Sorry if this is a wall of text. Here's my addition to the shipping companies pile: Exxon-Arroyo - Planetary Consortium Exchange tag EXA - Reactor mass transportation and logistics corporation Exxon is a bit different from its 21st century incarnation. With the decline of fossil fuels the company was broken apart several times due to failing finances but eventually became a transportation and logistics company. They specialized in tanker transport but also branched out into other forms of heavy industrial logistics. They remained closely tied to the energy sector and were instrumental in the logistics market as China began to import reactor mass in large quantities for their state nuclear projects. With their star once again on the rise they acquired Arroyo Logistics, a fledgeling breakaway company based out of Luna that specialized in transporting fusion reactor mass from the moon to the various habitats and sky-hooks in near Earth space. Exxon used their solid earth-based financial backers to improve the standing of Arroyo within the Lunar Lagrange Alliance, and steadily began transport of their operations, staff and assets off-world. When the Fall came, there was only one corporate arcology owned by the company on Earth, and much of their internal operating structure has remained intact post fall. During the Fall, Exxon-Arroyo cargo ships were involved in several well known acts of heroism wherein they took on large quantities of passengers fleeing habitats under attack and transported them to safer locales. The freighter Darker Skies was tragically lost during these daring operations resulting in the destruction of the ship, the habitat they were docked with, and the real death of all Egos aboard both vessels. Public mesh knowledge of the final hours of Darker Skies is incomplete at best and there have been ample spacer myths and conspiracy theories associated with the event ranging from heroic detonation of the vessel to take out an exsurgent threat, to simply blundering on the behalf of those involved. However, there are still many people that owe their current existence to Exxon-Arroyo which has earned them some stellar PR in the last decade even though most of the employees that performed these actions have since been laid off or transitioned to other corporate employers. Exxon-Arroyo currently leases and opperate eight heavy transport vessels. Amongst them are: the Harker-Stoltz, the LRI Ventura, the Frontier IX and the Eckhart Pasely. The ships they use are OLD and would be mothballed by most modern logistics corporations. The fact that they use these tubs to haul reactor mass...I guess the more things change the more they stay the same :-). This lends a little credence to the stories of the Darker Skies fiasco having been a result of a venerable ship pushed beyond its limits. However, Exxon-Arroyo has very short employment contracts with outrageous payouts upon completion and fantastic benefits packages. Not to mention there will always be a bit of respect given (ie Rep boost) to anyone that actually survives crewing one of these antique vessels with their morph intact. Amongst spacers, this is refered to as "getting a tan" due to the inferior radiation shielding these ships have. Ed was running thin on options and his quarterly body mortgage payment was rapidly approaching collection status..."well...I suppose I could always go get a tan with Exxon..."