Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[MysticWind]

The Emporium (pt. 2)

Brigadier James “Admiral” Heid retired as head of the Imperial Military Focus on his fiftieth birthday. The announcement, while a surprise, held no shock to those who knew him. Having fought for over three decades, if not more, it became perfectly understandable that the Despoiler of Africa (in the words of Samatar Jama Barre) and the Destroyer of Rhodesia (in the words of Nathan Holn) would want a breather. The IMF had found a comfortable prominence in the continent’s bustling private military sector, and it was said that the company was running out of wars to fight.

Critics in the war dogs circuit had lambasted his leadership in the Rare Earth Wars as remarkably lackluster. Having led a mixed force of Rehoboth Baster militiamen and an impi of Zulu warriors to secure Steenkampskraal mine, Heid had held off no fewer than three separate recapture attempts from South African troops and ARMSCOR heavies operating on behalf of Dai Seung Heavy Industries. After shrugging off everything from AKM rifle fire all the way to microwave and supersonic beam weaponry, the brigadier repelled the corporate mercenaries, going on to rally with the IMF main host and capture four mines more. And- that was it. Heid had then handed over the spoils to Nwabudike Morgan, taken their fee and bonus, and gone home. No epic betrayal of SafeHaven and subsequent clash of titans against the firm’s President’s Club S-rank units. No underdog defense of the scattered Dai Seung mining specialists, joining with former enemy mercenary remnants against Morganite elite formations. No enigmatic stratagem. No twist. Just, business.

Journalists in the African forever wars beat likewise reported that Heid was seen spending more and more time away from the battlefield. Despite having been marked for death, or at least indefinite detention, by multiple Mthwakazi-Mutapan governments over the years, he maintained a large estate near Lake Mutirikwi. He and his troops were free to come and go by permission of the current chancellor. There, the de jure outlaw hosted feasts and hunting parties, and even permitted the occasional watchvid interview. Visitors were astounded to see that beyond the expected indoor target ranges, trophy rooms of conquered Rhodesiana, and billiard halls, New Watercrest boasted a vast library, a ballroom, and even a full-sized garage of luxury sportscars that Heid professed to race and maintain himself. To outside observers it seemed a perfect retirement home for a perfect soldier, though a little anticlimactic.

Why do you think after all these years the Hammershields or your Circus have never come after me? I’m a necessary evil. They want me here - they need me here. Because if I wasn’t, they might have to do their jobs. It will be thankless and worthless, and once the bodies hit the floor, they're blerried. A dead twenty-three-year-old from Isington gets more linktime than the death of fifty-thousand people he gave his life to protect. So even if they did give a kwacha, their own media prevents them from taking action. Their media is the oppressor, their Tetra drones are the oppressor. The IMF is the great equalizer. I empower these people.

- Morgan Albion Media livelink interview

Officially, James Heid perished in a roadside bombing along the A1 Highway on a quiet stretch just southeast of Mbare. Officially, his vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom V was completely consumed in the engulfing flames- whether from People’s African Union militants, Rhodesian diehards, or just rival contractors, the theories will endlessly proliferate- claiming the lives of Heid, subordinate Jack B. Sterling (formerly of the 27 Troop), and several other high-ranking lieutenants. Officially, the Imperial Military Focus, like so many of the regimes it had interceded for and intervened against, would itself dissolve in the ensuing internecine struggles, solidifying SafeHaven’s preeminence in the PMC sector as it scooped up former IMF elites.

Officially, one “Buck Harrigan” would be quietly admitted into the 'steerage' of the UNS Unity under the auspices of the Stellar Lifeboat Project, alongside the couple thousand tired, poor, huddled masses of displaced persons, political exiles, and climate refugees under the charge of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Embedded in that lottery-winning crowd was all manner of fanatical terrorists, criminals on the run, spies of every stripe, and other opportunistic malefactors who had slipped aboard the trip to the stars with the help of hacking- electronic or otherwise. (It was said that near the end of mission prep, hurry costs were so great, no corruption was required- light bureaucratic maneuvering, some real-world experience, and a clean bill of health was all it took to be considered a Unity candidate.) And so, Buck was joined by “Chad Smith”, “Bosworth Davids”, and scores more of resettled former British East African motorcar technicians, selected for their keen mechanical expertise, excellent self-defense scores, and perhaps by friends in high places. While the Stellar Lifeboat Project was intended to select for random individuals and families, some small businesses from conflict zones like this Eames Emporium were accepted in full.

Heid and a mutineer knife fight on the Unity promenade during Planetfall

The IMF core had departed their homes with minimal possessions beyond ironclad loyalty to their commander. Thus when the Planetfall crisis erupted into shipwide warfare, they were far less equipped than their Spartan, Holnist, Kellerite, and other counterparts. However, they made do with the best of a bad tactical position and found their way to each other, defrosting as many of their comrades along the way. Shredder, psych-whip, sonic hammer, crowbar- all became as lethal as exo-frames and shagokhods in the hands of an experienced fighter. Heid himself had absconded the homeworld with his old SAS Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife smuggled in his cryotube itself. Upon awakening at the hands of a small band of Holnists- one of whom was a former Rhodesian Armoured Corps “Black Devil” who had recognized his lost country’s old bogeyman by chance- Heid feigned helplessness before the militants’ jeers as he fought off the effects of post-hibernation. When the Rhodie gunner moved to strike him, Heid tackled the Holnist and drew his subtle knife, effortlessly slaying his would-be captors while in half-blindness.

For the most part, the Emporium avoided the conflicts on the disintegrating vessel, preferring not to involve themselves just yet in the affairs of the nascent Unity diaspora. They managed to fight and stalk their way to a starboard colony pod with the majority of their members recovered, attracting some crew and passengers who found their daring to win- admirable. These initial dozens not only included former IMF operators but also farmers, industrial workers, medical personnel, scientists, and civilians. Before they fled, they looted indiscriminately all of the provisions, tools, and guns they could carry.

Notes:

Heid’s interview quote is inspired by tapes of the Jackal from Far Cry 2, namely “Necessary Evil”, and “Gluten-Free.”

“The Circus” is slang for MI-6, as per Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

[Trenacker]

Since time immemorial, movement over the water has been faster and cheaper than movement by land. It has also been more efficient than movement by air for bulk cargo. For a long time, rivers and coastal waters were also the choicest highways on Planet.

Ambush by humans and mindworms was so frequent, many colonies placed strict prohibitions on overland travel. Even for the courageous, it was nothing but difficult going. Chiron, geologically younger than Earth, is riven by tall mountain ranges. Thick accumulations of nitrate waste above the topsoil and the toughness of fungal tubers complicate road-building. Chiron's strong gravity and thick cloud cover also made early air travel more difficult.

Unity carried hundreds of barges to support waterside settlement and resource extraction. Following the modular designs of other transportation technology, they were capable of being fitted for a wide range of missions, including hauling, dredging, fishing, bridging, mining, patrol, and exploration.

At lower left, a floating laboratory has been converted to an extended-family dwelling, probably by settlers engaged in aquaculture. Pilgrims who could not afford other homesteads saw surplus barges as a good investment. Many followed S.A.M.M. expeditions in hopes of attaching themselves to a new base and going into trade. The larger of the two craft is a tanker and has been fitted with fighting platforms, a modification popular with both the Spartan Federation and the Human Tribe. The irregular hullform suggests that it has been salvaged from a river bottom.

Barges were easily converted for combat. Bourse artillerist Tael Kaestral commanded a flotilla of bombardment vessels at the final reduction of Xerxion, earning a generous bonus from his Kellerite paymasters. To obtain desirable trajectories against the mighty fortress, Pete Landers marshaled his followers to temporarily divert the Slow Wind River onto an oxbow course.

Parasite craft like this Tribal guncraft were easy to make from cargo shunters and tow vehicles. They were also deadly to crew. Combat attracted mindworms. No amount of speed could make up for the limited maneuvering space in even a wide river like the Slowwind. Designs without full crew protection and ample close-in defenses were rapidly abandoned.

CRI hospital barges were a frequent sight on the contested Slowwind. They were often subject to search, but rarely to seizure. Contraband was dumped overboard unceremoniously.

Floating helipads extended the range of Spartan VTOLs until they could strike deep into Pilgrim territory. Many outlying Pilgrim communities purchased surplus anti-aircraft cannon from their faction militia. To miss weekend drill was an forgivable breach of the social compact.

Sources:

Barge sketch is the work of Sergey Musin.

Little gunboat is Jeff Zugale's work.

Original artist of hospital ship drawing is unknown. Found on Richard Morganstern's "Star Wars Vehicles" Pinterest.

[MysticWind]

The Emporium (pt. 3)

Emporium Mobile H.Q. Sumatran Whip surrounded by replica T-49 main battle tanks and Unity scout choppers upon crossing the Planetneck into the Great Dunes

The Emporium landed at the Cape Storm continental tip, near the wind-swept southern pole. This desolate starting location was mercifully mitigated by the discovery of several Supply Pods with crucial supplies and even cryotubes along the northern coast towards Planetneck, leading one Warmonger officer to dub the region “Hunter’s Bounty.” The initial base of Overlord was relegated to a secondary outpost after the priceless discovery of a Unity airship, modeled after the Soviet Kamneva-class dirigible, from a Supply Pod. The Sumatran Whip became a floating fortress, allowing the faction to cross great distances quickly, if under the threat from the dangerous Locusts of Chiron. While its use as a battlefield command center is vastly overestimated- Heid was never one to place his Warmongers' eggs into one puncturable flying basket- it was an effective means of bringing down psychological terror upon the Emporium’s enemies, at least in the early years before the development of higher-altitude missiles.

Socioeconomic profile

After the initial decades of exploration and expansion, the other peoples of the continent were alarmed by the appearance of this faction of jolly bloodthirsty savages for hire, offering their services to any who was willing to sell energy, mineral resources, or simply foodstuffs. Indeed, the Emporium’s first contracts signed on Planet was to wage war on the ecosystem itself, providing heavy fire cover against mindworms and locusts while Hunters and Tribesmen ‘former teams cleared xenofungus. Or guarding merchant convoys between friendly factions against smacer raids.

It was there that the “Admiral” resumed his old tactics. While Emporium guard squads worked effectively, they seemed to inspire greater hostile activity from smacer survivalists wherever they operated. Whether that was because of their often cruel and brutal tactics, or rumors of Emporium battle-probe teams gifting battlefield arms they reclaimed to the baseless for renewed attacks, business with Heid’s forces was seen as a glass cannon, whose powerful blast had the potential for shattering blowback.

Emporium Assegai needlejet strike craft above the carcass of a young Sealurk, Mnesimache Planetary pacification campaign (ARC contract)

But entreat the Emporium they did, because Heid found peacetime services to ingratiate his military to some of the others. While one vertical of the faction’s economy was, of course, producing armaments of all sorts and calibers, it was a far cry from the more-intensively developed industrial societies that emerged from corporate or scientific rule. For all that the Emporium Design Corps poured into research, the faction was a net arms importer, and most of the weapons it did sell were aforementioned battlefield salvage.

However, what it did have was decades of battlefield experience to export. This initially manifested as the workhorse Mentor training programmes, where veterans advised other faction’s armed forces, even bringing them to the School of the Centaurs military academy located at Ultra. Everything from rudimentary military organization to rigorous anti-wildlife survival tactics to special operations is covered. As comprehensive as the Mentor curricula were, many governments grew leery of exposing the intimate systems of state security to mercenaries. So instead, they opted to hire Aegis Advisors from Heid instead; these lower-ranking Emporium officers, sometimes simply sergeants, were hired on short-term contracts to provide their experience briefly for campaigns at a time, then politely asked to bugger off. Indeed, many soldiers resignedly looked to fighting their former Aegis Advisors in the next vendetta, or even in the current one should contracts be broken.

Dabblers study logistics. Conquerors build trade empires. - Memento Vici

But superior arms and training alone are not sufficient to sustain a fight. Shorn of their paymasters, the imperial neocolonial powers they played against each other back on Earth, Heid and his comrades had to seek new means to maintain a viable army, more than a simple mercenary band. No longer could they rely upon the patronage of nation-states to provision their troops and deliver them to war’s door. While the faction was dominated by former IMF soldiers, Heid and much of the command staff did have experience managing resources required to sustain their campaigns, and they leaned on the expertise of those from beyond as much as possible. During the early years of settlement, the main priority after survival from the elements was creating the supply chains and transport infrastructure necessary to keep the Emporium forces in fighting form. Every new base and installation was tied together by routes for armored cargo vehicles, ensuring that any conflict would be fueled, funded, and fed. This transportation fleet of supply rovers, the Emporium “Merchant Army”, became regionally renowned.

Emporium ILM Porter cargo trucks laden with raw minerals for manufacturing electronic components depart from Children of the Atom resource outpost Colonia Trismegistus before dawn

By the time of first contact with the other burgeoning societies of Planet, the Logistic Corps was developed enough for Heid to offer shipment services to his neighbors. Christened Imperial Logistics and Materiel and based in the interfactional trade base of Market Garden, the external-facing section of the Corps offered secure delivery for inter-factional commerce, further guarding trade routes under the watchful eye and steady aim of Warmongers. They positioned themselves as Wells Fargo stagecoaches where packages would be sent in armor and comfort, in contrast to the adventurous but threadbare Pony Express that was the couriers of the Hunters of Chiron. After decades, the ILM garnered enough customers for it to grow gradually in time to be a continental shipping firm able to compete with the likes of ARC, Cartel subsidiaries, and even Morgan Transport offerings. In time, business would dwindle as tales of the Emporium’s infamy spread, and many faction administrators realized the considerable conflicts of interests involved in peacetime dealings with the Warmongers. By the time of the invention of the Supply Crawlers, the ILM was no longer a pillar of the faction’s economy, but by then, its major industry was in full production: war.

Political structure

The Spartan polity is often described as a “state that exists solely for preparation of war.” For the Emporium, it would seem, war is the state. - A Social History of Planet

The Emporium’s war machine and its organs of state are indistinguishable. The entirety of its society is dedicated to perfecting the faction’s ability to wage war. Paradoxically, the percentage of actual soldiers in its population is lower than that of the Spartans, or other martial factions such as the New State or the Darwin Raiders. Even though each citizen of the Emporium is trained in the arts of war from creche to tank, not all actually serve in the squads, or even the Home Rozvi civil defense units. Just as any modern military is primarily composed of those supporting the actual fighters, the vast majority of the Warmonger population is employed in “consolidation” work of logistics, heavy industry, scientific development, and entertainment. (Far from being devoid of the arts, culture in the Emporium means what the troops like- and as Heid and the original Thulium Regiment are from a cornucopia of Earth cultures, works of art are created specifically to cater to their diverse tastes.)

Emporium military doctrine emphasizes elite units, a holdover from the IMF days, stressing quality over quantity. While many ambitious commanders and even young conscripts dream of one day building an army that could conquer all of Chiron, the “Admiral” has always insisted that the service they should provide is to act as force multipliers embedded in the larger masses of their client militaries. As to planetary military domination, he only laughs haughtily at the notion.

5th Elite Drop Corps “Warhead Riders”, known for the Sack of Xerxion which contributed to the base’s decline

Internally, the Emporium combines the rigid discipline of military rule with the laissez-faire casualness of a mercenary band. There are the troops, and then there is everyone else. The troops must live and die as the campaign requires them to. Isolated acts of defiant heroism against incompetent commanders are encouraged- if they lead to victory. If not, it’s the stockade, the punishment sphere, or the gallows. Everyone else is expected to sustain the war effort. They are, as a rule, allocated fewer resources than those who fight. But those who contribute more to Emporium operations are rewarded as such, and even the lowliest drone is accorded the liberty of benign neglect. The Warmongers do not particularly care about the state of society beyond what is necessary to prolong the fight. If some social psych spending is required to keep the laborers happy, the quartermasters will deign to write it off; if bullets are cheaper, then force would be used instead. Greater service grants greater rewards, even the promise of loot. All are welcome to prove their mettle by joining the Rozvi or the squads.

The perpetual war economy promises the growth of a commercial venture. Contracts that are successful, of course, will provide windfalls for the faction from Heid to drone. At critical points of a campaign, operational psych chaplains of the faction spring into action, drumming up excitement for battle from soldier and civilian alike. Workers tear effigies of enemy commanders limb from limb while recruits relentlessly fire training rounds at empty xenofungus fields. Outside observers have noted the similarities between the sometimes ecstatic bloodlust displays of Emporium “war weeks” and Pentecost observances at the Lord’s Conclave, and crunchtime before quarter’s end at the Dynamic Enterprise.

11th Battalion “Red Shadow” standard squaddies assault a contract target using replica Late Earth era firearms

Emporium statecraft is typified in the treatment of conquered bases. Depending on strategic needs, or simply Heid’s mood at the time, most surrendered populations are given the free rein to depart at will- while fighting is desirable, having to quash drone riots in new conquests are usually distractions from the main fight. Crucial technical and industrial workers are compelled to stay- though efforts to buy their loyalty, or rather unit cohesion, are initially attempted by adding them to the current contract as shareholder beneficiaries. Either way, conquest is only undertaken with grander objectives in mind. Often, lower value outposts might only be held temporarily before being traded away at campaign’s end, or gifted to allied factions, taking only strategic resources and those willing to join the Endless War.

External Affairs

Ascendancy socialite Avril Walker at the grounds of the Helix Center

Foreign relations are perpetually strained. The Peacekeeping Forces and the Watchers of Chiron have both levied injunctions and prohibitions against the Emporium as an illegal PMC, guilty of harboring culprits of all sorts of war crimes. But despite the faction maintaining its dubious record of choosing the battles it wants to, even at times in contravention to earlier agreements, many still solicit Emporium support in their vendettas. Sometimes, to provide a ready-made staff of expert officers to lead hastily-assembled militias of civilians or paid smacers via Aegis Advisors. Usually, for the direct access to battle-tested, expensively-equipped, military units to augment their own forces via the squads. But sometimes to hire entire armies to wage vendetta on behalf of a conflict-adverse populace.

And rarely, the Emporium accepts contracts to engage in probe-work, just as the IMF once stole and robbed. While recruits of the Tactical Espionage Corps spend weeks of complex base infiltration, wilderness survival training, and social engineering in elaborated-constructed scenarios at Camp Lusty, they all-too-often find themselves challenged, even outclassed, by probe teams from factions either dedicated to counter-probe action (e.g. the Observers), or at battling rival extractors (e.g. the Dreamers). But the Warmongers do occasionally prosper at even inelegant smash and grab operations. Their most successful- and costliest- mission on Planet to date is the Heist of the Longevity Vaccine mk. I from the Ascendancy.

It had begun with Pahlavi prematurely terminating the ILM contract for armored intrafaction supply shipments. An anonymous tip-off later from a supposed high-ranking genetwister, perhaps even a member of the Gerousia, the Early Data Recon Corps had determined that the Ascendancy had been funneling massive amounts of scientific personnel to an otherwise unassuming manufacturing base, the Acme. One rip-roaring adventure later replete with multiple layers of deceptions, shootouts with Legionnaires, and rover chases followed by aerial extraction, the Emporium probe team had recovered the formula for a vastly improved life extension treatment. As supreme commander, Heid had insisted on taking the formula first. The “Admiral” found himself nearly choking to death, only to arise from the ground many tense minutes later, his skin cast in icy pale blue. One step closer to immortal- but at what price, his medics and battle-geneticists could not say. Since then, the prototype Longevity Vaccine has been refined and administered to Emporium high command with far improved results, but Heid remains confined to a personal exo-suit in all public appearances. Meanwhile at Ascendancy listening post the Zenith, a transmission is received from a deep cover Daena mole, and a thin smile materializes in the dark.

Brigadier Heid and the Thulium Regiment in a modern reenactment of the Fall of Salisbury during Beachhead Day festivities

The Brigadier’s  early demise might have prompted a true succession war similar to the dissolution of the IMF on Earth, had it come to pass. The Emporium’s leadership staff is primarily composed of the elite Thulium Regiment, named for the valuable rare earth element they had once fought over. The initial members are the same mercenary ultra-loyalists who had infiltrated the Unity as employees of the original Eames Emporium, rubberstamped by the Stellar Lifeboat Project. These commanders and operators, having fought and killed for the faction for decades, are often squad commanders or corps chiefs. Like many other faction leaders, Heid has a tendency to play them off against one another, keeping none close enough for power- and seeing who can best the other in fights. These conflicts range from hand-to-hand duels, even commissary bar fights, all of the way to powerplays between Emporium armies on campaign. But the Brigadier finds a way to rein them in. The regiment has found its numbers renewed over time by servicemen who have distinguished themselves, both in combat and in peacetime. The division between these commissioned and the original whenwes has been an easy one for the “Admiral” to exploit. And those of the Thulium are often endowed with great privilege and power, serving as military governors of bases, given authority to oversee Secret Projects, and advising Heid himself on what wars to join. Most, given to the same temperament as their commander, would rather be in the field at the fight than playing liege lord of spartan utilitarian cities like Torch, Fortitude, and Barbarossa.

Unlike indefinite-contract loyalist PMCs like Sabre or subsidiaries like SafeHaven, the Emporium regards itself the true independent maker- and assassin- of kings. All others are scorned as mere sellswords, or little more than glorified corporate security. “Rent-a-cops with particle impactors,” as Heid sneers. To be committed to a single client makes them your master, and yourself a lackey. The Warmongers see themselves as servants to nothing, save for the love of fighting itself.

For so long as mankind wages war, the Emporium will be there.

Casting

Avril Walker is portrayed by Sigourney Weaver as Alexandria Reid from Marvel's The Defenders.

The Thulium Regiment is portrayed by the cast of Pennyworth.

Notes:

The picture of the Sumatran Whip is concept art of the Aeroscraft ML866 dynamic lift airship.

The screenshots of strike fighters and of the drop corps are from Pandora: First Contact.

The scene of cargo trucks leaving a base are from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny.

[MysticWind]

The Emporium (pt. 4)

Name: Buck Harrigan
Rank: Civilian Vendor
Position: Vehicle Mechanic
County of Origin: British East Africa
Age: 53



Psych Profile: Militarist

Subject marked by compulsion towards confrontation, bordering on conflict, with others. Prone to verbal sparring when questioned by those outside of company; often follows pattern of gradual escalation until opposing party is pushed to directly offend, whereupon subject then lets loose barrage of barbs, often reinforced by employees. Despite confrontational style, general personality is normally courteous, affable, even good-humored.

Observed to manifest confrontation primarily when either challenged by others or presented with opportunities. Career record shows clear trajectory towards market domination. Subject repeatedly leads his company towards direct competition, utilizing aggressive business tactics to prevail over rival firms. Rumored to cut deals only to renege them for tactical reasons.

Inspires strong loyalty from subordinates while exercising leadership style allowing for autonomy within competitive environment. Ability to command high workplace cohesion, positive morale, and profitable business fundamentals amidst deteriorating British East African security situation is impressive. While subject’s temper and potential aggression are problematic, his acumen and leadership abilities deem the Eames Emporium a viable candidate for Stellar Lifeboat Project.

Design Notes

The Emporium is an adaptation of the Imperium, with the Imperial Military Focus as an adaptation of Empire Management, both from SMAC spiritual successor Pandora: First Contact. (Full Pandora lore here.) While the names are slightly tongue-in-cheek, the concept is not: it came from my original realization that Santiago and the Spartans, despite being militaristic, are actually Erratic in temperament, not Aggressive. They’re perpetually preparing for war, but what is that but the maintenance of some sort of perverse perpetual peace? There can be versions of the Spartans where they’re solely defensive and isolationist. So I imagined what such a “War Faction” made up of constantly militant aggressors might look like.

What I ended up with is the Emporium, based on the Imperium. They are a faction not only devoted to but dependent upon war, not least because they are mercenaries. Peace is only useful for rearming; it’s a time between jobs, paychecks. But also a time of societal stagnation- war is when they truly flourish. It’s what their entire societal structure and political economy is based on. Note that they are not a “Conquest Faction” - that’s a different horseman, after all, distinct from War. Nearly any faction can have its ideology be used as justification for the domination of Planet. In some ways, total conquest is the worst case scenario for the Emporium, meaning the end to war.

The Emporium is dedicated to war both as a concept and as a culture- it is not merely enough to be militarily-prepared in order to survive, one must always be fighting in order to thrive. Santiago fights for many different purposes. Heid simply fights, because that is all he knows. The monetization of warfare is simply the self-actualization of that fighting instinct.

The Emporium is also dedicated to war because of its leader’s personality. Heid is the consummate Blood Knight, as the trope goes - he relishes a good fight and a splendid war. To him, war is the purest form of the expression of life. Perhaps, in a way, it is the Spartan will to survive put in motion. Social Darwinism in action.

This version of Heid is influenced by his visual inspiration. Like Pennyworth’s Gulliver Troy, he is meant to be an urbane yet utterly brutal psycho killer. Unlike Santiago, his concepts of battlefield honor are completely opportunistic. The Spartans have a warrior's code, even if they permit ruthlessness. Heid is a brute who willingly exploits codes and breaks them at will. Sometimes for gain or for self-preservation, sometimes for a prolonged or a fresh fight. This mirrors how “Gully” can have all the pretensions of being a noble SAS captain, yet devolve into a jumped-up mugger, a robber preying upon wartorn England. Not to mention a domestic abuser. (Massive SPOILERS: a choice character moment.) So Heid is meant to be not only a relentless fighter, but also a stealer, an honorless rogue. There is no true chivalry to his warfighting.

Finally, the idea of having logistics be one of the Emporium’s major verticals/services was a response to this Templin Institute analysis about why the Banished from Halo: Infinite, and mercenary factions in general, do not make for viable villains.

[Trenacker]

Their strong protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, academic achievement alone was insufficient to secure virtually any leadership post in the University of Planet, especially one in the close orbit of the Academician himself. Prokhor Zakharov, never mistaken by any of his contemporaries or biographers as a keen judge of character, nonetheless maintained an obsessive control over the selection, and subsequent intellectual shaping, of those he entrusted with the business of his faction. Successful aspirants shared their leader's rigid belief in the correctness of technocratic government while refraining from "excessive moralizing" over the social consequences of the University's eclectic research program. They were also, as a rule, diffident, and mostly without natural constituencies even within their own faculties--traits that observers traced back to Zakharov's own deep-seated insecurities. It was a losing battle. In all but a few bases, student and faculty committees conjured an irresistible influence on virtually all decisions, big and small, so that while base directors could and did rule by fiat, it was guns to the end so far as enforcement was concerned.

Roland Steiner Dahlgren, forty-five years Zakharov's junior, and an American to boot, was ideal putty for his master's arthritic fingers. This byproduct of post-war America, far enough removed from "the most recent unpleasantness" with the Holnists that, despite two much older siblings sacrificed on the altar of Union Forever, he joined the Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in lieu of a traditional combat branch, knew only the rule-bound symmetry and machine-assisted comfort of the Corporate Age. To Dahlgren and much of his North American age cohort, religion was a personal ritual with precisely as much value, and importance, as thumb-sucking. Along with disinterest in education and skepticism toward the motives and efficacy of government and "experts," spiritual conviction was a potential signifier of Holnist sympathies, and incompatible with the civic patriotism felt throughout much of the victorious Northeast and Pacific Coast.

By prior agreement with his father, the adolescent Roland departed NOAA just shy of his twentieth year. He was next at M.I.T., then at the Superior School of Atmospherics at the University of Algiers, where his work focused on weather modification through cloud seeding. As an amateur pilot, Dahlgren often flew testcraft himself.  His analyses and experiments were recognized by the International Meteorological Organization as a decisive factor in the freshwater scheme for the Chott el Djerid. He was in close communication with the French Union regarding their project to create a so-called Sahara Sea, but opted instead to join the ARC's operations to restore the Ogallala Aquifer. In 2070, he joined the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri as an American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) contractor. In this capacity, he was attached to Terraforming Operations but also subject to the oversight of Administrator Oscar van de Graaf.

Dahlgren survived Unity's crack-up because one of Zakharov's engineers wisely anticipated the need for a shuttle pilot. This, after Dahlgren was skipped over for retrieval by geological engineering officer Ikurō Kamatari, who regarded the American youngster's association with the ARC as morally problematic and so marked him for death by abandonment. (Pilgrims are not believed to have penetrated so far forward within the hull, explaining why so many of their compatriots there fell in with other leaders.)

Most of the Unity engineering crew surrounding Zakharov were from explicitly Communist or post-Communist societies where personal freedoms were sharply restricted. This reflected in part the scope of Zakharov's pre-mission connections: as a fixture in the Soviet scientific firmament, his association with American scientists was usually incidental. Rather than focus on this experiential divide with his new compatriots, Dahlgren embraced the theories and practice of central planning. A U.N. Psych Profile suggests that a combination of Old American family tradition, comfort with corporate structures, and a taste for macro-scale problem solving predisposed Dahlgren to feel at ease in an environment where certain metaphysical debates were deemed closed and unimportant.

Zakharov seems to have taken a shine to Dahlgren. In his diaries, the Academician set the American apart from his other subordinates. Dahlgren, he wrote, lacked the instinct or the appetite for power politics, and was an ideal student: properly humble, and seeming to grasp intuitively the importance of placing "factual inquiry" over "silly explorations of personal feeling." Both men took a dim view of the growing ascetics' movement within University dorms in which students buoyed by special protection of the law frequently rioted against provocations real and imagined, from disagreement about the University's studied neutrality during the Spartan extermination of the Gaians at Blissman's Bog to anger over weapons sales to Morgan's Dynamic Enterprise. Zakharov was especially incensed by the movement's assertion that, from inquiry inevitably came empathy, which was as good as a call to action. University Security was constantly alert for student protests, and the violence frequently took deadly turns in both directions. Student bombers killed many of Zakharov's original lieutenants, and the faction probe teams "disappeared" dozens of undergraduates each semester in retaliation. On Yuri's Night, an all-faction holiday, the streets of University bases were simply given over to miscreants and militiamen.

Installed at Vostok Station, or ста́нция Восто́к, on the edge of the Great Dune Sea, Dahlgren oversaw the controversial scheme to flood emptied Hive warrens on behalf of land-hungry Pilgrims. The broad chain of resulting oases became a flashpoint of contention between a vengeful Yang, an increasingly muscular van de Graaf, and badly-battered remnant caravans under J.T. Marsh. Dahlgren's influence was unpopular with Pilgrim Stakeholders. Endowed with a large budget, he dispensed much of it as pay local Pilgrim settlers to defend University assets in the vicinity of their homesteads, a tendency that undermined their willingness to answer their own faction's calls to arms. The pay was conditional, too, on receiving certain medical procedures--a prospect that thrilled the hardy but sickly Pilgrim farmers but smacked to some of their more philosophically active merchant-leaders of a combination of bribery and eugenics.

Vostok Base on the Gwolier Rim. Called "the Silver Horns" by local homesteaders and "the Clockwork Base" by its University inhabitants, whose lives were ruled by the strict schedules and harsh rationing of their famously fastidious young master. Most left for the University heartland after the mandatory three-month rotation, but some counted the predictability and transparency of Dahlgren's leadership a blessing by comparison with that of the more capricious committees that helped to govern larger bases.

University Security used acid weapons against local megafauna. The Academician was adamant that these were never used for any other purpose. Yet student organizations circulated hundreds of vid-captures of wounds consistent with the use of such weapons in domestic police actions.

A Tri-Baron mercenary searches for an optimum gun sighting after disembarking from a Skitterer High-Mobility Vehicle. University settlers on the Dune Sea border gained a new outlook toward mechanical design from their Pilgrim neighbors. Rather than send worn equipment to far-away University Base for refurbishment or reclamation, they built new, locally-informed models informed by the adaptive biology of local wildlife. Dahlgren made the pained decision to assume a modest Tri-Baron Company contract after resistance from van de Graaf badly reduced the number of Pilgrim auxiliaries available to help his small security force. The Tri-Barons, tough veterans of the interminable Southern African Front Line Wars with more than four decades in South African service, quickly reimposed a reasonably semblance of balance between the warring powers of the area.

Sources:

Dahlgren's image from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Vostok Base image by Carlos Cardona, "Sci-Fi Environment Study," hosted on Art Station.

Battle image from Dune 2000.

Sniper image provenance unknown. Found on Wallpaper Flare.

[Trenacker]

In her magisterial work on the subject, Flaring Stars, Dr. Anwulika Tyjani contrasts the two greatest flourishings of the Kellerite faith tradition, the North American and the Chinese.

Jean-Baptiste, a proud Midwesterner, always addressed himself to an American audience. He spiced his spoken homilies with references to the "beauty of that John Deere music" and urging followers to replace the baptismal rite with frolic in the Mississippi River. The sacred Sunday, he said, was made to be spent at the ball park. Working men had as much need for Budweiser as for Bibles. Kellerism in its original vintage was mournful. Its adherents were singing out the old certainties of factory jobs and national amity, vanished long before they were born, and rededicating themselves to local relief. Keller called for a renewal and re-centering of family and civic life as the final balk set against the crumbling gate of poverty and addiction. Children born in small towns, he said, should worry less about expanding their horizons in the dehumanizing anonymity of the city's overcrowded cities than enjoying the many fruits of family and community well into adulthood. The cities would not miss those them. If they did choose to go away, they must do so only with the intention of returning when they had acquired the skills that had made their departure necessary. Most important of all, he wanted his listeners to join him in turning their backs on the World Wide Web, commending them to select physical experiences before mental ones.

Never, never make the mistake of equating the lazy and convenient camaraderie of distance and shared hobbies, however enjoyable, with the value of direct, personal relationships face-to-face. Your neighbor may dislike you, but he will still get you a cup or sugar or drive you to the hospital. - Sermon 402

To be sure, Keller was no doctrinaire libertarian. His summons was a reluctant one. Cutting against the prevailing political winds in his section of the country, he wholeheartedly embraced social safety nets and argued that the common man had nothing to fear from the expert--who was, after all, likely to be his own son or nephew returned to "put that fancy education to good use on all our behalves." This new thinking was for today, Keller insisted, not tomorrow. He looked forward to a time when the limitations of exigency could be lifted.

Wartime Kellerism, including the idea of the self-defense community, came later, after the founder had retreated from public life, so that the authenticity of the taped sermons that form of the bulk of the Prescriptive Teachings is still in doubt. The clenched-jaw, muscular Kellerism of the Annotated Broadcasts was in direct counterpoint to the rising succession crisis of the 2020s and 2030s. The author urged his small town listeners to take up arms for the protection of their own lives and property. Kellerites should not forsake government, but they would be fools to trust in its ability to shield them from the dangers now at hand. The rudiments of this new faith resembled Scouting tradition. Adherents should invest in practical skills such as sewing, canning, and carpentry. The able-bodied must learn to shoot. Towns were to disperse their libraries, while depositors should withdraw their cash. In Kellerite churches, prayer was almost completely replaced by instructional sessions in everything from first aid to car repair. As public order began to break down more completely, the final sermons released Kellerites indefinitely from the repayment of non-local debts. Departing from earlier warnings to keep family units small, the broadcasts now urged young people to marry so that the fortunes of their families might be intertwined, and bade them begin having children at once, "for each new mouth to feed shall have two strong hands and one strong back to recommend it."

Keller's bugle calls were naturally controversial. Politicians and industrialists blamed him for every strike, stoppage, and refusal to sell. Feminists pointed out that Keller's final position on families would disadvantage women and girls more than it would men. Liberals and technocrats felt that Kellerite communities, hermetic by design, could only ever become fertile ground for regressive thinking. The Evangelical Fire declared him a heretic over what they alleged was his casual and careless equivocation between what pleased God and what pleased Man. In 2045, at the Great Revival in Knoxville, TN, Keller was burned in effigy not once, but five times. John Bircher types, of which counted tens of millions of adherents in the mid twentieth century, scapegoated Keller as a Secret Socialist with designs to help eradicate liberty. In time, the United States Government, once indifferent to the Kellerite movement, began to treat it like any other secessionist movement. Exposed to the same propaganda as Holnists, many Federal troopers believed that Kellerites were cultists using the language of self-reliance as a cover for incest and polygamy.

Sometimes called National Kellerism, Chinese Kellerism was an offshoot of the original philosophy brought from Corpus Christi, TX by Jīnlóng Lin (林金龍), a petrochemical engineer who fled the Texas Secession. Lin's interests ran exclusively to Wartime Kellerism during a period of intensifying conflict between Taiwan and Communist China, no longer held at bay by the threat of American intervention. Lin's exegesis of the Annotated Broadcasts was carefully adjusted for its new audience. Keller's appeal for children to remain at home into adulthood was easily folded into familiar themes of filial obligation and ancestor veneration. The sacrificial aspects of the Kellerite lifestyle fit perfectly into a cultural context where the individual was subordinate to the group, especially the extended family and the nation. Lin did not translate any of Keller's commentary on alienation from modernity and dissatisfaction with certain movements in American Conservatism, although it is unclear whether this reflected a considered editorial perspective or simple ignorance of those materials. Lin was soon playing Keller's tapes for crowds of ten thousand or more most nights a week. Kellerites in Taoyuan initiated a scrapping drive in response to PLAN blockade. Throughout the country, those inspired by Lin's message mobilized disproportionately to help build beach defenses and campaign for hardline candidates who promised to preserve Taiwanese independence.

Like its American rootstock, Taiwanese Kellerism thrived on popular anxiety, but this time, the reaction of government officials was not hostility or confusion. Lieutenant General Zhxin "Johnny" Xie (契志欣) of the Republic of China Army believed this new religion, insular and service-minded, alternately alarmist and vigilant, was utterly congruent with the needs of civil defense. Xie used his position to advocate successfully for Taiwan's Kellerite communities to receive arms and training. He toured Kellerite communities throughout the island and hosted twice-weekly playbacks of Keller's wartime sermons for his officers, attendance at which was mandatory. In 2060, Kellerite officers overthrew the Taiwanese President and installed Xie in his place. Within months, the same troop would lead the vanguard that landed at Xinghua Bay on the Chinese mainland to stiffen the Golden Rebellion.

Shūfēn Liu (劉淑芬), born October 7, 2040, was the second daughter of a Taiwanese Air Force major on Xie's personal staff. At her father's direction, she gave up Taoist traditions in adolescence to adopt politically favored Kellerism, becoming a senior block warden while in secondary school. Liu followed a scholarship to Hong Kong College of Medicine where research opportunities placed her in connection with microbiologists on retainer to Struan's Pacific Trading Company. An outbreak of Red Flu derailed plans to return home in 2061, and she instead joined the Hong Kong Royal Ambulance Corps, assisting sheltered residents during the colony's strict quarantine. Three years later, Liu, a project lead at Struan's, was Assistant Director of Medical Services for a military internment camp at Shenzen. From 2064-67, she joined her father at the Golden Court, remaining until the elder Liu suffered a fatal stroke before studying infectious disease at the Universidade de São Paulo.

Chinese persuasion overcame American complaints regarding Liu's "questionable" Psych profile--a follower who had lived most of her life in the shadow of authority figures; a heretic to some; a Struan's affiliate who almost surely participated in unethical medical practices perpetrated against People's Liberation Army Prisoners of War, and possibly Hong Kong residents. Liu was posted to the Medical Division, expanded in 2040 with a tropical disease branch to compensate for the discovery that the Pathfinder Probe crew had carried Red Flu with them across the stars.

Pete Landers's stowaways, all sourced from the two Americas, tried and failed to locate known Kellerites among the broader Unity crew, few enough as there were, but Liu was an early prize for Aleigha Cohen. Liu assisted in the medical evaluation and triage of the ship's convict crew, and was well enough trusted that Cohen followed her recommendations on which of the prisoners to keep entombed. Since Cohen hadn't the mercenary protection of her once-and-future collaborator, it was all hands to the guns, and Liu instructed several of her crewmates on the finer points of shredder pistol marksmanship, learned from her father.

Once Planetside, Liu was spared the worst miseries of life in the Dreamer camp by Cohen's inspiration to found the faction's Mobile Ambulance Response Service, traveling surgery and apothecary. In this connection, she made frequent contact with Hivemen, sometimes as victim, sometimes as a tolerated merchant. On one such mission, Liu was detained with her team after it was found that Cobb had sold Yang irradiated rations. Rather than press for the return of his forfeited personnel and equipment, Cobb considered that they might be the price of penance.

Liu's professional attainments and character provided her the basic tools to climb high in the Human Hive. Medical staff were guaranteed the relatively favored status of Technicians, and though there was a long way to fall from grace, Liu received more consistent rations and services than when she had been amongst the disorder of her original faction. Yang quickly made the helpful Liu an Initiate, and she was one of the few invited to offer him regular counsel regarding the human management of his colonies. Liu's experiences with persons imprisoned by disease or war provided valuable insights for Yang as he walked the tightrope between visionary and villain to the starving hundreds he had led into the desert. Her knowledge of shared dreaming and long-standing inurrement to state-sanctioned experimentation led to Yang's entrusting her with the colony's nerve staples, which they used frequently to quell dissent.

Sources:

Lin is portrayed by Shu Qi in Shanghai Fortress.

Second imageis "Mars 21" by Maciej Rebisz.

[Trenacker]

Far from the warmth of a familiar sun, we returned in our primitive fear to the safety of the dark. - Delving

Mining engineer Archelaus Laskaris on the 4 Vesta asteroid. The Extravehicular Mobility Unit uses a neural interface, made possilbe by a datajack enhancement, to leave the hands free. The bulky clothing is crush-resistant. A medical pocket on the right upper arm complies with the minimum safety regulations expected by Comprehensive Transport. It contains a medicated wound dressing. A Personal Defense Weapon has been issued in case of labor unrest.

Archelaus Laskaris. Born 2030, New Smyrna, Empire of Greece. Father a fisherman, mother a police officer. Amateur mountaineer.

Graduated ETH Zurich with high honors, receiving PhD in geology. Completed M.S. in sub-surface mining at Curtin University, Western Australia. Commissioned a captain with the 737th Army Construction Command in Macedonia. Tasked with devising improvements to the 150-year-old Metaxis Line after Greek accession to the Balkan Triad.

Most of the rebuilt Metaxis Line was excavated with old West German machinery financed by Greece's NATO allies in hopes of reducing Greek bellicosity. It failed. Once the generals had their bribe, they invaded Turkey anyway, hoping to redeem the nearly two million Greek refugees who had fled earlier inflationary crises at home. After brief success, the Greek invasion collapsed.

Terraforming was a labor-intensive occupation: even if the Germans had been willing to sell them, Greece could not afforded automation suites. Standard crew for a digger was a brigade's worth of engineers, ore-handlers, riggers, and drivers.

Because of supply shortages caused by wartime embargo, miners were allowed filter changes only when their respirators seized. Most safety gear was homemade, such as this combination of old-style head protection, pilot's rebreather, and low-light goggles. Miners wrote their own code for programmable devices like the positive pressure systems that assisted respiration in particulate-heavy environments.

Eldest sibling killed at Defense of Trebizond, 2059. Dismissed with disgrace and imprisoned after participation in failed 2061 coup attempt against Megas Duox Acis Pappagallo. Spent time in solitary confinement.

Sold to Morgan Industries sometime before 2065. Received involuntary datajack surgery. Per Morgan Mindfield analysis, imprisonment, and possibly surgery, coincided with, and probably triggered, a significant change in subject's personality. Gaolers observed total abandonment of political activity. Subject instead refocused on purely occupational interests. Elevated to Trustee status within one year and dispatched as project supervisor to asteroid 4 Vesta. Operations Section Chief during successful rescue of personnel and equipment during major collapse of Vesta's Proxide Drift, averting compliance crisis.

The M.S. Solar Commander, a utility tug and survey ship purpose-built for work in the Trojan fields. One of few such vessels capable of fine manipulation, making her indispensable during industrial calamities. She was also equipped to serve as a long-term lifeboat in the event that a space object was rendered uninhabitable, such as by gas venting.

Hand-picked by CEO Nwabudike Morgan to be smuggled aboard Unity as seed agent, possibly for an independent colony. Escaped custody of SafeHaven escort during Planetfall. Discovered, wounded, in Hangar Bay Hose Room by medics answering to Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.

Set free by Yang, Laskaris pledged his loyalty and was first to recommend that the survivors dig beneath the sands rather than attempt a dangerous overland trek. This daring led to discovery of an extensive underground aquifer, the waters of which did not reach the surface for thousands of kilometers in all directions.

To resurrect the Metaxis Line, Greece contracted with the Superstition Engine Works of Apache Junction, AZ to build automated mining stations of Laskaris's own design. They were paid for with the plunder of Istanbul, briefly held by the Greeks during 2057-58 and ransacked when they were forced out by a Turkish counterstroke. Two of these stations were broken down into Supply Pods reprogrammed by Yang to follow his departing Landing Pods.

Sources:

Picture of Laskaris is "Trooper" by Joakim Ericsson on ArtStation.

Picture of Miner is the work of Sebastien Hue.

Solar Commander is "space miner," the work of Joseph Kim on ArtStation.

The automated mining station is "Mining factory," a 3D design found on Sketchfab and credited to 3DRT.com.

[Trenacker]

A Blue Line tram hub at Paradise Swarming. Due to overcrowding, most workers avoided the hubs and walked the tunnels instead.

Hive engineers built with defense, not comfort, in mind. Laskaris conceived of the designs for Worker's Nest during lucid dreaming, resulting in a nonsensical layout resistant to the predictive mapping of enemy Probe Teams. Hive bases were cross-stitched with secondary communication tunnels and random switchbacks to help defenders mass quickly while confusing the attackers. "The Long Road Home," one of the first pop hits recorded on Chiron, made light of the punishing travel to and from daily workstations--up ladders, at times bent double, or even in chest-high water. The song had no accepted length or lyrics, just a repeating melody: the idea was that one sang until they arrived back at their quarters.

Segments of each base were only accessible single-file; an initial allotment of large or heavy equipment was sunk with the biggest chambers. For decades afterward, those chambers relied on the old technology and performed other tasks by hand. One could not travel more than four hundred paces without running across a weapons locker. Less before passing a camera or motion sensor. Some tunnels were so long, travelers were issued a water cube mid-way; others, so dark that they checked out portable torches at one end and returned them at the other.

Ten meters below the sand, all distance communication traveled by wire mounted in overhead bundles. Hivers actually used simple copper taps to join the "Chatter," each work detail developing its own argot. Their language was a wild combination of English, Chinese, Indonesian, Morse code, and Digislang. Hive Security could identify interlopers, whether errant drones or the infiltrators of other factions, by their lack of uniformity. They more often assisted the lost than detained the suspected.

Hivers expressed themselves with stickers, slapping them on helmets, knee pads, and public surfaces provided for the very purpose. Yang encouraged workers to proudly place their stamp somewhere in all the tunnels they visited, a testament, he said, to the fullness of their work. Also a convenient way to mark whether anyone was off-station. Hivers filed their stickers with Librarians to create a kind of signature that even the nerve-stapled could recognize and reproduce. Each worker of record was guaranteed exclusive use of that image. They received reels of stickers in regular installments to ensure that they used them often.

Source:

Image appears to be from the videgame Cyberpunk 2077. Found on Pinterest.

[Trenacker]

Librarian Ram Jaisi Presents Images of Early Chiron

[/size]

La Ringa Voto, an electrified rail-runner, was the first non-military transportation link between the territories of different factions. In M.Y. 12, it joined Morgan Industries with University Base. Excited students mobbed the Morganite pachinko halls and gorged themselves on unfamiliar rations. Chemist Kahar Tokhtakhunov traded kasha for curry, attempted his first cigar, and logged his first debt with a local bank after depleting all his courtesy credits. On the other end of the line, eager merchants sourced the latest in chemotherapies and purchased jumpsuits with wrist contacts that changed color according to the wearer's vitals.

Beneath the starry sky, thoughts of the self are rendered petty. Even hard men think it impossible to train their eyes elsewhere than the heavens. - Life in a Circle

There were many ways to reduce dissent. In Sparta, helots were worked to exhaustion: tired workers were less able to flee. Both Hive and Ascendancy attempted to breed docility. Notoriously anti-social Prokhor Zakharov swung like a pendulum between knock-out gas and gifting unhappy colleges robot domestics, that they might receive that most precious gift of time. At the Panopticon and in Bentham's Blockhouse, they simply planted more trees.

To speed expansion, Hive tunnels were kept as narrow as possible. Side-loading trams were common. In case of emergency, quick-deploying polyurethane bladders in vectran sheaths inflated to form airtight seals against flood and loss of atmosphere. The exterior surface of the bladders were studded with tab releases so that workers could use to draw top-side air, which they were to mix with oxygen from bottles stored beneath the tram seats. In M.Y. 32, 141 persons were put to death in the Hive after 781 workers perished in a carbon dioxide incursion. A grand total of twelve bottles were recovered by forensic teams, none of them filled.

Harvest time in the Neyanza Valley. At Pentofaro, Shaper Base Operations specialists oversee the arrival of a VTOL bulk carrier as the first thunderheads of a monsoon rain arrive. In the distance, lower-lying fields have already flooded, an important measure of defense against hungry raiders. Shaper bases were some of the earliest to plant Terran crops on a large scale, adding familiar fresh foods to the faction's diet. This went a long way toward improving not only morale, but health, although they suffered inordinately from psychic attacks. Other factions, usually eating hybrid crops, complained of digestive issues even after their biologists assured them the new rations were safe to consume.

With help from the Bourse, Togra Labs materials specialists, and the Chiron Foundries of King Priam Mining-Planetside, Pilgrim S.A.M.M.s reached colossal proportions.

 

As they laid waste to the area around, S.A.M.M. crews spent months-long tours of duty fully "buttoned up" inside their craft. Crew cabins were well-appointed, featuring all the comforts, and decoration, of terrestrial homes left behind--water plumbing, pop culture memorabilia, electric ranges, and refrigeration. It was a better existence, many agreed, than back at base, where few had hard shelter or direct access to most conveniences.

Sources:

Train picture found in Pinterest. Original source unknown.

Cherryblossom arboretum picture by [rul=https://jasonclarke.xyz/projects/mqyakv]Jason Clarke[/url].

Tram and harvest stills are from the old Horizons attraction at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World. On life-saving bladders, see this Popular Mechanics article.

S.A.M.M. picture is "Alien Miner" by Carmen Chow.

S.A.M.M. interior pictures are captures of the work of modeler Chris Shaylor's toy ship, "Gutbucket."

[Trenacker]

Thanks, everyone, for joining us on this adventure!

If you have questions, requests, or reactions, by all means share them here!

You can also message me directly to request a link to our dedicated Discord server.

[Trenacker]

Secret Project: The Hellstack

Let the Witch commune with her trees. And I shall converse instead with the rocks. - A Geological Survey of Planet

They called it the Hellstack. At Iblis Shoxlari (Uzbek for devil's horns) in M.Y. 319, the University of Planet built a single massive winding house from which to run a 14,000km spool of nano-filament wire straight down. The filament could be so excited with the electric output of local thorium-salt reactors, it would cut through nickle-iron almost as easily as through air.

At a final depth of 11,700km, Chiron's core temperature sat somewhere just shy of 8,000°C. Work at the Hellstack continued for a half-century. When the pendulum motion of the filament slowed, indicating contact with a new and potentially uncatalogued material, technicians fired nano-scale slugs of microscopic robots down the hollow wire at nine times the speed of sound. Some were probes that, over the course of years, would work their way back up the to the surface so that their contents could be subjected to spectral analysis. Others were mass converters programmed to atomize whatever stood in the way of progress.

University Librarians were characteristically coy about their findings. Zakharov shared only a fraction of his survey results with the Planetary Council, under-reporting the miners' progress by margins of up to 1,000km. They were releasing mostly water, he told the assembled faction leaders, lost as steam before it could be extracted for some loftier purpose.

A Tomorrow Institute probe team released a tranche of the project's controlled files to the Planetary Networks in M.Y. 340. The results triggered a panic. Zakharov's biologists were actually in possession of fossil records indicating that Chiron experienced mass extinctions as often as every two centuries, driven by rampant xenofungal blooms. They were also piping water, rare earths, and dozens of gases including helium, hydrogen, and nitrogen, from the borehole for agricultural, industrial, and military applications. Microbial life recovered from the deep mantle provided the basis for an organic sheath that so efficiently scattered adversaries' lasers, the impact point was cool to the touch even after prolonged contact.

Under great secrecy, Chief Scientist Esau Sutcliffe Zo'arc replaced the original spool of wire in M.Y. 402, ostensibly to address loss of conductivity caused by heat corrosion and simple abrasion. Actually, the new thread was a thermal conduction medium that raced the intense heat of the core to the surface of the planet. That same year, the small polar icecaps went into sudden and full retreat. Massive typhoons roared out of the oceans onto land, devastating overpopulated Shamash. Demonboils drowned under meters of water. The Nautilus Pirates floated their way within a fortnight's hike of the high Pinnacle. This was the University's opening salvo against what the senior faculty had come to believe was the imminent threat of Planetary Consciousness.

A native of the underwater city of Essex-9, Esau Zo'arc worked the submerged diamond fields off South West Africa, staying on after Namib independence. Recruited by J.T. Marsh, he declined a life on the move to retreat to Prokhor Zakharov's great ivory towers. An enthusiastic consumer of anti-aging treatments, he was still outwardly youthful in appearance four hundred years after Planetfall. Under protocols agreed by the Planetary Council, he has been careful to preserve the original markings on his vintage American high-heat encounter suit despite replacement of the headgear with a whole-horizon interface.

Sources:

Hellstack picture is "Mining Colony" by PulpoGlow on DeviantArt.

Credit to the Let's Talk Science webpage for giving me a cursory understanding of boreholes. ZME Science and the Smithsonian Magazine helped with the rest.

Picture of Zo'arc is the work of KindaGoodPainter on Reddit.

[Trenacker]

According to mission logs, every one of the 256 terrestrial and 26 solar sovereignties recognized by the United Nations in 2071 contributed authorized personnel to the Alpha Centauri mission. Contingents ranged in size from two (Sedna) to more than 170,000 (Golden China). First to come aboard were lottery winners—individuals chosen at random from an index of candidates curated by the U.N. Intelligence Cell. Aage Galeano was one of these.

Galeano, a twenty-four-year-old park ranger from Fuerte Olimpo, Paraguay, arrived at the Rio space elevator an unknowing orphan. Incensed by their own misfortune, Galeano’s neighbors lynched his aging parents and younger sister less than two days after he departed for Brazil. Galeano never learned of their deaths: he was already in hibernation when the news caught up.

Mission Control wanted Galeano as a pioneer. In his professional capacities, he had executed tasks as varied as those of veterinarian, rural doctor, bush pilot, wrangler, horsebreaker, outbreak warden, postal carrier, constable, smokejumper, and marshland rescuer. He cultivated an impressive web of relationships—with Guaycuru nomads ordinarily skeptical of government men, with Kellerite sects more inclined to shoot first and ask questions not at all, and even the Portuguese garrison in nearby Mato Grosso Province. Prove yourself first, Galeano told new rangers, and you will never be unwelcomed. In his hometown, Peruvian Amazon Company men marked Galeano first for subornment and then, when that failed, for harassment due to his organizing against the encroachment of cattle ranchers. His own father would not speak to him, blaming the son’s principles for condemning their family to destitution. The U.N. approvingly judged Galeano incorruptible.

On mission organization charts, Galeano was marked as an aide to Dr. Pravin Lal, a man he had never met. In New York, bureaucrats who’d had the pleasure wondered at the viability of the match. Would this backwoods paragon accept Lal’s tempered approach to moral complexities?

It was almost for naught. The Tribe came for Galeano after an indexed search at one of the Data Core mainframes turned up his name, only to be repulsed by U.N. Marines in a blocking position. Automated systems woke Galeano almost at once because of his emergency billet, but the hab bay was already compromised and all passages blocked. Damage Control ordered him to lead anyone he could find through a hull breach, after which they would walk across the Unity’s surface to access an airlock aft of their starting point. For over an hour, Galeano worked to find and ready forty-six other souls for the escape. They were at the very end the spacewalk when an interior explosion ruptured the hull plating beneath their boots, killing thirty-four of them. Eventually, the remainder did locate the Medical Director and his retinue.

For the Peacekeeping Forces on Planet, Galeano led many of the first scouts of the south polar island where the faction first settled. This included a mission that located Colony Pods bearing fifty Struan’s contract workers at what became U.N. Relief Station. There, Galeano helped extinguish fires and assisted none other than Dole Yudikon from his damaged cryotube.

Source:

Still from the short film Leviathan. Original concept, including art, by Ben Mauro.

[Trenacker]

Expand Tech: ExpansionFoam®

A Tetra Vaal Hazard Warden with an ExpansionFoam® sprayer. The black hose feeds compressed air to allow for subsequent shaping of the foam pile.

First thing: secure yourselves behind a high wall. - The Essential Keller

Before StickyFoam®, there was ExpansionFoam®, an expanding high-tensile, non-toxic polymer designed for the emergency repair of airtight environments. When applied by spray bottle to the edges of a breach, the quick-setting product expanded at a rate of ten thousand percent with a pressure of 40,000 pounds per square inch, creating durable yet flexible airtight seals.

Unlike its tacky derivative, ExpansionFoam® was not pre-mixed with drying agent. Despite a very high surface tension that let it retain structure when shaped, it remained pliable and could be sliced cleanly with a knife or rigid straight edge. (This to allow for removal of excess foam in confined spaces aboard naval and spacecraft.)

Togra Labs first sold ExpansionFoam® to the U.S. Navy Submarine Forces, then to the European Space Agency. Other military, aerospace, and commercial customers followed, and the material was repeatedly put to the test during emergencies both underwater and in space. The foam was an unqualified success. If it could be deployed within the first minute of anything less than a total structural failure, survival probability sat above 85%.

By order of the United Nations Life-Saving Service in 2065, every registered spacecraft was required to have two 16oz cans of ExpansionFoam® on hand in case of containment loss. A squirt packet of the foam was issued in the right shoulder pocket of the jump suit of every emergency responder aboard U.N.S. Unity. As a last resort, it could even be pumped through the firefighting main.

On Chiron, the uses for ExpansionFoam® were practically unlimited. In warfare, it could be used to create ersatz bunkers and bomb-proofs. The high ambient gravity and atmospheric density of Chiron were enough that bullets fired at moderate range rarely had enough remaining energy to penetrate more than 6". Because of its heat-dispersing properties, the foam similarly frustrated most infantry-scale lasers. It was even made into an offensive weapon. Francisco d'Almeida broke overrides to suffocate entire compartments of Spartan fighters with sprinkler-deployed foam. After Planetfall, Pioneers built heat-retaining survival domes, slathered foam to shore up faltering mine struts, and, most ingeniously, created ramps or bridges to help them negotiate rough terrain.

Sources:

I ran with the ideas of MysticWind around StickyFoam® and Tetra Vaal.

Robot picture by Christian Pearce. (The .net website referenced in the image above appears to be defunct.)

I learned more about foams from Conservation Mart.

[Trenacker]

Cain fleeing before Jehovah's Curse, Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormon.

Without the drone, the queen is helpless. And the opposite is just so. - Impressions

On the 9^th day of the month of Eshai in M.Y. 32, Chairman Sheng-ji Yang arrived at the surface. His retainers were impressed. "That man of 111 put us young men to shame," remembered an attending militiaman. "The climb from the Main Gallery took two days. He led all the while."

It was perhaps a rare sweet moment in what had been a terrible year for the Hive. Proxl Rot had spoiled an already-anemic harvest at the Great Clustering. By the time containment protocols were imposed, it was also confirmed at Command Nexus and the People's Teeming. To avert starvation and rebalance the faction's energy reserves, Yang sold five hundred drones into slavery at Demontongue. His worst enemies were the only accessible buyers. Pilgrim moisture farmers sneered openly at this coup, forcing the ghost-pale, light-shocked unfortunates to bare their teeth and complete short logic puzzles. Most of them failed, too malnourished, or too inhibited, to even feign fitness of body or mind. Those who were exchanged showed equanimity: they were merely trading one poor master for another who could hardly be worse, if only the sun wouldn't beat down so.

Beyond the problem of food, there was war. The Hive, it seemed, saw no stranger that did not merit quick killing. Sparta was in full fury over a recent ambush. Though on the verge, as always, of losing Xerxion to Pete Landers, Colonel Corazón Santiago had peeled away a regimental combat team that even then was piping charges into the pockmarked basalt of Labor's Pillar. For their part, Monopolists were running rampant through the Nessus Canyon. Numerous Hive headhunting parties were missing, presumed taken captive by SafeHaven mercenaries for whom tracking and killing was a full-time profession.

Yang's column of just forty scout rovers, water tankers, and megabikes moved by night, sheltering in rock formations previously prepared as redoubts during rare years of plenty. Miraculously, they survived, losing just two vehicles along the treacherous route up into the Hyas peaks, where on September 43^rd, they shook hands with Ascendancy Legionnaires.

Many times, I saw the Chairman decline his meal to sup instead on imagined delights. He 'passed his dish to the left,' historically the sinister side, and would insist, quite menacingly, that the recipient eat, which, being closely supervised by His Eminence, was an unavoidable fate. Sometimes, knowing he must fall out if he did not have something, the Chairman condescended to eat the peel of the tangerine, but still refused the fruit in favor of another. I would like to say that I was equally attentive to the needs of my comrade, though it would make a liar of me. - Personal Diary

Source:

"Desert Bike" is by Mehrdad Malek.

[Trenacker]

Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi photographed at a U.N. immunization conference at the University of St. Andrews in Free Scotland. Her presence, a calculated insult by the United States, predictably infuriated other attendees, many of whom walked out of lectures she attended. A notable exception to that trend: Soviet polymath Prokhor Zakharov.

Today, I think, was the best yet. Given a complete 24-hour ration. Had myself some kashi, fruit beverage (I think it was raspberry), a tin of mackerel fillets in mustard sauce, and some very good crisps. And that was just breakfast! Whoever coined the phrase that there can be no joy in nutrition deserves to be shot. - Two Visits

Although the entirety of his sad column was invited through the laser gates of Rosalind's Spire, the Chairman bade his companions tent outside the walls. They remained there, indifferent to the heavy autumnal snow, until Christmas. By then, many were missing teeth loosened by a combination of the privations they had already suffered and the peculiarity of a solid diet they would never again enjoy in their lifetimes. [1] One died of dysentery brought on by the radical change in diet. Two were killed by curiosity: wandering onto a firing step to watch Ascendancy gunners return scattered fire from Conclave guns, they were mortally wounded by a rare direct hit.

Inside the chrome and glass monument, Sheng-ji Yang, scarcely able to walk unassisted, requested the services of a physician. He diagnosed arrhythmia and, after reviewing an electrocardiogram, would have whisked the visitor away for emergency surgery had not the Director herself intervened. "You should have been an actor," she scolded in perfect Cantonese.

They began with an exchange of information, Yang seated at one end of a long metal table, Pahlavi and her profilers at the other. A diagnostic drone hovered just out of reach over the Hive leader's left shoulder, extending and retracting its probes for the better part of three hours. Pahlavi asked about the Spartans, who were giving her trouble in the passes. The Ascendancy was bottled up, she said, and would not break out before the thaw, if at all. Yang suggested that the "Little Colonel" must soon withdraw, so pressed on the coastal plain by Tribals and Restorationists that she must have every last rifle home. Yang wanted to be told about the fate of Struan's Pacific Trading Company and the Chiron Interstellar Probe. Begging ignorance on the latter count--Joralemon Hardacre was alive, but his colony remained incognita--she confirmed that Roshan Cobb had made it to ground and introduced a liaison, Picoloro da Silva. Producing a data tape, Yang pushed it toward his newfound friends. Recorded on the magnetic reels were matrices containing millions of hours of observational data on the subjects of his underground kingdom.

Named for a local landmark, the Dreamer chargé d'affaires to the Ascendancy had delivered Chile's declaration of war to the Antarctic despotism of Zhuljin in a past life, a shock for which he was made prisoner until his countrymen routed their foes forty days later. As a reward for good service, he was soon reassigned to the diplomatic blitz under-girding Chile's bid to host a space elevator. It failed, but da Silva impressed the competing trade delegations and was recommended to his government by Struan's (part of the Peruvian pitch team) for a Psych Chaplain's posting with the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. He was awakened at the very height of the Unity disaster, minutes after Garland's murder. Realizing his two saviors were Holnists hunting useful slaves, da Silva led them into an emergency bay he knew would be occupied and there found a squad of Sabre Company mercenaries whom he promptly convinced to execute them.

I trust the paramecia races are proceeding to your satisfaction? - Yang in the Hyas, Cadet Librarian Dovin Grillov

My intent is to take the radical steps from which we were so foolishly dissuaded on Earth. Think how this could benefit your project to model the acme of leadership. - The Termite and the Bumble Bee

[1] Osteopenia, or bone loss, was a common side effect of Wespe-Quinn-Vagner hibernation, during which the subject leeched calcium.

Sources:

A lot of my material lately is inspired by having listened to the entirety of Ken Burns's Civil War. You can probably detect the cadence of the narration by David McCullough and some of Garrison Keillor's voice acting in my writing.

The woman in the picture is Iranian actress Mahtab Keramati.

Original source for the da Silva faceclaim is unknown.

The Ascendancy base is named after Rosalind Franklin, who discovered the double helix architecture of DNA.

The Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery are the armed forces of the Draconis Combine in the Battletech Universe. I've always liked how intentional that sounded. It puffs up the otherwise lackluster Hive Security.

Zul'jin is a character in the Warcraft franchise.

For the final quotes, I adapted language using the original faction treaty text from SMAC.