Spider web

In the space’s silence the wind is everything. Not the planetary wind, but the solar wind that keeps feeding the humankind expansion through the space. The red giants seem to be patched with small, black stitches that grow in numbers and volume every cycle. Hemispherical black plains made by attaching high porosity panels one to another soak the very essence of the red giants’ breath. Then, a central node, a refinery is connected to every panel itself through two main pipes: one for the solar wind that has been soaked up through the solar panel and then accelerated in the pipe’s magnetic field and the second one, for the superconductive cables that provide the refinery energy to run. From a distant view, the panels and the refinery resembles as the miners say with a spider that set its web around the sun.

The Spatial Mining Alliance, or in short the SPA, owns 83% of the solar wind refineries. Although it’s been under the control of the Monarchy, now by the power of money and with strictly defined hierarchy the SPA itself it’s an empire within the humanity kingdom. Monarchy lost the economical battle when the lust for luxurious was greater than for the power. The SPA operated in silence and bought one buy one the refineries that had been lost in seconds in casinos by charming lords and barons. Then, through corruption, murder and blackmail they acquired the other part that couldn’t be bought freely.

Now, the only thing that controls the SPA is the Spatial Royal Fleet that uses its own vessels to transport everything through the Universe.

The rest of the refineries are owned by smaller companies that haven’t been bought yet by the SPA and a very small percentage is under the Ascetic Monk Fraternity rule.