Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to go to space. It was my dream. Once I finished secondary school, I didn't really have the test scores or the fitness to work for one of the big space companies, or even a military program, but I still wanted to go. I figured if I just got into orbit I could find work somewhere on Port Eden or Babylon and go from there, even if I had to wait tables in some grungy bar, but I still couldn't afford a ticket. A friend told me about this service that sponsors you to go to space with just a small down payment. You work off the debt for a few years and then you're set. God I was so desperate... I... I just didn't ask any questions. I would have done almost anything to go to space... Anything except what they made me do for those five years aboard that ship... the Bohemian Galleon.
excerpt, Message in a Black Bottle (2287)
Black Barges, also known as sin ships, black ships, or criminal purposed spacecraft (CPS), are spacecraft operated for illegal activity other than piracy and terrorism. Black Barges are frequently linked to contraband smuggling, human trafficking, illegal asteroid mining, and abetting fugitives. In extreme cases, black barges are used as havens for human slavery, sex trafficking, and illegal or taboo practices.
Because of the high cost to build or buy spacecraft, Black Barges are usually operated by well established crime syndicates and cartels or wealthy individuals looking to indulge their vices away from the prying eyes of terrestrial governments. Black Barges are able to operate relatively unmolested through a combination of hacked transponders and records, bribery, and flags of convenience. The flags of convenience are usually drawn from countries that have very little space industry or antagonistic relationships with the nations and organizations that patrol space. These methods obfuscate jurisdiction effectively enough to avoid encounters with authorities in most instances, and interdiction patrols that do investigate telegraph their movements early enough for Black Barge operators to hide evidence of their crimes.
My one regret during my tenure was that we didn't do enough to stop the Black Barges. We got a few of them out of the skies, but there were dozens more out there that got away, and that's just the ones we knew about. I told myself back then that we had to go by the book and make sure we didn't start an international incident by seizing the wrong ship. I focused our efforts more on piracy, because that was a crime you could actually track. The victims were big companies that contracted us for the protection.
I saw later what kinds of things they did to people on those ships. I'd read the reports before, but I had to see for myself when we seized the Bohemian Galleon and it shook me to my core. If those girls hadn't gotten a message out we never would have stopped that ship. I wish we could have spared them that suffering... and there are still hundreds, maybe thousands of other faceless victims still out there still need help.
Admiral Jared Moorhaus, Commander of TASA's Space Interdiction Task Force from 2220-2226
Black Barges were first identified in the early 2180's alongside the first instances of space piracy. The number of Black Barges peaked around 2217's Great Earth Exodus, when the demand to leave
Earth was so high that people were willing to risk traveling to space via illicit means.
Tension between major spacefaring powers during the interwar periods of the 23rd century ironically led to a drop in Black Barge travel since interdiction patrols were on higher alert for espionage and strategic deception by adversaries. Meanwhile during the System Wide War and the War of the Americas, Black Barges took advantage of space militaries turing their attention to combat operations.
After 2300, fusion drives became much rarer in Black Barges as a result of the Most Mira terrorist attacks. After the attack, international agreements were ratified that required fusion drives to be registered and tracked to prevent similar attacks from occurring in the future. Black Barge operators usually opted for the slower travel times of a chemical propellant or ion drive in exchange for the privacy of not having every space-faring government constantly tracking their movements and ownership history.
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