FMI: Or Federal Military Intelligence. An institution originally designed to
seek out intelligence on Secessionist dispositons. By late 2053, however, the
FMI had become extremely powerful, even assassinating the Grand Admiral
Keynes in 2054 because he tried to resist their growth.
In 2055, the Grand Admiral Wen-Gao Ren came to command of the Federal Navy.
He ruthlessly cut back the power of the FMI, sentencing many to death.
However, his attempt at a coup very late in the war shows that power corrupts
the best-intentioned of people.
The FMI are best-known for wearing black scarves, trench-coats and triangular
black badges. Their symbol is the black triangle edged in gold, and their
motto is "We Really Want to Serve with Integrity".
New Sydney: The growth of supernational corporations in the eighties and
nineties inevitably eroded national loyalties. A good example is New Sydney.
Set up in the Australian desert (where land was very cheap), the "city" quickly
became exceedingly rich off its sales and research into Virtual Realities.
Electric Hallucinations (as they were called) were in use by virtually every-
one in the Solar System, to access the Internet and so on.
In fact, their Gross National Product outweighed that of Australia, with
whom the Corporation had no connection.
New Beijing: Same story as New Sydney, except New Beijing was set up in the
west of China. Most of its employees are non-Chinese (whereas most New Sydney
employees are Chinese). They create genetic cultures for warfare, medicince,
spaceship construction, and so on.
Space War: The whole of Void and Void Corporation takes place during the Space
War, fought largely in interplanetary space between the starfleets of the
Federation (comprising Earth, the Moon, Mars and some space stations); and the
Secessionists (comprising all the large colonies in the Asteroid Belt, various
starbases and space stations, and the three Modules).
The Space War lasted from 2052 to 2055, and resulted in millions of deaths.
At one point, the Secessionists got as far as the Moon; but their poor cohesion
and lack of resources told, and they split up and eventually were defeated in
2055.
The Mafia: Set up in the Starbase of Talbot, the Talbot Family Mafia, or
just Mafia, were a foce to be reckoned with between 2045 and 2054. Preying on
weak space-casinos, they even managed to corrupt the various governments
during the wars. They were wiped out when their leader, Vincent Talbot, was
assassinated by Dan Clayman, and his son Benito assassinated by a secret agent.
