As Costa and Carmen stepped into the chamber, around them, beat the ambient bustle of Pacifica. For the Rock was alive, in its teeming, clattering machinations. As all great beasts that consume and process and reproduce must, the Rock came with a pulse. For Pacifica was the lung of the Tanner Belt. All asphyxiated scree of civilization that littered the no-man's space of the independent worlds; scrap, detritus, stolen cargo, and pilfered ships - came into Pacifica, as products, contraband, and unregistered ships flood out.
This was a meeting place, yes, but it was not a place for privacy.
High-sided workboots clatter on the bulkhead, adding to the broiling ambient noise - machines at work, pumps straining. The faint after-scent of molten synthetics that even the filters couldn't parse out. Corin's shoes - with the lugged soles and padded heels of a warehouse worker - announce him before Fredrich can. This is not the footwear of a soldier, but of a man who makes his living dragging uncooperative masses from place to place. His march announced him; the arrival of an unsubtle pirate kingmaker - even as Corin himself would deny that title.
Corin Frei. The reluctant leader of the Unioners, as far as anyone could learn from the Colony News Service. On that point, at least, lay consensus. From there, the stories - there were oh so many - diverge. They sprawl as loose cables, they tie themselves in knots. There is no truth or fiction to the legend of Corin Frei, only tangles and catches, and unanswered questions.
The greatest of which was this: it was a matter of debate if Corin had led the Unioners to glory - or astray.
“Pacifica may not have the shine of Crete or Malta, but she’s built on honest work steel, sweat, and the will to survive. You’ll find no pretense here."
Corin grinned, if only to himself. To the old pirate, pretense was his particle shield, it was his blood - it was all he'd been running on since he stepped out of obscurity - near a decade ago now - and into the MND's most wanted list. In his experience; and he was nothing if not experienced, pretense was the only protection you could count on in the underworld. Notwithstanding, it was no less true on the fairer side of the law. Pretense had won every gain the Union had made since the Vierlande massacre. It was all, in the end, improvisation. Plans tended to distort on the fly at the fringes of the Sector.
He meets the eyes of his guests once - long enough for welcome, long enough for solidarity - before dropping his gaze. His face, if not his attention, is fixed towards the center of the conference table - a slab of meteoric iron, polished to a finish. The upper surface is ornamented, covered with polished peridot crystal, cut and shaved into improvised tiles. It's an astrographer's mosaic - a map of whorling jump points. There lies nostalgia, as artful as it is devoid of function. For, if anyone was to set a course by these waypoints, they would become irrevocably lost to space. For the mosaic maps a moment of a time long past - when the Union dealt in the conflict diamonds of the Omegas. At a time before the singular feud metastazing in the Hammen Hole had not yet surpassed the TOV limit, had not yet consumed all - the Union still maintained a balance between the Hessians and the Corsairs.
With a fraction of a nod, Corin returns the impetus to Frederich. The younger man had covered the essentials. No, Corin makes a point of speaking last. You want to be behind your target - to see their flanks open up - before you engage. A rule to live by, in piracy, and in peacetime.
Good man, Friedrich. I see you've enriched their attention. The Corsairs and the Unioners are on collision course now - heading toward a melding, a fusion. Unions of powers alike ours tend toward the explosive.
Before Costa and Carmen could reply, he breaks in, speaking up for the first time. Though his entrypoint is unconventional, Corin commits; charging into the space Friedrich left hanging in the air.
"Carmen Elena Quintana, del Clan Quintana, y Dimitrious Konstantinou, del cónclave Deterrence; bienvenidos a Pacifica. Bienvenidos a La Roca."
[Carmen Elena Quintana, from the Quintana Clan, and Dimitrious Konstantinou, of the Deterrence conclave; welcome to Pacifica. Welcome to The Rock.]
Corin gestures to one of the guards, a glimmer of a twitch playing at his cheek. He speaks with confidence, with authority, but without a hint of superiority - assumed, or real.
“Bitte bring uns fünf Gläser, Willi, danke.” [Please fetch us five glasses, Willi. Thank you.]
His voice falls level as he slips from Cretan; the tongue of the Union's guests, to Rheinish; his own speech, into Bretonian English. This was diplomatic theatre; English is a middle-ground that favored neither side.
“...Compañera Quintana y compañero Del Sol, before you answer Frederich... let me equip you with information. You've crossed the stars themselves on the trust of strangers - aye, we are proven comrades in battle and in commerce. But I would have you know our hidden truths, before you decide how we humble Unioners fit into Crete's vision.”
Corin's hands, spread wide, rest against the lip of the table. He leans in, beckoning the attention of the indomitable corsairs.
“We have fought the hated Hesse together. We have braved the wilds of the Jump network together, carrying a fortune in Malvada Stone. Yet our connections run deeper. The last fifteen years of direct cooperation between the Unioners and Crete are not our entire story. No - our ancestral legacies are intertwined. ”
Corin affixes Del Sol and Quintana a light year-long gaze that didn't quite stop at their eyes. Understanding, camaraderie and earnestness. These were the passions of Corin Frei.
“The Schiller, the vessel of Franz Schulman - the vessel that began Crete's discovery of the Sirian betrayal, was built by men of the Union. We are more than of one kind: pirates, smugglers, and castaways - we Corsairs and Unionists alike share a legacy of opposing the same wrongs - merely from different positions."
"So when I say what I am about to say, know I do so from a place of reverence for Crete, and a respect for your people. Your victory is our victory - a victory against the Hessian counterrevolutionaries - and a victory against those that would leave others to starve while they grow fat. I tell you this as one pirate to another."
Corin lets his statement sit. It's an audacious start, one that might be prove brazen if Corin had misjudged his audience.
“From where I stand, the Corsair empire is strong, but your arms don't quite meet in the middle. You are embattled on multiple fronts; in the Sigmas, in the Omegas, in the Omicron systems. To further your fight, you need regional blocs to back Crete's vision, to distribute artifacts, and to provide plunder, resources, and technology. You will need friends - local allies - and local tributaries. It's an art your enemies are also attempting to perfect. Look at the Maltese, or the Coalition; in every house they have an ally. We want to help you match, or even outflank, your enemies, by expanding Crete's reach to untapped markets. In short, new markets for artifacts, and new sources of house technology."
The elder Unioner places a hand upon the table, redirecting the focus of the room to the jumphole mosaic, to the spiraling network of deals-in-the-shade implied by every line and node. Yes, it's out of date, but it was useful enough as a presentation piece.
"To explain the Union's role here, we must first acknowledge the Corsair Empire's current allies. To the west, you have a strong direct ties in Bretonia, through the Trafalgar Junkers, and unshakable regional allies in the Gaian movement. To the north? There your influence is unquestionable. In Kusari, the Corsair Empire enjoys the vital aid of the Farmers Alliance, who provide invaluable agricultural provisions and regional political influence. You also have the ever resourceful Hogosha, who manage the northern Artifact artery."
"But the Empire's current map of supporters are gathered on two islands of power, isolated by an ocean of stars. Liberty is cut off from Crete by distance, and by the Rogues and Xenos ever-increasing loyalty to Malta. Rheinland is cut off by the Omega war. In Gallia, since the end of the Incursion, the Corsair Empire has lost its supporters in the halls of the state."
The flat of Corin's mottled hand rests upon the center of the mosaic; upon the distribution webs of the Unioners.
"The Unioners offer access to the black markets of these three missing pieces: Rheinland, Gallia, and Liberty. How? Well, our infrastructure is already in-place. Pacifica is our gateway to Liberty's eastern systems, where Outcast influence is the thinnest. In Gallia, we founded and control the first and only point where the Gallic and Sirian underworlds meet, through our enclave in Zurich. There, we offer the Corsairs our connections with the Unione Course, and their subordinates in the Gallic Brigands. Of course, we also offer Rheinland. At home, we dominate the smuggling trade. There, we are the last effective bastion of resistance against Hessian encroachment. It is the Unioner presence that prevents the Hessians from crawling out of the Omegas, and into the alleyways of Berlin and Hamburg.”
It was a tempting offer - and, crucially, one no other prospective underworld group could match. Only the Unioners had a smuggling net strung between the three houses where the Corsairs lacked local allies.
“Beyond our allegiances, beyond our contraband network, we offer our capacity for production- for invention, and for replication. We are both faced by the necessity of matching the Coalition and Hessian armadas, across vast distances. While the Coalition and the Hessians enjoy a regular supply of off-planetary resources from nearby allies, Crete has always had to resort to force for access to commodities and hardware salvaged from the houses."
"We offer an ability few underworld groups can. The Unioners maintain a developed industrial base. We have a developed capacity for production, for manufacture, and for counterfeiting, that will supplement the industries of Crete by supplying pirated, or domestically produced, hardware. I understand the Corsair Empire is in the midst of modernizing its fleet. At the same time, the Corsairs must develop and preserve your logistics. This is much to ask of Tripoli alone."
"If you look at only the Tanner Belt, it is strewn with the military innovations of Liberty and Rheinland's under and overworlds. From these rich pickings, we have learnt much. We have also demonstrated an ability to unpick those secrets - to produce them for ourselves. Our most extreme example is the Sirene, is a Chimera of a vessel, combining adapted Rheinlandic technology, upon an experimental Libertonian communications battleship. Our most modest is the Hel cruiser. We certainly have the means to produce subassembalies for the renewal of the Corsair warfleet. This is not without precedent; the Corsair Empire turned to the Hogosha and their Samuran suppliers to develop the Raba. The Empire turned to the Order to appropriate the basic template for that which became the Murmillo."
"These are the services we could offer, should Crete see fit to embrace them."
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)
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