*** Transcribed Audio from Interspace Commerce transport Santa.Cruz ***
*** Time: Now Location: Galileo System, Reppu Bend ***
“Hey Captain, does this work?”
“What? The transcriber? Yeah, it works, is the green light on?”
“Ahh, yeah, the green light is on.”
“Well, you’re live. State your credentials and where you want the message to go and when you’re done, press ‘End’, the green light will go off.”
“Ok, thanks a lot.”
---
“This is John Silver, Interspace Director of Risk Cargo Operations for Kusari and Gallia, based out of Roppongi in New Tokyo, callsign AG47. Please direct this message to the Office of Admiralty at Planet New Tokyo, thank you.
Your Excellency,
Please excuse this urgent communication and the nature of its delivery. It’s John Silver from Roppongi speaking. I had the great pleasure to meet you briefly at one of our annual ambassadorial evenings last year on the station where we enjoyed a sake while watching a particularly fierce lightning storm in the upper atmosphere of New Tokyo, perhaps you remember?
Well, I’ve just been recalled from vacation on Curacao and ordered to clean up the mess out there in Tokyo E5. I’m willing to bet that you have more information on this than I do at the moment and I’d like to apologise in advance for this bureaucratic mix up. Right now, I’m on one of our boats heading north through the bends in Galileo to personally take charge of the situation, so I will be able to brief you very soon with a more accurate report.
As you know, we’ve been working on that perennial issue of cargo safety – specifically energy cargo safety – in the immediate orbit near the Tokyo docking gate and looking for smart solutions to mitigate the regrettable regularity of H-Fuel shipments exploding with the ensuring loss of life, cargo, pollution and subsequent insurance liability.
There’s no doubt that the vast majority of incidents are caused by pilot error and maintaining too much speed leaving the trade lanes, however we are determined to play our part in contributing to a reduction in the number of these type of serious and usually fatal incidents.
I’ve been pushing the Newark crowd to act on your recommendations to move all energy cargo out of Roppongi to a separate installation, and to be honest I thought the project had stalled as I kept hearing that there was pressure to set up a similar facility in the Gallic system of Ile-de-France to offset some of the lease overhead of Versailles Station, the new Interspace operations base in Gallia.
Anyway, from what I can tell at the moment, there’s been a contract team out in E5 building a new commodities facility without any authority whatsoever, as I haven’t signed off on it yet, and we certainly haven’t received any permission to construct the station from yourselves at the Office of Admiralty either.
It’s clear that subcontracting out the initial basic station build contract has been the primary factor for this oversight and I think the contractors must be real ‘time is money’ cowboys as I’ve already been contacted by a Gas Miner’s Guild ambassador about dangerous navigation in Sigma-13 and narrowly avoiding a collision outside Helgoland when, I assume, they were hauling construction materials from Frankfurt.
If they have the intended construction location co-ordinates correct, the new facility - which we’ve opted to call Kobayashi Station in honour of the late governor of Narita - should be near the geographic centre of quadrant E5, 35km from New Tokyo, 35km from Narita and 25km from the Medium Blue Green solar. The location is based on advice from our physicists that siting the facility away from planetary orbits, established stations and transit lanes would, in the highly unlikely event of a major combustion catastrophe, allow us to safely tow the station into the star to eliminate any additional risk to people or property.
As I have remarked to you previously, all of us at Interspace on Roppongi are particularly grateful for the dedication and contribution of the Kusari Police with their ongoing commitment to peace and security, so we’ve certainly no intention to apply for weapon platform licences at Kobayashi, and furthermore, we think that might be asking for trouble given the large amounts of energy fuels we hope to be storing and trading at the facility.
I had a young lawyer from Newark screaming in my ear about “no charge for the station”, “near an existing approved installation” and “the construction area is associated with the Narita free development zone”. It was difficult to understand what was being said as the signal kept dropping out as we passed through the radiation fields here in Galileo, however they kept repeating “7.7.1 is void because 8 and 8.7 do not exist anymore” which I assume is a reference to the Kusari Code of Laws.
This over-reliance on legal positioning is, as you very well know, not the way we conduct ourselves at Roppongi. Rather we view ourselves as partners with the Kusari people and are more than happy to meet any and all obligations with respect to the station, now and into the future. Accordingly, we would be very grateful if you could please peruse the factual aspects of this communication as they are known at this stage to allow us to commence the permitting process for this facility please.
Name: Kobayashi Station
Location: E5 on the trade lane elevation in New Tokyo system
Purpose: (primary) To reduce transportation and storage risk of potentially hazardous energy fuels in the vicinity of the New Tokyo/Roppongi docking and transit area, and (secondary) to act as an energy commodities exchange through warehousing, distribution, and certification of standard energy commodities.
Approved transportation vessels for service of facility: Santa.Cruz and William.Orbit - both unarmed Interspace Commerce IFF registered civilian ‘Stork’ long haul vessels.
Name, Callsign and Title of Applicant: Mr John Silver, callsign AG47, Interspace Commerce Director of Risk Cargo Operations for Kusari and Gallia, based at Roppongi Station, New Tokyo system.
Just to reiterate, I haven’t had the opportunity to visit the construction site yet, however this Captain is making light work of the journey so I should be there shortly and then be in a position to verify the information communicated here and answer any questions you may have within twenty-four hours. Hopefully everything is in order at the site and we’ve a robust platform to build upon.
Perhaps we’ll have the pleasure of your company again this year at one of our Roppongi corporate events where I can appraise you of the finer aspects of the operations of the new station? I would also be happy to be your host and arrange a tour of the facility at any time if that is of any interest to you or your Admiralty colleagues. It would certainly be my great honour.
Your Excellency, I look forward to conversing with you soon, this is John Silver signing off, my sincere thanks for all your help, it really is greatly appreciated.”
---
“Thank you Captain, so all I have to do now is press ‘End’ and the green light goes out you said?”
“Yep, that’s all you have to do. Sounds like a bit of a debacle you have on your hands up in NT.”
“The Kusari are wonderful people, we’ll get through it somehow. All of this could have been avoided if we’d kept the work in-house, I never like subcontracting important tasks… hey, wait, the green light is still on… which switch is it?”
“The one at the side, I dunno why it is on the side.”