In the Mirkalion System, the very system that had for decades screwed over dozens of mercenary companies, there was panic. What had once been a time of debauched revelry and hedonism, brought about by ill-gotten gains and the selling of sapient beings into slavery was now one of terror and fear. For the past three months, any ship that entered the system that was of pirate origin, was connected in some way to the system government, or tried to transport supplies to the system was shot to hell by weapons fired from out of sensor range. What made things worse was that the entire system was slowly being consumed by an ever-expanding Blackout Trap, which rendered all communications and sensor equipment save those that were wired, visual and/ or laser transmitted inside it useless.

It would only be a matter of hours at this point before the entire system was isolated from the outside, unable to even cry for help via FTL comms. What really showed that the mysterious attackers had meant business was their unprovoked assault on the space station under the control of the system government. The governor only barely had managed to escape the station via an escape pod after said station was slammed with dozens of kinetic slugs that were traveling at absurd speeds. Whatever rail cannon that the unseen aggressors were using was propelling slugs of hyperdense material at speeds that were fast enough to practically ignore shielding, armor and other countermeasures.

After the governor had fled to the surface of Mirkalion Prime and no other ship dared to leave the planet or enter the system, the hidden adversaries began shelling the planet from beyond visual range. If they had taken up positions within the orbit of Mirkalion Prime’s moon, they could have been seen via visual sensors, but they were firing their rounds from much farther away. There were only sporadic glimpses of military vessels waiting just inside of maximum visual range, sitting there like tiny dots of red and grey against a black, star-covered canvas. The ship models were unknown, and as the visual sensors were not cut out for the task, no one was sure whether it was another pirate fleet, the Urk Consortium or something else.

After another three weeks of randomly directed shelling, the unknown forces moved in. The red and grey ships were armed to the teeth, covered in heavy armor and had thrusters that were big enough and powerful enough to move the warships into place. There were only ten of them, but ten purpose-built military warships against a bunch of ramshackle pirate ships was not a fight that the people on Mirkalion Prime wanted to engage in. Better to let the few soldiers on board come down and be butchered by the outlaws that had taken over decades ago.

Then a ship dropped out of hyperspace. No, scratch that, it wasn’t a ship. It was a mobile space station. A massive craft that was over three miles long appeared in orbit, bearing the same colors as the ten warships and like the smaller craft was armed and armored to an absurd degree. The craft was too big to land on the planet, let alone enter its atmosphere, but this one mobile space station was enough to get the people of Mirkalion Prime to realize that they were not going to win this at all.

There was one thing about the space station that struck a handful of the outlaws and criminals on that planet with a sense of déjà vu. The massive mobile battle station had the words ‘Nullzone Solutions’ written on the side, only it was crossed out and above it was written ‘Alpha Guardian Company’. They were oddly familiar, the crossed-out words and the symbol emblazoned on the sides of the ships and station, almost like they had seen them before. Still, no one really cared about that now. There were going to have to deal with a bigger issue.

Then came the communique that had been long overdue.

“This is the PMC known as Alpha Guardian Company. We are contracted by our employer to seize control of this system. We have already dealt with any and all threats to our void-borne operations. Do not attempt to resist our atmospheric, aquatic and ground based operations. To the criminal elements and corrupt leadership of this system, we have only one thing to say. Resistance is futile, you will be destroyed because we are assuming direct control. All forces on the planet must lay down their arms and yield to our rule. Refusal to do so will result in destruction.”

Naturally, the people of Mirkalion Prime were used to violence and refused. This was met with sustained orbital bombardments of certain areas. As time passed, more warships entered the system, all bearing the same color scheme and decals as the others. Then came transports, construction ships, mining ships and more. Finally, Alpha Guardian Company landed on the planet and began to make good on their words.

It was a bloody mini war, but the blood spilled was disproportionately that of the defenders. It was a contest between untrained and trained combatants, with the trained ones having access to much better equipment and orbital strike capability. In a matter of days, the PMC, supplemented by war droids, managed to secure every major settlement on the planet, round up the leaders of the system government, the leaders of most criminal groups and even the heads of a local branch of the Urk Consortium. There would be no trial for them, just a pair of cuffs and a trip aboard a prison ship to a place far away and inescapable.

The PMC’s employers had repurposed an out-of-the-way former AHU penal world into something they could use, and the Alpha Guardian Company was more than willing to pay the scum who nearly wrecked them back with the same punishment they nearly had to face. As weeks turned to months, the Blackout Trap that had consumed the system gradually began to fade away, and by the time the UGN sent a fleet to find out what had happened, the Alpha Guardian Company had, for all intents and purposes, become the system government itself. When the UGN arrived and tried to deal with them, the Mirkalion System formally withdrew from the UGN.

The UGN would have tried to deal with this issue in a more violent fashion, but by now they had bigger fish to fry. The 80 system wide Proxy was in full swing, and they had just been called in to fight it. As time passed, the PMC that controlled the Mirkalion System began to expand its operations and would eventually start to absorb small mercenary groups. By the time the Proxy War ended, the Alpha Guardian Company would have the fourth biggest military in the galaxy, just behind the UGN which itself was behind the OCS which in turn was just behind their employers. Despite technically only being in control of a single star system, the Alpha Guardian Company was still a force to be reckoned with. They still were beholden to their employers, whom they refused to share the name of. These employers who had lifted them from ruin were only ever called one of two things.

They were either called ‘Alpha Gamma Charlie’ or ‘Algach’, which was an abbreviation of first two letters from each of the former words. No one outside the leadership and founding members of the Alpha Guardian Company knew what these phrases meant, but some UGN citizens had suspicions. However, when asked whether they had ties with the Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth, they would always reply the exact same way, regardless of position in the PMC.

“We of the AGC have no connection to the AGC. To insinuate that we of the AGC are in any way beholden to the AGC is pure idiocy.”