The companies share a common history, but the devil’s in the little secrets they’ve learned on the frontier. NorCol’s closest competitor is Hasei Haldraad Deep Space Engineering. They aren’t as big, their total displacement maybe two-thirds of what the Collective can bring to bear. They’re no less of a threat, though. Hasei builds for speed, and they’re the best at it: everything they touch is faster, lighter, and sleeker than anything the competition can provide. It sells itself on that, and I’ve seen the adverts up close.

Well, I haven’t seen them, exactly. I’ve caught blurs and flickers on my scopes, tracked machine-ghosts almost too fast to follow. I’ve even fought a few, if that’s what you can call it. Staring at my instruments and hurling shots at distant pinpoints, hoping I’ll get lucky.

Hasei sells steel and stability, but there are others on the frontier. Companies that trade in time and expertise, offering solutions to every kind of problem you can imagine. If you want something done, and you want it dirty cheap, you get Loh Kustar on the line. The Locusts are always on the news band, propping something up or stamping it out. The results are never pretty, but there’s always results. Sigurd-Lem is almost the exact opposite. Not quick, not cheap, but put up enough capital and their R&D departments will do you miracles and black magic.

But if you need something survived, you buy Nor Collective.

Back before there was an Authority to speak of, back when Sigurd and Hasei were still subsidiaries of the ancient Bayern Corp. Back when the Marr hit Sevastopol and flash-fried the new colony from orbit, the only thing still standing was the only NorCol machine that got there in time. It’s still standing. The survivors turned it into a monument, high on a plinth made of ash and concrete dust. You can even go and see it, so long as you stay behind the radiation shields.

NorCol builds for the future. It’s their motto, but most people don’t understand what that means. It isn’t some feel-good tag line, it’s a promise. When the stars go dark, NorCol’ll be around to watch it happen.

You can always count on NorCol, come rain or shine or afterglow. When one part fails, another takes the load, then another. When you finally kill one of its machines, there’s another ready to walk across its corpse. Redundancy’s what the company does best.