Howdy Junks’. It’s been too long, yeah. Time goes fast when you’re being manhunted by goddess Commie bitches.

We’re going to rectify that, right now. Call it a chat between mates, yea’?

The Arbeitsdirektor’s been doing this thing he does; making plots. And I don’t know what he’s plotting most of the time, but it’s something sure valuable to us both if he let it trickle down the tailpipe to my end of the spectra.

You know this jump-gate we’ve been sitting pretty over? The dead one? It’s right in our cosmic backyard and the powers-that-be have been a little stuffed up by the cloves of garlic being shoved up their rectal fissures to crap all over our slice of the Tanner belt. So I’m going to throw this supposition out at you:

Gate and lane components are the most valuable possible-contraband that never got contrabanded because the bloody things are track so easy - let alone nobody can crack them out of their white boxes unless you’re God’s gift to Lane Hackers, so for now they’ve only earned a pittance’s remittence on the grey-to-black.


That’s a state of affairs we could readily resolve.

Those gate components drifting in the nowhere are the most beautiful little trinkets we could possibly lay our collective claws into. Now we’re no neophytes in the smuggling world - the Unioners have been fencing ill-gottens since your great-great-grandparents were old enough to wish they were space pirates from the nursery; we know there’s a market for this crap. It’s not directly useful to us as shipbuilding stock - we import enough from you and yours in Texas to cover all our bases - but out there, beyond the regulation of house territories? We’re going to make a killing, if the risk of getting caught with stolen gate technology doesn’t kill us first.

Natural choice in the matter would be you to salvage the sensitives - you’ve got the most salvage experience, after all. Catch is - this stuff wouldn’t get you slapped in jail, just as cardamine would - it’s enough to get you assassinated, right on Liberty’s porch, too. It’s a little hot for junkers to be stealing Agiera’s intellectual property from under their noses - but the Union? We’re already as deep in the red with the so-called Libertonians as to be breaking toxic candy canes in Sugarland as it is. If we get caught, we’ll just railroad whoever caught us with enough tachyons to make their kidneys atrophy.

So where do you come in? I’ll tell ya’ arrow straight:

We’re shipbuilders by blood - make-do-and-mend with salvage is what we do. However, most of our salvage is done in dry-docks from plane stationary ship hulks - not freeborne scrap under rotation in radiation hell. You’ve got the salvage equipment to tool us up appropriately - if you lend us your expertise, let your guys teach our guys - then we’ll repay you by loading your transports - away from the trade lanes and the public eye - with the salvage we acquired. This is contingent upon us finding a buyer, but you know us. Rheinlandic efficiency, in the flesh.

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Credit chip for your thoughts, Bill.

Expertise. We’ve been getting all the real solid materials from FL-ER. Call us prejudiced; our pilots get less askanced if you give them something to assemble with German in the manual.

It still leaves you with the most critical part of the puzzle, though. Especially since you’re the third party who could benefit the most from this - apart from, ‘course, the Corsairs.

Salvage isn’t as simple as strapping a few mining lasers on the side of a Ragnar - you know that. Proper tractor beam and cutting array calibration is the difference between ending up with the goods in your hold or nothing short of vapour. It’s why mining corporations consider their methodologies as something of a trade secret.

The scrap present in the Bering field is totally unique - it doesn’t reflect any of the debris you’d usually find floating around. It’s denser than ship components and loaded with whacky rare earths and exotic materials. This doesn’t give us much of a base to work from, but it’s a s good as we’ve got.

Here’s what I propose - you send over a team of your best boys to educate our salvage crews on the nuances of in-space capture. In return, we’ll share the wealth when the trade route fires up. You help us calibrate all this equipment we've got sitting pretty, and we can get this express mobile this side of the month.