To: Moriarty and kin.
From: Armin Jansen, der Alster Union.
Subject: War and Poaching.
You must pardon my absence. There has been… a purge.
I have been waylaid by war, Professorship. As you have doubtless heard already with your myriad of ears, the Unioners and the Red Hessians are now painting each other as red as their namesakes. It appears the Hessian leadership maintains…. interpersonal… ties to the leader of the Bundschuh, who has been using third party espionage to destring our smuggling networks, two by two. Our trade network is vast, Lane Hackers, and the majority of our chess pieces disposable pawns. Every once in a while a Unioner may grow overconfident running artefacts through the Dresden node - to their peril.
I will not lie - this is a setback to the movement not encountered since the Eight Hundred war. The Red Hessians are our prodigal protégés, Hackers. We nurtured them in their infancy, we armed them. Their famed Vidar attack cruisers are merely bolt-on modifications of a design we exported to them. Yet several hundred years is more than sufficiant for a lovechild to vacate the ideological cradle. We realise now we have raised only a school-shooter: they claim to be socialist yet destroy the livelihoods of the blue-collar they claim to wear. You must see Dresden to know of their sin, Hackers. The devastation. The lanes destroyed. Such piteous retribution against the corporations as to target the citizenry by extension. You, us - we have boundaries. We comprehend the necessity to change the system, not rip and tear, that a hammer is as only indiscriminate as its wielder. In short - the Hessians claim to be fighting for the Rhein. They are not. They are a proxy of the Sirius Coalition, an organisation descended from the very ultimate enemy that sent man eloping from his cosmic Eden. We have raised a psychopath.
I cannot reflect on the parenting of my ancestors with pride, nor will I waste time on regret. What matters is our actions in the now - and, if anything, the Hessians have served most fittingly. They have disenfranchised themselves from the cause of the Rhenish worker. They pushed the people into our palms, by becoming the Great Satan our people needed. The federal sympathisers waste themselves upon the Corsairs as has been their want since the fall of Neimann, which creates a vacuum. Already we have crafted ties with those authorities willing to put prejudice aside. The time is now.
The most compelling risk the Hessians present is their tactical ability. Our ships exceed their own in competence and design, but they remain as fallible as their pilots. The Hessians are combat hardened after years of misguided grind against arguably the most formidable martial power in the edge systems - our prior experience is based upon the skulls of those many foreign manipulators who saw it fit to die for their cause as eagerly as we were to live for ours.
As for the…. risk… concerning the Hellfire Legion, we have seen them fraternising with the Auxesians on innumerable occasions. The same Auxesians who fraternised with the Bundschuh to raid our artefact shipments, on the Hessians’ behalf, because the Bundschuh wish to preserve a neutrality of intentions between the Order and the Auxesian band. You see how the web ties together.
We are confident that we have sufficient resources to combat the Hessians. They are fighting on multiple fronts at once, and, with careful tactical management, we can prevent them from monopolising on us. Our dilemma is not a numbers game, nor is it logistics - we carry the advantage in both. Instead, it is mobilisation. Our economy is, was, partially dependent upon the exchange of blood diamonds. This is obviously no longer the case, nor can we depend on artefacts solely without becoming a client puppet of the Corsairs. We have an answer here, too.
You are doubtless aware of the Bering jump gate debris field? The totalitarian grip of your ex-employers over Jump Gate components?
Think of the geopolitical consequences if some organisation was to, say, export the dead bones of that jump gate to independent researchers? Think of what it would do to the so-called manifestness of the Liberty Government?
You can’t have a manifest if you lack a monopoly. We are already in contact with the Junkers to make our initial arrangements, although we hope you can cast insight. We know next to nothing about jump gate components apart from how to store and transport them - and that is all we require. It is not the technology that intrigues us, it is the delectable potential of seeing the Emperor without his clothes. Agiera is a stranglehold cooperation. It makes every house dependent upon itself - upon Liberty. Their trade practices are disgusting to the individualism we espouse. Jump gate technology must be democratised if Sirius is not to become a client state to the Wall Street diabolus. If it provides us with sufficient funds to sow the constellations with dead Hessians as a side effect, so be it.
I trust your are interested?
Regards,
Armin Jansen.
First contact representative and Diplomat-in-Chief of der Alster Union, Pacifica Base, Bering.