“Exeter Primordial”
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Exeter Primordial was the largest planet in Pilgrim’s Rim, mostly a barren desert consisting of purple rock landscapes. The climate was sporadic and prone to rough looming fog storms, causing space travel to cease or be restricted frequently.
A portion of the planet facilitated a techno-city, Mecha Vergas, which was made up of various cyber-towers, blocks of quadrants of desaturated rubix-cube buildings and one massive citadel reaching an altitude breaching the ozone.
Most of the work force there was made up of machines and robots, but there was also cheap labour from slaves usually captured from off-world conquered neighbours. That was why Pegger production was cheaper to have them shipped in from Exeter Primordial to Starshock, although the quality of person was lower and oftentimes downright invalid.
“Exeter Dropship”
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The orb shaped freighters cascaded between checkpoints in Mecha Vergas, transporting robo-paraphernalia. The sphere-shaped landing decks were tended to by small robot agents with conveyor belt legs and glowing visor eyes.
No paychecks were written.
The cargo was guarded to a mediocre extent against desert pirate raiders by hired goons with a life story too fucked up to get a job anywhere else.
The fog storms which plagued Exeter Primordial resulted in crash and burn scenarios for a percentage too expensive for these rich machines. But that was just the reality of the puppet business life on Exeter.
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“Exeter Pirate Ship”
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In the vast purple barrens of Exeter Primordial lay several lo-tech bases buried in the cavernous underground depths. These bases, built-up over decades in hollowed-out grottos and over ancient alien temples, presently were occupied by humans – specifically vagabond tribes of pirate raiding squads. Their various pirate ships were parked there and could ascend out of a labyrinth tunnel system loose into the atmosphere.
In flight, the ships hid cloaked and lurking, orbiting the perimeter of Mecha Vergas until a weak and vulnerable cargo ship from the metropolis wandered too close to the edge.
That’s when the wasteland pirates would board the cargo ship via an extendable cybertube and proceed to loot the thing clean out.
During the ambush, casualties were slim-to-zero because the Securobots which were supposed to defend the ships usually just surrendered right away. That’s what they were programmed to do in the event of overwhelming force – which happened all the time – to save the IFP (Interplanetary Federation of Planets) a few dollars more on their bots not being blown to scrap metal while all their other stuff was being stolen. The IFP tended to take a lackadaisical approach to many of their interplanetary properties and Mecha Vergas was a prime example of this. In particular, the poor Securobots of the cargo ships were left hopelessly understaffed and inadequately equipped.
Securobot SOS’s had to climb through the commchain all the way up the call-center hierarchy reaching far beyond off-world and by the time they got to the IFP Megaship – it was too late and no one cared. The staff politics at the upper-echelon of the IFP were so convoluted it rendered them completely impotent to do anything about it, even though it was an ongoing nuisance costing a bunch of money that no one was even trying to solve. There was an abundance of other impossible problems which were taking priority at the IFP.
Thus, the cycle of supplying the enemy continued.
