AEKI

The AEKI Corporation is the largest corporate state on Pulse.

## Pre-Visit History

In the centuries before the arrival of The Visitors, AEKI was a galactic power in its own right, controlling dozens of worlds as its direct corporate property and maintaining a corporate presence on dozens more.

It was known to destabilize or invade smaller governments in order to place them under their hegemony. One notable example of this are the Chitans, whose native aristocracy was defeated by AEKI in 220BV, and their ruling queen replaced with a puppet. AEKI was allowed to directly own large swathes of the planet, and its officials were subject to AEKI law, not Chitan law. Chitan workers were routinely mistreated, and while a noticeable chunk of the nobility were absorbed as collaborators, the Chitan economy became incredibly extractive.

In 140BV, the Chitans, funded by AEKI's rivals as it was embroiled in a stellar war, overthrew their aristocracy and forced AEKI to evacuate its collaborators from the planet. These "emigres" or "defectors" integrated into AEKI, to the point that some could even be found working at their colony on Pulse.

AEKI, decrying the Chitan Common Interest Government as spartan, anti-individualistic and bloodthirsty, went to war against the CIG and its allies a half dozen times over the next two centuries.

AEKI's first permanent installation on Pulse was built in 61BV, and over the years its population and extractive infrastructure began to grow. House Helgema of the Jotuns purchased a sizable area of land just a few years later, in 54BV.

In 30BV, a land surveyor named Ernst Ashenko found records of a massive lithium deposit on one of the planet's colonies. Realizing the immense value of this find, he falsified AEKI's records before selling the real information to representatives of the IEC. AEKI, believing the planet to be a backwater, happily agreed to sell the land to the IEC, only to later realize their mistake when the area began churning out huge amounts of lithium and lithium products. Ernst Ashenko's fate is unknown, but he is believed to have either escaped into another IEC holding, or to have been assassinated by AEKI agents for his betrayal.

Despite the public betrayal, larger galactic issues kept the IEC and AEKI from openly entering into conflict with one another, and the IEC's claimed lands were respected.

## Post Visit History

As the galaxy crumbled under the invasion of the Visitors, it was quickly becoming clear to AEKI officials on Pulse that defeat was inevitable. One of the last surviving pieces of extra-stellar media showed CIG and AEKI troops fighting side by side--presumably to be crushed sometime later.

AEKI's local executive officer on Pulse, Harlan Traat, took radical action. Using contacts within AEKI's main hierarchy, he had the Pulse office deleted from all of AEKI's internal records. Then he turned to the other two major colonial powers - the IEC and House Helgema - and requested they attempt the same.

Traat is usually considered a founding father of modern-day Pulse for this action, and his administration is venerated by AEKI media as a capable leader.

Despite cutting themselves off officially from the rest of the galaxy, a massive number of refugees still managed to stumble across Pulse in the years after the Visitors' arrival. The corporate structure of AEKI and the IEC found themselves increasingly unable to absorb such large numbers of people into their workforce.

Faced with an angry and impoverished population, the IEC was able to convince the planet's powers to create a civilian government under the Colonial Corporate Council, or C3, which would administer Intercorporate Development Zones, free territories not owned by any single megacorp and populated with various independent smaller companies who could advance the speed of economic development.

AEKI reluctantly agreed to this new international order after it was formed in 9AV, building a corporate office in the newly incorporated Pulse City and exporting certain goods to the newly created intercorporate class of consumers.

When Harlan Traat died in 34AV at the age of 98, Brea Tarlyle succeeded him as CEO of the company. A much more "AEKI-first" leader, over the course of her administration AEKI has continued to embrace an "interior" economy, attempting to keep its employees purchasing AEKI products as opposed to those from other corporations.

She was a vocal hardliner against the Chitans during the Long Reach diplomatic crisis, and was only overruled after an IEC-led coalition after a years-long stalemate.

In recent years, AEKI's increasing use of android labor has alienated working class organics and caused a spate of terror attacks by organizations like the Automatic Vanguard.

## Structure

AEKI's Chief Executive Officer is elected by the Board of Directors, who themselves are elected by the company's shareholders. Statistics show that almost 60% of AEKI stock is owned by just 100 people. A number of these are the heads of various AEKI Departments (sub-companies specializing in a particular product or service), who are generally appointed by the CEO and Board. Due to this back-and-forth arrangement of confirmation, quid-pro-quo deals are usually made (where a Department head agrees to elect a certain candidate to the board, in exchange for that Board member endorsing the Department head's preferred successor.)

AEKI follows what might be called a 'mercantilist' perspective, attempting to keep economic activity inside itself. When an AEKI employee buys a product from an AEKI supplier, there may be a transfer of wealth from one Department to another, but the currency ultimately stays inside of AEKI, instead of going to an outside company.

The current AEKI head, Brea Tarlyle, is notable for her hardnosed, "trade deficit" perspective on AEKI's relationship to the IEC and its web of allied corporations.

Despite longstanding unity, however, the rise of a free market system under AEKI has led to internal divisions between Department heads. Realizing that they could enrich their own Department (and therefore themselves) more than their colleagues, a number of AEKI Departments have been lobbying for greater opportunities to collaborate with outside companies.