Trestle Base

[Proselyte]

APRIL 25th, 836 A.S.
PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM
PLANET ERIE
VOSBURG HINTERLANDS
GROUP CLARION HEADQUARTERS, "TRESTLE BASE"

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The plan was bearing fruit for Group Clarion and their sister cells.

Trestle Base's restored communications array was easily the most valuable asset these Militant fighters had ever gotten their hands on, and it continued to prove it. Their uplink to the Pinnacle Station comms network enabled them to orchestrate support for themselves on a scale they didn't know was feasible. Contacts were made with all manner of potential supporters. Zoner privateers looking to get payback on the Houses and make money doing it, sympathetic business enterprises, other Militant groups with roots beyond Erie. The command center's ops room was ever a flurry of activity.

The cause of Pennsylvania rejoining the Independent Worlds had more steam behind it than they before dared to assume. It did, however, remain as deeply disorganized in space as it was on the ground. Everyone was fighting their own private wars.

That would need to change someday, if they ever hoped to marshal a force against the Battleship Alma.

Clarion, for the time being, set about building rapport, and support, with these contacts rapidly, and with this effort they were rewarded with supplies, capability, and reach. Military equipment that would give their guerrillas a fighting chance against the Marines. Starships, and the people to man them, at least some smaller snubcraft and transports plus the single gunboat on a mercenary contract - a shrewd use of their prior donated funds. Even negotiated reinforcements, not to mention very rare personal-use technology, from some of the more notorious of the sector's troublemakers and arms dealers, granting them unique capabilities indeed for such a small bunch of rebel fighters and operatives.

New recruits were also trickling onto the base as fighters tugged personal connections, pulling Militants from other parts of the region to join up. After being subject to vetting outside the base amidst friendly camps and sympathizer safehouses, the newbies remained confused by the scanning process at the perimeter.

"We're checking for Lib-issue implants", the guards said, wielding their oddly high-tech handheld bio-scanners. The Militants had enough on their plate without infiltrators finding them, though they never told these new recruits the truth of the matter.

Some problems weren't for the grunts to worry about.

With the base population now numbering just over two-hundred souls, they were in a prime position to begin exploiting the intel from their most important deal: leads from the Lane Hackers on the LSF's local intelligence network that, if allowed to sniff out the base's location, would have them all flattened from orbit by an Archer cruiser's siege cannon.

Group Clarion doesn't plan to let that happen. They prepare themselves to hunt their rivals, while the Republic's focus is drawn towards its boiling tensions with House Kusari. Once Liberty's local intel network is out of the way, they'd be free to ramp up propaganda efforts, truly strike the match against the occupation, and rouse the population to start building momentum towards independence. This isn't a war that will be won without the support of the Eriean public, after all, and LSF suppression of the movement remains the main obstacle to building that support.

That's the real hit towards Big Mikey's - that is, Erie Governor appointee Mike Davis's - assimilation agenda they're looking to land. All the guns and ships in the universe would be pointless if they never manage to enflame the hearts of the people. They have to know it's worth it to fight back.

But who exactly is going to show them that?

For all his efforts, the Bretonian coordinator of Group Clarion was not popular with the men. He may have won them access to an impressive spread of resources, but in return, Liberty has been operating near-unimpeded in the vicinity of the city of Vosburg for months now, while they hide in their little base. His leadership style - pragmatic, calculating, cautious - reads to the impassioned Militants as weakness, a failure of nerve. His counterpart coordinators in Group Elk and Group Alleghany never fail to remind him of this, the former being a native Eriean, and the latter a Canarian - especially incensed at working with a former occupier of his own homeworld.

Unfortunately, they were right. He knew that his troops and volunteers needed a vision to follow, and he knew he wasn't the man to offer it to them. Efforts were being made to find a more potent agitator to inspire the troops and set them to tearing apart Liberty's rule piece-by-piece - but the Militants of Trestle Base weren't going to wait any longer.

The negotiations with Clarion's sister cells on the details of the merge were nearly done.

A change in management is in order.