[Future Perfect] The Greyjackets

THE GREYJACKETS

Approximately 40 years ago, the last Summit of Known Powers was held. Intended to serve as a means of fostering tolerant co-existence among the major players in faction space, the Summit was a playground for idealists, politicians, and scoundrel's alike. A young but influential Alliance, the enigmatic Kokorans, a Regency strained by civil unrest, A Coalition beginning to crumble, a Collective perhaps even stranger than the Kokorans, and the known universes largest Commercial Powers acting as one political entity all met and attempted to resolve their grievances and plan for a peaceful tomorrow. Unfortunately, every prize earned by one party takes something away from another. And it was the Coalition that lost the most during the summit; with little aid from a Regency attempting to reinvent itself as distinct from its Imperial past, the Alliance stifled all of the Coalition's outcry over how the UIC was split apart. The Summit met and ended, and everyone went their separate ways.

However, unhappy with provisions made at the Summit of Known Powers, angry individuals hailing from the Coalition and the Freespace took up arms against the Alliance. They felt the Alliance had long been sabotaging the Coalition's sociopolitical efforts as well as buying/empowering regional Warlords in the Wilds of the Freespace to use as leverage against the interests of Planet Dust. Coming mostly from the poor slums and labor camps, these people came to be called Greyjackets because of the drab, grey jackets they would tend to wear.

After a few years of Greyjacket militia's posturing, threatening, and protesting the Alliance began to grow weary of them. Beleaguered by increased hostilities from the Regency over Colonial Expansion in the Frontier, the Alliance government had enough. They placed a standing bounty out on the Greyjackets, declaring them terrorists allied with the Regency Government. Pushed into a corner, the Greyjackets respond by blowing up several key government targets on Core Beta. They state the difference between their prior actions and current ones should have been evident. But if they are to be treated as terrorists, then let them be what the Alliance has made them.

Since then, the Greyjackets have recruited heavily from among the Alliance’s own growing population of dispossessed, including ex-military men and even a few rogue mind-cops. An admixture of Coalition, Freespace, and Alliance personnel, they have succeeded where the Summit had failed - in reunifying a sundered people back under a shared vision. Indeed, they are something of folk heroes among the Dusters and the backwaters of Coalition space, said to be fighting to restore the grandeur of a reunified UIC.

Greyjackets act in small cells of four or five people and are semi-autonomous. Greyjacket leadership is secretive, mobile, and seems to excel at misdirection. For example, even one of the few known Greyjacket leaders, Ajax Stone, insists upon using only the rank of Sergeant despite commanding at least a small fleet of Greyjacket vessels. Their efforts run the gamut from promoting civil disobedience, to the promulgation of dissident literature and anti-Alliance information, to blatant piracy (against the Alliance and its allies), murder, and quick-strike attacks against civilian population centers. If nothing else, Greyjackets consider themselves to be at war with the Alliance.