RE: Pirates and Privateers

Brian Bell wrote:

> On a military level, I would guess that most governments have taken
the
JFK
> possition with respect to the AE (i.e. an attack fron one memeber of
the
AE
> will be considered an attack by ALL members of the AE).

I don't know how true that can be. Some of the smaller AE outpusts are
small
family groups or even lone (intrepid, insane, fill in the blank)
adveturers/claimstakers/homesteaders/etc. I would imagine the
particularly
far flung outpsts are quite vulnerable to true pirates and "plausibly
deniable" local power antagonism. When Old Zeke way out on some rock
somewhere stops transmitting and all the AE investigation patrol finds
is a
big glass crater where his dome used to be, what's the emperor going to
do?
What if the antagonist is an entrenched power larger than AE? What if
it's a
roving pirate band?

Iceberg Raphael, founder, Actuarial Nightmares