"Minister Kane. It's been too long."

"Your humanitarianism humble us. All of us. I've relayed your offer through the compound. I cannot tell if you are a madman, or worse, a good man, but you've lifted hearts today. Perhaps, for a score of days. Our advance patrol efforts have only been mildly successful. I myself am due to born Union One and run the blockade under full escort in a matter of hours."

"Water under the Bridge. I believe I have an inkling of what you have in mind."

"Yet must lead with ensuring you are fully aware of what you risk through this act."

"The blockade is tight. Its rules of engagement only that there are no rules. All are targets. The Separatists have fired upon their own allies, the Gaians, for transporting basic medical relief. Medical stasis bands, food rations, even a hired Zoner. The Seperatists are committing their entire resources, calculating that our supplies will burn away before theirs do - for they are in very much the same logistical noose as ourselves as by burning us they've also burnt away their sole source of replacement war-fighting equipment, as well. For Knight, this is Zero Hour. She will not ameliorate her chances with considerations such as compassion, or soldierly conduct."

"They will think nothing of engaging a neutral third party irrespective of your cargo if they discover you are en route to Pacifica. From bullets to babies, the response will be force."

"The Separatists will willingly enter full hostilities with the Natio Octavarium if they believe it will prevent one crumb of supplies from reaching Pacifica's dockyards. They have betrayed close friends for strategic advantage, they will think nothing of strangers."

"They are a military junta who are accountable to no civilian population. No Separatist pilot will face a tribunal if they reduce your escape pods to so much ash. The Separatists are prepared to tell the entire underworld to go to hell if it lets them plant their flag upon Pacifica's dockyards. They believe their cause infallible, and thus keep their hearts ineffable."

"They will then inform the Hellfire Legion, who will treat your people as co-beligerants. Locklear has committed himself and there are few of you. I will not play with your survival for ours."

"Their strategic targets are Unioners, Kane. It's people who they war to kill, not machines, not any perceived strategic threat, for there was none when the conflict began. They intend to cleanse the belt from us. Bering is the Fulcrum as to if their rebellion becomes the wound that brings the giant down, or joins the pages of the deluded and done."

"If I cannot convince you to keep your transport at home, and, by the look of you I doubt I can, then a mixture of Beryllium and Niobium would be most useful. Superconducting elements might not seem like the most obvious example of medical relief, of course. However, if the relief effort is to succeed, we will require such materials to repair any damage sustained to the jump unit upon system entry. The Sirene's nanoforges will be able to make use of both to reduce the impact of radiation penetration into nonredunant systems."

"On a personal touch, any alcohol you can provide wouldn't go amiss around here. Morale is variable. It is a tactical imperative that my men are distracted from dipping into the harder narcotics."

"Kane. Irrespective as to if you decide to commit to this insanity, you have our thanks and the Union's faith. More than I can express here. Frei out."

"Kane. You're a suicidal man for commanding that transport, but no more than myself. We've had to stave off no less than seven attacks on our Yacht by separatist employed mercenaries and the Seperatists themselves, in part thanks to the Lane Hackers informing the Seperatists that I would be present in the system to oversee a draft treaty with Gaian, Unioner and Lane Hacker Signatories. The damn Hackers appears to have briefed the Seperatists about the presence of three major hostile actors being gathered in one place at one time, and attempted to assasinate the Gaian and Unioner delegations before they could traverse the Tanner Belt. We can only be thankful that the Separatists apparently did not pre-warn Locklear as well, for I doubt the Hackers would have made it to the table if they did."

The Gaians are Hackers are historic territorial rivals as much as they are both friends of the Union; It took four hours of continuous haggling to prevent them from shooting one another in the face."


"The diplomatic strategic circumstances has revolved in the last nine hours. I cannot say if they have improved. The Lane Hackers are not handwaving in their pledge to broker a peace treaty. It is a treaty heavily biased towards the Hacker Agenda, however, because it actively works to keep the Separatists on the board, and as a possible asset against the Legion. I did belabour the fact that we are now at war would suggest that the Seperatists will not view such an agenda cleanly. I'll use my own words from the meeting to describe what I thought of it." I respect their commitment even if the meeting itself could have moved more cleanly. Yet, it moved. We are alive. We were not shot down despite the Hacker data-leak. It is still greater diplomatic progress than has been achieved in months."



"It involves Unioner, Lane Hacker, and Atacama access to the Seperatists outbound transmissions using pre-positioned hijackware spikes located in Seperatist equipment throughout Bering. Considering that we ourselves import fire-control software from the Lane Hackers to operate the main battery guns on our largest of warships, the revelation that said spikes exist in practically blew the organs out of our engineering directorate, yet you take what you get."





"There's a collective of Hellfire Legion defectors, called the Atacama Cohort, embedded inside the Vespucci system. They've taken umbrage with Locklear's reformation, or defamation, from their point of view with the Legion of today, and they're the source of most of Pacifica's supply chain, despite having to fly through the mass of Legion territory to get it to us. They've done this largely without compensation and have federalised with the efforts of the Gaians in Tau-Liberty southern Barrier. They've been the secret to keeping Pacifica's populations alive, and are effectively the same Legionary servicemen who stood by the Unioners and the Hackers in the final years of the Vespucchi Triurmivate. They are, however, extremely aggressive to whoever even suggests co-operation with the Commonwealth's Goverment. To the point where encouraging the Atacama to embrace the treaty required a few information dumps that I would have preferred not to have spilled out of the cargo airlock. They are a worthy and honest people. I advise you make contact with them should you need individuals who know the home theatre."

"I do not expect this treaty will last as it expects two duplicitous parties to change their agendas from the sharpest of commitments, yet it offers my people opportunity to reshuffle our forces before the next wave. The Union will not make the mistake of placing trust in the Separatists again."

"It appears the chaos has settled and there is now an order to all of these events - except, one factor; your people are the rogue element, Kane. Every side involved in all of this has an obvious benefit to the effort of thwarting the Legion by pulling away from them the Seperatists. You and yours? I find it difficult to understand why the Natio is covertly acting to weaken Vespucchi, if only indirectly for now. You yourselves existed in close proximity to the Legion for over a year within the Kansas system. Yet through your philanthropy and repeated aid to our evacuation efforts, first technical, now material, and soon-to-be in sanctuary, you've become an involved party. Even the Lane Hackers, who are usually brittle, appear to be forging bonds with your people."

"I am not a psychoanalyst, so I will not try to be one. There's a clear cabal developing against the Legion here, all comprised of parties who have been wronged by the Legion in the past. Yet your people's own prior contact, in your own words, has not been hostile. The actions of your people have been honest, virtuous, and, frankly, have provided salvation in degrees we could not have anticipated even on our positive of calculus. So I hope I do not offend your ministry by this question."

"What's your play, by tying your populations to the Hackers and Mine?"

"Kane. It's been a month and the celestio-political landscape has undergone sea-change. You'd be simultaneously amazed and completely unsurprised if I debriefed a fractal of it."


"I'd be interested in making an information request. I will not fault you if you choose to lie outright or simply reject the proposition considering the fate of the Ring treaty. What is your current status with the Lane Hackers? I'll preface with the statement that even if you are presently sleeping with Yoshida, to go fully ridiculous, It will not impact the status of any ongoing negotiations. Contingencies are developing at a rate that will determine the fates of Bering, Vespucci, and the Taus, alike."

"Conditions are unfolding that will change the nature of the Unioner personnel we send to you. Instead of two hundred refugees, to what use could the Natio Octavarium do with two hundred dedicated shipwrights, with prior experience including the retrofits of Battleship Harmony, and our own Spyglass program?"

"Which brings me to my second request."

"How many drinks would I have to buy the COOs of Octavarium's national enterprises to lay a transport with two thousand units of Deuterium rich water aboard Freeport Ten?"

“You’re going to want to sit down for what I am about to tell you. It’s massively entangled the geopolitical circumstances.


Hunter Wolf was a twenty two year old enterprising young man detailed to the Pacifica front from the Unioner’s Munich cell. He was descended from a multi-generational Unioner family and was widely uninformed as to the geopolitical status of the front. He was highly idealistic and individualistic in a manner you will not see from the more integrated western cells, where the majoritiy of the underworld throughput occurs. Wolff was neither vicious nor Utillitarian – he believed readily enough in the necessity of anticorporatism, yet he was always a believer in the immediate armistice – that peace with the Seperatists was worth any cost, even the abandonment of Pacifica and the spiritual heart of what we are as Unioners. Wolff intended to see the sector, as young men are prone to, and build himself a life. He was an able pilot and a natural threethinking diplomat. Whilst our people have a reputation for self-interest, Wolff was a man who saw the larger picture. In twenty or so years, he would have been a valuable addition to the directorate. He was a component of my personal guard during the Lane-hacker held peace summit at the Tanner rim, between the Hellfire Legion defectors the Atacama Cohort, the Lane Hackers, and myself. I believed in Wolff. I still believe in him.

As you know, Yoshida brazenly confessed. He confessed to debating the terms of the peace agreement as outlined by the Hackers with an Internal Rheinlandic entity. This is why we pulled out of the peace treaty, as, obviously, we couldn’t be party to an agreement that the Rheinlandic Government was given consultancy over. Various Lane Hacker operatives then indulged in various threats against my own life. They were careful to differenentiate their aspersion between myself and the Unioners – declaring hostilities against me, but not against the organisation. They were taken seriously.

There’s a historical pattern of Unioners who have succeeded in siezing the directorate by force, or underhandedly play the Caesar by steering the movement through brinkmanship. Schilder’s creation of the Bering conflict is the most notorious example. It’s a common feature within the upper echelons of our movement due to the fractious nature of the Rheinland underworld – but apart from such historical figures such as Garen and Abendroth, they’re rarely successful. Even then, they guarantee themselves a bad end, and the wider movement harm. Either the Unions themselves hold them accountable, or the Union operates through third parties to assure its own stability. Successful labour directors resign, Kane. When I heard of Lane Hacker overt support to diminish the Unioner deterrence campaign, I was forced to return to Hamburg, to conceal myself, till the war had reached a point where the Seperatists were prepared to entertain a restoration of relations without the Lane Hackers themselves dictating terms. The fate of Bering should be decided by those who occupy the territory, never a third party. Continuing the war for another month would save the later human cost of a continued simmering rage. Lasting peace would be the salvation of my people.

Hunter Wolff was privy to Admiral Schultzky’s deployment of the Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon at Marshal Station’s airspace. He watched the bombs detonate. When I was forced to conceal myself, he searched for answers outside of the movement. This included in alumni of the alien and, predictably, the Lane Hackers themselves, who had been sending observers into the theatre to prove for pressure points. They found one in Wolff. By painting me as an instigator of the conflict, they managed to subvert Wolff, one of our finest young Arbeiters, into an unknowing saboteur to his own people. Rallying a base of outsiders that had either been rejected or had lost favour with the Union in the past – including Corsair rebels, Wolff found legitimising entities for a coup. In the meantime, the Lane Hackers attempted to promote Wolff’s image by construing him as a hero in propaganda broadcasts.

Wolff was may things but he was also a twenty-two-year-old. He was idealistic and naive. Upon attempting to recruit cell-leaders and commanders of the Pacifica defence force to his insurrection, he miscalculated the value of Pacifica to the western cells. To the ancestral spirit of those who have hewn for centuries with drills and hammers to carve survival from the belt. Wolff was shot, three times, before he could be arrested, but not after confessing, on record, to his plot, including a number of his major backers. Including the Lane Hackers.



He’s been supported by outside entities. I’m aware of the identity of three of them. He worked through the Union’s allies and those who perceived a benefit of removing me from the board. What I am not aware of is what promises he made, to whom, and why. My concern is less the attempt on my life than the attempt on the Union’s credibility. Stability is paramount.

I have been forced to conceal myself since an incident known as the battle of New Providence, the local name for what was Freeport Two, whereupon the entirety of the Seperatist and Unioner fleet detachments within Bering engaged one another to near-total losses on both sides and the severe damage of major war assets. This was immediately precluded by a Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse warhead deterrent strike upon Marshall station; I do not regret the decision. The Hellfire Legion would have simply impacted Pacifica with additional Warheads if we had not illustrated our capacity for deterrence. The strike was overwhelmingly successful.

We’ve had reports of Lane Hackers funding third party mercenaries and repair ships to support the Seperatists in combat. Any illusion of neutrality they are attempting to maintain has shattered apart.

I am now in a position where I am more concerned over what the contacts of Hunter Wollf intended for him, than I am of the Bering war. We know he was fraternizing with known nomad agents at the time of his betrayal – they may also be responsible for the exodus of his family members.


The Lane Hackers actions are despicable, Kane. Their immediate response to a diplomatic impasse was to attempt decapitation of the Union in a time of war. The Hackers believe in puppets, not allies. The only means to shake their control is to act in the manner that they expect the least – to subvert expectations – to nullify the endgame.

The search for Schilder continues. His disappearance remains. We strongly suspect at this point that Schilder is the Hackers’s reserve pawn; a backup ploy now that Wolff’s coup has failed. Wolff’s family members are also unnacounted for – they’ll likely attempt the same, using the next generation of the Wolff clan as their agents. After all, they now have a brother to avenge.


I believe that the Lane Hackers are systematically sheltering Unioner extremists in order to puppet the entire Bering conflict and elevate their own standing in the Libertonian and Rheinlandic underworld over a killing field of bones. I believe Wolff is not the first or the last.

I believe that we are not the only targets of this insidious process. This comes at a most severe time for us; our program to expand the Union’s fuel dumps to extend our operational range to the Vespucci system is almost complete. Yet it is apparent that the enemy within is far more destructive than the external enemy.

Kane. I am prepared to die for my people if it expands the agenda of my people. I will not die to turn my people into slaves.

It gets worse. As I said, one of Hunter Wolff's suspected supporters was a supporter of the infection. The Lane Hackers, by all accounts, knew of this. We have evidence, communications logs, from a Separatist deserter that the Lane Hackers were fully briefed. The Lane Hackers still backed Wolff's coup in full knowledge that he could deliver the entire Rheinland-Liberty cross-border smuggler's network into the control of the alien.

That’s the truth, Kane. The unvarnished, rotten truth. I expect you’ve furthered relations with the Hackers in the meantime – it’s what I would have done in your position.

I don’t want to see your people entrapped as surely as mine were. Nor do I expect you to take anything I state here as gospel. Yet the Natio deserve honesty. And you deserve to know the truth of the Bering war."

"Which brings us to Vespucci. The Hackers do not know of this, and I would prefer if you kept them in the dark over this one, but the Tanner Belt conflict is soon to come to an abrupt close."

"The War in Vespucci is only beginning. Yet the teams are already blurring their shades. "

There's a diminution to Corin's voice. For the first time since first interacting with the aged Arbeitsdirektor he appears.... worn. Not roughened or tenacious. Worn.

"You might wonder why I am sharing this with you. How this risk could possibly benefit me. After all, you could forward the entirety of this message to the Lane Hackers to obvious geopolitical reward. In truth? I do not know. I simply have a gut impression that you, ostensibly, are a good man, Kane. That you will act according to the interests of your people and that you are not susceptible to suggestion or intrigue. That your people will protect you, should the Lane Hackers choose to replace you with a puppet, just as they attempted with me. I ask you to do no more with this disclosure than to keep asking questions. Cross reference -any- intelligence you are provided by the Lane Hackers. Do not attend meetings alone, or on Lane Hacker spacecraft or space stations. Keep a guard around you. I need someone I can trust in Vespucci who has a skin in the game. I have the Gaians. I hope I can also trust in you."

"We live in seditious times. Only principles will see us through. The Unioners have a belief that's embossed into the logo of the Syndiclia. Those who burn Ucagleon's house will themselves be consumed by the fire. The principle is simple; protect your neighbour, from those who would see benefit in burning their neighbours. "

"Good luck. Remain safe."