#5 by Carnifex

Cravic’s Cobra flew through the dense smoggy atmosphere of Planet Pittsburgh, decelerating as it came closer to the landing platform. Pittsburgh was the industrial centre of the New York system. It’s position deep in the Pittsburgh debris field off the heavily used tradelanes made it the best place for Cravic to gauge what the situation was like in the rest of liberty without being seen. Landing on the busy platform he headed straight for the bar, like so many other pilots do after a long day in space. Buying a drink he looked around and wondered who would be best to get some rumours out of. He dare not talk to the bartender as he’d still be here to give him away if someone picked up his trail and followed him to Pittsburgh, pilots could be gone for months on shipping runs and be nearly impossible to contact which made them the safer option.
Seeing a Bowex freighter captain sitting with one of his shipmates he decided to sit near them and listen in on their conversation.
“...and they charge less as well,” said the Bowex captain, “If it continues at this rate USM will end up owning the rights to every speck of value in Bretonia as well as Liberty.” The shipmate nodded his agreement with a grave look on his face.
“BMM can’t keep up with them and USM don’t need a shipping firm to do their moving for them so we get the worst of a raw deal,” finished the captain with an air of discontent.
“Is it really getting that bad in Bretonia?” asked Cravic leaning closer, “I knew their eyes were bigger than their Motherloads in Liberty but Bretonia as well?”
“You had better believe it,” said the captain, eager for a fresh audience, “For a while there they were having trouble distributing cargo outside of Bretonia, the war against Kusari and Rheinland was keeping them away from their best clients,” he started to lower his voice as if this was confidential, “but since Liberty stopped hostilities and Rheinland distanced itself from Kusari, what with their unprecedented losses to the Outcasts, USM has been off like a shot!”
Cravic widened his eyes a tiny bit and not entirely to act as he was expected to. Most of this was in fact news to him. “Why do you think Liberty didn’t take the opportunity to seize as much of Shikoku as possible? Why let the fight with Rheinland go so easily a second time?”
“Where have you been mate?!” exclaimed the captain, “Those Outcasts didn’t just defeat the Kusari Empire, they flattened them. With so many losses to attrition in the Independent systems and the blitz style attack Kusari could barely hold its own. None of the other houses wanted to make any move that might make them next.”

Carnifex, having gathered more information, headed back to his ship; it wasn’t good to stay too long in the one spot even if Planet Pittsburgh hadn’t been the industrial sewerage pipe that it was. So Liberty had wanted the war over quickly and cleanly. That was a horrible reason to kill off one of your best admirals. Cravic suspected that it wasn’t anyone in Liberty that had actually wanted him dead but someone who had bought out some LSF lackeys who had ‘loyal’ officers under them who were looking for advancement. None the less Cravic wanted to disappear for a while and started thinking of places that didn’t ask questions.