Starport Security
Contents
Starport Security
Since FTL travel will only take a ship to the edge of a system’s jump envelope, incoming traffic tends to pile up at the edge of a star system. Many ships’ visits to a system will not even require a trip inside the jump envelope to the core systems and orbitals, so a means of transacting business at the edge of the system is an ideal option. The jump envelope is also a star system’s first line of defense when it comes to extra-solar hostilities, so the ability to maintain fleets of warships for quick-response is a strategic advantage, as well.
While a starport may provide security to the system it orbits, this entry deals primarily with how security is handled aboard one of these massive orbital stations. Spaceports, starports and star fortresses may provide the backdrop for many scenes in the sci-fi genre, and it pays for the Master and Crew to have an idea of what to expect.
As with so many ideas put forth in these rules, they are not immutable. If the regulations put forth here do not jive with your setting or story, change them to your heart’s content. We will provide a base expectation that should apply for most port scenes, though even the regulations described may be altered (either toward the more- or less-secure end of the spectrum) based on various social, political or even religious factors.
What goes on in a starport?
At the edge of a system, one of the biggest things that happens is interstellar commerce. Ships bearing cargo or cargo pods come in, drop off their goods, pick up goods, and depart. Since trade will consume such a high percentage of a system’s traffic, starports would be hard-pressed to handle all the shipping of sometimes massive cargo haulers. Every cargo vessel that comes in can’t eat up a berth. Not for long, at least; there wouldn’t be enough space to accommodate all the traffic, much less store the cargo that all these freighters drop off.
Instead of physically warehousing goods in space, starports take a page from terrestrial shipyards where containers from wet-navy cargo ships are offloaded, and placed out in the open awaiting distribution. In space, there is plenty of, well, space for ventures like this. Most cargo will be placed in cargo pods (the shipping containers of space), and these can be offloaded and set in stationary orbital drift near the starport. With computerized tracking and transponders, specific pods can be located later, picked up and moved when necessary. If carrying loose, non-containerized cargo, a ship may need to dock to allow the cargo to be placed in containers (for an additional fee, of course). In-system freight lines will not usually handle cargo that is not stored in pods.
Goods that a planet has available for export will often be shipped by in-system freight handlers to the edge of the jump envelope and set for rapid pickup by merchants. With these procedures in place, most aspects of large-scale commerce can be handled by a visiting ship without ever having to enter the system, offload a single crewmember or even interact with the port authorities other than to check in on arrival at the system, make whatever declarations are required and turn on the ship’s beacon.
While the hands-off approach may work for most commerce, the next biggest activity that occurs at a starport is interstellar travel. This service that Starports provide could be viewed much like the function of an international airport. If a person is on a planet in a system, they might be lucky to find a vessel at the local planetary spaceport that is traveling to the system they want to visit, and even if they do, said vessel will most likely pass by the local starport on its way out. At the very least, these ships would have to spend time and fuel moving in-system to pick up passengers planetside, and even then, there is the question of how the person is going to get on the ship itself. Small vessels have atmospheric streamlining and can transition from space to atmosphere with relative ease. Most larger vessels avoid atmosphere except for dire emergencies, and some are simply too large to land or cannot maintain structural integrity outside of zero-g within their TISA inertia bubble. For these ships, their passengers would require a ferry service to get off the ground and onto the ship. It is more practical to consolidate these services and activities at the starports. For a privately-owned or operated ship, picking up passengers planetside may not be an issue. However, when the ship leaves the system and the ship’s manifest is submitted, all passengers will be subjected to the scrutiny of the authorities, both local and interstellar. Picking up someone who needs to “get off this rock in a hurry” may not work out so well when the IPA scans the passenger lists and wants to board for apprehension or charge the ship’s captain with aiding a fugitive from justice! Most private individuals don’t have the means for proper vetting of passengers, and most legitimate, commercial passenger lines will require that all prospective passengers be cleared for interstellar travel before even selling them a ticket. This creates a demand for a service that is best consolidated in one central location, at a starport. It could be compared to the security checkpoints at a modern airport.
Interstellar travel can be quite an event, in much the same way that an international trip by wet navy can be. Except for travel hotspots or heavily populated worlds, where there might be hourly departures, the wait time for ships travelling to or from some systems might be days. The trip itself will often last days or weeks depending on the distance and the speed of the passenger ship, and whether it is a direct trip or if there are any stops along the way. Travelers will often want to stock up on supplies before boarding a ship. As such, many starports will have plenty of retail outlets available to travelers. The wait times visitors must endure also creates the need for significant temporary housing. Many hotels, offering anything from luxury suites to body lockers, have a significant presence at most starports.
Additionally, all the starport service personnel, the employees of the retail outlets, the chefs and wait staff at restaurants, the concierges and maids at hotels—they form a sizable stable population. These people will not live somewhere else and commute to work. They will live at the starport, which requires permanent housing.
This can be a large population, both stable and transient in nature, and wherever there are people, there will be security concerns. Most starport security will be handled by a division of the IPA.
Once away from the atmosphere of a planet and the oversight of its government (or even further out between the stars), certain questions of law and legality often arise. Do laws still apply in space? If so, whose? What is illegal on one world may be allowed on another, whether it comes to matters of personal property or conduct. If a passenger aboard ship murders someone else, under whose jurisdiction does the investigation fall? Who bears the onus of responsibility for any lawbreakers?
Unless your campaign setting is more on the spectrum of “wild west in space” or “anarchy with spaceships” or “post-apocalypse among the stars,” these sorts of questions may be asked from time to time.
When a ship is purchased and put into operation, one of the many bureaucratic hoops the owner must jump through is to register the vessel. This involves paying licensing fees, background checks and any number of other forms of governmental verification. This process is a proclamation, of sorts, by the owner of the vessel that he has been checked out and approved by some planetary or interstellar governing body, and that the laws of the licensing authority extend to the ship itself. This allows any crew or passengers to understand what laws are in effect aboard ship, as it becomes an extension of the government’s sovereignty. A vessel attempting to operate without registration will be stopped cold at the first established system at which it tries to make a legitimate stop. Those in power seek to keep it contained (see the entry on System Travel Regulations for more info), and will not want to do business with unregistered ships, finding their mere presence worthy of investigation. The common (and often true) belief is that the only legitimate reason to not bother with registering a vessel is to more easily conduct unlawful business. Without a valid registration, it will be next to impossible to get passengers (except for the above mentioned “get off this rock in a hurry” types) because they know that as soon as they set foot on an unregistered ship, the law is whatever the captain and crew says it is, or what they can enforce. Registration works the other way around, too. An organized group of passengers might attempt to take control of a vessel. If they do so, they will have to contend with the issuer of registration, who would see it as an act of piracy, and piracy is not tolerated among the stars any more than it was tolerated on the high seas of ages past.
In this vein, each ship is sort of a castle, and each captain its king. When visiting another system, no government official may board the vessel without permission of the captain. If the local authorities need to board a vessel that is registered with their own governing body or that of an ally that has appropriate legal pacts, a local writ or warrant may be required. If the governments are different or do not share such pacts, boarding a vessel may become a matter of international affairs. If the local authorities truly need to get on board a foreign ship, they have many ways to stall things out and prevent the ship from leaving, but so doing may raise the stakes to that of an international incident, where the locals have to make a kind of cost-benefit analysis. On the flip side, if the crew of the ship is participating in nefarious activities, their nation of registry may not wish to get caught defending them. The nation may disavow their registration if the threat to political relations is untenable, effectively hanging the crew out to dry.
With these rights afforded to ship captains, some measures must be taken by local authorities to gain compliance by visitors. This will usually take the form of denying services to ships that refuse to cooperate with port or law enforcement. You may deny an inspector to examine your cargo, but they do not have to let you dock, either. Continued non-compliance may garner the ship orders to leave the system; they do not have a right to be there, after all. Refusing to comply with that directive, the last straw, can be considered an act of hostility, which unties the hands of the local government when it comes to responding to threats.
The Law, Self Defense and Armaments
While aboard ship, the Captain is the ultimate authority when it comes to how the crew conducts themselves. The Captain is considered the arbiter of offenses up to misdemeanor crimes (those whose punishment is usually a fine or other levy). The captain may impose other sanctions such as extra duty, confinement to quarters, loss of privileges or even imprisonment in a brig (if such a facility exists). For felony-level violations, most nations would have a captain confine a suspect or violator and have them turned over to the IPA as soon as possible or during their next stop at a system with an IPA presence. If confinement is not feasible due to ship accommodations or the threat level of the individual in question, involuntary coldsleep may be used as a substitution to incarceration. If members of the crew do not feel that their captain is upholding the laws of the nation of registry, they can file an internal diplomatic complaint that may begin an investigation of conduct. To protect from this, many ship captains tend to follow the letter of the law and keep detailed logs of legal activities in case the auditors come a-calling. If the crew knows their captain runs a tight ship and keeps legal matters above-board, it will cut down on the instances of complaints, false or otherwise.
The matter of ship board personal armament is dictated solely by the captain of the vessel, and these rules may vary significantly between crew and passengers. As a passenger, expect your right to bear arms to be severely curtailed aboard another vessel. While even the hulls of small ships and shuttles are sturdy enough that none but the heaviest of small arms could possibly penetrate, there are plenty of other safety concerns. Projectile and energy weapons of any type will usually be forbidden. Hand-to-hand weapons such as knives, swords and more exotic weapons have had sort of a revival thanks to space travel for this very reason, and carrying them is usually not frowned upon.
A starport is generally considered more of an extension of sovereign turf than a ship, as these large orbitals are often owned by a planetary or stellar government, and are considered by many to be “cities in space.” Trouble and security threats to both the stable and transient populations usually comes from the transient population, those people who are only one FTL jump away from getting away with any crimes they might commit.
While anything may go on one’s ship, when you step off onto the terminal, visitors must pass through a security checkpoint where the local government will attempt to stop the flow of prohibited items. This process is handled like a modern airport, but one can expect the detection gear employed to be significantly more advanced. The primary concerns at security checkpoints are weapons, drugs and explosives. Security personnel will also be on the lookout for wants and warrants; it’s hard enough to catch a criminal on the loose on one planet. When they can travel from one world to the next hoping to escape the long arm of the law, things get even trickier.
Most starports will not allow travelers to carry projectile or energy side arms because of the threat of collateral damage, and also to discourage visitors from causing trouble. Restrictions may be looser with the resident population of the station as they have virtual status as citizens of the starport. Stunners and other less-lethal weapons will likely be a more common sight when on a starport. Personal melee weapons are usually tolerated for self-defense, cultural or religious reasons. Whether resident or local, long guns and heavy weapons will almost certainly not be permitted.
Some starports may have a black market that will sell or rent weapons to travelers at exorbitant rates, however travelers caught violating weapons statutes can expect to pay stiff fines or detention if fines cannot be paid.
While the sale and distribution of certain hazardous drugs is frequently prohibited, the regulations for such contraband is all over the map from one locale to the next. A general rule of thumb will allow “personal use” quantities, but if large amounts are being moved or if the drugs are hidden so as to attempt to defeat search procedures, the customs officials may confiscate the items, issue a fine, deny access or even arrest the suspected smuggler. One can also expect all personnel from the vessel in question to get extra scrutiny from customs checkpoint personnel while their ship is in port.
Lastly, because of the intrinsic hazardous nature of explosives and the fact that almost no private citizen will have a legitimate reason for having them aboard a starport, all explosive devices and components thereof are prohibited.
Security Variations
If your campaign is more of a “wild west in space” affair, you may loosen the restrictions for the heroes and NPCs to carry weapons aboard a starport. You may feel that a starport is just another city, but in space. On the other end of the spectrum, you may choose to have “overbearing” governments in your story setting that wholly restrict armaments wherever they can get away with it (like in the tightly controlled confines of a starport).
Even in a setting that abides by the “standard” laws listed in the previous section, there may be worlds that fall on one side or the other. A frontier starport or station in a war zone may encourage a more militarized citizenry. Oppressive dictatorships or autocratic stellar empires like the GPR or Azuriach Imperium may heavily restrict armaments among the populace and especially among non-citizens.
