The HCS Hornet
The Hornet class heavy fleet carrier HCS Hornet is tecH/Nically a rated warship, capable of serving as the flagship of a major fleet. The ship is capable of deploying not just fighters, but docking, tending, and repairing ships as large as linear accelerator destroyers. However, as a major operations center for the Hornet’s Nest supercorp, the ship rarely sees combat anymore.
The HCS Hornet now serves as the flagship of H/N’s home fleet and houses the majority of the upper echelons of its command staff, political base, and RND capabilities. It acts in place of a “homeworld” for the corporation and enables them to have a mobile base of operations that can outrun both their enemies and the Maelstrom.
Nearly all the amenities expected of a planet can be found aboard, including artificial greenery and other necessities to ensure life remains livable and tolerable for those aboard the ship.
Unification Wars
No one exactly remembers where or how Hornet’s Nest began as a corporation. The company has been a fact of life in the galaxy for as long as any of the supercorporations can remember, and most of them are grateful for it. However, achieving that status was a long and bloody journey.
Hornet’s Nest is an amalgamation of countless other smaller PMCs, brought to heel by buyout or forceful pacification by the super corporation. H/N’s quest to dominate the security industry led to them absorbing countless smaller organizations, often leaving the remnants of the bloody conflict behind both in destruction and in the culture of the organization.
Relationship with 9LL
Of all of H/N’s bloody feuds, none are quite as famous as their conflict with Nine Lives Logistics . Like many other conflicts Hornet’s Nest has fought, the true origin of their feud is old enough that no one remembers what truly started it. In the modern day, conflict between the two supercorporations manifests as an ideological difference between a company built on saving lives and a company built on taking them.
On the whole, however, Hornet’s Nest maintains a neutral position with most of the other super corps. Providing security for nearly every corp inevitably means cutting deals with nearly every corp. In fact, it isn’t unheard of for contracted Hornet’s Nest forces to end up on both sides of a conflict in one capacity or another.
Takeover by Commandant Koshak
One of the more notable shake-ups in the recent History of Hornet’s Nest was the takeover of the HCS Hornet, and subsequently H/N as a whole, by CMDT Koshak. Koshak is a radical member of an upstart religion, the Cult of the Helljumpers, which is founded on the idea that a woman known as “The Commander” or “The Queen of Battle” will in the near future lead her faithful, her soldiers, in a physical war against the Maelstrom to conquer it and halt its advance.
In a conflict known as the Forty Eight Hour War, Koshak and other members of Hornet’s nest, primarily motivated by a general sentiment that the various highly trained forces of Hornet’s Nest were being left on the sidelines in the conflict against the Maelstrom, attacked loyalist H/N forces and seized control of the HCS Hornet and its support vessels. They demanded the surrender of the remainder of the corporation, the immediate return of all Hornet’s Nest forces to a higher degree of readiness, and a greater focus on operations within territory threatened by the Maelstrom. Their demands were accepted; due to the task-organized nature of most H/N forces outside the home fleet, no other force within Hornet’s Nest was powerful enough to dislodge them. In a post-Forty-Eight Hour War world, Hornet’s Nest is somehow on more of a war footing than ever.
Life and Martial Culture
The foundations of Hornet’s Nest are military culture and discipline. Children born into the corporation, even its upper echelons, are prepared for war from a young age using various indoctrination tecH/Niques. Games are structured to enforce military hierarchy, and weapons and martial arts training are common. It is not uncommon for proper military training to start very young, especially for the elite who are expected to fill officer roles or those fast tracked for Away Teams and other special operations forces.
While the exact age that training begins varies wildly based on how various lineages experience time, the children of the nobility will typically begin learning drill and ceremony extremely young. Their teenage years will be filled with basic training, and their “high school” age will begin more specialized training like VBSS or tactical air and space control party training. Additional training will continue well into their adulthood, but this is done as a way to give them a solid foundation for leadership and military bearing.
For those not born into the corp, adapting to the lifestyle can be difficult. A lifetime of brutal training is condensed into a short period of time via the use of virtual reality simulations augmented with neural links that can warp the perception of time for the recruit and give them the feeling of having experienced years of time with the corp over the course of mere months. Ultimately, they are expected to become as much of a part of the same whole as any other drone: a cog in a much larger machine.
Constructs are an extremely common sight in the battlefield ranks of Hornet’s Nest, largely for their eidetic memory that aids in assimilating to the Hornet’s Nest culture. Additionally, many construct models boast exceptional resilience in combat, a trait prized in a supercorp that is often on the front lines of conflict. Less combat-oriented models are frequently assigned to officers, especially elven officers, due to their enhanced tecH/Nical capabilities and their value as adjutants.
Fleet Structure
At the top of the fleet structure of H/N is the Home fleet, consisting of the HCS Hornet as its flagship along with a contingent of heavy battleships, escort destroyers, and fleet-tending support craft. Together they make up both a lethal battle group and space-borne mobile society, functioning as the center of H/N’s political, military, and cultural base.
H/N also operates numerous smaller battle groups. These battle groups range in size from carrier strike groups, consisting of a starfighter carrier and destroyer/anti-ship warfare escorts, to planetary security garrisons supported primarily by corvettes, cutters, light carriers, and orbital defense guns. Away teams may be individually assigned to small stealth corvettes that can operate completely independently of larger strike groups, enabling them to collect intelligence and conduct surgical strikes in a way larger battle groups cannot.
Most of these smaller elements are task-organized according to the requirements for a specific operation, meaning their members are pulled from various departments of the corporation and organized into one coherent unit for the duration of an operation. This form of organization helps ensure flexibility in the deployment of various units while also preventing any one unit from gaining enough motivation or, more importantly, power to overthrow the Home Fleet.
There is, as always, a sort of hierarchy between different components of the supercorp in terms of prestige. Away Teams and larger battle groups, intended for when the corp is on a war footing, receive far more prestige for their position as ‘real’ military assets, while interdiction fleets and planetary garrisons are often viewed as lesser, softer postings. This hierarchy exists in spite of a plethora of data showing that forward deployed garrisons see significantly more combat and display a higher degree of readiness on average than other postings.
Other famous and notable ships within the H/N fleet include the HCS Pampanito, a stealth corvette famous for raiding shipping lanes and deploying the infamous Away Team Seven of Hornet Sniper™️ series fame, and the HS O’Brien, an ancient fleet tender that some say has been serving since the corporation was founded.
Rank Structure
Hornet’s Nest personnel are placed into departments and issued a key card of a corresponding color to match their department (OOG note: message Alison-065 if you’d like a card custom cut for your character).
The colors are as follows:
- Yellow: Leadership
- White: Medical
- Red: Security Forces
- Orange: Manufacturing
- Purple: Resource Acquisition
- Green: Merchant Marine
- Blue: Personnel Support Services(cooks, clerks, etc.)
Hornet’s Nest ranks are structured from 1-5 in ascending order. Level one personnel are junior enlisted, conscripts, and others considered to be low on the corporate ladder. Level two personnel can be junior enlisted given their rank as a promotion for time in service or junior NCOs, depending on unit SOP. Level three personnel are NCOs. Level four personnel are officers. Level five personnel are field-grade officers with high-level corporate positions.
Hornet’s Nest personnel also have a “rate,” or a job that they are assigned to which is expressed by a two-letter prefix placed before their rank (OOG note: these can either be real-life US Navy rates or completely made up Sci-fi ones).
For example; H.Kay is a level 2 Special Operator with H/N’s security forces. She would wear a red keycard with a 2 on it and would be addressed as “SO2 (Special Operator Level 2) Kay.“
Hive Syntax
Hive Syntax is the language spoken by generational members of Hornet’s Nest, founded on the speech pattern of sailors and combat constructs. Every long-standing member of Hornet’s Nest is capable of understanding and speaking Hive syntax, though some prefer galactic basic in the presence of others while still others stubbornly refuse to use Hive Syntax at all.
(OOG note: Hive Syntax is a language composed of military terminology, naval jargon, computer/programmer jargon, 1337 speak, pilot/air traffic controller terminology, and others that comprise an advanced form of talking like a robot.)
Naming Conventions
H/N members are often named in a manner consistent with Hive Syntax. Names based on weapons, 1337 speak, military and sailor jargon, and other similar things are all common.
Away teams
Away teams (ATs) comprise the special operations forces of Hornet’s Nest and are the “cool guys” that often represent the public face of the company. If a civilian on a far-off planet has ever seen a movie or played a video game featuring Hornet’s Nest, chances are a swashbuckling, oorahing Away Team was at the center of it.
In reality, ATs, while highly trained, execute a wide variety of often not entirely glamorous jobs, and may or may not be considered to be of vital importance to the company. While some may focus on high-risk raids and boarding actions, others spend years at a time in deep cover on backwater planets, collecting intelligence on enemy outposts.
The services of an AT are the second most common, and the first most profitable, service sold by H/N. While they are expensive to arm and train, the services of each Away Team are unique, allowing corporations to contract out unsavory business. This is included but not limited to; hits, union busting, sabotage, corporate espionage, pathfinding, and asset retrieval.
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