"Esau" And MIRKHEIM

"'...about thirty years back, [the Baburites] tried to muscle in on a business that Solar had in a stuff called bluejack, on a planet in their neighborhood.'"

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT I, p. 46.

The Solar factor:

"'...euchered them out of their gains by a clever trick, and made sure they could get no benefit from returning. That was the first aggressive move Babur made in space. They seem to think they're ready for the real action now. And cosmos knows the Commonwealth is ill-prepared.'" (ibid.)

"Esau," collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate, tells the story of that Solar factor who, of course, goes far with van Rijn. Aggression by Babur and ill-preparedness by the Solar Commonwealth sums up the situation in Mirkheim although there is more below the surface.