Corridor War

The Corridor War was a conflict fought in 1991 between primarily mercenary forces, arising mostly from the Teune Dominion's nationalization of it's contracted deep-Gamma Big Bend Gateway wormhole project from the Venger Conglomerate. It's economy struggling from the cost of financing the project, the Dominion attempted nationalization in order to impose harsh tariffs on traffic, resulting in the Conglomerate hiring mercenary forces to reacquire the wormhole. The conflict was notable for being fought almost solely in space, with only rare and small scale infantry engagements, and for marking both the rise of Qhevak as a force on the interstellar mercenary scene and the fall of the once dominant Double Barrel Military Consolidated. The resulting tensions also helped slow the ongoing expansion into Gamma, marking the beginning of the end for the second phase of deep-Gamma expansion.

Background
The Teune Dominion was a small scale As'i majority colony established in shallow Gamma on national syndicalist principles in 1972, at the beginning of the First Gamma Gold Rush. The Dominion was a small but fast growing state at the time, which had lucked out with the discovery of a particularly He3 rich gas giant in a neighboring system at a time when fuel was in high demand to fuel the Rush. Seeking to expand it's economy and influence, in late 1988 the state contracted with the up and coming Gamma development conglomerate Venger to host the Big Bend wormhole gateway project, linking shallow Gamma with a deep Gamma sector 19,000 lightyears rimward that had been noted as particularly rich in habitable worlds. This sector was only 710 lightyears from the furthest region of Qhevak, prompting notice from many of the powers there.

While the project went ahead successfully, by mid-1990 it was starting to show strain. Construction of the wormhole had finished and the first traffic was beginning to flow, but it had finished half a year late and overbudget. The Teune Dominion had gone into heavy debt while advertising itself as a host for the project, and with colonization of the Gamma Quadrant already starting to slow it was obvious that the residual payments from Venger would prove insufficient to clear their debts for the forseeable future. Starting to feel pressure from their populace with the beginning of economic decline, the Dominion government forcibly nationalized the gateway and imposed harsh transit tariffs.

The Dominion at this point in time operated a rather small domestic fleet, consisting of 4 midweight Beltine-class corvettes and 305 orbit-capable F/I-411 Katana aerospace fighters, the latter of which lacked the range or firepower to be useful in a serious space environment. It had however purchased long term defense contracts with a number of mercenary contracters during the early phase of windfall spending, to bolster it's defense while it built up a domestic military. These included Double Barrel Military Consolidated, a human-majority (supremacist, some would say) military contractor that was dominant within the shallow Gamma mercenary scene at the time, and operated a sizable fleet that included the then state of the art Svetovid MAU-40bis strike cruiser. They also purchased the services of Neumel-Shen, an AI mercenary corporation that was known for being more interested in exploring the outcomes of interesting political scenarios than anything else; as well as Astra Tactical, a contractor that later gained a semi-fair reputation as "a gaggle of e-girl tactical influencers".

The Venger Conglomerate lacked any formal military forces at the time aside from lightly equipped private security, but had attained a sizable fortune which enabled it to tender with various Gamma-based mercenary companies, which included the up-and-coming Shivastra Offensive Services, which had been planning on making use of the Gateway and so actively sought to contract with Venger. Other contractors included Rockhoppers Inc, a human majority force mainly known for operating in mining company corporate warfare; Stella's Strikers, a collective of bionano organisms that was mostly interested in the conflict for social justice purposes; and NeuKrieg, an AI warship squadron that rebelled from it's commanders in Delta after they didn't let them commit enough warcrimes.

Conflict
The conflict opened on February 5th 1991, with simultaneous raids on three of the Dominion's largest asteroid mining operations by three of Rockhopper's squadrons, each composed of 3 FE35T Gophers. This came as a surprise to the Dominion - Venger had spent the preceding months openly attempting to pursue legal solutions while quietly hiding it's mercenary purchases.

While effective in damaging production to a degree, the primary purpose was to lure in the forces of Neumel-Shen and Astra Tactical, which had been tasked with engaging targets entering the system while Double Barrel's forces secured Big Bend. The Gophers were built to operate within gas giant ring systems, and so had very high short duration thrust as well as extreme survivability for a craft of their size - once the inbound fleets had entered their FTLi radius, the Rockhoppers manuevered to keep the craft locked out of warp for as long as possible. Simultaneously, four of Shivastra's Seraphs engaged Double Barrel's forces from Qhevak's end of the gateway, which consisted of 3 MAU-40bis cruisers and 4 P-99 Stingray gunships.

In theory, Double Barrel's forces had the edge in this scenario - the MAU-40bis were fifty percent larger than the Seraphs and with heavier guns for their size. However, they were relatively lacking in ECM and infared jamming capability, and the dazzling from Shivastra's craft prevented Double Barrel from detecting Shivastra's inbound ballistic missile swarm, fired from extreme range five weeks prior on a trajectory that would pass through the gateway, until it was already near the point of SNAK deployment. The resulting kinetic barrage resulted in a total wipe of defending Double Barrel forces aside from one MAU-40bis, one Seraph lost on the end of Shivastra, seven Gophers destroyed and the gateway reentering the hands of the Venger conglomerate.

While Venger now held the gateway, the Dominion still claimed it and the gateway would be useless for Venger's commercial purposes until the Teune Dominion had been pacified. With Venger and Shivastra heavily fortifying Big Bend against reprisals, and the Dominion's mainworld sufficiently well defended to prevent direct attacks from Venger without extreme losses, the next seven months of the war would be a very drawn out slog. From March to September, the conflict largely consisted of a series of small scale ship raids, with Venger's forces attempting to destroy the Dominion's asteroid mining supply chains and thereby the economy needed to keep it's mercenaries serving, and the Dominion's mercenaries attempting to destroy the logistical chain of Rockhoppers, Strikers and NeuKrieg, which were operating out of bases established in the nearby Oort.

In theory Shivastra had few logistical issues due to their position on the other end of the wormhole, but had limited ability to run raids within the system due to the fixed and heavily monitored point of entry the gateway provided. They therefore began to establish increasing layers of fixed defenses around Big Bend over this time, including heavy particle beam killsats and SNAK mine arrays, freeing their Seraphs to travel to shallow Gamma via conventional warp and prepare for an overwhelming flanking assault staged from Venger's bases. This was stymied by an overwhelming Double Barrel/Neumel-Shen combined force assault against Big Bend in August, which destroyed much of their pre-placed infrastructure and two Seraphs at the cost of another MAU-40bis and two ATRAP-I missile destroyers, but was nevertheless unsucessful at reclaiming the gateway. Shivastra was also able to note a relatively low level of coordination during the attack, attributed to a mix of Double Barrel's borderline hu-supremacist views and Neumel-Shen's philosophical detachment.

Despite this setback, Shivastra was able to transfer three of their remaining Seraphs and fifteen of their Kappa lance fighters down to Venger's bases by mid-October. From there, the victory was more of a gradual lightening of the slog than a real decisive victory - Teune's forces had been exhausted by the unsuccessful gateway assault, and Shivastra's TacMind, once partially networked with Stella and NeuKrieg's forces, was able to better coordinate the offensive and effectively exploit the coordination struggles between Neumel-Shen and Double Barrel. With Teune's economy in full blown collapse, it defaulted on it's debts in mid-November and, no longer able to pay it's mercenaries, was effectively bought out by Venger.

Outcome
Teune defaulted on it's debts at the end of the conflict, and it's assets were mostly acquired by the Venger conglomerate as payment for war expenditures. Most of it's populace moved to other As'i worlds, and the system was mostly used as a free trade zone. Double Barrel, unable to receive most of it's payment and already struggling from expenditures in other conflicts, fell into bankruptcy shortly after the conflict and would later split into a number of other organizations including Jim Vakani's now infamous Reaper's Scythe. Shivastra Offensive Services gained a major reputation boost from the conflict, and with Big Bend enabling it to more easily contract with shallow Gamma buyers would explode in popularity from then onwards.

Despite involving a rather high cumulative fleet tonnage by the standards of mercenary conflicts, casualties in the conflict were very low. This was mostly a result of the war being fought primarily in space, between warcraft with mostly high levels of automation and proportionally low crew counts. It was also a result of rather low levels of mutual apathy between most sides of the conflict - most of the mercenary groups on both sides had known each other beforehand, and few crews would seek to apply any more force than was necessary. Civilian casualties mostly consisted of Teune Dominion asteroid miners, though 25 died after a passenger ship was (so they claim) misidentified as a raider by a NeuKrieg vessel.