Back to square one

We left Blue Republic a week ago. Let's say it was a meeting of minds: the war with Red Federation wasn't going well, Blue command was in atrophy/disarray, and irregularities in corporate accounting had somehow resulted in the better part of my assets being impounded--Geronimo Pox was holding them in escrow until, as one of the faceless bureaucrats put it, "We can get to the bottom of this." Translation: The Republic's ship replacement program is being audited to figure out how much in the way of corporate funds we received and what we did with the money.

Whether this is prelude to catastrophe (...well, bankruptcy) or temporary inconvenience is anybody's guess.

So we are stuck in Gallente space for the time being and I figure it's a good time to try to improve our standings with the Gallente Federation. That's where this low grade Red vs Blue war has been dragging on for the last however many months. You see, before we were recruited into Blue Republic we had been working for the Caldari Navy, running missions out of Motsu. That necessarily entailed conflict with Gallente insurgents and infiltrators, whom we dispatched on a fairly regular basis. Our sterling combat record for the CN didn't make us at all welcome when we moved down to Verge Vendor to join the Blues. We were challenged at every stargate under Gallente control, and were allowed in only after some mucky-muck in Blue pulled some strings. And we still get stopped and searched on a regular basis. Regular pain in the ass...
...that will soon be a thing of the past, I'm hoping. We grabbed an Incursus from the hangar in Alentene and made our way to the Gallente Navy's internal security office at Eglennaert 1, Moon 4. There we hooked up with Esate Binck, a rather pitiful but pliable agent, who agreed to give us some low level work that--so he says--will enhance our reputation with the Gallente Federation. We should know in a week if this'll work.