The Connacht Summit

[Luminium]

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Matthew listened to IMG representatives lay out their concerns attentively. When Albert finished speaking, the minister took another drink, draining his glass.

"The plan is to have the Guild act as the public distributor of our gold, as you have surmised," he said calmly. "Nothing more, nothing less. While you could try to negotiate on our behalf, I fail to see how that would accomplish anything except outing you as collaborators to a known terrorist organisation. We would not want to do anything that jeopardises the Guild's legal status, as we intend to use that to our advantage. And a large number of IMG ships visiting Dublin in spite of existing laws is bound to cause an incident. In fact, the Kingdom will surely outlaw even approaching the Dublin jump hole without a permit from the Armed Forces, if they have not done so already. So the guise of running your own mining operations in Dublin will not work."

He leaned back in his chair. In truth, he was not entirely convinced that his plan to drip feed gold into the Houses to dissuade them from supporting Bretonia in the Dublin Crisis was going to work, but it seemed like a reasonable course of action. If the Crisis was not as severe as expected, they may commit less effort to dealing with it. And of course, there was a matter of profit - profit that would go into the movement's coffers and not the Crown's.

"What we could do," the minister continued, "is deliver shipments of gold to IMG supply points out in the Border Worlds. Our own Free Dublin Shipping Company will be able to handle such an affair, as they are experienced blockade runners. We can even stamp the ingots with the Crown's royal seal to make them appear legitimate - we still have the old BMM moulds from Graves. Once the gold changes hands, IMG transports can handle the delivery to the House markets without legal troubles. Honshu, Colorado, Frankfurt - these systems desperately need gold, they will not ask too many questions from kindly IMG traders. As far as they will be concerned, you bought it from the Crown. Do you have any bases in mind that could be used as staging grounds for our purposes?"

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