Public The Andelm Accession (Free Traders, Spacer's Guild especially)

[Aeshi Tillian]

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Word spread like the blue shadow virus up and down the space lanes of the Outer Rim, from every shadowport to Merchant-Captain's Guildhall to dockside cantina.

New Horizon Shipping Combine had gotten monopoly shipping rights to the entire Andelm system. Ad Valorem tariffs were going to be eighty percent, or a hundred percent.

Nobody knew the truth, except for a small blurb on the trade channels about the contract. Ninety-nine standard years of exclusivity. No other companies, even from the neighboring Susefvi or Svivren who had worked there for centuries would be allowed to sell or transport goods. Companies in other systems would have to contract with the Combine to get their goods to their established market. Ships from rival companies would have to stop outside the system, pay a tariff and then progress to the far side.

It made Aeshi's blood boil. It seethed and surged in every fiber of her being. A monopoly? In the Outer Rim? It was a throwback to the original Trade Federation and everything she stood against. Everything the Trade League stood against, but they could take no hostile action without grounds.

The Andelm system had not signed the Charter and had (apparently) freely and willingly signed the contract, citing lack of service and unreliable deliveries, making it completely legitimate.

Fortunately, Aeshi wasn't completely legitimate, and neither were half the Free Traders she knew, and practically none of the Spacer's Guild. She had sent quiet messages to both with a simple message.

Undercut the Combine. Break the monopoly. Kark the Core-world lackeys and their Coreworld tactics. Let's show 'em what it means to do business in the Rim.

It was, frankly, a declaration of war. A call to arms and incitement to revolution. She'd set a rally point in Svivren for the easiest trade good access and the sheer number of trade ships that passed through every day. Nobody would ever be able to trace them through here. The Requiem was all done up and her transponder codes changed. She'd emptied her hull of what she traded for and picked up on Centares.

Andelm's main export was dedlanite, used for blaster manufacturing, and a long history of organized crime bribing the ruling council. Which meant two things- foul play was suspected and that credits spoke louder than the law. They would need mining equipment, blasting supplies, food rations, water, household goods. Aeshi had purchased in bulk as much as she could squeeze into the cargo bay.

"Get those cargoes loaded up!" Aeshi called to her first mate, an Imyni who just squawked at her with irritation. "I know, I know! Asteroid-chasing Core-world gobs of Krayt-spit..." She hissed, setting a small container of thermal detonators into the shielded compartment beneath her captain's chair. Always a dangerous place, but the best place to avoid getting caught.

Outside her, the endless sound of Svivren's seas of bazaars and the mingling of myriad scents assaulted her, but she pushed those out of her mind to focus.

This would take luck, precision, and guts. She would need all three to put her reversion to real space close enough to the planet to evade detection while also not crashing. Light-speed landings were never good, but they were the best to slip through hostile space. Especially in this case, where she intended to do a lot more than undercut the Combine's prices. There was no way the Andelmians would willingly give up their established relationships for some upstart subsidiary whose headquarters was somewhere in the Trantor system. Who had even heard of the Trantor system? An ecumenopolis in the Core, it was bound to be dwarfed by Coruscant, especially already squeezed in between Kuat, Balmorra, and Corellia.

She'd traded on Andelm IV multiple times and her family's fleet stopped there regularly, practically their first stop after Svivren! They'd even married some of the Andelmians and lived there. They hadn't been able to get in touch with them though, which concerned her grandfather and his siblings immensely.

So, she was going to make it a point to start poking around the mines and the offices. Turning up dirt and find what leverage the Combine had used. Either as leverage to persuade the Andelmians to nullify the contract or persuade the League to be involved. If that didn't work, well, fighting empires worked just as well with fighting companies.

"Any word from the others, yet?" She asked her co-pilot, who just shrugged his beaked head. "I'll check my messages another time and see what they say."

 

[Aeshi Tillian]

They hadn't heard from any of the others, which was perfectly understandable. Smuggling was a big deal to shipping companies, especially ones with monopolies. Conspiring to engage in smuggling took it to an entirely different level. And it put others at risk, which was against the unwritten code that her type of scum tended to abide by. Never put somebody else in danger (unless they were a direct competitor and deserved it, anyway), never snitch to the authorities. Never cause problems where you pick up water.

Frankly, Andelm was a bit too close for her usual business model, but that just meant New Horizon Shipping Combine was too close for comfort. And she had no intention of letting it get any closer. "Go ahead and get the engines up and running, make sure they're fine tuned." Aeshi said after a moment, adjusting as a loader droid carried another crate of cargo up the loading ramp. Foodstuffs and medicine, mostly. Essentials that shipping monopolies are able to manipulate the most and cause the greatest form of vulnerability.

Behind her, she felt the shift in power as the generators powered up and the engines thrummed through the hull of the small freighter. The droids trundled the last of the cargo into the hold. Aeshi waited and took the datapad manifest, double-checking it and signing off on the very vague and generic cargo list.

She didn't know yet what sort of enforcement measures the Combine might have put up, but she wasn't ready to gamble on them being lax. They had to be expecting this response, and probably sanctions from the League. Forcing corporate servitude on an independent world was something the League took very seriously.

With a last glance around the landing pad, Aeshi turned and hurried up the landing ramp. It sealed with a hiss of hydraulics behind her and she picked her way through the cargo bay up to the bow of the ship, where her co-pilot nodded at her before standing up to adjust the sensor calibrations.

"Engine control efficiency?" Aeshi asked after a moment, and received the Imyni version of a thumbs-up. "Transponder masker?' A quick nod. Aeshi considered and flipped open a console panel, ducking underneath to take a look at the masker and adjusting the primitive controls until the registration read as being from Corellia. "Let's see if they want to throw down with Alliance registry."

She resealed the panel and locked it into place, watching the seam disappear entirely into the metal of the console before retaking her seat.

"Station Control, this is Requiem. Cargo loaded and ready for departure on TFE departure lanes."

"We read you, Requiem. Permission granted. Course registered as Svivren. Is this accurate?"

"Affirmative, Control," Aeshi replied, buckling the safety harness as she set her hands on the control and increased the power to the atmo-repulsors.

"Smooth travels, Requiem, may the Force be with you."

"And also with you," Aeshi answered automatically, and nudged the throttle forward and the ship's hum increased for a moment before beginning to lift off the ground. The dockside district fell away beneath her as she guided this ship away from the port towards a circuitous route low to the ocean, falling into path behind one of the Commenor-class refitted Venator's they'd gotten hold of after the Core Imperial Confederation collapsed.

A private comm channel dinged.

"Hey, Aeshi!" The voice on the other side said, with muted voices in the background. "Headed to Svivren by the look of it?"

"So it says, Irala," Aeshi said in the comm, with only a slight frown. Irala was technically her closest closest, with Irala's mother being Aeshi's mother's identical twin. It rankled Aeshi sometime, seeing her aunt in full corporate finery and living in luxury while Aeshi held only scattered fragments of a tired, grimy woman with a glint in her eye and a love of trouble. "Look, I'll be exiting orbit pretty close to your mass shadow, about five points off your starboard stern."

There was a silence. "Oh, okay," Irala answered. "I was going to ask if you wanted to come aboard for the transit and catch-up." There was a note of hurt in Irala's voice and Aeshi stopped, nearly missing the course correction to loop outwards until she shook her head after a moment and adjusted. There was plenty of room aboard a Commenor-class for the Requiem. For multiple ships the size of the Requiem, honestly.

"I can do that," Aeshi answered after a moment, though she'd not been aboard of one of the bulk freighters since they purchased them and brought them out to the Rim. "It'll be nice." Her voice sounded a bit flat to her, but thankfully the comm helped hide that.

 

[Ardon]

Ardons Angel entered hyperspace as he finished checking over the cargo. He'd gotten the call, however he wasn't sure exactly how things might be going. As he waited he 'conversed' with the ship, running over tests and systems. His sekret-astromech-droid certainly gave its input, connecting into the systems as well. It was odd the type of 'conversations' the three would have. So much of it not being in any spoken language. It made for a more unusual connection between them all.


Eventually they'd arrive and Ardon would take in a breath, now comes the spoken language. He opened up contact with Aeshi Tillian and her ship, "Ardon = Asking permission to board via Ardon's Angel." he said into the communications system, "Ardon = Ready to help."

He would wait for a response, but was pretty sure they'd let him on to speak. He wasn't sure yet how things were going to go. But he wanted to make sure that things were the most well coordinated as they were able to be. And to accomplish that he thought it best he get a proper understanding of the situation and what was needed or avoided.

 

[Aeshi Tillian]

Ardon

Another comm channel dinged, and Aeshi leaned over, adjusting the ship's communicator and she tilted her head to listen. She hit the button for the reply, "Permission granted, Ardon. Requiem's too small for you to dock with, but meet me aboard the Ragnos." It was one of the Commenor-class ships the family had purchased and Irala captained. "We can conference there."

She rested one hand on the controls and adjusted the course of the small freighter to curve up and around the massive bulk freighter. "Follow my docking course. It will help to confuse sensor readings and trajectory predictions." That was quiet and adjusted through a comm squelched channel to ensure the Susefvi controllers didn't get a sign of their plans.

It was good to hear from Ardon again. Their paths didn't pass too often, but it was always good when they did. They were both different from most of their families. Holdouts, perhaps, or throwbacks to the earlier days of the family. Many of the cousins had regular cargo routes now and they worked circuits. Whispers spoke of the Tillians as merchant princes. Her great uncle Ragnos had passed away not long before and there was some discussion still about who would run the company in the future.

Aeshi wasn't overly concerned about that, as she did little business with the family as a whole, except paying the company commission and bearing messages as a courier on occasion. There were not too many left who still plied the tramp routes, but they were some of the last holdouts. It was unsettling to see Tillian Family Enterprises morph into something new, just as the Outer Rim was beginning to change. Civilized, some might say. The feeling knotted in her stomach as the hangar doors slid open to reveal the interior of the vessel.

"Initiating landing procedures," Aeshi commented over the comm, as she slowed the throttle and guided the ship downwards, settling lightly on the deck of the ship with a hiss of hydraulics. "Ardon's coming too," she added over the comm, to ensure the hangar bay remained open for his own vessel.

 

[Ardon]

He smiled as he reciev a response. However little he might interact with his relatives, it was always good. Even if the circumstances didn't always match. Now certainly was one such case, it wasn't exactly a matter of levity, but still. He opened up the comms again with a simple, "Docking change = Confirmed." before adjusting to the new location.

Ardon had certainly stuck to what he did, piloting. It was perhaps the best place for him, even if he wanted to move up the ladder of things, he doubted things would go well for him. No doubt his family was great and would help him know what to do if he did try, he thought, but he just didn't see a rise as something he'd want either. He preferred it like this, the more direct work.

Landing procedures were initiated and he went into the ships hangar bay. The droid would stay behind while he left, setting out to meet Aeshi Tillian and whoever else might be involved in the process.