Squib Games
Nothing was the same anymore.
It hadn't been for a long time.
Aspects recalled times past. The tall buildings of the city center reminiscent of Denon, but the illusion was quickly dispelled. Ardru wasn't an ecumenopolis. It was a rocky planet that had been strip-mined, fracked, and exploited over centuries. The glitzy spires of New Dal quickly faded by surrounding bands of ghettos. The homes and graves of the countless laborers whose blood, sweat, and very lives had worked those mines for a prosperity denied them. Locked out of heaven by those who wielded credits and the law as blunt instruments.
The Galactic Alliance thought it had ended corporate control of planets. All they'd done was push it into the shadows. The Denon-Ardru Mutual corporation was every bit as powerful in controlling New Dal as it ever had been. The mining company had founded New Dal. It had exploited and abused it for centuries. The Galactic Senate could not un-do that legacy with so simple a thing as a single act, no matter what their intentions may have been.
It was the same battle that it ever had been.
Just now the corporate authorities were in hiding the same as Darkwire. A war in the shadows. One side propping up a sham government stacked with its own lobbyists and proxies, former employees with the promise of a bright future ahead of them if they remembered who their true loyalty was to. The other trying to level a playing field that had always only been a rigged game.
The law was against them. The right to organize labor unions stifled behind choking regulation. The right to vote suppressed through a series of shifting goalposts and changing laws. Minimum wage legislation dead on the council floor.
It had started to make people desperate.
Desperate enough to fight back.
The Squib found himself standing in the refresher, staring at a face he no longer recognized in the mirror, and asking himself if he had any fight left in him. It hadn't been his fight, it had been
Hex
's. It had been
Daiya
's.
He hadn't seen either one since everything had gone down on Denon. Didn't know if they were still alive. He'd managed to finally make it off the planet. Used all of the influence he had left with the Consortium to try and re-group here.
Different junkyard. Same situation.
He'd spent the last year trying to grapple with the same problems he'd run into on Denon. The only difference here was the mining company couldn't do anything directly. The civilian government was in control. The mining company still got what it wanted, but it made the cold war that was brewing one in which the corporate authorities were muzzled. Their blows softened by boxing gloves.
Darkwire, on the other hard, was in a position to try and use the law against the corporations. If they could get proof of the nepotism, proof of the bribery, then perhaps the Alliance might actually dismantle some of the corporate structures that were holding these people back.
But it was going to be ugly.
He didn't think he could do it alone.
It hadn't been for a long time.
Aspects recalled times past. The tall buildings of the city center reminiscent of Denon, but the illusion was quickly dispelled. Ardru wasn't an ecumenopolis. It was a rocky planet that had been strip-mined, fracked, and exploited over centuries. The glitzy spires of New Dal quickly faded by surrounding bands of ghettos. The homes and graves of the countless laborers whose blood, sweat, and very lives had worked those mines for a prosperity denied them. Locked out of heaven by those who wielded credits and the law as blunt instruments.
The Galactic Alliance thought it had ended corporate control of planets. All they'd done was push it into the shadows. The Denon-Ardru Mutual corporation was every bit as powerful in controlling New Dal as it ever had been. The mining company had founded New Dal. It had exploited and abused it for centuries. The Galactic Senate could not un-do that legacy with so simple a thing as a single act, no matter what their intentions may have been.
It was the same battle that it ever had been.
Just now the corporate authorities were in hiding the same as Darkwire. A war in the shadows. One side propping up a sham government stacked with its own lobbyists and proxies, former employees with the promise of a bright future ahead of them if they remembered who their true loyalty was to. The other trying to level a playing field that had always only been a rigged game.
The law was against them. The right to organize labor unions stifled behind choking regulation. The right to vote suppressed through a series of shifting goalposts and changing laws. Minimum wage legislation dead on the council floor.
It had started to make people desperate.
Desperate enough to fight back.
The Squib found himself standing in the refresher, staring at a face he no longer recognized in the mirror, and asking himself if he had any fight left in him. It hadn't been his fight, it had been
Hex
's. It had been
Daiya
's.He hadn't seen either one since everything had gone down on Denon. Didn't know if they were still alive. He'd managed to finally make it off the planet. Used all of the influence he had left with the Consortium to try and re-group here.
Different junkyard. Same situation.
He'd spent the last year trying to grapple with the same problems he'd run into on Denon. The only difference here was the mining company couldn't do anything directly. The civilian government was in control. The mining company still got what it wanted, but it made the cold war that was brewing one in which the corporate authorities were muzzled. Their blows softened by boxing gloves.
Darkwire, on the other hard, was in a position to try and use the law against the corporations. If they could get proof of the nepotism, proof of the bribery, then perhaps the Alliance might actually dismantle some of the corporate structures that were holding these people back.
But it was going to be ugly.
He didn't think he could do it alone.
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