Admiral Knight.
Alright, Admiral. Your terms are just.
We have the means to refit and maintain your vessels indefinitely, however, we are not Deep Space Engineering and the longer your ships maintain in our custody and the more battle damage the we are forced to patch, the more nonstandard the vessel will become - puristically because we do not have the tooling or insider technical awareness to repair critical elements dreadnaught’s internal layout - a repercussion that will be imitated fleet wide. Whilst we can mimic Libertonian manufacture and our repairs will hold their own under practical use, we are Rheinlanders and we hail from the Rheinlandic shipbuilding tradition.
This will eventually lead to your various assets - from the smallest fighter to the Harmony itself, suffering power grid issues from systemic incompatibilities. Fortuitously for you, we happen to have the greatest engineers at our disposal this side of the law, which will delay the issue. Softwareside, the Lane Hackers may be able to aid us combat active incompatibilities, but we will not be able to stave off the inevitable. You are correct in your assessment that we will eventually be forced to cut a larger Libertonian asset apart - which promotes aggressive tactics - tactics, which, in turn, require a reasonable supply state.
We are stuck in a chicken-egg scenario with neither the Chicken nor Egg at our disposal.
You are advantaged in that we have made extensive study of Libertonian design custom through black market acquisition - you can see evidence of this in our own Arbeiter space superiority fighter, which features the most efficient power management system on any strike craft ever designed. Several years of extracting the skeletons of Libertonian patrol craft from the Tanner Belt has proved enabling, but it will not be enough. We will either have to arm you with our own gear, or find a supplier on the inside.
More pressing is the issue of cultural assimilation. The decision of our leadership to run to your aid is an unpopular one - we are already suffering from a spate of internal betrayal from the Red Hessian movement - the average Unioner is hardly in a trusting mood towards outsiders. We would strongly advise that Harmony elements avoid contact with Unioner cells outside of Bering itself - the average Bering Unioner can be convinced to hold a tolerant attitude towards your battlegroup at what you represent - despite obvious dissimilarities in methodology and institutions, there are parities; we are both patriots who believe our respective houses are the victims of subversion. We both hail from legitimate organisations outcast by systems that attempted to catalyse our own destruction. We both are rebels, but not by choice.
The old bones of the Rheinland Imperial Navy ring stronger within the Unions than anywhere else in the Rhein - there is still a proud martial tradition buried under the patina of criminality and self-interest that the universe has forced upon us. You are further advantaged by the beliefs our leader has chosen to promote; there remain a vast number of Unioners who fervently believe that we are living in the end of days, and that the various subversive forces throughout Sirius cannot be stemmed except by total commitment to their eradication - indeed, perhaps cannot be stemmed at all. For the first time in centuries, there are a significant number of Unioners who are truly willing to put aside tribal distinctions for the benefit of a wider whole - a sense of macro-destiny that you yourself entertain.
I would advise you go slowly - Unioners on Pacifica are surprisingly receptive to Libertonians, if only due to our trade relations with Liberty’s underworld. There are even the rare Libertonian amongst the Union’s ranks - not every member of Texas’s dispossessed ends up in the clutches of the Xenos or the Rogues. In addition, Pacifica itself features wet-dock facilities more than sufficient to keep your battlegroup running indefinitely, should it be required to do so.
My advice to you - go slow. Take your larger assets to Pacifica a ship, a crew, at a time. Give our men and yours time to adjust to each other’s existence. Encourage your crews to mingle with the local populace, yes, but cautiously. Analyse by psyche profile before subjecting them to the bustle of the underworld. Conflict avoidance is not the only matter at stake here - it is a matter of spirit. We do not wish to de-legitimise each other.
We collaborate because it is strategically valuable. The average Unioner is pragmatic before they are intolerant - it is how we have toed the line between the Maltese and the Corsairs for centuries whilst many others fall to one influence or the other. Prove that you are useful to the rank and file, and they will respond to you in kind.
Ostensibly, we are engineers, and you are soldiers. A soldier will respond well to a comrade in arms, and an engineer will respond well to an equally analytical mind. Let us be the versions of ourselves that we wish to see in each other.
The alternative is our naked treaty will fall apart at the seams and I will have no power to prevent it from doing so.
As for our motivations regarding the GMG - they are multiple. Practically, they impede our trade relations and consider us to be terrorists - which is a status we have entirely earned. Historically, they are the cause of the fall of the Rheinland of old and thus the entire reason our organisation exists in its present form, rather than a lawful conglomeration. They are our ultimate antithesis. Whilst we regard Republican as a symptom, the GMG is the virus. It is against our system of belief that the resources of a house, and thus, the entire house itself, should be beholden to an entity that does not vote, that does not pay tax, and thus has no motivation to support the wellbeing of the peoples it exports to. The GMG milks the treasury of others, grows rich beyond the imaginings of anybody but the upper echelons of Interspace Commerce and Synth Industries, whilst thousands starve in the streets because various governments of Sirius are locked in a state of fuel starvation by the GMG monopoly. The GMG saw fit to topple a legitimate government, loved by the populace, for the sake of banal credits. We regard the GMG as not merely a crime against Rheinland, but against the entirety of humanity.
However, I concur that the GMG is not a common target - let us handle the GMG, as we have for centuries. I merely ask if you choose to become a beneficiary of the H-fuel we rob from them.
Are you willing to sacrifice smaller principles for the greater good, Admiral?