8th February
23:02 GMT
Emana is burning.
There are small fires burning in a hundred locations in every major city. In space, slain satellites drift in uncontrolled orbits, the lights on their hulls flickering and dying. More than a few ships too, though most are merely crippled before either their assailants are targeted in turn or the boarding teams arrive.
Fortunately, no one's been crazy enough to perform orbital strikes yet. The consortia are 'sorting things out' amongst themselves. At ground level that mostly amounts to small strikes against one another's holdings, data breaches, blackmailings, targeted assassinations and bribes. Individual companies which make up the consortia may be liquidated by force or financial manipulation, folded this way or that, bought or bid for…
I have records of the last few Branx Corporate Wars, but I think this is the biggest yet.
The government of Emana appears to be sitting it out, which considering their position is the only sane thing for them to do. Officials are doing their best to calm things down and limit the damage, but… At times like this there isn't a lot they
can do. The High Conciliator appears to be… Talking to a regional governor. Providing reassurance and encouraging him and his staff to bunker down and wait for it to blow over.
I wait for the call to finish and then
step out
and reappear in front of the now inactive screen.
The High Conciliator regards me for a moment.
"I was wondering if you might turn up. Are you here to gloat?"
"Would it help if I did?
"
"Nothing will help in any practical way, but I might feel better if I had someone external to blame."
"How did the mess out there even
happen?
"
"Things have been tense since you destroyed the Citadel, but we had a negotiated exchange of powers lined up. All of the major consortia-alliances had agreed in principle… Then some..
little..
snap-horn speculated a little too hard on a synthetic currency and the economic knock-on effects triggered…
This."
"I'll admit that I'm not exactly choked with guilt, but that all sounds like it wasn't my fault.
"
"No, I suppose that it isn't. Would you like a drink?"
"Would
you like a drink?
"
"Auron, yes."
"Then it would be impolite of me to make you drink alone.
"
"
Hm." She hauls her not-inconsiderable bulk out of her office chair and lumbers over to a cabinet. "A full-on corporate war. I didn't think that I'd see one in my lifetime."
"How long do you usually go between them?
"
"There isn't a set interval." She pulls out a decanter of a translucent yellow and two glasses. "The last one happened just before Tamaran fell. At the time they were-" She pours herself a full glass, takes a quick look at me and then pours me a finger. "-our last trading partner to still be resisting Citadel domination. Those who traded with them wanted us to take a more supportive position, those who traded with the Citadel were in the ascendance…"
She puts the decanter and glasses on a small tray and carries them back to her desk. I generate a construct chair and sit down opposite her.
"Now, the
first corporate war,
that was interesting." She takes her seat, setting the tray down on the desk and then passing a glass to me. I take it from her and nod for her to continue. "Someone… Probably the psions, started handing out faster than light drives like it was a bankruptcy auction. A great many of our larger corporations decided that moving to places… Planets in some cases, without Emana's 'restrictive anti-business laws', was in their best interests."
"Wouldn't the set-up costs of new colonies more than-.
"
"Not if someone else is paying the transportation costs. A lot of the time, the new colonists funded themselves, and the psions -or whoever- were paying for the ships. So, whole cities disappeared overnight, some of Emana's most profitable industries were no longer paying tax… The government more or less collapsed. We still don't really have an army."
"I've yet to see a successful corporate state.
"
"Oh, we
weren't one. But it took about… Fourteen years to break down. Because it turns out that having legal remedies to the abuses of power by the powerful does a lot to defray social unrest. With that
gone, their new corporate contract-holders-." She leans forward. "Read 'slave owners', could do whatever they wanted. Until the unrest resulted in a series of socialist revolutions from people who were tired of dealing with that shit. They won in some places and lost in others, and where they lost they did enough damage to make the settlements unprofitable and where they
won they swiftly went after the places where they lost."
I smile.
"And let me guess: the corporations appealed for government aid?
"
"I'm not sure what they were expecting a basically defunct government to
do exactly. But… Faced with the potential for bloody slaughter, my predecessor managed to negotiate a settlement. Of sorts. He reached out to the most stable worker groups and most sane management cliques, and… Found common ground. The war burned out, and a new normal was agreed upon. Consortia are a good deal better behaved now, and about a fifth of them are still run as cooperatives."
"I didn't know that.
"
"'Shares for the people'." She takes a drink. "We teach the period in schools. Our little attempt to remind would-be corporate titans that worker protection laws
don't exist to protect workers from managers. That
if you push people too far they snap."
She reaches up and takes hold of both of her horns for a moment.
"One.. stupid.. fake currency. And there's nothing
I can do."
"What exactly
is your job?
"
"Picking up the pieces when other people have finished being stupid. The Citadel's
gone and it isn't coming back."
"Also, the karnans are in the process of taking back Karna.
"
"A mass uprising?"
"A fleet the Crown Imperium has been sponsoring for just this opportunity.
"
"I respect someone who is prepared to invest long-term." She takes another glug, then stares helplessly at her glass. "I'm just annoyed that Amalak of all people is managing to make the transition we're so obviously
failing to. I would have thought that a jumped-up pirate would… Flail around violently instead, and at least
some of our consortia would have had the sense to put feelers out. As it is the..
Meat Barter clan will probably come through this with more of their infrastructure intact than we will."
"Wasn't it part of your job to make sure that happened?
"
"No, it's part of my job to remind our corporate leaders that
they should be doing it. But telling people they should take a hit in profitability now to create a contingency against a situation that will probably never happen is something of a
hard sell."
"So, what, they don't-?
"
"They have
insurance." She splutter-laughs. "As if any insurance provider could cover
this."
I take a sip of my own drink, mentally-. Oh. Actually, that's not too bad.
"What do you want out of this?
"
"We need to pivot our society. Probably execute-. I'm sorry, I will need to recommend that the continual existence of certain individuals is 'contrary to the legitimate business interests of the people of Emana', which amounts to the same thing. Then direct people to forge links with… The karnans, because there's no way that they have the facilities to support a fleet of any size with Karna. And Tamaran, they went dark suddenly so that was
you?"
I nod.
"I saw images of the state of the place. Trade
there. At-cost, because we're trying to build an image of ourselves as a business partner before one of the people the Citadel and psions alienated decides to take their wrath out on
us."
"But what do
you want?
"
"
I want to alter our society so that nothing like this can ever happen again.
I want to force people to overcome their 'see-grab' instincts and take long-term factors into consideration. And once the fires are out I'll be able to. I'm just not sure what I'll have left to work with once my people are prepared to listen to me again."
I nod and finish my drink before fabricating a copy of my book and sliding it across the desk to her.
"You might want to take a look at
this.
"