#essentially anything UEG does it always in its self-interests

[kivaember]

I think you've mentioned before that after the fires of ibis, a portion of the Rubiconian population was evacuated off planet? What with 50 years having gone by there has to be multiple generations who have never set foot on Rubicon. I wanted to ask what life is like for the Rubiconian diaspora and what they think about the survivors left on Rubicon and vice versa.

The Rubiconian diaspora are split into two groups (to simplify it, in reality it's pretty complicated, but the simple summary is):

The Intellectuals: when Dr Nagai triggered the IBIS system to initiate the Fires, there was advanced warning for this that had some of the intellectual elite of Rubicon fleeing the planet. They had the resources and means to drop everything and go: access to spaceships, money, etc. When they fled to UEG space, and reports of the Fires came in, the UEG gave them an offer: they could accept silver citizenship to Earth and maintain the quality of life they're used to, so long as they share their knowledge and research with UEG.

Quite a lot of them took this offer, and fifty years on their descendants are naturalised Earth humans. This has come at a cost, though. While they had to give technological and scientific research over to the UEG, they had to waive any rights to their ""remains"". The UEG, for some reason, are very interested in Rubiconian physiology, and the more "pureblooded" they are (as in, they can trace their lineage back to the original Rubiconian settlers), the more pushy they are about having access to their bodies upon death.

Because Rubiconian belief has them not very attached to their corpses (they tend to mulch them or use them for scientific endeavours themselves), they agree to this with little fuss. In their eyes it seems like a steal: give up your world's secrets and your bodies when you die, in exchange for safety and security. Rubicon is gone in their eyes, and there's no way it's coming back with how razed it is. The UEG emphasise this point as well: Rubicon is completely destroyed. No chance of recovery, ecologically. Yup. Gone forever, this is your home now.

Publicly, the Rubiconian Liberation Front is mocked as a bunch of half-feral colonists that have been driven insane by Coral contamination, or a bunch of Coral smugglers pretending to be Rubiconians. This is the propaganda the Rubiconian diaspora holding UEG citizenship are fed, and it's what they believe - whether genuinely, or because they want to maintain their comfortable lifestyle.

The Refugees: Right, these Rubiconians are the ones that fled after the Fires, and are a mix of those who managed to find functioning spaceships post-Fires and flee, or were evacuated from the surface when the UEG's first response fleet landed on the planet.

This was done by the UEG to ensure that no surviving Rubiconian scientists or "pureblooded" Rubiconians slipped the net: upon evacuation, the refugees were told to submit their identification papers and the like - on the surface this was to reunite them with any family members or the like that they may've been separated from, but in reality it was so the UEG could confirm their identities, how many generations of Rubiconian they were, and segregate the "useful" from the "useless".

The useful were given the citizenship offer, but the "useless" were shipped off to an industrial colony that needed an influx of new workers. The UEG spun this as a PR move, obviously. They saved the Rubiconians and gave them new homes, new jobs! Meanwhile the refugees were forced to work in gruelling production facilities on frontier colonies, in exchange for food, shelter and meagre wages.

Needless to say, this group of Rubiconians are exceedingly bitter towards the UEG. There's even a common belief amongst them that the UEG was the cause for the Fires, that it had been planned since they thought Rubicon was becoming too big of a threat to its supremacy, not helped by reports of them establishing the PCA and looting Institute ruins for technology.

Though they can't do so openly, they quietly support the RLF's movement on Rubicon. They all hope that one day they do succeed in overthrowing the PCA and reclaiming their home, so that they can one day return - many have plans on how to escape the colonies they're trapped on. They're just waiting for the day they can return.

As for Walter and Carla, they intentionally destroyed their papers and pretended to be simple Rubiconians from unimportant origins. Even then they didn't really slip past UEG's notice. While Carla was half-Rubiconian, half-Earth, Walter was as pureblooded as they came, able to trace his bloodline to the very first settlers of Rubicon with no mingling of other humans from other colonies, which was picked up when the UEG did their "routine" blood test. The UEG were very pushy about Walter, and even when they relented and let Carla keep him, they actually took pains to settle them within the solar system itself, rather than the frontier colonies where majority of the Rubiconian refugees went.

Every so often the UEG make an offer, but Walter knew better than to accept whatever they're peddling. The only concession he makes it making a blood donation whenever they request it, if only because they do pay him quite a bit for that, though he can't for the life of him understand why.

Hilariously, these blood donations actually funded quite a bit of their early operations before Carla managed to establish herself as a successful black market weapon's dealer.