The Ceres Cooperative (Ce-Co)

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The Ceres Cooperative is an ancient, belt-spanning mining collective that prioritises long-term stability and shared prosperity over individual freedom. Built on a thousand years of hard labour, Ce-Co operates as both a financial institution and an industrial engine, reinvesting endlessly in its own expansion.

The asteroid belt is home to a great many nations and peoples, all mining asteroids for raw materials. The Ceres Cooperative, or "Ce-Co", is by far the oldest and largest mining group in the belt and has existed in some form for a thousand years.

It began as a simple Earth mining company around the wars of the 21st and 22nd centuries, got into space quickly, and mined asteroids. From there it became a cooperative rather than a standard firm. For most of its life it expanded slowly across the belt, virtually ignoring the rest of the solar system and paying the Solar government only what it needed to, until the Solar War.

In the Solar War itself Ce-Co fought and took part in plenty of battles, but compared with the other rebel powers it mainly held the inner asteroid belt defensively and supplied the rebellious nations with resources.

They are rough, practical people who believe in making long-term plans and putting the good of the Cooperative before the rights and comforts of the individual. The Ceres Cooperative works much like a bank that only invests in its people, offering loans to begin new ventures and reinvesting any profit in further ventures. Its people have an austere outlook on life: boasting and displays of wealth are heavily frowned upon, as is speaking against the general consensus. Their ships are the Ceres class: robust, spartan machines built for debris fields, easy repair and rapid revolving gun fire.

Ce-Co flotillas are led by Foremen, and "the Foremen of the Ceres Cooperative take no chances".

Ownership and possessions

In the Ceres Cooperative, everything technically belongs to Ce-Co. Every tool, every ship, every hab. In practice, people keep the small things that make up a life, like a worn pair of mag-boots, a cherished holo-recording of family, or a lucky chunk of the first asteroid they ever mined. Nobody would ever ask them to give these up. Still, it is considered noble not to own things, and better still not to cling to them. A Ce-Co worker who holds their possessions lightly is respected. One who hoards is quietly pitied.

How Ce-Co is run

Ce-Co is no single company but a great labyrinth of subsidiary businesses and organisations, each one run by a Foreman. Every subsidiary holds shares in the greater Cooperative and uses them to vote at its meetings. Those votes go to the best Foremen, who are raised up to become directors.

The directors don't simply rule. When something needs doing, they make pitches, setting out what they want to achieve or what has to be done. The board votes, and the director with the most popular pitch is given a leadership role to carry it out. That role comes with a contract that sets out exactly what they may do, how their success will be measured, and how long they have to see it done. Ce-Co may have two or more of these leaders at once, as long as their contracts don't overlap. In Ce-Co, nobody leads by birth, wealth or force. They lead because they persuaded their peers they had the best plan, and only for as long as it takes to deliver it.

The Cooperative does not fix a permanent title for these contracted leaders. The name may change with the objective or policy of the day, and since leadership is temporary and rests on the board's consent, nobody makes a fuss about what the role is called.

Life in Ce-Co

Everyday life in the Ceres Cooperative can look like a company town or like a freewheeling contractor's life, depending on where you sit. What binds everyone is work and debt to Ce-Co. Born to Ce-Co parents, you inherit a measure of that debt, so leaving is rare, though it does happen. Work is valued above all: hard work earns respect. Honesty about successes, failures and limits is thought of as honorable. Trying to improve yourself is highly regarded.

Debt to Ce-Co is not loan-shark debt. Nobody breaks your legs for falling behind. There are still consequences for not working and not pushing yourself. Life is a little spartan, and spending too freely is looked down on, but people rarely go without food, safety or comfort. In theory the debt can be paid off and you can walk free. In practice that is uncommon: people live on Ce-Co's dime, and the community is so insular that most would not want to leave. A little success can let you start your own subsidiary and gain more freedom, but you remain part of Ce-Co and in debt to its bank. For a hard worker, it can be a good life.

Ce-Co folk are very insular. Successful Foremen have to deal with foreigners, but there is a natural disdain for anything outside the Cooperative and a general distrust of other nations, each with its own rude nickname. They see themselves as the only true hard workers in the solar system and the backbone of humanity, and they do supply perhaps the largest share of mined resources, though others could fill the gap if Ce-Co vanished. Foreigners, for their part, often find Ce-Co people blunt, gruff, undignified and scruffy, with a reputation for looking unwashed or unkempt. No one, however, would deny that they are hardy, practical people who, given enough time, will get any problem fixed and survive the hardest stretches of the frontier.

Keeping to itself has not always kept Ce-Co out of fights. At some point it fought a war against another nation of the belt, the people now known as the Pioneers, and won. The Pioneers fled to Saturn. The details of that war are not widely known but the Pioneers still have a deep hatred of Ce-Co to this day.

Named characters and flotillas

• Foreman Edgermann: A Foreman, by his title of the Cooperative, whose battered cruiser is mining an asteroid deep in the void. See the account below.
• Mining garrison flotilla: This Ceres-owned mining flotilla garrisons a large asteroid cluster rich in heavy metals and radioactive minerals. Hopefully there will be no need to fight and plenty of profit to be made, but the Foremen of the Ceres Cooperative take no chances.
• Recovery flotilla: The Ceres Cooperative builds robust flotillas to retrieve stolen property and territory from local pirate gangs or aggressive nations. The calculations are done, and the potential loss of this many ships is a reasonable risk to balance the books and keep control of regions.
• Isolated flotilla: This Ceres flotilla has suffered terrible damage while cut off from its supply lines. Its sturdy Foreman has decided to use guerrilla tactics to survive the isolation, take enemy ships and reclaim lost territory.
• The deep-void scientific expedition: Ce-Co supports this in part, alongside NOVA.