So, despite the illegal shipyards being a violation of treaty between humans and Amnion, the illegal shipyards flourished. Thieving often proved more profitable than honest mineral extraction. The bootleg shipyards would protect whoever brought ships to them, from being stolen by other pilots, to attract more spaceships to these yards. Some people were attracted to founding businesses that provided support for pirates at these bootleg yards.
Thanatos Minor provided an ideal clearinghouse for the raw materials, technologies, and organic tissues which the Amnion craved. This description makes the Amnion race sound rather unsavory.The best-known--because the best-defended--of these bootleg shipyards was the one called Billingate on Thanatos Minor.
There were a number of such shipyards within human space, of course. However, by virtue of their locations their existence was precarious: they were vulnerable to direct attack by the UMCP. In order to exist at all they required secrecy. Therefore they hid like ferrets; they moved whenever they could; often they kept their own operations--and profits--small so that they would be less susceptible to exposure or betrayal.
Billingate had few worries along those lines. Because it had been hived into the bleak rock of Thanatos Minor, a planetoid which sailed the vacuum a few million kilometers inside the borders of forbidden space, it had little or nothing to fear from overt assault. It was protected--albeit obliquely--by treaty. It was also defended by Amnion warships: the quadrant of space it occupied lay along the most heavily patrolled boundary with human space. And it was defended as well by the ships which depended on it. In human space, any illegal might reasonably flee rather than face a UMCP destroyer or battlewagon. In forbidden space, flight was less attractive because it lead deeper into the fatal realm of the Amnion. Safety from imposed mutation existed only at the fringes of Amnion territory. Illegals were inclined to feel cornered when they were threatened near Billingate; therefore they were predisposed to fight back.
This shipyard did not need secrecy to protect it.
So pirates with enough credits went to Billingate to purchase vessels--or re-creations. Illegal gap ships went to Billingate for repairs. And any brigand who could get there went to Billingate to fence his or her loot. Thanks to its location, Thanatos Minor provided an ideal clearinghouse for the raw materials, technologies, and organic tissues which the Amnion craved. The human species was betrayed more consistently, more often, and profitably there than anywhere in human space--or human history.
For this reason, Billingate had grown populous--UMCPDA estimated between four and seven thousand inhabitants--as well as rich.
The human species was betrayed more consistently, more often, and profitably there than anywhere in human space--or human history.
Conversely, this makes the human race sound at least as unsavory as the Amnion, if not more so.
Billingate gained notoriety as a place where vices, slavery, and chemical dependencies flourished. Surgeries that could reduce or enhance human abilities became increasingly common on Billingate. A man called "the Bill" ran Billingate due to the Amnion seeing him as the best human choice for leadership, and due to his ability to keep the place profitable and efficiently running. The Bill is rumored to have had surgery to possess a double phallus, a rumor which has increased the disdain that conservative and genophobic people felt toward Billingate. But the UMCP couldn't just cross into forbidden space to destroy Thanatos Minor, because that was forbidden by treaty. Treaty didn't allow the Amnion to permit Billingate's existence, but the Amnion simply denied the existence of such a place. The UMCP couldn't destroy Thanatos Minor without the action being seen as a sign of war by the Amnion.
In the corridors of UMCPHQ, as well as in the chambers of the Governing Council for Earth and Space, it was frequently argued that war was preferable to this kind of peace. As long as places like Billingate were able to exist, the UMCP could never prevail against piracy. However, the official position of the United Mining Companies was that the benefits of trade justified the costs of piracy--and war would put an end to trade.
Warden Dios would state that war would prove too costly a way to wipe out piracy, and considered a war with the Amnion to likely be unwinnable. And now we know why Warden prefers a more covert approach for destroying Billingate, why he's sending Angus and Milos against it instead of Min and a large UMCP fleet.