Alster Unioners

Reynard grins, taking off his spectacles. There's an element of wry in the Unionist's eyes. He clearly believes in eye contact being the beneficiary of trust, even between several hundred lightyears and a thousand redundant FTL neural relays, pinging through open space.

One of illustrious arbeiters saw one of your people take... exception... to the well-armed right hand of the Xeno movement. Such waves raise stories on their crests. Before your fighter was downed - a galling loss to the Maltese people, given your particularised fecundity.

I am a cardamine dependent, señores. I require cardamine to survive. In the words of your people, I am enlightened. There are many like me in the Unioners.

Surprised? Possibly. Rumours are rife in the underworld and can colour the truth.

My Maltese associates. I am a Unioner - we are the purveyors of the Rheinish belly. The underworld belies its true structure - Rheinland has often seemed impregnable to the Maltese markets. Demand is low - the Rotte Hesse are rotten indeed but an illusion of a puritan principle will attract the idealistic and young. They have clamped the Cardamine markets. The Bundschuh, market themselves as components of the idiolect of the powerful with the predilections - the orange dream will not flow there, either.

In its absence, the Corsican chemical nox fills the streets of the Federal Republic under legal endorsement - it is no contraband, and its presence has thinned the demand for the local produce. There are distributors in the Rhein who see the Corsian narcotic as a suspect compound - why should we depend upon a substance crafted by a people who commits xenocide against Sirians? Cardamine is the known factor. To some, Cardamine offers hope. I see the effects the chemical has wrought on the Liberty Seperatists, who share our attitudes towards personal choice, private entitlement.

The Unioner way of life holds that all men have the freedom to choose their own values. If one needs or chooses to be needful, in the consumption of Cardamine, then that is their freedom and right.

We are the only Rheinland underworld faction who takes no exception to the sale of Cardamine - once, under the years of the Contaris, we ourselves traded cardamine from its source. Now, we must content with third parties. But you would hardly call us content with the arrangement.





We come with some baggage - Yes, we sometimes fight the Hessians and avoid getting in the Corsairs' way in the process. We are neutral parties in the edge world war, as we would offer no meaningful strategic advantage to either nation. We do not presume that we can dictate politics to you, nor interfere in your own, personal mission, that runs to the fabric of your belonging. If that status quo makes us an unworkable party, you may but tell us. We do touch upon Maltese politics or compromise your goals. As Unioners, we restrict ourselves to one, meek mission; restoring prosperity to our home. All other goals and agreements are based on equitable transaction, promise, and the will to honest trust. Of late, the Lane Hacker movement - a former close ally of ours, has thrown our name to the political tradewinds to be used as currency, in a bid to increase their control over the Liberty-Rheinland border. A short, and mostly self-contained turf-war, that will likely terminate with the return of Professor Nicole Hunter. They, too, are an ally of yours, and can understand apprehension during this temporary disturbance.

But too, we hold advantages. We are close allies of the Gallic Brigands, and were the first Sirians to discover a direct connection from Rheinland to the Gallic Sector, at the time undiscovered by Gauls. We have numerous connections in Bretonia on both sides of the underworld divide. We are nested allies of the Rogues. We are the only Sirian entity to hold a distribution hub in Gallia - unknown to the republic. We have the most numerous distribution networks in Rheinland for black and greymarket goods - the Unioners are the status quo for smuggling in the gallic underworld.

There are advantages inherent in who we are. We are the most sophisticated shipwrights in the house underworld - and we are keen to find new, emerging markets to retail our products to. The Unioners consider shipbuilding a service to be offered to others - engineering a beneficiary to man, or Maltese, kind - that is best appreciated by the client, not horded by a jealous and self-indulgent few. We have perfected a number of technologies and innovations that may be of use to Malta - our technicians can expedite shipyards and turn scrap to functional subcomponents as a matter of course.

In addition, we sit upon the Bering graveyard - a trove of military innovation from the governments of two of the Core World houses. Our extraction industries are considerable and we crave an ardent market.

But there remains another motivator to our dialogue. You seek to bring the imperial model back to the Outcasts - a model of statehood that uplifts its population and sets their horizons outward. In our homeland, the Unioners have strived to return the imperial rights enjoyed by the vox populi for near two centuries - for only can a benevolent empire properly safeguard the syndicalist model from opportunists who would seek to reduce every right of the free to a common value. There is a belief that those who believe in an enlightened society should find common ground. We hope you concur.

The Unioners have an interest in entering preliminaries with the Maltese Imperial Coalition to expand upon theatres of common interest. As an imperial movement, allow us the genuity of predicting that you have a demand to feed your industrial base - to strengthen, consolidate, and muster the maltese state. We can provide you with the proverbial coal for your industrial fire - our cause thrives upon customers, for hull plates through to engine components, from salvage to ships, from half a millennia of shipyard development knowledge to an inocubative flair for construction.

The Vierlande Subcomponent Forge: Hamburg System, Rheinland Space

In return - well, you have the commodity that ends all class divides.

Cardamine, cardamine, cardamine. Everybody wants cardamine, mis preciados socios de negocios.

Hola, Unioner.

You bring a unique proposal to the table, certainly perked a few eyebrows over here when we received your message. The Cardamine market in Rheinland has been difficult to penetrate, namely due to the heavy presence of the Corsairs, the less enlightened brethren of ours that continue to try and foil us at every turn.

Now - I have some serious concerns regarding this, namely your apparent 'alliance' with the aforementioned group. I've heard they were crucial in a recent fight against the Communists from the Omegas. It raises the question as to why you would try to play both sides and how they would react should they discover what you are doing.

Access to the Rheinland and Gallic markets through yourselves and by proxy the Brigands is a tempting offer, I'm afraid until we can clear up this rather glaring concern we will be unable to make any sort of deal.

Regards,
Alana Leoz
Imperial Coalition

Alster Unioners

He brings up a display on the terminal. Realtime economic data, from thousands of transactions.

You bring up the prospect of sides. From the perspective of your nation, there certainly are sides - sides are the substance of nation states.

We are not a nation. We are a labourist organisation. We are devoted to healing the Rheinland economy through balance and independence.


Let me tell you a story. Both the Junkers and the Hogosha are intimately involved in the distribution of cross-border resources. We trade with both parties through separate facets of our organisation. Both the Junkers and the Hogosha are aware that we inport from their enemies. These imports exist in non-competetive markets. Our trade with the junkers is for libertonian armourments and engine components. With the Hogosha, high art is the primary import. They cater to seperate realms of the Rheinland underworld market share. Neither side is double-traded against the other, as we do not compete in shared economic spheres - for example, we would never dream of selling arms to the Hogosha because we import arms from the Junkers. Through this method, we avoid inflaming rivalries or exerting undue influence.

It is challenging for a core-worlds organisation such as the Unioners to wield the influence we do without capitulating to any one tradewind or another in the wider Sirian underworld. Our goal is to create a fairer Rheinland and adjust inballances in its laws. If we achieve our aims, nox will be criminalised within less than a year. Such an event would open the cardamine market to malta. Would the Corsairs take exception to this change? Likely not. It would not impact on their core considerations - which are the expansion of their Omega empire and the acquisition of additional food supplies.

We take this stance deliberately wherever there are foreign binaries that do not touch Rheinland directly. If choosing a side is forced upon us, we tend towards the side of the binary that did not exert the pressure - for example, our swing from the Hellfire Legion to the Lane Hackers, when the Legion decided to abandon us. Now that the Hackers have proven problematic, we have found separate partners, and so on. Our relationship is restricted to only trade dynamics. When martial interests do come into play, we ensure they do not intersect. This is primarily due to our concerns being occupied with powerful rivals - the Coalition, the Red Hessians, the GMG - and dangerous insurgencies - the Xenos, the Bundschuh - and state law enforcement - the Federal Police and BDM - which occupy the entirety of our time and resources.

In short; we are an industrial base, señora oficial Leoz. We are not employed by Daumann and Republican anymore, but that changes little. We are a worker's co-operative, and we choose to work; to create products - usually products regarding spaceships or engineering services. A corporation does not care what the customer does with its tools. As a worker's co-operative, we try to be more self-aware.

Historically, we have attempted to trade core world goods upstream to Malta. The prime zone of intersection is in Texas, and the newly found Laptev corridor - which is the Union's private backdoor to House Kusari. In the south, we have shared theatres of operations with the Corsairs. As the Red Hessians have few enemies, out of the selection of the Core, the Aliens, and the Corsairs, the Corsairs remain at least human.

We are public regarding our trade dynamics. Such mechanisms cannot exist in the dark. Our business model is not to sabotage our customers by creating conflicts of interest. We offer four products: Distribution, Design, Creation, and Counter-revolution. We ensure that no two sides of a front are using the same product. We do not see such an arrangement as playing both sides, as neither nation attains overlapping beneficence from any exchange we may make. Instead, by being reliable, those that trade with us will not see violent shifts of allegiance, as driven by politically motivated factional organisations, such as microstates, or expansionist warlords.

That is a delicate, and dangerous balance for the Union. It places my people at significant risk. For example, a customer could pretend to hire our services before abusing our trust for a Public Relations campaign. It has happened before. Never-the-less, we choose to believe in a Sirius where the neutrons of accountability hit everyone eventually.

So, in short, we would avoid offering Malta any services that we also render to the Corsairs, and vice-versa. Note that the Corsairs, by their own choice, do not buy arms, engineering, or ship designs, from the Unioners, so all of these proposals would be available. Regarding direct military assistance against groups outside of Liberty, that would be off the table due to our scope of joint operations against Rheinland's local khans, the Red Hessians. In Liberty, however, we would be willing to lend support, in our limited operation purview of Hudson, Puerto Rico, Kansas, and Texas.

It is important to note that the Unioners do not trade in non-technical information, such as intelligence. It is beyond our purview. We only do so to our immediate allies (for example, the Liberty Rogues), without any currency of exchange.

Hola, Unioner.

An acceptable answer, I suppose. At the present moment in time, we have little need for shipbuilders outside of our own capabilities and we have no real interest in engaging in any military operations within Liberty space.

That is not to say we're not open to any future co-operation, just not at this time, si?

We are more than happy to ship Cardamine to the Bering system provided you can pay for it - with credits, not labour. Malta wouldn't ever consider denying anyone access to the Orange Dream.

Otherwise, I shall keep you in mind should our focus ever shift toward Rheinland.

Regards,
Alana Leoz
Imperial Coalition

Alster Unioners

Reynard grins.

How much Cardamine will one hundred million credits purchase the Unioners? We are looking for distilled Cardamine extract, not a burnable leaf, from fresh-cut plants, not freeze-dried crops - such is the desire to pay a premium. Our clients have particular tastes. Out of the interest of security, we will make the Handover in Sigma thirteen.

Inform me if you have any questions or security considerations.