Corporate Sector: The Big Time

[Ashin Varanin]

The MC33 Leechar-class star yacht exited hyperspace over Reltooine, and Selka Ventus confessed herself unimpressed. One ancient station orbited the reddish gas giant, and that right there was the Reltooine system, gateway to the Corporate Sector. She'd passed through Reltooine space before, but she'd generally been asleep. That didn't bode well for this stage of the strategy, but so be it.

"You're sure?"

Beside her, the Shasan Selkath known as Dificul -- her aide for several years -- burbled gently. <<Would you like to see the market research reports and time correlations again, Ms. Ventus?>>

"Took too fething long the first time, Dif." She touched the intercom. "Captain Pedimen, deploy the billboard and bring us in to the station."

Pedimen, another Selkath, gribbled in response, and the luxury yacht nestled up against Eclipse Station.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The internals on decks 46 through 52 were now, by hook or by crook, property of iBorg Prosthetic Augments. Not an ideal location, but good enough for the functions this office needed to have.

First off -- the foreman led her through the plans deck by deck and item by item -- the Eclipse Station office's bottom two decks would hold primary responsibility for holo billboards. Updating ads for iBorg throughout the system, maintaining advertising materiel, and serving as a major proprietary comms relay from iBorg to offices deeper in the Corporate Sector. The comms relay was comprehensive enough to take up decks 48 through 51 of the long, thin station. And then came the last deck. Deck Fifty-Two on Eclipse Station, orbiting Reltooine, was becoming a fully functional midgrade cybernetics shop.

It was on this deck that Selka, Dificul, and the local foreman lost the momentum of the tour.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The assassins, when they came, were disguised as customers. In hindsight, this probably wasn't their best choice, considering the cyborg shop wasn't actually open yet. So in that sense, Selka was forewarned. The smell of cortosis ore also gave it away. Big handfuls of the stuff, crumbly red-black ore all over everything, more handfuls waiting for when she drew and ignited her lightsabre. She did so; an acid-yellow blade splashed its light across the half-finished waiting room. They grinned and chucked a bit more cortosis.

Those grins died as her sabre met the ore without apparent effect.

"Behind me, please, Dificul," said Selka, and snapped a Makashi salute at the assassins. "It seems our friends have never heard of dimetris circuits, and if they don't know that, imagine what other incivilities they might perpetrate upon your person."

<<As you say, ma'am.>>

The assassins drew sonic blasters. First good move they'd made yet. Problem? They clearly hadn't figured on trying to quickdraw guns that looked more like obese vegetables. Her thrown sabre scythed through them all at waist level before they could scream. Then the screaming started, and didn't end.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Fortunately, all concerned were in a cybernetics lab. She'd missed the sabre throw -- she'd meant to take off their legs -- but hastily unpacked droids got to work with hastily unpacked components, and pretty soon two of the assassins were on the road to continued temporal existence.

Context time.

Several years ago, Etti Four and the Corporate Sector Authority had been the primary targets of the New Order, a Sith faction. The New Order's aggressive presence, and that of the Sith Council before it, had led the Corporate Sector Authority to join the defensive alliance that constituted the Levantine Sanctum. And in return, the Levantines had facilitated a wave of investment and procurement options from the major corporations that enjoyed free trade zones and few tariffs in Levantine space. Etti Four had become the most heavily fortified world in the quadrant, and the New Order collapsed without launching its assault.

Then, less than a year ago, had come the Second Akala Crisis. Trillions of people across the galaxy had simply vanished, and Etti Four had experienced its fair share of unrest. It had called on its longstanding Levantine membership, and the Sanctum's patrollers had responded, restoring peace and feeding millions.

Selka had been there for both crises, in corporate leadership capacities. Her ties with the CSA went back many years.

At a guess, that had something to do with the two weeping men who now ended at the waist.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The CSA was, and always had been, alive and well. Frankly, that was part of the problem. The Corporate Sector was aggressively stable, to the point where it had taken a serious threat of invasion to spur an outside alliance, and a major population upheaval -- one shared by the rest of the galaxy -- to actually call upon that alliance for active intervention. Aggressive stability meant vested interests. Huge corporations, the largest in the galaxy, held sway here. She'd been CEO of two of them, and connections were connections, and along the way she'd had to step on some toes. That was just the nature of the game. Somewhere along the line, someone had motive.

Thus far, she could narrow that down to someone who had the connections to know she would be arriving on Eclipse Station over Reltooine. Or, since the assassins had been largely incompetent and possibly just weapons of opportunity, someone who had Eclipse Station connections.

Cue a quiet recovery room, two bandaged men with massive lumps of cybernetcs instead of abdomens, the station security chief, and Selka sitting on a chair.

"So let's talk about the transmission you received from Mall'ordian."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The CSA, as it now existed, wasn't exactly monolithic. Large, certainly, but as much of a venue as an entity. The old Corporate Sector powerhouses were shreds of their former selves, and other corporations controlled the region now. Santhe, Silk, Arceneau, Ty'rel, Akure, Hegemonic Automaton and more. Even CEC and Mandal Hypernautics had interests around here. The planetary governments, too, especially the big ones like Etti Four, were power players in this sector's balance. But the CSA remained important, in its way, even if here or there it was propped up or acquiesced to as a formality. Its power varied, and the Second Akala Crisis hadn't done much for the mean baseline. And various groups didn't think highly of those that did the propping-up.

One such group, apparently, had gone gunning for her, and if her then probably others as well.

Tourist vessels crammed Mall'ordian airspace around Selka's MC33 yacht. The Selkath captain blubbered grimly. <<Too many comm nodes to locate the one that sent the orders, ma'am.>>

"I figured. Mall'ordian space is ridiculous this time of local year. Well, time to play bait. The real estate has been purchased?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Mall'ordian
Surface

"Nice place you have here." Colonel-Commissar Ghent's voice would have fit right in on Socorro -- dry, sharp and dark.

"Glad you see the potential," said Selka blandly. "Once the medical equipment arrives, we'll have a distribution center-"

"A cyborg chop shop, you mean."

"No, sir. A medical facility where tourists can tune up, repair, or upgrade their prosthetics and examine new options. We get serious functionality for our customers when that's what they want."

"These neural implants aren't prosthetics."

"Well, sir, we're working from a study that says a minor amount of neural-cyber connectivity is beneficial for emotional stability and capacity. Rather than using, say, implanted memory as a crutch, we find that the process of inputing memories in cybernetic storage solidifies the memory in question -- keeps it fresh, even after neural implants are removed. Things learned remain learned. Our implants are proscribed for some neurological disorders and even neural damage for veterans."

"Veterans?"

"Yes, sir. Most of our employees saw action at the First and Second Battles of Manaan, myself included. Many of our customers have lost limbs in the line of duty. This is our specialty."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Mall'ordian​

"I'm sorry, Colonel-Commissar, I have to take this call. Perhaps Captain Trammis can show you around?"

"Captain...?"

"This is Captain Trammis, our regional manager." Trammis was a local man, an Espo veteran who'd lost both arms to a Sith a few years back. His arms - both obviously prosthetic, one sleek, the other blocky -- were iBorg models, a Phade and a Nyax respectively. The Nyax's internal ion disruptor was technically illegal around here -- except to an Espo veteran. He shook Ghent's hand with no indication of bone-crushing strength.

"Captain-Commissar, sir, a pleasure. If you'll come with me, I'd like to show you our rehabilitation myostim unit..."

As Trammis wandered off with Ghent through the half-finished facility, Selka actually did take a call -- from Dificul, up on the yacht. Captain Pedimen's steward needed her dinner order.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The local authorities constituted a contract -- not a large one, but an important one. Her initial contract with the Reltooine/Eclipse Station authorities had been one thing, but Captain-Commissar Trammel had pull within the ambiguous, conflicted framework of the CSA thanks to Mall'ordian's tourism revenues. Even if the Mall'ordian facility only covered the standard bases -- sales to tourists, operation/installation, medcenter distribution -- it represented more. For one thing, it meant brand-name awareness for anyone who took the Perlemian to Etti Four. First they'd catch the holo-billboard at Reltooine, then the iBorg ad buy on Mall'ordian, then get that impression solidified on the CSA's capital. In short, with careful ad placement strategy, iBorg would project the impression of being a significant corporation in the Corporate Sector. And when this whole thing was viewed in concert with the iBorg presence on Manaan and Balmorra, and the upcoming distribution center on Metellos, distance between brand contacts would help contribute to the illusion of scale -- of reputability. The short-term hit in transportation costs would, with luck, balance out.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

That was step one, at least from this particular temporal vantage point. Step two was the next hyperjump, the one that would take her Leechar yacht to rendezvous with two others, plus a handful of H-wing mobile rescue boats, at Lythos.

Ahh, Lythos. Crown jewel of the Corporate Sector, at least if you had agricultural-grade cybernetics to sell en masse. The system had fourteen planets. Lythos I and XIV were mining worlds; Lythos VI, VII, VIII, and IX were major agricultural worlds. And their elites vacationed on Mall'ordian and did business on Etti IV. Once those two distribution centers were in play, she and her better associates would start setting up shop in the Lythos system, and not just any shop. Fourteen planets, four of them significant agriproducers, made for a lot of real estate, and Lythos' location was central to the Corporate Sector. The rescue boats, mobile cyborg labs, would stay...along with a central shipping/dispatch/distribution node. But that was still a jump away.