Your Ship Is Not Your Ship
NORTHERN EARTH SETTLEMENTS, CORE SYSTEMS — The North Atlantic Colony Administration advanced a bill last cycle that would limit how far a private vessel owner can travel from their registered home station without filing a Movement Justification Request — a permit, in plain language — and paying a corresponding Transit Equilibrium Fee.
The cap: 400 standard kilometers from your registered berth.
Need to visit family on the southern coast? File a form. Hauling fabrication supplies for your independent workshop? File a form. Running medical cargo to a remote settlement because the Bureau’s contracted fleet is three cycles behind schedule — which it always is? File a form, pay the fee, wait for approval.
The sponsors call it the Atmospheric Restoration and Personal Transit Accountability Act.
I’ll call it what it is.
I pulled the lead sponsor’s public statements from the last four years on the Neural feeds. In 2931, Colony Administrator Pereira said — and I am quoting directly — *“The freedom to move freely between stations is a cornerstone of settlement life and we will never burden ordinary citizens with mobility taxes.”
You said the opposite in 2931. Which version is lying?
His office declined to answer. Twice.
The bill’s economic logic, such as it is: private vessel fuel combustion contributes to atmospheric particulate accumulation in Core Systems airspace. Fewer trips, cleaner sky.
Two problems with that.
First, the atmospheric modeling cited in the bill was produced by Stellarion Environmental Consulting — a subsidiary of Orion Trust Holdings, which also owns the three largest licensed transit charter networks in the Northern Settlements. Those charter companies are exempt from the distance cap. Their routes are classified as essential commercial corridors.
Convenient.
Second, the actual particulate data shows private vessels account for 4.2% of Northern Settlement atmospheric load. Industrial extraction platforms — majority-owned by Orion Trust Holdings — account for 61%.
I don’t deal in intentions. I deal in actions.
The fee structure is worth reading carefully, because most people won’t.
A Movement Justification Request costs 340 Standard Galactic Credits per trip beyond the cap. Processing time: 72 to 120 hours standard. Expedited review — meaning same-day — costs an additional 890 SGC.
Median private vessel owner in the Northern Settlements earns approximately 2,100 SGC per cycle.
A single emergency trip to a family member two stations over — unplanned, because emergencies are unplanned — would cost between 16% and 47% of a monthly wage just for permission to travel.
This is not an environmental policy. This is a tariff on existing. Paid to a bureau. To use a vessel you already own. To travel on routes your registration fees already fund.
Contradictions don’t exist. Check your premises.
I asked Administrator Pereira’s office whether citizens who cannot afford the fee should simply not visit their families.
The response: “The Administration is committed to equitable transit solutions and will be releasing a subsidy framework for qualifying low-income residents in the coming quarters.”
That’s not an answer. Try again.
They did not.
The bill advances to full Colony Assembly vote in six cycles. Several neighboring Colony Administrations are watching with what their own communications describe as “significant interest.”
Of course they are.
The galaxy spent nine centuries learning that you don’t own what you cannot use freely. Some people apparently need the lesson again.
— 宗像 レイナ, Galactic Affairs Correspondent