| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.colorado.edu> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: realism in corporate life |
| Date: | Tue, 12 Dec 1995 13:31:27 -0700 (MST) |
on the timing, and the rest of this is an explanation of what's going on,
what has happened historically, etc. Evan, you and I might want to talk
a bit since a lot of stuff has gone on privately between us.
As far as Ares and Shiawas are concerned, the evidence points to
Sheppard-Intrepid, not to Maxim Arms. MCT just began a joint
research venture with Maxim(the Hyperdeck purchase I sent a small post on
that could have been overlooked) and they were the ones who ordered the
Court to have SI and Maxim stand down from thier posturing. They have
nothing to fear from Maxim since they already have nukes themselves and
they control the court too. Saeder-Krupp, according to Evan
Hughes' post a while back, indicated a frosty reception by the board to
thier evidence that Maxim was working on acquiring nukes, and he had
indicated that there were a few board members who might even own Maxim
stock themselves. I've been doing my best to give the list every
indication that the evidence points to SI and away from Maxim. As of
now, the UCAS thinks that SI was covering thier tracks, not Maxim,
because of the artificial planting of data in thier databanks(and SIs)
showing that the A-M facility was in fact purchased by SI several months ago.
My Maxim internal logs are NOT known by anyone, corp or otherwise. If
they were, I'd have posted it here. They're just like you did with Ares
when they downed the Wyvern in NY. Totally unaccessable in an isolated
system. Just because I post them to get some plot details out doesn't
mean they are available for anyone in the SR world to know beyond the
people talking in them.
Now for a little history of Maxim and Velli herself. Last year, when
Velli was killing her way to the top, she manipulated Dante into stealing
documents that proved that The Org, a totally private intelligence
gathering/selling group started by AJ, was shielded by Maxim Arms. Now,
both corp and Org had thier rules called Security Protocols, and the
biggy was, paraphrased, "If the Org is ever proven attached to Maxim,
then all the Org's assets and Maxim's go ballistic and kill everyone who
knows." This was the reason for destroying the InterPol North American
HQ in New York and the attempted killing of Drake in the process. And it
was also responsible for the total destruction of a secret BIS data vault
in Berlin and the attempted killing of HAMMER as well. However, by this
point, it became apparent that the other Big 8 corps would have to know
through thier own spies, and so Moriarity(who was still alive and CEO of
Maxim) sent information out to the Big 8, privately encrypted and
deliverd to the CEOs only. This information showed very revealing stuff
about them personally or their buisness dealings and requested that they
all come together in Switzerland, under the guard of InterPol. He then
very quietly organized Maxim's military, core wars, and orbital assets
into full, instant readiness, and sent Velli to tell them Maxim's
demands. The demands were really simple: Don't try to crush Maxim
because we have your highest levels infiltrated and if you do, we'll take
you with us when we die. In return, we'll give you half of the Org's
agents and half of thier facilities, and encorporate the rest into
Maxim(thus Maxim Security Inc was born). Basically, Velli said "If we
know enough of your personal secrets to get you all here, then we have
agents in high enough positions in your organizations to paralyze you for
long enough that we can hurt you really badly. Sure, your combined might
will squash Maxim in the long run, but who of you can resist attacking
your other competitors when they're down? Eventually it'll be world-wide
corp war, all for the convenience of destroying Maxim. It's not worth
it, and Maxim is willing to do it."
For a week, while Maxim was waiting to unleash corp war on the world, the
Big 8 mobilized thier units and waited very nervously for Maxim to
deliver the list of agents. Maxim provided a list of the locations of
the Org's outlets worldwide, and the corps divided them up between them
and leveled them, no survivors. Maxim also provided a list to each corp
of the agents they would sacrifice in order to avoid destruction, as well
as agents in all their subsidiaries. There was a purge that extended
into every level of every corp, government, policlub, etc worldwide. The
Org was originally some 30,000 employees, 10000 of which were agents, and
of which Maxim allowed some 5000+ to be killed. Most of the agents were,
and still are, sleepers who are told to wait until they get into powerful
positions before they start leaking information. Basically, Boards had
to find new members even.
I had basically reached a conclusion that the Org was too powerful, so I
destroyed it. Naturally, the corps and everyone else would keep thier
purges VERY quiet lest the general public become aware that someone had
been infiltrated at every level and reputations suffer.
Now, what does this mean for the nuke plot? Well, 2 of the corps at
least are looking elsewhere for thier target. Another has a vested
interest in Maxim's health(at least some of it), another was never on
poor terms with Maxim(MCT). That's 4 of the 8 that would not do much at
this stage. Now, what about corporate spies, you ask? Well, Maxim still
has some 2500 active agents in corps(half of the 5000 are sleepers) that
can feed false information or censure what the corp really gets. I
figure that it's probable that this goes both ways, but the confusion
should be great enough that there is nothing that provides
incontravertable proof.
Everyone needs to understand something about Velli too. She doesn't give
a flying f**k about anyone else except how they relate to her personal
power. She is a Machiavellian in the truest sense of the word. Her
personal power rests on Maxim's, and if Maxim goes down, so does she.
She doesn't underestimate her opponents/competitors/enemies nor does she
care much what other people think of her except in how it relates to her
ability to exert power and remain a "prince" among fools. She is
brutally pragmatic, killing whenever it suits her needs, perfering to
inspire fear rather than love because she can control those who fear her
easier than those who would lover her. If you've ever read Machiavelli's
"The Prince" then you know exactly what she is. She is his ideal
prince. She keeps the people placated and happy and so Maxim sells
well. She doesn't allow inferior products to go to market, so Maxim has
a solid market share in military vehicles and heavy weapons. She keeps
her employees happy, but inspires fear with the rumors of
disappearances so that they work well for her, etc.
I say this because if you will understand Maxim, you need to understand
Velli. If the Big 8 bombed Maxim's facilities, she would go apeshit and
we'd have total war on our hands. That would be bad.
I do agree that something has to be done, but I think that the best time
to start it would be after Maxim tests their first bomb on the far side
of the moon. The other corps would know that someone did it, and they'd
quickly figure out that it wasn't SI since they don't have the orbital
facilities to do it(correct me if I'm wrong, Evan). As it is, Maxim has
only one station that it bought from Fuchi, excluding the survillance
sattelites and comm sats it has, of course. I think that this would be
the best time to make a corporate example of Maxim.
Look at the corporate world of SR. The Big 8 all have nukes in some
token assortment, if not a stockpile. If it is a well known secret among
themselves, then it is reasonable to assume that the largest AA corps
would have the ability to do it too, but mostly not the willpower or the
balls to risk the Big 8's wrath. Maxim has both, and is just about the
same size as Yamatetsu(in my world, they're bigger than Ares, but
compromises must be made here). So it's not unreasonable to let them
have nukes, from a corporate perspective. However, it is also important
that they should have a lesson made to them too. I was thinking about
something similar to what happened to the Azzy base in the Aztlan
sourcebook, actually. Something along the lines of "We'll let you keep
what you have, but try and make any more and we'll REALLY frag you
over." At this point, they'd have maybe 10 total.
Same idea, Mark, just different timing.
It was after the strike that I figure the knowledge that Maxim has nukes
would become known in the shadows, and then when the players would likely
decide that the corp option wasn't severe enough, and they'd take the
destruction of Maxim's few nukes onto themselves.
I hope this response didn't seem like an attack. After writing it, I
think it's reasonable.
