The Company WarsTHE COMPANY WARS
C. J. Cherryh
THE ORIGIN OF STAIONERS AND MERCHANTERS
In the early twenty-first century, starprobes went out, launched by Sol Station, 
which diring the interval of the starprobes' travel, became a great economic 
power in Earth's politics. 
Sol Station, a self contained orbiting "multifactory," pulled in metals, 
minerals, and ice from the asteroids, abandoning the practice of lofting 
anything up from Earth's gravity well. Since the majority of industrial cost on 
Earth was either in fighting gravity (lifing and transporting heavy objects) or 
heating things up and cooling them down (smelting and refrigeration), once a 
spacestation achieved the machinery to separate and smelt metals by solar power 
(thus becoming a "multifactory," a combination of industries all locked together 
in the production of goods for export to Earth (medicines, electrical power, 
scientific data, and processes) and for its own consumption (machinery, 
construction materials, oxygen from ice, and foodstuffs (from orbiting fishtanks 
and farms operating at industrial pace thanks to total environment control 
possible in such facilities.) 
The result was a station capable of replicating itself endlessly at little 
expense; and a balance of trade which made investment and experimentation 
possible. 
Hence, the robot starprobes which reported several stars much like the Sun, 
lacking habitable planets but potentially rich in metals and ice. 
The theory of cryogenic suspension in sublight starflight was rejected. After 
all, Sol Station and the one traveling scientific station which had already been 
in orbit about Venus and Mars and now ventured the turbulent gravity well of 
Jupiter, proved that there was little difference between a working solar station 
and a ship. 
So the first startship was modular, and while it would take years under light 
speed to reach the chosen star, there was no reason for the people aboard not to 
carry on life much as it was carried on in huge Sol Station. When it reached its 
destination, its payload, containing manufacturing units, would go into orbit in 
some rich and stable area of the designated starsystem, while the engine module 
would break free after assisting in this process and return to Sol Station. 
It proved hardly more expensive in effort to make the mission multistage, that 
is, to colonize several starsystems in the same vector by using several engines 
and compartments and shedding each into deceleration at the time appropriate for 
each star. So if one part of the mission failed, another might succeed, and if 
anything went wrong with one engine, they had the capacity to continue on the 
others, or to return should it become necessary. 
As it happened, all three stages worked without a hitch, and Earth had three 
functioning starstations. They had no ambition at all to land on a planet. 
Planets were too expensive at this stage, too wasteful of energy in getting up 
and down; mankind had decided that starstations (of which Sol Station was one) 
were more productive for small populations than planets were. 
The voyaging starships never lost touch with Sol Station, and continually 
transmitted the data the scientists and tehcnicians in the colony mission were 
developing enroute. Life aboard went on in a mundane fashion, under the one 
gravity produced by acceleration; and when decelerated and parked in orbit, each 
starstation began a continual dataflow to Sol Station, and to each other, and to 
ships in passage. The result of this close community of scientists at work in 
new environments, as well as the research and development necessary for the 
guidance systems and engines for the mission, was a technological acceleration 
for Earth, a period of great prosperity and wild speculation as new discoveries 
multiplied. 
The engine modules had a small crew compartment: they were designed to move 
greater mass than their own -- to push, in other words. Their crews had the 
harder life, since they were few in number and had to give up their associations 
with the colonists, who would live normal Stationer-style lives, hardly 
different than they would have lived on Sol Station. The engine-modules might 
have been robotized, but it was felt, first of all, that the chance of failure 
would be less with crewed modules, in such long voyages; and secondly that the 
occasional contact of human beings who had seen Earth would serve to keep the 
colonies from becoming too different in their isolation; the chance for 
instance, that a colony would grow completely alienated from Earth and shut off 
its contacts had occurred to Sol Station. So the primary reason for crewed ships 
was a psychological one. 
The small crews must pass years together, and must have as normal a life as 
possible. Families happened, in spite of mild official discouragement, and when 
the first ship returned to Earth, they were offered a chance to stay. They 
refused, having spent too long at this to give up what to them had become a way 
of life. Crews grew larger (as did crew quarters) as second-generation crew took 
husbands and wives. Children ran and played throughout the ships, did small 
maintenance, and grew into crew work with the passing years, children whose 
lives were measured in calls at this and that starstation. 
This was the origin of the merchanters and the stationers, whose lives became 
vastly different one from the other, but who were linked together in mutual 
necessity. 
The arrivial of any ship in those early days was occasion for holiday. 
Trade began, conducted without substance (of data by commmunications net) and 
with (of goods and parts carried by the ships). 
What did the merchanters get out of the exchange? The improvement and care of 
their ships, which were their homes. Their food. Their whole lifestyle. And the 
freedom which began to be their whole way of life. A merchanter "family" was 
tightknit, even developing an accent unique to a particular ship: everyone 
aboard seemed to be a cousin or aunt or uncle. 
Stationers got the same sort of thing -- but their populations were larger. They 
liked their security, the benefits their trade brought in. 
Starstations expanded, built new modules and boosted them by ship to stars as 
near to them as Barnard's Star and Alpha Centauri are to Sol; and Sol had to get 
news of some of these stations secondhand, because of their distances. 
There were nine such starstations -- ten, counting Sol. 
They were: Alpha Base and Beta Base, Bryant's Star, Glory, Venture, Galileo, 
Olympus, Thule, and Eldorado. 
The next starstation was sent to Pell's Star. And that star had a planet which 
had life, which had a sapient species, which had agriculture and the kind of 
luxuries which Earth had been supplying. 



PELL'S STAR AND DOWNBELOW
Scientists flocked to Pell. Everyone wanted to be in on the find. Meanwhile, 
word of the discovery traveled at lightspeed back to Earth. 
By the number of years it took that lightspeed message to get to Earth and for 
Earth to debate the matter and send another message the same number of 
lightyears distance back, trying to adjust the trade patterns to accommodate the 
new discovery, it was too late. Some starstations had shut down and emigrated 
because goods were reaching their trading partners from Pell, not Earth, and 
they were suddenly in a backwater area, out of the future line along which goods 
would flow. 
Pell not only succeeded as a starstation, it was being overloaded by immigrants 
and sent out new colonies to Viking and Mariner; and Mariner, having discovered 
by telescope a planeted star near it, colonized Cyteen, which had another 
agricultural world. 
THE BREAK WITH EARTH
Earth just did not cope with these changes fast enough. The value of its goods 
plummetted. It suffered an economic crisis and there began to be an outcry that 
the starstations and the merchanters ought to be taxed to support Earth, who 
after all, started the space program. 
Now in one way the original decision to have manned ships paid off; some 
merchanters had maintained enough contact with Earth to be somewhat loyal to the 
Earth Company, but few stations were loyal enough to want to pay a tax. Earth 
was able to enforce the tax, at least, at first. 
There was some shooting. Merchanters who would serve Earth were armed. 
A great many people who did not like this trend left the nine starstations which 
began to be called the Hinder Stars. 
They went to Pell or further. 
But then... then a scientist at Cyteen discovered a principle that made possible 
Faster Than Light travel: an FTL ship. 
During the passage of a lightspeed message to Earth that such a discovery might 
be possible, an FTL ship was launched from Cyteen and had time to tour almost 
every starstation in far space. 
THE COMPANY WARS
Had it not been for the tax, Earth could have been in the center of things 
again. But Cyteen was hostile to Earth. 
And Cyteen had two things: a discovery in the biology of the planet Cyteen had 
given them rejuv, a drug that could hold off old age for up to fifty years. 
Earth wanted it. Badly. Cyteen also had FTL. And that, Earth got, thanks to 
Pell, which got the secret and spread it. 
The shooting then became serious. Some merchanters went to Cyteen and Cyteen 
declared its independence of the Earth Company. 
Earth built fifty superFTL carriers to batter Cyteen to its knees. It named the 
ships after the nations of Earth. 
But Cyteen, older than Earth in the matter of building FTL ships, matched their 
fleet. 
The one thing Earth had was a majority of merchanters on Earth's side, and this 
included some very good starpilots who wrote new chapters in FTL operation, and 
who outflew and outfought Cyteen equipment, which was generally a few years more 
advanced than Earth's. 
In FTL technology Cyteen had a slight edge, mostly because of a handful of 
physicists who were still at work on improvements. 
In actual operating skill, the loyalists had the edge, and their ships were good 
enough, if not the latest. 



MERCHANTER OPERATIONS DURING THE WAR
Merchanters had once been the warships: a few of the old sublights had been 
converted to FTL; many of the modern merchanters were launched by Pell, Earth, 
or Cyteen as new ships, crewed by spinoffs of older merchanter families. But the 
lifestyle changed radically because of FTL. 
The voyages of years now ammounted to weeks spent in space. 
While merchanters still looked for mates outside their ships, the difference in 
lifestyle of merchanters and stationers had gotten so extreme that 
merchanter/stationer marriages were unlikely. Merchanters associated with 
merchanters, and were confined to the docks at the ninth level of the rim of 
each wheel-like station. Along one side would be the tending machinery and 
access ramps of ships in dock; along the other side (in the Green and White 
sides of the wheel) were bars, restaurants, and hotels (called sleepovers) for 
spaces. On the dockside of Blue Section (which is always administrative) are the 
customs office, the spacer banks, security headquarters, and in short, all the 
nerve centers of the docks. Only military ships of ships with special clearance 
get to dock in a station's blue dock, and only stationers with special clearance 
get to live in the eight levels above, many of which have sensitive offices. 
Station Central is the uppermost of the blue levels. 
White contains many shops that serve spacers; the levels above have shops that 
serve stationers, and residences of shopkeepers and medical folk. The uppermost 
level of white had the security detention area and police headquarters; the 
level just below has the medical facilities, the hospitals, and so on. 
Green section on the stationer levels contains general residences, restaurants, 
and shops for stationers. 
Red section on the docks is for insystem haulers coming in with ores and other 
industrial goods: it contains much of the manufacturing. This also tends to 
socially separate insystem spacers from FTL spacers, who do mix without 
fighting, but without great enthusiasm either: FTL merchanters are clannish and 
occasionally dangerous, tending to enforce their own law, particularly on Green 
dock, which is their territory. 
There is little residence (but some) in red sector. Its docks have shops and 
manufacturers' offices and some station offices which apply exclusively to the 
insystem ships. 
Orange section dock is either for FTL or insystemers, depending on need. It has 
shops, banks, and some restaurants; above are residences. 
The hub has three functions: docking for null-G haulers like oreships which 
unload their cargoes without gravity, and which will stand off from station 
during crew liberties. Ore haulers are too big to dock at regular facilities. 
The hub also has those functions of station lifesupport and power which do not 
need gravity. And it has a gymnasium and recreational area for null gravity and 
low gravity sports. 
Merchanter ships come in several classes. 
There are general FTL haulers. Crew lives forward in a wheel-like cylinder that 
rotates to supply gravity because these ships do not often use regular engines 
and the force of acceleration is a nuisance, not a help to them. The cargo 
compartment is behind, in front of the engines. The cargo space may be of 
several kinds. 
First it may be unheated, in which case contents will freeze in the cold of 
space. Some goods profit by this. 
Such holds are not pressurized either. 
Or the hold may be heated to various degrees. This is expensive, usually 
involving lifesupport sufficient to admit a worker without a spacesuit, but in 
most that do claim heated holds, the temperature is just above freezing. Few 
goods need balmy temperatures. Very few haulers can handle that kind of thing in 
bulk. 
Or a ship may take cannisters, some of which have internal regulating systems 
for heat or air. 
Many ships have one heated hold up front and the rest unheated. 
Also most goods do not require gravity. Most holds are zero-G. 
A very few ships can provide heated holds with gravity, which they get by having 
one or more holds included in the crew cylinder. This is very expensive 
transport. Often passengers ride in spare crew cabins (there is not much 
interstellar passenger traffic at this stage). In rare emergencies, heated one-G 
holds can be used for passengers. 
Ships can come in all sorts of combinations. 
There are also can-haulers which are nothing but a crew compartment in front and 
engine at the rear connected by a long bare backbone with clamps that bind up to 
ten or twelve huge cannisters in place. Canhaulers unload to small pusherships 
which then shove the cannisters into the null-G dock of station hubs. 



In the normal operation of a merchanter ship, it takes cargo, leaves dock, and 
spends hours (or in some systems and depending on the power and load -- days) 
getting to the nadir of the stellar pole far enough out that the jump will not 
land them in the heart of the star or try to take a planet along. During this 
time the crew lives normally, annoyed only by the first acceleration that got 
them going. Normal space engines shut down then and they coast. 
When they get to the nadir jump range they get a navigational fix on a star, do 
the elaborate calculations to determine exact location, and turn on the 
generation vanes, the large panels suspended on vanes about the ship like 
old-fashioned rocket fins -- but these provide the field which takes them into 
jumpspace, the Between. 
Subjectively, a few minutes pass. Objectively, a week or month of Universal time 
has passed. This again varies according to power and mass of the ship and load, 
and yes, a more powerful (or less loaded) ship can overjump a weaker one and 
arrive first. 
The ship has now been dragged out of hyperspace by the nearest gravity well in 
the vector it had chosen. Usually these are jump-points, brown dwarf stars of 
Jupiter-like objects which exist between the greater stars -- too cool to give 
off much light or radiation, but massive enough to make a considerable pockmock 
in hyperspace. 
The ship is now traveling about 3/4 to 1/2 lightspeed or about 139,000 miles per 
second. At this rate, planets and large rocks are dangerous to it. If something 
went wrong at this speed in our solar system, a ship near Earth might have 
fourteen minutes to solve its problem before hitting the Sun -- and, of course, 
it takes enormous energy to turn even a hair, let alone bend a sharp turn to 
evade something. 
If you use conventional radar, it sends out a pulse and you literally run into 
its bounced-back return; if you are tracking a high-speed ship moving in a 
different vector than your own, your pulse may not catch up to it and come back 
fast enough to do you any good. Remember the fourteen minutes above; and heaven 
help you if the ship in question is coming your way! More about communications 
and radar of FTL ships later. For now, suffice it to say it is a good idea to 
come in only at zenith of the jumppoint and to leave the point only at nadir. 
This regulates traffic and reduces your chance of running into someone to those 
of your house getting hit by a meteorite on Earth. Rare, but known to happen. 
Starships, after all, are not as frequent as automobiles. 
If your instruments are off, of course, you could impact the jump point. 
And any ship moving at in-system speeds looks like it's standing still. They can 
only hope you'll slow down before you get into the jump point central area. 
How to shed this enormous velocity? Pulse the jump engines, which partially 
reforms the field and blows off some of your velocity like an invisible drag 
chute extended into the interface of realspace and hyperspace. You slow down to 
a crawl. 
Now you pass tamely through the realspace near the Mass, the almost star-like 
object that makes the gravity well. There may be other ships already here. You 
can talk to them by com and even, if you wish, stop completely, link airlocks, 
and exchange goods outside station customs. A lot do. This passage through the 
jump point can take a leisurely week, if you're having fun. If you're in a hurry 
you can probably get on through (and be cursed by near traffic) in a day. 
There is, however, a penalty for this, subspace is a harrowing experience and 
makes one feel awful. Moving through space too rapidly give you no time for your 
stomach to recover and you will progressively become sicker and worse at 
navigation. Take your time. It's healthier. 
Also, if you string jumps (pass through several jump points without slowing 
down) your velocity could begin to get out of control. If you should fail once 
to dump speed before jumping out again, you would probably jump past any local 
gravity wells and get sucked into the nearest most massive star's well, exiting 
at a speed beyond lightspeed, which violates Einstein's principle and pockets 
you in a traveling discontinuity -- in other words you become a black hole and 
come to a spectacular end as you and the star attract each other. Since you are 
a very small black hole, it will swallow you without ill effect -- except to 
you. 
So you make your exits from stars and jumppoints tamely, at a sedate speed, with 
due care. 
Now, during the War years, you may see a military ship occupying the jump point. 
It is good to identify yourself rapidly and courteously beyond the 
computer-squeal of identity your ship constantly gives off, and to heave to if 
ordered to do so. You cannot match a military ship in maneuvers or jump 
capacity. It can go further, faster. Only if you are still 3/4 light do you have 
a chance of running from it before it can get up to speed or before its particle 
weapons and shells can reach you. But its beams go lightspeed: you are 3/4 
light. You have maybe fifteen minutes lagtime before it knows what you are (your 
noise getting to its receptors at lightspeed). And fifteen minutes lagtime for 
its beams to reach where it predicts you will be fifteen minutes later (or less 
if you're going toward it) -- if it fired at once. 
That is not a lot of maneuvering room, considering your degree of possible 
turning is less than a warship's, and it diminishes incrementally at 3/4 light. 
You have to dump most of your speed, lock on a star, and be in a favourable 
position to jump. Thirty minutes is not really very long to do all this. If you 
can do it you are probably a merchanter running with empty holds and up to no 
good. 
They do have to guess how much mass you're carrying to know where you're likely 
to be (if you should turn). How much cargo you carry plays a part in this. 
You could try dumping cargo. 
Usually, however, the worst the military will do (if they're Union) is look you 
over and check your papers and question you. If they're Mazian's Fleet -- well, 
in the last years of the War, the Earth Company Fleet began to need troops and 
crew for its ship. It might impress your young men and women as troops or crew; 
might take your supplies, raid your cargo. Africa and Australia have been known 
to kill for fun. India, North Pole, Atlantic, and Pacific will mostly take 
supplies. The rest of the fleet are likely to take both people and cargo items. 
If you meet other merchanters at a jump point -- still be careful. Ships have 
been taken by Union to use as spies. 
Merchanters know one another by name. All on a given ship have one last name. If 
you say Finity's End, for instance, everyone knows this means the Neihards. So 
it is an age in which a man or woman's word and name for dependability are life 
itself. But Union knows these names too. And has access to ships that come and 
dock at Union ports. 
This war has no borders -- except for the fleets that maintain them. It is 
fought in three dimensions and the front skips and moves according to where the 
carriers are. Merchanters more freely through the war, dock here and there, get 
questioned by both sides, and try as much as possible to ignore the fighting 
which has been going on for half a century. They act as if the war doesn't 
exist. 
So you may be bound out of that jump point for either a Company star or a Union 
base. It doesn't matter. Usually. After, no one attacks stations or planets. 
Yet. 
When you arrive at a star, you come in at the stellar zenith pole as agreed by 
navigational law, slow down at once, Your arrival has been reported by a jump 
range buoy which is a robot station which has three functions: first, it gives 
you a current updated computer image of the estimated positions of every object 
in the solar system, cutting down on the lagtime problems. Second, it adds you 
to the image which it now beams back to station. Third, it assigns you a lane to 
follow, again cutting down lagtime. You do as instructed and come in safely at 
reduced speed. 
Station will know you have arrived an hour or so later when the message gets 
there (FTL ships are faster than messages). Station Central will greet you and 
you will talk to them as you approach. The lagtime shortens from an hour to half 
and hour to five minutes to no appreciable lag as you get to the station and 
begin docking. You match the station speed and rotation pattern, shutting down 
your own rotation, and locking your cylinder into docking position, then shove 
your nose into the docking cone, fasten clamps and wait for the crews to attack 
lines and hoses which provide you power, flush your tanks, take your refuse 
(biostuffs are precious) and give you shielded-line communications with the 
station. 
You go out, go through customs check, and report to station offices for 
debriefing. 



UNION MILITARY
Union is based at Cyteen, and that star system is defended not only by warships 
but by astrography -- i.e. there is a nasty region of space on one side which is 
a gravity well consisting not only of several jump points swinging each other 
about in a difficult ballet, but with enough debris about them to make dropping 
out of hyperspace here a very fatal matter. 
Since FTL's tend to go to the nearest jump point unless they have gone way, way 
deep into hyperspace, any ship coming in on this side of Cyteen will come to 
this graveyard, like it or not. No ship has yet been built that can jump over 
it. 
There are also starsystems further out, which are at an early stage of 
colonisation. These all belong to Union, which is economically powerful and able 
to build ships at a great rate, while the Earth Company cannot. 
And Union uses cloning techniques to produce population at a great rate; while 
it still takes 18 years to produce a soldier, and longer to turn him or her into 
one of the black- uniformed Elite space force, the rate of population growth is 
tremendous, thanks to the birthlabs. 
Union ships are mostly military. Some merchanters are registered to Union ports, 
but these are not counted as Union ships, since they are not owned by the Union 
government. Their designation is US. UnionShip. 
OLD WARSHIPS
The oldest sort of FTL warship is a converted merchanter. Most of these were 
shot up and put out of action by 2350. 
CRUISERS
There are a few of the early FTL cruisers left -- ships with big engines and 
vanes and a big powerplant for the beam weapons, small crewspace and generally 
miserable living conditions. 
CARRIERS
There are carriers: these carry four (usually) insystem fighters; and troops. 
The troops usually number about a thousand per vessel. They have large 
crew/troop cylinders and a great deal of this cylinder space is given over to 
their lifesupport, the medical and operations facilities, the recreational space 
(in space for years at a time, the troops have to have room to move about), 
galley facilities, equipment storage -- which includes stoarage for sidearms, 
ground drop shuttles, hand launchers, defensive and offensive personal 
electronics, field hospital unit, and the thousand odd hard- suits and armour 
used by the troops; training and briefing ares, not to mention sleeping and 
maneuver-protection areas. Beyond this there are the crew quarters, which are 
luxurious by troop standards, private cabins for high officers, separate 
recreational facilities (as spacers and troops do not mix much), operations 
stations sufficient to direct a mission scattered across a solar system; and the 
operations stations specifically in touch with each of the four fighters- craft; 
and the weaponry of the carrier; and the actual operations and flight of the 
carrier. 
On a carrier there is one captain (unlike a merchanter, which may have two to 
four captains and whole crews, each active during a particular watch); each 
carrier however has two crews, one mainday crew, one alterday. (Mainday and 
alterday are 12 hour periods: night is ignored in space, where it is 
meaningless, and time is divided into two duty shifts, because ships do not stop 
running while a crew sleeps.) The next in command is de facto alterday captain. 
For combat, it should be added, all crew is called to stations if there is time. 
Strategic and tactical command passes to the captain, while piloting, armaments, 
communications, and radar operations got to appropriate officers. The captain 
is, to be sure, capable of handling the ship physically in combat, but rarely is 
this the case: a carrier captain is chosen for a combination of many skills and 
rarely is the captain also the most qualified combat pilot. There are in both 
fleets a few exceptions to this, but the skill of any captain in Mazian's small 
fleet surpasses that of almost all Union pilots. 
Troopers, both male and female, like the officers and crew of the carrier, are 
aboard for those moments in which human force is needed: boarding a stopped 
merchanter; landing on a planet, moon, or mining station; holding a facility 
once taken; opposing enemy troops in any facility or terrain too valuable to be 
blasted by the ship's weapons -- for operations in which a scalpel is of more 
use than a sledgehammer. 
To get to these situations where they are of use, the troops have to ride 
through many unplesant battles in which they are no more than freight, and one 
quality of these troops has to be patience and endurance: the physical strain of 
riding through an FTL battle can kill the unprotected. 
When they exit their ships, they go in laser-resistant armor which has (if 
needed) a self contained air and heating system, so that this armor can double 
as a spacesuit for brief periods. A hit in the joints is one way a laser or 
projectile can get through this armor, but it is made to keep those joints 
covered as much as possible. Particle weapons are more trouble, but more the 
kind of think one would face in a bitched battle. Each trooper carries a laser; 
a projectile sidearm on occasion; and a heavy knife, because shooting inside 
pressurized compartments and certain portions of spacestations adjacent to the 
outer walls is not an outstandingly good idea. 
The helmet also has a com, so that each trooper can receive general orders; and 
the visor also has sighting and range devices and other readouts which appear by 
an optics system if one looks up from inside the helmet. 
Union troops are both natural-born and birthlab born; they are all highly 
indoctrinated because the educational system of all Union citizens is fed into 
the mind by subliminal means -- a technology used everywhere, but used by Union 
for political as well as factual education. These troops are both loyal and 
literate, and they are professional, trained to the nth degree in every aspect 
of their weapons and their duty. 



CARRIER COMBAT
The carrier is a vastly powerful ship capable of over- jumping a merchanter, 
capable of very fine maneuvers. It is not the size of a ship that determines its 
speed and agility: it is its mass to power ration, its mass relative to the size 
of its vanes and engines. Carriers are vastly over-powered and come into a 
system at up to 7/8 lightspeed. 
A carrier may not wish to dump speed: it may ship through a starsystem at this 
incredible velocity in which the distance between planets can be covered in 
minutes, and it can fire and be gone so rapidly the victim may have no warning. 
It may shed its riders, which will travel at that speed, although they are not 
capable of FTL: they are small ships with a crew of about fifteen, each one 
equipped and instrumented to handle the enormous velocities of a carrier, up to 
the lightbarrier. They are very sophisticated in electronics and armaments and 
any one of them is every bit as much to be dreaded in attack as the carrier 
itself: they are fast and their firepower, while less than a carrier's, is 
sufficient to destroy a carrier's maneuvering capacity, or to wipe out a 
starstation or reduce a planet to the stone age. Riders spread out from a 
carrier, and often operate at different speeds so that their capacity to turn is 
different. This confuses the enemy's longscan, (more about this later). When the 
carrier is ready to leave the system, it summons its riders which limpet 
themselves to the hull. 
A carrier has very powerful weapons mounted on the huge frame shell, which also 
supports the vanes and engines. The personnel cylinder rotates inside this 
frame, and the RPM of the internal cylinder is variable in a warship. When the 
ship goes into maneuvers of high-G stress, the RPM increases, which presses 
humans deeper into their seats and helps them endure the stress of the small 
changes of course these ships can make at high speed. Additionally the working 
stations, for crew who have to remain sitting upright and working through these 
terrible stresses, are themselves on hydraulic tracks which help absorb the 
stresses by slowly yielding to the move and returning to position. The fitness 
of these adjustments is critical, since the ship that can turn tighter than its 
enemy even by a fraction of a degree (remember that we are crossing whole solar 
systems in which that little change at the start of the course means miles and 
miles difference at the end) may confuse the enemy's longscan estimates and help 
the ship evade a strike. 
That frame can also do something no human body can stand: it can whip 360 
degrees or any portion thereof at blinding speed to bring those guns to bear on 
anything th computers tell them to, and since it is not part of the personnel 
cylinder, the occupants get no stress from the move. 
Two ships passing each other at 7/8 lightspeed do not see each other coming fast 
enough for human operators to react: ID is made by the two ship's computers 
spitting out their continual squeal of identification, recognizing friend or 
foe, and directing fire all before a human mind could even realize the enemy was 
there, let alone send a hand to the control board. 
Two ships differing vastly in speed: the advantage is always to the ship at 
greater velocity. Therefore, a major objective is to cause your enemy to dump 
speed and get the battle to a slower speed if you are defending the system. A 
ship has to dump if it has run out of solar system (or it can jump out 
altogether and reorganize itself and then come back in a week or so from a 
neighboring jump point -- if you have been attacked, it is a good idea to send 
ships out to all the neighboring jump points to prevent this move ... the enemy 
will also try to set up an ambush when you do, and so on). A ship also has to 
slow to the speed of its riders it wishes to retrieve -- and no carrier wants to 
leave its riders behind if it can help. Outside of losing fifteen highly trained 
crewmen per ship, riders are expensive, and if the situation is bad enough that 
the carriers are running, the riders are likely to be overwhelmed too. 
Union, however, has lost quite a few riders, while Mazian's fleet, much more 
reluctant to leave riders, has kept most of its own, as witness the fact that 
most Company Fleet ships have their original riders: i.e., those riders that 
were lost were destroyed with their carriers, not left behind. 
In riderships particularly, Union suffers from less skilled personnel than the 
Company Fleet has. 
Union riderships have been cannonfodder until recently, but the situation is 
changing. 
SUPERCARRIERS
Union is developing a few carriers that can handle more than four riderships. 
Mazian has no such ships. 
DARTSHIPS
These are just a little larger than riderships, but they do have star capacity: 
they can go FTL, which means that they travel like carriers and fight like 
riders. They carry very small crews, only four of five, because they have 
sacrificed crewspace and complexity to give up mass to the engines. Living in 
one is miserable. 
They are very greatly dreaded because they are hit and run fighters and you 
never know they are coming. The best you can do is chase them if you can figure 
out what jump they're going to make: a carrier can overjump one and be waiting 
for it, but it is very tricky for a stationary ship waiting at a jumppoint to 
ambush one traveling fast; you have to shoot from the hip on your computer's 
first indication this is the enemy, and you have to fire at where they're going 
to be. 
The Earth Company has no dartships. 



EARTH COMPANY FLEET: MAZIAN'S FLEET
When the Hinder Stars stopped trading with Earth, commerce fell off, 
particularly as the war heated up. Merchanters feared Earth, feared 
conscription, feared the lack of understanding Earth had of their situation, and 
commerce between Earth and Pell was finally severed. 
Having built a fleet of fifty great FTL carriers which hurt Earth economically, 
Earth fell into chaos as a failing economy and the stress of the war and the 
complexity of Terran politics paralyzed its decisionmaking aparatus. This led to 
the rise of the Isolationist party which cut off funds to the Fleet. 
OF IMPRESSMENT
Supply for Mazian's fleet became so bad few of even the highest officers had a 
complete uniform ... let alone badly needed equipment and repair. Ships that 
were damaged had to be scrapped for parts to repair others. Equipment was 
cobbled together by ingenuity. The Fleet kept fighting -- kept holding off the 
Union fleet even when the Union regenerated its losses and they could no longer 
get enough recruits or even food to feed the troops. 
So they turned to impressment and raids on merchant shipping to get what they 
needed. 
Ironically, they still relied, even at this point, on the cooperation of Earth 
Company Merchanter Ships ... for information, voluntary support, contributions 
of supplies, and even personnel. Some of the present Fleet captains came from 
such volunteers. The problem was with the frustration of the Fleet when 
merchants began to refuse this cooperation under the increasing burden of Fleet 
demands, and after seeing to what extent volunteers were adsorbed into the Fleet 
-- forgetting Family, putting Fleet loyalty first. What began as cooperation 
ended up as a bitter relationship. Most merchanters wanted the old days of trade 
back and the Fleet represents that tradition; they do not like Union's way of 
life, which is alien to their values of family and ship. They fear if Union wins 
and starts building merchant ships of its own, they will be run out of business, 
forced under the domination of a government -- and presently they have no 
government at all. The only think that is holding Union at bay is Mazian, whose 
abuses are flagrant and piratical. So they are caught between a rock and a hard 
place and support Mazian even when he raids them. 
THE STATIONS
The staunchest Earth Company Station is Pell. The Company also claims Viking, 
Mariner, Pan-Paris, Russell's Star, and Esperance. All others belong to Cyteen. 
All stations are too fragile for combat. They have all declared their neutrality 
in this war and will dock any ship that asks for docking. 
Even Cyteen would -- if a Company warship wanted to come to dock -- not, you 
will understand, likely. 
DOWNBELOW AND THE DOWNERS
The only Earth Company world besides Earth is Pell's World, called Downbelow, 
named by the gentle natives who share Pell with humans. It has thus far proven 
too expensive to colonize the world; and there are ecological reasons not to do 
so. But Downers, whose own name for themselves is the hisa, supply grain, meat, 
fruit, and all manner of goods to Pell and the loyalist stations. Humans cannot 
live on Downbelow without breathing aids. 



INSYSTEM HAULERS
Also worth mentioning are the insystemers, particularly numerous in mining 
colonies: these are tin cans with engines for the most part, zero-G ships run by 
miners collecting ores out of asteroid belts, or the ore haulers who bring it 
in, or the countless little pusher-ships and skimmers that flit about stations 
sweeping up debris and assisting with construction and movement of cannisters. 
Even an insystem transport which runs supplies back and forth moves at a crawl 
which can take weeks to get from point to point, or months to cross the solar 
system. Some of them are solar-sailers, riding the stellar wind; some are fusion 
ships. Theirs is a hard life and they are hard people, right down to the 
youngsters born on these small ships. 
It is the dream of many insystemers to go to the starships, and they often 
become the volunteer troopers of the fleet, lacking the skills of FTL 
technicians. Many trooper officers were born on insystemers. 
Insystemers are, by the by, another kind of navigation hazard to a starship: but 
they (as the name implies) cannot leave the solar system, and always operate in 
the plane of the planets and asteroids, where few starships come: they are 
reasonably predictable in course too, even if they can turn or even reverse 
direction; it takes so long for them to move that, relative to a starship, they 
might as well be standing still. The system bouy knows pretty well where they 
are. 
MAZIAN'S FLEET
Mazian's Fleet once consisted of fifty carriers; it is now far smaller. They 
have no dartships, no cruisers, nothing but the carriers and riderships and the 
occasional help of a merchanter. 
They are officered by the officers smart enought to have survived against the 
odds, to have gotten supply where supply did not exist, to have eluded the 
ambushes of Union's more advanced ships, and to have raided and harassed Union 
territory (some merchanter harassment comes under this heading) to such an 
extent that is has hurt Union's commerce; further they have come several times 
within a hair's breadth of actually defeating the massed Union Fleet. If they 
could knock the Union Fleet out in one pitched battle, the merchanters would 
instantly fall in line, and the Earth Company would rule human space again. 
Further, Earth is secretly building ships again, and will launch a new fleet if 
it can buy enough time. The Fleet does not know this. At least -- it is not 
likely the Fleet knows. Earth just needs a few more years. Then it will take 
back the Hinder Stars, whose starstation still exist, mothballed and waiting; 
and it will launch out in a new period of FTL trade. 
TACTICS AND STRATEGY OF MAZIAN
Mazian has one edge: skill. His captains can jump together and avoid hitting one 
another, a trick those shiny new Union ships have been known to fail at, and 
Union pilots are scared to do it. Consequently, Mazian operates in two ways -- 
in hit and run tactics, using his carriers like massively powerful dartships at 
Union shipyards and mines and strategic jumppoints which Union would like to 
hold for itself. And he can group them in pairs and larger groups, arriving all 
at once or even from opposite sides of the system simultaneously to make hash of 
Union defenses. 
Union pilots regard Mazian's captains with mingled hate and awe because of their 
uncanny ability to put their ships where they want when they want, especially 
when those ships are old and patched. Union ships just cannot match their 
precision, and Union Pilots lack the nerve and the recklessness of Mazian's lot. 
Mazian's troops are also legendary, for their ruthlessness and their fierceness: 
where Union troops are cool and efficient and follow orders, Mazian's Fleet 
troopers are loyal only to their own commanders and their own ships fight like 
maniacs and have a disturbing tendency to seize the initiative if deprived of 
officers: their chain-of- command runs right to the bottom, and if a trooper 
officer drops, the unit never pauses: it knows who's next in command. 
They have on the average more experience, are older than the average Union 
trooper, and are career soldiers, where many Union draftees hope to live to see 
the end of the war. Company troopers have no such plans ... not even those 
impressed from merchanter ships, who have survived their induction. They will 
loot, but their own officers can control them ... if they want to. 
COMMUNICATIONS
Radar and radio, lasers, any means of communication or longdistance examination 
or communication thinkable -- has to operate under the speed of light. 
FTL ships go faster. So the fastest way to get a message to another star is to 
have a ship carry it. 
This also means that an attack can get there FTL before any broadcast warning. 
It takes eight years for a communication to get to Cyteen from Mariner, except 
by FTL ship, which arrives in a month or so. 
This lag means that tactics have to be planned without the ability to radio 
ahead and tell your friends you're coming. 
Ships have to physically meet and talk: that's quickest. 



LONGSCAN
Ships have two kinds of radar: the ordinary sort which operates sublight; and 
longscan, which is part guess and part radar. 
The way it works is this: 
It takes the original information of the jump range buoy and identifies every 
ship and object in a system, how fast they're going and what direction. It 
calculates a likely track and shows it on a screen as a four coloured line. Red 
is what track the ships will take if they keep on as they bear. Yellow is what 
they will do if they veer as much as convienent: this is a cone-shaped 
projection. Blue is their position if they decided to stop. 
Human operators rapidly intervene and as the computer priorities them the 
fastest-moving ship data, they decide, on the basis of emotional human 
knowledge, what those ships are likely to do when the informational wave they 
have just made entering the system hits them. If a warship, for instance, it may 
turn toward them as fast as it can. An operator is assigned for each ship under 
consideration while the computer handles the slow craft and the other which for 
various reasons do not need constant monitoring. 
In the meantime two things have happened: Their ship has changed course and 
speed either following or not following the buoy lane assignment; and the other 
ships one by one pick up their presence in the system and react accordingly. But 
this radar image changes constantly, so when the action begins to conform to one 
of the projections, the computer changes the colorcodes, assigning red to most 
probable and so on down to blue as the least, so it is part radar, part 
computer, and part human guesswork. 
The data in the bank is the best information about the mass and engine capacity 
and turning ability and hostility or friendliness of each ship whose computer 
number is on that chart; and all ships known to be in space are in that computer 
memory. 
Now, military craft (particularly Earth Company warships) are always making 
adjustments and honing their turning abilities if only by the smallest degree; 
this fouls up the enemy's longscan guesswork and can provide surprises. 
Mallory's Norway for instance, has not recently tested her adjustments to the 
extreme, and therefore the captain herself does not know just what Norway might 
do if she had to. And those refinements are only tested to the fullest, of 
course, when it comes to a situation where a ship either turns tighter than it 
is supposed to, or breaks apart -- or dies in impact. 
All FTLs and starstations have longscan. Station central traffic control has 
longscan as its main function and it generates the image which the buoy 
broadcasts to incoming ships. 
All communications of FTLs naturally have to have doppler adjustments because of 
the relative difference in velocities involved in their operations in 
starsystems. 
There is no communication in hyperspace. 
TACTICS
The object is to destroy the enemy ships. Station buoys are off limits as 
starstations are, since their destruction would endanger neutrals aboard ships 
which would suddenly pop into a system blind and not have land assignments or 
longscan information. 
Mines may be attacked, but robotized targets should be the objective according 
to the rules of war. 
Shipyards are frequent targets: they are also heavily defended. 
No stationary defense can copy with an FTL attack. 
Planets, stars and large rocks can shield a ship from scan if it turns off it's 
emmissions, which it is not supposed to do... but it is done. 
Emissions include radar. 
Stars and some Jupiter objects are "noisy" enough in their own emmissions to 
mask a ship. 
A carrier is too big to blow up: you have to immobilize it and hammer away at 
it. 
A wrecked ship can encapsulate a few crew and jettison them but if they are not 
picked up soon, they will die. Troops also can be rescued if they are wearing 
their hardsuits, but they are widely scattered, hard to find, and usually their 
own side does not have time. Remember they travel in the same vector and at the 
same speed as the wrecked ship was going. 
If you end up side by side with the enemy going the same direction as you are, 
it will be as if you are standing still relative to each other: a terrible 
battle will ensue like two old frigates battering away at each other with 
broadsides. Thankfully, this is rare. 
If you are next to a small object and jump, you will take it with you. 
Unfortunately, you cannot decelerate it when you get where you are going. 
Here is map of Compact:
 
