Free-lance settlers

While the media prefers to show well funded settlers like capitol's pioneers, imperial's conquistadors and bauhaus' homebuilders as the people making the borders of humanity grow, that is far from the truth. The vast majority of all new settlements founded are not directly funded by the mega corporations but freelance or minor corporation ventures. And while life is hard for all settlers, at least the megacorporation's own are dropped with the expectation that they will live, the same cannot be said for the freelance settlers, greedy minds long ago realised that the one thing the solar system had no shortage of were desperate people, and freelance settling ventures often drop colonials on barely terraformed asteriods and moons, or in deep wilderness with little more than the clothes on their back. Should the venture succeed then the freelancers own the colony, should it fail the most expensive investment was the transport. But by placing many colonies at the same time that cost can be reduced greatly. The fact that they work so many colonies at the same time means that the people behind these ventures are often sloppy when it comes to backgroudn checks on the colonials, and it's far from uncommon that some of the colonials go mad and butcher everyone in the new settlement. That like dark legion raids, starvation and diseases is seen as a price of doing business rather than as an actual problem. And since there's such a rampart overpopulation in the inner solar system's megacities the cartel and the major corporations look the other way. And the ever growing poverty means that people are still lining up for the recruitment offices.

I said once that I thought the mutant chronicles universe had a lot in common with the Firefly one, and based on that similarity I wrote this text, not sure if you can call it a story. But it sets the mood.