. The majority of the equipment surveyed here appears to be a functional combine of Kusarian and Gallic imports).








Commonport II


Curiously, Freeport X bears the Commonwealthian registry of Commonport II, despite being the first Freeport to come under Commonwealthian protection and arguably possessive of greater functional value than Freeport CI (Commonport I). When queried for an explanation, Administrator Nadeau equivocally elaborated that “The err is a chronological matter. Robert’s decision to moniker the Freeports under an alternative pseudonym dealt with the two ‘ports sequentially according to the order with which the respective paperwork for the installations traversed his desk, and not due to linear, orderly reasonings such as common sense.”