Tango Sector 11: Mutual Blackmail

[ excerpt from A Brief History of Piracy in Tango Sector by Eulalia Ward ;  access to the following file is granted by the Terminus Public Academic Archive, as overseen by the Records and Writings Division of the Tango Sector Labor and Transit Representative Union Technology and Public Access Information Division  ]

… Of the five star systems currently member to Tango Sector, Adeyemi system saw perhaps the vast majority of pirate activity during what some scholars now refer to as the Platinum Age of Piracy.⁶⁷ Because of Thistle and Chandra’s easy access to natural resources and necessities for deep space travel (oxygen, water, fuel, etc.) and Homily’s access to the rare and valuable metals that fetched the relative best price by weight on those Iwasaki markets which Adeyemi pirates frequented, Adeyemi ships found themselves at constant threat of boarding by small, well-armed pirate crews from adequately (if hastily) cloaked ships. (For more on Platinum-age cloaking technology, see chapter 17, Common Corsair Strategies). When Torus Station was first built, it boasted not only state of the art surface-mounted artillery for monitoring pirate activity in the area, but also the offices of several of the first major insurance firms offering a cargo plan specifically for victims of piracy. … 

…  Piracy, however, dropped off significantly after the creation of the Martinet, whose original primary function was as a piracy deterrent force, though as the threat of piracy has decreased over the Sector’s long life their focus has adapted to enforcing other important regulations, such as smuggling laws and inter- and intra-sector traffic. While the cultural legacy created by the so-called Platinum Age’s vast network of pirate crews lives on in Tango Sectors smugglers, black market traders, and other criminal networks, in recent years, few if any instances of piracy have been reported within the Sector. … 

⁶⁷While Hajj and Andrianakis, et al. make a persuasive case for referring to this period of time as an “age,” due to the drop in pirate activity after the dissolution of the Iwasaki-Adeyemi treaty several years prior to the institution of the Tango Sector Labor and Transit Representative Union and its accompanying governing bodies and regulatory police force, their naming of the Platinum Age is flawed at best: while they cite the ancient Golden Age of Piracy as inspiration for the name, the choice of “Platinum” implies a gradience between gold and platinum in accordance with their respective ancient values. However, this illustrates a severe lack in understanding of the ancient scholarship on nautical piracy: the Golden Age was named not for its value but for the prevalence of gold as the most common or sought after “booty” during this period of piracy (see Vester’s recent article on etymology and the similarly ancient “Celluloid Age” of digital piracy for more detailed explication), and thus Hajj and Andrianakis would be more accurate in naming their alleged age the “Scandium Age of Piracy,” or, perhaps even less romantically, the “Oxygen Age of Piracy.” 

This week, on Tango Sector: While their compatriots are busy infiltrating a gala in Terminus, the rest of the crew assists the mysterious pirate crew known as the Gravesent in tracking down their kidnapped captain. Cash calls on a helpful connection. Liam encounters an unpleasant reminder of his past. 

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