113 Rosella Place/69 Light Street, Casino, NSW 2470 ...

This is a cross post from a Medium article I wrote about this, I thought it might be interesting as the state election is next week.
​
​
The NSW State election is approaching. I decided it was time to find out what each of the parties had to say about their policies. What follows is a brief summary of all the independents and political parties running stand for. I have done by best to provide a good faith reading of these parties and, when relevant, have attempted to clearly notate any editorial comments.

Legislative council parties:

Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers

The Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers are an agrarian, social conservative, and libertarian party whose policy platform is based around ending the government regulation of environmental protections and standards, as well as laws about maintaining native biodiversity which often conflicts with crop plantings. Their main goal is to remove the ability of external forces (governments, courts, or activists) from interfering with the direct commercial goals of land owners as they prize individual property rights which they believe as violated by land reform legislation. Beyond this, they also aim to assist NSW farmers by pushing for drought assistance to combat the current prolonged drought, as well as pushing for further tax cuts aimed at farmers.
Like many other current right-wing groups, they have coalesced behind supporting the end of renewable subsidies and pushing for the building of more coal power stations. Uniquely, they also want to end the interconnection of NSW power to other states in a pseudo-isolationist move. This also means that they oppose many policies about regulating carbon and other pollutants, however as they also support deregulated fishing they are currently signalling their difference from the NSW National Party by wanting to prevent further mass fish deaths in the Murray Darling River.
As part of their right-wing libertarian streak, this consists of ending most government regulation of gun control, whilst also signalling support of ‘tough on crime’ policies and supporting the police and prison guards.

Socialist Alliance

The Socialist Alliance is a traditional socialist political party who are focused providing a more egalitarian society where wealthy individuals and corporations pay aggressively higher taxes to fund re-distributive policies increase the standard of living for lower income peoples. They also want to expand public transport along with taking privatised assets back into public ownership.
They also want to switch to a renewable energy economy and make NSW explicitly anti-racist and a safe haven for refugees. They also believe that our current electoral system is flawed so they wish to introduce a series of electoral reforms to introduce electoral recalls at all levels, and make all levels of government proportional instead of our current mix of representative and proportional government.

Sustainable Australia

Sustainable Australia is focused on what they see as the issue with our current immigration rate. Under their ideological view, having a high immigration is detrimental to Australia as it causes “over-development”, as their website claims, as well as increasing housing costs, and environmental damage. Whilst not explicitly stating it, they appear to be planning on addressing the predicted losses in economic growth from their policies through diversifying the economy. This anti-immigration view covers refugees, as whilst they will allow them to enter the country they believe they should stay around their local region and work be done to improve safety there.
From their policy platform, it appears as if Sustainable Australia wants to limit overseas trade as they have policies on restarting Australian manufacturingjobs, which would assist our economy if we were no longer utilising low cost overseas manufacturing sources. However, they appear to be on-board with the current environmental consensus as they want to transition to a renewable energy economy and want to protect natural lands.

Greens

As one of the minor major parties, most of their policy platform should be somewhat known. It is dominated by their positions on the environment where they want to rapidly transition towards an entirely renewable energy sector, as well as more general policies about reversing environmental pollution of air, land, and water-bodies. Broadly, they are the most prominent socially and economically progressive party in NSW at the moment. However, they are anti-genetically modified crops [Ed. note — this is due to a flawed belief that ‘organic’ food is better than modified, which is not supported by any current research consensus.]
Of note is a current “civil war” within the NSW Greens between the two faction which respectively believe that the Greens should be focused entirely on the environment, and the other who believe that they should be a vehicle for broader democratic socialist policies. However, there has yet to be any noticeable policy arguments (publicly at least) around this, so the factional struggle may be personality based.

Animal Justice Party

The animal justice party is a leftist political organisation based strongly around broadening animal rights and protections. The majority of their policies are to do with ending the killing, or harming of animals in any way. Seem to want to end the use of companion animals (pets) in general but are addressing that bit by bit by limiting how you can adopt animals. They also view population growth as bad for animals and the environment and thus believe we should keep growth at replacement rate, which implies limiting immigration. However, limited policy detail on environmental and climate action policies, broadly says we need a carbon tax and to shift to a renewable power economy.

Advance

Advance is actually a coalition of the Advance Australia Party and the Motoring Enthusiasts. Their policies goals seem to be addressing housing affordability, increasing Sydney’s desirability as a tourist destination, anti-gambling — specifically Barangaroo, desiring the return of the Sydney Monorail — which appears to be driven by their distaste of the Light Rail, pro-electric cars, and “fixing the roads”. Not sure on their political alignment, appear to be a centrist neoliberal party without a social justice platform or any re-distributive policies.

FLUX

Ah, FLUX. FLUX is not a political party in the traditional sense as they have no actual policies in of themselves. They’re a single issue party, which wants to more or less end our Representational Democracy model and replace it with an electronic platform which is a mix of Direct, Representational, and Delegate Democracy where you use ‘an app’ to either directly vote, or nominate someone to vote for you on every piece of legislation in parliament. Legislation, which I assume is also crowd sourced?
[Ed. note — INTERESTING. Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow (real person) who has been a candidate for the Science Party (formerly the Future Party, now running as the James Jansson group) for the last couple of elections has moved to FLUX and is the candidate for Willoughby. You may know him as the dude who put the OPAL chip inside his hand.]

LaboCountry Labor

NSW Labor has a typical modern centre-left policy platform. However, of note is their recent moves to ban single use plastic bags, phase out single use plastics, invest ~$140 million into local recycling projects, and of particular note they claim to want to seek a treaty with the NSW indigenous peopleswhich would replicate similar treaties in Canada and New Zealand. This treaty would cover: recognition of historical wrongs, addressing health and education services, and language rights.
This election, NSW Labor is trying to differentiate themselves from the Liberal Party by emphasising their goals to decrease housing and hospital costs, as well as addressing industrial concerns, such as wage theft and underpayment, as well as providing increased services such as more education facilities and free public transport for children. Another policy difference is their goal to divert the currently allocated funds for stadium redevelopments towards other policies such as renewable powered air conditioning for public schools.
They also wish to legislate 10 days paid domestic violence pay, in addition to investing $158 million towards building new domestic violence and sexual assault courts, increased victim compensation, and increased funding to shelters and advocacy groups.

Liberal/The Nationals

The Liberal/National coalition will be running this campaign based on their record over the last eight years which has constituted increased building of private toll motorways as well as the building of more commuter lines, specifically the light rail and North-West Metro. The party however has been dogged by their more draconian policies around nightlife and music policiesin general. This has been paired with their alleged failures on environmental policies based on the recent spate of mass fish deaths in regional NSW resulting from widespread rorting of water resources by the large commercial cotton farms.

Australian Conservatives

The Australian Conservatives are a factional splinter of the Liberal Party of Australia. They were started by Cory Bernardi who left the party because of his views of the “corrosive left” of the Liberal Party. As such, they are an extremely conservative party. Their policy agenda does not meaningfully move away from orthodox right-wing business politics, and government regulation, as they are libertarian on this front. Their main focus is on ‘white resentment’ politics. This is as their most detailed policy statements deal with ending “gender reassignment” and “political indoctrination”. Their main goals is to realign Australian with their conservative views on what it means to be an Australian, that is to be white and hetero-normative [Ed.]. Broadly they are quite similar to the current Republican party in American in terms of their social and economic views. This party is part of the current wave of populist(whilst not actually being populist as their policies will benefit the 1% primarily) “Western Civilisation” politics based around Nationalism and anti-leftism.

Keep Sydney Open

Keep Sydney Open appear to be a civil libertarian party based around getting the government and its regulation out of the music scene and Sydney nightlife. Their main party agenda is the end the Sydney Lockout laws and the current government’s policies around policing music festivals. Have no really stated political goals outside of this niche beyond some language around a stronger ICAC, and introducing 24 hr public transport. Of note, not actually running a candidate in the Seat of Sydney, where the lockout laws apply.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats are an aggressively libertarian party whose only elected member is David Leyonhjelm. The main thrust of this party is promoting “individual liberty”, which is mostly expressed as reducing the ability of governments to enact regulatory legislation, and letting businesses pay less tax. They see effectively no place for the government beyond Defence, and maintaining property rights.
Editorial: the Liberal Democrats use a very American strategy of campaigning, which is “triggering the left”. They’ve also engaged in sexist and racist behaviours in their effort to gain votes from the same constituency of One Nation, Australian Conservatives, and Men’s Rights Activists.

Voluntary Euthanasia Party

The VEP are a single issue party, and that is enacting legislation for voluntary assisted dying. They appear to be a party dedicated to ensuring quality of life up until death through both allowing death to happen on your own terms, increasing palliative care, and improving access to medical cannabis. Beyond that, they claim to be a moderate progressive party and will vote on a case by case basis for all legislation under that framework.

Christian Democratic Party

Otherwise known as the Fred Nile Christian Democratic party. A Christian religious party aiming to “glorify God in government”. Under that framework, are pro-business. Their main niche is ensuring that NSW remains a tacitly Christian state by legislating SRE classes (they’re the ones who made SRE mandatory and that you have to specifically opt out, whilst also making information about that hard to find). This party is extremely conservative about sexuality and gender identity and believe that there is only two gendersand you should only be heterosexual, and thus want to remove the Safe Schools program.

Small Business Party

Another neoliberal business party whose policy focus is on cutting business taxes and regulation, claiming they’re a drain on the economy. This extends to wanting to reduce housing Stamp duties and power prices. Also are anti-immigration as they claiming current NSW immigration is unsustainable and there is no place for them here. [Ed. note — current immigration rate is reason we’re not in a recession at the moment.]

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation

One Nation is the most prevalent of the current Australian mainstream populist (whilst not being popular) ‘white resentment’ political parties. Under the NSW leader Mark Latham — who has a colourful past — the party has taken a specifically Men’s Rights Activist lens as it has explicit platforms on their idea that white men are being repressed in our society.

Outlaw the new Left-wing discrimination against men, boys, Christians and white people, including a ban on discriminatory ‘employment quotas’ and segregationist ‘safe spaces’ — One Nation policy outline

This platform extends towards explicitly racist policies, and removing recognition of transgender people’s rights. These policies manifest themselves through their anti-Islamist rhetoric, claiming that they’ll end “Islamic Radicalisation in schools”, being anti-multiculturalism, and putting forward a policy that only individuals who “pass” a genetic test [Ed. note — which is bullshit] can get Indigenous peoples specific social welfare.
These policies around Indigenous peoples also extend to the Indigenous Land Reform Councils as they claim they’re hoarding billions of dollars which should be taken. Like other prominent white resentment parties, One Nation also supports pro-business reforms such as protectionist policies to maintain monopolies, and cutting their taxes and regulations, as well as being anti-renewable energy and fixated on coal power.

Seniors United Party of Australia (group G)

The Seniors United Party is pushing forward a policy agenda aimed specifically at senior citizens, such as being focused on increased funding and undoing of Liberal/National cuts to superannuation. They also wants oversight and regulation of aged care providers. However, like many other parties running in this election, they are a anti-immigration party and wants to see reduced in overall migration levels.

Monaghan and Monaghan (group H)

This is a husband and wife duo from the northern beaches and the majority of policies appear to be focused on a “not in my backyard (NIMBY)” agenda in regards to the Northern Beaches. However also wants to ban brothels and 24/7 gambling, and very specifically the Woolworths in Mosman.

Jeremy Buckingham Greens splinter group (group L)

Buckingham is a former Greens MLC who left/got kicked out of the party over allegations he committed an act of “sexual violence”* towards a staff member. This was investigated and dropped due to insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegation. Teamed up with Alan Jones to help stop coal seam gas mining
His policies are a little hard to nail down as his content is limited on his website, but based around his previous statements it broadly aligns with the environmental aspects of his former party, the NSW Greens. Of note however, is his desired collaboration with American Tech Baron, Elon Musk, to build a tunnel through the Blue Mountains from Western Sydney to Lithgow.
\allegation was revealed under parliamentary privilege by Newtown MP Jenny Leong. May have been done as part of the current NSW Greens civil war over whether or not they should be a climate action party or a more broadly socialist party.*

James Jansson (group S)

A re-branding of the Science Party as they aren’t registered at State level. Focused on increased transportation, housing density, etc. Seem to be greenish Radical Centrist party with focus on changing regulation and increasing funding without really rocking the boat or doing anything substantial.

Various Independents

Tony Edwards: no clear policy directions stated, with more of a general anti-right perspective.
Ellie Robinson: Anti-corruption platform and wants to address climate change, disability rights, animal justice, indigenous rights.
John Brett: anti-national debt candidate, focus on removing foreign involvement and getting more people back into trade jobs.
Ron Bogan: pro euthanasia, helping out senior citizens, pro-National Energy Guarantee (therefore neoliberal on climate action), focus on the Shire and Western Sydney. Campaign slogan — “put a bogan in parliament”
John Hunter: no information online about him.
Bryn Hutchinson: “progressive independent” — focus on police accountability and a NSW Human Rights Act.
Danny Lim: this is the guy with the billboard hanging around Newtown and the city who’s billboard said “Tony [Abbott] you cvn’t.” From what I can find, running principles of egalitarianism, anti-racism, broadly leftist, pro-renewable energy, investing in public healthcare, removing private healthcare insurance rebate, increasing refugee intake.
Andre Brokman: found his Medium blog — pro-Council amalgamations to increase centralisation and reduce ‘chaos’ in Sydney planning, appears to be a transportation enthusiast. His bio: “Andre Brokman is a full time city planning student and part time uber driver”

Roy "Sarge" Jovanovic lounged in his pilot's chair scrolling through ship designs, trying to find the one that would make the most tempting target. A screen to his left listed all of the transponder codes in the ship's database and the fleets with which they were associated, a screen to his right held a dizzying array of maps, graphs, news searches, and other information about shipjackings in the local sector over the past year, and the front screen showed a live feed from a scout drone's camera, floating about a klick off the port bow to give him a good view of the ship's current appearance.
Roy was the executive officer of one of the many small, unaffiliated fleets that plied the spacelanes in Human territory. Once humanity finally got around to colonizing other solar systems, seemingly everyone on Earth wanted their own slice of the interstellar pie, but not everyone had the resources for it. Where many governments and international corporations commissioned their own fleets, and the largest governments and megacorps were even able to build multiple fleets for their various departments and business units, a lot of the smaller nations and domestic companies simply didn't have the funds for more than one or two ground-to-orbit transports, if that. So dozens of independent fleets started popping up to service those needs; these fleets often came with range limitations, exorbitant fees, slow jump drives, low cargo capacities, and other annoyances, but their clients couldn't exactly afford to be picky.
He eyed a particular scatter plot to his right for a moment, pondering, then tapped a name on his left. "Hello Alibaba," he called, "Set ship identity to FENL." The ship's virtual assistant acknowledged the request with a cheerful chime. Within moments the front screen showed that the ship's hull now bore the bright and blocky red-and-green-with-yellow-highlights pattern of the Frota Estrela Nacional de Lisbon, the Portuguese starfleet, and the ship's bland flattened-oblong shape now boasted the sweeping curves associated with products of the Lisbon shipyards, thanks to some incredibly illegal nanofabricators placed strategically throughout the hull; actual physical modifications would hold up much better to EMPs and invasive sensor scans than the standard holographic emitters that freelancers generally used.
Independent fleets were hired for all sorts of tasks of all degrees of legality, depending on their individual capabilities. Sometimes they were glorified delivery drones, sometimes pirates asset acquisition specialists, sometimes scouts for colony fleets, sometimes covert assets for larger organizations who wanted to keep their hands clean. Roy's fleet, Charlie's Chameleons, was a well-equipped and experienced mercenary fleet and one of the few trusted to play the deniable-asset role, as they were doing now. While humanity was nearly a decade into the process of officially integrating with the larger galactic society and it would probably be a decade more before their laws, technology, and such were fully integrated with the other species', unsavory types had already set up shop near the borders of Human territory years before and had started to make a nuisance of themselves, and now several Human colonies were quietly starting to take steps to deal with them.
The Chameleons' current target was one Rit!tkatp, an unpronounceably-named and incredibly cunning member of a major T!ka!irtk gang that had steamrolled the other criminal organizations in several systems a few years back and was now running basically every illegal enterprise in the sector from black marketeering to smuggling to things best left unmentioned. If that gang was the Italian Mafia in Space--and they did try to cultivate that impression, to the extent that a bunch of ugly pseudo-insectoids could pull off the "gentleman criminal" look, anyway--then Rit!tkatp was their Godfather, and he had a particular penchant for shipjacking that had led the colonies of Abydos Prime, Malcor III, and Newer Zealand to hire the Chameleons to do something about it, before the gang scared away all shipping from their respective solar systems and left them cut off from the wider sector.
The virtual assistant chimed again. "Ship designation?" it asked in a dispassionate, slightly Chinese-accented voice. Roy tapped his chin and stared at his right screen, not responding. "Ship designation?" the ship asked again after a brief pause, and Roy waved a hand in irritation. "Bah, that won't work. He goes after eighty-three percent of FENL shipping in this region, but we still don't know what makes the bastard pick one ship over another and we can't afford to guess wrong."
"That's a bit long for a name, boss, and it's not Portuguese," the ship remarked, this time in a much more human-like voice and one tinged heavily with sarcasm.
Roy glared briefly in the general direction of the front viewport, trusting that the ship's ex-military AI, Karma, would have no trouble seeing his expression through one of its many cameras scattered throughout the bridge. (Having an AI on a non-military vessel was just as illegal as the transponder database and the nanofabricators. Something of a running theme with the Chameleons, really.)
"What did I say about breaking character?" he asked mildly.
"Hey, I have to play dumb when clients are around, so I have to get my snark on when I can," Karma replied. "Plus, Charlie decided on this personality when you know I like playing Siri better, so you can just deal with disappointment. And before you ask, no, I wasn't able to find any good correlations in the FENL data either, so if you haven't had any brilliant ideas in the past ten seconds you might as well try another one."
"Fine," Roy grumbled. A bit more scrolling and pondering, then: "Hello Alibaba--" "Still right here, boss." "Hello Alibaba, set ship identity to IDF." As the cheery yellow-and-blue-circles pattern of the Ikea Delivery Fleet rapidly painted itself across the hull, Karma asked, "You're thinking he might go for quantity over quality, then, boss?"
Roy glared again, then sighed, giving in. "Maybe. We know he likes the bigger consumer goods shipments, for whatever reason, but none have come through here in a while so he might go for a smaller cargo."
"Makes sense. Designation?"
"Hmm. The IDF Some Assembly Required."
"Good one, boss."
"Nobody asked you."
(The first generation of Earth starships bore exactly the kinds of names one would expect. Every country had so many ships named for historical and pop culture references--the most popular in America being Serenity, Millennium Falcon, and Enterprise among the civilian fleets and Washington, Midway, and also Enterprise among the military fleets--that even prepending ship designations wasn't enough to tell them apart. That, plus several fleets being sued into bankruptcy by Disney's intellectual property division, made most everyone change naming conventions. After First Contact, when it was discovered that a short-irreverent-phrases scheme was both unique among known spacefaring species and also incredibly irritating to quite a few of them, even the most humorless bureaucrat was happy to go along with the trend; the first few years even saw informal contests for the most innuendo-laden ship names until the diplomatic corps begged for it to stop so they wouldn't have to keep explaining the jokes to other species' fleet registrars.)
Within seconds the ship's new name was added to the hull and the ship's transponder was switched to broadcast the new identity, but Roy still wasn't satisfied. "That won't work either. They never send high-tech stuff in their midrange transports, so there's no way he wouldn't pick up the signature of the bombs or the trackers, or both."
"I think maybe you're being too paranoid, boss. T!ka!irtk scanners aren't that advanced compared to Human ones. We can probably risk it."
"Easy for you to say; if he blows us out of the sky, you can just reload from backup. Let's see. Give me SAF colors, designation Not All That Glitters. No, cancel that, same problem...."
Their wannabe Space Don Corleone was one of the best in the business. His organization operated in eighty sectors falling under at least fifteen different species' legal jurisdictions, and not once had any court managed to get any allegations to stick. Rit!tkatp worked through shell companies of shell companies, always had bullet- and plasma-proof alibis, employed legions of lawyers to ensure he never saw the inside of a law enforcement vehicle (much less a jail cell), never put his name on anything if he could help it, and never left witnesses in any state to testify against him. At least three Earth-based governments and several colonial fleets had task forces waiting on hot standby at all times to jump in, arrest the gangster, and seize his assets the moment he gave them the slightest excuse...but he never gave them that excuse, and so their ships were continually restrained by leashes of red tape and impotent fury.
The Chameleons' employers were well aware that they weren't exactly squeaky clean themselves--very few of the transponder codes they used were obtained through legal freelance work, and "aftermarket modifications" didn't begin to cover what had been done to the jump cores and shield generators of the five ships in their small but heavily-armed fleet--but figured, hey, the legitimate government forces can't do squat without evidence and it takes a thief to catch a thief, so here they were.
The next hour or so passed slowly as Roy thought up and discarded dozens of possible fake identities that might tempt Rit!tkatp into a trap, accompanied by Karma's ever-so-helpful running commentary, from the APF Free Two-Jump Shipping ("You know we don't have enough ships to fake an Amazon convoy") to the RSN Duke Duke Duke Duke of Oil ("Nah, he hasn't jacked any Saudi ships since that new petroleum refinery started up on Epsilon Eridani 3") to the RKF Package Delivers You ("He has friends in the Russian Federation and you don't speak Russian, you'd give the game away if he has native speakers in any of his picket ships") to the NSWS Beware of Drop Bears ("Come on, boss, Newer Zealand would never allow a Newer South Wales ship in their territory after that last incident").
Finally, Roy slammed a fist on his armrest, cutting off Karma's latest comment. "This isn't going to work. We're not the first ones to try something like this, and no one's ever pulled the wool over that bastard's compound eyes before. We have to try something new, but how can you possibly catch a gangster who's thought of everything!?" He dropped his head into his hands and gave a muffled order through his fingers to recall the drone and reset everything to defaults.
"You sure, boss? For what they're paying us, you really want to just let Space Tony Soprano off the hook like that?" Karma asked as the drone headed back toward its hangar and the ship's outlines flattened out into blandness. "You tell Charlie you're out of ideas and she's not going to be happy, and after all the wining-and-dining she had to do for the bigwigs on that New Phobos gig, neither is her bank account."
For a long moment, Roy just sat there, thinking, as a smile slowly grew on his face. "Bank account, huh," he murmured to himself, then lifted his head and spoke with renewed enthusiasm. "Karma, change of plans. Load up the Skreaming Skulls paint jobs on all the ships, and then I'll need to talk to the captain."
A burst of static blasted from the speakers before Karma responded, "Sorry, boss, had to do a systems check on my hearing. I could've sworn you just said the Skreaming Skulls."
"You heard me."
"The ridiculously-over-the-top space pirate getup you use when clients just want tons of property damage and for us to scare the bejesus out of whoever the target is? The one that would make me bluescreen with embarrassment if it were possible for my personality template to have gone through a goth phase in its youth? The one with absolutely zero capability for stealth or discretion whatsoever? That Skreaming Skulls?"
"That's the one."
"Are you insane? What happened to being subtle?
"Probably. And fuck 'subtle'."
"Well...you're the boss. Just don't mind me if I take a fresh backup and sync it back to base before we go."
"You do that. Now, give me a minute to write up a proposal and then ring up the captain."
A little while later, Roy leaned back comfortably as the face of Captain Charlotte "Charlie" van den Heuvel filled the screen in front of him. The pair of welding goggles perched on her forehead indicated that he'd caught her in the middle of fixing something, probably the dodgy recirculator on Chameleon One that kept breaking because they hadn't had the time or money to give the life support systems the full overhaul they needed.
"Sarge! I was beginning to think I wasn't going to hear from you today."
"I keep telling you, I hate that nickname."
"Well, tough. Captain's orders. I take it you've figured out a decoy job that'll fool every last one of those bugs?"
"Nope, not a clue!" Roy said with a cheery grin, causing the captain to lose her own grin. "Complete change of plans, and I think you'll like the new plan. I think it's time we called in the big guns."
Charlie raised an eyebrow. "We don't have big guns, Sarge. The Chameleon Base retrofit got delayed, remember?"
"Not those big guns," Roy shook his head as he sent his proposal over to her. "Those big guns."
The captain read it over, as did the instances of Karma on both Roy's ship and hers, then whistled softly. "Gutsy, and stupid, but he'll never see it coming. Gold star, Roy. I'll tell Ace, Tiny, and Eagle to prep for departure. Briefing in twenty, jets up in forty."
A space station floated in the void, far off the established spacelanes and nowhere near anything resembling a planet, or even a large asteroid. Its only company was a fleet of ships and a handful of smaller defense stations, ranging in quality from the finest models that laundered money could buy to lightly used models that had been repurposed after what was left of their prior owners had been rinsed off of the bulkheads. The former sort had been built with the sorts of odd angles and strange proportions that their T!ka!irtk owners found aesthetically appealing and other species found headache-inducing, while the latter sort had been retrofitted to that design as best as possible, and in both cases they were all decorated in a manner that appeared to be boring sheets of uniform whiteness to those inferior species whose visual organs were limited to sensing what they laughably termed the "visible" spectrum of light.
This gathering of vessels was not hidden nor kept secret in any way, despite its remoteness. On the contrary, its master Rit!tkatp delighted in welcoming all comers to enjoy the creature comforts of his station, whether their tastes lay with gambling, racing, mind-altering substances, negotiable affections, or even more exotic pursuits. All beings, from the poorest sight-seer to the most inquisitive government investigator, were invited to partake in its pleasures--provided, of course, that they did not stick their olfactory organs where they didn't belong.
On this particular occasion, Rit!tkatp, patriarch of his extended family and clutch-master of the station, reclined regally in something that only a member of his species would recognize as a chair, as two of his employees filed his dorsal phalanges and several more polished his forearm plates. The T!ka!irtk species was semi-insectoid and covered with something that wasn't quite an exoskeleton, from which protruded many bony outgrowth that served both as defensive spines and as sensory apparatus. They had four bulbous eyes, two compound eyes for seeing motion and two simple eyes for distance vision; four arms and four legs, all multi-jointed and bone-plated; and a mouth both filled with sharp teeth and ringed by pedipalps.
The memoirs of the Human diplomat who had first made contact with the T!ka!irtk famously described her first impression of them being "the result of a drunken orgy between a praying mantis, a wolf spider, and the ugliest porcupine on Earth," and if anything she was being too kind.
Rit!tkatp enjoyed surveying his domain from the control center that was the heart and brain of the station. The clatter of dice rolling in the gambling hall, the rustling of smuggled goods passing through hangars not depicted on the station blueprints, the pathetic wails of those who required encouragement to repay their loans in a timely fashion...these sounds were music to his aural receptors, the rhythm by which he lived his life.
Alas, a flashing light on the proximity sensor board informed him that the intricate symphony of station operations was shortly to be interrupted by an unplanned intermission.
"Look alive, people," the captain's voice sounded in everyone's earpiece, "we have reversion in two minutes. Remember, don't take any unnecessary risks, don't worry about picking good targets, just keep firing at anything and everything in weapons range until you get the signal, then stall as long as you can." Acknowledgements came from Chameleon One through Chameleon Five, and each ship's crew performed a few last-minute equipment checks.
"Cortana, status summary for all ship systems," Roy called. "All systems green," came the cool synthesized voice of the virtual assistant, followed by Karma's voice adding, "Except the long-range transmitters, which are...blue, I guess, since someone decided that pirates like Cortana for whatever reason. Or whatever other color you'd give a system that I'm giving extra-special attention to, so that I can transmit myself out of the mess you meatbags are about to get yourselves into."
The bridge crew laughed, one calling out, "We love you too, Karma!" as the timer ticked down toward zero. The navigator started counting down with it: "Reversion in three...two...one...now!"
Right on cue, the HMS Dead To Rights, Seasons Don't Fear The..., No Kill Like Overkill, Gallows Humor, and Do Unto Others, Repeat As Necessary of the infamous Skreaming Skulls Skwadron popped into existence in a spasm of warped spacetime and hilariously bad graffiti. Each ship immediately unloaded every railgun, missile tube, plasma launcher, and drone fighter on board at the nearest target. They'd chosen their approach vector very carefully to ensure that no civilian ships were in the line of fire, just Rit!tkatp's goons. There were likely to be few civilians around in any case, as station security didn't like having too many ships arriving or departing at any given time.
The ensuing three minutes or so were the highlight of Roy's career thus far. Nothing like blowing up bad guys with no concern for ammo limits or mission objectives to relieve some stress.
But far too soon, the party was over.
"Bad news, boss," Karma called urgently, "we've got a frigate at our two o'clock. Make that three. Make that six. Um. Make that a six and two drone carriers." Roy glanced to the tactical display, disbelieving, but the AI was right: somehow, a mere gentleman crime boss had not one, not two, but eight capital ships at his disposal--and that's just what he had within jump distance on short notice. That would certainly explain how he'd managed some of the more impossible-sounding feats attributed to him, and why most local pirate crews would refuse to cross him for any reason and also refuse to say why. Must have bribed a shipyard or something...or, hell, maybe they were a present from some species that wasn't a big fan of humanity and would love to see someone meddle with their affairs.
Vastly increased danger aside, though, it didn't change the Chameleons' mission profile. The frigates had almost reached firing distance when Ace made his move: in the most hectic region of the battle, two T!ka!irtk gunboats went charging for the No Kill Like Overkill, both sides firing volley after volley of missiles and countermeasures at each other, and only two ships came out the other side of the expanding field of shrapnel and debris that resulted from the skirmish.
On sensors, the two surviving ships were the two T!ka!irtk gunboats, one heavily damaged and one mostly fine, and the expanding hull fragments of Chameleon Three were all that was left of the fake Skreaming Skulls ship; in reality, however, one of the gunboats had been destroyed and, in the sensor-scrambling confusion, Chameleon Three had swiftly scanned its profile and transponder and taken its place. The "damaged gunboat" turned tail and limped back to "its" hangar, immediately forgotten by its fellows.
The plan at that point had been to keep blowing things up while Ace worked to keep the attention on the other four ships, but the frigates changed things. It was all the Skulls could do to avoid the capital ships' guns, and despite some amazing piloting from Tiny and crack shooting from all the Chameleon gunners they shortly found themselves captured by tractor beams and dragged helplessly within range of the station's even larger guns. The crews' former high spirits were understandably shaken, but Roy reassured the crew of Chameleon Two that if they hadn't been reduced to atoms yet they'd probably come out of this alive so just sit tight and wait and everything would be fine, and he was sure the other officers on the other Chameleon ships were telling their crews basically the same thing.
The speakers crackled to life unbidden. "You know, I was having such a good day." Rit!tkatp's smooth baritone echoed throughout the bridge--or, rather, the voice of his translator; T!ka!irtk couldn't make the appropriate sounds for any human tongue, and vice versa for humans. (Unless they were fluent in one of those African clicking languages, from what Roy had heard, but even then apparently they sounded like a dog trying to speak French.) So both species used translation devices to communicate, and fortunately he'd hooked his up directly to the comm system so they only heard the translated voice. Roy had dealt with them in person before, and the way all those conversations would go was that they'd first hear one of the bugs say something in his own language that would sound like someone firing a machine gun at a xylophone, then the translator would speak in a Human tongue, then the Humans would speak, then their own translator would fire yowling cats back at the bugs, and they'd alternate like that for the duration; it was enough to give anyone migraines.
"I slept so well, my breakfast was wriggling, my customers were happy...and now, you jump into my system, the system of a law-abiding citizen, and you commit property damage the likes of which I have never seen. I am well within my rights to confiscate your ships in recompense and send your crew back to T!ka!ir to pay off the damages with hard labor. But I am a generous and honorable being. Tell me who hired you to do this, and I may be willing to let you go. I may not even inform the authorities that you did this, so that you may remain free to continue your detestable activities elsewhere."
Roy had to hand it to him, the man was smooth. Perfect "incensed businessman" tone with a bit of "agreeable neighbor" thrown in, and only a barely-noticeable dash of "unrepentant murderer" in the mix to show he wasn't to be trifled with. He acted just as if he were talking into yet another journalist's holorecorder; he had to, since for all he knew the Skreaming Skulls were live-streaming this conversation back to their mysterious employers in the hopes of catching him admitting to something illegal. That, too, had been tried a few times before.
Before he could think of something to say Charlie responded first in the most insultingly casual tone she could manage. "No one hired us. We decided that you were scum, and your ships didn't have nearly enough holes in them, and it's a weekend, and we were bored, so why not pop in and say hi?"
Rit!tkatp didn't believe that for a moment, of course--mercenaries, do something for free?--so he and the captain traded polite, velvet-coated barbs for a bit while the newer crewmembers waited on the edge of their seats for the moment when the alien gangster tired of it and ordered them vaporized. Roy had stopped paying attention, though. He only had eyes for one tiny corner of his screens, where he waited for a message from Chameleon Three.
As soon as it came through, he grinned fiercely and accepted the data transfer attached to the message, and several minutes later--it was a pretty huge transfer--he gave the crew a thumbs up, waited for them to quiet down, and hit the transmit button while the alien gangster was still speaking.
"Have you heard of an old Earth gangster named Al Capone?" he interrupted, to an uncertain pause from Rit!tkatp. "This is your second who barges into our conversation?" he asked. At Charlie's nod he adjusted something offscreen and now appeared to be looking directly at Roy. "No, I have not. This is relevant because...?"
"Well, I was thinking you might have, since he bears a striking similarity to a Mr. Zhanpeng Lee, a bureaucrat in the office of the Minister of Finance on Xin Beijing. Also a Ms. Beatriz Gonzales, a sales director with Lockheed-Grumman Industries. And oh, I believe also Mr. Dan O'Neill, Mr. Lubo Denisov, and Ms. Sweta Chandragiri. Need I go on?"
No response from Rit!tkatp except a twitching of his pedipalps. The mentioned names were either false identities he used to do business in Human space or bribed and/or blackmailed intermediaries between real companies and his shell companies, discovered in the complete copy of the gangster's financial records taken by Chameleon Three's instance of Karma, and the twitching indicated frantic thought on the gangster's part as to how that information could have been retrieved.
Rit!tkatp wasn't stupid enough to keep his personal records on the station-wide network for any two-bit hacker to find if he or she rooted an information kiosk or gambling machine; everything was in an armored server room directly below his office, hard-linked to his office terminal and shielded from any sort of wireless access, which only he and his most trusted associates could access and in which he could withstand an assault for several hours at least. And of course there was plenty of surveillance and security teams between his enemies and his data, such that anyone trying to dash to the vault would surely be cut down before they got even one floor up from the casinos. He'd taken every reasonable precaution against every reasonable form of attack.
What his security policies did not take into account, however, was an illegally-enhanced military-grade AI gaining root access to the repair bay computers several dozen floors below his office, taking over the station's maintenance robots (glorified ten-foot-tall alien Roombas, basically, and not particularly difficult to co-opt), marking all the corridors between the hangar and his office as closed for cleaning to clear out any civilians, quietly intercepting the camera feeds from the empty hallways, and then using Chameleon Three's boarding lasers to drill straight up through all those floors and into the server room itself, at which point Karma had physical dataport access and the game was up. "Crazy flying AI with frikkin' laser beams" isn't the sort of thing usually covered by standard security policies, so Rit!tkatp could be forgiven for not anticipating that.
"You think to threaten me? In your decidedly helpless position?" Rit!tkatp demanded, still maintaining his innocent businessman air with some effort. "You think that I will be afraid of images of extracted endoskeletons and oxygen-bearing fluids on your ships? No, your Human superstitions do not apply to the T!ka!irtk. We know that death is certain, and because of this we do not fear it."
"Funny you say that," Roy continued, "since we superstitious humans have a slightly different saying. 'Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.' And that's the striking similarity: None of those individuals pay their taxes."
Now the alien looked honestly confused. "See, I know that a businessman such as yourself would scrupulously pay your taxes, and so would any of your cover identities. Excuse me, your business associates. But you forgot one little thing. There's one backwards little country on good old Earth that's always behind the times and out of step with the rest of the civilized world called America, you might have heard of it. Those crazy Americans have all sorts of crazy policies; for god's sake, it's twenty-one-forty-fucking-seven and they still haven't switched everything to the metric system. And one of their quaint little rules involves taxes."
Charlie chimed in from Chameleon One: "You're damn right it does. See, I'm an American citizen thanks to my mother. Doesn't matter that I've never set foot on Earth in my life, or any American colonies, or hell, even an American-built space station, they take their 'citizens living abroad' thing very seriously, and every year I have to file my taxes with Uncle Sam. Every damn year. Eritrea used to require that too, but they gave up that nonsense almost a century ago. And I complain about it to my XO here every damn year, too...which worked out nicely this time, I guess."
Rit!tkatp had reached both left arms offscreen and appeared to be quietly yet frantically tapping away at a terminal, paying attention to Roy with his right eyes and his computer with his left; it was a somewhat disconcerting sight. Roy glanced over at his tactical display where he was getting a jump proximity notification, probably the same one that had the gangster all upset. Unless he was looking up Al Capone in whatever Human historical records he had access to, which was also possible. "And seeing as no fewer than one-third of your false identities have American citizenship and many of your shell corporations are registered in American colonies, well, that brings us back to Al Capone. When the government managed to show he hadn't been paying his taxes back in nineteen...whenever it was, well, that was a federal crime."
"Yes yes yes, I see your point," Rit!tkatp said hurriedly, chest plates clicking in alarm and dorsal phalanges folding outwards in frustration. "You have uncovered blackmail material on me, and now you will wish something in exchange for not alerting the Human governments, I am sure. So--"
"Nope, too late for that, sonny," Ace interrupted from Chameleon Three, his voice coming from Rit!tkatp's side of the connection since he was patched into the station's comms. "Already sent it all over. Would even have gift-wrapped it, if they had a tri-D printer in their office somewhere. Got a thank-you note back, too, ain't that sweet. Now, normally these things take something on the order of a hundred eighty business days, but I think in your case they'll make an exception. Right...about...."
Silence.
"...about...oh, come on, they said twenty minutes! Damn government bureaucracy, where's a dramatic entrance when you need one?"
More silence.
Then, flashes of light. Four unmarked ships in plain gray jumped into the system in escort formation, heading for the station. They definitely had the highly-functional-with-a-hint-of-muscle aesthetic of American ships, to Roy's eye; he thought the design was a bit boring compared to, say, the Brazilian or Italian fleets, but at least they'd stopped putting red, white, and blue stars and stripes on everything with an engine and a flat surface.
Rit!tkatp hesitated for long moments, all plates and phalanges going utterly still. "You're not thinking of resisting arrest, are you?" Roy asked mockingly. The alien glared at him with all four eyes, then spat, "If that is all the fleet your Bureau of Federal Investigators can muster, I don't see why not." The frigates dropped their tractor locks on the Chameleon ships to go engage the new Human vessels, leaving only the carriers and drone fighters (and of course the station itself) to keep them under guard.
Roy looked on with concern. Surely they didn't send just four ships? When even without the capital ships the region always swarmed with drones and the station itself could withstand a siege for days?
"That's not the FBI, buddy. They only have sub-orbital ships and no off-planet jurisdiction. Check the IFFs," Ace said smugly, and both Rit!tkatp and the Chameleons checked their tactical screens. "IRS? Io Rescue Service?" the alien said with bemused contempt. "Close, you're thinking IIRS, Io Interstellar Rescue Service. Nope, that there's the Internal Revenue Service."
On the far side of the fleet, the frigates were engaging the new arrivals. The front two ships turned out to be torpedo boats, the IRS In Triplicate and the IRS Red Tape, and they were unloading missile volleys on the frigates at a staggering pace while the support ships IRS Credit Freeze and IRS Wage Garnishment raised jamming fields and fired off the occasional EMP burst. The T!ka!irtk frigates, confident in their superior numbers, didn't even slow down as they approached the quartet of smaller ships, and so they were caught completely by surprise when three new ships jumped in right above the others, the destroyers Rapid Depreciation, Asset Liquidation, and Maximum Deductions.
"Your mere tax collectors have capital ships?" Rit!tkatp asked incredulously. Roy wasn't sure if the gangster had forgotten the Chameleons were still on the line or if he just didn't care at this point, but with glee he replied "Well, your mere civilian 'casino owners' have capital ships, so fair's fair."
The carriers were ordered to the station's defense next without even giving them time to collect all their fighters, as were the few smaller stations capable of independent movement. As soon as they were out of range of the main station's protection, though, they were ambushed by yet more ships jumping in. These ships, three frigates and five cruisers, were large enough that both Humans and T!ka!irtk could see that they weren't plain gray at all; they were actually white with thousands of tiny black boxes and tiny black text criss-crossing their hulls. Of course, thought Roy, forms and spreadsheets. Should've known.
The frigates Thorough Audit, Double Entry, and Mandatory Compliance made short work of the carriers without their drone screens to protect them, and the cruisers Let's Get Fiscal, Weighed in the Balance Sheets, Nine-Tenths of the Law, Accrual Intentions, and I've Got 1099 Problems made short work of the defense stations, both mobile and immobile.
Roy didn't know exactly what a crazed T!ka!irtk looked like right before it decided to do something incredibly reckless, but whatever expression was on Rit!tkatp's face probably qualified. The main station began firing every last weapon in the IRS fleet's direction to prevent them from approaching as its long-dormant engines slowly came to life and began propelling it far enough away from the other ships to make a jump; a few foolhardy civilian ships darted out of various hangars and began angling for jump vectors so as not to end up who-knows-where in the hands of an angry mob boss, but most decided that they'd rather not risk entering the crossfire of a major fleet engagement, thank you very much.
He may have lost his fleet, many of his henchbeings, and his untouchable status, but the alien might still escape to fight another day. Roy could hear Charlie swearing up a storm over the comms at the prospect, and he felt the same way, but they were powerless to do anything about it. The Chameleons were still close enough to the station that it had but to pivot a single gun away from bombarding the other fleet to turn them to ash, so all they could do was float there and watch it inch away to freedom.
Until, that is, one last ship jumped its way into the system right in the fleeing station's path, arriving with enough force that Roy swore he could feel the gravity waves rippling through Chameleon Two. It was a dreadnought, and the writing on its bow proudly proclaimed it to be the IRS 3949-A
On screen, Rit!tkatp stared at the dreadnought for a long moment, then drooped like a wilting leaf, all of his plates opening wide in a sign of submission. The station's guns fell silent and its engines spun down before they'd even had a chance to reach full power. Roy almost felt sorry for the bastard.
Almost.
As the dreadnought and cruisers sent out boarding shuttles and his crew started talking excitedly about sending the battle recordings to everyone they know, Roy put on a mock conciliatory tone. "Hey, buddy, don't worry." The soon-to-be-ex-gangster looked up at him with his right eyes. "Sure, you might have been involved in wire fraud, embezzlement, smuggling, theft, grand theft, bribery, robbery, burglary, murder, assassination, illegal gambling, illegal prostitution, drug running, and who knows what else on top of the major tax fraud, but at least you avoided one thing."
He leaned forward and lowered his voice, and Rit!tkatp leaned in as well.
"Count yourself lucky that you never, ever committed mail fraud, because US postal inspectors...well, those fuckers don't mess around."

Health groups have blasted a bid by James Packer's Crown Limited to allow smoking across the entire gaming floor of its proposed Sydney casino, an area that could be as large as two and a half rugby league fields.
Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkie said the move was "extremely concerning" and accused Crown of "putting profit before the health of their staff and consumers".
NSW Cancer Council manager of tobacco control Scot Walsberger said the organisation was "disappointed" in the NSW government's conditional approval of the proposal and said potential employees would have to choose "between a job at the casino and their health".
Crown's proposal, conditionally accepted by NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell on Thursday, describes allowing smoking in the gaming area as "absolutely critical". The company has proposed a 24 hour-a-day gaming area of up to 20,000 square metres – about the size of the MCG playing surface and slightly bigger than that of the SCG.
"It's such a backward step considering that we've had smokefree workplaces in this country across different states for probably two decades," Ms Sharkie said.
"We don't think there should be exemptions for high-roller rooms – they're still exposing workers to enormous harms."
In a letter to the NSW Government, released by Crown on Thursday, Mr Packer said: "In order to effectively compete with Macau, Singapore and the rest of Asia, Crown Sydney will need to permit smoking in VIP gaming areas."
Crown's Sydney rival, The Star, enjoys a similar exemption from NSW laws in its high roller areas and Crown's Melbourne high-roller area, the Mahogany Room, is exempt from Victorian anti-smoking laws.
Mr Packer said Crown had struck a deal with union United Voice "in relation to the issue of installing and maintaining state-of-the-art air quality technology".
However, Ms Sharkie said there was "no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke".
"The research shows you need a tornado-like suction to be of any benefit, so the risk of harm is very high – they don't work, these curtains or ventilation devices.
A Crown spokesman said the company "takes the issue of staff occupational health and safety extremely seriously".
"A surgical operating theatre requires at least 20 air exchanges an hour, Crown's investment in state of the art air filtration ensures we are in excess of 30 exchanges," he said.
The entire Sydney gaming floor at Crown's proposed Sydney casino is to be a "VIP gaming area", with entry restricted to members and a minimum bet per hand of $20.
However, Ms Sharkie said she was sceptical of moves to restrict access by the general public.
"I don't think they would really be filled with extremely wealthy international gamblers because I don't think they're going to need 20,000 square metres," she said.
"So I don't know how the casino is defining a VIP, but we are aware here [in Victoria] that it's pretty easy to get a VIP pass to Crown."
24/7
Crown proposes the gaming area will operate "24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year" with "no limit on the number of table games".
Dealers are to operate traditional baccarat, blackjack and roulette tables but there are also to be "semi-automated table games and fully automated table games".
Crown says it will offer some non-smoking gaming tables, "reflecting the preferences of some VIP gaming customers".
Under a memorandum of understanding reached with union United Voice, air quality is to be tested every three months and the results reported to health and safety representatives.
The test results are to be handed over to the government and an annual report tabled in NSW Parliament.
Mr Walsberger called on the states to join together in a national ban on smoking in high-roller rooms.
"The disappointment here is that we aren't even sticking with the status quo, we're offering a new, very large casino in a very large space to get this additional exemption."
On Thursday, Crown's proposal advanced to stage three of the NSW government's approval process for "unsolicited proposals", which the government said "involves the finalisation of all outstanding issues with a view to entering into a binding agreement, if the government decides to accept the final offer".
Fairfax Media has approached United Voice for comment.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/casino-smoking-exemption-blasted-by-health-groups-20130708-2plbm.html#ixzz2YQ0JDRzX