[civ2buf]

The Discipline Fleet Rebels discover another species

The rebellion fleet had flown through Navidon space for quite a while, not harried by these allies who were connected to the Explorer conglomerates who in turn seemed to be loyal to all three factions, but mostly loyal to their own balance sheet. Information given to Control Alliance admiral Qumo (7x'2x'189 formally), suggests that the Explorer factions have had several ships destroyed by the crystalline faction that Qumo is seeking after.

The Explorer moguls are losing their deep space information sources, which kept them on pace with the Control Alliance's knowledge of the galaxy. This would be bad in a way, because disconnected from deep space, the moguls are more likely to remain loyal to the Justice's faction, which lately has been advocating that the corporate powers of the foundation restrain their activities to territory claimed by the foundation. Now the explorer moguls can say they are following this rule.

Qumo and his fleet are completely immune to the rest of the foundation, they are seperated by vast spaces of ally claimed territory. To be truthful, allies and enemies alike have come close to prevent any expansion of the foundations' official borders. While other empires have expanded borders, the foundation has simply developed its three systems more thoroughly, and discovered many star systems.

The alien ship is blocking Qumo's fleet from the obvious paths to known Crystalline space. It is a largeish ship by foundation standards, and its proportions lead Discipline to guess it is a warship.

Qumo decides to stop and build some real defenses. The loss of the fleet at this point would be a horrible blow to both the Control Alliance and the foundation as a whole. The foundation is in dire danger of being merely a provincial trading nation. They will find war soon, and the loss of the huge amounts of trade they currently have with other nations will be devastating to Foundation economy. "If they would just understand that a galactic free trade zone will never happen, they would begin arming for the inevitable wars," he thinks.

This is the ideal of the Anarchists' who desire to trade with everyone and fight with no one. But the control alliance receives its funding from trade with the cyber aliens. Bizarrely, certain anarchists had no objections to funnelling trade profits to Discipline, and running the whole operation for a fee. Of course, most of the profits are just numbers in Anarchista's First Bank of Freedom, which is the preferred bank for all renegades and weirdos of the Foundation. Shareowners for the bank are primarily some of the first setllers of anarchista, and a few speculators on homeworld. Profits are skyrocketing as Anarchista slowly takes over the title of economic center of the Foundation.

While homeworld is certainly the place that produces the most in raw terms, Anarchista mediates the most virtual transactions and completely information based systems.

If Qumo can trade with these new aliens, like the perfect deal he has with the cybers, the Control Alliance will be able to triple its fleet, and control more research projects. But Qumo has an idea, a proposal for the cybers. A wickedly clever idea that would remove the neccesity of attacking the Crystalline completely. When Qumo has an idea, everyone onboard the Discipline notices.