To: The Hellfire Legion, Harmony. Subject: Pax Beringa.

[The Syndicate Leagues]

Incoming Transmission

To: Hellfire Legion, Battlegroup Harmony.
From: Acting-Arbeitsdirektor Solomon Weiss.

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The directorate has met in session - the dove passed muster. We'll accept, providing a few definitions are nailed down tight.

Artifact shipping isn't a negotiable. Its how we feed our families. Pacifica earns a trade producing ships for the underworld, but not every Unioner space station comes with functional production lines an' the goverment made its position on givin' us gainful employment clear a long time ago. I could lie directly to your face and tell you we won't ship the stones, but I can't stop individual Unioner cells from doing so. I don't have the power, nor can I let my people starve in good conscience. We don't have a secure system of resource heavy planetary bodies from which to suck the marrow dry like y'all do; we don't have anywhere to settle down and develop infrastructure under fresh, non-recycled air that hasn't passed through a million lungs. We have to live as intermediaries for other groups, because that's the only path of life open to us. It's not a moral issue, it's necessity. Frankly, carved-up chunks of crystal don't kill people. If some rich artist or hack wants to pay top bill for it, it's on them. We had no wilde in our ranks in the Nomad War that we'd ever flushed out, an' if there's infected in the movement today they sure don't make themselves known. Harmony's well aware where the money for their munitions comes from. We're famous as middle-men - but we try to profit from the chaos orderly, like. We're not the cause, we're not a symptom. We might carry the pathogen, but be immune ourselves. A strange crises for men privileged enough to give it names.

We've been shipping artefacts for aeons and nobody up from the order down to the core has taken exception to it - 'cept the Hesse, in part because it keeps Crete flush. I won't argue with personal morality, but there's the lay of it. Artifacts are a bigger earner than the greater sins; slavery, hard narcotics, gunrunning. I put a blanket order out on artefact sale and desperate men will sell their humanity to save their flesh. That's how human nature works. I don't know a single Unioner who wouldn't prefer to make a king's living off sellin' tech and grain. But that's the hand the houses dealt us. Sure - you run into our shippers? Enforce your own laws. It's what they expect and it's the risk they take with the job. It's one of the curses of decentralisation - sometimes we all have to get a lil' libertarian if we want to survive the dark.

As for, say, piratin' Synth Foods or Agiera transports. Those transports are insured, as are the crews. We don't deal in hostage takin' or in riled up slaughter. We maraud because you can't hurt a rich man through physical assaults. You hurt the rich man through his wallet. Now, the rich are canny - they try to turn us nobodies against each other by pressing our flesh between the hull-plates and their ill-gotten gains. The fact is, those people get paid hazard fees. They're still going to be in their careers if they offer the goods or not. We're not in the pod-popping business and there will always be collateral. Our hands arn't clean. The fact of it is the average Unioner is as just as terrified of the poor sap with the goods than he is of him. He's not the opponent. He's not the problem - no - he's like us; a symptom, but not the disease itself.

That's the methodology here. It's what we stand for. We rob corp's, not individuals. If y'all seen our interactions with freelancers and independent traders y'all know we either let them roam free or charge low, or for mere information. Corpers get taxed. We like to see it as a tariff against the one percent for all the wages they've denied us. We're not the Rogues, Mister. Someday there'll be a reckoning for all this, and we know it. There's more to all of this than plunder and a jolly roger. We do it this way because we don't have the support infrastructure to play general. Sure - we've got a handful of barely militarized multi-century old relics in service and a whole gaggle of prefabbed cruisers down crewed by the reluctant and starved. They're bonemeal before an army. We can't pretend to be like you because we don't have the resources, the tradition, the history. We are what we are, own that because we have to.


But I'll be reasonable. We'll cut piracy op's up in Tex' real downhill till we can prove there's more substance than style in my words. Till the Legion recognises what they once knew about us - that us, like you, are just men dealing with the bus they've been thrown under. We won't target civilian installations. We'll even give the Sugarland security detail a break for once.



Dalgaard, I'll give you this consideration; the Alster chemical weapons attack that won our cause so much infamy? The bosses were warned a fortnight ahead, and word disseminated to the men-on-the-ground through the Hamburg labour gangs. Those who were there, chose to be there, chose to kiss the ring. Republican forced men in there because it factored that it could ride the insurance high all the way to Wall Street and let good men die for it. Unioner Hamburg recruitment upticked after that. The dark fact of it is that that when you're fighting dirty, uphill, just to survive, you can't afford to have righteousness at your back. You need to know the line, and when it can't be crossed. The Legion's alive because it's drawn that line for itself. So is admiral Knight.

We'll stick to the proposal. No Unioners in Texas without pre-consent or the company of the Harmony Battlegroup. Those that are, are in mutual violation of the agreement and can be assumed to be actin' on their own impulse. However, we'll be expecting the same from the Legion in Bering. Come with company or expect the rain. Nothing helps brings down tensions like clearly defined RoE.

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Transmission Ended

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"Though the past is scarred and the future untold"
" Be the boot heavy, the vacuum cold."
"I of the Liga,  do not fold"
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