Allanean Arms Offers Instantaneous Interstellar Travel

[Allanea]

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As you know, of course, there are many ways to travel among the galaxies and stars, to reach remote worlds with your cargo and crew. We at Allanean Arms believe, of course, that the one and only truly advantageous way to travel is instantaneous interstellar travel. Many other companies worldwide already provide solutions for this purpose, and we at Allanean Arms would be amiss if we did not ourselves provide our own instantaneous travel solution.

And so here it is: The ITS Mark I Interstellar Gate. A full ten miles [that's 16,000 meters for our more imperial-challenged clients] in internal diameter, the Gate can fit pretty much any ship.

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The Mark I ITSG[/center]

How does it work? Well, the instantaneous travel system itself is, naturally, classified. But what you can know is as follows:

We will plant an ITS gate in orbit of a planet, or other location of your choice. It will be operated by an onboard subsapient AI, linked by quantum-entanglement broadband connection to our central database. When a ship approaches, it will signal the AI, and the AI will enter the coordinates of the gate to which you might want to go. And presto! Instantaneous interstellar travel!

Unlike our competitor ITH system, we allow the passage of armed ships and warships of all types through our gates, provided they can make it through. And frankly, you shouldn't be messing around with warships bigger then 10 miles in diameter, there's no purpose to it. [Yes, Central Facehuggeria, we ARE looking at you.] The client nation can program the AI to block incoming ships from given nations or polities, wit the exception of Allanean Arms vessels.

While using the gates to wage wars is perfectly okay with us, be aware that attacking the gate system in any way will lead to termination of your warranty service and possibly your exclusion from the gate system.

What warranty service? Well, space has its own hazards. Asteroids, micrometeoroids, solar flares, freak anomalies. Allanean Arms technicians will inspect the gate every two years to replace all wear-and-tear damage on your gate. This is a lifetime warranty, by the way.

The gate's power accumulators will run out after about ten years of use. We would prefer you recharge them yourself, but if you do not, Allanean Arms' technicians will do that during their bi-annual inspections.

And how much does this cost? Well, we charge a mere 500 billion dollars for this gate, or 55 billion per year for ten years on the installment plan.

But there's more.

Smaller gates, designed for pedestrian or cargo travel, are available for only $500,000 a pop from our company. For safety reasons it is not possible to use them to get to the coordinates of the orbital gates or vice versa.

Some of those gates have already been installed in various locations, and here's a short and incomplete list:

Orbital Gates:

Earth

Allanean Worlds:

Zarahemla
Neo-Dallas
Egeruo
Mistake
Carmel
Laumer
New Numenor:
Lucas:
Neo-Dallas
Serena.
Stalinvast
New Clondike
Roddenberry
New Nashua
Laura
Beatrice
Libertas [all systems of the Libertas series]
Greenleaf
Elhe Niennah
Constanza
Torvalds
Gates
New Nmweni
Weaver
Giger
Birch
New Maine
Severus



Traileric Worlds:

Octavian's Reach
Strategos
Volantia

Passenger/Cargo Gates:

In Allanean Territory:

An Allanean Passport, visa, or passport of a nation with which Allanea has visa-free travel is necessary to enter Allanean territory from gates outside the United States of Allanea. Sniffer technology will not permit WMD passage.

Liberty-City Space Port, Earth
University of Concord, Liberty-City, Earth
Gene Roddenbery Space Station, Earth Orbit
Neo-Dallas, Neo-Dallas
Sqeeerk'nak, Egeruo

[Sskiss]

The Sskiss are interested in this....

[Trailers]

A super-portal to the Traileric homeworld may raise the hackles of some of the more isolation inclined nobility, but we must recognize the trade advantages of having such a piece of technology in ones system.

Tell us, can one simply pull the plug if a battlegroup tries to stuff itself through the thing?

[Arizona Nova]

-=Sana Business Newsfeed (NoAds Premium Package): "Money Talk(s) With Rick Casson"

The host, at his desk, does his typical opening, welcoming the applause. "Hello everybody!" he yells, to cheers. "How are you all doing tonight? Well, I've got a surprise for the show tonight. You may know this guy - interstellar shipping magnate, old as the hills but doesn't look younger than my 97 Subaru Outrider, richest man in the whole damn empire - no one but John Harshan, CEO of United Federal Shipbuilders!"

Wild cheers echo in the studio as John walks onto the stage, every bit the young, dynamic businessman, and although the camera doesn't show it, his eyes belie an intelligence far older than the rest of him. He waves to the audience as he makes his way to the chair, saying "Thank you," "Awesome," and other such things. When the clamor finally dies, Rick begins to speak.

"So John, have you heard the news?" he cracks knowingly.

"Well Rick, I've got three feeds going into my skull at all times, and if the news is big enough it sets little pulses going through my brain to wake me up at night," he chuckles, and the audience laughs politely as well.

"Just kidding, I knew that," says Rick. "But seriously, this ITS thing, this 'Allanea' - what? Going toe to toe with ITH? Stargates?"

"I know Rick," said John, becoming more serious. "It is a little confusing. First off, there is already a far older and far larger network run by Northrop-Grumman, which we have, which does the same thing, and of course we're part of the ITH too. Second, it's not like the ITH's 'ban' has ever hampered things - we've used the NoGru network for arms and heavy industrial transport for ages - ages - now, and it's worked like a champ, and the ITH has filled in the crucial - and far larger - niche of nohaz commercial and civilian traffic. We have bus lines through the ITH. It's basically the interstate for the galaxy. If Allanea is looking to compete with someone, he needs to look at Northrop-Grumman, in my mind."

"Interesting," said Rick. "Where do you think this is going? Don't tell me you don't pick up shades of that time long ago, when certain people began banging on pans and saying they were coming for Klonor."

John smiles knowingly, and says, "Well, I hope it goes places. Ever since NoGru withdrew from ESUS it's been harder to get customer service on those damn gates; though I wouldn't know that as much as the Feddies. Hell knows they've had to fix em enough," he laughes, and a chorus of laughter echoes in the studio. "They've got a mountain to climb though, and once they've done that another one to build. Seeing as they have to pull together a 16 klick behemoth to set things up - as opposed to flipping a damn switch in the ITH - they've got a lot of work ahead of them."

"Well thats all the time we have for today John," said Rick, "Thanks for coming! Next up, Solar startup Umbrella Biogenetics: To Serve Man or to serve man... to horrible mutants?! What do you think!" Feed fades to black.

[Kanuckistan]

Some of those gates have already been installed in various locations, and here's a short and incomplete list:

Orbital Gates:

Earth

Interesting. Would Kanuckistani merchant traffic be able to use the Earth gate to access the network?

...which Allanea has visa-free travel...

Just out of curiosity, who are these?

Sniffer technology will not permit WMD passage.

*hides SAPL Decadence explosives*

[Allanea]

http://www.powernutritiondepot.com/forum
http://www.ihealthbuzz.com

http://www.healthypages.net

The Sskiss are interested in this....

Quite awesome. Name me your worlds that you want added.

Tell us, can one simply pull the plug if a battlegroup tries to stuff itself through the thing?

This would depend very much on how much warning you have left.

Interesting. Would Kanuckistani merchant traffic be able to use the Earth gate to access the network?

Yes.

Just out of curiosity, who are these?

Derscon, the C'tan, a variety of the more benevolent ESUS nations, GFFA and CSS nations. I should compile a list.

*hides SAPL Decadence explosives*

Mostly it's a plot device to prevent idiots from going HAHA I STUFFED WMD IN YOUR PASSENGER GATE YOU ALL DIE

[Skeelzania]

==Message from the Ministry of the Navy, Strategic Services==
==Addressed to the "Chairman of Allanean Arms," a standard Skeelzanian formality==

Mister Chairman,

We received what I can only call a brochure several weeks ago, concerning this new 'Stargate' you hope to market. Since then we have been monitoring the discussions and contemplating our next action. I will admit that such a device is of some interest to the Skeelzanian Sternreich. At the present time, a typical battlefleet would take upwards of three weeks to reach Sol from the Skeelzanian heartland. Not that we'd immediately send a fleet through, but the point is that it takes far too long for heavy Skeelzanian ships to travel any significant distance. This includes our merchant marine.

We do, however, have reservations similar to those of our Kanuckistani associates, and then some.

You may be aware that Skeelzania has had a turbulent relationship with the Solar System in the past. While never becoming a full shooting war, death was had on both sides. While the Kaiserin hopes to remedy this in the near future, we must still show caution. As such, we would be much more receptive to purchasing a number of these Interstellar Gates if we knew that, at a moment's notice, one could shut the things down. This is especially pertinent as one member of the network, the "C'tan," are suspected of having violated Skeelzanian space and of destroying a Skeelzanian frigate without provocation. While the Kaiserin wishes for peace, we cannot be sure that the Automatons wish the same.

Which leads us to our next point. The idea of such a strategic resource being controlled by a "sub-sapient" Artificial Intelligence (and a foreign one, no less!) is personally abhorrent to a number of figures in the Skeelzanian military and government. I would like to know if the gate may be modified to incorporate at least some human crew, if only to throw a manual killswitch (assuming there even is such a thing on board).

The final point is really a matter of clarification. I cannot determine if the prohibition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" applies to every gate in the network, or merely the ones in Allanean space. It may be helpful if one would fully define "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as well; there is not a missile aboard a Skeelzanian warship with a payload of less than ten megatons, and yet these are common weapons.

The answering of these questions will do much to help us in reaching our conclusion.

Respectfully yours,

Reichsgraf Orstov Tredegar, Vice Deputy of the Sternmarine

[Capsule Corporation]

Upon the mere consideration of acquiring even one of these massive gates, protesting voices came from all over raysia. Most of the opposition was sparked by the anti-allaneans, but their points made sense.

The protest: "this sounds like a scam to give allanea instantaneous reaction ability to any system in the union! If relationships ever go sour, we will have handed them the advantage of deploying their fleets in a manner of minutes. While we already own this ability within our foldships, and see the advantage in energy usage, ease of deploying of deploying readied battlegroups, and ease of passage for civillian ships between colonies, we are at this time hesitant to support allanea in their quest to let other nations fund their territorial expansion programs."

[Trailers]

Allanean merchants, in light of recent territorial acquisition in a distant galaxy, it has become necessary that we find a stable, instant mode of travel. Your gates will fit the job nicely, assuming that they can be disassembled on this side of the Kanuckistani-stabilized naturally occurring gate and flown through. If this is the case, we would like to requisition three of these gates. One shall be delivered to the Traileric home system of Octavians Reach, your transport crew will be given a temporary access visa through our Odysseus corridor FTLi; the visa may be activated when and where they like. The second shall be delivered to Strategos Shipyards located in the New Pergamum starsystem. There is no FTLi or political juggling to do there..And the last of course shall be delivered to the newly acquired helot state of Volantia, located in the galaxy in which we wage war upon the doomed United Federation of Planets or whatever they call themselves..We will be willing to pay in compensation for this longer trek, and any other difficulties you may have networking this far flung gate with the others..A speedy completion of these tasks will net you a further bonus to line your pockets with. The A sum of 500 billion Traileric minai will be converted to universal currency and wired to you upon acceptance of this offer, with the remaining trillion-and-then-some to be paid upon networking of all three gates and a demonstration of safe travel from the Milky Way galaxy to the gate at Volantis. Is this acceptable? We are open to negotiation.

--Message ends.--

[Allanea]

We will happily install this wormhole for you at the location of your choice.