The super-Earths are now dotted with factories, corporate headquarters, testing ranges, mining facilities and other company facilities. Over the years, however, the system has become fully corporatized and the initial settlers have been (often literally) driven underground. The megacorporations moved in slowly but surely, initially refusing to displace the existing inhabitants of the system (technically, they bought the land and not the people or anything already constructed there). In a remarkable lack of originality, the four worlds are now named microTech, Hurston, ArcCorp and Crusader. The winners are believed to have flushed trillions into the UEE economy: microTech, Hurston Dynamics, ArcCorp and Crusader Industries. Megacorporations were quietly contacted and asked to bid for their own planets.
The decision was ultimately made to sell the system piecemeal to the highest bidders to support construction of the Synthworld. UEE naval engineers conducted the small amount of required terraforming, a series of underfunded military outposts were established, and then Stanton sat unwatched for another generation. With a down economy in the midst of a hundred-year colonization drought, the UEE had few options for actually exploiting Stanton. Without formal colonization papers on file, the existing inhabitants had little choice: prospectors, survivalists and other squatters have little means to protect themselves from the might of a Bengal.
A quartet of super-Earths are an extremely rare find and the Empire quickly declared Stanton to be a case of eminent domain, citing a need to protect and extend nearby jump lanes. By the time the UEE noticed the system’s existence, all four planets had populations numbering in the tens of thousands. All indications are that it was discovered by a free agent trader and that word of the location and its potential riches spread slowly on the electronic grapevine. No one is sure exactly who first settled the Stanton system.
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