Editing Brandy (section)

=== Aquila 473 B 100542 C Non Agricultural, Non Industrial, Vacuum ===

There are stars of all sizes and colours, white, yellow, orange, red and brown. There are quite a lot of brown dwarfs dotted around, dimly illuminating star systems consisting of interstellar dreck and slurry, particles of dirty ice too small for a beetle to colonise. Most don't appear on any but the most detailed star maps, it is very rare one even rates as a navigational hazard and they rarely impinge on the direct routes between more interesting inhabited systems. The exception is Brandy.

Brandy lies in the middle of a dark nebula made of a mix of organic molecules most notably ethanol (well methanol actually exists out there so why not?).

Four different colonies compete, run by British Petroleum, New Standard Oil from the US, Lukoil from Russia and a gang of mainly Scandinavian freelance belters called the Berusadine Brotherhood.

Each of these has a base (BP have bagged the only orbiting body big enough to be a planet and built a starport called New Milford Haven) and a number of refineries and mining vessels trundling round the system, grabbing the oil/ice asteroids and sucking in the denser strands of gas. 

From the main world Brandy gives about as much light as a 40 watt bulb, a dull purplish brown star about 20% covered in black sunspots edged in dull red. Every few hours a cloud of ethanol gets close enough to be caught up in one of the sluggish solar flares, making it burn with a dim blue flame. Residents say its looks a bit like a Christmas pudding, if you squint and are three sheets to the wind.

The main product of the system is a variety of interstellar light mineral oil, but inevitably various bored engineers have found a way of distilling off the booze to make 'Starshine' - various kinds of 90+% proof liquor dosed with food colouring and flavourings cooked up by organic chemists from the heavier fractions. Most people find it vile, but it is popular among the growing number of semi-feral spacebums who work asteroid belts and Oort clouds throughout Known Space, especially with a couple of ice cubes freshly chipped off a comet and shot of Ultra-Bee venom.