Bersarang Multi-Stellar

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Its bulk-produce freightliners are among the safest commercial vessels operating between systems, often forming small fleets as other MacroCorps and private operators form spontaneous formations around these massive transport craft. Interfering with Bersarang’s operations can disrupt agricultural networks supporting billions, making Bersarang convoys effectively neutral in many conflicts save those against Exogen and the very worst captains of the Mehndak pirates. Where that protection is insufficient, the MacroCorp can always rely on the Directorate to provide military protection or they can rely on a host of mercenary groups.

Bersarang Multi-Stellar started when several wholesalers operating across the newly formed ExeCor met in the Opening Fiscal Century in 045 on the moon Arkans orbiting Shijiaan in the Protean system at the behest of Dumno-Ualos. With the Hegemon in its infancy and surging demands, this meeting was intended to unify into a kind of compact that could manipulate prices on an interstellar level.

The Hruod brothers saw things differently.

Close friends with Dumno-Ualos and known for being a major supplier across Mkklon, Protea and Jov, they had survived by being cutthroat and opportunistic. They had built up a major series of manufactories and feedworks to supply the Three Sisters and the miner populations of Shijiaan. Their headquarters on Arkans had become famous for their ballroom parties and this one promised to be the largest of the fiscal cycle.

While unclear if by design, after Dumno-Ualos had struck a major deal with all the executives assembled, utilizing his Clan genetics to bind the authorizing agreements into a chirograph, he departed before celebrations began, which was characteristic of the Founder.

In an act of violence that would set the tone for the MacroCorp to come, the Hruod waited until Dumno-Ualos left orbit before activating a contract with the Black Ring assassin group who systematically annihilated the guests and executives. Being the last living members of the agreement, they enforced the agreements of the chirograph and effectively forced the operations of all the agreed Corpos to obey the century long agreement.

By the time for renegotiations, each of these entities and thousands more had been quickly absorbed into Bersarang Multi-Stellar.

Lalande: The Hand that Feeds

The Lalande system contains three naturally habitable planets. Mara’zu, closest to the star, and No’zama with its binaric sister world Sol’zek. No’zama is the primary world of the system and has been developed by Bersarang for seven hundred fiscal cycles. The system is filled with orbitals and unaligned communities on dozens of moons and worlds outside of this habitable zone. While Lalande’s few governments quickly joined the Hegemon, it remained largely ‘directionless’ before Bersarang chose it as its new base of operations.

In the Second Fiscal Century, Bersarang successfully petitioned the Summit Council and financed the construction of several permanent gatewells connecting it to Protea as well as the “Pathstar” of Hathor. Thus connected, the MacroCorp could extend their reach to all major buyers directly to their home office. The resulting wealth allowed them to lease every planet for the next thousand fiscal cycles, providing them with the means to now grow a practically endless amount of food.

Shortly after the leasing, Bersarang depopulated the rolling grasslands first with payoffs and, when that didn’t work, with force. They brought in their own farmers and livestock managers, not wanting to deal with endemic populations who would surely protest… And they did.

Local governments were heavily incentivized to grow Ungala berries at the expense of ancestral lands which would need to be demolished. One region, lead by the Royal House of Kamà, rallied the No’zama to stop the Bersarang earth movers. Protesters were given a single warning before the favored miliCorp, Gulicar Safety Group, opened fire. Known for rapid assault, the Gulicar scattered protesters with tracked monocycles, driving all the way into the Palace of Kamà where they arrested the Royal family. Anyone connected to the protesters were tried and sentenced to off-world indentured servitude.

Now, Bersarang’s headquarters hangs above the grow fields of No’zama that stretch unbroken across each hemisphere. Hauled into orbit, the apsidina class macro-orbital has been the home office for Bersarang for centuries but it is also the primary processing center for billions of tonnes of products made from the raw materials hauled to No’zama across multiple star systems before being shipped back out. At the core of the apsidina, a unique ansible array is suspended via perfectly tuned gravity wells. A century ago the Yinntosh and TelStar MacroCorps were commissioned by Bersarang to build the Red Oracle. This unique and advanced tachyonic based logistics system that utilizes an ansible array paired to hundreds of Bersarang owned ansibles across the ExeCor and Midworlds which is then disseminated by a thousand shackled Chapak synthan entities. With the right Bersarang subscription, almost any product can reach any point in the Hegemon.

Produce and Product

Bersarang’s real advantage is not simply the quantity of food produced but the reproducibility of its agricultural systems. So called “Pocket Farms” are available and scalable at the individual consumer level to colonial initiatives that cater to Bersarang’s catalog of equipment, food animals and seeds that can be easily changed to a local biome and atmospheric chemistry before being shipped.

However, farming is only one aspect of the MacroCorps marketshare. Over half of all consumable products eaten by the Hegemon are connected to either Bersarang directly or one of their paraCorps. This list is truly exhausting but their major trustBrands are as follows:

• Kantauri Fabricated Chekenᵗᴮ: Premium fabricated cheken products with lower grades able to be grown in protein vats while higher grades are actual cuts of meat from animals bred in captivity.

• Black Graze Styrworks: A paraCorp Styr beef supplier. They are the primary meat supplier for Directorate personnel. The BlackStyrᵗᴮ genetic line is the leftover attempt of Bersarang’s attempt to modify the Styr which was converted to an all organic brand after Audit investigation.

• Durok Swine Products: Mass-market processor of swine flesh from an unbroken genetic line native to Lalande. Their meat slurry, cured strips and cheaper protein blocks are known for high quality. Their Kandian breed is famous for its translucent red flesh and sweet flavor profile referred to as ‘Delights,’ a favorite amongst the Directorate and a common celebratory gift in the Hegemon.

• Colarisᵗᴮ: The ExeCor’s dominant carbo-stimm drink. Sold in everything from low-cost workshift tall cans to expensive reserve formulations with unique flavor and stimulant profiles. Every planet in the ExeCor has a national flavor.

• Hydris: The loser of the Brand Wars, the Hydris paraCorp still services Frontier and Midworld Orbiter locations through their remaining restaurant brands. Their weightlessness friendly injection system is a standard for Orbiter communities.

• Ungala Infusions: Started by General Gulicar, it is Bersarang’s flagship ungala line from Lalande.

• Stampede Dairyᵗᴮ: A broad line of cultured styr milk products, including cheeses, cream concentrates, fortified milk gels and standard liquid options.

• Marazu Pastures: Bersarang’s primary seed catalogue.

• TableSaintᵗᴮ: Bersarang’s synthan cuisine developed on Sol’zek which includes their Grade S Holographic Feast experience. This paraCorp produces multi- and para-sensory dining experiences.

Division 39

The Iron Teeth

The 39th Barakan Division, the Iron Teeth, is closely associated with Bersarang and wears white and red parade colors representing its primary financier. Contracted after the Fall of Catraeth and the Duskward War, Bersarang uses the Iron Teeth regularly in its operations to secure new food monopolies and deter competition.

The Iron Teeth are named as such for their custom of removing their lower jaw mandibles to be replaced with bionetic replacements made from nusteel. Additional muscle bundles and various organoid enhancements create a terrifying weapon option that these Barakan regularly use on their victims. How such a custom even started is unclear but has never dared investigation.

The Iron Teeth operate from a fleet of several converted Consortium style freightliners, another mystery about the nature of these Barakan. Unlike other Barakan Divisions that use planetary bases called Hollows, the 39th and their Travan stay aboard these vessels and will often operate on smaller craft. As such, the 39th rarely deploys in large numbers preferring devastating boarding actions in pursuit of their contracts. The Iron Teeth fleet, callsign Hunger, operates widely within the Bersarang trade networks, often in plain view as few caeliners can recognize the hull markings as Barakan.

Contracts with the Iron Teeth traditionally include provisions despite the fact that Barakan do not consume ordinary solid food. The reason for this requirement remains unclear and it is further assumed that the vast quantities of food that they have been paid over the centuries are, presumably, within the holds of their massive vessels. Their mobility makes them useful as rapid-response forces whenever Bersarang agricultural holdings or distribution networks are threatened.

“We’re back in business…” Yanda was getting excited reading the data screens, a hungry grin through gold plated teeth. The bridge on the trampliner was fifty meters buried beneath the hull, a mismatched collection of different hulks bound and fused together to make a surprisingly fearsome ship though outwardly it appeared benign.

The perfect vessel for pirates.

“She’s Bersarang, Captain, confirmed as Freightliner 408-5, the Half-Full. Comm echoes indicate she’s heading back to the ExeCor from Selion, basket full.” Teod, the ship’s bosun, reported. He was big, a Grounder, once an indentured forced to kill in fighting pits on a penal colony. Yanda had bought his debt, he owed everything to her.

“This is it.” She slapped her helmsman on the back of his chair, “This is the one that makes us famous!”

“Are you sure? Bersarang’s a MacroCorp.” Teod protested, “We’ve only been hitting nationals and freetraders, they could put up a fight.”

“What’s the difference? We’re already outlaws, Teod. Welched on our contracts, didn’t return the gear to the Tributaries, if we get caught it won’t be ‘dent status they give us, we’ll be going to some rock breaker penal colony like Ghazar.”

Yanda weighed her options. They’d been going mad, stuck aboard the cramped confines of the trampliner. If they let the freightliner go that pent up anxiety and frustration would cost them more fights, likely deaths. This would happen even aboard a Armada ship where there was discipline, steady pay, and ways of keeping distracted in the longhauls, but pirates?

They were a solar outfit, the trampliner didn’t have a dawndrive so it couldn’t leave the system. It had been made up of Orbiters from the outer belts until Yanda and her gang of Armada deserters had run into them refueling. First they’d joined, then Yanda had challenged the former Captain to a duel. They’d fought on the cargo deck in front of the eighty crew and she’d gutted her, taking her ears as trophies that hung on a loop to the knife sheathed to her chest. She had re-christened their ship the Bird of Prey and quickly went about making a name by ransoming trade vessels moving through the Iblis star system.

She had high designs for her future and therefor everyone else’s. A catch like a MacroCorp ship would make them famous, get them known with an out-system syndicate, maybe even as far as the Mehndax!

To do that this needed to work perfectly.

“Spin up the power core, start bleeding power into the main thrusters.” She ordered, crossing the deck to different control stations. The bridge had twenty operators and had been decorated with booty from the nine vessels they had already plundered. The caeliners themselves were each a riot of stolen uniforms, stolen high fashion articles and random jewelry.

The forward screens were a wash with static as the optics worked in conjunction with the lidar to probe space ahead of of the

“She doesn’t see us.” Yanda echoed the data’s conclusion. “She’s only got two shallops piggy-backing her trajectory to the next leyline.” She pulled up her sleeve, revealing the shackle codes inked into her skin just three months ago, and fed it under a reader. “Weapons hot.” She ordered.

The hammer shaped trampliner accelerated forward, passing through the rings of the nearby gas giant that had shrouded its signature. Along the central spine, sections of the hull bristled with explosive bolts, revealing armored hatches that swung open, revealing the ordinance filled launch cells beneath.

There was nothing the freightliner could do, nor the shallops surrounding it, but assurance claims would be referenced if they just rolled over. The Half-Full had a single heavy calibre cannon which slowly swung to bear on the Bird of Prey as it burned toward the starboard side.

At the same time the freightliner launched starflares that all but screamed emergency signals across every comm channel. It wouldn’t matter, they were between leyline points, at least two standard days from help.

As Bird of Prey neared, the cannon fired, sending reverberations through the three kilometer long vessel. The shells were timed, exploding into millions of shards designed to perforate an enemy’s hull, but the pirates had upgraded their vessel. Overcharged thruster pods fired, violently juking them away from the freightliner’s defensive fire.

“Prime warheads,” Yanda howled as the gravity doubled, slamming everyone against their restraints.

“Aye, Captain!”

The warhead activation was picked up by the Half-Full’s scanners and the firing instantly stopped. One of the shallops decided to quit and run. The smaller, interplanetary craft, was far more nimble than the larger freightliner and their captain must have figured the odds.

“Pay the butcher.” Yanda intoned.

Her weapons officer nodded, his cropped multi-colored mohawk like a predator’s fin, “Paid in red!”

A single missile fired in an explosion hypergolic propellant. The ten meter long ordinance had directional thrusters all over and an advanced logicor that quickly aligned the trajectory, accelerating up to thirty g’s, over a hundred kilometers a second, right after the shallop.

Two evac craft ejected from the hull moments before the missile hit. The kinetic warhead peeled back and injected a rod of time-hardened gravium burrowed into and out of the shallop’s six decks in less than a second. The hull violently decompressed reducing every biological thing into liquefied sludge that flash froze in the void. The shallop corkscrewed away, a cloud of debris chasing it. If she wanted, Yanda could intercept the smaller craft, a worthy prize that still had mostly working parts.

But the freightliner was the prize.

It stretched into the black for four kilometers, a sleek white and red painted hull emblazoned with the sigil of Bersarang. It carried a mithqal worth of food products, enough to feed a population of a billion people for a fiscal cycle. What that could be worth was a life’s fortune or enough to purchase a dawndrive.

Exactly two seconds later the incoming receiver buzzed and Teod accepted the call. The worried voice of an older woman, quavering in fear and shock, spoke, “Unknown ship, this is the Half-Full under contract with Berarang Multi-Stellar, we are standing down and are ready to purchase safe passage from you—”

“Half-Full, this is the Captain of the Bird of Prey, time you powered down and prepared to be boarded!” Yanda chirped through the comms. She looked to the rest of her crew, “Arm up, we’re going to take this one!”

∆

The hatches opened without needing to be forced. The Bird of Prey had come alongside and fired tether cables before pulling close and marrying three airlocks alongside their mutual flanks. Yanda’s pirates swarmed aboard, quickly passing through the short passageway to the main freight corridor of the Half-Full that ran down the spine of the freightliner.

There, the hundred or so caeliners had gathered, as was the custom during a surrender. As the pirates caught sight they began to whoop! and cheer, waving guns and vicious looking melee weapons, many of them homemade. Most of them had daubed their helmets in warpaint and had festooned their caraplate armor with welded spikes.

Fear could save you a lot of trouble, especially against Consumers working the trades.

The first few Bersarang caeliners were brutalized as the pirates unleashed their pent up frustration. Confined within the Bird of Prey with diminishing rations, water limits and squeezing through decks with powered down gravity wells to conserve power was enough to drive anyone insane. Stretching their legs meant unleashing kicks and punches into the faces of men and women who were holding their hands up, pleading for their lives.

One burly looking caeliner with markings that described him as a porter stopped a club strike to his face and gut punched the pirate in front of him. Teod, behind the now floored pirate, shot at point blank range with his scattergun and decapitated the porter in a spray of gore that splattered across a dozen of the freightliners who started screaming uncontrollably.

“Please! Enough! We’ve done what you asked!” One woman, portly, her coveralls bore the sigil of Captain.

Yanda made a beeline for her, pulling her blastax from its harness and pointing at her counterpart, “Where’s the pay box, Corpo?” Yanda didn’t slow and swung the flat of her weapon into the woman’s face, breaking her cheekbone, knocking her to the ground where she stayed.

“Are you having trouble taking us seriously?” Yanda giggled. It helped that she had done a dose of Blur, a cheap narco that cranked up your response time. “Where is the pay box!”

“Its installed in the secondary bridge,” one of the caeliners spoke up, earning Yanda’s ax aimed right at him. “Please, don’t! I can take you there!”

“Who are you?”

“Chief Mate—”

“You know what this does to a body, aye?” She gestured with the ax, letting the overhead light panels illuminate the six grooves in the curved blade, “there’s a round of ratshot loaded here that will blast you right in half.”

The man nodded, already sweating, “Chief Mate and Captain both have the access codes, I can get you in.”

Teod, now holding the scattergun one handed, shook his head, “We shouldn’t split up.”

“I can handle it.”

∆

The secondary bridge was barely the size of an opti-unit, rudimentary helmsman’s station and standing room for four other terminals. Yanda had her burner pistol out, a short range plasmic projector that incinerated targets rather than risk a puncture to vital ship systems. She used it to shove the caeliner in, glancing backwards in case anyone tried to sneak up on her.

“Get it.”

“Just don’t kill me!” He stumbled in and started fiddling with a panel of switches. He started a sequence, clearly some kind of code, and a moment later the panel swung open revealing a safe with a small hand dial. He began working it, the pneumatic lock clicking as he spun it.

“Be quick about it.”

“Yes… yes,” he made an error, cursed, and started over. “I’m sorry, just, can you not point that at me.”

She let her expression soften, “Poor Corpo, can’t focus when the work actually matters?” She shoved the burner’s nozzle into the back of his head. He started crying, making another error and had to start again, his hands shaking. “One more chance and I drag your Captain up here and leave you ash on the deck.”

He started praying and his hands steadied. She listened and realized she actually knew the verse the man was reciting.

“You’re Katikak?”

The man nodded, clearing the second sequence, “I am, you?”

“I was,” a pang of guilt rose up from her stomach acid, “I stopped renewing…” She’d been devout as a child, like her father who had raised her after he mother had joined the Armada. He’d taken her to services, dedicated a part of her inheritance to Patriarch Gu-Ib which had lead to her sponsorship through Armada training allowing her to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

She felt it, the words, locked behind the memetic weave within her brain. All she had to do was intone a renewal and let the confidence and belonging flow back into her.

Yanda bit the inside of her cheek until it bled. She wouldn’t give her Self up like that, never again. Never let the Armada or the Corpos or Katikak back into her mind that compelled her against her own interests. She was free.

A bolt released and the Chief Mate stepped back, hands up.

Yanda looked inside the pay box and saw ten gold colored planks of reinforced plastek. The value of each would be programmed and verified by The Market itself, good anywhere in Known Space. She took out a small, finger length wand from her belt, and scanned them confirming their massive worth of credit.

“Is each freightliner carrying this much or is it just Bersarang?” She asked, her mouth dry and her heart doubling its beat.

“We fed two planets and took the harvest of another, all of it needs to be backed by Lalande. They don’t like middlemen or banking guilds. Everything in there is our percentage and the exchange from each transaction.”

“Seems stupid to keep a fisk’s worth of credit all in one place, you’d think they’d come up with a way of commerce a little safer, aye?” She reached for the planks when—

Something hit the Half-Full at top speed.

Yanda stumbled, slamming her forehead on the pay box’s edge. She was lucky to be wearing a helmet but her ears were sent ringing. She was shoved as the Chief Mate suddenly barreled into her, knocking her to the ground and sending the planks across the deck.

She aimed her burner at him, thinking he’d try and kicker at her but he was already out the hatch of the secondary bridge and running.

“Founder’s balls!” Her comm screamed into her ear.

“Captain! Something’s just hit us!” It was Teod, the yelling of the freightliner’s crew and her own people distorting his report.

“You think! What in the hells was it?” She didn’t wait, Teod wouldn’t know anyway, and twistd the nob on her helmet to switch back the channel to her ship.

“Bird of Prey, this is the Captain, what’s going on?”

Static, then, screaming broken up only by the thundering boom of heavy calibre rounds.

She grabbed a handful of the planks and ran, boots echoing across the deck. She aimed, thought better of the range, and turned back toward the freight corridor.

It was easy to find her way back to Teod, less than two staircases, her burner out and filling the small satchel on her belt with the planks. The Blur was helping her limbs obeying her but there was a growing unease that not even the narcos could keep down.

What had run into them?

“What’s going on, Teod?”

The caeliners were on the deck, facedown, twenty pirates holding guns and knives on them but they were spooked, narco sharpened senses on overload. She scanned the massive corridor in either direction. The lights were off save for this section, like an island in the dark.

“Can you hear it?” One of her people hissed.

She listened and there it was, some kind of deep, multi-note hum… Getting closer.

“The evac craft, they came back, hit the Bird of Prey then us. Its a boarding party, some kind of security maybe?” Teod whispered.

“We have to run!” One of the caeliners sobbed. “You don’t understand, we aren’t alone!”

Another looked up at Yanda, “You shouldn’t have boarded us! We could have just transmitted a ransom! We have the assurance for piracy!” She kicked him, sending a tooth skipping across the deck.

Yanda looked up suddenly and saw it, a four meter wide square above her in the ceiling becoming brighter. Not hot like it was melting, no, she recognized the technology as a transphasic vaporizer. Somewhere in the back of her mind facts bubbled up reminding her that the emitters were Grade 1, used some kind of wave that pushed matter apart until they simply stopped being what they were, reduced to their fundamental atoms.

Teod turned to Yanda, scattergun still in one muscled hand, “Captain, something’s coming—”

Then the square of ceiling just stopped existing.

Two shapes dropped, hitting the deck with such force that Yanda and the pirates standing almost lost their footing.

Then the shooting started.

Teod was hit with forty-seven bullets within two horrific seconds. The first few rounds shattered his caraplate completely, the rest pulverized his flesh, reducing him to pieces still held together by his vac suit’s rubber and fabric.

Before his body could fall, twin streams of fire moved outward, never breaking or stopping, sweeping left and right and cutting the pirates in half.

But you didn’t get to be a pirate in the Hegemon of a Thousand Empires by not having a fair bit of chance, luck and survival instincts.

The pirates on the outer perimeter rolled and dived for cover, weapons coming up, they started returning fire with scatter shot, softpoint and frangible rounds. Sparks and richochetes blossomed across the forms of their attackers.

Yanda threw herself to the ground, burner aimed forward, and fired.

Bands of green light formed a corona of conflicting electromagnetic fields, briefly swirling around the nozzle of her pistol as it formed a charge and spat a heartbeat’s worth of energy in a column of angry red light.

The bolt hit the figure on the right, melting paint and igniting the folded nusteel in a gout of superheated gas. To Yanda’s complete horror, she saw what it was.

“Barakan…” The word drove through her psyche, the Blur and into the deepest recesses of her Self. She’d seen them before in their hulking assault-harnesses.

The one she’d hit looked directly at her, red lensed eyes dialing and focusing on her.

“Oh… god.”

The pirates didn’t know what they were looking at. Maybe they thought it was just security forces in large autoplate. There were plenty of groups like that all over Known Space, but Yanda knew Tetsudyne Grade 1 armor anywhere. They were the bogeymen of civilization, the final weapon more frightening than an atomika bomb.

They fought back, falling into small groups to try and flank the two Barakan. The freightliner caeliners ran, a few of them caught in the crossfire, littering the deck with bodies. The flanking assault would have worked, should have worked, autoplate had weaknesses on the sides where armor joints needed to break for joints.

The bullets that got through were, simply, ignored.

The Barakan both ran out of ammunition at the same time. When they did, they launched themselves forward on bursts of white fire. It was then that the pirates realized what they were fighting.

They died too quickly.

Arm swings as methodical as machines killed the pirates with each movement. Cuts with wrist blades, bodies crushed under the Barakan heavy rifles used as clubs, kicks that sent bodies flying apart through the air.

They were dead, all of them, as the Barakan marched forward, reloading their twin barreled weapons with quick mechanical movements.

The Barakan she had shot was looking at her now, its red eyes more than eyes, they were nightmares, holes that felt like they were sucking her in. They promised a thousand ways to die.

There was only one thing to do against such carnage.

Yanda put the burner to her chin, barely feeling as the ring of superheated metal burned her chinstrap and into her skin.

“God, forgive me…” And she pulled—

“Stop.” The Barakan she had shot spoke, its voice cutting across the deck.

And for some reason, she did, the metal fizzling at her flesh burned.

It stood over her, a mountain in white and red. The other was finishing off the dying with single rounds to the chest or just stepping on them causing bodies to burst like overripe fruit.

“Drop. It.” The Barakan ordered, and she did, the burner clattering to the ground. Only then did the Barakan remove its helmet revealing a skin stretched skull crisscrossed with scars and a massive bionetic jaw that jutted out in a strange underbite. It sniffed the air then looked down at her with datattooed blackened eyes.

“I waited.” It said, its voice slow. Yanda saw its mouth did not move, the voice emitted from the vocal chords through a small ring at its throat. “Kotar kill all on your ship.”

“I—I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” It breathed, eyes closing. “Sorry.”

“L-let me die.” Yanda begged. “We were wrong.”

“Yessss.” Its eyes opened and Yanda realized it was grinning as it lowered itself down and down to her.

“Oh— god! God!” She was trying to remember the words, to release her faith back into her. The creature stopped, head tilting as if curious.

“God?” It spoke the words with its lipless mouth and through jutting bionetic.

Then it looked up, into the ceiling, looked around at the dozens of dead and the rivers of blood collecting along the deck plates. It looked back down at her.

“No god.” Its mouth opened and Yanda knew no more.