Sean-Michael Argo - Trade War

The small planetary body, designated UK2060 was little more than a moon that moved in a high orbit around one of the dying suns that populated Ellisian space. While the main Grotto battle force engaged Helion armies in massive void and ground campaigns over control of the two beta class planets, the Baen Reaper tug had been sent to this distant body.

According to the shift manager’s briefing, long-range sensors had picked up what appeared to be mining activity on the surface. It had been noticed by both Helion and Grotto that only the tomb-worlds were plagued with the heavy atmospheric conditions that prevented remote scans of the surface, a fact which had heavily affected how the front line had structured itself. The overall stratagem of each corporation was to quarantine the tomb-worlds while active conquest of the other planets and satellites could continue.

Most of the other planetary bodies appeared to be nothing more than wasteland worlds, stripped of much of their natural resources. However, as more surveyors and engineers were brought to the surface of claimed planets, both corporations had made a peculiar and radically profitable discovery. The technology of the machine race was still an enigma for the scientists of corporate space. The energy reactive and unbelievably hard substance that the tomb-world buildings were made from still defied scientific investigation.

No torch or blade could cut the substance, and when the material was not activated by the gun spiders it was of sufficient weight and density that dismantling or otherwise salvaging the buildings was thus far impossible. The gun spiders, once damaged enough to render them combat ineffective had also eluded any sort of reverse engineering. Their corpses had yielded no insight into the machine race beyond the fact that they did have an organic component in the form of a brainlike organ that moved electrical impulses throughout the creature’s body. Grotto had also been unable to determine how exactly the giant tyrant machine creature had managed to reanimate the shattered bodies of the penal legionnaires. With so many unanswered questions and no functional way to realize an immediate profit, the cost of military expeditions into the dead cities was unjustifiable.

After several bloody engagements, Reaper Command had ordered a cordon and picket of any tomb-world, and the focus of the various Grotto battle fleets had become focused on laying claim to the wasteland worlds.

Helion had seemingly come to the same conclusion, and they too created cordons and pickets anytime they managed to out-fight Grotto forces for orbital dominance around the tomb-worlds. Both corporations were massively over-extended and when two mighty organizations engaged in trade war on such an epic scale, the costs mounted swiftly and the Boards demanded a profit margin.

It was when massive deposits of nefadrite ore, mordite gas, and ink-rock were found on some of the planets that the war intensified beyond anyone’s imagination. It was clear that the machine race, or whoever built them, were utilizing an entirely alien system of technology and raw materials. Common materials such as zinc, iron, copper, and xaxos had been stripped away from the planets. This massive harvesting combined with apocalyptic levels of planetary desiccation had created seemingly lifeless worlds, and yet each was one rich in various materials that were vital to the maintenance and expansion of corporate industry and technology.

Both Helion and Grotto seemed to realize that it was only a matter of time before other corporations would learn of the vast wealth just waiting to be prised from the dead planets, so both corporations were rushing to stake their claim.

The war played out in a grisly spectacle of void battles for control of tomb-worlds and brutal ground campaigns for control of everything else. Neither force seemed interested in fighting each other and the machine race simultaneously, so for the time being most of the tomb-worlds were fought over as points on a star chart.

So far, the Reapers had only been employed in the scrap wagon sorties, even if they increased in number and threat level, the salvage marines had yet to be sent directly into the teeth of combat on the front lines. Such hellish warfare was the purview of the hereditary stormtroopers of the various elite Houses, vassals of the corporate nobility of Grotto society.

They were born into military life and had the best in training and equipment. While a single stormtrooper was still no match in skill or equipment for the average Merchants Militant contractor, their unwavering loyalty to the corporation and dedication to the glory of their respective Houses made them fearsome foes.

Most Grotto battle forces were comprised of several battalions of stormtroopers, with small units of Merchants Militant contractors present as high end specialists. Samuel, and most of the other marines, knew that all it would take was a decimal point shift on the fleet’s balance sheet to press Reaper Command into putting marines on the ground. Even so, the marines were happy to be planetside on what they all hoped would be a non-combat salvage, though no one expected it to be that easy.

“Hey, Boss,” said Marcus, as he held up his data-pad “Water sample came back from the lab. Support techs say that this stuff is edible once you filter out the minerals and strain the water. Command thinks the complex we’re heading toward might not be a mining facility at all, more like a food processing plant.”

Ben Takeda heard this and reached his arm out of the boat to dip his hand in the water, causing a splash due to the speed of the vessel. When he brought his gloved hand back up out of the water he had a fistful of green muck that clung to his glove in ropey strands. He held it up to the rest of Squad Hyst, all of whom stared at him blankly.

“I’m making a disgusted face,” crackled Ben in the digitized voice of his grim visage.

Bianca burst out laughing as she piloted the boat through the murky haze that hung just above the water’s surface. The pilot’s laugh was echoed by the digital wheezing noise that passed for laughter from Takeda.

The flood plain was treacherous. Reefs and pillars wreathed in a thick haze rising from the water and invisible until a few seconds before impact. The large deck lights helped to a degree, and so far none of the boats had suffered an impact.

“Marcus, did they give any indication as to who this complex might have belonged to?” asked Samuel as his eyes scanned the haze. “If this whole planetoid is covered in potential foodstuffs then there ought to be dozens of processing plants out here, so it can’t be Helion.”

“Negative Boss, they say unknown loyalty, possible Wageri pattern complex, eighty percent certainty,” reported Marcus as he consulted the data-pad, “Could be a free-wrench operation. Grotto and Helion both were issuing licenses like candy at the start of the war, maybe a Red List community?”

“At least we have gravity for this op,” said Holland from his seat in the middle of the boat. “And we had a luxurious eighteen hours to build our boats, so if we sink I guess it’s our own fault.”

Like the scrap wagons, the simple and brutal stratagem was to construct makeshift craft that could move through the terrain, armored as well as they could be without sacrificing too much maneuverability and hopefully get them where they needed to go still alive.

Samuel was proud of the vessel that Squad Hyst had created, though he could not help but harbor a degree of resentment toward Command and Grotto for not using some of the much-discussed profits to purchase the Reapers equipment to suit the mission. Maybe Tillman’s union wasn’t such a bad idea, thought Samuel as he took stock of the boat. Collective bargaining might be just the sort of thing to yield them proper vehicles.