Jack of Harts

For every world the Shang bombarded into new dark or ice ages, the New England Federation answered with a dozen secret fabrication plants. Some resided on the outskirts of populated systems, while others operated in truly dark systems where no human lived. Even Post War accounting cannot calculate exactly how many freighters, destroyers, smaller escorts, or fighters they built. The Shang found and destroyed too many of those secret bases for a full accounting to ever be completed. We do not even know how many secret factories existed, since many launched from systems seeking to save as many of their people as possible while Shang bombardment fleets smashed their planets into rubble or worse. The Shang thought they could beat the Federation by hammering it until it broke. They were wrong, and they paid for it.

The Great Families pushed through numerous wartime emergency measures to streamline their economy and push their population towards greater productivity. In just one change, the social credit earned by helping build the new Victory Ships or volunteering to fight could be passed on to family. They even sent recruiters to Rikers Planet in the New New York system to look for those willing to improve their social credit by serving against the alien threat. It may have been a hive of scum and villainy, but the Great Families would go to any effort to protect their way of life. They even volunteered many of their best and brightest, in grand public ceremonies of course. These and other measures made the New England Federation’s contribution to The War Effort the single greatest economic and manufacturing drive in the history of Earthborn humanity.

The Great Families first waged The War like any other war they had waged in their long histories. Wars of conquest and defeat were temporary, while business was forever. It was business through another avenue, with military victories and losses factored into the final deals that would make the better classes of people on each side money no matter what. The realization that the Shang had no intention of making a deal with the better class of Americans was a shock. They would grind the Great Families down with the same heal they used on everyone else. They did not accept that the Great Families were better than others. That was something the Great Families could not abide. Win or lose, profit or loss, they demanded respect. It offended them when the Shang refused to give it. That is the true reason the Great Families put all their support behind The War. The Shang offended them.