Station systems existed for only one reason: Commercially valuable resources. New Detroit was one of the oldest of the station systems, a solar system with no chance of ever hosting Terran life in any but the most tightly controlled of artificial environments; but it was a major trading nexus sitting in a system that contained one of the most commercially valuable materials known to man: Kreshnium.
Discovered accidentally by a xenogeologist on a survey mission through the system, Viktor VonKresh was lauded by the scientific community for his discovery of a substance that pushed the 'faster than light speed limit', once thought to be unbreakable, higher than ever thought possible. Seven years after his discovery, Dynamic Technologies Inc. revealed that they had found a way to incorporate it into their next generation of FTL drives. New Detroit's charter was drawn up within days of the announcement.
Discovered accidentally by a xenogeologist on a survey mission through the system, Viktor VonKresh was lauded by the scientific community for his discovery of a substance that pushed the 'faster than light speed limit', once thought to be unbreakable, higher than ever thought possible. Seven years after his discovery, Dynamic Technologies Inc. revealed that they had found a way to incorporate it into their next generation of FTL drives. New Detroit's charter was drawn up within days of the announcement.
The station had originally been designed as a twin taurus design with a rotational gravity, but the advent of gravity polarization technology had caused the design to be altered significantly. The station, when viewed perpendicular to its long axis, looked amusingly like an old railway train axle with one large wheel at one end, and a smaller wheel with six balls around the axle next to it at the other end. This design placed the habitation area all in the same plane and made it possible to have a very open space to live in. The larger of the two quickly became known as Topside and was reserved for the station's commercial and administrative needs, open areas to supplement local food production as well as green areas for recreational pursuits, and naturally these areas became an attractive place around which to put housing for the people working Topside. The smaller wheel became the industrial center for the station as well as efficient housing for the labourers, technicians, shipyard workers and maintenance personnel who were needed to keep the station running, and keep the shipyards in business. It became known colloquially as Low Town, and it quickly became the place to find any form of diversion a person could want; bars, brothels, and dens of vice of every kind became common to the point that it became easier to tax them, rather than try to put them out of business.
DTI had been one of the original investors in the station, but their interest was always seen as peripheral to a colonial charter; the system had a resource they wanted, and they were willing to invest to get it, but no more. Their investment included a number of very quiet suggestions to the original board of directors about how to make New Detroit self-sufficient, including an offer of very low interest loans from the Darkaellan Imperium for developing an indigenous ship-building capacity. There had been a number of deals made between the board and DTI, the most important of which was that DTI would get to purchase refined Kreshnium at a reasonable price, and and in return they would prioritize their FTL drive production to supply the local shipyard's needs. They also brought in trained technicians to do the installation and maintenance of any FTL units. This last was seen by many as an insult, an implicit distrust of New Detroit's ability to maintain the Drives themselves. The truth was far more complex, since DTI had good reason to suspect that their proprietary technology would be a huge target for organizations like the Cartel, who would just love to get a massive leap forward in their own FTL R&D programs. The status quo had been maintained, however, and most of the fears that a foreign monopoly on FTL technology would result in high prices, secondary costs, and artificial supply shortages to boost demand (and prices) turned out to be unfounded. DTI and the Imperium made FTL drives cheaper and faster than anyone else, and within a dozen years had a market share of FTL drive production of about 90 percent, the last holdouts tended to be military SpecOps, or clandestine manufacturers, catering mostly to smugglers, pirates and other outlaws. Most people didn't realize how much the history of this one massive station had been influenced by a state which was now widely viewed as a pariah by most of the people living outside of it.
The irony of all of this was not lost on Petrona Hamasaki. She had acquired a finely honed sense of historical irony in her present occupation as an investigator in the offices of the Minotaur branch of the United Systems Police Force. The USPF had been her own figurative run for the border after her career in the NDPS had come to a explosive, screeching, grinding halt.
She had been right, had done everything by the book, and had made certain that what had turned out to be the last official arrest of her career, as an officer of the law with New Detroit Public Safety, had been beyond reproach. The fact that the Darkaellan woman she had tried to detain had been working for DTI's own private security unit shouldn't have mattered to anyone, after all, the NDS Legal Code did not provide outside contractors with any special immunity from prosecution. DTI's security people had to obey the law just like anyone else, and she had deliberately committed an act of lethal violence on no other grounds than suspicion, and the ststion's Judiciary Board had refused to prosecute her for it. Petrona's attitude towards the Imperium and its corporate subsidiaries - like DTI - had been as cynically hostile as anyone else's, and her indignation in the face of such a betrayal had been indecently volcanic.
And now she sat in a small office in the large, block-like UniSys building in the Old Quarter of Níngjìng Bay. The last five years had certainly been educational, that was certain; any lingering antipathy she might have felt over the official charges of insubordination and the unofficial advice of her former lieutenant, and boss, that she quietly resign before she was loudly cashiered, had been washed away, and replaced with something like pity for how badly informed about the realities of interstellar commerce and politics she had been.
Her current boss, a man named Julius Benedict Harlow (Special Agent in Charge, Níngjìng Bay), had sought her out, and made her a job offer working for UniSys. JB (as he preferred to be called) had made it clear that the offer was one likely to make her even more unwelcome than she already was in law enforcement circles, but she would have the authority to "...Stomp on anyone's dick if they get in your way." To say that she'd been enthusiastic would have been a lie, but she had to eat, so she had said yes without really thinking about it.
Her prejudices about the USPF had been as poorly informed as the ones she'd had regarding Darkael and DTI had been (what she now realized was just popular bigotry), and the learning curve in her new job had been challengingly steep. She had come to understand the incredible difficulty of maintaining law and order across interstellar distances, and how one system's laws could conflict with another's to the point of laughable absurdity.
Case in point: A businessman from Jefferson finds out his 17 year old daughter is consorting with a man "of unsuitable nature" - ie. wrong skin tone, ethnic background, and religion; a triple threat - and has his private bodyguards beat the man with a thumb-thick rod and warn him, in accordance with what is scripturally acceptable common practice on Jefferson, that he would do well to move on. The man who is beaten doesn't take the hint, and convinces the girl to elope with him on a ship to a new star system. The father of the girl then sends his agents to find the girl and bring her home, since a girl of her age is not considered a legal adult and cannot make a legal contract of marriage to a man of whom her father does not approve.
"Needless to say, JB," Petrona said as she explained events to her boss, "these guys just don't seem to grasp why the Alliance considers their actions kidnapping, and try as I might, it was a wasted effort. I'd have had better luck explaining gravitic systems engineering to them. Their case doesn't have to go through a UniSys Criminal Court hearing though, since they were forthcoming enough to admit that they put that girl's husband into a coma from the beating they gave him."
JB gave her a sceptical look before asking, "Was that before, or after you advised them of their rights under interstellar law?"
She couldn't help the Cheshire Cat grin on her face and said, "After. They knew they had a right to silence, and legal aid, and they talked anyway. Frankly, I don't think they took me seriously, it might have something to do with the fact that they come from Heardsfort County on Jefferson."
"I don't get it, Pet. What's so different about Heardsfort County?" JB asked while reaching for his cigarettes.
"It was settled almost a century ago, primarily by what I personally would consider 'insanely conservative' religious fundamentalists; they don't allow women to enter most professions - especially law enforcement - and generally don't encourage them to live independently. I think they thought I was your secretary."
JB managed to avoid choking on the smoke from his cigarette as he laughed out loud, "And since you had done your due diligence, you didn't bother to enlighten them?" he finished for her. He got a wink of her eye by way of response.
JB started blowing smoke rings at the ceiling's air circulation vent and watched as they got pulled away to be filtered and recycled in one of the building's hydrostatic air systems. Petrona had come to realise that this meant he was deep in thought, and waited for him to finish working out whatever was occupying his mind by removing the dust cover from the cranial interface port behind her right ear and plugging in her wireless uplink node. She still got a thrill out of using the virtually unlimited access that UniSys agents had to the planet's public network, although here the office was a closed system that had to be accessed with a direct hardline connection. Her first order of business was to check her private message in-box, there was little of interest aside from the ubiquitous vids of her younger brother's pet cat doing something dumb or cute. Her brother was planning on going to university outside of their home system, he had a burning desire to go to a real planet and see what life there was like. She wished him well, because she had a pretty good idea that her mother would be doing everything she could think of to keep him on New Detroit.
It made her feel a bit homesick, but there was no way for her to go back without her past coming back to haunt her. In her weaker moments, she wondered what would have happened if she'd gone public with the information in the official arrest record - of which she had kept a copy.
Nothing good, probably.
Publicly, her father had been outwardly stoic about what had happened, as Japanese always were, but the man had been as comforting as any parent could be expected to be in private moments between them. She missed her father; the two of them used to meet for lunch on the first day of the month, just the two of them, no matter what. It was their own private tradition. Noboru Hamasaki's family were part of the Japanese exodus from Earth, people who had gotten tired of the rising ethnocentrism of their homeland's politics and increasing social pressure to be 'more Japanese'. Her mother's family were mostly Hispanic, with a hint of Norteamericano in the family tree somewhere; not that any of them let it show. She hadn't spoken to her mother since she had resigned from the force in disgrace, and left for Minotaur.
'Both of us too proud. Hispanics to the bone - as always.' Petrona thought to herself as she watched Joaquín's feline behaving badly.
JB's voice brought her attention back firmly to the subject at hand.
"I think it would be in our best interests to ship our two wayward Jeffersonians back to local custody along with a sealed copy of their admission of guilt to you, as well as your own investigative report, and then let them handle it. They admitted to beating that man to within a millimeter of his death, and they had to know that would be a crime anywhere." He stubbed his dwindling cigarette out in a little sand filled ashtray that sat on the right corner of his desk. "Want me to make the call?"
"Nah, the gang over at Bay PD has to get used to the idea that I can make them choke on their own work sooner or later." She shut her 'link down and removed it, replacing the dust cover as she put her desk terminal on-com to place the call to the local Níngjìng Bay Police office. She wished all of their cases could be resolved so easily, but that just wouldn't be in the Universe's nature. Considering how her career had developed in the last few years, she knew that every easy case was followed by half a dozen real bastards. That was tommorrow's problem, however, today's easy work meant that she could have a little fun, and she was really looking forward to a few drinks with the team, and knocking those pins over at the bowling alley.
DTI had been one of the original investors in the station, but their interest was always seen as peripheral to a colonial charter; the system had a resource they wanted, and they were willing to invest to get it, but no more. Their investment included a number of very quiet suggestions to the original board of directors about how to make New Detroit self-sufficient, including an offer of very low interest loans from the Darkaellan Imperium for developing an indigenous ship-building capacity. There had been a number of deals made between the board and DTI, the most important of which was that DTI would get to purchase refined Kreshnium at a reasonable price, and and in return they would prioritize their FTL drive production to supply the local shipyard's needs. They also brought in trained technicians to do the installation and maintenance of any FTL units. This last was seen by many as an insult, an implicit distrust of New Detroit's ability to maintain the Drives themselves. The truth was far more complex, since DTI had good reason to suspect that their proprietary technology would be a huge target for organizations like the Cartel, who would just love to get a massive leap forward in their own FTL R&D programs. The status quo had been maintained, however, and most of the fears that a foreign monopoly on FTL technology would result in high prices, secondary costs, and artificial supply shortages to boost demand (and prices) turned out to be unfounded. DTI and the Imperium made FTL drives cheaper and faster than anyone else, and within a dozen years had a market share of FTL drive production of about 90 percent, the last holdouts tended to be military SpecOps, or clandestine manufacturers, catering mostly to smugglers, pirates and other outlaws. Most people didn't realize how much the history of this one massive station had been influenced by a state which was now widely viewed as a pariah by most of the people living outside of it.
The irony of all of this was not lost on Petrona Hamasaki. She had acquired a finely honed sense of historical irony in her present occupation as an investigator in the offices of the Minotaur branch of the United Systems Police Force. The USPF had been her own figurative run for the border after her career in the NDPS had come to a explosive, screeching, grinding halt.
She had been right, had done everything by the book, and had made certain that what had turned out to be the last official arrest of her career, as an officer of the law with New Detroit Public Safety, had been beyond reproach. The fact that the Darkaellan woman she had tried to detain had been working for DTI's own private security unit shouldn't have mattered to anyone, after all, the NDS Legal Code did not provide outside contractors with any special immunity from prosecution. DTI's security people had to obey the law just like anyone else, and she had deliberately committed an act of lethal violence on no other grounds than suspicion, and the ststion's Judiciary Board had refused to prosecute her for it. Petrona's attitude towards the Imperium and its corporate subsidiaries - like DTI - had been as cynically hostile as anyone else's, and her indignation in the face of such a betrayal had been indecently volcanic.
And now she sat in a small office in the large, block-like UniSys building in the Old Quarter of Níngjìng Bay. The last five years had certainly been educational, that was certain; any lingering antipathy she might have felt over the official charges of insubordination and the unofficial advice of her former lieutenant, and boss, that she quietly resign before she was loudly cashiered, had been washed away, and replaced with something like pity for how badly informed about the realities of interstellar commerce and politics she had been.
Her current boss, a man named Julius Benedict Harlow (Special Agent in Charge, Níngjìng Bay), had sought her out, and made her a job offer working for UniSys. JB (as he preferred to be called) had made it clear that the offer was one likely to make her even more unwelcome than she already was in law enforcement circles, but she would have the authority to "...Stomp on anyone's dick if they get in your way." To say that she'd been enthusiastic would have been a lie, but she had to eat, so she had said yes without really thinking about it.
Her prejudices about the USPF had been as poorly informed as the ones she'd had regarding Darkael and DTI had been (what she now realized was just popular bigotry), and the learning curve in her new job had been challengingly steep. She had come to understand the incredible difficulty of maintaining law and order across interstellar distances, and how one system's laws could conflict with another's to the point of laughable absurdity.
Case in point: A businessman from Jefferson finds out his 17 year old daughter is consorting with a man "of unsuitable nature" - ie. wrong skin tone, ethnic background, and religion; a triple threat - and has his private bodyguards beat the man with a thumb-thick rod and warn him, in accordance with what is scripturally acceptable common practice on Jefferson, that he would do well to move on. The man who is beaten doesn't take the hint, and convinces the girl to elope with him on a ship to a new star system. The father of the girl then sends his agents to find the girl and bring her home, since a girl of her age is not considered a legal adult and cannot make a legal contract of marriage to a man of whom her father does not approve.
"Needless to say, JB," Petrona said as she explained events to her boss, "these guys just don't seem to grasp why the Alliance considers their actions kidnapping, and try as I might, it was a wasted effort. I'd have had better luck explaining gravitic systems engineering to them. Their case doesn't have to go through a UniSys Criminal Court hearing though, since they were forthcoming enough to admit that they put that girl's husband into a coma from the beating they gave him."
JB gave her a sceptical look before asking, "Was that before, or after you advised them of their rights under interstellar law?"
She couldn't help the Cheshire Cat grin on her face and said, "After. They knew they had a right to silence, and legal aid, and they talked anyway. Frankly, I don't think they took me seriously, it might have something to do with the fact that they come from Heardsfort County on Jefferson."
"I don't get it, Pet. What's so different about Heardsfort County?" JB asked while reaching for his cigarettes.
"It was settled almost a century ago, primarily by what I personally would consider 'insanely conservative' religious fundamentalists; they don't allow women to enter most professions - especially law enforcement - and generally don't encourage them to live independently. I think they thought I was your secretary."
JB managed to avoid choking on the smoke from his cigarette as he laughed out loud, "And since you had done your due diligence, you didn't bother to enlighten them?" he finished for her. He got a wink of her eye by way of response.
JB started blowing smoke rings at the ceiling's air circulation vent and watched as they got pulled away to be filtered and recycled in one of the building's hydrostatic air systems. Petrona had come to realise that this meant he was deep in thought, and waited for him to finish working out whatever was occupying his mind by removing the dust cover from the cranial interface port behind her right ear and plugging in her wireless uplink node. She still got a thrill out of using the virtually unlimited access that UniSys agents had to the planet's public network, although here the office was a closed system that had to be accessed with a direct hardline connection. Her first order of business was to check her private message in-box, there was little of interest aside from the ubiquitous vids of her younger brother's pet cat doing something dumb or cute. Her brother was planning on going to university outside of their home system, he had a burning desire to go to a real planet and see what life there was like. She wished him well, because she had a pretty good idea that her mother would be doing everything she could think of to keep him on New Detroit.
It made her feel a bit homesick, but there was no way for her to go back without her past coming back to haunt her. In her weaker moments, she wondered what would have happened if she'd gone public with the information in the official arrest record - of which she had kept a copy.
Nothing good, probably.
Publicly, her father had been outwardly stoic about what had happened, as Japanese always were, but the man had been as comforting as any parent could be expected to be in private moments between them. She missed her father; the two of them used to meet for lunch on the first day of the month, just the two of them, no matter what. It was their own private tradition. Noboru Hamasaki's family were part of the Japanese exodus from Earth, people who had gotten tired of the rising ethnocentrism of their homeland's politics and increasing social pressure to be 'more Japanese'. Her mother's family were mostly Hispanic, with a hint of Norteamericano in the family tree somewhere; not that any of them let it show. She hadn't spoken to her mother since she had resigned from the force in disgrace, and left for Minotaur.
'Both of us too proud. Hispanics to the bone - as always.' Petrona thought to herself as she watched Joaquín's feline behaving badly.
JB's voice brought her attention back firmly to the subject at hand.
"I think it would be in our best interests to ship our two wayward Jeffersonians back to local custody along with a sealed copy of their admission of guilt to you, as well as your own investigative report, and then let them handle it. They admitted to beating that man to within a millimeter of his death, and they had to know that would be a crime anywhere." He stubbed his dwindling cigarette out in a little sand filled ashtray that sat on the right corner of his desk. "Want me to make the call?"
"Nah, the gang over at Bay PD has to get used to the idea that I can make them choke on their own work sooner or later." She shut her 'link down and removed it, replacing the dust cover as she put her desk terminal on-com to place the call to the local Níngjìng Bay Police office. She wished all of their cases could be resolved so easily, but that just wouldn't be in the Universe's nature. Considering how her career had developed in the last few years, she knew that every easy case was followed by half a dozen real bastards. That was tommorrow's problem, however, today's easy work meant that she could have a little fun, and she was really looking forward to a few drinks with the team, and knocking those pins over at the bowling alley.
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