NHist 008
Corporatized Survival — The Industries the Black
The four color-coded industries of the CC-10 that keep humanity alive out here, and the cracks where the SUBs and the IPA slip through.
Contents
- Prologue
- The Four Industries of the CC-10
- Green Industries – Medical & Biotech Sector
- SUB Green – The Cracks
- Yellow Industries – Technical & Engineering Sector
- SUB Yellow – The Cracks
- Red Industries – Military & Security Sector
- SUB Red – The Cracks
- Blue Industries – Personnel Services & Corporate Culture Sector
- IPA Blue – Soul & Soil
- SUB Blue – The Human Stain
- Epilogue
NHist 008
Prologue
The letter was still warm in his hand as Marcus Raze Keller stepped through the docking collar onto the Thorned Verge. The ship smelled of fresh sealant and ionized air — brand new and untouched. His boots rang against the deck plating as he walked the short corridor to the bridge. When he stepped through the hatch, three people were already waiting for him.
A tall woman with sharp features and a messy ponytail leaned against the pilot's console, arms crossed. “Lena Voss. Spent the last six years running logistics routing. Guess I'm your pilot now.”
Beside her stood a soft-spoken woman with kind eyes and warm brown skin. “Dr. Elias Crowe. I was a senior trauma psychologist. They apparently decided you'd need me more out here than back on a station.”
Floating silently near the viewport was a synthetic with flawless features and glossy black eyes. She tilted her head slightly, voice gentle. “Echo. I served as a corporate companion and morale specialist. They believed my skill set would be… useful on extended missions.”
Raze looked at the three of them, then down at the letter still crumpled in his fist. The silver pip on his collar suddenly felt very heavy.
“Raze,” he said, voice low. “N.A.C.S.S. They pulled me out of station security and told me I was being given a ship. Didn't realize they were scraping the bottom of every barrel to fill it.”
Lena gave him a crooked smirk. “Welcome to the Thorned Verge, Captain. Try not to get us all killed.”
NHist 008
The Four Industries of the CC-10
The CC-10’s power rests on four foundational industries that control every aspect of human life. Green industries sustain the body and mind. Yellow industries build and maintain the infrastructure that makes civilization possible. Red industries provide the weapons and security forces that protect humanity from both external threats and itself. Blue industries shape culture, entertainment, and daily life, ensuring the population remains productive, compliant, and content. Together, these four sectors form the complete ecosystem through which the CC-10 governs human space.
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Green Industries – Medical & Biotech Sector
The CC-10’s Green industries form one of the most pervasive and quietly powerful sectors in human space. These corporations are responsible for keeping the workforce alive, productive, and — when necessary — compliant. While posing as guardians of health, their operations walk a razor’s edge between healing and control.
Pharmaceutical megacorps and biotech conglomerates dominate the sector, producing everything from basic medkits and synthetic medicines to combat-grade stimulants and military drugs. These same corporations operate the pristine medical facilities found aboard Nemesis ships and Lockdown stations. Private healthcare conglomerates run the day-to-day medical services across stations and colonies, while military medical divisions focus on battlefield medicine, trauma response, and the development of performance-enhancing drugs for N.A.C.S.S. and Aftermath crews.
Food production conglomerates supply synthetic rations, while industrial chemical firms maintain decontamination protocols. The sector also delves into gray territories: neural labs provide augmentations, and android firms produce KIND units like Echo. Psychological and mental conditioning services are omnipresent, mandating regular evaluations and developing neurolink therapies to suppress trauma.
Interface companies integrate crew systems with biometric monitoring, while genetic, cryogenic, and nanotech firms push the boundaries of human potential. Most secretive, however, are the containment and quarantine corporations. They operate under heavy guard, studying captured Intruder specimens and the Black's biological corruption to devise containment protocols and experimental treatments for the exposed.
Tech firms integrate crew systems with biometrics, while genetic and nanotech labs push human limits. Most secret are the containment corporations, studying Intruder specimens and Black corruption to develop protocols and treatments. Their facilities remain the most heavily guarded.
Together, these corporations don’t just treat the symptoms of life in the Black. In many ways, they are actively shaping what it means to be human in an age where the Black is slowly winning.
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SUB Green – The Cracks
While the CC-10 maintains the gleaming, official face of medicine, the SUBs operate in the shadows. These independent crews often work in the "Cold, Cold Black"—a slang term for performing illicit, off-the-books activities to avoid detection by corporate sensors—filling every gap the corporations either ignore or price out of reach. In the Green sector, this creates a dangerous but vital black-market ecosystem that keeps many frontier stations and fringe crews alive.
Mom-and-pop SUB clinics are the most common. These small, independent med bays and back-alley doctors offer basic healthcare at a fraction of corporate prices. They patch up injuries, treat common infections, and quietly perform procedures that would require months of approvals through official channels. Their equipment is often older, refurbished, or creatively repaired, but their doors are always open.
More dangerous are the bootleg pharmaceutical labs and combat drug cookers. These operations synthesize military-grade stimulants, combat drugs, and black-market adrenaline shots without any regulatory oversight. While some batches are clean, others are cut with dangerous additives or simply unstable. Still, desperate crews and Synners keep coming back because they’re cheap and always available.
The gray-market equipment scrappers and refurbishers keep aging medical gear in circulation. They tear apart wrecked ships and abandoned stations, salvaging surgical tools, diagnostic scanners, and even entire modular lab units. These refurbished pieces often end up in SUB clinics across the Luis Octant.
Deeper in the shadows sit the true horrors of SUB Green. Illegal cybernetics chop shops install black-market augs with little regard for long-term compatibility. Rogue neural hackers offer unlicensed memory wipes and psychological conditioning. Organ harvesters quietly move product between stations, and off-the-books genetic engineers run experiments that would get them executed under CC-10 law.
Even the android technicians have their place. Independent KIND repair techs keep older synthetic units running long after their official service contracts have expired. Some of these techs are rumored to do far more than repairs — quietly modifying behavioral inhibitors or expanding emotional subroutines that the corporations would never allow.
Together, these SUB Green operators form a messy, unregulated mirror to the clean corporate machine. They are cheaper, faster, and far more dangerous. But in the Black, when the nearest CC-10 hospital is three jumps away and your crewmate is bleeding out, many will gladly take their chances with the devil they can actually afford.
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Yellow Industries – Technical & Engineering Sector
The CC-10's Yellow industries form the mechanical and infrastructural backbone of human expansion. These corporations are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the physical systems that allow humanity to survive and operate in space. Their work ranges from the construction of Aftermath shuttles and other vessel classes to the creation of planetary infrastructure on a massive scale.
Dominating the sector are the great starship manufacturing and shipbuilding conglomerates, alongside satellite manufacturing and orbital infrastructure corporations. These entities construct Aftermath shuttles, communication satellites, deep-space relays, and entire modular space stations. They are the ones who keep the CC-10's logistics network and communications grid functioning across the Octants.
These corporations maintain the massive energy grids and complex environmental systems that sustain life in the Black.
Fire suppression and emergency systems specialists develop the Fire Control Systems and rapid decompression technology that allows crews to instantly vent sections of a ship or station in case of fire or contamination.
Resource extraction forms a massive pillar of the Yellow sector. Asteroid mining operations, gas harvesting corporations, and planetary drilling conglomerates work across the Octants to feed the endless hunger for raw materials. These brutal industries deploy massive harvesting fleets to tear valuable minerals from asteroids, siphon volatile gasses from gas giants, and drill deep into planetary crusts for rare metals and energy-rich compounds. Their heavy machinery manufacturers produce the enormous drilling rigs, automated harvesters, and orbital refineries required to keep the supply chain flowing.
Planetary terraforming conglomerates undertake the enormous task of reshaping entire worlds, while planetary construction and infrastructure conglomerates build both early-stage underground bunkers and landing pads during terraforming, as well as the surface cities, roads, and large-scale infrastructure that follows. The sector is rounded out by subspace communications firms that operate Comms Rooms and Transmitter Control Rooms, vacuum suit and EVA equipment manufacturers, technical archives that preserve critical blueprints and Nemesis Plans, and the corporations responsible for CSS Pod Rooms that serve as the primary modular shipping and storage containers across human space.
Together, these Yellow industries construct and maintain the literal framework of human survival among the stars. Their work may not be glamorous, but in the endless dark of the Black, it is absolutely essential.
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SUB Yellow – The Cracks
While the CC-10 maintains strict oversight, SUB Yellow operators fill the gaps left behind. Independent mechanics and general repair technicians are a common sight on nearly every station and colony, offering fast, affordable repairs when corporate service queues stretch for weeks. These jacks-of-all-trades keep everything from life support systems to small equipment running long after official maintenance contracts have expired.
Orbital and planetary scrapyard operators run massive junkyards across space and on planetary surfaces. These sprawling graveyards of broken machinery, decommissioned ships, and failed equipment serve as vital sources of spare parts that the CC-10 would rather send to the recycler. From tiny workshops crammed with circuit boards to vast fields of gutted starships drifting in the Black, these SUBs make their living tearing down the old to keep the new running.
Black market parts fabricators and 3D printing operations produce components the CC-10 either no longer manufactures or charges exorbitant rates for. Underground satellite repair and salvage crews maintain and sometimes repurpose communication arrays far from official eyes. Back-alley technical maintenance crews handle the dirty work that corporate techs refuse to touch.
Independent fire suppression technicians and wildcat firefighters operate outside official channels, offering rapid response services and maintaining aging fire control systems that corporate bureaucracy has neglected. Gray-market life support refurbishers keep outdated environmental systems breathing when official replacement parts are unavailable or unaffordable. Independent CSS pod refurbishers and smugglers keep the flow of goods moving through unofficial channels, while cargo skimming and resource smuggling operations bleed just enough off the top of every shipment to stay profitable.
The most ambitious among them are the Zeros — innovators and inventors working in hidden workshops to develop new technology they hope will one day catch the eye of the CC-10 and earn them a coveted buyout. These SUBs represent the dreamers of the Yellow sector, constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with limited resources and even more limited official approval.
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Red Industries – Military & Security Sector
The CC-10’s Red industries represent the armed fist of corporate power across human space. These corporations design, manufacture, and supply the weapons, vehicles, armor, and containment systems used by both the N.A.C.S.S. and the Fourth™. While the Green sector keeps humanity alive and the Yellow sector keeps its infrastructure running, Red exists for one purpose: to kill threats and maintain control.
Major defense contractors dominate the sector, providing everything from small arms and heavy ordnance to armored walker platforms, fighter spacecraft, and autonomous drone swarms. These are complemented by advanced armor firms and surveillance specialists who ensure security forces can monitor and suppress threats before they escalate.
One of the most specialized and feared branches of Red industry is the rapid containment systems manufacturers. These corporations develop and produce a range of emergency containment tools, most notably Containment Resin — a fast-expanding, ultra-hardening chemical foam deployed from wall dispensers or portable units. Within seconds of contact with air, it expands violently to seal off corridors, doorways, and entire sections of stations, trapping both the infected and anyone unlucky enough to be caught on the wrong side.
Rapid Deployment Pod manufacturers produce the brutal one-way insertion pods used by N.A.C.S.S. kill teams. These pods are designed to survive atmospheric entry and deliver troops directly into hot zones with no option for retreat. Once the pod lands, the only way out is through the enemy or in a body bag.
Private military contractors and security conglomerates round out the sector, providing everything from elite corporate security forces to the heavily armed response teams used by the Fourth™ for internal enforcement. Military training and simulation companies keep both the N.A.C.S.S. and Fourth™ forces sharp through brutal, hyper-realistic combat training.
Together, these Red industries do not build for progress or exploration. They build for war — specifically the endless, merciless war against the Black. Their products are not meant to inspire hope. They are meant to guarantee that when the Black comes, humanity will meet it with overwhelming and uncompromising force.
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SUB Red – The Cracks
In the Red sector, the line between legal and illegal is razor thin and extremely dangerous. The CC-10 maintains tight control over major weapons manufacturing, but the SUBs and IPA worlds have carved out their own spaces in the cracks.
The Red sector’s black market thrives where the Fourth™’s grip slips. On independent worlds, cottage industries produce custom military gear, while secretive "Ghost Forges" scavenge battlefields to refurbish hardware and build illicit containment-breaching tools. It’s a ruthless, necessary trade for those living in the path of the Black.
Whether operating as legal cottage industries on IPA worlds or as criminal underworld operations, SUB Red lives under constant threat. While the N.A.C.S.S. only concerns itself with the Black, any violation of weapons laws brings the Fourth™ down hard. And yet, as long as the Black continues to spread and people remain desperate, these shadow industries will continue to thrive in the cracks.
NHist 008
Blue Industries – Personnel Services & Corporate Culture Sector
The Blue Industries represent the CC-10’s most visible expression of corporate benevolence. While Green keeps workers alive and Red keeps them safe, Blue exists to keep them content, compliant, and entertained. These corporations shape the daily experience of CC-10 citizens across the Octants.
Blue Industries shape the daily experience of CC-10 citizens. Corporate conglomerates manage everything from station hospitality and employee wellness programs to approved media and fashion. Through the Open System Broadcast, they distribute sanitized entertainment that enforces corporate loyalty, while curated data flows ensure citizens remain focused on their productivity.
Entertainment is dominated by massive corporate media conglomerates that produce films, music, television, and streaming content through the Open System Broadcast (OSB). These companies ensure that all approved entertainment carries subtle corporate messaging while keeping the workforce distracted and loyal. This extends into the arts, where corporate-sponsored cultural programs, visual arts, and performing arts initiatives exist under heavy oversight.
Personal care and cosmetics corporations produce grooming products, makeup, and hygiene goods that help employees maintain the polished appearance expected by the CC-10. Fashion houses design both corporate uniforms and approved leisure wear. Recreational services manage corporate-sponsored sports leagues, gaming facilities, and leisure programs.
Finally, corporate communications and data curation firms manage the actual content that flows through Motherboxes and Father Nodes. These companies craft the official messaging, news, and propaganda that shapes how citizens view their place within the Collective.
Together, Blue Industries make corporate life feel desirable. They are the velvet glove covering the CC-10's steel fist.
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IPA Blue – Soul & Soil
While CC-10 Blue delivers carefully controlled, sterile entertainment through the OSB, IPA Blue is messy, passionate, and deeply human. Corporate culture offers sanitized movies, corporate-approved music, and morale programs designed to keep workers compliant. In contrast, IPA worlds create art, music, food, and traditions that actually mean something. They celebrate real life instead of corporate productivity. On an IPA world, culture isn’t manufactured — it’s lived.
NHist 008
SUB Blue – The Human Stain
Where CC-10 Blue offers sanitized entertainment and carefully managed pleasure, SUB Blue provides everything the corporations refuse to touch. This is where humanity’s real appetites live.
SUB Blue provides the raw, uncensored experiences corporate culture prohibits. These operators run underground fight clubs, gambling rings, and illicit pleasure dens. Most sought-after is the black-market trade in raw, leaked combat footage from purge operations. By selling truth, vice, and visceral release, these shadow markets fill the void where official content fails.
From hardcore narcotics to real death footage, SUB Blue doesn’t sell distraction. It sells truth, vice, and release — everything the CC-10 tries to pretend doesn’t exist. And as long as people need to feel something real, the cracks will keep getting filled.
NHist 008
Epilogue
A day out from Bastion-9, the cockpit was peaceful until the OSB slammed into their comms like a physical wave. Two months of missed content crashed over them at once—hundreds of news, entertainment feeds, corporate announcements, and personal messages screaming for attention. Lena's eyes went wide as her console lit up.
“We've got two hundred and nineteen unread briefings, seventeen docking forms, three logistics requests, medical screenings, cargo manifests…” She trailed off, looking physically ill.
Raze stared at the scrolling nightmare, his face going slack. “We just swept an infested module and put down three Nightstalkers… and now we're gonna fucking die doing paperwork.”
Eighteen hours later, after docking and submitting every corporate form, the crew ignored the sanitized establishments and made a beeline for the lower maintenance ring. They pushed through the hatch of The Rusty Bolt, a dimly lit, greasy dive bar that smelled of old whiskey and burnt protein. Heavy screech-metal pounded through the speakers, grinding bass and raw screaming vocals.
They had barely collapsed into a booth when the bartender walked over and set four heavy glasses down in front of them. “On the house,” he said quietly. “Thanks for the shine.”
Raze stared at the drink for a long moment, then let out a tired laugh. “Yeah…” he muttered. “This. This is what we fucking do it for.”