Private Military Companies

When an Armournaut band survives for long enough, it'll try to become a private military company. First you have three idiots, one battered MOA, and a contract nobody read properly. Then you have accountants, legal counsel, maintenance depots, recruitment offices, pension obligations, and enough branded armour to pretend the whole thing was intentional.

Most PMCs are bastards. They sell violence at scale, cultivate governments that need deniability, and learn very quickly that stability is less profitable than dependence. But they are also what nearly every successful Armournaut outfit is trying to become: permanent contracts, proper logistics, replacement crews, medical cover, lawyers mean enough to make clients pay, and enough political weight that nobody can simply decide not to honour the cheque.

The trouble is that once an Armournaut band becomes large enough to stop begging for work, its members usually become ruthless and lazy in equal measure.   

The 13th Ward Gallowglass

The Gallowglass replaced the 13th Ward’s former militia, the Gaping Rhincodons, after the Ylianic Purges. The Rhincodons had been sent against newly Dyophidian civilians during riots over the execution of Saint Gharamackiel, then broke after eight months of vicious urban fighting. Armed Dyophidian mobs filled the vacuum, backed by the Ophite Papacy and equipped with whatever they could “liberate” from the old militia.

Chronic ammunition shortages shaped what came next. The Gallowglass began reclaiming propellant for improvised explosives and developed a grenadier-heavy style built around mines, demolition charges, and brutal opening fusillades. Infantry and power armour then close with oyster axes and crab hatchets while MOAs carry troops, absorb fire, and kill heavier targets. The Venti later codified parts of this as Mobile Defilade Doctrine, though the Gallowglass resists attempts to standardise its tactics.

Its banners now travel widely, especially in the Frontier, where it has a reputation as reliable hirelings and possible illegal fortalice-builders. If you fight them, keep the engagement at range and break their assaults apart before they can mass.

These are not the usual perfumed princelings who expect a theatrical duel and a graceful surrender. I lost two fingers and one good Armournaut finding that out. People who practise close combat are stupid, obviously. People who practise it because they believe in something are worse.

Lunar Irregular Corps

The Lunar Irregular Corps recruits non-citizens into partisan militias under Lunar Union supervision. Groups of at least twenty-five apply together, receive a proctor and sponsor, then spend two years studying tactics, logistics, leadership, history, and politics before attempting the collective excellence exam. Passing grants provisional citizenship, limited Union support, and eligibility for contractual work, followed by a three-year service tour.

Irregular units are deliberately non-standard. Some are tiny Armournaut teams with support crews; others approach battle-group strength. They may take Lunar Command assignments, private contracts, or support non-Union operations, while proctors monitor doctrine and conduct. You see, only some Union soldiers are allowed to torture. The system works.

The LIC is also one of the Union’s main tools for expanding influence. Irregulars provide security, support local reform movements, invest in communities, and are authorised to intervene where elections or political transitions are threatened. Plenty of worlds have entered the Union through their work. Whether that counts as peacekeeping, nation-building, or something less polite depends largely on who won.

Armournauts are highly prized because even one pilot can transform a militia’s capabilities. Plenty join for citizenship, steady work, or simply to escape the less reputable end of PMC life. The LIC Armournauts I’ve met are like school kids: quiet, well behaved, practically polite. Whatever the Union teaches them, some of it clearly sticks.

Rex Panthera

Rex Panthera is a small Frontier PMC specialising in infiltration, asset expropriation, assassination, and other work best finished before anyone understands what happened. It was formed by Major Winston King from the remnants of Lunar Union Cohort 9 after the unit hijacked a Temple Einstein-class warship for an unknown benefactor and was subsequently charged with treason. Since then, both Union Cohort 0 and Temple operatives have repeatedly tried to wipe it out. They have yet to manage it.

The company stays small, mobile, and expensive. Constituents are housed and fed at company expense, take equal shares from contracts after organisational costs, and may decline work. For each operation they nominate a boss, who has absolute authority once the shooting starts. It is less democratic idealism than practical mutiny prevention. Rex Panthera survives because its people can leave, its leaders can be challenged, and everyone understands that profit and continued breathing are shared interests.

In combat they favour speed, aggression, and coordination: veteran freebooters, power-armoured shock troops, drone tanks, MOAs, and aerospace support hitting hard enough to end the contract before it becomes a battle. Joining them can make you rich quickly and hated even faster. Its motto is “no hard feelings” is emblazoned on the patches and is practically a mantra of cluster youth today. Treachery is a two-way street, after all.

Winston King is a legend, which is exactly the problem. Half my crew wants to join him and the other half wants his bounty. He fights like he cannot die and encourages babynauts to think the same. Democracy is lovely in your own time. During an airstrike, I prefer orders.

Seaside

Seaside is the largest privately owned PMC in the Cluster and one of the few mercenary forces capable of frightening actual navies. It made its name during the Embargo Wars, fighting for both Venti and Yscenic interests, then proved during the Kambiku Crisis that simply deploying its fleet could be enough to stop a Superpower war before it started. Many governments now keep Seaside on retainer partly to ensure nobody else hires it first.

Its fleet is enormous, aggressively concentrated, and crewed by veterans who have spent careers fighting in space. Seaside is expensive because it is built as a strategic sledgehammer: battleships, carriers, destroyers, landing craft, patrol fleets, and boarding teams designed to break open a theatre for everyone else. Frontier contracts are smaller, usually trade protection, colonial security, and anti-piracy work, with most Armournauts employed there rather than in its core fleet operations.

Seaside insists it is not an Armournaut outfit and don't even deign to call themselves a PMC, instead “enterprise threat mitigation agency” tested better with focus groups. Open your eyes: a ship is just a huge communal MOA with better toiletry. Its people also tend to regard other mercenaries and professional militaries as amateurs, and its blacklists have ruined outfits that annoyed them.

The one good thing I can say is that Seaside accepts surrender. It even run prisons, which tells you how committed it is to pretending its a state. If you have enough spare time as a mercenary company to build your own legal system, I’m sorry, but you’ve taken the hobby too far.

Farimba Extremophiles

The Farimba Extremophiles are a Jaori state-administered military company descended from Odelke’s old Farimba tradition. Its modern lineage begins with the Extremophile Cataphracts, who kept fighting after the Yscenic conquest long enough to evacuate Princess Morania, the parliamentary cabinet, and hundreds of thousands of civilians into Temple space. Their descendants rebuilt the New Jaori government in exile on Fardannis and reorganised their military around the same basic problem: how to keep fighting when resupply is impossible.

That produced the GELF Cataphract Sleeves, full-body living armour that provides nourishment, environmental protection, and enhanced combat capability. Extremophile doctrine favours prolonged operations in places most forces cannot remain functional for long, from deep ocean to deep space. Its conflict with the Yscenics continues, while both Temple and Venti involvement remains constrained by the risk of wider war.

Its people are excellent allies, if a little touchy. Don’t praise the Yscenics around them. Don’t get clever about Odelken history. Play dumb if you want to keep your thumbs.

The GELF weapons take some getting used to. They treat them like pets. I once heard a man’s meat gun purring while he scratched under what I assume was its chin.