Under unoriginal circumstances, this discussion would be forfeit before it had ever begun. However, these are not conventional circumstances.


Your cause is fundamentally agreeable to us, from the little we know of it - a non-state actor, yes - but one with sufficient house-bound funding. Reassuring. Your feet lie upon the terra-firma of the house systems, even whilst you scythe your will through the edge systems. It is true, your interspace Commerce creditors give us pause; we have no sympathy for Interspace and their forcible manipulation of house governments for their own interest. Corporations exist for the benefit of the economic body, not the manipulation of usury to rob those already afflicted by famine, however, you yourselves have been proven in no way parasitic to the cause of the Rheinlandic individual - indeed, you have been assistive. Unlike the Auxesians and the Order, you do not fraternise with revolutionary madman and demagogues - you show equal disdain for the Bundschuh, whilst the Order and the Auxesians cultivate the angst of the would-be peasantry for their own fervour. You stand for the dissemination of the eldritch, to make light from oblivion, not harbour its fruit in greed. Money, for monstrosities. This is a trade we can respect.

There is nothing more middling to manipulate than an academic - the Bundschuh thrive upon abstract simple-fixes to deep-rooted socio-economic dissonances within the Rhein. They lack pragmatism. In their intent to see their utopia glisten under the blood-moon of the red flag, they have caked the streets with gore. We applaud you for not promoting the interests of traitors.


You are unique. You are a countermeasure to the Nomads - winnowing the infected with ease. You are, equally virtuously, a for-profit military company, which means that you are susceptible to the edifying virtues of the market - a Randian self-awareness that fills us with hope.

Ever more usefully, you have shown a single-minded opposition to the iniquities of secessionists, of those who would leap into the nomad-encrusted dark of the independent and edge worlds, abandoning their house roots to wither and die. Your short shrift with the Zoners has earned no small dose of admiration; whilst we ourselves tolerate the Zoners as an essential, if unpleasant, intermediary into the world of lawful trade, our dependence is dying and our suspicions are sharp. It remains the case that if not for the presence of Freeport Two, the Westphalia system would be all but secure from parasitic sell-swords, from cardamine-pushers, from miscreants of every mark. Equally, the denzins of the so-called “Freeport” Eight have been long providing every item of mischief from bullets to bandages to Bundschuh operations against planet Hammersee - a colonial endeavour only a system away from your own borders, Core.

Under this light, we would be keen to negotiate with you. We have considerable suspicions that the Nomads, and Nomadic technology, are attempting to push their way back into the Rhein - sightings of suspected infected, of ships that match no categorical database, and even, allegedly, the Nomads themselves, are extremely elevated.

We have much to gain from a perfunctory, cautious, relationship. One of acquaintance, from a distance. Our zones of control overlap within the Sigmas, as do our mutual interests - You have a working relationship with the Rhein’s government, do you not? It is in our interest to preserve the continuity of the Rhein from internal forces - the Core provides external support to Sirian governments. You are a force for stability in a chaotic universe.

I am aware that certain individuals consider us terrorists - they would be right. We terrorise those we see as a threat to the socio-economic survival of Rheinland, of those who parasite from the popular economy. We fight con artists - and the Nomads are the consummate conmen.

Note - I am not condoning any overt relationship. I am merely suggesting a certain level of reservedness - a preparedness to come to terms, when the hour is ripe. We have considerable knowledge of Nomadic activity within Rheinland itself - an awareness that could, eventually, be of use to you, and we also possess a degree of executive control over the artefact trade through our considerable resource exchange network; the Hansa.

Our objectives are dissimilar, yet they are parallel enough to never need to cross - provided that you present no threat to our allies in the Corsair empire, of course, and our eternal assistants under Daumann and Kruger employ.

If you molest our comrades, of course, this message is naught. However, considering your past interactions to our misguided colleagues in the federal bureaucracy, I remain full of hope.

Within moderation, of course.

Smuggling operations are not my department. I will relay you downstream, Miss Hawken.

Don't mind the delay, Hawken. Communications between cells, that, up to last year, were at each other’s throats like a pack of rabid rats is not easy. Now the line's established, we will be more reliable. Or surrogates will die. Either or.

I am Sascha. I pull the strings as to what enters Liberty and what doesn’t. Ignore the Junkers - we are the ringmasters of the Liberty-Rheinland blackmarket corridor. If there is so much as a K’voshi bangle on the streets of Manhattan, it bears my serial number.

The artefact market has changed since the days of innocence men like Shaun Ashcroft represented. For one, demand has risen over two hundred thousand percent. Rich bastards still crave artisanal gemstones carved off the wall of some Pygarian tomb, but the dissemination of Nomad technology has impacted all sectors. Weapons corporations, governments, crave hybrid equipment. Intelligence services - hyper gate maps, jump anomaly markers, locational data of alien structures, movements. In the dark ages, we were selling stones - now, we’re selling information. The buyer could be anyone from a private collector to the Cambridge Research Institute - it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the artefacts are liquidated into cold, hard cash as rapidly as we can get them off the transports.

There are many within the Union who view the Nomads as the eternal problem - they borderline destroyed everything that we believe in nearly a quarter century ago, however, they represent a Sirius-wide craze and the general artery of our organisation. We have forged an empire off selling the stones. I would be a beggar, or dead, if not for the trade. Families depend on what others rob from the sepulchres.


The Union doesn’t run contraband like your low-down Maltese, Rogue, Lane Hacker or Hesse - the power isn’t with the suppliers, with the people at the top of the food-chain, but with the distributors. Cretins who hold onto the supply to jack up prices are shunned. We don’t buy from con-men. Anyone in the right place at the right time in the Omicrons, with nothing but a pickaxe and a pressure vessel, can mine artefacts. The talent is in ensuring said artefacts can transition nearly a hundred lightyears from the Edge Nebula to the streets of Manhattan without being blown out from under them, arrayed against security agencies with far more funding, equipment and training than any arrangement we could make. Then there’s the dice-roll of knowing what can be brought, what is in demand. Our hanseatic league does both - better than anyone in the shade of the law.

The short response is; yes, I’m interested. But I’ll need to see what you have, which others cannot give me.

The artefact trade is an addiction. A collector doesn’t want five hundred tonnes of silica laminate. They don’t want chipped pottery and amethyst sculptures anymore. You don’t run artefacts to make thousands of credits, you run to make hundreds of millions. The real hot goods are from the sciences - active artefacts, that’s what sells.

I’m willing to help you, help us, help you, Nova - but I’m a buyer. I won’t risk my men or my credits till I have an idea of what you’re packing for sale.

I'll give you context.

My men are dealing with the bloodiest conflict our organisation has stuck itself in, in the last three hundred years. The Hesse bastards are even hitting our convoys in Gamma, mid-load. I can still get my blockade-runners through, but I have to sacrifice entire fighter wings to do so.


Which puts you under pressure.

Hit me with the rarest, most unique, most unprecedented K’haran or K’voshi artefact you're willing to give us out of your inventory, we'll grade it's value - and I’ll tell you if I’m willing to continue this conversation.

I know what the Core is capable of. I know we will not disappoint each other.