P006 → The Borkney Archives 1: Short Fiction
SINCE THE GROUNDBREAKING 1978 UN AIR PASSAGE ACCORDS that deregulated global freight and passage, the stabilized carriers have brought unity and calm to the contentious and sometimes violently competitive air market. Unshackled from government constraint, and free to self-regulate, the airpassage industry has achieved an enviable degree of global, regional and local power and influence that has helped unite the common man and the uncommon industrialist alike in prosperity and freedom around the world. For your pleasure and edification, here is a brief, and informative digest of the industry that is so crucial to the way of life of billions of people worldwide. So, let us begin!
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The exciting result, in
1978 of the merger of seven global carriers and manufacturers: Abd-Hameyed Frieght and Passage DshT.,
EMAF DpE. (Elemental Manufacturing, Acquisition, and Framing), Zee Yang Rightmann Industrial Aerostadt
Ppe., Buchmann Downs Haulage Inc., Laurenceville Industrial Fabric & Thermite Inc., Buhimbol-Intertrans
Hydrogen OoPgs., and EHSTAR (Ezeq-Goran Hope Star Transglobal Air Routes). Intercontinental Blimp is
the largest corporation of any kind on the planet, employing close to one million people globally.IB's first product line as an integrated company was the astonishing trilloon platform. In fact, company spokesman Vera Ragunanndanann described the ambitious trilloon program as the impetus for the merger. "With so much at stake, and such massive financial and intellectual contributions required from the seven allied corporations, we all agreed that only the deepest collective commitment would be acceptable..." Launched in 1980, after eight years of tightly veiled research and development, the IBS Ghengis was unveiled by Szegged-Halifacks at the XXIV International Airpassage Expo in City of Industry, California. The framing was so novel and controversial that IB Corporate Peacekeepers were deployed among the spectators to prevent rioting. Said Oliver Hassebureau, airpassage editor for the New York Times :
"The beast looked like nothing other than a pregnant, tumorous throwback. Certainly
an affront to a general public raised on ever-narrowing forms and sleek and
streamlined framing. The air [amongst the spectators]... was fumed with disbelief and
confusion, like a hydrogen leak, waiting for a spark...[to ignite it]. The IB bulls stationed
amongst the spectators were twitchy themselves, not knowing if and when this crowd
would ignite into a full-scale riot. I could see the sweat on the neck of the one nearest
me, and it was a mere 50 degrees F. True to Emilio Szegged-Halifacks'...
showmanship and timing, however, that combustible pall evaporated as soon as the
Ghengis pirouetted away from its mooring. Never has beast turned beauty in so
narrow an envelope of time. The audience sighed as one... As the fish does not know water, we,
obviously do not know what we ourselves want..."
Pyrene Airship Freight and Passage (Symbol PAFP on the A-MBEx) Operating out of Huizir-on-Rhine since it's founding in 1811, Pyrene is the oldest continually operating carrier in the North Eastern hemisphere.
Founded originally as a packet-vessel operation under the name Trans-Pyrene Oceanic, Pyrene is known for it's dependability and safety across a number of the world's most challenging routes. The company was run by the Von Gerritsen family until 1923 when brothers Vito and Albert Von Gerritsen came to irreconcilable differences over the company's direction. The two settled by agreement that Vito would keep the company and Albert would retain certain route patents and airship designs under the name Oceanic Dirigible (see below).
In 1924 the company renamed and restructured itself. Eleven months later Vito was found dead in his office suite. Ownership disbursed to the ten majority shareholders per the revised corporate bylines of the restructure.
Oceanic Dirigible (Privately held) Founded in 1924 as the result of the Von Gerritsen split at Trans-Pyrene Oceanic. Albert Von Gerritsen focused his new company on performance airships designed for fast, light freight. Von Gerritsen never expanded the route patents he retained from settlement with Pyrene. Instead he shrewdly revised and refiled these patents, keeping ahead of changing environmental conditions and weather patterns. This earned him the sobriquet 'Weatherman.'
Needing a big event on which to launch the reputation of his untested company, Von Gerritsen announced a bold goal: make the infamous La Monse Run in under twenty days. The development team, led by famed framer and fabric innovator Torres Al-Heyamid, Schmidt Prize-winning fiber chemist Yang-Xin Lebrecq, and a young framer named Borden Lee Zampelli, developed the controversial RAS Voorgescheit Celestial, the world's first true-neutral buoyancy airship.
The Celestial made the La Monse run in record time. Alighting from Ergosh Field, near Constantinople on the morning of October 10, 1929, Captain Gens Marquendoomer captivated the world with daily industrial telecasts of their progress. Fifteen days later, at dawn on October 25th, the Captain and his exhausted, badly dehydrated crew touched down at Port Sudan airfield. Due to a combination of weather patterns, new technology, and exclusive use of Oceanic's patented routes, Marquendoomer and his crew shattered expectations and records with a then-astonishing fifteen day run.
The voyage was not without mishaps, however. Three hours north of Laotian airspace Navigator First Class Kurt Fong Saud miscalculated his bearings. Inexplicably missing in the expedition's equipment was a Parley 32 Weather Converter (then state-of-the-art). Without vital information from the converter, and with the miscalculation, Fong Saud nearly ran the ship into a coastal inversion on the Slip Loom Line near Sembalek Falls.
While many critics cried foul that Von Gerritsen closed his routes along the La Monse run, thereby creating an 'artificial pitch' on which to compete, Von Gerritsen would have none of it. Capt. Marquendoomer answered for his boss in a famous Op Ed piece in the Bohemia Press saying "Feragh ich bin alquadar, moquab droogen vericht messe!" This is, indeed, where the colloquialism we use today, originates.
The Celestial was the prototype for all subsequent Oceanic liners. Patents derived from her original framing, including chemical fabric emulsions, fiber stranding, buoyancy pilings, framing algorithms, pivot shankling, and non-linear aluminum PGR conversion techniques, all still stand today. The original Celestial is immortalized in all ships of the Oceanic line in their serial numbers, all of which start with either C, CE, and CEL.
Albert Von Gerritsen died in a hunting accident in 1972. His niece Harriet Von Gerritsen-Torgash, Chief Executive Weather Analyst for the company at the time, assumed control after what was believed to be an internecine boardroom feud between those who wanted to diversify the company's route patents and those who wanted to maintain Albert's original intent. She still sits in the top seat today. As the University of Hagen-Am-Hooerdeine's 1982 graduation keynote, she left the students with a glimpse inside her razor-sharp mind: "Growing up in an airship family, it was always clear to me that there are two ways to untether the line halleck. You can either batten like crazy and pray the wind won't shine, or you can bellow the leathers and hope for the best. These two things, either or...And that's exactly what I've done all my life."
Beheymot Global Freight and Passage (Symbol BEH on the A-MBEx, and BFP on the London Transit Commodities Exchange). Formed in 1954, originally as a military partnership between the Palestine Hagannah, the Royal Transjordan Frontier Force (RTFF) and a trio of military-industrial suppliers.
In 1958, in response to the military buildup on the Persian border and the imminent collapse of the buffer states of the Kurdistan/Tikriti/Kuwait Accord, the governments of Palestine and Transjordan brought together three cross-government subsidized corporations to provide for the defense of the two Jordan River states. Led by the charismatic Gamal Zilbermann, (the one and only 'Hero of Beirut,') owner of Zilbermann Framing and Engineering, the other two corporations included Bezek Al-Massoudh Hydrogen Works, and Hashemite Royal Foundries.
Palestine Prime Minister Ariel Ben Moshe and Transjordanian King Gustav Ibn Abdallah IX signed the charter with the trio of corporations just weeks before the new corporation, newly dubbed Behaymot, delivered its first shipment to the Western Transjordan Frontier, which pointed to much deeper and longer partnership than the international community had previously understood. This was the vaunted Yela Hamzeq (Hell's Onion) platform, so named because the framing of the aerostat was vaguely onion-shaped in order to support the heavy armor and firepower. It was a line of aerostatic defense ships designed to provide an umbrella of forward observation and fire. With a heavily armored undercarriage, twelve batteries of 9" air-to-surface artillery that provided 360º of coverage, and four 50 cal. forward-facing rotary motorguns, each Yela Hamzek was truly a horrific thing to behold for miles around. The platform proved itself in the coming chaos that would consume the region sixteen months later.
In 1959, the Ar-Rutba Defense Incursion put Beheymot and the Yela Hamzeq platform on the world stage. In a move to secure key transit routes from the rapidly deteriorating situation in the buffer states, the RTFF utterly razed the agricultural outpost city of Ar-Rutba using the Yela Hamzeq platform, which at the time was stationed over 100km west, across the border. Said Line Captain Ghazir Shteynman, future Adviser General to the UN Commission on Deregulation, who was a Yela Hamzek pilot during the Ar-Rutba action, "It was like God sneezed."
Inquiries and orders piled up in the Eilat and Aqaba offices after what became known within corporate circles as "the Audition." The Yela Hamzeq Line helped keep the Jordan River states out of the Central East Collapse. Behaymot quickly became the world's top lofted-arms provider.
Although this was advantageous during crisis times, the looming peace made it clear to the corporate directors and backers that diversification was key to sustainability. Because of international regulations, the company's growth and expansion into peacetime opportunities were limited. In 1965 the company reorganized under a new holding group, Behaymot Global Freight and Passage, under which Beheymot Lofted Attack & Defense Systems Intg. stood independently enough to satisfy regulatory agencies. Regulation barred the company from acquiring existing patent routes, however, and the expense of developing new routes did not appeal to the corporate leadership.
Today, helmed by Gamal Zilbermann's charismatic nephew Tariq, BGF&P does a majority of business (73% according to 1984 financial year-end reports) in the military sector, providing weaponized airships and support infrastructure under it's subsidiary Beheymot Lofted Attack & Defense Systems Intg. It retains the deepest vertical infrastructure of the big four, with mining and processing, hydrogen and elemental extraction, and chemical interference processing, all the way up to passenger catering and service consultancy. Although BGF&P do not have the breadth of route patents enjoyed by its competitors (in fact, the freight and passage division alone would not rank as a major player in the marketplace), it does supply many of the freight and passage services that the other Big Four rely on to provide top service to shareholders, owners and consumers.
© 2024 Elan M Cole