A new alliance

by [AAA] Gr82cu2m8

It had been a few years now that commander Ray Moncoga had been leading the settlement of Adalia Prime. It had taken a while to fully dismantle the *Arvad* into parts and take it all to the surface. Some of these resources went to a group of several hundred mining families, making it possible for them to set up mining outposts on the most promising asteroids around the belt. However, most of the *Arvad’s* resources went to the construction of structures on Adalia Prime.

Ray stood in his office, looking out the window. There he had a good view overlooking the colony. It had grown considerably in the time he had been here. Weirdly the settlement reminded Ray of the old cities of Earth. He still had some beautiful photos of some of those cities decorating a wall next to the window. Ray loved these kinds of mementos. They reminded him of humanity’s shared history, their collective roots.

Behind him on his desk, a comms-app on his tablet began to play a loud tune. Ray turned and looked at it. On the tablet, the name “Robin Onest” was now clearly visible.

*Reaper?* Ray thought, *What could my former army buddy possibly want from him at this hour?*

They had served in the same squad together onboard the *Arvad* for years. But that was over twelve years ago now. Both Robin and Ray had gone their separate ways right after the… Ray’s mind stopped him from thinking back to that time. Instead, his mind went dark and cold for a moment. His tablet came to life again and repeated its tune more loudly. Ray picked up his tablet.

“Reaper, my old friend. To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked, trying to sound more cheerful than he felt.

“I’ve been getting several reports on a group of men causing trouble,” Robin answered, sounding concerned, “but it’s not so much what these guys have done, but who they are that has me worried.”

Ray listened as Robin explained the reports he had received in his current posting as commander of ‘the 1st Order’, an outfit tasked with keeping the colony and its outposts safe.

Questions sprung to Ray’s mind. But before he had the chance to ask anything, Robin continued. “I am sorely afraid this group may become a threat to our mining outposts and shipping lanes if we don’t act soon.”

Robin paused for a moment, so Ray asked almost instinctively: “And what can I do to help?”

“We’ll get to that,” there was a brief pause, “but not over the Comms channel.” Robin sounded as if he suspected people were listening in on their conversation. “No, meet me at the ‘On the Rocks.’ I’ll have something to show you there first. And then we can talk.”

After the call, Ray realized how insular his time on Adalia Prime had made him. Robin hadn’t given him that many details, but it was clear that something was amiss. Robin would not have bothered him this way, after such a long time, except for something serious. So Ray had agreed to meet Robin at some disreputable bar called “On the Rocks.” Ray had never been himself but had heard many unpleasant stories. He did not much care for bars and clubs, having never been a drinking man. Not like his father anyway; probably because of his father, come to think of it.

A few hours later, Ray put on some inconspicuous clothes and headed for ‘On the Rocks.’ His navigation app directed him to a makeshift building behind recycling plant ERC-721 of the waste disposal district. It was not the best neighborhood, Ray knew, certainly nothing like the commerce district. Most people avoided this place, and the smell here was terrible and penetrated anything. The $WAY for working in these plants was good enough, though, and it was impossible to find cheaper living quarters anywhere else in the colony. It made sense that the poor, unskilled, or those wishing to remain anonymous would end up here, despite the smell.

Ray fought back nausea when he arrived at the bar. It must have been the first time in his life he regretted being early for a meeting. He looked at the time; Robin would join him in about twenty minutes. Ray didn’t fancy waiting outside the bar that long, hoping the bar would at least have some air scrubbers to deal with the worst of the smell, so he stepped inside and sent Robin a message.

Once inside, Ray was surprised by how spacious it felt. The establishment was small but had been built deep into the ground, giving it unusually high ceilings. The entire left side was a long bar with barstools, which dominated over half the room. Behind the bar, a tall, well-built bald man with a full beard cleaned some glasses. The rest had tables and chairs of different makes and sizes. It looked to Ray like the owner hadn’t been too picky selecting his furniture.

The crowd was light this early in the day, and Ray found a stool roughly in the middle of the bar. Most of the tables by the entrance were completely unoccupied. Ray noticed most men and women here looked like they just came from a shift in one of the recycling plants.

In the back, however, there was a group of men that had something different about them. They were not wearing uniforms that marked them as plant workers, but each of them wore clothes that had a wild and freestyle look. Most of the men had rough faces and poor posture. Ray sized them up as “not the types you would want to get on the bad side of.” Falling back into old military habits, Ray quickly counted eight of them from the corner of his eyes and trained his ear in their direction. While ordering a drink, he overheard them bragging and plotting loudly.

“By Myrkul, you can see nothing has changed, right? So don’t you think I’m staying in the hell-hole much longer,” a slender guy with a big scar across his face screeched while slamming his fist on the table. “I’ve arranged a transport off of this dead rock to go join the UDL faction; you want to come with?”

“Ha, UDL? Isn’t that Captain Jack Panzers group of outlaws?” asked an older man with bulging muscles and long, gray hair. “Heard Jack cobbled together a ship and launched a couple boarding attacks on local merchant ships. But no, I’ll pass that one up, pal. I’m not into his kind of soul-eating shit!”

The slender guy looked aggravated. “So after doing hard time for twelve years, you rather just roll over and let ‘em shit all over you again?”

“Don’t you worry about me, my friend,” the old man replied with a nasty grin. ”Me and my friends have similar plans, and we’re going to have those belters work for us for a change.”

*Hard time? Twelve Years?* The blood in Ray’s veins turned to ice, and shivers went down his spine. He recalled the events on the *Arvad* that took place twelve years ago, some details as clear as if it was yesterday. And for good reasons. For him, it was one of the darkest days of his life aboard the *Arvad*.

Back then, a group of lower deck workers had been discontent with their jobs. They had already organized strikes to demand better working conditions and pay but to no avail. Eventually, they decided to take it a step further. They occupied and sealed one of the primary air scrubbing decks, which they then powered down. To prevent anyone from breaking through the locked doorways, they had taken as hostages the family of a highly-placed army officer. Those hostages were Ray’s wife and son.

*Arvad’s* High Commander Don Arkos had a difficult decision to make. Perhaps it was the most difficult of his career, or so Ray liked to think. He and Ray had been friends since childhood, so he knew Ray’s wife, Marry, and his son, Jason, very well. And he knew it to be likely they could get hurt if he ordered his men to end this rebellion.

But Commander Arkos did not a lot of time to decide as the effects of CO2 building up in the air were already evident. To make matters worse, people had already started complaining about dizziness and shortness of breath. He knew, that like with all terrorists, he could not give in to their demands. Otherwise, he’d be inviting every other group aboard to start revolts as well. He ordered his men to go in, save the hostages, and end this rebellion. There was no other way.

Ray remembered the reports from that mission vividly.

The doorway to scrubbing deck 1155 was blown open. Armed forces quickly poured through the hole the explosion had left behind, identifying at least one worker who was in a state of shock. Another worker, Danny something, had been guarding the hostages at the time. According to character witnesses, Danny was a nervous man. He was pointing an antique shotgun at Marry and Jason when the soldiers found him, kneeling on the ground, shaking, and crying: “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”

Forensic evidence revealed that Danny tensed in shock when the doorway exploded, causing the shotgun in his hand to go off. Marry and Jason, who had been sitting there back to back tight to chairs, had not survived that blast.

Ray believed that the men in ‘On the Rocks’ were the same cockroaches, freed after twelve years of incarceration. They were the reason he no longer had a wife and son. And now they were free again. Free to reap havoc on this young community. Ray’s blood boiled, and he wanted to leap at the group and finally get his revenge. But as he started to rise, a solid warm hand on his shoulder stopped him.

It was Robin who had arrived and joined on the barstool next to him. “I can see you remember our ‘friends’ here,” Robin whispered. “Now, I’m sure you now understand why I am worried.”

“Yes, I do, and if you had come any later, I might not have been able to control myself,” Ray admitted.

Robin looked at him with a hint of concern in his eyes, “But you know we can’t do anything about them, right?”.

Ray didn’t want to but nodded. These men had served their time, according to *Arvad* and Adalia law. If they hadn’t done anything illegal, Ray’s hands were tied. And from what he overheard, Roy knew this was going to become a problem.

Ray and Robin spend the next couple of hours talking about “pirates” and “privateers.” The words sounded strange to Ray, but they had no other words for what Robin was describing. And they knew they were going to have to deal with this problem sooner or later.

“The 1st order has plenty of soldiers”, Robin mentioned, “and a good number of them also got pilot training. But we won’t be able to fight pirates with a few light container transport ships.”

Ray understood where this was going and agreed. “Hmmm, you know what this means, right? We’ll have to reallocate resources we so desperately need to improve our people's lives, to build defense structures and combat vessels”, he said, then paused for a moment to collect himself. “And if we don’t, these rats are going just to take what they want uncontested, and our people will suffer even worse fates.”

And so Ray and Robin decided to start a new alliance. They would convince the different corporations forming throughout the belt to join. Funds had to be raised and redirect to building defenses and combat ships. And Robin would start training programs to ready the pilots of ‘the 1st Order’ for what was sure to come next: *‘Conflict’!*

(c) by [AAA] Gr82cu2m8 / with thanks to [1ST] Gareth and [1ST] Korivak for review and redaction.