Comrades.


The last time we attempted to negotiate with the “National Council” over a trade understanding, the Council requested we abandon our neutrality in the Hispanic civil war and enter a political field which neither impacts us nor would earn Malta any credits if our institutions are being mauled. You requested deployment of WMDs in this endeavour. No. Such a question misappelates our efforts to keep the Corsairs out of Rheinland.

The Unioners have survived for centuries by being many things to many people. To the Hessians, we create an illusion of Corsair interrelationship to discourage direct assault. However, our relationships to your nemesis is neither trusting nor anything more than transactional; they have goods to sell, we buy them, in exchange for working behind the scenes to keep the Corsairs firmly out of the Rhein. We have been significantly successful in this matter – if the Corsairs believe we are covering their southern flank from the Hesse, they will not move into the Rhein and attempt to milk the massive contraband arteries flowing through the Rhein’s veins.

It’s a power play. The Corsairs are nothing to us but a counterbalance against the Red Hessians and a battering ram against the GMG. We do not trade weapons with the Corsairs, nor are we reliant upon Corsair technology or fuel. There is a well-documented two-way arms embargo between the Unioners and Crete. We rarely conduct joint tactical operations and have positioned ourselves as the sole supplier of the sole Corsair base in Rheinland territory proper so we might better manipulate the purse strings of Crete. This is not appeasement. This is regulation. It is against the Unioner belief system to interfere in foreign politics – in return, we will always do everything in our power to prevent foreign politics from interfering with us. For example, if the blood dragons asked for material support, we would send them weapons and supplies – for a price, of course – no questions asked, despite a lack of formalised relations with the Kusari underworld. We are suppliers, retailers, distributors. It is how we fund our blue-collar activism and manufacture flotillas of picket cruisers with sufficient regularity to give the Texan defence forces a headache. We do not distribute to Crete.

“Fondness” is inaccurate. The Unioners do not possess latent resources of our own. Contraband is the aorta that feeds our heart. However, as is evident due to the Council’s position – we are fast becoming victims of our own image. Whilst it might aid our cold war against the Hessians to see ghost-chains between ourselves and the Cretians, we resent the concept of becoming a lackey. The Corsairs are capricious and unreliable. We look for alternative partners.


The Outcasts have always been reliable trading partners of the Unioners for the centuries since our criminalisation by the Federal Republic. The more the directorate learns of you, the more we are inclined to view Malta as a potential root to our economic tree. For the first part, you are the sole-source manufacturers of a product that has immediate, guaranteed, resale value; die Orangetraum. Cardamine is the titan in the pantheon of narcotics, life expectancy extension drugs, antidepressant and antianxiety medication. Above everything, it is relatively easy to pack into consumer goods for smuggled export.


We are specialists in the transfer of bulk contraband. Above everything, we own the Rheinland distributor-level black market, without contest. The Bundschuh refuse to traffic black market goods other than supplies for themselves, the Red Hessians are diamond-obsessed protectionists, and the LWB are too fragmented to be a factor. The Unioners, by contrast, have ruled the Rheinland smuggling net for aeons. It is why we have managed to secure alliances with both the Junkers and the Hogosha at once – they see the value of our services. Rheinland, by comparison to the other houses, has a comparatively low cardamine uptake. This is entirely the result of minimal Cardamine distribution, not a result of minimal demand (and, with sufficient PR, we can create demand).

The Unioners believe in the individual freedom of choice. We mandate, we always have, that an active wealthfare state and assiduous economic planning is not opposed to the right of the individual to live whatever lifestyle they so desire. The illegalisation of Cardamine is a crime against humanity, a crime that can only be rectified with your assistance.


There is, obviously, the matter of what we have to offer in return other than simple credits at Malta’s ample granaries.


Bering may be remarkably resource devoid graveyard, however, it is the graveyard of innumerable, relatively intact, warship hulls from the Rheinland-Libertonian war up to the present day, for Bering remains eternally a battleground between ourselves, the Libertonian Seperatists, and the Liberty and Rheinland government intelligence and deep recon branches. We honour the dead assiduously and therefore heavily restrict access to the field to all but our own ranks. The materials available in Bering are numerous, including entirely intact starship systems from thousands of separate military-grade designs. Even special operations vessels have found their rest within the belt. This wealth of materials, both technological and physical, represents an unlimited opportunity to bolster the sophistication of Malta’s navies. In return for cardamine, and a IFF boster from the National Council to the shared neutrality we once enjoyed, we will trade this salvage, en masse, directly to your shipyards.





I trust Benito Contari will not harass the Unioners again with indiscriminate requests for the Unioner deployment of weapons of mass destruction, this time around. I confess, the Directorate was disappointed by our former dealings with your organisation. As a democratic institution, we hope that we were simply victims of the political winds; that the moment now favours discussion.

Extremely reasonable.


You will not regret your decision. However, we have one additional request - IFF status between the Unioners and the Outcasts has been rather difficult to maintain of late. We request a co-mutual IFF update to true neutral to facilitate active trading between our peoples.

As for cardamine, any operations that we undergo will be off our own backs, with Unioner distributors bearing the brunt of the risk. There are Unioners within our own organisation - not to mention the independent pirate and separatist populations of Beringa and Hamburg - whose quality of life nnd physiological wellbeing would benefit from a more consistent cardamine supply.

In return, we can have high-grade strategic spacecraft components flying upstream as soon as our transponders are synched.