Into the Black

(Seven Star Lounge, Zanchul Station, Tietera Orbit, Tietera System)

Tietera was a busy industrial system. Tietera itself was rich in mineral resources and industry, but the rocky planet was crap all for sustainable food production outside of hydroponics bays. Ziphad, the third planet in the system, was actually an agrarian world that could feed several planets easily, but had little to no mineral resources. During the initial colonization phase, the Knelfi pioneers who founded the system decided to land on Tietera, and build the resources they would need to grow food on Ziphad. That, combined with the fact that most of the industry and economy in the system flowed through Tietera, meant it was the seat of power in the system.

Zanchul Station was a seedy place run by the local crime lords, much like Choson Ring in Sol System. Every system had at least one place for the criminal element to gather. The cops, if they were smart, didn’t bother with it unless something high profile was going on, because it was easier to keep an eye on the illegal trades when they were centered in one place rather than underground and constantly moving. The syndicates knew what was up, as well, and self-policed to some degree, to keep things at a tolerable level.

That was why Aiwan Gilwarin was so confident in walking down the halls of the station’s promenade without constantly checking for cameras or other annoyances. He had no warrants, no bounties on his head. He was, however, the facilitator for a good deal of the pirate fleets in this sector, helping turn stolen goods and credits into something that could be spent without getting law enforcement involved. He paid his taxes as a ‘financial consultant’, plus a few bribes that made it so he would hear about any legal action against him long before it got to the point people were trying to arrest him, and he could have his people quash the trouble or arrange for the investigators to find something that threw them off the scent.

As he walked to the bar he frequented (and owned, though few people knew that), Gilwarin’s thoughts turned towards the reason he was having a meeting tonight. The current state of affairs was getting hot. Too many pirates had come into the area too quickly, and there were calls for people to start getting solid Navy pirate hunters, instead of just the border patrols they had in the area, and start cleaning house. There were even some that were considering bringing in Mercenary groups like that Black Star Company that had been in the news recently.

The Seven Star Lounge was what passed for upscale dining and drinks on Zanchul Station. It wasn’t high society, by any stretch, but it held itself to a bit of a higher standard than the dives that the common pirates went to, and was priced accordingly. The food and drink offered were also of a higher quality than you would find elsewhere on the station, including the real meat in the dishes, from actual animals. It was the only place on the station where you could find vermaw (a beast not dissimilar to the Terran ‘cow’ native to Ziphad) steaks fresh, never frozen. He didn’t usually partake in meat dishes, as there was a bias in knelfi society about ‘barbaric’ practices like that, but he always made sure there was a steak on his plate when he was meeting with pirates. Little things like that made all the difference, after all.

As he walked past the line and to his normal table, Gilwarin smiled, seeing that everything was in order, ready to meet with Aeson “Quickblade” Shaxidor, Captain of the Death’s Shadow, the only pirate battlecruiser in Known Space. Sure, it was an older ship, retired after the last major interstellar war, but he happened to know that Quickblade had been keeping the Shadow in good repair, and upgraded the systems quite a bit over the years. After all, he’d help finance some of those transactions. But Captain Shaxidor was one of the smart ones. Hopefully he could get the Captain to agree to help quiet down the pirates, or at least get them to do most of their damage on the other side of the border with the Alliance.