## A Problem of Scale
Approximately ten years prior to the public outbreak of the Inter-Corporate Wars, Nanotrasen subsidiary Matahari Pharmaceuticals was given a simple task: near-complete control of the modern medical market, by any means necessary. While Nanotrasen-affiliated electronics and mining enterprises remained profitable despite allegations of stolen patents and repeated strikes by workers protesting poor living conditions, its biomedical acquisitions were staunchly unable to turn a profit, largely due to a lack of infrastructure. Matahari clinics were largely non-present outside of major cities (where they were often overlooked due to a minimum of staff or proximity to other, more reliable healthcare providers), and brand-name medications repeatedly failed to meet consumer metrics. Rather than accepting that their background in computing technologies and energy weapons left them largely unequipped for the problems of modern biomedical development, Nanotrasen decided to adopt its usual approach: throwing money at the problem.

## Project Maka-Wanaharo
The problem, of course, lay in a few factors. First of all, the handful of established Matahari laboratories were fairly small facilities consisting mostly of newly-hired staff without much in the way of experience in the field of complete-market-domination-of-the-healthcare-sector between them. These labs were also established inside the jurisdictions of nations such as the Solar Confederacy and the Antechannel League, which featured sharp regulations on medical experimentation. Matahari Pharmaceuticals chose to combat the problems simultaneously: they needed a medical laboratory of incredible size outside the operating space of most conventional authorities, preferably in a zone of space with ready access to the base materials necessary to synthesize a variety of modern medications, medical devices and biological utilities. The ideal place for this sort of construction was, of course, the Frontier.

Noting its proximity to a handful of recently-surveyed planets rich with precursor chemicals and its suitable distance from inhabited space, Matahari worked closely with N+S to ship nearly-unparalleled quantities of industrial-grade construction materials into a sparsely-populated region of space. Rather than constructing a lab on the surface of an uncolonized planet, Nanotrasen elected to construct a huge biological research and development station in the orbit of an orange dwarf star known as Raxichiarachix’s Beacon on most star charts. This served to minimize the risk of biological contamination from local flora and fauna while also ensuring that any outbreaks of pathogens or otherwise would have great difficulty escaping the station. Satisfied that their investment would be kept safe from legal oversight or biological pollution, the Matahari Pharmaceuticals board dubbed this station was dubbed the Raxichiarachix Installation. In order to keep the location of its investment hidden, funds funneled into the construction project were publicly marked as being devoted to “Project Maka-Wanaharo”, allegedly a Matahari-backed charity for victims of Meliz-Nolan Syndrome.

## But Why The Privacy?
With the advent of most modern medical technology, i.e. advanced medical scanners, chemical sleeper beds and the elimination of most medical allergens, profit margins on much of the healthcare industry have become much thinner. This has led to a variety of developments:
– Some firms like Cybersun Biodynamics have pursued an “elite” class of medical care, such as advanced cybernetic implants and over-engineered medical devices designed to appeal to upper-class clientele.
– Many medical professionals have instead flocked to other, more lucrative fields of medicine-adjacent study, be it xenofaunal research with groups such as CMM–BARD or working for a private client for standard pay, such as the various independent or private military contractors operating in areas such as the Frontier.
– And finally, traditional medical facilities and corporations, like hospitals or insurers, have to pursue vast cost-saving measures in order to keep up.

One of the best available methods of doing so was to skirt traditional regulatory bodies in order to avoid the costs associated with them. Testing ethics, certain safety protocols, even certain aspects of copyright and patent law – all could be reduced or even eliminated entirely without the oversight of government watchdogs. By constructing the Raxichiarachix Installation in such a remote locale, where the closest government body (the Colonial League of Independent Planets) was infamously soft on most pharmaceutical regulations, Matahari would be able to significantly enhance their margins and increase their market share unimpeded.

## Nearing Completion
As construction wore on, enthusiasm for the scheme began to wane, then was swiftly replaced with tiredness and an eagerness to ‘get it over with’, in the words of an anonymous Nanotrasen executive during the project’s Year Eight progress report meeting. By this point, nearly the entire interior and infrastructure system was complete, with only the exterior shell and a handful of minor systems still in progress. In order to speed the process along, Matahari decided to expedite the hiring process and get the installation’s research and manufacturing underway. Shoveling money into the best recruitment campaigns money could buy (screening for a combination of biomedical expertise, independence and financial unscrupulousness best suited to long-term isolation in an off-the-books biosciences facility on the edge of known space), Matahari hired thousands of scientists, engineers, administrative workers and maintenance technicians to staff the Raxichiarachix Installation while it was still under construction. Administrative structures, research teams and security squads were assembled out of whole cloth, with Raxichiarachix staff becoming a full tenth of all Matahari personnel practically overnight.

Within six months, newly-hired employees began to arrive in droves at the facility. Raxichiarachix Installation was designed to be almost entirely self-sufficient – the fewer ships that traveled to-and-from the facility, the lower the chance of discovery or infiltration by undesirable parties. Alongside the huge swaths of biomedical laboratories, genetic engineering workshops and chemical manufacturing plants, the station also featured extensive botanical gardens, dormitories and even a large entertainment district designed to mitigate the stresses of deep space.

This level of luxury was unusual for a Nanotrasen-affiliated facility, especially for a company as deep into unprofitability as Matahari. The reasoning behind this was fairly simple: asset protection. If an employee at a Sharplite production facility went postal, the worst they could do would be to blast a handful of their colleagues with a prototype laser rifle. If a virologist at Raxichiarachix went off the deep end, however, the ensuing viral release could be devastating to the personnel onboard, especially given the skirting of decontamination systems in order to reduce expenses. Crunching the numbers, Matahari determined that simply providing some movie theaters and the occasional employee mixer at the bar would be cheaper than rehiring all their organic employees after their virus-ridden bodies were disposed of. As a result, even whilst incomplete, Raxichiarachix Installation was practically a colony unto itself.

## Beginning Work
Upon arrival, Raxichiarachix Installation personnel immediately set to work on their assigned tasks. While most research teams were assigned to streamlining the production of existing Matahari medicinal drugs and devices, a handful of special projects were also included in their first-year docket. A small number of research sections were allocated to advanced cybernetics, while a scant few others went to work designing new combat drugs for use by Vigilitas strike teams.

The largest special project, however, was the sparsely-described “Project Oversight”. On an already highly-confidential station, Project Oversight was even more of a blackbox than usual – all that could be easily put together by an outside observer was that the team took up the majority of the Raxichiarachix Installation’s top-level geneticists and very rarely took breaks. While a degree of camraderie existed among the research cohorts – though competition for rare bonuses and limited funding provoked more friendly competition than anything else – the Oversight staffers maintained isolation from the rest of their colleagues. Rumors began to circulate that the Oversight cohort were engaged in all sorts of exotic tasks: production of genetic mules to test diseases on, analysis of genetic lines to mitigate risk of payouts for insured clients, even manufacture of advanced mutations designed to extend the natural lifespan. The real nature of their work, of course, was not forthcoming.

## At the Edge of the World
After a further year and a half of research beginning on Raxichiarachix Installation, Matahari Pharmaceuticals ran into a familiar sort of problem: profit. While the station had produced novel research that had produced success on the market, its costs had still exceeded any revenue acquired almost fivefold. Between the immense cost of the Raxichiarachix Installation’s construction (which by that time had still not been finished), the complete lack of expense spared on staff, and the difficulty of retaining said staff, Matahari was billions of stellarum in the hole with no easy way to write off the station – while an entirely secret research station may be exempt from regulation, it was also exempt from being insured or financially liquidated. While the Matahari board deliberated over their options, the decision was made for them. In early FS 495, the Inter-Corporate Wars, which had remained a series of quiet sabotages and careful accidents between the Syndicate Coalition and Nanotrasen’s corporate alliance, had its first overt military action. Suddenly, Nanotrasen had no funds to spare for marketing campaigns, corporate rebrands, or propping up failing research installations. And, looking at their options, the Matahari board realized it had the perfect excuse.

Withdrawal of the highest-level administrative staff was quiet – team leads were notified of a “corporate retreat” aimed at “retraining senior administrators to engage in modern socio-political-economic culture in a synergic fashion” with “re-coordination exercises, level-management revitalization procedures and meta-analytic standup meetings”, which they were unfortunately unable to participate in due to the vital nature of their work. That message, laden with corporate buzzwords and non-speech, was the final communication to any members of the Raxichiarachix Installation by Matahari executives for the next two years. Without a word, shipments of supplies ceased to the station, and communications arrays were remotely disabled. Overnight, one of the most advanced biomedical research stations in the known universe became a coffin.