The Captain has asked me to circulate this, in advance of the official brief. This is the high level timetable for the opening of the planned op. The Captain wants you to think about this and have any comments and questions readied before the briefing. There are about a thousand ways that this can go wrong before we even engage. When it turns into a cluster fuck, we all want to make sure that it is the other team that gets reamed. I’ll see you all individually to discuss in the next few days.

DO NOT DIVULGE THIS INFORMATION WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION.

Attach:

-10h
Insertion of Alpha Company (Engineering with attached snipers) to Target Levels (TL)+10 via Glider

-8h
Advance movement of all companies to TL-10

-1h
Movement of all units to TL +/-2

-0.5h
Movement of Alpha company to TL+1
Movement of Bravo Company (Assault unit with attached engineers) to TL-1

0h
Alpha (Eng) destroy stairwells through TL with explosives
Alpha (Sn) engage AA units on road bridges leading to TL

+0h5m
Golf flight enters airspace
Golf(1) engages and destroys pinned AA units
Golf(2) attacks TL using low yield thermobaric warheads

+0h6m
Golf flight leaves airspace
Bravo company uses breaching charges on ceilings to enter TL

+0h7m
Charlie Company assists Bravo and holds breach.

+0h15m
Delta and Echo Companies pass through breach and engage.
Foxtrot moves to TL-1 as reserve.

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Floors 122 upwards are currently occupied by a Nova Urbo Revolucio training camp, which is considered our primary tactical threat. Neighboring blocks top out at 101 storey’s preventing direct overlook of Floor 122. However, observation from these positions allows us to estimate that the N.U.R. inhabit no more than 15 floors at peak occupancy and typical occupancy is approximately 10 floors. There appears to be no other sign of permanent occupancy below floor 160 which is the limit of reliable observation.

The base is permanently screened by six squad sized observation positions in the surrounding blocks equipped with medium anti-armor and anti-air capabilities. The outer perimeter is extended by two further teams observing the N.U.R. base and the main vehicle approach. Patrols are concentrated within the tower, on floors 8 through 42, extended or external patrols occur infrequently due to manpower shortages.

The main vehicle and pedestrian access points have been lightly fortified at the tower but are not extensively hardened. The long sight lines and permanent observation squads provide sufficient warning in the event of problems. Local populace have proved accepting of our presence and the appearance of lighter security does not alienate them unnecessarily.

As stated the primary threat axis is vertical at this installation and this has been reflected in the emplaced defenses.

There are 8 banks of express elevators which extend above the 100th floor, 2 goods and 6 personnel elevators. The goods elevators were found to be on floor 1 at the time of our occupation and have been locked on floor 3 by parking armored cars between the doors. The personnel elevators were located on each of floors 1, 4, 13, 62, 97 and 120. The elevators above floor 50 were physically secured by one squad each and ridden down to floor 3. Commendations are attached for troopers from squads III and IX who entered the elevator shafts on floor 90 and climbed the intervening distance and entered the car from above to avoid encountering N.U.R. sentry’s. (see attached document #132-2-6a). Personnel elevators are secured by placing a storage crate between the doors. A further 10 banks of personnel elevators and 5 goods elevators extend only to floor 50. These have been left in use to simplify the movement of goods and personnel in the base.

There are 8 stairwells, paired with the express elevator banks. These have been wired with sensors up to floor 20 and emplaced with mines and automated weapons from floor 7 through to floor 12. The entrances to the stair wells have been sealed on floors 1 through 7.

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So, for today’s example I’m going to talk about the NeoCorporations.

That conjures all sorts of images and impressions doesn’t it? Mobsters with Digital Agents? Shadowy figures running corporate holding companies buying any profitable concern? Murderous business practices and shady agendas behind every familiar brand? And everyone knows that all of the corporations are ran by these organised criminals. Now, is it possible that maybe everyone’s wrong?

Quick show of hands please. Believe there’s more truth than not in the representation. Ok. Less truth? Ok. Not sure?

Right, so most of you aren’t sure, I hope that your just being cautious and I haven’t lost you all, already. But of all the people who are committing, most of you think less truth. As an aside, that is almost certainly because I prewarned you. In surveys among the student population at large it comes in at seventy-six percent believe it to be truthful. Maybe you’re just all cynics.

So anyway, returning to the subject. Let’s take a look at NeoCorporations shall we?

Ok, so let’s start with the all Corps are NeoCorps perception, is it true?

First off we need to dig down deep, look at the foundations as it were. What do we mean by a corporation? Anyone? No? Ok then, let’s start small and work up. I want a show of hands when you agree we’re there, ok.

So, a property owing landlord? Mom and Pop diner? Family grocery store? No one so far, eh?

What about a restaurant owned by a landlord? Or a dozen properties owned in common by a group of non-related people? How about two grocery stores owned by the same family? Getting warm, yet? How about a large factory owned outright by one man? Getting a few hands now, I see.

Right, for reference a corporation is any organisation that is legally separate to its owners. Which should give you some guidance on which of the examples are corporations and which aren’t. Everyone with me? Good.

So, how does that work in an area that doesn’t have any consistent formal law?

Question?

Ok, since I’m miked up and you aren’t. The question was whether we should consider an area that is part of the United States and hasn’t formally seceded to have no consistent laws. The answer is, since they aren’t consistently followed and we can’t consistently enforce them, yes we should.

Ok look, I’m not here to debate Reunification with you, come and find me after the lecture if you want to discuss it, ‘kay? Thank you.

Where were we? Right. So we can’t objectively define what constitutes a corporation within RimCity. But, what about outside the Froth, is the situation clearer there? Are the corporations we can identify run on the organised crime model we’ve been cultured to expect? Well, sometimes but mostly, not.

Sure, there are some corporations – mostly holding companies and venture capital outfits – that have undeclared boards and major stockholders. And quite a few of the larger ones caught up in the last corp. war restructured to a more locally autonomous model. But, they did it without changing the organisational hierarchy – mostly it was just about devolving more decision making to lower levels.

Even Militech still maintain their original business hierarchy to this day. As one of the two major combatants in the 4th Corporate War it should be that they, of anyone, would have reorganised to better resist decapitation strikes. It is true that they restructured their “Active Tactical Board” onto a more cellular structure. With again more devolved powers of action than previous in the war. The key is that this was a purely military wing of the corporation. The core business hierarchy remained firmly intact throughout.

When you look at the facts this comes up again and again. Most of the corps whose records we can access have the same business structure they’ve had for, in most cases, decades. Sure, a lot of decision making has been spun out to a lower level and extra emphasis put on what’s called “continuity plans” but, no real change in structure.

You got a question?

Ok, can you clarify that?

Fantastic, I was hoping someone would pick up on that. Nice one! Right, the question was whether that was also a basic description of a traditional organised crime group. With small groups having local autonomy feeding up to a top level group. And the answer is absolutely, you’ve pre-empted my next question about what is an organised crime model. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Right, let me just get myself back on track.

Ok so, the “fact” that there is a massive difference between the traditional normal corporation and the traditional organised crime group is one of those things that everyone knows. In reality they aren’t as different as you’d think. You can insert your own joke about paying taxes here.

Now the traditional normal corporation has a pretty large variation in structures and authority levels. And the traditional organised crime group has a pretty large variation. But, there is a not insignificant overlap on that spectrum. When you get right down to it, there are only so many ways to structure an organisation. The larger the group the fewer the ways that work and that is mathematically provable. Don’t believe me? Go over to the Bourbaki building and ask them about hierarchies and partially ordered sets.

Clear your diary, first.

So, what you have is a lot of organisations over the years exploring all of the various structures in a few related niches, and you’d better believe that the niches are related. Is it any surprise that they’ve developed similar shapes and ways of acting? The difference isn’t in structure. The difference was probably never in structure.

So what is the difference between a normal Corporation and a NeoCorporation and is there a simple way to tell them apart? Anybody?

Hah! That’s fucking brilliant, I couldn’t have put it better myself. The answer given was that it is exactly the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter.”

- Wichita-Butler university. Shaheed ‘Shady’ McKray, guest lecture series, partial transcript (lecture 3).

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“Well, there it is kid. What do you think, was it worth it?”

He looks through the window trying to see past their reflection and the deck lights. Something. Something in front of them. Dark against the rising moon. Angular. Block upon block upon cylinder, capped with domes, crowned with pillars and spires. All joined with buttresses and flimsy bridges and strung with threads and ropes. Perspective fails and it looms. Too close. He takes half a step back, a sudden intake of breath. Too close, they’re about to…

The Helmsman’s uniformed arm clasps his shoulder.
“Easy lad, it’s still a way off yet”

“How… How did…?”

“It’s common enough. At night with almost no lights, there’s nothing to judge it against. I have to remind myself to believe the instruments and not my eyes, sometimes”

The Helmsman walks over to an instrument screen, touches some controls.

“C’mon over here, you can use one of the docking cams. See for yourself, it’ll give you a light enhanced view. Not as good as seeing it in daylight but, we’ll be down and unloading long before then.”

He walks over to join the Helmsman, reluctantly turning away from the dark mass outside the window.

“Pan with this, zoom here and that’s the reset. There you go”

He zooms, the picture steadies and shows featureless black shipping containers and black dome tents clustering along the waterfront. Movement catches his eye and he pans, zooms closer see’s… “Jesus!” …a Roll-on/Roll-off ferry cruising into the gap between two ‘containers’. Scale snaps home, the blocky container buildings and domes must be at least 10 storey’s high.

He pans and zooms wildly. Rank after rank of blocks stacked on top of each other all of them 10 storey’s, capped with more 10 storey domes, taller narrower cylinders and cones. Level after level climbing upwards. Buttress towers 100 storey’s high support bridges half the height of the blocks and long enough to look slender. The threads and ropes are roadways coiling from place to place, level to level. He zooms. None smaller than 6 lanes wide. Zooms out. Towering over all of them are spires and barrel shaped pillars, tall enough to dwarf the bulk of the buildings like skyscrapers over lesser structures in a regular city.

So many levels, so may ways it ties together. He can grasp the smallest scale – individual buildings and roadways, even see how they interconnect but as soon as he zooms outwards it quickly becomes too vast. Too empty. Too dark. The mass of it matt, featureless black.. Scattered domes and cylinders appear transparent and lit from within. Although backlit by the moon it is hard to be sure if they are illuminated at all. The only light’s he’s sure he can see are what he takes to be signs and navigation lights on roadways and roofs

“Where are the rest of the lights? Where is everyone? Is this one of those deserted areas?”

“Hell no, this is fucking Santa Barbara kid! It’s just… well, there’s no windows that’s all.”

“What! What do you mean, there’s no windows? I’ve seen them. In photos!”

“The outside’s smooth apart from the entrances and that. Didn’t your uncle tell you? All the windows are only on the inside, they all look inwards”

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Installation’s a breeze – couple of days unit set-up, mostly removing the transport interlocks and then setting the reactor to warming up. You can do a crash start in a couple of hours but it shaves about 30% off the lifespan, so we don’t. Hell, you can even transport it hot if you have to. It was developed as part of the PLA fast deployment infrastructure and it really shows, like I say it’s a beauty.

Then it’ll be a few weeks checking the site wiring before final connect. I’ve done eight of these installs before and it’s always the longest part of the on-site, inside the Rim City anyway. It’s a sort of design flaw. No, no not a design flaw of the reactor, *laughs* sorry, I wasn’t very clear there. I mean it’s a design flaw of the city, sort of. You see it was designed be a quick method of constructing permanent housing to replace destroyed buildings, so it was supposed to be hooked up to a grid. Yeah, yeah it’s got limited self sufficiency – generates power with solar cells, wind turbines, bio-reactor produced methane, stuff like that – but it was never meant to function in isolation. Problem is, it was never meant to take over most of the western seaboard either.

All the buildings are interconnected so they can match supply with demand in their local area and most settlements don’t realise there’s any problem outside of the occasional brownout. Until they try to run industry and find that there isn’t any spare power after all. Or until they power up a generator that has a connection to the main grid and find it running at 100% capacity with no local availability increase. So it’ll be a few weeks physically tracing every single cable in the facility before making final hook up. After I leave? Well I’ll have given them the normal warnings and it’s all in the manual. If that doesn’t stop them, well we offer a call out service as an addition to the normal maintenance agreement. Reasonable rates too. Personally I always enjoy seeing how these baby’s are managing out in the world.

- Gerry Stein, AS Power Systems

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You want to disagree? You’re wrong and here’s why.

We’ve got Corporations, in fact we’ve invented a whole new organisational structure for them We’ve added the secret society ethos to big business. These groups are dedicated to the ideal of making money, no matter what. When you can’t even identify the major shareholders you’ve got no hope of holding them accountable. Sheer brilliance.

Next up, we have the AltCults. These people are building entirely new “nations” based round a few common ideals. Well, a few common ideals and some slightly shady or unstable technology – usually grafted onto themselves and their societies in strange new ways. They are building, expanding and consolidating in the ethical vacuum of the Rim City. The time to stop them is long past.

Then, the usual suspects: Warlords and Gangs with the lovely sophisticated ideal of “its all mine”. The new and slightly wacky religions with their new and slightly wacky moral codes. The newest generation of predators each and every one carrying around an image of the way the world should be. And finally thousands of refugees every day who pour into the Froth convinced that it’s paved with platinum and a new life is waiting to be carved out. The shocking naivety of these no hopers is daunting and, frankly, a little scary in this day and age. The power lent by their convictions should not be underestimated

So that’s the idealists – then we have the victims. That’s everyone else. Everyone sat fat, dumb and happy, just waiting for the next thing to happen. Looking around them with perfect acceptance that this is the way things were, are and should be.

Victims … every … single … one…

Maybe not today, but eventually one of the idealists will come and they will impose their vision on the victims. If they are lucky it will be the takeover of the place of employment or the residential block, not a bullet in a gang war or a visit from a more traditional predator. That’s what it will be that decides it though, pure chance.

Either you have ideals or you don’t. Either you grab the future and you mould it to your vision or you sit around and you wait to be grabbed.

Choose.

-Aarden Harrow, Entry #3

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<...>

I am being serious. Look we’re living in a giant rat maze. Too much space between settlements, and it ain’t all well mapped. People who don’t like your rules can always just go and get lost. It all goes back to the founding.

<...>

*laughs* yeah, I know we’re not a separate country. We just might as well be.

<...>

Yeah, you got an army in your pocket do you? Look “reconquista” might be big talk back east, the fact is you don’t stand a chance.

<...>

Ooooh scary. Where were your militias when Night City burned?

<...>

You just don’t get it, do you pal? There’s a million roads in the RimCity and we know all of them. We’ve got our own army too, one that didn’t just fuck off to Louisiana when things got bad.

<...>

You might want to watch that mouth easty, it’s a long way to the nearest exit.

-Overheard on the Tahoe Highcity Funicular.

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Into this, already complex, infrastructure we thread a wire/less communication network with several million channels. This is added on top of a barely functioning old style (but still non-obsolete) Net with all of it’s infestations and wildly propagating malignity.

As if this wasn’t enough, we furnish with portable media screens, semi-intelligent conformable fittings made from the most cutting edge of materials whose long term consequences are still poorly understood. In case some of the fittings have been missed or are, fates forbid, the wrong colour we have provided hundreds of thousands of Microfactories capable of creating any imaginable object. Then added processing space into everything down to, I ask you, the buttons on pairs of trousers. In the name of making it nice and easy for anyone to imagine and design every object, obviously.

Finally into this profoundly unnatural environment we drop several hundred million future shocked primates who have just been violently uprooted from their homes.

And then, for some reason, we act surprised when they behave like drug addled children in a toy store?

-Billy Yusef Mohammed

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It’ll be in the comments below. Don’t expect frequent updates, I’m not doing this as a web design thing, it’s just an attempt at motivation!